Powder (Victor Salva, 1995)

Hey, 1995. What's with all the slack-jawed gawking? Haven't you ever seen a guy in a fedora before? I know, it's been nearly ten years since Duckie donned his iconic old-timey chapeau in Pretty In Pink, so, it's probably been quite some time since you seen anyone outside of an old black and white movie wearing one. But still, you really need to get over your fear of fedoras, it's so unbecoming, it's so... 1995. What's that? Really? Well, I've just been informed that 1995 wasn't just staring at Jeremy 'Powder' Reed (Sean Patrick Flanery), the lead character in Powder, because he was wearing a fedora, a lot of it had to with the fact that he's so pale (and, before you ask, yes, I consider "1995" to be a sentient life form). You mean to tell me that they don't have Goths or Goth-adjacent people in this part of Texas? I mean, if Jeff Goldblum is allowed to be a science teacher, I'm sure they can deal with a rat pack reject with gothy skin. What think I'm trying to say is: I found the town's reaction to Powder's chalky complexion to be a tad over the top. However, at one point Lance Henriksen's Sheriff character does remind his Deputy (Brandon Smith), who finds Powder's ashy appearance to be off-putting, the irony of a Texas police officer being prejudiced against another human being for being too white.

Speaking of things that are ironic, anyone else find it odd that Powder's primary antagonist looked exactly like Eddie Vedder? It's true, Pearl Jam technically didn't release an album in 1995, but I think most of you will agree that no-one represents 1995 more than Eddie Vedder. And if there's one thing the Eddie Vedder's of this world hate, it's pigmentally-challenged hipsters who dress like Dean Martin circa 1955.

That, and super-smart freaks of nature who are able to cleanse, fold and manipulate the forces of the universe; they totally hate people like that.

After causing cafeteria cutlery to smoosh together of its own accord and showing a deer hunter the face of death, you would think the Eddie Vedder-aligned populace would learn that you shouldn't mess with albinos from Texas, especially one's who have memorized Moby Dick. But if they didn't, mess with them, that is, there wouldn't be a movie. And who wants to live in a world without movies like Powder? I know I sure don't. Seriously, this movie is uplifting and shit. It's like Begotten meets Edward Scissorhands, and it features Susan Tyrrell!

Not to continue to pick on 1995, but I have to say, Powder couldn't have picked a worse time to emerge from his cellar. I know, he had no way of knowing that his grandpa would was going to kick the bucket in 1995, nor did he know that 1995 going to be such an asshole. But still, 1995 is no place for... (Pigmentally-challenged hipsters who dress like Dean Martin circa 1955?) Exactly.

If Powder had, oh, let's say, emerged from his cellar in 1977, he would have been the toast of New York City. However, instead of hanging out with Andy Warhol, Little Edie and Bianca Jagger at Studio 54, Powder is stuck with a bunch of bland, non-cocaine abusing ninnies.

Anyway, after Powder's grandpa dies, Sheriff Doug Barnum (Lance Henriksen) enlists the help of Jessie Caldwell (Mary Steenburgen), who is the director of a reform school for troubled boys. (Where the fuck is the school for troubled girls?!?) I have no idea. Nevertheless, since Powder is still a minor, he's forced to live at this place, which, yep, you guessed it, is also home to Eddie Vedder and his evil band of moistly sprocketed toadies.

Accusing him of being a "vampire from outer space" and asking him if he's was kicked out of "cancer camp," Eddie Vedder makes it's clear that he doesn't like Powder from day one. And it's when Eddie Vedder tries to initiate the hairless newcomer (some stupid ritual involving a spoon), that he gives him his first taste of his Powder power.

(Hold up, you mean to tell me that Eddie Vedder gets multiple tastes of Powder's powerful Powder power?) Yeah, so? (Didn't he learn his lesson during the first demonstration?) Oh, I hear what you're saying. That's just it, the Eddie Vedder's of this world are super-stubborn. In other words, it's going to take a lot more than causing forks and spoons to collide with one another in the cafeteria of a Texas all boys reform school to quash this bully.

