The DAN ZONE

What a way to start the 80s horror era. Humanoids from the Deep is everything The Creature from the Black Lagoon wanted to be 25 years before—filled with blood, boobs, an enlightening Native American subplot, and sea monster perverts!

Only in my recent years of nostalgia film watching have I come to realize how much focus was put on Native Americans in movies of the 70s and 80s: Prophecy, Creepshow 2, Porky’s II, The Dark Power, and this film, just to name a few. Hell, there’s even a little Indian kid who eats baked beans out of a flashlight in that very special three-part Grand Canyon episode of The Brady Bunch. However, ‘Humanoids’ casts the hottest Indian of all. This is one sweet piece of Tonto ass, with tight jeans and feathered Parker Stevenson locks. In fact, most of the cast in this film has Farrah Fawcett/Bruce Jenner hair. Awesome. As usual, the lone Native American character in the film is more in tune with nature and the way progress destroys it, but is faced with major discrimination when he tries to warn of the consequences of industrialization. The whities even call him ‘dumb’ and ‘drunk’—right before beating him up! Luckily he has some white allies, and the film even throws in a message of peace at the end—right during all the sea monster madness.

The film scores immediate points for daring to have a child as the first victim. Sweet! But soon after, not one but multiple dogs become victims. Now they’ve gone too far! They should have left well enough alone with killing the kid. The film’s opening sequence features an underwater-swimming-through-the-seaweed perspective right out of Jaws 2, plus you get a cheap cat scare—right out of every horror movie ever made. Even so, the basic plot is the best part of this film. These pervy humanoids seem to be able to smell fish from a mile away, because every time a woman gets near the shore, these hideous humanoids crawl from the surf and pounce! Yep. They are hungry for human va-jay-jay. And they also need visual stimulation because they always swipe at the victim’s bikini and rip it right off before taking the plunge! It really doesn’t get any better than that.

Well, actually, it does, during the big festival on the dock at the end of the movie. First of all, there’s a Bubblicious bubble gum booth! Ah, the memories of the Bubblicious/Bubble Yum/Hubba Bubba wars (and that nasty spider egg urban legend). Then the humanoids break right through the boardwalk. Yep, they’re under the boardwalk, out of the sun, under the boardwalk, probably having some fun—with some pour human victim. But that’s just foreplay, because they then ravage all the hot chicks at the festival…and even some not so hot. The gore is upped big time as people are torn to shreds by these horny humanoids. But the humans fight back, and a gang of dudes even surrounds one of the humanoids and starts giving him a serious beat down with some sticks. It’s like footage right out of a lawsuit against the police department!

Other great moments include the humanoids pulling a Michael Myers as they stalk some woman in her own house. Very creepy and effective moment. This is just one of two very suspenseful scenes, the other being an attack on a pickup truck, made slightly less impressive due to the laughable reactions of the chick driving as the humanoids crash through her windows.

The final thing that could have made this film better is the addition of MOST of the deleted scenes on the disc. The film is only an hour and twenty minutes and could easily have been bumped up to an hour and a half with the inclusion of deleted scenes, most of which contained…more humanoid attacks, boobs and blood! How rare is it that you watch deleted scenes for a horror movie and find they actually contain horror and nudity??? I’m shocked these scenes were ever deleted in the first place. Blood and boobs are the key ingredients of a horror movie! Cut out the dialogue, the plot, the social message…and give me more blood and boobs dammit!

Aside from slashers, the 80s also spawned various horror films about the use of human flesh as meat to be served to unsuspecting patrons at restaurants, diners, and such. Motel Hell serves up a seriously demented take on the theme and could be so disturbing, but instead goes the over-the-top exploitation camp route, probably because it would have been way too heavy for 1980 censors if the premise had been taken seriously. So basically it was watered down to Waters…John Waters that is. Yeah, it’s definitely weird enough to be something John Waters could have put on celluloid.

Basically, a freaky redneck man and his hella butch overalls wearing sister have a motel, slaughterhouse and a ‘meat market,’ so you can guess what becomes of guests. Not even Norman Bates thought of a way to turn a profit on being a psycho killer!  This plot could be a simple set up for a whole lot of kills, but instead, the movie is more about the process of exactly how this psycho pair makes sure their meat is perfectly right for use. This shit is heinous. They bury their victims, STILL ALIVE, in their yard up to the head, then cut their throats, severing the vocal chords so the victims can only make these horrible gurgling sounds. After that, they cover their heads with sacks. So every time the psycho pair visits their little crop of people, you see a bunch of sacks wiggling furiously from the dirt while making miserable noises. The goal of the pair is to tenderize the meat through immobility—which requires feeding the ‘garden heads’ by sticking funnels in their mouths.

The psycho pair is portrayed in typical backwoods lunatic creepy comic fashion, not unlike Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive in that respect, where you find the maniacal behavior somehow funny, yet you know coming face-to-face with the freak in real life would be a whole different story. The scenes involving the tormenting of the garden heads are truly horrible, but the film has a bunch of characters and subplots that help distract from over thinking the possibilities of the situation—like, WTF happens when the buried victims poop or pee? Ew…fricking…ew.  There are two chicks who stop their car in the middle of nowhere because there are cows crossing the road—cardboard cows that are part of a trap, making this a moment that could have been high on suspense but is instead somewhat humorous. There is all out slapstick camp when a whip-wielding dominatrix and her male slave, dressed in clear plastic bra and miniskirt (Missing Persons anyone?), think they are about to get into a swinging B&D interlude with the nasty looking, rope carrying psycho pair. Then there’s this trippy neon strobe light experiment the psycho pair performs on the garden heads that could only be a product of 1980. Add to that a role for Wolfman Jack as a reverend, and you can see how far this movie strays from its disturbing main premise

Along with the revolting concept of the garden heads, the ending of this movie also has some pretty strong horror elements. First of all, the garden heads eventually escape, and are these traumatized, almost zombie-like monsters, making for some fantastic horror. And the final scene could have carried the whole movie in a sort of Texas Chainsaw way, when a local cop is chased through the slaughterhouse by a chainsaw swinging maniac wearing a fricking slaughtered pig’s head. What a fantastic creepfest that moment alone is—a visual that could easily stay with viewers forever. It makes a great starting point for a remake if you ask me….

Back in the day when Friday the 13^th and Halloween reigned supreme, right as the 70s were becoming the 80s, there were a string of low budget horror/exploitation films being made that were just begging for a market that didn’t involve passing theatrical rating systems. It’s almost as if a catalog of movies was being filmed in preparation for the early 80s home video explosion.

The most crucial part of marketing these films would be the theatrical poster (aka: the VHS box artwork). The gruesome scenes of sex and slaughter alone made young, impressionable teens and pre-teens’ stomachs turn with terror, afraid to imagine what brutal horrors awaited the adolescent sinners on celluloid. 1980’s Mother’s Day was definitely one of those cover visuals that kept me away from the film until I was much older. From the title, you could assume that this movie was cashing in on the emerging slasher/holiday themed films, but in truth, this movie has more in common with Deliverance and I Spit On Your Grave. It’s definitely the torture porn of its day.

But back to that artwork, which is what promises a gory good horror experience. This ain’t no Mamma Mia. Mother in her chair with half her face looking like a skull immediately brings to mind Mother Bates. The present she holds with a decapitated head indeed points at some demented celebration of the Mother’s Day holiday. Behind Mother we see her two sons. The inbred looking one on the left is holding the bloody axe, so we assume he’s a deranged killer, while the one on the right we can only assume is more horribly disfigured and deformed under his potato sack mask, much like Jason in Friday the 13^th Part 2 (which this film pre-dates by a year). His knife screams Michael Myers. So this simply has to be a straight up holiday horror film, right? Nope. It is the work of a genius artist and marketing team, because this simply isn’t a scary film, not a holiday slasher, and barely even a disturbing exploitation flick.

