TRANSMORPHANS and the OLIVER TWIST ENDING

On Thanksgiving, I had the pleasure of catching this "cult sleeper" with Archduke and Dan the Commie. I was amused to hear Orphan invited a public backlash from adoption advocates:

"We are concerned that in addition to its intended entertainment value, this film will have the unintended effect of skewing public opinion against children awaiting families both in the United States and abroad," said a letter to Warner Bros. CEO Barry Meyer from the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute.

Warner Bros. may or may not have  added a pro-adoption message at the end of the film when it came out on DVD... That was at least the bone they originally threw to the orphan loving coterie.  When we On-Demanded it, there certainly wasn't an "ADOPT NOW" in the credits.

But what's really dope about this movie is the character Max, who is the biological, deaf daughter of our protagonist parents. As you can imagine, there's a lot of interesting possibilities for manipulation and suspense when you have to communicate in sign.

When a kid's this cute, you're gonna barf if she gets hurt. When the kid's deaf, you're ready to take a bullet to the brain for that mute little tyke. So Orphan didn't make me want to adopt, but it did encourage me to have a surrogate child by the mother of Max. I'LL PAY ANYTHING!!!!

Videogum.com was offended not only by Orphan's Photoshop fuck-up of a poster (which really does make a good movie look cheap and trite), but also by the dud taglines. They responded with this:

I think Girls Are Made From Sugar And Evil might be the only winner here, but the idea's right. And look what made an appearance! From our second post, the worst tagline ever:

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL!

Eli Roth's trailer for Thanksgiving was sublimely thouroughbred, serving a potent slew of tasty taglines like, This year there will be no leftovers. These posters were made to solidify the image of Roth's Thanksgiving as a lost Grindhouse classic of the holiday-slasher breed.

Eli has hinted at turning this into a full-length feature. But would that be self-defeating?

CAN'T STOP... WON'T STOP

My dad is a tagline toreador. In response to the announcement that he was victor in our "Make Your Own" contest, he offered an alternate for Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man. And so, this Thanksgiving I give thanks to my prolific patriarch in the form of this Award Certificate, featuring his new tagline:

And I might as well post my own tagline for Harley now:

One burns leaf... One burns rubber... And they'll both burn in hell.

EAT LEAD, FROGGIES!!!

The guy who ad-libbed that famous line (which should have made it's way onto a poster at some point) is "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, the World Wrestling Federation legend. Roddy left the WWF at his peak in 1988 to parlay his popularity into a Hollywood career. Don't ask me why They Live was a box office bomb, and The Scorpion King solidified Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's position in Tinseltown... that's just the nature of The Ring.

Roddy starred in two films the year he left wrestling. One of them was this:

Those frog costumes are incredible.

But, by 1992, Roddy was back in the Royal Rumble to fight for the big belt. Watch his expert beef-libbing here:

And there will probably always be a place for Roddy in the world of Wrestling. His website tells me that he hosted WWE RAW at the Garden just last week. After the premiere of Darren Aronofsky's recent stunner The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke said he only felt like they had succeeded the moment he saw Rowdy Roddy Piper in tears after the film.

PARTY'S OVER!

Some things won't stay down... even after they die.

I hope everyone gets to eat something they love this Thanksgiving.

Despite the fact that a priest does indeed rip every auxilliary body part from one man's torso before being impaled by a gravestone, this clip does no justice to the true extent of gore explored by Peter Jackson in this film (Yes that Peter Jackson, idiots).

Now, I know I reminisce a lot on this blog, but first viewings of shocking visual events are far more significant to me than "Straight-'S' for Satisfactory" report cards of yore. I remember my brother was working on some kind of montage-commentary on "Violence" for a film class in high school... which of course meant gathering your boys together to rent some really gory shit-- and by extension, letting your little brother see some really gory shit. Selected scenes for presumed "discussion" included the now infamous "Marvin" sequence from Pulp Fiction, perhaps a clip from Robocop, but most surely in attendance was this bit of lawn-mower mayhem from Dead Alive:

The original title Dead Alive clearly did not fly with European distribution, where I suppose Braindead was a safer bet... In any case Spain came through with a tagline that was quite to the point: Tu madre se ha comido a mi perro = Your mom ate my dog

Technical Sidenote: For anyone who's ever wondered what "MIDI" means, all of the music you hear in Dead Alive is MIDI, meaning it was composed and recorded using computer software, no real instruments.

COMIN' STRAIGHT FROM THE UNDERGROUND

Hard to see there, but the great Bruce Campbell is totally in Maniac Cop 1 & 2 -- as the hero though, not the anchovy-pizza-faced killer. Actually, this dude plays the Maniac Cop: 

Crow T. Robot of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew once remarked: "My God, he's a catcher's mitt with eyes!"

Glad to see you guys wouldn't quit a winner.  

Samurai Cop boasts some YouTube clips that are just too good to be true, capturing that perfect, "one-take only" feel of one-dollar Grindhouse beauty. And look who's back! Robert Z'Dar was clearly on a roll by 1989.

OF CORPSE I'LL MARRY YOU!

