Finally, a holiday movie for people who hate the holidays, hate humanity and hate being alive.

Director Terry Zwigoff (Crumb, Ghost World) has crafted a darkly cynical Christmas film that has more in common with 1970’s underground comics than It’s A Wonderful Life. If you thought Ebenezer Scrooge was a ***censored***… just wait until you meet Bad Santa.

Willie Stokes (Billy Bob Thornton) is a booze swilling, ***censored*** sex loving con man with one skill in life: he can crack safes. Willie is lazy, foul-mouthed and unmotivated. Luckily, the vision is supplied by his pint-sized partner, Marcus.  Marcus has has stumbled across a scam that will allow the duo to pull just one job a year… thus freeing up the rest of the year for Willie to wallow in alcoholic misery.

The scam is this: WIllie and Marcus advertise themselves as a bargain basement Santa and elf to suburban shopping malls and department stores.  They travel from city to city and work for a few days in costume, gathering insider knowledge about the security situation at each store. Then, they spring into action after hours, crack the safe and go their separate ways until the next holiday season.

The only real problem with this plan is Willie himself. He hates kids, he’s uses the f-word compulsively and he drinks until he urinates all over his Santa trousers. They have pulled the scam for many years, but this year Willie is slipping even deeper into his self-destructive habits and is raising the suspicions of the nervous shopping mall manager (played to snivelling perfection by John Ritter). 

Marcus struggles to keep Willie on track until they can pull the heist. In the mean time Willie befriends a seemingly dim-witted fat kid who actually believes that Willie is the real Santa Claus. When Willie finds out the kid lives in a big house with a clueless grandmother who loves making sandwiches, he decides he should move in to their nice suburban house with them. To complete his new domestic situation, he picks up a cute bartender (Lauren Graham) with a fetish for banging alcoholic men dressed up as Santa Claus because they remind her of “daddy.”

Once the premise is set up, Bad Santa works as more of a character study than a comedy or crime caper. Writers John Requa and Glenn Ficarra ruthlessly peel the layers and show us the pitch-black heart of this character. These guys are best know for their screenplays for kiddie flicks Cats and Dogs and the recent Looney Tunes movie, so it’s obvious that they had some venom to get out of their systems.

Zwigoff is the perfect accomplice, because he obviously relishes shredding all the conventions of Christmas movies. From Santa Claus to advent calendars, Zwigoff puts it all on the chopping block. Willie is vomited and urinated on by a procession of annoying brats until he ends up urinating on himself. And in what would be the “cute kid” role in a normal holiday movie, Zwigoff casts a chubby, dim-witted looking kid and encrusts his pudgy face with snot to erase any trace of cute-ness the audience might find in him.

The film does fall apart a bit in the final third as a few new plot threads are introduced and hurriedly tied-up. But the first two thirds of the movie are so caustically funny that it doesn’t matter. I have no idea how Dimension thinks they can market this film to a general audience, but you’ve got to give everybody involved credit for creating this highly original holiday film.

Review by Christopher Sharpe.

"Somebody pull up the Anchor...this thing is dragging”

With a laboriously sluggish story line and vaguely developed characters, high hopes for Master and Commander as the next epic blocbuster may sink to the bottom of the ocean.

Master and Commander is based on the historical novel by Author Patrick O Brian, a relatively undiscovered, author of the twentieth century whose naval adventure novels in recent years have been acclaimed as the best historical novels ever written. Certainly the great praise paid to this
writer is warranted, however not all stories translate well from paper to film, this movie being a good example.

The only reason I can determine the film makers would make this book into a film would be to somehow feed the non-History informed, reality TV watching populace a spoon sized, unseasoned piece of what it was to live and fight among a 19th-century British ship in the times of the Napoleanic Wars.

In that attempt they do deliver what would seem to be historical accuracy, some of the most interesting being the crude surgeries the ship’s Doctor, Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany) would perform on the seamen after battle. But, other than a few interesting glimpses into the daily lives of these men, the film grossly fails to provide any real character development. The storyline sinks and bobs in and out of the audiences interest for almost the whole of the movie.

Russell Crowe, does deliver faithfully the role of Captain “Lucky” Jack Aubrey, the arrogant but loveable tyrant of the Naval ship, who stops every 15 minutes in the movie to give one of his lesser cohorts a pat on the back and a reminder of his run-ins with great politicians and warriors. However, there is little real definition as to the motives and or real relationships with Aubrey and his crew. Sadly, just as we are revealed an ever so slight glimpse into one of the supporting cast’s characters they are promptly killed off.

Not until the last 30 minutes of the movie is there a feeling of engagement between the crew and continuity to the story, which really is too little too late.

Master and Commander isn’t bad, but it isn’t great. And with all of the great movies made in the history of cinema, and the few spare hours that you have to sit and watch them in your life, you may be wasting precious time viewing this one.