The film’s opening is classic. Some self-help guru is giving a seminar, and an old lady bonds with the couple she’s sitting with in the front row. After the seminar, she offers the young man and woman a ride. But this nice young couple has plans for her. As soon as they get on a desolate road in the woods, they plan to attack and kill her. The ominous synthesizer accent stabs are sheer 1980 perfection. Before the couple can attack the old woman, the car stalls, so the lady gets out to check under the hood. The twist, of course, is that this is Mother, and it is she and her sons who have plans for the couple. We cut to a blatant dummy profile in the back seat that is supposed to be the man, then we cut to the girl in the front seat, who screams as blood is splattered on her, and then we cut back to the man dummy, whose head is THEN chopped off….you know, after blood has already flown! Hard to believe an editing job this bad was not corrected upon the film’s original release. Once Mother and her sons drag the girl out of the car and the boys have some fun with her, she crawls to Mother for mercy. Mother proceeds to choke her with a rope—while saying “I love you” and planting a kiss on the young woman’s lips!!!! Geriatric lesbianism??? Blech!!!

We are then introduced to the three main chicks of the movie. Let’s face it. By 1980, any trio of girls in a horror movie was simply a poor man’s Laurie, Annie and Linda. These three are slightly older though, and planning to do a whole girl getaway thing, but first we’re treated to a pool party that captures a moment in time when men were men, sporting beards, filling the packages of speedos, their backs covered in hair while their heads were bald. They just don’t make men like they used to.

Once the girls are on the road, all signs point to a bad weekend. They are heading off to a lake to camp. Bad sign. They stop at a gas station convenience store and two kids are playing banjos out front. Bad sign. A crazy redneck store clerk warns them to stay away from their destination. Bad sign. They drive past a “proceed at your own risk” sign. Literally a bad sign!!! And yet, they still go skinny dipping almost immediately!!!

Before the horror begins, we get the weirdest 1970s flashback to when these girls were in high school (the 70s being, you know, a year before the film was released, and probably when the film was made). The flashback holds plenty of promise. First off, they paid for the rights to use Tommy James’ “I Think We’re Alone Now,” which is a big surprise. Anyway, the girls are recalling playing a prank on one hell of a cute guy—one of the girl’s luring him onto a baseball field at school at night to have sex. She runs off for a minute, he gets naked and begins doing naked pushups, and then the girls turn on all the playing field flood lights! And it’s more than just a full moon that’s out! As the guy scrambles for his clothes and runs off, everything is flapping in the cool night breeze!

Just as the girls are having a poignant moment, Mother’s boys attack. The girls’ are dragged kicking and screaming in their sleeping bags to Mother’s house. Magically, when the girls are released from their sleeping bags, they are no longer in their nightwear, but are instead fully dressed in their day clothes!!! Anyway, they are brought upstairs and tied to machines in a fully equipped gym!!! Didn’t Leatherface have one of those?

Weird thing is, this family seems almost normal, aside from the whole kidnapping girls and doing sexual things to them. This is definitely not the Texas Chainsaw family. In fact, when one of the girls calls one brother a ‘backwards, perverted piece of shit,’ he replies, “Don’t ever say backwards again! We civilized! Look around!” And you totally believe it. They have TV, they have Trix on the breakfast table! And they don’t even look particularly frightening, which is a big disappointment for someone like me who loves Wrong Turn. One brother has red hair, fucked up backwoods teeth and a deformed eye, but when the other brother takes off his creepy potato sack, he’s…um…actually really cute and totally normal! WTF? On the bright side, he’s the one whose butt we get to see when he takes advantage of the first girl. This is the one and only disturbing exploitation scene in the film. They bring the girl outside, make her dress like a little girl with toys in her hand, then he pins her down on the ground and begins slapping her repeatedly while screwing her—as Mother sits by and watches!!! More old person sexual weirdness. Meanwhile the other brother takes “Kodak” photos per Mother’s request. I wonder if this was the kind of advertisement Kodak wanted for their precious ‘moments’? The scene, thankfully, can’t compare to the heinous rape in I Spit On Your Grave, and modern desensitization and overexposure to torture porn further weakens its impact.

From this point on, the movie is essentially just Deliverance with women seeking revenge instead of men. The other two chicks escape their gymnasium prison and exact revenge. This is also when the film is most suspenseful. There are a couple of horror elements thrown in as the girls escape the house (the obligatory body parts found around the house, for instance), there’s a great cat and mouse game in the woods (the girls have amazing sense of direction in the strange woods in the middle of the night), there’s a classic TV set kill (you can’t pull that off with a modern LCD flatscreen), and even an electric knife kill. See? This family really isn’t backwards at all. But the ultimate moment comes when the chicks get revenge on Mother—using a set of blow up tits that were lying around. I’m not even kidding.

This is one of those movies that holds all its potential in the very final image you see before the credits role. There is a bit of family back story referenced between Mother and sons a few times throughout the film, but you don’t really even give it much thought as you’re watching. But then comes the final ‘scare,’ and you can’t help wonder why they didn’t make the family backstory the focal point of the entire film??? Oh if only they’d make Millennium Mother’s Day. Because the best part of Mother’s Day 1980 is the Psycho-homage artwork.

Way back in 1984, the same year A Nightmare On Elm Street haunted our dreams, there was another film released with a curiously similar premise. Hot off his groundbreaking role in Jaws 3-D, Dennis Quaid starred in Dreamscape opposite Kate Capshaw, same year she did Indiana Jones…can you spot the six degrees of Steven Spielberg situation going on there? For added fun, there’s even resident Exorcist exorcist Max Von Sydow! Dreamscape freaked me out when I was a kid, and I’ve been contemplating adding it to my horror collection for a while. It’s definitely entertaining—and definitely one of those hokey PG-13 sci-fi horror flicks you’d watch dozens of times on cable during long summer days back in the mid-80s. Well dag, why am I even hesitating in adding it to my collection? The nostalgia alone is reason enough to own it! Unfortunately, both the DVD and Widescreen releases are edited versions! Oh the f*cking humanity!!!

I just caught the movie on cable this weekend. It definitely is  no Elm Street. It’s more a psychological sci-fi thriller with a couple of standout horror elements. The situation is pretty simple. There’s this experimental dream clinic where people with the ability to enter the dreams of others are being studied. Essentially, they’re lab rats (which Dennis Quaid so conveniently points out). There’s plenty of exposition and character development, including the obligatory 80s sex scene (Quaid making Capshaw’s fantasies come true in her dreams!). Quaid is also pretty sure one of his fellow caged rats is up to no good and possibly killing people in their dreams. Which is perfect for the bad guy looking for a way to assassinate the president (the president being Eddie Albert of Green Acres fame!!!).

The freaky cheese begins with Quaid trying to help a scared young boy get past his night terrors. He enters the boy’s dream for one hell of a trip—and a confrontation with the boy’s boogeyman, who is not wearing a dirty red and green striped sweater and a fedora. This boogeyman is actually…a snake man!!! Eek! A snake!!! Pretty sick scene, especially when you are a young teen in the 80s and claymation/stop motion animation whatever-it’s-called technology is actually cutting edge. Yeah, the snake man kind of looks like he slithered his way out of 1933’s King Kong when he moves. I can only imagine how CGI-tastic he would look in a remake. I think what makes him work in this film is that he’s not overexposed and all up in your face, as is the problem with horror movie monsters these days.

There are numerous parallels to the Nightmare movies—some ideas even ahead of the Freddy franchise. First of all, there’s the dream clinic angle. There’s the fact that if you die in your dreams, you die. There’s the ability to manipulate your dreams, like in Elm Street 3. Then when Quaid confronts his dream-nemesis at the end of the movie, it’s like a Freddy free-for-all. Let’s see. The bad guy at one point uses finger knives. Yep. He rips out a heart, and quips, “Have a heart!” Very Freddy, post Elmstreet 2. The killer dreams he has ninja abilities, just like the kids could imagine super powers in Elm Street 3. The final nightmare eventually leads Quaid into a fiery underworld reminiscent not only of Freddy’s boiler room, but also his fiery lair in New Nightmare. The Dreamscape lair is protected by devil dogs/hell hounds as in Elm Street 2. And there’s even a character taking on the appearance of another character’s father as in Elm Street 3!

