Aug 4-10 Stoner Comedy Week: I don’t gas reefer anymore, but I love it when people in movies do!
Ever since the 2023 Australia incident, where Tenacious D went on hiatus — and seemingly Jack Black buried his friend Kyle Gass — thinking of the D makes me sad. It was hard to watch this movie, made in a time when things were better.
The plot of this film — well, the origin of the band — isn’t far from the truth. Jack Black and Kyle Gass met in Los Angeles as part of a theater company, and Gass felt threatened by Black, as he was the only musician before. Yet the chance to go to Scotland for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival — and to climb the volcano, Arthur’s Seat — bonded them. Gass would teach Black to play guitar in return for food, just like this movie. After a three-episode HBO series and a successful album, they went from being a comedy band to being a real band that does comedy. Initially, this was going to be about Tenacious D playing coffee shops and Black becoming fascinated by Atlantis. Black and Gass both fall in love with a girl called Simmeon, who has written books about the fictional island. They later meet Ronnie James Dio, and are sent on a road trip to Miami.” That movie never made it.
This one didn’t do well in theaters. Cult movies rarely do. Black said, “A lot of enthusiastic stoners were like, ‘Yeah, du-u-u-de! Just saw it.” I was like, “Where were you when the movie came out?” “Sorry, dude, I was hi-i-i-gh!””
Meat Loaf is Black’s dad. Dave Grohl is Satan. Dio is Dio. All is right in this. I mean, any movie that ends with the heroes smoking out of a bong made from Satan’s horn is one I’m going to love.
Their next album, Rize of the Phoenix, starts with the words, “When The Pick Of Destiny was released, it was a bomb. And all the critics said that the D was done. The sun had set, and the chapter had closed. But one thing no one thought about was that the D would rise again.” That album is about Gass losing his mind as Black becomes a Hollywood star.
Master hacker Stanley Jobson (Hugh Jackman) was busted by the FBI for infecting their Carnivore program with a computer virus. He can’t even look at a computer ever again. He can’t see his ex-wife Melissa (Drea de Matteo) or daughter Holly (Camryn Grimes) because of a restraining order.
Then, Gabriel Shear (John Travolta) offers him $10 million for one last hacking job.
Ginger Knowles (Halle Berry), who gets him into this, may be a DEA agent. Gabriel could be the boss of Black Cell, a secret organization created by J. Edgar Hoover to battle terrorists. Or he could be dead and the Gabriel we’ve met is someone else.
It could be both, to tell the truth, because Gabriel loves misdirection.
With support from Don Cheadle, Sam Shepard and Vinnie Jones, this starts with a 135 camera-filmed explosion that has CGI elements. It starts strong and keeps moving, a film that really got Jackman and Berry noticed by audiences.
The Arrow Video release of this movie has commentary by director Dominic Sena, interviews with composer Paul Oakenfold and production designer Jeff Mann, the promotional HBO First Look: Swordfish, another feature on the effects, a music video, conversations with the actors, two alternate endings and a theatrical trailer. It comes inside a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tommy Pocket. The sleeve includes a double-sided fold-out poster and an illustrated collector’s booklet. The booklet features new writing on the film by Priscilla Page and an article from American Cinematographer about the film’s opening sequence. You can order Swordfish from MVD.
In the year 2037, genetically engineered Mati (Gabriel Damon) has been programmed by an evil doctor (Jürgen Prochnow) to design an AI named Monster, which drives a giant truck in a race for $100 million. Somehow, this brings together its human driver, Gus (Karen Allen) and French Elvis Johnny Hallyday as Stump as they navigate the end of the world.
Directed by Pierre-William Glenn and written by Patrice Duvic, Alain Gillot and Wallace Potts, this is a so out of left field post-apocalyptic cash-in, a film where a truck has a human mouth, where goth kids float in labs, an intro song by Stan Ridgway from Wall of Voodoo, three parts for Prochnow, Howard Vernon’s voice, a Philip K. Dick license plate, a shout-out to Heavy Metal artist Enki Bilal and despite all the car stunts, it has the core DNA of an art film beating inside what should be a total theft of Australia end of the world cinema.
