Propaganda Review: 'Saturday Morning Mind Control' by Phil Phillips (1991)

In which we revisit one of the greatest anti-consumerist screeds of all-time (which, naturally, is all but ignored for being, allegedly, nothing more than the maddened rantings of a hyper-religious Christian nutcase.)

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2018 Southern Fried Gaming Expo BLOWOUT! (Part Two — The Pinball Games!)

At long last, we finally get around to checking out the pinball games at Atlanta's dandiest celebration of all things old-school coin-op entertainment!

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com

OK, it took me a little longer to wrap up our (already three-month) late retrospective on the 2018 Southern Fried Gaming Expo but trust me, folks, the wait was well worth it. 

Well, probably not, but still, there was plenty of great pinball-themed nonsense to soak up, and I am more than happy to share that silverball joy with you today in photographic essay form.

So how about we do away with the needless pleasantries and hop right into the proverbial sack of discourse, why don't we? Yeah, I didn't think this encounter with the coin-operated relics of yesteryear would be considered nonconsensual, neither ...

Grand Lizard!

That backboard art is pretty much everything I love in life in one piece of kitschy, ephemeral art. Lotsa' bright, pastel colors? Check. Half-nekkid people wielding comically-oversized, highly impractical weapons? Check. A giant frog monster who looks like his head was resized by about half a week before the first prototypes went into production. You better goddamn check that one off the list, fella'.

I suppose the general theme of Grand Lizard is pretty generic — ultimately, it's just another by-the-numbers Conan The Barbarian/Dungeons and Dragons wannabe generic sword and sandal fantasy table, and it's not like there aren't enough of those out there in pinball-land as it is. Still, it's a pretty decent looking unit, I suppose, with some pretty interesting aesthetics. By the way, have you spotted the baboon yet?

Of course, the most noteworthy thing about the table — besides the fact its namesake sounds astonishingly similar to a title in the Ku Klux Klan — is the eponymous "Grand Lizard" situated near the top of the playing field. Granted, Father Time has taken its tool on the Grand Lizard on this particular set, to the point the prop looks more like a weather-beaten frog than a Satanic serpent. Oh well ... at least the tongue ball chute still looks fairly intact.

Raven!

Yeah, I'm just gonna' go on ahead and assume that isn't the pinball unit's original backboard art. For the curious, here's what that is supposed to look like. Sorry, guy, but you just ain't gonna' beat some glorious, 1980s B-movie box art-caliber graphic design like that, that's for damned sure.

As you can no doubt see for yourself, the playing field for Raven is pretty basic. For a mid-1980s unit, this is actually astonishingly minimalistic, with those plastic Fallopian tube ramps more or less the only distinct mechanical feature of the table. We all know the 1980s was a time that wholeheartedly embraced style over substance, but shit, even by Decade of Decadence standards this stuff just comes off as brazenly half-assed.

You know, as ubiquitous as the whole female Rambo archetype was in the 1980s, for the life of me I have no idea which text or character the trope comes from. I mean, you've got that one Hispanic chick from Aliens, but beyond that, I can't think of a single militarized femme from that epoch's pop cultural landscape. Hell, for all we know, Raven got the whole ball rolling and has yet to receive its due credit 30-plus years later; personally, I'm just mad we never got a G.I. Jane board, complete with a barracks rape scene multi-ball mode.

Star Trek!

I am not, nor have I ever been a fan of Star Trek, but even I have to admit this is a pretty groovy little unit. It's a rare table that's able to pull off the whole "retro" aesthetic without coming off as desperately nostalgic, which is EXACTLY the words I'd use to describe most of the "old school" obsessed modern pinball units that are getting churned out these days. 

Here's a board that demonstrates why the "less is more" approach is always a smart one to pursue when it comes to pinball table design. The bottom half of the board is pretty-clutter flee, with pretty much the entire space reserved for some truly lovely table art. The color palette here is just fantastic, with the oranges and blues just beautifully fading into the blackness of "space" towards the top half of the unit.

There's nothing truly remarkable about the gameplay Star Trek offers, but it's nonetheless a solid pinball experience overall. All of the obstacles are spaced out pretty evenly, and the sound effects are just superb. It's far from being a candidate for best licensed table ever, but it's certainly one of the more underappreciated tables from the time frame ... and I certainly much prefer it to the Next Generation table that's more widely celebrated by seemingly everybody except for myself.

Paragon!

You know, pretty much the only time I ever hear the word "Paragon" is in conjunction with the phrase "paragon of virtue," and as obvious by table's backboard art, that's probably not what this unit is about. I suppose the R-rated sword and sorcery fantasy novel artwork speaks for itself. Part 1970s Budweiser art and part Napoleon Dynamite drawing, there's a lot of things you can call this display, but assuredly, "boring" isn't one of the descriptors likely to pass your lips.