One segment is uber creepy and NOT like anything you’ve ever seen on Elm Street, but may have experienced if you’ve ever played Resident Evil Zero. Zombies on a train! This scene puts the snake man to shame! Too bad it’s such a short scene, because it definitely gives the entire film horror cred. The other standout moment is the very “Amazing Stories” twist at the end. Not a major twist, but still mysterious enough to get the Twilight Zone theme dancing in your brain.

I must say, after the debacle that was A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010, I think the producers should have focused their attention on remaking 1984’s other nightmare movie, Dreamscape. This one is a classic premise ripe for a horror overhaul.

This gory little b-movie is one I’d forgotten about until it was recently mentioned on the horror message boards. When I saw it back in the 80s on VHS, it was titled Return of the Alien’s Deadly Spawn, but the DVD release simply uses the original title The Deadly Spawn, which they apparently changed to cash in on rumors that there was going to be a sequel to Alien. Even though it’s not a sequel to anything, somehow Return of the Alien’s Deadly Spawn works so much better with the b-movie sci-fi/horror feel of this 80s treat. It was originally released in 1983, one of my ten favorite years of the 80s.

I can not believe how bloody red gory this film is, with plenty of awesome fake body parts (mostly heads) and the giant Deadly Spawn’s slithering, sperm-with-teeth offspring (which love to eat head, ironically).

The opening has two young guys camping out in the woods together (gay!) when they see a meteor fall to earth nearby. They go to investigate but one guy goes back to the tent for a flashlight. This is classic. He starts calling out to the other guy because he can’t find the flashlight…but the guy apparently has no name, because he’s calling out generic things like “Hey! Where’s the flashlight! Hello! Can you hear me? I can’t find the flashlight!” Not only are these guys gay, but apparently they’re turning tricks with strangers in the woods! And those who are gay shall pay, so both dudes fall victim to the giant alien sperm machine.

After some absolutely awesome synth-drenched creature feature music over the opening credit, we arrive at the house that is predominantly the setting for the remainder of the movie. It’s not explained, but somehow, the giant Deadly Spawn has worked its way into one of the dankest flooded basements I’ve ever seen. This thing looks like a sewer, and is apparently the perfect temperature to keep sperm-with-teeth thriving.

So in this house lives a couple, their older son who is some sort of science major, their younger son who has a room loaded with iconic horror merchandise (I can totally relate), and visiting relatives—an aunt and her psychotherapist husband.

Mom and dad both end up in the basement (they’re having electricity issues they need to check on), and the gore is superb, although the giant Deadly Spawn, revealed pretty much from the start, is almost comical in its look—sort of like a more gruesome and evil Audrey II with great big eyes. But the real comedy is that when everyone else wakes up in the house, they have no idea of the horror in the basement (even though the cat tries to tip them off) and just go about their daily business. The uncle intends to sit down with the little horror freak to psychoanalyze his obsession, while auntie is off to an old lady tea party—and she conveniently leaves a sign on the door that the electrician should go round back and into the basement. Dunh! Dunh! Dunh!

You can guess what happens next. However, our little horror freak decides to slip on one of his masks and go scare the electrician after he arrives. Instead, he witnesses some serious head chomping by the sperm-with-teeth. And for pretty much the remainder of film, we keep cutting back to the kid just standing in the basement taking in the Deadly Spawns feasting on the heads of his mom, dad and the electrician while being totally ignored by the main monster.

In the meantime, auntie’s tea party gets NASTY. The sperm-with-teeth have escaped the basement, and one ends up ground into the salad in a food processor. Yum. But what happens next is awesome. It’s an old lady army as the sperm-with-teeth attack and grannies strike back, beating them down with umbrellas and other elderly apparel!!! These senior actresses totally get into it, crawling on the floor with sperm attached to them, blood gushing from their arthritic joints. Totally awesome.

At the same time, the science major gets a visit from some of his friends (it wouldn’t be an 80s horror film if teen characters weren’t thrown in there just to raise the body count). These fellow science geeks have found one of the nasty critters on the street and are dying to examine it. Dying being the operative word. Let the killings begin as the Deadly Spawn manages to climb its way out of the basement to chase the kids around the house! It’s so awesome to watch this three-headed moving monster model being pushed around the house by hidden crew members—I’ll take that over CGI any day.

Naturally, it’s not the science majors who figure out how to take down the sperm machine, but the little kid who is totally into horror. In the aftermath of the carnage and the defeat of the Deadly Spawn, we get like 5 lame minutes of the authorities hunting down the remaining sperm-with-teeth through the woods, and it feels like they’ve just ruined an awesome flick with a horrible ending. But what follows after the 5 minutes of filler is one of the most fricking AWESOMELY unexpected endings you’ll ever see. If you thought twist endings began with The Sixth Sense, think again.

I don’t remember adding the1982 film Midnight to my collection…but there it was as I continue my A to Z rewatch of all my horror DVDs, so I popped it in not recalling anything about it until as soon as it started. I assume I purchased it after seeing it mentioned as a film from 1982 on a message board. Since it is horror and came from the 80s, I’m obligated to own it. Yes, obligated. It’s a rule of living in the Dan Zone. I’m just shocked that I absolutely never saw this movie before I bought it on DVD. It must have been like the one 80s horror movie that we didn’t carry in the video store I worked at in the 80s.

Getting the important horror trivia out of the way, this film is written and directed by John Russo, the man responsible for writing the original Night of the Living Dead. When the film begins, it seems like it’s going to be a real bad low-budget flick but once it gets off the ground (and that takes a while), there are actually some great horror elements.

The film has a ‘prologue’ involving a mother and her children catching a little girl in an animal trap in a field, beating her and then taking her home to sacrifice her. When the little girl is sitting with her leg in the animal trap, she sounds and looks like she was directed to merely scream—without any direction as to the kind of pain and terror she would be in if she was actually caught in an animal trap. Not a good sign.

It only gets worse when we flash forward and meet Nancy, a tomboyish looking chick who somehow ends up being the objective of every man’s ‘affection’ in this movie. First thing, her drunk old stepfather cop comes home and tries to molest her, so she hits him over the head with a tape recorder (totally 80s!) and runs away, leaving him passed out on her bed and…snoring. I kid not.

Once she takes to the streets, she’s immediately offered a ride…in exchange for sex…by some perv in a car. She gets rid of him and is then picked up by a couple of buddies in a truck, a black dude and a white dude (who is hot for her—but she’s not hot! I don’t get it!!!). As they drive off, things go really downhill and make me pretty sure this film was filmed in the 70s but not released until 82. We are treated to a melodramatic, soft rock track by a female singer, with the main lyrics being “you’re on your own.” Wow, this is bad.

Meanwhile, back home, stepdad cop is telling his wife that her daughter ran off and that Nancy has been trying to seduce him! What a disgusting pig!

But back to more of “You’re on your own” as the truck trio makes its way through a small. At a gas station, they meet a black reverend and his daughter who tell them there have been a lot of murders in the town over the past few years that the locals are calling ‘accidental deaths’ because they are a bunch of racists. Wow. Didn’t see the racism angle coming. Anyway, the reverend and daughter hitch a ride in their truck and are dropped off at a cemetery to pay respects to the reverend’s dead wife. The daughter decides to walk home (home seems to be pretty close to the cemetery), and once she’s gone, this bearded fat guy in overalls comes out of the woods with a knife and kills the reverend! Soon, the fat guy is at the reverend’s house, and things don’t turn out so well for the reverend’s daughter.

Meanwhile, our interracial, intergender trio is facing their own harassment by the locals (they’re run out of a bar for having a black dude with them), and the black dude even drops the ‘honky’ bomb after. Awesome! TOTALLY 80s! Right after, the guys inform Nancy that they’ve been stealing food from convenience stores as they travel because they have no money, so she joins in and they steal from another place…to the  mellow 70s sounds of “You’re on your own”! TOO funny.

