Twin Sitters (John Paragon, 1994)

They may engage in dinning rituals of a fundamentalist Christian nature, openly advocate torture, and behave like total gentlemen when on a date with the same woman, but don't you dare call The Barbarian Brothers "conservative." An overly stimulated glutæus maximus crushing the spirit of human dignity, Twin Sitters (a.k.a. The Babysitters) represents a new high in the made-up pantheon of babysitting comedies that feature musclebound twins who can hit a tennis ball with a cannon-like ferocity and make killer lasagne. Repeatedly subverting the existential Zeitgeist with their seemingly brainless antics, Peter and David Paul, with some much needed guidance from writer-director John Paragon (Jambi the Genie from Pee-wee's Playhouse), have created a heart-eviscerating poem cleverly masquerading as a crudely worded suicide note. Which is kinda inappropriate, because not once did the thought of taking my own life trickle through my diseased mind as I watched this non-travesty unfold before my very stunned mouth, nose, chin and eyes. Not wanting kill oneself is just the tip of the other foot when it comes to adjudicating the misguided adoration I absorbed from this cinematic abomination. A mangled pile of scattered body parts, shards of broken glass, and deformed clumps of metal, this movie/self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head is basically a sped up episode of the Three Stooges mixed with a second-rate Chuck Norris action flick that's been anally raped by a poorly produced exercise tape from the latter half of 1985. In other words: it takes everything that's awful about slapstick comedy, punching and kicking in strategically torn clothing, and physical fitness, and magnifies it to an almost blinding level of garishness.

An enchanting tale involving two boorish twins named Peter and David Falcone (real life twins Peter and David Paul), a pair of bodybuilding foodies who never met a malapropism they didn't want to force feed their shriveled genitals, the film seemed to be channeling Eating Raoul. I know, weird, eh? Out of all the films to channel. Of course, having Paul Bartel (one of the geniuses behind Eating Raoul) appear as "Linguini-covered man" during the opening restaurant sequence helped immensely in the channeling department.

However, when the caveman-esque boys go to the bank to secure a loan so that they can open their own eatery, I began to wonder if they were gonna start bumping off swingers with a frying pan.

Unfortunately, no swingers are murdered with cookware, but the bank employee who denies the Falcone brothers of their lone is played by the writer and director of Twin Sitters, John Paragon, who played the sex shop salesman in–you guessed it–Eating Raoul. And Mother Love actually does strike two ninjas in the head with a frying pan during a heated battle in the kitchen. Sure, they weren't swingers, but it's pretty damn close, if you ask me.

Anyway, if Chopping Mall is considered the unofficial sequel to Eating Raoul, I'm gonna have to assign Twin Sitters the status of being the third film in of the nonexistent trilogy. The only thing that really irked me was the fact that Mary Woronov wasn't the "Linguini-covered woman," that distinction went to Suzanne Kent (The Gong Show Movie), who was dressed like Edith Prickly for some reason.

The part of the plot that didn't resemble Eating Raoul, for those with an ill-defined interest in such things, is about the aforementioned twin brothers being hired to protect/babysit the nephews of a corporate whistle blower after they prevent assassins from killing him in the park (he was impressed by their physical prowess). Put in charge of keeping the kids safe while their uncle is testifying at an undisclosed location, the Falcone brothers utilize their unique parenting skills to win over Bradley and Steven (Christian and Joseph Cousins), who are a tad on the brattish side.

Akin to their heavily muscled, racially ambiguous brethren, the Paul brothers bring an off-kilter approach to their line readings that causes the person who is watching and listening to tilt their head slightly to the side while simultaneously making a nonplussed expression with their face. Loudly screaming their dialogue with heightened sense of urgency, the Peter and David bring an unconventional charm to their roles. Whether uttering nonsensical gibberish, babbling incoherently or merely mixing their metaphors, the thickly structured duplicates do so with an exaggerated brand of comical desperation.

And you know a movie has got something special going for it when the biggest chuckle is earned when one of the shirtless butt-sniffers yells "unspeakable atrocities" at the top of his lungs.

I'm still not 100% sure if the absolutely demented clothing Peter and David wear throughout Twin Sitters is a plus or a minus. But I know one thing, I'll never look at spandex the same way ever again. Seriously, the things these guys wear in this movie were totally messed up. I mean, I could have sworn that I saw one of them sporting a hat with a seagull on it (complete with a matching nest of eggs).

