Dolemite: The Total Experience. Part 1, Dolemite.

Hell yeah.  When I first saw this movie as a young lad, I was immediately obsessed.  This launched a very long legacy of occasionally making reference to Rudy Ray Moore things and sadly having it go over people's heads.  Well I am here to say that I finally picked up Dolemite The Total Experience box.  That is eight discs of Rudy Ray Moore.  Of course only three of them are Dolemite movies, and a couple are live stand up, But nonetheless, it is the best collection of Rudy you can get.  So I am going to review, not just the Dolemite films, but every damn disc in the box.  Here is the thing though,  Rudy's comedy is very NSFW.  So in order to preserve his legacy, I am not going to hold back as well.  So if you don't like swearing and such, you should just ignore this.

Rudy Ray Moore is well known as a comedian who recorded raunchy comedy albums, usually rhyming while cool jazz played in the background.  Dolemite is a character who Rudy steps into to make some of his best stuff happen.  Dolemite is a character who is a kung fu fighting, smooth talking pimp, is the greatest in bed and employs an array of martial arts hoes to do his bidding.  The New York Times calls this "The Citizen Kane of blaxploitation films!" and I for one am ready to revisit this movie.

The first film, simply titled Dolemite, sees our character starting out in prison.  Dolemite was wrongfully accused of dealing drugs during a set up.  Why didn't they just get Dolemite on the many other things he actually did, such as run a prostitution ring, or murdering people?  Well anyway the warden brings Dolemite to his office where he says that Dolemite can go free if he agrees to help clean up the streets of the big drug kings now in charge of the area.  The main guy Dolemite is worried about is Willie Green, a rival pimp who seems to have bought up excess stuff that has been sold off from Dolemite's seedy empire, including a club that Dolemite loves.  A madam that works for Dolemite named Queen Bee has been trying to keep things afloat and also enrolls his bitches in the Chuck Norris Martial Arts School.  If you've got an empire to protect, that is the way to do it mother fucker!

So Dolemite has some catching up to do.  Specifically he needs to bang lots of hoe's vaginas.  He immediately starts banging two of them in the back seat and some of Green's men start to chase him down.  Dolemite murders them with a rifle on the highway.  Then he goes out to see what happened to his neighborhood.  This leads to him finding out that Green owns the club and has a former hooker of Dolemite's in his employ.  Well then, it looks like it's time for Dolemite to... bang some bitches, drive around, get framed again, and bang more bitches.  This framing happens when he's getting info from an old contact that is now a drug addict, which leads to some martial arts and a gun fight.

One of Dolemite's plans is to have a party at his old club.  So he breaks in, grabs some money hidden in the floor I think, and pays off Willie Green's men what the Dolemite empire owes him.  After a brief interlude where Dolemite watches his bitches do kung fu, it's off to the club to do a stand up show.  Oh yeah, it's revealed that Green works with the Mayor.  It is well known that Dolemite is a serious mutha fucka when it comes to laying down sweet rhyming stories to the beat of music.  This of course impresses Willie Green who stops by and offers to go into business with Dolemite.  There is only one way to respond to such a thing though, and that is to kung fu Green and kill every single mother fucker in the goddamn mother fucking army of Willie Fucking Green with the help of his fine ass pussy peddling kung fu hookers.

In the fight with Willie, Dolemite is shot but he rips out Willie's stomach.  Some police guy comes out and shoots Willie to make sure they can't pin it on Dolemite.  So he goes to the hospital.  The cop guy chases down the Mayor after a failed attempt at assassination by one of the hookers makes the Mayor flee.  The Mayor is killed trying to get in a plane.  It is revealed to Dolemite that his cop friend is an FBI agent, and that there is a hit out on him.  This is quickly resolved in the hospital by the death of every last mother fucking guy who dares to accept the hit on Dolemite and their asses get murdered in the hospital that seemingly has the darkest damn hallways known to man.  Also there are some corrupt cops that are sort of in the movie and they get arrested fairly quickly.

I glossed over a few things, but this movie is downright awesome.  The budget is pretty low, but they make up for it with a hell of a lot of nudity.  The editing is not so great, but they make up for it with bad ass music.  The acting is usually sub par, but they make up for it with not so great kung fu, and Dolemite doing stand up.  So there's violence, nudity, drugs, pimps, hoes, kung fu, guns, car chases, and stand up comedy in this movie.  What the fuck else do you need?

Stay tuned for the next installment.  I will be updating frequently to get the entire box taken care of.  That way you will know all you need to about the film saga of Dolemite, and Rudy Ray Moore's greatest feats of acting and comedy.