But this is finally where the real horror begins and we are treated to a backwoods family film that’s half Texas Chainsaw Massacre, half Psycho. After an all-points bulletin is put out for our trio, they are chased by cops and of course make a ‘wrong turn’ into the woods to escape. They soon see the fat killer running around with what looks like a body in the woods. But it wouldn’t be an 80s horror movie if they didn’t decide to camp out in the woods anyway. And if Nancy didn’t decide to take a walk by herself the next morning before the guys awake.

Well, Nancy returns to camp to find that two ‘policemen’ have found her male companions. One creepy guy is a totally androgynous dude (at first I thought it was a woman) and the other is this bulky, bald, goateed leather daddy type! WTF? It’s like something out of a Mapplethorpe photo.

Unfortunately, things don’t go well for Nancy’s friends, and within minutes she’s on her own (the ‘racism’ theme discarded and rendered completely irrelevant for the remainder of the film), running through the woods being chased by the creepy pair and, naturally, right into their sadistic home. This is when it gets really good. Nancy is directed by a nice girl playing solitaire at a table to a phone in another room. Unfortunately, when she goes in that room, she finds the fat killer cutting off some dude’s head with a knife! Within minutes she’s at the mercy of the ‘family’—the two guys in the cop uniforms (which it turns out they got when they killed some real cops), the fat guy, and the solitaire playing be-otch. They make Nancy walk on all fours like a dog into a cage next to some other already caged girl! I was sure this was about to turn into a seriously disturbing exploitation flick, but that never happens.

Instead, it turns out the dirty stepdaddy decides to go find his wife’s daughter and make amends, so he follows clues all the way to the crazy family’s house!!!

While stepdaddy is playing hero and sneaking up for his rescue mission, we get to meet the family’s mommy—a corpse sitting in a rocking chair upstairs. Seems the family needs the blood of three people to perform an Easter ritual at midnight. They hook themselves up with another female victim, who is the first to be sacrificed at an old skool occult ritual including a classic black room with candles, the family in black robes with hoods, inverted pentagrams painted on their foreheads, and dear old dead mom watching the whole ceremony.

Nancy is the star, so she ends up being the lone survivor (stepdad gets killed trying to save her, but we don’t exactly feel sympathy for him, even though he was drunk when he tried to screw her). Nancy takes care of business, knocking off the family one member at a time, and as soon as she sets the last one on fire, the credits begin to roll to the sound of… “You’re on your own”! Didn’t anyone tell John Russo that classics like Night of the Living Dead were classics in part because of their appropriate musical scores???

As cheesy as Midnight is (and actually, the word is actually a lyric in “You’re on your own”), it has some really strong horror moments that make it totally worth a watch. Like I said, it feels more 70s than 80s, so I can’t say it gets points for coming from the 80s. And here’s the real kick. I just discovered that Russo did a sequel in 1993 in which one member of the family didn’t exactly die at the hands of Nancy… I MUST see this movie!!!!

Memories…like the corners of my television screen…

Way back in the day—like 1983/1984—me and my friends on my block would cram into my bedroom on the hottest days of the summer, in front of a fan, and have serious sessions of the classic arcade game Warlords on the Atari 2600. What made it such a cool game was that it was a four player game using the paddle controllers. So everyone took a corner fortress of the screen in this multiplayer Breakout-style game, and we’d battle it out, using the bouncing balls to try and destroy our enemies’ walls to cream the kings behind while protecting our own wall from being destroyed so our king wasn’t vulnerable to a ‘pong’ attack.

Twenty years later, in the heat of the retro gaming craze, the company Infogrames, responsible for making about a dozen modern remakes of classic 80s video games, took a shot at Warlords for the PC. However, instead of selling it on its own, they pulled a money-making scam and packaged it in the “Atari Revival” package with two games that had ALREADY been released individually, Combat and Missile Command. Although I had already owned those two remakes, I HAD to rebuy them just to get Warlords.

Well, here it is about seven years later, and I finally took the time to play and complete Warlords remake. And in theory, I loved it. Unlike other major 3D arcade remakes such as Frogger and Centipede, this ‘remake’ is mostly just a visual update with a few new gimmicks in game play.

The Visuals

The archaic block graphics on a black background from the original Atari 2600 hundred have been replaced by a very unique concept. Each of the walls in the four corners is represented as a top down view of a colorful and finely detailed castle wall. Inside the wall stands a knight (appearing to be caged in) who is very active, looking around and responding emotively to the action going on around him (or sometimes her) as the walls are bombarded by fireballs. Yes, the old skool Pong ball has been replaced by flame streaking fireballs. These fireballs are released by none other than a dragon that flies around the empty area in the center of the screen. Said dragon releases the fireballs sporadically until players are eventually juggling FOUR fireballs at once. Good thing is, your shields (which truly look like shields) can catch a fireball and hold it until you decide which enemy you want to fling it at. And when you hit the button to catch a fireball, your shield reaches out in the form of a big metallic knight’s hand! Pretty cool. The game mixes things up graphically as you proceed through the levels, because every four levels or so, you are actually placed in a NEW environment! There’s a typical castle/moat environment, snow, even outer space! Hey, if Jason and Leprechaun can go to space, why can’t Warlords?

GAMEPLAY

Aside from the traditional practice of moving your left and right to block fireballs and aim them at other players’ walls, there have been some new tricks added to the mix. First, not only does the dragon shoot out the fireballs, but as he flies around during each level, he also releases these floating shields that have symbols on them. If you hit one of these floating shields with a fireball, it usually works to your advantage. Depending on what symbol appears when your fireball makes contact, a variety of things can happen for a short period of time. You can shrink your opponents’ shields, enlarge your own shield, give yourself temporary invincibility, get an automatic wall repair, reverse the directional controls on your opponents’ shields (totally messed up), give everyone invisible walls, or slow down the balls. Of course, none of those tricks is convenient when you’re not the one who hit the floating shield. And a couple of other tricks are not particularly helpful no matter who hits them, such as one that turns all players’ walls invisible, one that turns the fireballs invisible, one that speeds up the fireballs to the point of chaos, and one that SWITCHES your castles for the REMAINDER of the level. In other words, say you’re castle is in the bottom left corner. You may be tossed up into the top right corner. Depending on where you are switched to, the position can actually reverse the direction of your controls, again, totally messing you up, only this time for the remainder of the level (which always ended in me dying).

There are also ‘bonus levels’ every four levels or so in which you go one-on-one with the dragon. It’s just your castle and the dragon, who spits his fireballs at you and then just flies around so that you can try to hit him with them. He’ll become smaller (which, based on the top down view, represents him swooping closer to the ground—in essence, INTO the screen) at which point you can’t hit him, but once he’s back to full size, you have a few seconds to nail him. The goal is to hit him a number of times with fireballs to kill him before the bouncing fireballs destroy your castle. Good news is, if you do ‘die’ in the bonus level, you don’t lose a life.

In total, there are 40 levels, and then you are treated to a short and sweet movie that ‘ends’ the game. Even though you have a set number of lives (and can earn extra lives through points as the game progresses) there are really no worries about not being able to complete all forty levels. If you get a ‘game over’ because you lost all your lives, the game simply asks if you want to continue, at which point it picks you up on the very level you were last playing. So in essence, you have ‘infinite’ lives. You can also pause and save the game at any time, so you don’t have to play all forty levels in one sitting.

I played the game solo, so all other players were computer controlled. The only real competition was the ‘player’ diagonal to me. Since the other two are right next to you, all you really have to do is catch a few fireballs and throw them repeatedly at the same spot in the opponents’ walls, quickly creating an opening to nail the knight within. You don’t have such direct aim at the diagonal opponent, so you have to rely on ricocheting balls to bust through the wall and nail your target. My diagonal opponent beat me one too many times, so I actually began letting the other two opponents live a bit longer so THEY could create a clean opening in the diagonally opponent’s wall from their positions!