While I find the table art on this one interesting, I can't exactly say I find it all that interesting or impressive. Granted, whoever designed it had talent, but the whole thing is laid out in such a pell-mell manner, like a 14-year-old really into Game of Thrones was asked to design a slot machine or something. And like I'm going to give a fuck about that extra flipper when you put a damn tiger-lizard-eagle-person right next to the ball drain. Jeez, talk about cannibalizing your own product features, no?

So yeah, Paragon, unfortunately, is a pretty forgettable little table with a theme that feels like it could've been lifted from about 15 or 20 of its contemporaries. Which ... much like the chimera that's plastered all over this motherfucker, whose name I can only assume is literallly "Paragon" ... shows the aesthetic and mechanical shortfalls of commercial hybridization in full.

Time Warp!

This board is literally the Frankenstein's monster of pinball tables. I can almost assure you the guys at Williams came up with this one by simply looking at all of their abandoned projects and leftover props and saying "fuck it, might as well mass produce something with all this shit." And I assure you, that steadfast dedication to quality product is glaringly apparent with the table itself just as much as it is with this woefully uninspired backboard art.

I mean, pardon my language, but what the shit-ass-fuck is supposed to be going on here? You've got glowing pyramids and dinosaurs and some dude with a mustache trying to grab a bunch of planets like a homosexual version of Galactus, and I'm still not sure what half of the stuff up top is supposed to be. What is that above the astronaut, anyway ... a fucking German soldier from World War I?

A lot of these older boards tried desperately to create a sort of countercultural vibe, but this one just comes off as hopelessly cluttered and insincere. Like, even if you were into Blue Oyster Cult and retarded metaphysical shit, would one look at this crap even for half a second make you stop and think about dropping a quarter or two in the coin slot? Let's face it: the "intended" target for this one wouldn't have even bothered stamping out their rat-weed-filled cigarettes to even look at this one.

Gold Wings!

Yep. This board clearly wasn't trying to capitalize on the success of any popular Tom Cruise movies involving fighter jets and shit. While hilariously awful attempts to mimic actual I.P.s is nothing new in the pinball world, this has to be one of the most shameful ripoffs I've ever seen in the medium ... and considering that includes Hollywood Heat, that's fuckin' saying something.

But really, outside of the sheer novelty of playing a very unlicensed Top Gun pinball game, there's just not a lot to talk about here at all. The artwork is pretty humdrum, the mechanical features are about as basic as it gets and the overall design is just painfully bland. Unless you really have a hard-on for the blue and grey color scheme, you're probably not going to get much out of this experience whatsoever.

Still, you have to give Gottlieb a little bit of credit for thinking way outside the box when it came time to crib lines from the movie. Pretty much anybody else would've found a way to put "I feel the need for speed" somewhere on the table, but they instead opted for a bumper referencing a solitary line of dialogue about the perils of "jet wash." Shit, if these guys were given the go-ahead to make a Ninja Turtles pinball game, they'd probably eschew the "Cowabungas!" and "Radicals" for a little speed bump reading "pork rind?"

Mousin' Around!

At first glance, I thought this was a table modeled after Mouse Trap. But considering Mouse Trap didn't have any creepy, sexualized mice with humongous rat tits nor fat dudes chomping on cigars on the game board, I soon learned the error of my ways.

I can't be the only person who gets a weird Chuck E. Cheese vibe from this one. I mean, this thing looks like the interior of a Chuck E. Cheese, right down to the clashing blue and red color scheme and plastic shit all over the place. The only thing missing, really, is an obstacle modeled after the shitty pizza and black parents punching the hell out of one another next to the ball pit. 

Not that you really need me to tell you this, but this is a pretty forgettable pinball unit. The overall gimmick is uninteresting, the artwork is just kind of meh and the overall gameplay is quite mediocre. It's playable and I suppose it has a little bit of charm, but on the other side of the token, I can also easily see why this one never became an arcade staple.

Congo!

Man, finding this thing made the entire show worth it. Granted, I'm not the biggest Congo fan out there (in fact, I don't think I've even seen the movie all the way through), but just the fact that a pinball game was made as a monument to the film makes me all kinds of giddy.

And to be fair, even if the game wasn't based on a movie about killer monkeys, it'd still make for a well above average pinball unit for the mid-1990s. The artwork is great, and the design is just top notch. It's complex without being too cluttered, and they actually had the gumption to build the artwork into the obstacles instead of trying to build the obstacles around the artwork ... an engineering mishap that many a pinball designed made back in the day, as evident by the existence of Waterworld.

So yeah, they kind of ripped off Creature from the Black Lagoon here, but hey, if it works, it works. It's not technically a hologram, nor does a giant monkey hop out of it (which is a huge disappointment, obviously), but it does have quite a bit of stuff going on underneath it. It's hard to describe, but once you see it in motion, you'll be like "Oh, OK, I get it. That's not that cool, but it's kinda' cool, I guess." Which, for 1995 consumer standards, nearly constituted a ringing endorsement.

