p e n g u i n d e v i l

No, I’m not going to start reviewing Hank Williams, Jr albums… Instead, I watched another Herschell Gordon Lewis film, 2000 Maniacs! It’s another fun classic, intended in a more humorous vein then the previous years Blood Feast, but still a clever film and a truly classic and American take on Brigadoon! I admit that I don’t know where they came up with 2,000 of them, but this classic Friedman/Lewis feature does have enough good old boy fun for for a whole town!

Due to some road-sign shenanigans, two cars of Yankees get sidetracked into the southern town of Pleasant Valley, and lucky for them! Good things are brewing in Pleasant Valley, see they are having a Centennial and they need some guests of honor to make it right, Yankee guests of honor, for their celebration and bbq…

They do receive a grand welcome, complete with friendly southerners, a welcoming mayor, badly stereotyped hicks, an awesome and terribly catchy theme song by “Chuck Scott and the Pleasant Valley Boys” and lots and lots of flag waving (Confederate flag waving, that is), but there is more in store for these strangers. What these Yankees guests don’t realize is that this isn’t the centennial of the towns founding… something terrible happened here a hundred years back, in April 1865.

Once the guests get settled in, they begin to lose each other amidst the festivities, and who can blame them, with all the new ladies and gents to meet, a rock drop contest, a barrel roll (like no other!) and a big BBQ, who could resist taking advantage of this good old time southern hospitality. Of course, in this case, it’s about the last hospitality that these poor fool Yankees will know, because a hundred years back, Pleasant Valley was destroyed by Union soldiers! And, in a fury of good-natured yet foul-deeded vengeance, some terrible and fun tricks are in store for these poor Yankees! But all may not be lost, for William Kerwin (from Blood Feast) has luckily hitched a ride to help them out! This fun little film has some great and crazy gore scenes, more great dialogue and all sorts of fun characters!

And then, what do you get if you spend a year with cameras trained on the Golden Gate bridge? Seemingly you get unpleasant footage of two dozen people jumping to their deaths. You also get, The Bridge. An un-narrated documentary filled with nothing but film of the bridge, of people on the bridge and film of people jumping off the bridge! There are also interviews with their loved ones and an interview with one of those, oh so rare survivors (something like 2% survive the jump). Watching people wander around on the bridge and then jump is, to say the least, a bit unnerving, or disturbing, and while I didn’t find the film to be as controversial or disgusting or whatever critics say, I felt like it certainly did inspire some internal feelings around the subject of watching people die, intentionally die. Even though these people selected a very public location for this final event of theirs, I couldn’t help but feel intrusive, as if it is something that shouldn’t be witnessed. I also could have done without witnessing the “they’re in a better place” stuff. I know that people tell themselves that to feel better, but to me it really weakens the seriousness of what is going on here. But the movie is quite interesting to watch, if you are up for it… And there are some really nice shots of the bridge and its locale.