CONTROLS…if you can call them that

Now for the bad news. The really bad, truly tragic news. Warlords is absolutely, without a doubt, meant to be played with a paddle or spinner knob—which this game does not support. The original arcade version of Warlords is included as a bonus with this remake and it DOES support the awesome Stelladaptor that lets you use original Atari 2600 paddle controllers on your PC. But, what makes NO sense is that the updated version itself does not support the Stelladaptor, which SUX. Your only options are the mouse or keyboard. Naturally, quick and accurate left/right blocking is a challenge with keyboard presses, and the mouse is only slightly better. I got by, but I definitely wouldn’t have had to continue as much if I’d been using a paddle. The other issue with these two control options is that they pretty much makes a multi-player game out of the question. Your options for multiplayer are one player using the mouse (and having the advantage) and the other three players crowding their fingers together on the keyboard like it’s a Ouija board. Absolutely horrible and it basically makes the entire release of this classic game in an updated version pointless unless you like playing with your imaginary PC friends…

I was in 8^th grade when the television show Square Pegs premiered in the fall of 82 and became an instant hit with the Gen-X crowd. Rather than sending us off to the School of the Performing Arts and thereby implanting dreams and fantasies of stardom in our little minds (which was also a fun escape), Square Pegs was set in our young 1982 realities. It was all the people in my class talked about, and the girls started saying “like” and “totally” regularly, despite the fact that we lived in New York—like, the totally opposite coast from where the valley girl phenomenon began. But add to that the popularity of the Moon Unit Zappa song “Valley Girl” and the movie of the same name, and 82 and 83 would be forever marked as the “Valley Years” in my school history book. Gag me with a spoon—because I totally loved it.

In fact, Square Pegs seems like it may have been the inspiration for so many 80s teen movies, including the John Hughes films that came after it. There are more new wave songs and references used in this short-lived series than there are in The Last American Virgin and Fast Times at Ridgemont High combined. The show’s resident valley girl Jennifer DiNuccio said “gross me out the door” a year before Deborah Foreman played an adorable ‘Val’ in Valley Girl. Jennifer also dropped the geek bomb nearly two years before the release of Sixteen Candles. Johnny Slash was hanging out regularly at a record store four years before Duckie in Pretty in Pink. And of course there are the constant battles between cool and uncool, popular and unpopular, themes also central to, you know, just a couple of John Hughes films (Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Some Kind of Wonderful, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off…)

The great thing about Square Pegs is that all of the main characters are likable and endearing. Jami Gertz is the preppy and snooty yet scatterbrained Muffy Tepperman, who is just as often the brunt of jokes as the ‘geeks’ but a bit more oblivious to the fact. Sarah Jessica Parker is perfectly cast as Patty, who really doesn’t care so much about how popular she is, but mostly humors her embarrassingly desperate friend Lauren, played by Amy Linker, whose delusional daydreams about being popular cause her to make self-centered decisions but also reveal just how insecure she is in her own skin. Marshall is so bad at his comedy act that he is the epitome of class clown (you’re more often laughing at him than with him)—a geek indeed, but so unaware of that it that it actually comes across as cute. Johnny Slash is so cool in his ‘different head’ as a new waver that you find it hard to believe he wouldn’t be embraced by supposedly bitchy Val’ Jennifer DiNuccio and her friends. But Tracy Nelson plays Jennifer as partly naïve and ignorant, which softens her snobbery and also shows that she’s just as flawed as the others. Her boyfriend, proud guido Vinnie Pasetta, is never so tough to be threatening to any of the geeks, and is usually more than willing to talk to them. And Jennifer’s best friend, LaDonna, is the token black chick, totally on top of her game in that role, poking fun at racial stereotypes because she’s self-aware of being surrounded by a bunch of crazy white kids.

So bad it’s funny, or just too ahead of its time?

When I first watched my DVD set, I was shocked at how ‘cheesy’ the show is, although I was absolutely in love with how 80s it is. I still am, having just rewatched the entire series again. But this time around, I listened more closely, and damn does this show have some seriously subversive and funny humor. It was absolutely targeting a teen audience when it was originally aired, but most of its funniest jokes were probably over all our heads back then. What doesn’t help is the ridiculous, inappropriately placed laugh track. The DVD would have been better if they had REMOVED the one-note laugh track. Shows like Scrubs are absolutely hysterical, and we’re never told when to laugh. This series could benefit from the same golden silence. Either that or replace the canned laughs with a REAL audience that could gasp in shock at the truly filthy moments of the show.

So exactly what are these subversive jokes of which I speak? The reason they aren’t so obvious is because most of the time, they are being delivered by teenagers who are not trying to pause for comic effect or to let the joke sink in, but just talking like kids talk. You blink an ear, you miss the joke. There are obvious jokes, of course. In episode 1, we learn the principal’s name is Dingleman, and within minutes, Vinnie is calling him “Dingleberry,” which has Patty pointing out to Lauren how predictable that comment was, because of course an audience of that age was totally thinking it. Principal dingleberry—I mean, Dingleman, refers to a case of vandalism as “VD,” a surefire comment to get a giggle out of an adolescent audience. And in an arching storyline, Lauren crushes on a radical teacher who could very well be Sean Penn’s Spicoli character if he had became an educator, because he’s constantly slipping up and inferring how great it is to smoke pot.

The show is loaded with sexual innuendo not even heard on ‘racy’shows of the time like Soap or Three’s Company. A female teacher pushes for a girl’s football team, claiming it’s a male conspiracy to keep women from touching each other. In science class, Vinnie says he’ll puke if the teacher talks about crabs again. When Muffy solicits “a box with a slot in it” for student complaints, Vinnie throws her quite a perverted and sly look as he walks by. Vinnie suggests that the guys bring the ‘hot dogs’ to a Halloween party. When Jennifer tells Vinnie her Christmas present better be bigger than a bread box,” he hugs her close to him and drops a deadpan, “It is big.” Did we get this kind of humor at 12 or 13 years old? Probably not. Were our parents watching this teen show with us? Probably about as often as parents bothered watching Saved by the Bell with their kids in the 90s. So all this clever ‘adult’ writing was being wasted on a bunch of kids. But that didn’t matter to us, because the adults writing the show were also incredibly tapped into the trends that made kids go gaga nearly 30 years before there was a Lady GaGa.

Were the 80s that obvious that early?

This is one of those shows that is SO aware of its place in time that it feels like it’s a satire of the decade rather than a product of it. It definitely brings me right back to that era, and what’s so cool about it is that it’s placement on the 80s timeline lands right on the cusp of the explosion of the new wave phenomena on MTV and mainstream radio. When this show began in 82, ‘new wave’ music was mostly heard (by very few) on ‘new format’ radio stations that had just begun taking a risk and daring to be different. The number of new wave songs that had entered the upper pop charts had been minimal—songs by Blondie, The Police, Human League, The Go-Go’s and Devo some of the few, which is why it was so cool for new wave character Johnny Slash to constantly point out that new wave was a “totally different head.” But by September of 83, the one year anniversary of the show’s premiere, artists like Billy Idol, Kajagoogoo, A Flock of Seagulls, Duran Duran, After the Fire, Thomas Dolby, The Tubes, Men Without Hats and Eurythmics were dominating the charts in the U.S. While many artists of the new music movement would remain staples only of alternative radio for years, the seed had been planted in my generation’s psyche. Even people who didn’t think they were into ‘new wave’ were actually into it. Established artists dating back to the 60s were giving their music a very 80s, very electronic drum and synth based spin to score chart hits. And MTV of course took a foothold in 83, thanks in part to the draw of Michael Jackson.

Unfortunately, this is a landmark that Square Pegs never got to explore because it only lasted one season. By the time “Billie Jean” and “Beat It” were in heavy rotation on MTV in the spring of 83, all episodes of Square Pegs had already aired. In fact, even though MTV premiered in August of 81 and was already a hit with kids, from the day Square Pegs premiered a year later, and through its 19 episode run, it never mentioned the channel once! I can’t imagine they could have ignored its existence if they show had returned in the autumn of 83 for a second season! And would the show have embraced complete dedication to the 80s and worked the giant careers of MJ, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, and Tina Turner into the show if it had continued on a few years more, even though none of those artists were new wave, the show’s defining characteristic? We’ll never know.