Meteor!

What the shit-fuck is supposed to be going on here? The first time I looked at this backboard art, I actually struggled to determine what I was looking at for a few seconds. That has to be one of the worst uses of a pink-on-blue color scheme in the history of anything ever. Artwork this fugly, in my humblest of opinions, simply shouldn't exist outside of early 1990s Trapper Keeper binders.

You know, if somebody asked you to dream up the most generic 1980s pinball theme you could think of just as a larf, I'm pretty sure this is what 99 percent of the American populace would see in their reveries. I mean, it's just so devoid of personality, or really, any distinguishing characteristics whatsoever. This is the kind of pinball game you'd play at a hole in the wall restaurant once on a road trip and never think of again for the rest of your life ... hell, even if you DID actually play this game at a hole in the wall restaurant once on a road trip, you probably STILL don't remember it even after I reminded you. THAT is how forgettable this game is, really.

At first glance, I wouldn't even think this was a pinball game. To me, it looks more like some cruddy 1980s toy set, or maybe the front page of a spiral bound notebook they had on sale at the dollar store. I really can't say this is one of the worst pinball games I've ever played, but I can certainly say it's a strong contender for least memorable pinball game I've ever played. Shit, I already forgot the name of this fucker and it's only been, what, three paragraphs now?

Eight Ball Champ!

I could've sword I played a variation of this game, only instead of a bunch of dapper-looking British chaps on the backboard, it was some meth-head Marlboro Man wannabe with some skanky barmaid in the background. And no, it wasn't the one with the unauthorized Fonzie, either.

Speaking of generic table designs, shit, do you think they could've found a way to make this one less traitless? I mean, the whole table artwork design is basically a facsimile of an actual billiards table, albeit with a few blinking lights here and there. I mean, that's like being commissioned to make a football-themed pinball table and painting the whole table like an actual football field. I mean, how stupid would that look and shit?

It just dawned on me how common the phrase "shoot again" was on some of these older units. Was that an official catchphrase for Bally Midway, or was it just so ingrained in the pinball vernacular that it was kind of like saying "the end" before the credits on a movie started rolling? I'm just surprised that a grand total of zero concerned parents groups ever accused the industry of promoting teen suicide. Shit, if Ozzy or that queer fella' from Judas Priest would've said "shoot again" in the outro to any of their songs, I promise you at least one lawsuit would've come out of it.

Road Kings!

And we close out the 2018 expo with the best. Well, actually, that's a bold-faced lie. Road Kings probably isn't the "best" of anything, but it WAS perhaps the most interesting unit I found at the show, and something I had never heard of (or seen) prior.

Part Mad Max, part Knight Riders (not the TV show, that one movie directed by George Romero) and all homoeroticism, Road Kings is the leather bondage fetish post-apocalypse Road Rash in pinball form we never knew we wanted, and the execution is thankfully every bit as awe-inspiring as the premise itself. I mean, a full QUARTER of the playing field is taken up by a giant steampunk penis ... if that doesn't tell you we're in store for all sorts of greatness, I don't know what does.

In a way, Road Kings epitomizes everything that's great about pinball ephemera. It's kitschy, it's kooky, it's outdated, it feels shamelessly capitalistic and just wallows in the low-culture of its own existence like a pig rolling gleefully in its own dookie. More than a bizarre tribute to the norms and folkways of yesteryear, this thing truly does represent a type of commoner's art, a sort of weird cultural artifact demonstrating what the masses of 1986 thought was socially appealing. And color me tinkled pink that even then, knee deep in the Reagan Years, arcade amusement targeting juvenile audiences was THIS enamored by the idea of commercialized machismo. Thank goodness that nonsense stopped being part and parcel of contemporary gaming culture, right?

...looks like I stand goddamn corrected, after all. 

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B-Movie Review: "Summer Camp Nightmare" (1987)

High school Bolsheviks take over a youth program operated by a religious fundamentalist, with plenty of rape and opaque allusions to Chairman Mao following suit ...

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@JimboX

At this point, it feels like I’ve seen all the summer-camp-themed slasher flicks worth watching. The Burning, the Sleepaway Camp trilogy, and, of course Friday the 13ths 1, 2 and 6 (which, mind-blowingly, are the only three movies in the Jason canon that actually feature the summer camp motif.)

So naturally, as soon as I stumbled upon Summer Camp Nightmare, my curiosity was more than piqued. I mean, how did a horror movie starring The Rifleman himself about teenagers murderin’ one another fly under my radar for so long?

Well, despite the namesake and the fairly suggestive VHS box art, Summer Camp Nightmare isn’t a slasher flick. Rather, it’s this weird combination of Lord of the Flies, Meatballs and that old British movie If… that’s too goofy to be come off as a legit criticism of authoritarianism but still too grim and violent to be passed off as a more risque Camp Nowhere.