Burial Ground: Nights of Terror

Here's the thing, I love zombie movies.  Since the first time I saw Night of the Living Dead (thanks basic cable) my life was changed.  I was around eight at the time and it would be fair to say that my obsession with horror started right then.  Being haunted by the fact that no one survived and Ben got shot in the head even though he was human, I began seeking out everything horror, and more specifically zombies.

Nowadays there are a million zombie movies though.  Ones based on classic books, but with zombies, ones where scouts fight zombies, it is a bit out of control.  Thanks Walking Dead/ Dawn of the Dead remake/ Resident Evil, you have ruined it for me.  The worst thing however is zombie comedy.  Don't get me wrong, I like Shaun of the Dead as much as the next guy but after the fiftieth zombie comedy, you tend to stop finding it funny.  Burial Ground keeps getting funnier every time I see it though.  You probably need explanation, so on to the review.

A bearded man who is a professor of something informs us that only he knows the secret to whatever it is that he knows while pouring over some book and a couple of papers.  Shortly after he gets eaten by what we can assume is zombies due to the lighting being poor.  Though this may be due to my VHS copy.

So a bunch of people arrive at a mansion for some reason in three cars.  One woman who I learn later is named Leslie, is wearing a kinky outfit and she says that she found in the room they are staying in. To which her husband/lover replies, "You look just like a little whore, but I like that." and then they bang.  A shadowy figure creeps up on them and in a surprise turn of events, the figure is actually creeping up on a different husband and wife.  They are his parents George, and Evelyn whose name I only discovered by writing down other people's names and then fact checking with the credits.  I don't recall her name being spoken.  That is just how this movie is so I will forgo the other explanations of this.  Anyway Evelyn's son is Michael and he is played by Peter Bart, a rather short adult.  Oddly he is dubbed by someone who passes for a kid even less when it comes to vocals.  From what I gather from the context, George is a step dad.  Peter Bart, looks like this

True face of horror right?  So then a blonde in her night clothes named Janet immediately says to her husband/boyfriend named Mark that something bad is going to happen, but he puts an end to her paranoid ramblings by making out with her.  Then zombies appear and shamble along to let you know that this is a zombie movie.

Everyone is arguing at the dinner table and it turns out they had all been invited to the Professor in the beginning who has been researching the undead.  I looks like they don't have to go far to find out more about it though.  After a brief discussion, most of them go outside.  Janet is out taking pictures with her husband and she is apparently clumsy.  The lights start acting strange at the house and begin to explode which scares the maid and butler.  Of course we are now treated to zombies coming out of seemingly everywhere to attack Janet and Mark as they are about to bang outside.  Then even more zombies come out to a cacophony of annoying electronic sounds.

Evelyn, George, and Michael are in some room with statues where the two adults are playing with firearms with their eyes closed.  Suddenly Michael gets really clingy with his mom.  Zombies attack them though and they try to shoot the things but it doesn't work.  It actually looks gross and kind of cool when they are shot in slow motion.  The zombies kill George and start tearing apart his stomach.  This also looks cool.  Michael escapes with mommy.

When you are a clumsy person you end up getting stuck in bear traps that are just laying around, just like Janet does.  As Janet and Mark struggle with the trap rather hilariously, zombies come for them.  So Mark grabs a pitchfork, but quickly loses it and waits for the zombie to wrap its hands around his neck.  Luckily James and Leslie arrive with rocks to smash some zombie heads, which looks pretty gruesome.

Zombies appear to be surrounding the cars, so they have to try and get back into the mansion.  After doing so, the zombies give up and they start to board up the place.  The maid goes off searching in the dark and looks out a window where her hand gets skewered by a zombie with excellent throwing skills.  Afterwards her head is sawed off by a scythe.  The zombies rip her apart and then equip themselves with sharp objects to hack through the door.  So James goes on a head exploding spree.

Janet seems to have only bruised her ankle from the bear trap.  While Leslie is looking around a zombie breaks through the window and tries to "Zombi 2" Leslie's eye, but the glass misses and gets her face.  Janet can't escape the zombies coming in, but Mark and James start bashing skulls for her.  Then Evelyn machetes some zombies to protect her son.  Michael returns the favor by trying to suckle on his mother's breast and fondling her.  Evelyn rejects her son's advances.

The group decides to let the zombies in and walk past them because zombies are slow, which seems stupid.  So Evelyn goes looking for Michael and follows a blood trail to where Leslie is munching down on her son.  Evelyn smashes her to death on a bathtub.