The new wave music is just the beginning of how 80s Square Pegs was. The fashions are out of control. Skinny ties abound, although lead character Lauren often sports a fat tie with her suspenders. Johnny Slash has a tail so long sprouting from the nape of his neck that he even has baby dolls hanging from it at times. He even runs for WeeMaWee High Indian mascot with hopes that the principal will finally let him get a Mohawk. Head bands, leg warmers and Ray Ban sunglasses are other major fashions on the show, as well as Vinnie’s tight Jordache jeans. That was a sight for my 13 year-old-mind to behold.

Speaking of, 80s visual stimulation is all over the place on Square Pegs, waiting to tickle your senses. Johnny Slash is always wearing a walkman, and can even be seen manually rewinding a cassette. An entire episode (the third episode) is dedicated to comic-wannabe Marshall becoming addicted to Pac Man when a machine is brought into the school, along with an Asteroids and Star Castle machine. We are treated to authentic screens of the game as he plays, and at the end of the episode, Lauren finds herself drawn to a Ms. Pac Man machine. And what’s more 80s than Jennifer sipping on a can of saccharin-loaded, cancer-causing Tab?

How many 80s references can you count?

Name dropping is another big component of the 80s allure of the show. Muffy envisions a Poltergeist themed Bat Mitzvah, and Johnny references the film, saying “They’re here!” after Marshall’s eyes glaze over from playing too much Pac Man. Lauren and Patty, after playing a prank at school, fear they are going to be grounded until the release of Poltergeist 2 (which would become a film in 1986) or worse, until the release of E.T. part 12 (that film didn’t even get one sequel). And speaking of sequels, Vinnie (who would be the resulting lovechild of a threesome between, John Travolta, Adrian Zmed and Joey from Friends) is eagerly anticipating the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, which is to be directed by one of his heroes, Sylvester Stallone (said sequel came out in the summer of 83, right after the show’s demise). Jennifer tells Vinnie to pick out his own clothes like Richard Gere in American Gigilo. Marshall, of course, ends up with Pac Man elbow, an epidemic that was as real as Rubik’s thumb for teens of the era. LaDonna tells Jennifer she has a lot more to offer Vinnie than Donkey Kong. Marshall imagines Muhammad Ali taking out the cast of The Facts of Life (a jab at what would become the most popular teen sitcoms of the 80s). And Johnny mentions making fish food from Pop Rocks (cruel but funny!).

Just Can’t Get Enough New Wave Hits of the 80s: Square Pegs

If only Rhino had released such a volume in their popular 80s CD series, much like they compiled a Valley Girl soundtrack years later. Square Pegs deserves a soundtrack—because it’s the soundtrack to a generation. Whoever was responsible for the musical decisions made on this show was way ahead of the curve, and the new wave-centric atmosphere could put most John Hughes films that would come a few years later to shame. Before I even get to the classic tracks used in the show, let’s talk about the posters that appear on the walls of the radio station at the school where Marshall and Johnny Slash spin all the hottest new wave records. This is just a list of the posters I was able to note throughout the season’s episodes:

ABC

Altered Images

Laurie Anderson

Toni Basil

Pat Benatar

B-52s

Blondie

Clash

Elvis Costello

Devo

Thomas Dolby

A Flock of Seagulls

Fun Boy Three

Heaven 17

Human League

Billy Idol

Joe Jackson

Killer Pussy (a poster for the song “Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage,” select words carefully covered by other posters for censorship)

Men at Work

Models

Motels

Oingo Boingo

Iggy Pop

Pete Shelley

Soft Cell

Squeeze

Stray Cats

Swinging Madisons

Tom Tom Club

John Waite

Kim Wilde

XTC

The musical references abound as well. When trying to get Johnny and Patty to write a song together for his band to perform at a grocery store, Lauren calls songwriters like Elvis Costello the poets of our time and points out that the Plasmatics sang jingles. Johnny Slash wears a B-52’s “Mesopotamia” shirt. Patty and Lauren translate “Valley Girl” into Guatemalan for the child that Muffy always talks about sponsoring. Muffy is forced to change the location of her Bat Mitzvah due to fear of slam dancing, the same reason Johnny Slash’s band is booted from Saturday Night Live. Johnny Rotten’s name appears in graffiti on a bathroom stall door. Eerily, in a spring episode, Jennifer mentions watching Marvin Gaye on Merv Griffin, which would have been only a little more than a year before his death in April of 84. Johnny Slash mentions knowing a roadie for the Clash, says the crowded diner (simply called “Grease” by the teens) reminds him of the Go-Go’s dressing room, and refers to Debbie Harry as the sexiest girl when asked. LaDonna describes Jennifer as a Pat Benatar without chipmunk cheeks (there were also Pat Benatar look-alikes referenced in Fast Times at Ridgemont High the same year) and complains about being dragged to four Olivia Newton-John concerts by Jennifer (this was just as “Physical” was about to tear up the charts). LaDonna also brings her Grandmaster Flash records to the Halloween party (to which Muffy makes a seriously early jab at rap that still exists today, asking why she didn’t bring any groups that sing). At the same party, Johnny wants to ask a Ouija board what the lyrics are to “Brass in Pocket” by the Pretenders.

It’s not all music talk at WeeMaWee. The new wave songs used in this show could fill a couple of soundtrack and were as important to its tone then as are the songs used in Glee today. Unfortunately, for the DVD release, the rights were not secured for a good amount of the songs used in Square Pegs. Is it really that expensive to license these songs—songs that appear on dozens upon dozens of 80s compilation CDs that sell for like 8 dollars??? This is some spilled milk I absolutely will cry over because many of the original songs have been replaced by generic substitutions. I’ve been able to piece together some of the original titles used in the show that have been replaced on the DVD thanks to Google, but not all of them. First, here are the songs that are retained on the DVD:

The very first episode is pretty crucial, because The Waitresses actually appear on the show, performing both “I Know What Boys Like” AND the show’s theme song “Square Pegs,” both of which are intact on DVD.

In Episode 8, Johnny Slash’s band perform their own ‘original’ song called “I’m Tired,” a pretty cool Devo-esque/B-52’s-esque track. Too bad there never was a Square Pegs soundtrack album released. “I’m Tired” may not be as cool as the awesome new wave song “The Gimme That” performed on Fame by Doris and Montgomery the same year, but it would still be awesome to have in my record collection. (how gay am I?)

Episode 9 is dedicated to Devo, who perform at Muffy’s Bat Mitzvah, so their songs are presents. Johnny listens to “We Are Devo” while dying his hair pink and the band performs my all time favorite Devo song, “That’s Good,” at the party, with the entire cast actually dancing in rhythm to the song! Hot.

In Episode 12, Marshall is spinning in the radio station and introduces the song “He Could Be the One” by Josie Cotton (better known for her track “Johnny Are You Queer”), and the song is actually used on the DVD.

In the final Episode (technically Episode 19 since the Christmas episode was an hour and considered two episodes), several of the songs from Berlin’s awesome Pleasure Victim EP are featured, including “Sex (I’m A)” (just the intro), “World of Smiles” and “Tell Me Why.” That’s some major exposure for the band. Billy Idol’s “Come On, Come On” is also used in the episode, and the rockabilly band Jimmy and the Mustangs performs two songs (they never made it big even on the new wave scene, although they did have a record released).

That’s the good new wave news. Now for the bad no wave news. Here are some of the songs missing from the DVDs. If anyone has any info as to what I’m missing with these tracks, please leave me a comment to let me know. Thanks.

In Episode 1, there was originally a B-52’s song played outside the dance. Not sure what song was used (it may have been “Private Idaho,” my all time favorite song by them).

In episodes 2, 10, 14 and 17 there are scenes at the Grease that had different song playing when the shows originally aired, replaced on the DVDs. Don’t know what the original tracks were.

In Episode 6, Marshall introduces two different songs by punk band Armed Response. I’m not sure if either is actually by Armed Response because I’ve never heard anything by them. In another episode, he introduces a Minor Threat track, but the track is not used on the DVD.