Ultimately, the movie’s a pretty mixed bag, but on the whole, it’s a mostly entertaining little novelty from the late ‘80s that you might consider an overachiever, and you certainly have to give it credit for trying something different with the whole “dead teenager” formula.

So, how about we fire up the VCR player and take a trip down memory lane, why don’t we?

We start off with a fleet of yellow school buses en route to summer camp. They do the whole "Hail to the Bus Driver" song except the lyrics  are altered a little bit. We're briefly introduced to a few characters, including a black dude in a Cubs cab, this nerd that audio records everything and this one little cuck who pees on himself.

The counselors at Camp North Pines get on the PA system and everybody is introduced to their bunks. The kids immediately begin trading contraband, which primarily comes in the form of Baby Ruth bars and girly mags. Then they play two-hand touch football for awhile and the audio-recording nerd is confronted by a bigger "counselor-in-training" who threatens to cream him for calling him a "purple dork" or something along those lines. Then it's time for everybody to hit up the mess hall, and since this is the late 1980s, none of the kids are fat, which is just one of those things I can't help but notice in movies from way back when.

Chuck Connors plays the head camp counselor and he shows the kids his butterfly collection and he leads a lunchtime prayer. His second in-command, this Uncle Tom who looks like Tracy Morgan, gives him a formal introduction to the kids, and holy shit does that guy look like Willem Defoe. Apparently, he's a religious zealot who jerry-rigged the TV to only pick up the local preachin' channel. He also warns 'em to not use the old rope bridge, not just because it connects them to the girls' camp, but because it's old and dilapidated and dangerous. So, naturally, a whole bunch of kids go out to cross it and then Mr. Warren (that's Chuck Connors character) makes an edict that the kids have to go swimming everyday. Then the camp nurse shows up and she's a MILF and that one dorky kid with the audio recorder almost drowns and this one camp counselor everybody refers to as a rich boy pulls him out of the drink to make himself look all heroic and shit.

Then the rich boy counselor talks to this five-year-old kid and he tells another counselor he thinks Mr. Warren might be "a bigger freak " than they assumed and he convinces the audio-recording nerd to climb atop the roof and tinker around with the TV antenna so they can get more channels. And sure enough, he manages to unscramble the porno channels, just in time for Mr. Warren to waltz in, yank out the plug and read 'em the riot act. Warren sends the nerd and his camp counselor to "the meditation room" and Franklin (that's the rich boy counselor) makes another crack about him being a pederast and then it's time for the Camp South Pines girls to make their appearance at the talent show. The fat black dude raps and then a bunch of hoochies dressed like Cyndi Lauper do a song and dance number and the boys catcall 'em like middle-aged construction workers and NOBODY accuses anyone of sexism or "verbal rape" like they probably would if that shit happened today.

You know, it's only a fall of, like, six feet. I'm pretty sure that's probably not gonna' kill him, guys.

So the older boys and girls schmooze while a two-man heavy metal act called "The Horn Dogs" perform the shittiest song you've ever heard in your life while the fat black kid bangs on the drums. Of course, Warren is gravely offended by all this and suspends the talent show AND cancels the upcoming dance, because that's something Jesus probably wouldn't like or something. This leads to one of the kids stating "what a gonad," which yeah, is pretty dadgum funny.

Some of the older counselors rendezvous with some girls from the other camp and some of them make out for a bit then Franklin holds a fireside meeting where he tries to convince the other counselors to REVOLT against Warren's authoritarian regime.

Then the fat black kid makes a joke about Mr. Warren's second-in-command succeeding in a "white supremacist" world and everybody laughs because of how preposterous it sounds (my, how things have changed there) and all the kids start chanting "free Chris Wayne," who was one of the counselors who got sent to the "meditation room" earlier in the movie. Then all of the counselors tell Warren he's a "pedo" to his face, Franklin pulls out a handgun(!) and forces Warren to lock himself into his own prayer building, along with all the rest of the adult counselors.

Franklin and his Republican Guard then amble on over to the girls camp and pull a gun on the heads of THAT camp and we cut to a bunch of campers spying on some girls with binoculars. And that's our cue for a good old fashioned panty raid, complete with games of grab-ass that DON'T result in sex crime prosecutions. Franklin says he's going to merge the boys and girls camps as one and he tells all the other kids that all of the adult counselors "have gone on a trip" and left the properties to his oversight. He appoints a couple of skanks to his "supreme executive committee." Then he makes all of the kids take an oath to the "Supreme Revolution" and since he's promising them a social mixer, of course all the kids are going to go along with it.

The kids wheel Mr. Warren out and this one skank dances on him like a stripper. He tells the kids their actions are "sinful" and asks them to please think of the consequences. Warren tries to make a break for it in the woods (he even gets a few good headbutts in) but with his hands tied, he isn't able to put up much of a fight against this one ruffian, who produces a hunting knife and STABS HIM DEAD WITH IT. Welp, shit's getting deep now, ain't it?