The MVD releaase of this film has the U.S. and extended French versions of the film, as well as an interview with star Jürgen Prochnow, We All Descend – The Making of Terminus with Vincent Glenn (son of director Pierre-William Glenn), star Julie Glenn (daughter of Pierre-William Glenn) and archival interviews with Pierre-William Glenn, photo gallery, reversible cover artwork, a poster, a trailer and a limited edition slipcover. Get it from MVD.
A strange meteorite crashes to Earth in the United States, and the near-tragedy combines the three-person Flying Angels acrobatic team—Scott Masterson (Michael Lembeck), Chuck Gavin (Chad Everett), and Beth O’Brien (Adrienne Barbeau)—with Ultra Heroes who have come from Nebula M7. A mysterious old man — Walter Freeman (Stacy Keach Sr.) — recruits the three to become Ultra Force and face a series of monsters, including King Maera.
According to Ultrafandom, “Between 1981 and 1983, Tsuburaya Productions established a planning department in the United States called ULTRA COM, with the aim of creating a film script titled Ultraman: Hero from the Stars. This film, written by Donald F. Glut, focused on the story of an Ultraman active in the United States. The initial plan was to produce a live-action tokusatsu film, with Jackson Bostwick and Anne Lockhart cast as the main actors.”
That eventually became this movie, jointly produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions and Tsuburaya Productions and animated by Studio Sign and Ashi Productions. It was initially intended to become a series. Still, it became a TV movie in the U.S. and a theatrical release in Japan as part of the 1987 Ultraman Festival with Ultraman: Terror on Route 87, Ultraman Ace: Giant-Ant Terrible-Monster vs. the Ultra Brothers and Ultraman Kids.
Also known as Ultraman U.S.A., this finds the new Ultras assisted by robots — Ulysses (William Callaway), Samson (Ronnie Schell) and Andy (Charlie Adler) — and operating out of a high-tech superbase under the Georgia National Golf Club that has a hangar that opens up near Mount Rushmore. Now, Ultraman Scott, Chuck and Beth they’re ready to destroy the aliens from the planet Sorkin.
The U.S.A. Ultras also show up in the Ultraman Legend short, Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legend The Movie and Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Destined Crossroad.
Directed by Mitsuo Kusakabe and Ray Patterson (who also made GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords and A Flintstone Family Christmas), this has a very American look — almost like how Bionic 6 and Mighty Orbots combined American and Japanese styles.
Also: Writer John Eric Seward isn’t a single person but a collective name for several people who worked together on the story.
This is a fun film, as all Ultraman films are, and feels quite a bit like Team America.
For years, Kevin Pollak has done a Shatner impersonation. So why not have him in a Shatner-directed and starring episode as the potential son-in-law of the man who is Kirk?
A pilot (Pollak) has been engaged to Adm. Kornfeld’s (Shatner) daughter Dulcine (meta here, it’s Shatner’s real-life daughter Melanie, who was also in Syngenor, Cthulhu Mansion, Bloodstone: Subspecies IIand Bloodlust: Subspecies III). He’s been forced to wait until the wedding night to consummate their union. While waiting for her — and her father to deactivate the chastity device that keeps him away from her lady business — he falls for Emmy (the Swedish Bikini Team’s Heather Elizabeth Parkhurst), a sex bot who he gets stuck inside, just when that device is hacked by his soon-to-be bride.
Not based on an E.C. Comic, this episode was written by National Lampoon alumnus Chris Miller and Kevin Rock.
You can download all of the episodes here or watch this episode on YouTube.
Howard Thorne (Nick Moriarty) stalks and assaults women on a regular basis. Or maybe he’s just dreaming of it. He wants nothing to do with his junkie wife Vicki (Adele Rein, The Girl With the Hungry Eyes). When they go to a costume party together, she learns who he really is while he learns what it’s like to be a victim. Then, they both go to Hell.
Like many films of this time and genre, there were many prints of this, some with more filthy scenes that could have just been spliced in. The Something Weird VHS of this supposedly had more of the later nightmare footage.
