"Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In" for 12/4/92
cutline: If Rutger Hauer can blow away an entire Arab army led by Omar Sharif, he might get to kiss Carol Alt, in "Beyond Justice."
By Joe Bob Briggs
Drive-In Movie Critic of Grapevine, Texas
The following is a complete guide to bad guys in the movies.
1. The best bad guys come from Colombia--greedy blood-thirsty drug lords with bad complexions who sneer a lot while they walk around their mountain villas wearing Japanese kimonos. They always have a girlfriend named "Marissa" who gets slapped around a lot. Colombians are now more popular than . . .
2. Arab terrorists. After ten years of pretty much being the standard for evil, Arab terrorists, who always have names like "Muhammad Akmal Muhammad," have become overused and devalued. Not that they're still not popular. There's no more thrilling moment than when a man with a scraggly beard and a dirty bandana cocks his automatic rifle and swaggers down the aisle of a hijacked airplane, screaming "Death to the infidels! Death to the infidel dogs!"
3. New York drug gangs. You still see a few coked-up pimps who get rich off of selling crack to elementary school kids, but the only guy who could do this convincingly was Wesley Snipes, and Wesley is now a GOOD guy. And the New York drug dealers are not necessarily bad anymore anyhow. At any moment they can turn out to be undercover New York cops working hard to save their people from drugs. (Ice-T, Mario Van Peebles, etc.)
4. Redneck hillbilly cannibals. One of my favorite bad guys is the overweight gap-toothed weasel named Hiram who lives in a shack and keeps innocent women chained up in his tool shed, where he can occasionally go out and poke em with a stick and fatten em up for the family picnic. But the last good one I saw was in "Snake Eater," two years ago.
5. Real cannibals, from South America. This is so politically incorrect that I haven't seen it done for ten years, but there used to be a kind of movie where anthropologists would go down to the Amazon Forest to prove cannibalism didn't exist, and, of course, they'd end up as Swanson's TV dinners for the local tribes. These guys have yellow gunk painted across their noses, grass skirts, and they carry feathered spears.
6. Nazis who have NEVER BEEN FOUND. Just like professional rassling, the movies have sort of lost interest in Nazis. I think it was when somebody figured out that any Nazi officer who was alive in 1945 would now be at least 80 years old, and so these movies are getting really tough to cast. Even if you can find a guy who's planning the comeback of the Reich from his unassuming home in Paraguay, you've got to make that deal with Jessica Tandy to play his wife.
7. Mercenaries in Africa. These are always guys who have gone to Africa and built secret fortresses in the desert or the jungle so that they can kidnap the beautiful daughters of millionaires and take them there and hold them ransom so they can raise money to finance wars in the Middle East. While they're at it, they usually kill a few natives, slaughter some elephants, and start going so crazy that it takes a whole platoon of retired Marines to storm the fortress, kill 400 henchmen, and rescue the girl.
8. Lunatic Viet Cong officers who don't know the war is over. These are the guys who are still holding the 3,000 missing-in-action American prisoners that Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris still haven't been able to rescue after six movies. They usually have a single name, like "Colonel Hong," and a nickname, like "The Butcher." They like to string up Americans and ram hot bamboo sticks through their TOES. (It's always some weird part of the body, like the toes, so you'll know it's a weird ancient form of torture that no American has ever heard of.) If you can't find a Vietnamese guy to play the torturer, you can always hire Henry Silva.
9. Corrupt psychotic cops. An increasingly popular bad-guy type, this pure-dee mean nightmare in blue should be played by Charles Napier or Wings Hauser. He beats up women, kills junkies when he's used them up, takes money from hookers, and puts his partner in a situation where he can get killed. In the last scene, he pulls his gun on his partner and says, "That's right--it was me all along. Sorry I have to do this, Paul, but business is business." And then somebody drops a cement block on his head and riddles his body with machine-gun fire.
10. The Mafia. These poor guys are totally passe. Sure we have an occasional flick like "Goodfellas" that brings them back in all their Technicolor brutality, but, let's face it, that's more fantasy than reality these days. Ever since Gotti's gone to prison, we're talking guys sitting around old folks homes trying to chew their applesauce. A once proud bad-guy tradition has entered its twilight years.
