Teenage Catgirls In Heat

Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In" for 7/29/94

cutline: Carrie Vanston and Marissa Mireur--as you can see, these are "Teenage Catgirls in Heat."

By Joe Bob Briggs

Drive-In Movie Critic of Grapevine, Texas

These new statistics came out last year showing that the city that has THE MOST CRIME OF ANY CITY IN THE WORLD is . . .

Would you care to guess?

What do you think? New York? Rome? Beirut? Medellin?

Try Copenhagen.

I can imagine almost any other people in the world as criminals--but DANES? The ones with the blonde hair and the designer duffel bags who grin at you in airports? The ones who are actually AFRAID TO STEP AHEAD OF YOU IN LINE? I don't wanna say these people are mild-mannered, but they ask permission before they SNEEZE.

What this really makes me think is, just what do they consider a crime in Denmark?

Maybe putting two slices of bread on your open-faced herring sandwich is a crime.

Maybe it's a crime to sell hand-made wooden chairs to Americans for less than a thousand bucks each.

Maybe spitting on the statue of Hans Christian Andersen is a crime.

And what do the Danish police do if they catch you? Force you to drink Tuborg instead of Carlsberg? Confiscate your clogs? I mean, I can't imagine they have actual JAIL CELLS in Denmark. In most parts of the country, they still run the subways on the HONOR SYSTEM. They might ask you for your ticket, and they MIGHT NOT. Try THAT in New York.

But let's say you did have a REALLY ANGRY DANE. Maybe he was drunk on aquavit, and his wife just left him, and somebody he hates, like a SWEDE, ran over his favorite weenie dog. How much could he do? No way he could get a weapon, so the best he could do is crack the Swede over the head with a Little Mermaid paperweight, you know?

I mean, I'm willing to believe that SOMETHING is rotten in Denmark. After all, it's the culture that created Brigitte Nielsen.

But then again, it's also the culture that had the sense to send Brigitte Nielsen over to US.

Danish criminals? I'm sorry, but this just does NOT compute.

Speaking of filmmaking capitals of the world, I always get a little goose-bumpy when I see a new flick come out of Austin, Texas, cause that's the birthplace of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and they only make about one movie a year there, but they're always these campy ultra-quirky drughead artistic statements, like the one we've got this week--"Teenage Catgirls in Heat."

As the poster says, "When they rub against your leg, YOU cough up the hairball!"

This is the story of what would happen if somebody's grandma in Texas unleashed the power of the 4,000-year-old Keshra Cat Sphinx, which looks exactly like one of those cheap black cat statues you can buy in art museums. One of these things turns up in an attic, and pretty soon the ancient Cat Goddess is commanding cats to fling themselves off telephone poles and railroad bridges, committing suicide so that Keshra might have absolute power.

Then the dead cats turn into nekkid women that walk around on their tiptoes and rub up against corduroy. They all get together in the house with the Keshra statue thingy, like a low-budget sorority, and then they spread out, mate with unsuspecting males, rip out their guts, and leave em splayed out on the ground with an ear-to-ear grin.

Their goal: a race of Texas Cat People.

Pretty scary, huh?

Fortunately, there's a licensed "cat finder" in the area, a guy who drives around in a pickup with a vacuum cleaner strapped to his back, listening for cat brain waves so he can . . . actually, I'm not sure exactly WHAT he's trying to do, but he's damned entertaining doing it.

Nekkid catgirls runnin around the countryside while being tracked by a loonie cat exterminator and a hitchhiker who finds out that the women he lusts after most in this world . . . is a goldang CAT.

Pretty decent one.

Three dead bodies. Twenty-two dead cats. Thirty-two breasts. Multiple aardvarking. Multiple catvarking. Breast-stabbing. Cat interrogation. Brahma bull Fu. Water pistol Fu. Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Gary Graves, as the goofball cat finder, for getting a strong signal on his radar and saying "This has gotta be some lunatic with a backpack full of cat heads"; Dave Cox, as the hapless hitchhiker who gets bumped out of a pickup truck in this weird town, for saying "Jesus! Suicidal Egyptian cat cults?"; Carrie Vanston, for being the first actress ever to actually cough up a furball on camera; and writer Grace Smith and writer/director Scott Perry, for lines like "Cats killed my grandfather!"

Four stars.

Joe Bob says check it out.

JOE BOB'S ADVICE TO THE HOPELESS

Old Grouch Alert! The Starway Drive-In, just west of Frankfort, Ky., is up for sale, but there's one hitch. Owner Michael Chakeres will sell the 10-acre site only if it is NOT used as a drive-in. Reason: this traitor owns two hardtops in Frankfort. Brian Powell of Lexington 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 Joe Bob's world famous newsletter, "The Joe Bob Report," write Joe Bob Briggs, P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, TX 75221. Joe Bob's Fax line is always open: 214-368-2310. The computer in Joe Bob's trailer house can be contacted through CompuServe at 76702,1435.

Dear Joe Bob,

Who would go on a stamp of Jim Morrison? Young Lizard King or older overweight poet? Or Val Kilmer instead, since he looks and sounds so much alike? And would that be selling out? For Morrison, Kilmer, or Oliver Stone? What would Shirley MacLaine have to say about this? Do past lives count? Now that "Freddy's Dead," can he appear on a stamp?

Sometimes, it's like I can only talk to you, Joe Bob.

Your partner in crime,

Armando D. Munoz

Seattle

Dear Armando:

I vote for the bloated heroin-head grizzly-bear armpit-crust Jim Morrison.

It's a nineties thing.

