by Joe Bob Briggs
I've been wondering about one of the mysteries of modern civilization, and I'd like to share it with you this week because, what the hey, we could use a little intellectual material on this page and , besides, it's bugging the royal bejabbers out of me.
What I'm talking about is the ultimate riddle: Why do the people on "Family Feud" always play instead of pass?
I know this bothers you as much as it does me. Because, let's face it, we've all been there. Richard Dawson comes out and does a bad joke. Then two wimps (or wimpettes) walk up to that table in the middle and say, "Hi, Richard, I'm from Saginaw, Michigan, and I don't know a shin from Shinola, but I bounce on my toes like this because I've been a nerd ever since the third grad, and this is my moon-faced family, and they have a collective IQ of 37."
OK, then the game starts, and Richard tries to focus on the big board, and he says, "Name something that a dog does in the street." And one of the wimps slaps that buzzer and says, "Hitch-hikes."
Richard looks up at the big board and he screams "Hitch-hikes!"
And the bell rings and "Hitch-hikes" shows up there as No.4.
Then the other wimp says, "Rubs his leg up against mailboxes."
Richard looks up at the big board and screams, "Rubs mailboxes!"
And the bell rings and "Rubs objects" shows up as No. 5.
OK, so wimp No. 4, the Nerd Family from Saginaw, Michigan, now has a choice. They can play. If they play they have to get six more right answers to win, including the last one on the list, which got two votes from the studio audience. Or they can pass. If they pass, then the other turkeys have to get six answers, and if the others miss three times, even if they get five of them right, then the Nerd Family only has to get one answer to win the game. Besides that, they get to discus it before they answer.
There's only about $10,000 at stake, so what do they do? They play. Every time they play. And what happens when they play? They get all but one or two answers, and then they miss three times, and then the other family gets one answer and wins all the money.
Have any of you turkeys ever seen, even one time, somebody say, "Dawson, I've watched this game on TV and I want those other jerks to go first?" Has this ever happened in the entire history of "Family Feud?"
Nosuree, Joe Bob. And why hasn't it happened? I can only think of one reason.
Game's rigged. The only families they put on that show are dropouts from the Industrial Trades Institute. We're talking Rock City U.S.A.
That's why I'm not joining the "Family Feud" team that Lute Fenwick is getting together over in Cleburne. I stopped by Le Bodine last week, talked to Thedadean Griffin the shampoo lady, and she told me that Vida Stegall was back with Lute because he told her she could be on the team. Theadadean said he wanted me to join up, too, but I told Thedadean that the only way I'd be in a "family" with Lute Fenwick would be if he married my ... Well, actually I can't tell you what I told Thedadean. But anyway, I don't care for small-screen video bullstuff anyway. Drive-ins are my life.
I got so
bored going through my mail from Temple that I decided to go out to the VFW
Lodge Hall and play some horseshoes, but on the way out there I passed by the
Gemini and couldn't resist this golden oldie called "Bloodsucking
Freaks." I know, I know, it's a revival. It's "the
Incredible Torture Show" being brought out again. We all saw it in
'76 at the Highway 67 when it was called, "The House of the Screaming
Virgins," but no sweat, because true art lasts forever.
I got all nostalgic seeing it again. We're talking women in cages, we're talking torture, we're talking bodily mutilations, we're talking large breast quantities, large breast qualities and large breasts, we're talking midget rape, we're talking bondage, we're talking mad doctors, we're talking no-stop death. This is the kind of picture that really makes you miss the '70s.
It starts out with this stage-show at the Theatre of the Macabre, where Master Sardu amuses his audience by having a midget named Ralphus take this woman's blouse off, strap her to a chair, and tighten an iron tourniquet around her head until blood drips down her face. Then he sticks this nekkid girl's hand in a vise and hacks it off. Then the midge rips her eye out and eats it. Pretty routine stuff. But after the show's over , the wimp critic from the New York Times refuses to review the show. Sardu is a little p.o.ed.