Allowed to attend a regular high school, Powder, using the muscles in his neck, turns his head to look at Lindsey (Missy Crider) during science class. Of course, Mr. Ripley (Jeff Goldblum), notices this, and incorporates it into his lesson plan. I was surprised Powder didn't give Mr. Ripley a look as if to say: "Uncool, bro... uncool" (in other words, cock block my chalk-covered cock again and I'll cold cock you). But since he's the kind of person who is amazed by power windows, no such look is forthcoming.

Anyone else think it was somewhat peculiar that on his first day of school Powder attends a class that boasts a demonstration of a Jacob's Ladder? Talk about your plot contrivances. Either way, Powder is zapped with enough electricity to kill five elephants. After a brief stay at the hospital, Powder is told by Ray Wise that he's a genius. When this happens, I was like, great, let's get this boy to New York City, or at the very least, Dallas. But what happens instead? Powder goes on a camping trip with Eddie Vedder. This movie is starting to make less and less sense as it goes along.

Senselessness aside, I did experience some mild wetness in and around my eye-holes during certain moments. However, in all honesty, that just means the film is good at manipulating saps who are easily moved. And manipulating saps is like shooting fish in a barrel. That being said, I ain't no sap. Meaning, it must have been my allergies that were causing my eye-holes to well up. (But you don't have any allergies.) Shut the fuck up. There's no way I'm admitting in public that I was moved to tears by a movie this maudlin. Uh-uh, it's not going to happen. Powder is a movie I watched. If you want to do the same, be my guest. Warning: The film, for the most part, does take place in 1995.

Excision (Richard Bates Jr., 2012)

When one of Gerald's friends in Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael tells him that he thinks Winona Ryder's Dinky Bossetti is "ugly," I remember saying to myself: You have got to be fucking kidding? Sure, Dinky's hair is an unkempt disaster and her wardrobe looks like something a homeless Goth might wear, but she still looks like Winona Ryder (her skin is like porcelain). This lack of credibility when it came to taking the other character's perception of Dinky seriously didn't exactly ruin the movie for me, but it did irk me to a certain degree. Well, in a recent film called Excision, we're introduced to a character who comes pretty close to embodying the spirit of Dinky Bossetti, The Queen of Teen Angst. Except, instead of obsessing over a woman she thinks is her mother and taking care of  a menagerie of animals (each with a carpet sample to call their own), AnnaLynne McCord's Pauline dreams of performing surgery on her ill sister in her parent's garage, and, not to mention, looks at her bloody tampons with a wide-eyed, weigela-scented sense of wonder.

In the spirit of transparency, I should tell you that I watched Excision, written and directed by Richard Bates Jr., immediately after seeing Ryan Nicholson's Hanger. Why am I telling you this, you ask? It's simple, really. Both films feature characters who like to admire tampons that have been drenched in recently excreted menstrual blood. Talk about your weird coincidences.

Things get even weirder, coincidence-wise, when Excision throws an unorthodox abortion scene at us. If you remember correctly, Hanger boasts a gruesome coat-hanger abortion scene, too. While not as graphic as the scene in Hanger, the Excision abortion scene is nothing to poo-poo about. I think most of you will agree, putting an aborted foetus in a microwave oven (one that appears to have been specifically designed to dispose of unwanted foetal waste) after extracting it with your hand isn't something you see everyday, either.

However, that's where the similarities end. You see, whereas Hanger is a hate-filled, misogynistic slab of putrid bile masquerading as entertainment, Excision has a strong female lead and surreal flights of fancy that are visually interesting.

Oooh, I just remembered, the real reason I brought up Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael. It's true, I already made my point regarding the two films, but I sort of got taken off track by the whole tampon/abortion thing. Anyway, I felt Excision got the look of the teenage outsider right.

Now, I've since discovered that AnnaLynne McCord has been on a lot television shows. But since I've never seen any of them, I approached AnnaLynne McCord as just another actress. Meaning, I didn't spend the bulk of the film thinking: Wow, the chick from 90210 is doing some freaky ass shit in this movie.