Made for John Lamb (Sexual Freedom In Denmark, The Raw Ones, Sexual Liberty Now, possibly the director of Zodiac Killer) by Jack Hill, this is a drugged and fuzzed-out roughie that’s more art than nearly any other movie in the genre and one that actually is sexy. Credit for that goes to not just Hill, but Rein, who has a volcanic scene with herself in a mirror. There’s also Cathy Crowfoot (who would go on to shoot and produce The Boy With the Hungry Eyes) as The Crow, a martial arts-using vengeance-seeking former victim out to destroy Howard. Also: A Dracula-voiced host, played by Ron Gans, the voice of New World Pictures trailers and the Halloweenradio commercial.
You can also see Carol Baughman (My Tale Is Hot), Rene De Beau (Orgy of the Dead), Gaby Martone(Mermaids of Tiburon) and Luana Anders (who convinced Jack Nicholson to join her improv class) show up.
This VCI Blu-ray release has two commentary tracks: one by noted film historian, podcaster and artist Rob Kelly and the other by Jack Hill. There’s also a photo and poster gallery. You can get it from MVD.
Aug 4-10 Stoner Comedy Week: I don’t gas reefer anymore, but I love it when people in movies do!
Written in 1977 by Phillip K. Dick, A Scanner Darklyis based on Dick’s life. Between mid-1970 (when his fourth wife, Nancy, left him) and mid-1972, Dick opened his house up to teenage drug users as his amphetamine addiction went out of control. How else do you write 68 pages of books a day? To escape, while in Canada, he went to X-Kalay, a Synanon recovery program. That’s why the book — and the movie — ends with a dedication to the people — including Dick himself — who died or had their lives ruined by drugs, saying that they were “some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did” and informing the audience that “drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to move out in front of a moving car.” It took him two weeks to write and three years to rewrite, a time that his fifth wife, Tes, said that she would find him crying, as the book was so hard to write. As a result, Dick wrote a contract giving Tessa half of all the rights to the novel, as she “participated to a great extent in writing the outline and novel A Scanner Darkly with me, and I owe her one half of all income derived from it.”
Richard Linklater wanted to make Ubik, but couldn’t figure out how to film it, a problem that most people who made Philip K. Dick movies solved by just doing their own thing and just using the title (see Paycheck, The Adjustment Bureau, Next — which is based on “The Golden Man” — as well as Minority Report, Total Recall and nearly every movie made from his books). His daughters, Laura Leslie and Isa Hackett, started looking closely at the scripts and learned that while they didn’t want a cartoon made of their father’s most personal work, Linklater got it.
The process of making this movie involved the actors being involved in the writing process, then making the movie, then 18 months of animating everything, which was way more than the studio thought it would take. The rotoscope process gives this a look beyond anything I’ve seen outside of Waking Life. This is the next level of what Linklater did in that film.
20% of the country is addicted to Substance D. Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is an undercover cop living in a house of addicts reporting back to the government agents that police the war on drugs, who all wear scramblesuits so that they have no idea who they are, undercover and masked even to one another, maybe to themselves. He’s in love with Donna Hawthorne (Winona Ryder), from whom he buys the drugs, and wants to get closer to the supplier. But she is also Hank, his boss, and this has all been a trap to make James Barris (Robert Downey Jr.) get overly paranoid. Or maybe she’s Audrey. Also: Who are the people that Bob has a suburban life with? Is he addicted to Substance D? Whichever, whatever, because Substance D was created by New-Path, a drug abuse clinic, to make money for themselves by creating and curing the supply and demand. Is Bob in the clinic to get help or is he there undercover to stop them?
None of it matters, but it all does in the end. Nothing is everything. Or, as Dick said, “There will come a time when it isn’t ‘They’re spying on me through my phone’ anymore. Eventually, it will be “My phone is spying on me.””
Back in early 2023, in the middle of SOV mania, I found the film Song of the Sword on the Internet Archive, thanks to Demolition Kitchen. It obsessed me — a rare movie that it seemed that no one else had seen with no Letterboxd or IMDB entry. I wrote about it, entered it into both of those sites and even hunted down a lot of the cast and crew.
Imagine my surprise when Joel Sanderson, who is Demolition Kitchen, reached out about a revised version of the film.
Last weekend, the film played for audiences for the second time — the first in forty years.
Here’s what the Lawrence Times had to say:
Song of the Sword, a 1986 local sword-and-sorcery movie, has been lovingly re-edited for a fresh premiere at Liberty Hall.