I think I'll just let the vibrant denizens of YouTube speak for me on this one. Shit really pops off around 4:20

S.Love was right about rhyming taglines. A treasured rarity to be sure.

MY BEAK IS UNSHEATHED!

Yes I am in a twitter-feud with an un-respondent opponent. But out of idiocy comes inspiration. Read below:

I did indeed write "bog", when I clearly meant "blog". Never mind that, Archduke went straight for the jugular, (perhaps) unaware that it was a hilarious pun on a previous tweet by my idiot cohort.

 Enjoy the life of Bog:

After 1200 Years... They're Back. I normally hate these DVD spreads, but this one says "the remains of the legendary medieval Bog People".

Bodies Buried For Eternity... Until Now

Yeah, you might know Vinnie from this litt-ow Guy Ritchie monologue from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels:

Wait... does this poster say Aldo Ray?

Tarantino of course paid tribute to Aldo Ray with his character Aldo Raine (played by Brad Pitt), leader of the Inglourious Basterds. Here are some of those WWII movies Quentin must have grown up on -- you have to look for the name Aldo Ray underneath the likes of John Wayne, but that's the beauty of it.

Hm... that's a "ticklish" question? I thought it was a "go play outside, Daddy's tired and needs to take a whiskey-bath" question.

MARRY ME BUFFY

Pert. Wholesome. Way Lethal.

I remember Buffy was basically the hottest chick I'd ever laid eyes on. And I truly sympathized with her plight! And then there was Olly Pike (Luke Perry's character), who I simply considered the coolest motherfucker on the planet. This may well have been the impetus for those idle, prepubescent musings, when I would ask my parents, "What if I grow up to be gay?"

Paul Reubens played one of the best vampires in cinema history; Here's that death scene that used to crack you up:

Inside The Actor's Taglines FEATURING Nicolas Cage -Part ONE- The Early Work

Yes, it is time for everyone's favorite wackjob to get his, via a couple of idiots. Personally, I love Nicolas Cage. I don't necessarily mean his work, even though I do love a select few of his flicks (Raising Arizona, Leaving Las Vegas, Matchstick Men, Face/Off), it's just that persona. I don't even really know how to explain it. I have this vision of Nic acting in real life a lot like the picture above, like a nutcase. In my mind he sleeps in a mud bath taken directly from the earth where Christ was born, while a Korean high princess sits on his face. Both literally and figuratively of course. Enough with the hearsay lets get to the early tag lines that helped shape Nicolas Cage into the actor we all know, and some of us kind of enjoy some of the time.
Is one of those things trying to get an up-skirt? I think that Nic went all in on his preparation for this role by literally becoming a vampire. We all know that vampires aren't real, but he believed soooooo hard that he could be one, in his head he was one. That's why he looks like a fucking corpse on this poster. I don't know about you, but I don't see much life behind those eyes.

An artist's rendering of Nic Cage even does Nic Cage just perfect. You've just got to love that rhyming tagline as well. You really just don't see that anymore, and quite frankly, I miss it.

Honestly I love taglines that tell me what genre of movie I'm looking at. It makes me feel like the movie studio respects my intelligence enough to point out it's a comedy despite the Elvis skydivers. Because nothing says genre confusion like skydiving dead inventors of Rock N Roll. Thank Jebus for that.

You know what's beyond the call of life's duty? Having to get within 200 yards of this piece of garbage. Seriously, if you watch it you will just be haunted by regret for at least 15 minutes. Then you will forget all about it, which is basically the worst thing that could happen to a movie. No one remembering it.

Stay tuned for part two of this Nicolas Cage tagline retrospective which is guaranteed to be full of dick jokes, topical humor, and good old-fashioned hate.

I DON'T THINK YOU CAN SKYHOOK YOUR WAY OUT OF THIS ONE KAREEM

^^ I love the little ninja hanging on a rope down by the tagline. ^^

Yeah, if you didn't know, Bruce Lee totally kicked Kareem Abdul Jabar's ass. Also, you may notice that, in one of his countless nods to Hong Kong cinema from Kill Bill, Tarantino dressed "The Bride" in Bruce's iconic yellow jumpsuit and Aasics, in the scene where she makes stir fry out of O-Ren Ishii's "Crazy 88":

Somebody else sported Bruce's yellow jumpsuit, but in the case of Bruce Li, it was a little more impostor, a lot less homage:

In Bruce Lee Against Supermen, Bruce Li, like the original Bruce Lee, played Kato, the sidekick of the Green Hornet. This was the height of the so-called "Bruceploitation" movement after his death. Check the real Kato snuffing out some Chinatown goons:

THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING

Creepshow boasts one horrific death scene:

As you can see, one of the vignettes in Creepshow 2 is called "The Raft", and it pretty much shut down my life when I first saw it as a kid. Part I & II below:

MEASURE BY MEASURE

There was a tagline on one of these Desperate Measures posters, but those idiots made it like size 3 font.

Search, Rescue, And... Destroy.  I'm gonna guess Michael's movie didn't do quite as well as those listed above because his handlers didn't follow the simple Rule of Measure: You must have 2 intense looking dudes on your poster. Sad, really.

No, no. I said 2 intense looking dudes. Is anyone listening?

Too many dudes.