The zombies get in so the crew goes walking around.  Somehow, just the butler runs into the Professor who is now a zombie and gets killed.  Day comes and they make their escape to a monastery where the priests are all zombies.  James is killed in this fiasco so Mark, Janet and Evelyn escape to a workshop of some kind where they find zombie Michael.  Evelyn is so happy to see her son that she let's him suckle her, at which point he tears her nipple off with his teeth.  As she is being eaten, the zombies shove Mark's face into a table saw and surround Janet.  The End.

This movie is made up of chaos, very little plot, and some pretty offensive material.  There is a decent amount of naked ladies, a lot of violence, and one scene with both.  The movie is mostly remembered now for Peter Bart and his on screen mother's relationship, and justifiably so.  The first time I saw this I could not believe what was going on.  I have now watched the movie three times.  I recommend this to hardcore horror fans and those that are already used to Italian horror films.  This movie is pure chaotic enjoyment.  Sure the character's logic makes no sense and very little is explained, but who cares.  This movie is exactly what it needs to be, totally ridiculous and awesome.

Robo Vampire

In 1988, a man named Godfrey Ho dared to take two movies that were unrelated (but surprisingly neither involved ninjas) and make a strange cult film that the internet chose to remember for some reason.  Those of you who watch internet reviewers have probably already seen a review for this movie by someone, and likely this means you are familiar with Godfrey Ho as well.  The man made a career of making low or no budget films at a dizzying rate.  It didn't matter if a movie of his failed to make any money because there were always a few more on the way already.  Often times he would get stock footage or buy unfinished films to make up a portion of his movies and film new scenes to make it complete.  This had the unfortunate effect of making them pretty incoherent.  Regardless, lets look at this crazy thing.

To start with, Army guys leading a person covered in denim to... somewhere are attacked by a hopping vampire dude when they start opening coffins for seemingly no reason.  That is how this movie starts.  Then a guy with a mustache comes down some stairs and says,"We must find a way to handle Tom, that goddamn anti drug agent."  His has employed a Taoist and his lackeys to train some vampires.

So a guy named Ken, who likes to dress as Waldo is busy at work loading vampires and drugs into some coffins.  I think the plan is for the vampires to protect the drugs or something.  A guy wearing black scolds him momentarily for screwing around and after Ken hits his nuts the vampires wake up, so fighting ensues.  They stop the vampires with their exorcising papers or whatever and soon discover the drugs they have are not real.

Taoist, the leader of the vampire trainers wakes one up in another scene to show off his sweet vampire wrangling abilities, but is soon interrupted by a woman named Christine.  She wears see through clothes and is hellbent on revenge due to the vampire being her husband.  This causes them to no longer be able to spend eternity together, so naturally she is mad.  Then the vampire wakes up and starts attacking her, but suddenly stops when he recognizes her sweet gecko tattoo.  Taoist and crew start to refer to her as a ghost and she decides to help them as long as she is allowed to get married to her vampire husband.  This relationship is too confusing for me.  A vampire and a ghost, but they have to get remarried?  Why?  Oh, the vampire is named Peter by the way.  But most importantly, where the hell are all the robots I was promised?

Anyway, Taoist and crew are driving along the road when they are ambushed by Army guys with what seems to be automatic shotguns.  They send out a vampire who shoots some fireworks and kills a guy named Tom.  Some people are working on poor Tom and one of them says, "I want to make use of his body to make an android like robot."  So after a verbal application is submitted, they make Robo Tom.  They refer to him as Robo Warrior and he looks like this

So another movie is going on where some blonde agent is kidnapped and they send a dude out to save her.  That continues and I get bored, but what I didn't know is that most of the rest of the actual Robo Vampire part of the movie is just Tom fighting vampires, which is cool.  Eventually the other movie grows on me as it has decent fight scenes, and some violence.  Robo Tom eventually faces off against the ghost, and her husband that have some lovin' together (though not much) and he also kills the Taoist.  The other movie gets rid of the other characters.

Robo Vampire is a pretty strange movie overall.  The cover with a picture of Robocop is what usually makes people watch it.  The movie has some decent violence and martial arts sequences, and some really bad robot fighting vampire scenes.  There is also some naked ladies, so at least they checked that off the list.  The story is fairly scattered and unimportant when it comes down to it, and that's odd considering there are two of them kind of.  Another thing to note is that there is a part where a woman cuts open a real dead animal and stuffs drugs into it.  For me, this is hard to watch.  I recommend this to a bunch of drunk people, or anyone who seeks out "bad movies" in general as this is not good in terms of quality.  I would also recommend it to Godfrey Ho fans that haven't seen it.  Normal human beings could probably skip it though.  I mostly enjoyed what it had to offer, but there are better Godfrey Ho movies out there and I will probably just watch one of those next time I feel the need for something like this.  Better Godfrey Ho movies with Ninjas, and Zombies.