So Sardu, the mc.c played by the late great Seamus O'Brien, who has a voice like Vincent Price, tells Ralphus the Midget to kidnap the Times critic, which he does by shooting him with a blow dart at an art gallery opening after this bimbo pops open a raincoast and flashers her groceries. While he's waiting for Ralphus to bag the critic and bring him home, Sardu asks these two leather bunnies to paste him across the backside with a bullwhip. Every once in a while he sends Ralphus down into a dungeon to feed some raw meat to these moaning nekkid porkchops in a cage. He's just keeping them there until he can send his next shipment to the Middle East. The Arabs pay big bucks for Off-Off-Broadway actress meat.
OK, back to the main action. Sardu tells Ralphus to electrocute this bimbo by pouring 500 volts through her breasts. This is so the Times critic will be impressed. It doesn't work, so Sardu decided to have another show, but first he tells Ralphus to go blow-dart this blond ballerina named Natasha so he can have some choreography. He wants to brainwash her so she can kick the critic's brains out in his next show. Ralphus hides out in her locker in Lincoln Center, knocks out her lights, drags her back to the theater, puts chains around her neck, hangs her up by her wrists, and starts playing the cymbals until she agrees to dance on opening night. They almost over do it, though, and they have call the doctor so she won't die. When he gets finished, Sardu says, "How much do I owe you?" and the doctor says, "How 'bout letting me take it out in trade?"
"Another operation?" says Sardu.
Doc goes tot work. First he straps a bimbo in a chair and bulls out all her teeth "so you won't bite." Then he decides to do "a little elective neurosurgery" -- powerdrill through the head while he's humming "Marriage of Figaro." Once he gets in there pretty deep, he wiggles it around, sticks in a straw and...well, you get the title now. Sardu gets grossed out, though, so he tells Ralphus to feed the doctor to the nekkid women in the dungeon. Pretty amazing scene, espeically when they rip out his heart and rub it over their flesh. Sardu and Ralphus stay upstairs playing darts on a slave girl's backside.
There are just too many highlights to go into. The rest of the flick includes: A blonde who gets stretched on the rack, a guillotine demonstration where a girls has to hold the rope in her mouth and if she opens it the blade falls. Ralphus making love to a head. Sardu and Ralphus using human fingers as backgammon chips, another ballerina that gets her feet cut off by Ralphus, and a copy who goes down to Off-Off Broadway to investigate the ballerina's disappearance but gets fed to the starving nekkid women, and a pretty good fried-eyeball scene.
There's also some sick stuff that I can't mention in the newspaper.
We're talking Top Ten list. We're talking Best Re-release of 1983. We're talking Best Director nomination for Joel Reed. We're also talking all-time exposure champion: 76 breasts.
Heads roll (four times). Hands roll. Fingers roll. Feet roll. Excellent midget sadism and dubbed moaning.
Three and a half stars. Joe Bob says check it out.
*
You probly heard of rags like Variety and Hollywood Reporter that are supposed to keep up with the movie world, but I"m here to tell you that neither one of 'em is worth a flying french fry when it comes to drive-in knowledge. That why I read Sleazoid Express, the only newspaper that keeps up with the industry. Now you won't believe this, but Sleazoid Express, the finest authority on drive-in moviegoing in America, is published in New York City. I couldn't believe it either. But I've been checking it out for over a year now, and I have to give this guy Bill Landis credit. He's the editor and he reviews every drive-in movie in America. And where do you think he's seeing 'em?
Times Square. Geek city U.S.A.
Anyhow, I got my February issue of Sleazoid Express last week, and it had a lot of info on new releases in it. Somebody dug up an old print of "The Love Butcher," the 1973 flick about the dimwit Beverly Hills gardener who talks to a dummy, his "handsome" brother Lester, and then dresses up in a wig to assume Lester's identity so he can go out and seduce and murder lonely housewives. Played the Linda Kay D.I. but hasn't been seen since.
Bill also reviewed "Midnight," the "Chainsaw" ripoff I saw couple a weeks ago, and he talked about this scene where Lawrence Tierney, the slopehead cop (who's a hansom cab driver in real life) tries to rape his stepdaughter. In the version I saw at the D.I. this scene is missing. Tierney just tells his wife how she "doesn't know what your is really like" and that the daughter "made advances." We get the idea, but what the hey? This missing-rape scene represents the kind of censorship I've dedicated my life to fighting. Maybe if we had the real version things would've been different. I'm getting an explanation pronto from the jerkolas who sent us these prints.
Thanks, Bill.