Intermission: Monty Nolahn and the Holy Grail

 

So here’s a fun fact about me: I am an actual living, breathing part of the Holy Grail mythology.

(Betcha didn’t see that coming)

 

 

Picture it: 1989. Everyone’s wearing paisley print and the airwaves are ruled by the likes of Paula Abdul and Milli Vanilli. Yes, it was a dark time in our history – and I’m sure the fact that I was a freshman in high school has nothing to do with that statement.

Oh, it wasn’t as bad as all that (being a freshman, I mean – the music was indeed that bad). I’d gotten involved in a handful of activities and met a whole bunch of people outside of my class. Between drama, the school newspaper, and wrestling, watching countless viewings of Monty Python and the Holy Grail with my best friend and working up the courage to almost ask girls out, I was pretty busy.

Through the newspaper and art class, I’d met a couple of seniors – Paul and Chris – who took me under their wing and introduced me to The Ramones. That was pretty huge for a little scrub frosh like me (note to self: review Rock ‘n’ Roll High School).

One day, I waltz into the newspaper room and find Paul and Chris hard at work on a Major Project. That project? Listing the Top 100 Rock Albums Of All Time. As you can imagine, a project like that leads to lots and lots of debate. I wasn’t privy to any of those discussions, primarily because the list was to be the basis of a contest in the school paper. The grand prize: The Holy Grail.

I never asked Paul and Chris how they happened upon the Holy Grail. They were seniors, after all.

Instead, I focused my energies into trying to guess what they would pick as the best rock album of all time. Led Zeppelin IV? Nah, too obvious. Something by the Ramones, maybe Rocket to Russia? Perhaps. Probably something a bit more popular, though, something alternative. In the end I went with my gut:

 

I chose… wisely. Weeks later, I had the Cup of Kings in my hands.

I suppose you’d like to hear about the Grail, eh? It’s not like you’d think. It certainly isn’t all jewel-encrusted and whatnot – that’s not the cup of a carpenter’s son. It was a good size cup, holding 12 to 16 ounces, and had a good weight to it Also, it was yellow and plastic, just like the people of Judea would have used back in the day. There was even a helpful piece of tape on it that read “The Holy Grail,” so I knew it was legit.

You’re probably wondering if I drank from the cup – it certainly would explain youthful demeanor and thick, luxurious hair. But no, it didn’t seem appropriate. Also, on the off-chance that this was not the one true Holy Grail, I didn’t want to turn into a crazy, long-haired skeleton thingie like that one Nazi in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Instead, I used it as my water cup in art class for my paint brushes. That seemed far more appropriate and since it was plastic, it was easy to wash.

I was in possession of the Holy Grail for about two years. I honestly don’t know what happened to it. I assume that one of my fellow art students stole it, but it just as easily could have been ninjas or Nazis or the Illuminati. Or some combination – Nazi ninjas, perhaps?

I admit that security for the Grail was pretty lax. It was a different time back then.

 

Bargain Bin Review: Galaxy Invader

Directed by Don Dohler, 1985, 80 minutes, unrated
The Hamlet of Bad Movies

 

My old podcasting partner, Jason Soto of Rabbit Hole Productions, challenged me with this movie, but in a perverse way, I’m grateful. Galaxy Invader is the brainchild of writer-director-producer Don Dohler, isn’t available through all the regular means, and appears to be shot over the course of a weekend for about $60. In other words, it’s a classic Bargain Bin Review.

Galaxy Invader opens at night, with a car doing about 12 miles an hour through a meadow. Suddenly, a shooting star! The shooting star does a bunch of loop de loops – something I understand your typical shooting star is incapable of – and then crashes in the forest just over yonder hill. We then cut to the crash site, where we get the first-person perspective of what I imagine to be an asthmatic alien.

Already, I’m starting to think that Galaxy Invader is a terrible title for this film.

The driver, a young man named David, calls his old college professor from a pay phone to tell him about the UFO sighting. The Prof immediately believes David, and asks David to wait by the side of the road for (I kid you not) six hours to meet up with him. David obliges, so we can forget about him for a while.

That next morning – I think? This movie has a lot of time issues – we get more first-person perspective of our Galaxy Invader invading the basement of a young couple, thoroughly interrupting their quality time of slurping coffee, reading the newspaper and not talking. It’s a standard issue horror sequence, and oddly, the only one in the whole movie. We do get our first view of the Galaxy Invader, and it looks like the Toxic Avenger and the Creature from the Black Lagoon had a love child and dressed it in black suspenders.

Enough of that! It’s time for Dysfunctional Family Theatre! We meet the Montagues, a backwater family who puts the “diss” in dysfunctional. Seriously, they make the family in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night look like The Simpsons. They’re like The Waltons if they all absolutely hated each other.