Hangfire, The moment before all hell breaks loose.

Back in 1991 we had a lot of action films to watch.  It seemed like the video stores were full of bad ass dudes killing all kinds of people in all kinds of ways, for all kinds of reasons.  Hell Steven Seagal had four movies out by the time someone likely watched this.  I of course, was too young to really know who Jan-Michael Vincent, Lou Ferrigno, Ken Foree, and James Tolkan were because I was six.

However, one day I saw a VHS of this movie just lying around and seeing that it had an all star cast (according to me) I began to ponder why no one really talks about this movie at all.  It had a typical early 90's cover as you can see above and promised explosions to me on the back cover.  That is all I really needed to know in order to slap down the fifty cents required to purchase the VHS.

I am almost immediately greeted by James Tolkan in an eye patch whom you may know as that guy from Top Gun, who is cleverly named Patch.  Also there is a mustache guy named Kutner who is played by Lee de Broux who I recognize as Tom from Pumpkinhead, and Sal from Robocop.  So right away this movie is made for me.  So in the showers of a prison are a couple of guys wearing their underwear to the shower.  I guess everyone is in fear of being penetrated from behind in the prison, and for good reason because nearly a minute in someone is stabbed from behind and dies.

Meanwhile, a dude named Ike played by Brad Davis who I suppose you could recognize from Chariots of Fire if you wanted, is getting married.  His bride to be is named Maria.  Anyway, Ike is best friends with Ken Foree who if you don't know by now... well, sorry.  Ken plays Billy, and during this wedding he drinks a lot, so we see he is a party dude.  We also discover that Ike's name is actually Isaac.

The next day at precisely 7:00 am as the film tells us, guards come and get Kutner for his parole hearing.  At this point I am aware that this movie has an unnecessary amount of text informing us of when and where stuff is going on.  For example, shortly after informing us of that scene we see that it is four miles out from the prison on the interstate as some people are driving badly.  Then at precisely 7:05 am Kutner arrives to his parole, um... meeting.  We learn that Kutner is in jail for strangling an eight year old girl as well as possibly many others.  Maria, who is a doctor of some kind recommends that he doesn't get parole.

Four minutes later by the info text's account the bad driving makes a truck of Toxic stuff explode.  The Toxic chemicals are headed for the prison so they have to evacuate everyone.  Kutner decides to escape and takes Maria hostage along with the help of his friend Patch.  They steal a bus full of prisoners and end up in an old mining town of about 50 people.  The prisoners go out and steal the towns weapons to prepare for a shootout with the police.

Meanwhile Billy wakes up with a hangover and Ike is cooking eggs.  There is a knock on the door and it turns out that Ike lives in the town where the prisoners have gone and now have his wife ironically hostage there.  The people at the door are Lou Ferrigno as Smitty and Lyle Alzado as Albert, and they have guns which is a pretty scary thought.  It turns out they are not as strong as their physique would have you believe and are easily taken care of.

Meanwhile Kutner gets the police to back off by shooting a hostage, so the police call up the National Guard lead by Dr. Ron Shepherd from Xtro 2 himself, Jan-Michael Vincent as Colonel Johnson.  He is a stereotypical dick and gets some people killed in a wild west ambush scenario.

Much of the movie at this point is kind of like watching a western thanks to the location.  We discover that Billy and Ike were in Vietnam/insert other action stereotypes here etc.  People die, Ken Foree is a bad ass and says one liners, and then the location changes to a run down mining facility.  At this point it is just like any other lower budget action movie with similar lighting and filming techniques on display.

There really isn't much to say.  Despite this, the movie made me like it early on and so I was willing to sit through the rest.  Trust me it was worth it to see all the really bad one liners Ken Foree says.  I wouldn't call this a good movie, but those who are used to seeing this type of movie, or better yet straight to home video releases of the 80's and 90's would probably sit through it easily.  Where this movie shines is its cast of actors who are all pretty recognizable.  All these people are somehow in a movie together so out of curiosity it might be worth seeing.  I don't recommend this movie to the average viewer of film, those looking for a bad movie to laugh at, or those looking for some bad ass action though.  I recommend it to people who can sit through a straight to video Steven Seagal movie, or Cage 2 however.  It is about like watching something along those lines.