Franklin gets on the PA system and appoints a couple of new kids to "Supreme Revolution Committee" positions and tells them to shun these two counselors that pissed him off, and sure as sugar, those kids get shunned something wicked. Then this sixth-grader girl tells the audio-recording nerd she'll teach him how to dance and then the counselors grease each other up and chase chickens and pigs around. Then they SYMBOLICALLY destroy Warren's butterfly collection ... no wait, they LITERALLY destroy it in a fire and then they roast a LIVE pig over a fire. Well, it only took us an hour, but it looks like we're finally getting into that inevitable "Lord of the Flies" territory now. And that leads to the audio nerd and his girlfriend stumbling upon one of Franklin's lieutenants RAPING another camper so Franklin has to put him on trial for his misdeeds. His victim says he deserves to die for what he did to her and Richard tells his police force to take him back to his administration office so he can sleep on it.

So, the rapist's punishment? Franklin makes him cross that rope bridge from earlier ... if he makes it all the way across, he lives. If he falls? Then I guess Franklin will shoot him or something. His final words? "Speaking of bologna, all you women can eat my beef bologna." Well goddamn, that was quite the zinger. Of course, the dude makes it all the way across and all the female campers grab him and carry him off into the wilderness, where his fate, to this very day, remains unknown.  Oh wait, never mind ... they literally lynched him like a runaway slave. How about that.

Franklin grabs his pistol and one of the counselors frees the nerdy audio kid from his makeshift prison. He tells him that Franklin made up all those stories about Warren molesting everybody and he kvetches about being made to cross to rope bridge, too. And sure enough, the little audio nerd is sentenced to cross the rope bridge. Then Franklin and Chris, the one camp counselor "shunned" earlier, get into a scuffle while nerd boy dangles off the rope bridge. And that's when the police show up, rather fortuitously. The detectives listen to the audio nerd's recordings (see, it had a payoff after all!) and the cops tell them to get back on the bus and go back home, as Franklin gets placed in the back of a squad car. Cue some REALLY awesome-sounding synth music for the outro, and that, folks, is all she wrote.

Because teenage communist revolutionaries with boom boxes are the worst kind of teenage communist revolutionaries.

Well, not that it should be a surprise to anyone, but the flick was originally released under Roger Corman’s Concorde Pictures label, which I suppose explains the movie’s distinct “made for TV” look and feel.

The movie was directed by this guy named Bert L. Dragin, who went on to direct one more feature length film (1988’s Twice Dead) before calling it a career as an auteur. Interestingly, he co-wrote the screenplay alongside Penelope Spheeris, who also directed all of those great The Decline of Western Civilization movies and a whole bunch of mainstream 1990s comedies (Black Sheep, Senseless, The Little Rascals) that she surely wishes you’d forget about by now. Oh, and the movie itself was based on a real book, titled The Butterfly Revolution, that was penned by this guy named William Butler back in 1961. Obviously, the film adaptation takes a LOT of liberties with the source material, but a quick read-through of the Wikipedia article leads me to believe it’s more or less the same central story, so whatever.

Of course, the most noteworthy name from the flick is Chuck Connors, one of the few people to ever play in the MLB and the NBA and I’m pretty sure the only person to ever play in the MLB and the NBA and become a huge Western star on TV. Charlie Stratton, the guy who played Franklin, mostly stuck to TV work after his not-exactly-star-turning role here, including a stint on the ill-fated Dirty Dancing television show that NOBODY remembers actually happened in the late 1980s. Harold Pruett, who played Chris Wade, actually died in 2002 at the absurdly young age of 32, but hey, at least he got to make out with Jennifer Tilly in Embrace of the Vampire, which I guess kinda’ sorta’ makes up for the early demise. Adam Carl, who portrayed the audio-recorder nerd, also starred in cult classic The Monster Squad and provided the voice of Donatello in the The Secret of the Ooze, and he’s done pretty much nothin’ but TV work ever since. Oh, and if the actress who played Debbie sounded just slightly familiar, that’s because she was played by voice actor Samantha Newark, who is probably most famous for voicing the main character in the old school Jem cartoon.

Even now I’m not sure if the movie is supposed to be taken as a serious criticism of communist totalitarianism or if it’s meant to be some sort of sly parody ripping on Reagan-era Soviet paranoia. Needless to say, whatever message the filmmakers thought they were getting across definitely didn’t come out as clear and discernible as they thought, but then again, anybody going into a movie called Summer Camp Nightmare expecting an Animal Farm-caliber political parable DESERVES to be disappointed.