Joe Bob,

I read your column last week, and you said that the flick was Jay Leno's film debut. Well, wasn't Jay in "American Hot Wax"? I could swear that he was in a supporting role. The flick is just okay, but Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry got to rock at the end.

Best regards,

Gary Murray

Dallas

Dear Gary:

It's pretty scary to think there are people out there TRACKING Jay Leno's screen appearances.

I'm SURE you're right about it.

Dear Joe Bob,

All right, you started this (with your review of "To Sleep With A Vampire"), so now you're gonna have to do the right thing and finish it. Since checking out the movie, on your recommendation, I have become an acolyte of Charlie Spradling. However, can I get in touch with her? Would it help if I added that I'm desperate?

By the way, I've just started reading Iron Joe Bob. What does that tell you?

Thanks,

Al Muir

Dallas

Dear Al:

You're closer than you think. Charlie Spradling is a Fort Worth gal from way back.

I'll send her your letter, bud.

Dear Joe Bob:

As a medical student in of all places the "City of Medicine," I felt compelled to contact you about your column published in this week's issue of the local paper.

This column is a response to all the folks who wrote you to say don't spend more money on AIDS. Bravo to you! Your points are well made, but you missed one important one: we shouldn't have to choose between cancer and AIDS. The fact is that government funding for scientific research (like government funding for most things) is drying up. For all of President Bush's ravings about the promise of the biotechnology industry, our government is doing next to nothing to keep us on top of a field that is becoming increasingly internationalized.

But enough about that. The real reason I wrote is your statement "We licked polio in less than a decade." I hope you weren't suggesting that polio only began in the early 1950s. The fact is, as AIDS could be thought of as a disease of the sexual revolution, polio was a disease of the industrial revolution. The polio virus only rarely causes symptoms when it infects infants, but is very damaging to children and even worse for adolescents. When living conditions were squalid enough that everyone was infected early, the prevalence of the infection was never noticed. Only when things started getting cleaned up a bit did the disease become apparent because the average age of infection became older. A pediatrics textbook from 1913 in our medical library describes "one of the earliest" epidemics of polio as having occurred in Stockholm in 1887. So if we move at the same rate as we moved on polio we should expect a vaccine for AIDS somewhere around 2058. Needless to say, medical research is a bit more developed than it was in 1887, so we should be able to do the job a little quicker if only our dazzlingly bright "average Joe" (no offense) would get his finger out of his nose and create a political mandate for giving government money to somebody besides sleazy S & L presidents.

So, keep heart and keep making noise. Thanks for taking the trouble to read this.

Sincerely,

S. Russel Nash

Durham, N.C.

Dear Russel:

I appreciate your correcting my medical history, but I think the time we really got SERIOUS about polio was in the early fifties when we had several epidemics affecting kiddos. I'm just saying, "Let's get serious."

Joe Bob--

I thought I'd be writing to Ann Landers before I ever wrote to you--but lo and behold enough ignorant people are writing her and not enough intelligent people are writing you. I think I'm some place in between the two (leaning toward the ignorant, but smart enough to enjoy your humor--enjoy? Hell, I love it--I put you in the same league as Hunter S. Thompson).

I'm writing to you in regard to your article on Sheila Caan and the movie "Fertilize the Blaspheming Bombshell."

Kung Fu translated means hard work or perserverance. That's it. Martial arts means a military (martial) thing (thang in Texas) developed to an ART form.

Now, China produces more movies than the good ole U.S. of A. will ever produce and makes a s---load more money off their films than most Americans ever imagined China having. In fact, China makes the most money off films, and India is second, and they don't charge ten bucks a head either.

Next, most Kung Fu movies in China are really fighting movies with no plot except to act as bubble-gum glue between fight scenes, which is what they love to watch.

Kung Fu is being renamed Wushu and is going to be an Olympic sport within ten years (or so the World Wushu Federation says). It's just that only the Chinese are experts at it, and the best Japanese, Taiwanese, Filipino martial arts experts can't beat the Chinese. Consequently, the Chinese have to educate the rest of the world so they can dominate SOMETHING in worldwide competition.

Next, if you get the chance, watch some movies with Jackie Chan as star. He is a Kung Fu/Wushu/MARTIAL ARTS master who performs all his own stunts, and everybody who works with him has to sign a contract with him that states if he accidentally kills them during filming they cannot sue him or the studio and only get so much money if they are maimed or get dead somehow.

Onward: People study Kung Fu for a variety of reasons. It is not really a self defense. That is just a marketing technique. It is offensive. And it is designed to whack somebody or bodies without taking any serious blows yourself. Because according to the Chinese (where all the martial arts developed from), a fight should never last more than two seconds. And if you do make it longer, you're doing it to impress the chicks. And for all their claims about not liking violence they ARE truly impressed by their boyfriends kicking ass in a most beautiful fashion. (The ART in martial arts.)

I've had my ass kicked in class by four-foot-tall, 80-year-old Chinese ladies who are sipping a beer and puffing on a filterless Camel cigarette. They are into blood and guts, especially when the blood they are spilling is a white guy like myself.

It is fun to learn Kung Fu. It's healthy and builds confidence, so even if you do get your ass kicked on the street by psycho killer transvestites (which there are in San Francisco), at least they know they were fighting somebody who was learning how to fight. The best Kung Fu is running away, by the way.

If you do go through life without getting thumped, at least you won't wind up in a nursing home on a respirator as most older Americans. Joe Bob, I don't mean to bore you, but I could go on and on so I won't.

P.S. Smith and Wesson is the best American Kung Fu.

With all due respect,

Paul A. Muller

San Francisco

Dear Paul:

Why don't they make movies starring those four-foot-tall, 80-year-old head-busting Chinese old ladies?

THAT I would pay money to see.

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