Naturally, they’re our main characters. Joy. Well, let’s meet ‘em:

Pa is an alcoholic with a fine collection of torn t-shirts. He’s lazy and not very bright, but makes up for it by verbally abusing everyone else in the family and being quick to pull out his rifle. That’s not a euphemism for anything – I mean he literally pulls out a hunting rifle anytime someone annoys him. He often sounds like a cranky Jimmy Stewart.

Ma complains a lot and gets yelled at by everyone because she doesn’t cook fast enough, as if she has full control over the laws of physics in her kitchen. She is literally useless until the final minutes of the film when she does something incredibly out of character.

Carol is the elder daughter – she’s 25-years-old, don’t treat her like a child! – and is always giving her father lip. She’s sassy!

J.J. is the simpering son who basically serves as Pa’s lackey. On the plus side, he’s moderately smarter than Pa and owns a shirt without rips in it.

Annie is a teenager. Her main function is to tell us how much she hates Pa. And Scrabble. But mostly Pa.

 

So, Carol shoots her mouth off to Pa and runs off. Pa grabs his rifle and chases after her, like any loving father would do. J.J. runs after Pa, because Ma told him to. Carol finds her boyfriend, Michael, hanging out by The Smokin’ Tree. Michael immediately scolds her for being late, which is how he says hello. Carol tells Michael about the fight with Pa, and they storm off so Michael can give Pa a piece of his mind.

Meanwhile, Pa and J.J. see the Galaxy Invader and Pa promptly shoots it. The end? No, but Pa and J.J. do take the Galaxy Invader’s special toy: a Crystal Orb of Unusual Pulsing. They take it back to the house, and that’s when we’re treated to some crackling dialogue. The characters don’t so much speak to each other as rattle through their lines, often turning from anger to curiosity and back to random hostility on a dime. Mamet this ain’t.

Pa has dollar signs in his eyes, so he calls in his good buddy, Frank. We know Frank is an extra dodgy schemer by the way he chews tobacco and smokes a cigar at the same time – same way we know Frank’s girlfriend Vicki is extra sexy because our first shot of her is her legs.

Frank comes up with a sure-fire scheme: Round up a posse of guys from the bar to help capture the “spaceman,” and Get Rich. They head down to the local watering hole – which is packed, despite the fact that it’s only like 10:00 a.m. or whatever. Also, based on the way Ma, Carol, Vicki and the women in this bar are treated, this whole town runs on misogyny. Anyway, they get a bunch of guys to go hunting with them that night.

Yes, at night. Isn’t it dangerous enough to try and capture an alien being? Why does Frank want to hunt the Galaxy Invader at night? Frank never lets us in on that one.

Meanwhile, David and The Prof have been wandering around the woods all this time. Each time we check in on them, The Prof comments on how they’re “losing the light.” Eventually, they decide to cut bait, what with all the light they’re losing, and teleport to bar where they catch word of Frank and Pa’s hunting trip. They decide to trail the hunting party and observe.

Armed with rifles and beer, the posse heads out under Frank’s confusing guidance (“Fan out, but stay close!”). Despite having miles of forest to cover in the dark of night, the posse finds the Galaxy Invader in short order, and it’s a shootout! Somehow, Frank, Pa and J.J. get the jump on the Galaxy Invader and tie it up. As The Prof exclaims, “Oh great! The biggest scientific event in the history of the world is being lassoed by a bunch of rednecks!”

Ever the red-blooding American, Pa immediately speculates that the Russians might give him a million dollars for the Galaxy Invader’s ray gun.

From here, Galaxy Invader features lots of sneaking around and lots of stealing, losing and reclaiming the Crystal Orb of Unusual Pulsing. It also features the realization that the alien isn’t so much a galaxy invader as a tourist – I told you this was a terrible title for the film. The story clicks right along (albeit incoherently) leading up to some terribly performed fight scenes, the ol’ “replace the actor with a giant rag doll getting thrown off a cliff” bit, and a body count on par with Hamlet.

That’s right: I’ve compared this delightfully inept mess to both Long Day’s Journey into Night and Hamlet. How’s that for a solid Bargain Bin movie?

 

***

 

 

 

 

Bargain Bin Review: Megaforce

 

Directed by Hal Needham, 1982, 100 minutes, Rated PG
“The good guys always win – even in the ‘80s!”

 

There are some movies that play out like something dreamed up by a child. It’s easy to imagine a bunch of studio execs in a boardroom, furiously scribbling notes as a seven-year-old boy excitedly telling his story: “And then! And then! And then!” These movies don’t have traditional character arcs or story structure – they often don’t even make a lot of sense – but that’s a lot of the charm.

Megaforce is exactly that kind of movie.