Olivia Frisbie is a graphic designer currently living in Oklahoma City. Check out her website and pay her lots of money to design stuff for you.

If not for the presence of gubernatorial groper Arnold Schwarzenegger, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines would have gone straight to video or perhaps christened as a Sci-Fi Channel Pictures Original, as it operates on such a careless C-level that it would fit comfortably among the fluff and fromage like Jackie Chan’s Metal Mayhem, Pythons II and whatever crap Dean Cain and/or Richard Greico have been roped into this week.

Future saviour of the human race John Connor is now in his 20s, a homeless drifter, a barbituate junkie and no longer played by Edward Furlong, but Nick Stahl. Trying to stay in hiding and “off the grid,” he naturally travels to that low-key, out-of-the-way little town known as Los Angeles. Unfortunately, so has a visitor from the future—a female Terminatrix robot assassin (utterly talentless and future erotic thriller star Kristanna Loken) bent on snuffing Connor out and
bringing about the end of humanity. Fortunately, Arnold’s T-1000 cyborg-bodyguard has come back, too.

Thus begins an extended game of cat and mouse with action so mindless and uninvolving that it treats the characters as if they were Looney Tunes. Arnold and his charges (including vet assistant Claire Danes) drive, run and hide from the Terminatrix, and the Terminatrix shows up to do battle. Over and over again. Aside from an early street chase t makes a point to demolish everything, there’s no bravura set piece offered to distinguish T3 from, say, an episode of “JAG.”

Instead of sticking to the straight, serious action-oriented sci-fi of the first two films, T3 ventures into the realm of cheap comedy, with Arnold donning star-shaped, sparkle-adorned sunglasses and uttering quips like “She’ll be back” and “Talk to the hand.” Talk to the hand? That line was already tired by the time Fran Drescher put it in that Beautician and the Beast movie back in 1997. In fact, T3 plays the cheesy hand with every card dealt, to the point where it becomes a parody of itself ... and not a good one at that.

For all the suspense he put into Breakdown and the controlled pacing of U-571, director Jonathan Mostow sure blows it here. Things are competent, but since this isn’t a work of his own creation, he doesn’t seem quite sure what to do with it. James Cameron would know, but apparently he was too busy with his underwater explorations to care. (I’m not sure why Linda Hamilton didn’t even return—vacuuming doesn’t take *that* long—but her move to not get involved now seems like a wise one.) All in all, this belated entry doesn’t even feel like part of the franchise, but rather a half-baked rip-off issued by the coattail-riding likes of Roger Corman.

The DVD has a whole extra disc’s worth of featurettes, deleted scenes and other bells and whistles, but I so disliked the film I didn’t want to see another minute associated with it.

Rod Lott is the publisher of Hitch Magazine: The Journal of Pop Culture Absurdity.

Director: Johnny Crash
Cast: Misty Mundae, Julian Wells, Darian Caine
Official Site

Not since Joe Estevez stared down Tanya Dempsey’s shirt and ogled her sumptuous cleavage in Stuart Gordon Presents: Deathbed has a b-movie so seared intself into my palpatating heart. That’s right my friends, E.I. Cinema in conjunction with Seduction Cinema has crafted a B-movie masterpiece disguised as an erotic parody. The movie is called Spiderbabe.

We are all familiar with the legend of Spider-Man. A hapless young science nerd, is the outcast of his school, picked on by bullies and laughed at by girls. Then, one day he is bitten by a radioactive spider and becomes a wall-crawling superhero. This story was recent brought to cinematic life by Sam Raimi. The movie was very good, yet it was very slick and polished. It failed to capture some of the rough street-level charm of the classic Steve Ditko illustrated comic book series.

Enter: Misty Mundae.

Misty is one of the most talented and beautiful starlets working in the b-movie scene today. However, in all honestly, her movies haven’t been much to write home about. Misty is always a beautiful diamond in the rough—a shining beacon in the middle of these crummy movies. There have been a few notable films (Playmate of the Apes, Dr. Jeckyll & Mistress Hyde), but for these movies are only worth watching for their sweet sapphic love sequences. Seduction Cinema has made a name for themselves in the b-movie arena by cranking out “erotic parodies” but now they have taken things up a notch.

In Spiderbabe, Misty plays Patricia Porker, a hot female nerd who is is bitten by her science teachers giant arachnid. At first, she just feels sick, but then a car comes along and… whooosh… she is crawling on the walls of a building. Spider-man enthusiasts will recall this scene from the classic “Amazing Fantasy” #15. Director Johnny Crash obviously knows his stuff when it comes to Marvel lore.

After this exciting sequence, Spiderbabe continues as a pitch-perfect parody of the Spidey origin story… Except there are a few important differences. Most importantly, as with the other films in the Seduction “multiverse” the chicks get into the lesbionic action at the drop of a hat. Also, all the major Spidey characters are re-imagined as females. This comes in handy when Patricia tries to convince her boss at the newspaper not to run negative Spiderbabe stories. Also, instead of shooting webs from her wrists, Spiderbabe shoots webs from her… nether-regions. Her web-squirting genitals come as quite a surprise to everyone in the movie, including Spiderbabe herself.