The movie, directed by J. Stanley Haehl, was filmed entirely in Kansas by a primarily Lawrence-based cast and crew under the banner Abraxas Productions. Its narrative draws influence from many of the classics that are still loved today: Tolkien, Arthurian legend and the Tom Baker era of Doctor Who.
Maria Anthony, who co-wrote the script and starred in the film as a warrior named Kalydia, said the movie had a single screening at KU’s student union upon release. Although it won an award, she wasn’t aware of any further showings.
According to Anthony, film enthusiast Sam Panico kickstarted the film’s modern revival with a review on his blog, “B&S About Movies.”
“Imagine, if you will, LARPers — Live Action Role Playing — but on a much larger scale, filmed by video camera, fuzzy drained video colors coalescing to give us wanderers with walking sticks in the woods, primitive video effects in the place of computer generation magic and best of all, everyone is so serious about it,” Panico wrote in the review.
Anthony said Panico was intrigued by the semi-lost film and wanted to see it rejuvenated for a modern audience. That’s where Joel Sanderson, operator of Demolition Kitchen Video, stepped in to provide his editing expertise.
The title screen for the 2025 special edition of “Song of the Sword,” which will premiere at Liberty Hall Aug. 2. (Courtesy of Joel Sanderson and Demolition Kitchen Video)
Under the Demolition Kitchen banner, Sanderson is a “budget video producer, audio-visual technical designer, public access movie host, and musician,” according to his Facebook page. He also documents a diversity of Kansas-made media through an Internet Archive account.
Sanderson has long been interested in collecting and researching Kansas-made films. When he moved to Lawrence in 1989 and began working at the KU Film Library, he learned of “Song of the Sword” from his coworker, Mark Zumalt, the movie’s cinematographer.
Sanderson toyed with showing the film on his Sunflower Cable public access show around 2007, but figured it needed to be condensed — the original video clocks in at a healthy 1 hour and 57 minutes run time. The new edition showing at Liberty has since been shortened by Sanderson’s discerning eye.
“All I did was cut it for time, tighten things up, and the only other thing I added was I enhanced some of the sound effects, too,” Sanderson said. “And, you know, enhanced the colors and made it look more dreamy in a way. It’s from an original VHS tape, so it’s not going to be pristine, 4K quality.”
Sanderson reported that a recent test-run of the footage looked “really good on the screen” at Liberty.
Sanderson was also drawn to the project because he felt an ‘80s sword-and-sorcery regional film would stand out in a local movie scene dominated by horror films. Out of the thousands of regionally made movies, he estimates that very few are high fantasy.
The work required for this type of cinema, replete with elaborate costuming and magical effects, was driven part by passionate willpower and part by sheer luck.
Actress Maria Anthony as Kalydia in “Song of the Sword.” (Courtesy of Joel Sanderson and Demolition Kitchen Video)
Actor Clark Jamison as Shan-Ra in Song of the Sword. (Courtesy of Joel Sanderson and Demolition Kitchen Video)
“We cast our friends and closest companions,” Anthony said. To cast the sorcerer Adroma, she added, “We went up to this pretty lady in the student union and said, ‘Do you want to be in a movie?’ That’s kind of dicey now, but again, there was no budget.”
Clark Jamison played Shan-Ra in the film, a noble, guiding character invested in the power of words. Jamison recalls self-funding what he could of the project, including costumes created by Anna McCoy, editing software and lodging during two days of shooting at the Coronado Heights castle.
“We all stayed in (one) motel room for a night or two while we shot there,” Anthony said, laughing at the memory.
With 40 years gone by, she was happy to hand over creative reins for the 2025 special edition.
“There was no motivation or plan on my part (to re-edit the movie),” she said. “It was all these other people, and I think that’s perfectly appropriate at this point, that it be more fan-driven, creator-driven.”
Ultimately, every moment of viewing is imbued with the whimsy and fantastical interests of the cast and crew.
“This movie makes me feel like everyone in this is really into symphonic metal, BDSM, polyamory or painting miniatures,” Panico wrote. “Maybe and instead of or.”
Here are a few cool things from that showing:
This was such an exciting project to be part of. Thanks to everyone who made such a great movie and to Joel for being a champion of getting it back out there!
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