Luckily, the gorgeous Rena Sofer (Seinfeld - "The Muffin Tops") and her first-rate eyebrows show up halfway through to add some class and dignity to the proceedings with her modest business attire; she plays Miss Newman, the kids' tutor and the romantic interest of the Falcone brothers. I'll admit, it wasn't quite enough to placate the atrocious fashions of the burly brothers (who manage to infect the kids with their gaudy contagion), but she soothed my style-weary soul whenever it was about to go hurdling off the deep end. Which is a great way to sum the experience of watching Twin Sitters; in that, you'll feel like you're falling to your death, except instead of screaming along the way, you'll be laughing with the demented gusto of a bricklayer born without a taint.

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Eating Raoul (Paul Bartel, 1982)

Nowadays, people are killed, or, as my combat instructor Tiffany likes to say, "dispatched," by guns, axes, hellfire missiles, and sharpened toilet bowl handles laced with plutonium. But twenty-five years ago, everyday items like hippie beads, fine-toothed combs, bug zappers, and frying pans were employed out of respect to the victim. I mean, who doesn't want to be murdered by a frying pan? I know I wouldn't mind. In the darkly humourous, Eating Raoul, that's the question debauched swingers across Los Angeles repeatedly ask themselves during their final moments of brain activity, as the trauma that comes with being hit in the head with a frying pan catches up with them and death consumes their immoral shells. I'd say a solid eighty percent of filmed entertainment is rendered unwatchable because of its high-principled stance against murder. The seemingly unending lesson that Hollywood and their overly earnest allies having been teaching us... you know, that the taking of a human life is wrong and stuff, has plagued me for a good chunk of two centuries. The only instance where homicide is accepted seems to be then perpetrator is wearing a tin hat. Well, in this deeply satirical film about Paul and Mary Bland, murder is not only rewarded, it's glamourized. Deadpan to the point of nonexistence, Paul Bartel and Richard Blackburn have created a script so wicked, so spiritually enriching, that I still can't believe they were allowed to get way it after all these years. Promoting the unlawful slaying of deviants and miscreants from start to finish, Eating Raoul is one of my all-time favourites because it makes its predators, the Bland's, seem so normal on the surface.

However, underneath lies a subtle layer of flavourless perversion. All it takes is just one look at the Bland's apartment and you'll begin to notice that something just ain't right. The erotic artwork, their fabulous collection of 1950s furniture, the matching pajamas, and the twin beds make one stop and pretend to think.

Summed up in a succinct manner by Paul Bland (played by writer, director, and male pattern baldness enthusiast Paul Bartel) at an orgy, the unsuspecting couple lure swingers to their apartment and murder them for their money.

Now this murderous binge may have been brought on by accident (their flat is crawling with swingers and a couple end up getting bludgeoned to death after straying into their place of residence), but the desire to acquire enough capital to open a restaurant causes them to ditch conventional means of raising money and to focus on killing full-time.

Only problem is a professional thief named Raoul Mendoza (a hunky Robert Beltran) is onto to the Bland's scheme. And since Raoul isn't a card carrying pervert, the Bland's don't kill him. Instead, they team up with him. (The Bland's kill, while Raoul is in charge of disposing of the bodies at the dog food factory.) Of course, to Paul, this awkward alliance is a tad shaky from the get-go, as indicated by the shameless flirting that takes place between Raoul and Mary Bland. You can't really blame Raoul in that regard. I mean, if I found myself suddenly thrust into the shapely presence of the sexy Mary Woronov, I, too, would be engaging in a nonstop barrage of lame come-ons and ill-conceived wooing.

The sublime, extremely talented, wonderfully gap-toothed Susan Saiger plays Doris The Dominatrix, a woman Paul employs in order to help him expose Mary and Raoul's secret sexual alliance.

Giving what I consider to be one of the leggiest performances in cinematic history, Mary Woronov wields her extra leggy gams like they were a pair of deadly weapons. Fraudulently seducing the likes of hippies, middle-aged weekend Nazis, a creepy man-child, unruly patients, and fake Latino locksmiths (the locksmith part is fake, not the Latino part), the svelte superstar proves that even the squarest of squares can induce erections in the pants of others with a nonchalant ease. Sure, she can't seem to tell the difference between a dead swinger and a merely unconscious swinger (which is weird being a nurse and all), but as a Naughty Nancy and Cruel Carla, she's the bee's knees.

Seriously, her knees alone are actually worthy of a couple of grammatically obtuse sonnets.

The brilliance of Eating Raoul is plainly obvious during the murder scenes (they evoke a time when murder was fun and a valued activity). However, it's seemingly throwaway scenes, like the one that takes place in the sex shop, that make the film purr so efficiently. The repartee Paul Bartel engages with an apple devouring sex shop salesmen (John Paragon), for example, is wonderfully perverse. I like how Paul offends the clerk by asking for the cheapest vibrator he's got "Hey, there's nothing cheap about my store, don't you mean inexpensive?" It's those kind of touches that keep me coming back to this twisted masterpiece at least once year.

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