Director Johnny Crash does a great job of keeping the action moving at comic book speed. You know it’s a good sign when you are eager for the lesbian sequences to reach their climax to the real action can resume. The special effects are good in a low-budget, “Look, Ma! I know how to use After Effects” style. There are a few embarrassing sequences such as the final shot when Spiderbabe jumps onto the Statue of Liberty’s shoulder. Also, the wall-crawling action just felt a little bit fake. But overall, the movie looks amazing. This was shot with the same camera George Lucas used for Star Wars and it does not disappoint. You could have fooled me into believing it was 35mm film.

If there is anything lacking about Spiderbabe, in my opinion, it is the villain. Fem-tillian, just seems stupid to me. More importantly, it’s not a direct parody of any of the real Spider-Man’s rogues gallery. Just imagine the erotic possibilities of Doctor Octopus or the Rhino.

Nevertheless, Spiderbabe is a real treat for fans of Spidey, b-movies and lesbians. And that is something I think we can all agree on.

Ed Donovan lives in Burbank, CA where he is a mild-mannered copy shop employee by day. By night he is drummer for the art rock band Sodom and the Zsa Zsa Gaborrahs. He is also working on what promises to be the best b-movie zine ever.

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One of the great things about the popularity of DVD as a collector’s format is that we’re starting to see a lot of projects that would never have been released on VHS. One of the projects that I’m extremely glad to see is the Directors Label series. The Directors Label highlights the work of filmmakers who have pushed the boundaries of music videos and filmmaking. The first three editions of the series focuses on music video pioneers Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham and Michel Gondry.

Each volume is jam-packed with music videos, short films, documentaries and other peripheral work. The packaging is outstanding, right up there with the Criterion Collection. Each disk is packaged in a thick case made of clear plastic. The cases are thick enough to indicate there are at least two discs inside. Instead of an extra disc, however, the label has made the wise (and very cool) decision of including a thick 52 page book. The books features interviews, sketches and storyboards from the directors.

The Work of Director: Spike Jonze
Spike Jonze is easily the most well-known of this initial bunch of directors. Looking at this work as a whole, it’s interesting to see how conceptual it is. It’s also surprising how much of it is shot on video rather than film. Spike stays true to his skateboarding roots and isn’t afraid to keep things lo-fi.

The music video highlights of Spikes disc include the selections from Fatboy Slim, the Beastie Boys “Sabotage” and the Pharcyde video “Drop.” Rounding out the videos are a slew of short films, rarities and documentaries. There are two great documentaries on this disc, Sunrise in Amarilla, about teenage bullriders and a mockumentary about the Torrance Community Dance troupe preparing for their performance on the MTV music video awards.

The Work of Director: Chris Cunningham
Chris Cunningham may not be a household name, but he is legendary among fans of weird and disturbing ***censored***. Cunningham began his career as a special effects artist before he got the itch to direct. He transferred is obsessive attention to detail and skill for bizarre imagery to the music video genre.

Of the three directors mentioned here, Cunningham has the smallest body of work. But it is totally understandable given the amazing level of quality and difficulty on display here. Cunninghan’s most famous video is probably the incredibly disturbing video for “Come to Daddy” by Aphex Twin. Most of his videos are dark and filled with subtle special effects and optical illusions. The production value and high quality imagery blows away big-budget Hollywood films. My particular favorite on this disc is the video for Bjork’s “All is Full of Love” which depicts a surprisingly erotic love scene between two robots.

The Work of Director: Michel Gondry
Michel Gondry has been at this a lot longer than Jonze or Cunningham and this results in the most jam-packed disc of the bunch. Gondry’s disc features 27 music videos, 13 short films, commercials and oddities and a brand new 75-minute documentary. The Gondry collection is all over the map, but he’s clearly some kind of genius.

Gondry has directed videos for everyone from Cibo Matto to the White Stripes to the Rolling Stones, but he is probably most famous for his collaborations with Bjork. Gondry’s videos are so complicated and elaborately choreographed that they would be headache-inducing if they weren’t so much fun to watch. The highlights of this disc are “Sugar Water” by Cibo Matto and “Bachelorette” by Bjork. The extra features range the gamut from Levis’ commercials with multi-million dollar budgets to improvised short films including one starring David Cross as a walking piece of poo.

In closing, I could go on and on about how glad I am to see these collections released on DVD. The fact that the price is so reasonable and the production values are so high is just an added bonus. Each one of these directors have done substantial and important work that truly has pushed the boundaries of music videos and motion pictures. Each of these discs (as with any anthology) have their highs and lows. But the highpoints are very high and even the worst selections are still interesting. If you are a film student, avid cinephile or serious music fan, each one of these is a must-own.

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