Obviously, Summer Camp Nightmare is a movie with some structural problems, but for the most part, I thought it was a fairly entertaining no-budget youth drama that, while never really doing anything to distinguish itself that much, never really became disinteresting, either. The acting isn’t great, but it’s good enough, and there’s at least one or two laugh out loud scenes. And as corny as they may be, those rope-bridge scenes are nonetheless semi-harrowing, and it is fun watching the junior high commie utopia slowly devolve into Pol Pot’s primary school … even if the ending leaves a lot to be desired.

Is it worth going out of your way to see? Eh, not really, but if by some mysterious turn of fate you do wind up catching it on TV, you likely won’t hate yourself for sinking an hour and a half of your life into watching it. All in all, it’s perfectly adequate seasonal fare, and a pretty good mood setter to prepare yourself for that splendid summer-to-autumn transitional phase; like S’mores, you probably won’t feel like catching this most times of the year, but for whatever reason, it nonetheless makes for an oddly filling snack while we’re asses-and-elbows-deep in all this humid, late July weather.

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B-Movie Review: "Rolling Vengeance" (1987)

Redneck drunk drivers killed his family … so now he’s gonna’ exact revenge on ‘em using a homemade monster truck with a giant drill penis.

By: Jimbo x
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@JimboX

You know something I really, really miss? 1980s vigilante action movies.

We’re talking Death Wish II, III and IV. We’re talking Cobra, we’re talking 10 to Midnight and you better believe we’re talking Savage Streets. Sure, sure, a whole lot of them were flat-out terrible (ever seen The Exterminator 2 or 1990: The Bronx Warriors?), but a surprisingly high number of them weren’t just entertaining B-movies, some of them — like Fighting Back — even teetered on the verge of being legitimately great movies. And then there are flicks like Stand Alone, which I honestly, genuinely, unironically consider to be one of the absolute best movies of the entire decade.

With Donald Trump getting elected POTUS and synthwave aesthetics coming back into vogue, I suppose it’s only a matter of time before the once-dead subgenre springs back to life (you know, pending Hollywood ever grows a set of cojones, which, let’s face it, probably ain’t gonna’ be happening anytime soon.) Even now I’m not entirely sure what it is about movies of the like that make them so comfy, but they just plain are. Is it the vengeful undercurrent of unremorseful, Reaganomics-era white rage? The deliciously anti-P.C. counter-fascistic thematic tones? That weird, still kinda’ reassuring sense of hyper violent conservative-tinged moralizing? Whatever the case may be, movies of the like are entertaining and enjoyable as all hell even WHEN they’re substandard dreck.

Well, 1987’s Rolling Vengeance is a formula film that straddles a very fine line between being exceptional B-movie fare and almost legitimately good cinema. It’s hokey and corny and degenerate enough to appeal to the midnight wacko set, but it’s also filmed so surprisingly well — with way better than average cinematography and acting — that you kinda’ have to wonder how great of a motion picture these people could’ve made had the budget been more than $13 Canadian. But even as is this is a really fun genre offering, and one that’s well going out of your way to experience if you really miss trips to the video store and/or voting for Ronald Reagan.

The flick begins innocuously enough, with these two guys in semi-trucks using their CB radios to tell each other they’re full of shit. Then one of them clips a mechanical wheat thresher and he tells the other one to “eat his shorts.” Meanwhile, a generic power ballad with the chorus “driving all day, driving all night” plays in the background, and unfortunately, it is catchy as all fuck.

So they drop off their delivery of Jack Daniels and Budweiser, except the driver ain't too good and he can't back the thing up and he loses a couple of boxes on the dock.

Then we meet Ned Beatty, wearing a leather jacket and rocking  a Wolverine haircut, who’s the owner of a trashy honkytonk. He gets visited by a bunch of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers advocates who call his business "disgusting." Oh, by the way, he's also a used car salesman AND the owner of a strip club. Fuck, how many scumbag stereotypes can you fit into one character, guys?

Next, we've got a pair of two Canadian rednecks in pickup trucks drunk driving and throwing beer bottles at the windshield of the semi-truck. Which, I know, doesn't make any damn sense ... why would stark-raving mad alcoholics just waste booze like that?

So we learn that the cigar chewing older trucker is actually the dad of the younger truck driver who has a quick temper and can't figure out why they HAVE to make deliveries to so many miscellaneous assholes. His name is "Big Joe Rosso," and the name of his truck driving operation, naturally, is "Big Joe Rosso and Son." Then they have a birthday celebration for the youngest child in the family (dude's get three kids, by the way) and then the girlfriend of Joey (the son) shows up and they make out a little. So he takes her for a ride in his dad's new big rig and they drive by that one dude's liquor store and they talk about how much they hate that spirits-serving motherfucker. Then the little girl asks her dad when she's going to grow boobs the size of Dolly Parton's (no, really) and then she asks her pa to play her a  music box. Then Joe and his wife have a discussion about how they want Joey to go to college instead of becoming a truck driver. Then he tells his wife "god damn it, I like you," which is certainly something every woman one day dreams of hearing from her man.