In the Christmas episode, “Christmas Wrapping” by the Waitresses was originally used. WHY they secured the rights to the two songs in episode 1 but couldn’t include this Christmas classic makes no sense.

In Episode 13, a song has been replaced in a hallway scene. Many have noted that the song on the DVD sounds like the Cars (it totally does), but I can’t imagine them getting the rights to a song by the Cars any cheaper. Or maybe it’s one of the Rick Ocasek solo tracks from that era. I’d have to listen to the song on the DVD and then skip through EVERY one of my Cars CDs to see if I can find it. Knowing me, I’ll probably end up doing that.

One scene at the Grease in Episode 14 originally used “Hot in the City” by Billy Idol, replaced by an unknown song on the DVD. Billy Idol’s “White Wedding” was used three times in Episode 16, now replaced. Again, they used one Billy Idol song on the DVDs (in the final episode) so why not get rights to all of them? The worst offender is replacing “Dancing with Myself” in Episode 17 with a slower song. If you watch the DVD, you can clearly see that the kids are all doing the typical white person skip-dance to the faster tempo of the Billy Idol song.

In Episode 18, the use of “The Metro” by Berlin during a scene at the Grease is replaced on the DVD, but again, WHY, considering they used nearly every other song from the Pleasure Victim EP in the final episode on the DVD? Was “The Metro” really that much more expensive to use???

Who didn’t have Vinnie Fever? (and other sexy boy moments of Square Pegs)

Yes, my 13-year-old mind was hot for Vinnie and his hot Jordache jeans when Square Pegs originally aired. The show definitely tried to paint him as the next Vinnie Barbarino (Welcome Back, Kotter) or Arthur Fonzarelli (Happy Days), with references to both John Travolta and the Fonz made in the show. Whenever Vinnie does something involving his body on the show, all the girls on screen hoot and holler. We get to see Vinnie pumping iron, and more importantly, dance around in a skimpy Indian costume when he is in the running to be the new WeeMaWee mascot. And in the Devo episode, Vinnie slips into some serious leather and chains! Wow. I’m surprised there was no reference made to the movie Cruising!

Not to be out-studded, our modest Johnny Slash also tantalizes with the flesh. He looks more like Billy Idol in his ‘Indian’ outfit, with leather pants and a black tanktop, but he is much more revealing in an actual boys locker room shower scene in which we see him showering from the chest up! This may have been the first boys shower room scene ever on a TV show! It definitely feels like something right out of an 80s teen movie.

Maybe these ‘square pegs’ were just looking for sympathy?

If the ‘bullying’ done at WeeMaWee High was the extent of it in the high school experience, there would never be any school shootings. I mean, Jennifer and LaDonna were incredibly easy-going bitches. Lauren just seemed hyper-sensitive from the start. Hell, I would guess that her insecurities are the very things that caused LaDonna to refer to her as the ‘that fat girl’ and to Patty as ‘that fat girl’s friend.’ In the final episode of the series, when patty asks LaDonna if she knows their actual names, LaDonna openly admits she does (although she pronounces Lauren’s name wrong). Even though the writers may have not known they were writing the SERIES finale and not just the SEASON finale, they did a really good job of tying things up—the snobs prove not to be all that exclusionary, but definitely exclusionary enough for the Lauren and Patty to realize maybe they don’t need to hang with Jennifer’s crowd to be cool because they have each other, Marshall and Johnny Slash, who has enough connections to score them a private party with the band that played at Jennifer and Vinnie’s anniversary party—the party they were not invited to but so desperate to get into.

Simply because she wants to fit into the ‘high school experience’ and on the heels of that, because she hates being teased for being fat and having braces (neither of which was real on actress Amy Linker, who wore fake braces and fat pads), Lauren spends the whole series trying to become popular. Most often, her plans for popularity involve Patty as the pawn because of her strengths and talents like singing and writing (and constantly removing Patty’s glasses—a ‘geek’ symbol that can be taken off, unlike her own braces). Ironically this isn’t a sign of Lauren just using Patty’s friendship, but points to Lauren actually being proud of her, respecting her, and looking up to her. At the same time, Lauren is blinded to how she treats others just as she doesn’t want to be treated, as she is constantly looking to shun the unconditional friendship of Marshall and Johnny Slash—who seem to have crushes on she and Patty, respectively. She kind of realizes her hypocrisy at the end of the season, but surely if the show had continued, she would have fallen back into those old habits. After all, she’s a teenager who desperately wants to be liked.

The truth is, Lauren inflates the bullying to something it really isn’t. I’ve never seen such pleasant bullies in my life. I mean, let’s be honest. While they’re always SAYING they don’t want to be seen around Lauren and Patty, Jennifer and LaDonna talk to them in every episode and usually end up at the same social gathering as them! Hell, when I was in school, cliques didn’t interact AT ALL and there was some very cruel loathing involved, plus plenty of vicious treatment of the kids labeled as the geeks. However, what’s great about Square Pegs’ flawed concept of cliques is how it demonstrates that while there are desperate Lauren-types who want to fit in, in reality, the majority of a class is comprised of the non-popular or non-geek kids who really don’t give a shit about the ‘popular’ crowd, much like Marshall and Johnny (and usually, Patty). The hang up in this show is almost exclusively Lauren’s. Patty’s laid back nature actually does draw people to her. She nearly scores with a very cute senior from week one as a freshman, and there are also some intense moments with none other than Vinnie, who seems to have a place in his heart for her. Her slightly veiled confidence shines through and makes her attractive, glasses or not! I’m sure if the series had continued, they would have created some complications involving a secret fling between she and Vinnie (which would have been a great storyline), but in the end, I’m almost positive Patty would have ended up with Johnny Slash. Unfortunately, I don’t know that Marshall would have ever stood a chance with Lauren. We can only ponder the possibilities of the characters’ futures and simply rewind season one again and again (okay, reinsert Disc 1 and start over—I was going for a retro VHS moment there).

HALLOWEEN XII: the ultimate Square Pegs episode

Being me, I need to explore the brilliant Halloween episode of Square Pegs as its own entity. Why? Because it’s a blatant homage to slasher movies that was 14 years ahead of Scream. While it uses the 1978 film Halloween as its main source material, we all know that Halloween is an unofficial 80s film, because it literally was the mold from which all 80s slashers were created. When the Halloween episode of Square Pegs aired, slashers were all the rage. We’d been bombarded by dozens of them in a two year span, including three Friday the 13^th films, Halloween II, Prom Night, Terror Train, Happy Birthday to Me, My Bloody Valentine, and various other knockoffs. The creators of Square Pegs either loved slashers as much as they loved new wave music, or did some serious homework to pretty much generate the slasher rules Randy would claim as his own 14 years later.

Once again, Square Pegs seems so attune to trends. Who could have predicted that when they playfully titled this episode ‘Halloween XII’ that we’d be close to that many films in the franchise thirty years later? Then there are some FREAKY coincidences. While the class is watching a school filmstrip about Halloween safety, Marshall says to Johnny Slash, “just keep telling yourself it’s only slideshow,” and soon after, their teacher, Ms. Loomis, with a sadistic look in her eyes, scratches her fingernails slowly down the chalkboard!!! WTF??? A Nightmare on Elm Street wouldn’t be released until two years after this, with Freddy’s infamous fingernail scratching and Johnny Depp telling Heather Langenkamp to just keep telling herself it’s only a dream so she’ll wake up!!! Cue the Twilight Zone theme!

But back to the Halloween episode. LaDonna has one of the best lines when she tells Jennifer that “white people in sheets isn’t my idea of a good time!” But the rest of the freshman class laments that they are too old to Trick or Treat (ah, I remember the conundrum well). Muffy suggests that they all have a slumber party at their ‘lonely’ teacher’s house (the slasher Slumber Party Massacre would be released a month later!). So their teacher Ms. Loomis agrees. How CONVENIENT is it that her last name is Loomis, considering that was the name of Donald Pleasance’s character from Halloween!!! Awesome.