Speaking of fortresses in the desert, this week's movie, "Beyond Justice," has Rutger Hauer rooting around in Morocco with a Stinger missile on his shoulder, trying to rescue Carol Alt's son from her ex-husband, an Arab who has kidnapped the kid from his exclusive New York day school and carried him to a Moroccan warrior city, where he is chosen by his grandfather, Omar Sharif, to lead his peoples on camelback into the 21st century.
So, as you can see, it's one of those Italian-made prep-school-boys-pressed-into-Arab-military-service flicks, but it's got so much sand blowing around, getting in the way of the plot, that after a while it's like "Ishtar" without the singing. Carol Alt is supposed to be a big-shot corporate executive, because she walks into board rooms wearing designer dresses and says things like, "Gentlemen, I won't waste your time," then gets her son bailed out of prep school jams by writing huge checks and forcing the headmaster to ignore the fact that he beats up the other kids for no reason. Elliott Gould is in love with Carol--mainly because there's nothing else for him to do in the movie. As the lawyer, he mostly wanders around the desert searching for Donald Sutherland and his lost dune-swept career.
In fact, I kinda forgot what goes on in this flick--and I just watched it THREE HOURS AGO. I know that Rutger Hauer and his wooden men attack Omar Sharif's fortress and rescue the kid, and I know there are a lot of screaming bedouins on camelback with curved swords, but other than that the only thing I can remember is Carol Alt standing under palms saying "When will I see my son again?" so many times that you want to slap her around like a Colombian drug lord's whiny woman.
These film crews, they go to Morocco and they just get LOST out there, don't they?
One hundred ten dead bodies. No breasts. One motor vehicle chase. One camel chase. Sandstorm. Three gunbattles. Gratuitous Elliott Gould. Kung Fu. Throwing-star Fu. Hezbollah Fu. Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Elliott Gould, for never showing a single human emotion the whole movie, and for saying "That boy needs a father"; and Carol Alt, for successfully remembering all her lines and for saying "Business comes first!"; Omar Sharif, for dressing up in a desert headdress one more time, and for saying "Your weapons are indeed beautiful"; and Rutger Hauer, for finishing this movie instead of heading straight for the Marrakech Airport.
Two stars.
Joe Bob says check it out.
JOE BOB'S ADVICE TO THE HOPELESS
Bureaucrat Alert! The screen of the Caro Drive-In, on M-81 in Caro, Mich., got destroyed in a tornado last year, and the management decided not to rebuild, since everybody started going to the Caro indoor theater, which is owned by the same people. It gets worse. Now the Caro Village Council wants to annex the drive-in land, in the hopes of attracting the enemy of drive-ins everywhere: Wal-Mart! Dennis A. Luettke of Cass City, who saw "The Wild Angels" at the Caro in 1965, reminds us that, without eternal vigilance, it can happen here. To discuss the meaning of life with Joe Bob, or to get free junk in the mail and his world-famous "We Are the Weird" newsletter, write Joe Bob Briggs, P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, TX 75221. Joe Bob's Fax line is always open: 214-368-2310.
Dear Mr. Briggs,
I decided to call you Mr. Briggs because that Joe Bob Stuff is just too cute and you're probably too old for it.
Thank you for sending me your newsletter--in which I had an opportunity to see you write like an adult instead of a brat--or someone who would like to be young enough to still be considered a brat. Unfortunately, not even your more serious writing can shake off your cuteness. There's nothing quite so cute as the way in which middle-class, educated, left-leaning white people (who think they are a cut above all the other white people--rich and poor--not to mention everybody else except black women who are invisible in this society unless you're looking for a whore), particularly younger or would-like-to-be-under-40 middle class, educated, left-leaning white people think they know THE TRUTH and therefore are freer than everybody else, including and especially Anita Hill (who's not invisible anymore because she was on commercially-sponsored prime time.)
Shame on Anita Hill for not living by the standards of the WASP male! Shame on her for not telling Clarence Thomas he's just too fat, old-looking and ugly (not to mention too dark-skinned and thick-lipped)! Shame on her for not risking the loss of her job! If black women want to be treated like WASP males (and WASP males' boys-of-color), they BETTER tell their bosses to f--- off and worry about their snowball's chance in hell of finding as good a job later. Nena Lewis says check it out.
Sincerely,
Nena Lewis
San Francisco
Dear
Nena:
If I can ever find a "middle-class, educated, left-leaning white person" to write my column, I'll let you know whether your assumptions are right or not.