This is a sci-fi film made in the wake of Star Wars, so we open with text:

Despite official denials by leaders of the free world, sources now confirm the existence of Megaforce, a phantom army of super elite fighting men whose weapons are the most powerful science can devise. Their mission… to preserve freedom and justice by battling the forces of tyranny and evil in every corner of the globe.

I have thoughts. 1) I do love how they’re not just elite but super elite. 2) I can’t wait to find out what the most powerful weapons a late ‘70s screenwriter could imagine might look like. 3) Do globes have corners?

The opening credits are a treat, too. Starring Barry Bostwick! Xanadu’s Michael Beck! That Bald Lady from the very first Star Trek movie! All-pro baddie Henry Silva! The names splash across the screen as the soundtrack pew-pews its way through ink-blotted footage from the film. And you’ll be thrilled to know that everything is “Filmed in IntroVision.” Exciting!

After a brief tank battle, a fussy and vaguely Michael Caine-ish British General and Major Zara (the no-longer folliclely challenged That Bald Lady from the very first Star Trek movie), daughter of the President of Madeupistan, are dropped off in the middle of nowhere. They’re met by Dallas (Michael Beck with an outrageous southern accent). Dallas McConaugheys it up as he takes them to Megaforce’s secret underground headquarters.

Along the way, we get a display of Megaforce’s mega-awesomeness. Triumphant music plays as the men of Megaforce ride out in formation! They’re on pseudo-futuristic motorcycles with a comical amount of rockets and machine guns! They’re wearing skin-tight copper spandex uniforms! They’re popping frickin’ wheelies so they can shoot balloons with the machine guns on their motorcycles! And I haven’t even mentioned the tricked-out dune buggies!

But this movie is just getting warmed up! One of the hot-doggers comes sauntering up to General British and Major Zara, pulls off his motorcycle helmet and shakes loose his glorious mane of feathered hair. It’s Barry Bostwick! A bearded, headbanded, glam rock Jesus of a Barry Bostwick named – I shit you not – ACE HUNTER. Exactly what you’d imagine as the commander of a super elite army. Bostwick was cast based off his stage performance in The Pirates of Penzance, and it shows.

 

Ace Hunter takes us on a tour of the Megaforce facilities, a massive underground base filled with the latest, cutting-edge technology. It’s not all rocket-laden motorcycles though. Megaforce also monitors every conversation in every military installation around the world and has “a profile on everybody in the world that they deem important.” Well that’s… unsettling. Megaforce is one bad day and a chrome-masked leader away from being Cobra.

But hey, if you’re getting creeped out by Megaforce, you’ll be pleased to know that the group is also outfitted with stereotypes from just about every continent.

Finally, we get to brass tacks: General British and Major Zara want Megaforce to run a surgical strike on the forces of Notrealistan, the warlike next-door neighbor to Madeupistan. The backbone of the Notrealistan army is an elite tank division led by Duke Gurerra (Henry Silva, hamming it up). And wouldn’t you know it, Gurerra and Hunter are old war buddies from back in the day.

Ace Hunter cooks up an overly elaborate plan, and everyone jumps into action. There are spurts of drama, but they’re amusingly short-lived. Will Major Zara be able to go into battle with Megaforce? Ha ha no. Will Gurerra’s wormy second-in-command ruin Megaforce’s plans when he stumbles upon their secret supply station? Ha ha no. Will we get the grooviest skydiving sequence ever? Oh hell yeah!

The second half of the film is devoted to Ace Hunter’s ingenious plan, and two things are immediately obvious about Megaforce: 1) They spent some serious coin on this film. This movie features lots of helicopter shots, lots of practical stunts, and lots of explosions; and 2) Shooting big battle scenes is a bit beyond stuntman-turned-director Hal Needham’s skill set. Manic car chases through rural America? No problem! Land war in Asia? Eh… it all becomes an endless mishmash of blazing muzzles and explosions.

And yet, not a single casualty. I get that Megaforce was going for something more lighthearted than the typical war film – and in our era of making everything “gritty,” I’m not going to complain – but the A-Team-style action in a large-scale battle comes off a bit ridiculous.

Then again, just about everything in Megaforce is ridiculous. Let me remind you again that this is the head of a “super elite” fighting force named Ace Hunter:

The very concept of Megaforce is ridiculous. The romance between Ace Hunter and Major Zara is ridiculous. The dialog is ridiculous. Michael Beck’s accent is ridiculous. The overall message of the film, directly quoted as “the good guys always win – even in the ‘80s,” is ridiculous.

And then the ridiculousness is cranked up to 11 with Ace Hunter’s dramatic flying motorcycle sequence, which I will now gleefully spoil for you because you really, really, really need to see it:

I’m not just giving this film four asterisks…

 

****

 

… I’m giving it the Ace Hunter Seal of Approval.