You could view this as just another example of an attractive actress "going ugly" for critical accolades. And, after looking at some of the pictures of AnnaLynne McCord outside the Excision universe, I can see how some might take that particular view. But I don't think that's what's going on here, as AnnaLynne McCord seems fully-committed to the role of Pauline, a troubled teen who has a, let's just say, rich and colourful imagination.

The film opens inside the realm of this rich and colourful imagination. In there we see two versions of Pauline facing each other. One is twitching like a Clicker (the nickname given to humans in the third stage of the Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis infection - I despise Clickers, by the way) from The Last of Us, while the other is sitting still. Suddenly, the twitchy Pauline starts bleeding profusely from her nose and mouth. When the twitchy Pauline spits blood all over the still Pauline, the real Pauline wakes up.

Whew, for a minute I thought the entire film was going to take place inside this antiseptic nightmarescape. Don't get me wrong, I could have handled it. But, nevertheless, I appreciated the fact that Richard Bates Jr. didn't go overboard when doling out the weirdness.

Besides, there's plenty of weirdness to go around in the real world. I mean, John Waters plays a reverend, Malcolm McDowell plays a math teacher, Ray Wise plays a high school principal, Matthew Gray Gubler plays a sex ed. teacher and best of all, Traci Lords plays Pauline's mother.

After watching Pauline's family, which also includes Bob (Roger Bart), her henpecked father, and Grace (Ariel Winter), her little sister (who has cystic fibrosis), sitting together at the breakfast table for just a few seconds, it's obvious that they're a tad on the dysfunctional side.

Asking her sex ed. teacher if you can contract an STD by having sex with a dead body establishes right away that Pauline ain't hooked up right. I know, the twitchy, blood spewing dream sequence already did a pretty good job of establishing that. But, to be fair, everyone dreams about spastic doppelgängers who vomit blood; it's one of the great things about being human.

While each dream sequence is different, they all pretty much stick with the same theme. And that is: Blood, bandages, bodies and sex. Oh, and did I mention blood?

Approaching Adam (Jeremy Sumpter), who is sitting on the bleachers at school with his friends, Pauline tells the startled teen that she wants to lose her virginity with him. Now, most teenage boys wouldn't hesitate for a second to accept an offer like that. But then again, Pauline isn't your average teenage girl -- At one point she tells her sister, "When I lose my virginity, I want to be on my period." Yum.

In an obvious shout-out to Heathers, we see Pauline and Grace playing crochet on their front lawn. Later that night, guess who calls Pauline? That's right, Adam. It would seem that he's willing to look past her greasy hair, bad posture, acne and unruly eyebrows in order to attain some guilt-free teenage poontang. It's too bad it's soaking in menstrual blood. Don't believe me, take a look in the mirror, the bloodstained fruits of your cunnilingual labour are all over your face.

In an upcoming scene, Pauline will compare Adam's pussy eating technique to a dog drinking water (which, apparently, isn't a good thing - I love the thought of a guy lapping up my labia like a thirsty dog). She also describes Adam's girlfriend's vagina as a "diseased axe wound." Hee. Oh, and when Adam's girlfriend (who, by the way, doesn't know how to spell "cunt") tries to give Pauline a piece of advice, she says, "Make it quick, I gotta go take a shit." Classy.

Even though I didn't approve with a lot of what Pauline gets up to in this film, I couldn't help but sympathize with her outlandish predicament. And that's thanks in part to the amazing performance given by AnnaLynne McCord. The exact same thing can be said for Traci Lords, who kills it as Pauline's overbearing mother. If you're going to see one movie about a surgery-obsessed teen with  fallen arches, make it Excision. It's well-made, darkly funny and is sprinkled with fine performances. Oh, and did I mention blood?