If you're looking for a good video game pairing with this movie, might I recommend Double Axle?

We cut to the ruffians who work at the liquor store, who unsurprisingly, are getting drunk as fuck and 'rasslin. As it turns out, Ned Beatty has his *own* disappointing son (actually, about four or five of them) so it looks like we've got some narrative parallelism going on here, don't we? Next up, Joe's wife and his youngest daughter go for a drive, and then the drunk ruffians start throwing beer bottles at HER car and then they break into her ride and then threaten to rape her so it's time for our first car chase of the movie. (An aside: I just noticed the kid is wearing a Los Angeles Dodgers cap. Is that some sort of trick to make audiences think this shit is happening in America? If so, they probably should've taken greater measures to obscure he license plates that clearly read "Ontario" on them.)

Well, irony is a motherfucker, so the wife and kid end up getting creamed by, you guessed it, Joey's truck. Cue the triple funeral, as Joe and Joey mourn the loss of their entire household. Joey tells his girlfriend "he feels kind of empty now." Then the dad goes into his little girl's room and listens to that music box play and he cries very manly tears.

Cut to that trashy ass liquor store/dive/whorehouse, which apparently holds about 200 customers at a time. The owner chews out the regulars for killing what's her name and his kids, but like you'll pay attention because there's this one broad with HUGE knockers shaking her milk cans directly behind him the entire scene.

Then the redneck ruffians are on trial for vehicular homicide, or manslaughter, or something else like that. Fuck, the lawyer looks like Christopher Reeves. It's uncanny, really. Anyway, the judge only fines them $300 and Joe yells "they ought to be strung up by their balls" and the judge says he can sue them in civil court and the rednecks LITERALLY let out a "yee-haw!" after the judge bangs the gavel. Then Joey tells one of them "he drives like he has a firecracker up his ass"  and then Joe and Joey go the dive and order two beers and one of the rednecks pours a beer on Joey's head and yep, that leads to an all our barroom brawl battle royale. Then the bar owner comes in with a shotgun and starts blowing holes in the roof and then Joe, Joey and their hitherto unmentioned pal Steve grab the dude's gun and vamoose on out of there.

Then the rednecks come up with a new plan to exact revenge ... they stand on an overpass and throw fucking cinder blocks at their trucks. It's a surprisingly effective strategy, which results in Joe's truck flipping over. Although in critical condition, he appears to survive, while his son vows to "get the bastards."

Time for a montage of Joey digging through a dump and welding shit while a song that sounds like a very slowed down version of "War Machine" by Kiss called "Coming Up On You This Time" plays in the background. Well, five minutes later, that motherfucker has his own homemade Grave Digger, and then ... time for more titties at the dive.

So, naturally, the very first thing Joey uses his monster truck for, of course, is steamrolling EVERY single used car in the bar owner's car lot. And oh yeah, that shit is ALL kinds of satisfying to witness. Also, it just dawned on me how much the bar owner looks like Archie Bunker, which makes everything that happens in the movie about 15 times funnier by default.

Then Joey and his girlfriend play tonsil hockey some more, then they make sweet love by a roaring fire. And the lighting is all ghostly, too, so it's kind like watching two poltergeists bump uglies.

The next morning, a whole bunch of MADD protestors are at the bar. The owner surveys the damage to his used car lot and his redneck brethren comment on how most of the tires are still good. The sheriff asks the bar owner if he has any enemies and he says "nobody since the Gooks." Then when the cop asks him how he hurt his arm, he tells him he tripped over his own dick in the shower. Goddamn, do I miss the 1980s.

Now the owner is all kinds of liquored up, and he tells one of his sons his mama was a straight up slut and then some of the rednecks grab their shotguns and start chasing after Steve's truck at night. And that's when Joey  shows up to make the save in his custom-made killing machine. He runs over one dude (flattening him like a pancake in the process) and uses a drill apparatus impale and then crush another motherfucker.

LOL at Steve's last name being Tyler. Also, LOL at the sheriff looking like Mike Pence, too. Back at the bar, the owner curses at the rednecks for not praying before they eat and shoves potato salad in their faces. Then the owners says they've got to kill Joe and Joey or else he'll kill THEM himself and then they have a team prayer to "help get the low-life sons of bitches" that killed their two drinking buddies. And instead of Amen, he concludes the oration to the Almighty with the refrain "fuckin' A, we need more potatoes out here."

Guns don't kill people ... guys in gigantic, unrealistic, highly improbable homemade monster truck death machines kill people.