Dear Mr. Briggs:
In your reply to Barb, you may have seen "Bloodsucking Freaks" many times, but it would be more helpful if you re-read "Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In," pages 115-117. It is the doctor who performs "the sucking-brains-through-a-straw" scene. In these health-care-concerned days it is data-debasing not giving the doctor his deserved credit. The doc has a wonderful solution for securing payment in exchange for his services as well as a mouth-watering dental care plan.
No wonder the economy is lazy-buoyed. You have to go to Spain to find a really good drive-in chick. Over here "Women Against Pornography" have banned incredible torture midnight shows.
Richard Linoleum
Park Forest, Ill.
Dear
Richard:
When you can't remember who sucks brains
through a straw, there's something happening to those rear lobes, isn't there?
Tell me I'm okay.
Dear Mr. Briggs:
A copy of your column made its way around our law firm and ended up on my desk. Whether it be because of my background (an Episcopalian from Philadelphia) or just my lack of exposure to your movie reviews, I have a few questions. Can the movie "Naked Obsession" be rented from an HEB video store or is this something you have to special order? And what exactly is multiple aardvarking? I asked around, and even our most senior and experienced attorneys professed ignorance--something that rarely happens.
Thank you for any clarification you can provide.
Sincerely yours,
JoAnn M. Lindemann
San Antonio, Tex.
Dear
JoAnn:
1) "Naked Obsession" is
available from your finer video stores in the "Sleaze" section.
2) Multiple aardvarking is simple
aardvarking done repeatedly.
I hope this helps.
Joe Bob:
I cried when Maggy Thatcher lost her job.
I think about her all day long and have dreams about Mrs. Thatcher at night.
Joe Bob, Maggy is a married lady and lives 7000 miles away.
What should I do?
"Lonely in Oakland"
Dear
Lonely:
Please stay away from school playgrounds.
Dear Joe Bob,
I enclose an article about the fate of the Caro Drive-In (Caro, Mich.) from the daily news. The lot where it stood before a tornado took the screen down is going to support a department store. The drive-in won't be rebuilt.
I have a theory about drive-ins. They grew up as part of the recreational driving phenomena that spawned the whole subculture. The drive-in movie, the drive-in hamburger stand, the roadside zoo/produce stand/flower shop, etc., all developed because people were out driving for pleasure. Families on Sunday afternoons, kids on the weekends. Out cruising, having fun, looking for something interesting to do. From the late 1940s through all of the fifties and sixties, an American lifestyle.
But then in the early seventies, that began to change and you can almost see the place where the tide broke and rolled back. Suddenly there was the Arab oil embargo. Gasoline prices and the price of new cars doubled together and did it overnight. Suddenly the new cars weren't much fun anymore and who wants to drive a car you don't like? To work maybe, but out to "cruise" in? Besides, gas was a buck a gallon. And really, ever see a drive-in movie from a mini-economy-mobile thinking you were a goldfish looking out? More, the new cars were sealed, air-conditioned and enclosed. Passengers were kept away from the world--it wasn't like the old cars with a windshield the size of a greenhouse and big door windows that you kept down so you could interact with the world outside.
The old cars were part of their times, the new ones part of theirs. In a '57 you'd go to a drive-in; in a '91 you'd go to the store (The Mall). It makes a kind of sense.
So the drive-in is dead? No. Mutated maybe, but not dead. There is still a drive-in ambiance you don't find anywhere else. The freedom and privacy of your own car where you can yell, scream, bitch, moan, make out--whatever--and watch a movie at the same time. Complete with poor quality speakers on cords, dimly projected movies, and people barfing in the concession stand restrooms. Sure, it isn't quite the same, but what is? The "Happy Days" you see in terminal syndication on TV isn't quite the way it was either, but it's close enough to capture the mood and that's the point.
As long as people enjoy drive-ins, they will be there. Not as many of them, and it's getting harder and harder to find those big two-dates-and-a-twelve-pack cars, but if you look, there'll always be one close enough to drive to.
Take care,
Dennis A. Luettke
Cass City, Mich.
Dear
Dennis:
Your analysis of drive-in history is basically correct. The thing the drive-in haters never point out in the media is that people predicted the drive-in was a "dying fad" as early as 1948. But it didn't die in 1948. It didn't die in 1958. It didn't die in 1968, 1978 or 1988. And, believe me, it will still be here in 1998.
© 1992 Joe Bob Briggs All Rights Reserved