Swamp Thing (Wes Craven, 1982)

"Water meadowland and small shot for the ducks. He walks in the mud, moves aside the reeds. No clapping of wings, no motions around. Just a singing wind in an ominous silence." Why, you may ask, am I quoting the lyrics to "The Bog" by Bigod 20? Well, at first, even I didn't know. But then it dawned on me, the lyrics to that sinister dancefloor jam (I highly recommend the "Techno Duck Mix") and Swamp Thing, a moist chiller from director Wes Craven (The People Under the Stairs), bare a striking resemblance to one another in terms of foggy tone and murky relevance. It's true, I could have started off on a tangent that compared the Adrienne Barbeau cleavage festival with "Swamp Thing" by The Chameleons. But if you check the lyrics to that song, you'll quickly realize that the words being sung/uttered have very little to do with an actual "swamp thing." Or maybe they do, and I'm just looking at them from a too prosaic point-of-view. Ironically, both songs were played heavily at Toronto area nightclubs like the Boom Boom Room and Catch 22 circa 1991.

While the self-satisfied sensation I'm feeling over the fact that I managed to tie together songs by Bigod 20 and The Chameleons with a film that features Reggie Batts is intoxicating, I'd really like focus primarily on the cinematic work known as Swamp Thing (a.k.a. "Das Ding aus dem Sumpf"). In my defense, it should be noted that I have already alluded to the ample division that separates Adrienne Barbeau's breasts, and I've already used a number of adjectives of a slippery and shadowy nature.

By the way, if you should come across a review of this film that fails to mention Adrienne Barbeau's chest region at least once, the person who wrote it is obviously divorced from reality.

Even though I think they can be unwieldy at times, I do have fond memories of looking her animated cleavage in an ad for the film located inside Sgt. Rock #364 back when I was a smallish woodland creature.

The wettest film ever to emerge out of the festering stew that was the early 1980s, Swamp Thing, based the D.C. comic of the same name, involves a male research scientist, Alec Holland (Ray Wise), falling for a female research scientist, Alice Cable (Adrienne Barbeau), in the seasonally flooded bottomlands of dewy Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.A. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Only problem being that commandos under the command of a corrupt businessman, Anton Arcane (a ham-and-couscous-filled Louis Jourdan), raid the their laboratory compound just as their relationship was about to blossom and junk.

In the melee that follows, Dr. Holland is transformed into a green monstrosity after being doused with some volatile iridescent sludge, while Miss Cable flees into the swamp with the knowledge of the whereabouts to the final notebook containing the formula for the aforementioned iridescent sludge. The malevolent Arcane wants to procure the recipe in order to use on himself. Mind you, not to become a walking and talking vegetable, but so that he can harness its power to do some evil bullshit.

What transpires after Holland and Cable are cast into the swamp is a serious of commando attacks, followed by a last minute rescue. The commandos, lead by Ferret (David Hess from The Last House on the Left), would chase and harass Adrienne Barbeau, and just as her ass was about to get snuffed, Holland's green thing (portrayed by Dick Durock when in shrub mode) would jump out of the brush to help her just in the nick of time.

As you would expect, this gets tiresome after awhile. The only repetitive motif I enjoyed during all this swamp-based action was the fact that the commando played by the always excellent Nicholas Worth (Don't Answer the Phone) is violently tossed in the water not once, but three times by the Swamp Thing (it might have even been four times). Anyway, it got to a point where I anticipated his dunking with bated breath.

Surprisingly, it wasn't spacious cleavage and regenerating limbs that caught the bulk of my attention. No, what interested me most was the awesome performance by Reggie Batts as Jude, the youthful, bespeckled gas station attendant who assists Adrienne Barbeau in her mad scramble not to get murdered in a swamp setting. There was just something about his head-on line delivery that tickled my fancy. Of course, as with the majority of great film performances, Swamp Thing would end up being Reggie Batts' sole movie credit. Joining the likes of the legendary Madeleine Reynal from Stephen Sayadian's Dr. Caligari and the unheralded Kristen Riter from Student Bodies, Reggie has cemented his place in the possibly made up Panthéon of one role film careers.

The assertiveness of Adrienne Barbeau's character during the film's first third was mildly glorious, especially when Arcane's hired guns are attacking the research complex–she makes a fool out of Nicholas Worth and guns down a nameless commando. Unfortunately, this scrappiness soon turns to timidity, as she slowly evolves into a bit of a damsel in distress. She doesn't even lend a hand to Mr. Swamp Thing during the climatic battle with Arcane. It doesn't exactly ruin the movie, but it was, nonetheless, a disappointing turn of events.

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