Then the rednecks (you know they're rednecks because one of them is wearing a rebel flag tank top) decide to sexually molest Joey's girlfriend, because all is fair in love and war ... especially rape. Of course, it's only a matter of time before Joey hops in his big rig and starts chasing after the no-good white trash that defiled his gal pal. Some more trucks get turned into paperweights and then this one Okie gets splattered in a cornfield while this really triumphant, SNES-sounding music plays in the background and it is glorious. Also, I love how ALL of the death scenes in this movie are in slow-motion. I mean, if you're going to show a guy having his guts busted within the treads of a homemade tank, you might as well be able to savor the moment, shouldn't you?

So Joey chases another rube through an abandoned warehouse and winds up splattering his ass while he's locked inside this makeshift office. Then a TV crew asks the sheriff if he finds it just a little suspicious that all these people getting killed by monster trucks are all related to the bar owner. I mean, shit, it's gotta' be pretty hard to hide something like a homemade killdozer ... even as protectionist good old boys, you'd think SOMEBODY would've at least paid Joey and pals a visit, eh?

Then the sheriff visits Joey at the hospital and tells him he knows he's the one monster trucking everybody to death and he politely asks him to stop murderizing everybody and he'll leave him be. Then Joey's dad FINALLY dies. He tells his girlfriend to go home and he starts rushing towards the exit. Well ... I guess you can figure where this is headed.

The bartender is holed up in his dive, swigging Jack and brandishing a shotgun and just waiting for any nearby monster trucks to come smashing through his front door. His last surviving son is also drunk as shit and he starts crying because his daddy doesn't think he's tough and that's our cue for an impromptu demolition derby. Only this time, the po-po is waiting for the monster truck to show up, but even by then Joey has pretty much torn half of the bar asunder. But then the bartender’s sole surviving son shoots the cop AND STEALS THE MONSTER TRUCK! Oh fuck, that is a brilliant twist of fate right there.

The musically literally turns into the boss theme from Altered Beast and then the bartender's son uses the truck's penile-like drill to chase after the girlfriend, who is stuck in a very womb-like canal. Joey manages to smoke the bartender's son out of the machine and then it's time for some kung fu, complete with Joey hitting that motherfucker with some Wanderlei Silva-like knees to the noggin. The girlfriend narrowly avoids getting her uterus scrambled by her boyfriend's redneck skewering apparatus, and we cut to an ambulance where the sheriff is alive and well after all. Then a deputy pins the monster truck deaths on the bartender's son, and Joey and his girl walk off into the early morning sun while some sappy love ballad plays in the background. And yep ... that's all she wrote, folks.

It truly is a happy ending ... even though literally everyone they love is dead. And she just got raped by an STD-ravaged hillbilly. And he's probably going to go to jail for the rest of his life for killing like, six or seven people.

In case you were wondering, the flick was directed by a guy named Steven Stern, whose filmography primarily consists of Canadian made-for-TV movies with names like Camp Grizzly and Murder in Space, but he’s probably best known for helming Mazes and Monsters, that one TV movie starring Tom Hanks as a guy who plays so much D&D it literally drives him insane. The writing credit belongs to this fella named Michael Montgomery, who produced a couple of episodes of BeetleBorgs and Masked Rider, but that’s about it.

Lead actor Don Michael Paul went on to become a veteran TV actor, with recurring roles on shows like Models Inc. and The Hat Squad. And if “Big Joe” looked familiar, he should. He was played by character actor Lawrence Dane, who has been in everything from The Red Green Show to Scanners to Bride of Chucky. And of course, Ned Beatty is Ned freakin’ Beatty, whose oeuvre includes such all-time classics as Deliverance, White Lightning, Back to School and Toy Story 3, among tons of other movies.

All in all, I’d consider Rolling Vengeance to be a pretty entertaining little vigilante action thriller. The whole “monster truck” gimmick certainly makes it stand out from the deluge of Death Wish wannabes from the epoch, and at times, it almost takes on a slasher-like atmosphere … only instead of Michael Myers, you’ve got a dude sneaking around in a 15-foot-tall automotive monstrosity that literally spews fire.

It’s corny and cheesy at times, but I really dug the rawness and roughness of the plot. It’s so unsavory and so nihilistic, and at the end of the day nobody really walks out of the picture morally unscathed. That’s not to say the flick gets all high and mighty on us, but it is nonetheless refreshing to see a contemporary genre flick hit us with a somewhat unconventional ending.

It’s fun and grimy and scummy and violent and cynical, playing out like a darker, more jaded iteration of Walking Tall. The whole monster truck motif could’ve resulted in the movie becoming a self-parody, but to their credit the filmmakers play the whole thing 100 percent serious, and for that it never becomes tedious or unengaging.

It’s not for all tastes, but if you’re a serious vigilante action enthusiast — or hell, anybody who misses the Cannon Film Group — Rolling Vengeance is right up your alley. Calling it a genre classic might be a stretch, but it’s certainly way better than it probably had any right to be; and really, just how many movies are there out there in movie land that’ll quench your thirst for slow-motion mass death by vulcanized rubber?

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