All the Halloween conventions are present. Vinnie tells Jennifer “Halloween’s a scary night. Better watch out for the boogeyman” before the gathering. In attendance are Patty and Lauren, Muffy, and Jennifer and LaDonna. Once the party is started, we see the Loomis home through the eyes of the ‘killer’s’ mask. It’s all so familiar to Halloween fans, right down to a Jack-O’-Lantern sitting on the front porch. Before long, Vinnie calls to scare the girls with some ‘heavy breathing,’ then the lights go out. A knock on the door terrifies all the girls before LaDonna has her second classic line of this film, when she nonchalantly makes a social comment on black people talking to the screen in horror films by exclaiming, “Child, you better grab that knife!” Again, this is like two decades before this kind of joke became a cliché in dozens of horror films and satires like Scary Movie. Patty smartly responds, “He probably brought his own.”
But alas, it’s only Marshall and Johnny at the door, who announce themselves before they are invited in by calling the girls ‘babysitters’. Marshall is dressed as one of the then hugely popular McKenzie Brothers (you hoser!). But Johnny definitely gets prize for best costume. In true Michael Myers style, he is wearing a sheet and glasses—Ray-Bans, that is! And conveniently, since one of his favorite words is “totally,” he drops it immediately, upon entering…and it just so happens that’s the same word Linda uses repeatedly in Halloween. Of course, she wasn’t so ‘new wave’ until the actress who played her, P.J. Soles, starred in Rock N Roll High School a year later–although, the Ramones are more like punk than new wave. And that’s a totally different head. Totally.

Once inside, Marshall reveals that a patient has escaped from the mental institution, the teacher pulls out a Ouija board, and Marshall turns on ‘Creature Theater.’ In true haunted house style, thunder and lightning strikes, leading Johnny to claim that “God’s bowling!” Holy!!! That parental lie is SO a memory of my youth!!!

Finally, Vinnie shows up at the party. With the gang all present, there’s one last knock on the door. Lauren sees this as an opportunity for her and Patty to gain cool cred by bravely answering the door. As she drags Patty to the door, she promises her that the killers never kill virgins!!! How fricking unoriginal is Scream??? The girls throw open the door to find the ‘killer’ tangled up in some outdoor wind chimes. And the killer turns out to be…oh come on. Haven’t I spoiled it enough already with every last detail of the entire episode?

If you know that reference, then you are truly a Frogger junky like myself. Me and a couple of friends spent a majority of the decade from 2001 – 2009 playing the numerous modernized versions of Frogger for everything from Playstation One to the Gamecube, getting into the whole 20-year anniversary of the 80s. Yet, throughout all those releases, never once was there the inclusion of the original arcade game (while the original Pac Man landed on about a dozen Pac Man remakes).

I thought that had all changed when I discovered Konami Classics Volume 1 for the Xbox 360. I FINALLY just got an Xbox 360. It took my friend long enough to cave and spring for it as a gift for me, but I guess I should forgive her since she was out of work for a year and purchased it for me like the day she found out she actually was about to be hired into a full-time position again.

So, when I hooked up my Xbox 360 to my HD television with and HDMI cable and digital optical audio cable for full 5.1 surround, the first game I popped into the system to experience all the technological advances it has to offer gamers was…Frogger.

That’s right. I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to at last experience the original classic arcade game on a gaming console. So I popped in Konami Classics Volume 1, navigated the menus past the other two pesky ‘classics’—Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Super Contra—and prepared to leap into Frogger.

But…wait. This Frogger looks DIFFERENT. The general board layout is the same, but the graphics…they’ve been…updated. And the music—this isn’t the Frogger theme song! WTF??? I hit pause, flipped through the game manual, then Googled the hell out of this game. Sure, I found numerous places where it was mentioned that Konami Classics Volume 1 offers you the opportunity to play the games on the disc with their original graphics or modern ‘enhanced’ graphics. Well guess what. EVERY single person on the internet is a liar. Except me. Because I’m here to tell you the truth. Frogger is the ONLY game on the disc that absolutely does NOT give you a choice between original and enhanced graphics. In fact, it doesn’t even mention that it is subjecting you to enhanced graphics. It just slaps them onto your screen after tricking you with a title screen that looks very much like the one you would have peered at while dropping your quarters into the arcade machine in 1982. I’ve been bamboozled, ribbit! (I mean…dammit….)

This 1982 ‘slasher’ has everything going for it. A classic synthesized Halloween theme song rip-off, the chick who shrieked her way through Jaws II and later played hot hooker Angel, and teen angel Frankie Avalon as the killer! Need I say more? Okay, I don’t need to, but I can’t resist. I guess this post is loaded with spoilers, but I don’t think this treasured entry in my 80s horror library could be spoiled anymore rotten than it already is.

Following traditional slasher formula, we are immediately treated to a prelude of some kid playing his flute as he witnesses a violent family murder. Flash ahead to the present (aka: 1982), and said kid is now a grown-up Frankie Avalon, still playing the flute and locked up in a mental institution until he pulls a Michael Myers (sans mask for the remainder of the film) and escapes the institution. Not sure if the Beauty School Dropout Teen Angel (now the Teen Angel of Death) knows what’s drawing him towards Angel the hooker, but he sets off in her direction.

Angel isn’t actually a hooker this time around, but more like daddy’s little ho if we believe what her abusive daddy thinks about her. Despite her being in a leg brace, daddy believes she’s whoring around in backseats at night, planting that hefty leg brace on the ceiling of every car she can hobble into. It’s amazing how an actress can do such a convincing job as a terrified teen in a Hollywood blockbuster like Jaws II, but put her in a low budget slasher starring Frankie Avalon a few years later and she goes down as one of the worst final girls in slasher history. Angel ho is absolutely terrible in this film, while the Teen Angel of Death is pretty brilliant in his follow-up role to Grease. Yes, Frankie Avalon actually plays an awesome psychotic murderer.

Teen Angel of Death’s calling card is his flute. Criticize his melodic blood song and you’re dead meat. In a way, this film is a lot like Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2 in that most of the killer’s victims are random slices of white trash he meets on his journey to the final girl, with whom he has some sort of psychic connection because…get this. When Angel ho messed up her leg, she needed a transfusion, and got it from Teen Angel of Death! So now, when he’s about to kill someone, we get a serious close-up of Angel ho’s eye, which turns into a  spiraling cartoon graphic that spins us into the scene of Teen Angel of Death wasting another victim. Angel ho is psychically witnessing every murder thanks to the blood flowing through her veins. Of course, no one believes her, which means it’s time for a lonely walk on the beach montage (well, actually, a limp on the beach). Out comes a faux 1970s Streisand “The Way We Were” ballad! OMG. This movie is a mess!!! I can’t help but wonder if it was actually filmed in the late 70s and not released until 82, because the Teen Angel of Death even picks up a hitchhiker who exclaims with glee, “You’ve got an 8-track!”

Well, one murder leads to another, Angel ho sees the Teen Angel of Death standing outside her classroom window in true Halloween fashion (again, sans the mask), which all leads up to the 1:07 mark in the movie, when the final chase scene begins…probably one of the longest chase scenes in slasher history, taking us all the way to the 1:22 mark! I don’t even think Wendy ran through the desolate Prom Night halls for that long. Anyway, this chase scene lands us into a logging mill, and our lame Angel ho manages to jab Teen Angel of Death a few times with sharp objects she finds around the joint, which levels the disabilities playing field and forces him to bring out the big gun…a fricking fork lift! That’s right. He lifts Angel ho way up to heaven, with Angel ho not quite able to tap into the convincing terror she felt being chased by a mechanical shark four years earlier. But she doesn’t have to fake fear for long, because she pulls a serious Angel ho-revenge move and TACKLES the Teen Angel of Death, screaming, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” This shockingly aggressive behavior causes him to lose control of the forklift, babbling like a baby as he is sent off a dock and into a watery grave. Or is he? Because just when Angel ho thinks she’s safely back in a hospital (probably waiting for another psycho’s blood transfusion for a sequel that could be set in the hospital: wink wink)…the strains of the blood song begin again….