Anime Week: Akira

Welcome to Anime Week boys and girls!!  We will begin with a controversial title that rocked the nations with its cyberpunk look, feel and dark premise to how the world will progress.   Yes, I am not referring to Pokemon.   That is a whole other kettle of fish to contend with.  I speak of the popular manga turned anime Akira.   With this intense saga of violence, the struggle for power and the corruption of the human soul, this story brought amazing visuals and a complex story was well captured on cell.  This is Akira.

The apocalypse came as we always knew it would. The Cubs won the Pennant.

Tetsuo: Twin ceramic rotor drives on each spoiler!   And these look like computer controlled anti-lock brakes! Wow, 200 horses at 12,000 rpm!





Created from the Manga (Japanese graphic novel) by writer/illustrator Katsuhiro Otomo (A Gun Report, Short Peace Peace, Highway Star, Hippa: The Little Vampire and Park)Akira lasting from 1982 to 1990 and creating more than 6 volumes brings us a similar vision in the small cell screen of the same name.

Our story begins in 1988, when a nuclear explosion destroys the better chunk of Tokyo inviting the beginning of World War III.   By the year 2019, Neo-Toyko is a wasteland of anti-government hysteria, bosozku (tribal biker gangs) and people simply getting by day to day.  Shotaro Kaneda is the leader of the Capsules in constant conflict with a rival gang known as the Clowns.   Guess the Jokers was too on the nose and DC comics would have gone crackers over it.   Kaneda's best friend Tetsuo almost runs down an esper (psionically powered being) Takashi who escaped from a secret government lab sprung by an revolutionary group of underground freedom fighters.  No sooner does that occur, heavily armed soldiers tracking Takashi scoop him up along with Tetsuo after a small firefight.  Kaneda and his whole crew get rousted and interrogated for hours to no avail because the gang has no idea what is going on.    

Let's do some crimes, man!

The military head figure Colonel Shikishima and Doctor Onishi realize that Tetsuo has the same level of psionics that to the esper Akira who gave birth to World War III and they want to either lock down his powers or outright kill the boy before Neo-Tokyo suffers a similar fate.  With martial law declared the Colonel preps block to block searches for Tetsuo and his girlfriend Kaori.   Kandea and Capsules are in deep conflict with the Clowns when Tetsuo unleashes a psychokinetic wave that devastates both gangs and starts tearing up the land.  Kandea has no choice but to join forces with the revolutionaries to bring his former friend down before there is no city left to save.

Just a few tidbits on the overall vibe of this film.  To create this film over 2,000 shots and 160,000 single cell pictures were drawn using over 327 different colors.  The interesting part of this all is the better portion of this film takes place at night, which most animators avoid like the plague due to the increased color requirements.  


Otomo's creation of a post-apocalyptic Tokyo has brought about future similar such stories such as: Demon City Shinjuko, Bubblegum Crisis and A.D. Police mixing the aftermath of the world before and the cyberpunk genre.    The themes Otomo's stories displayed where the awkward social isolation, government corruption and totalitarian concepts.

My side! Your side! MY SIDE! YOUR SIDE!

Anime Week!

Okay boys and girls, I got a decent request that did NOT involve Troma movies, slasher flicks or some obscure Japanese torture movie.  My best friend Shawn approached me with a nice simplistic idea of doing an Anime Week.  So the next five days we will tackle a plethora of anime movies of different genre.  Oh yes, there are sub genres in the anime world as you would come to expect.  A novel concept in of itself given the mass collection of Japan-animation my girlfriend Janine and I have collectively.  

Hmm, must be one of those kid kites I have heard so much about.

This of course means we will be ranging from anything to comedic standing, action, some sci-fi and even maybe a horror or two.  As always, I will do my level best to keep it PG-13 in both description and visual.  
 This particular animation process began as far back as 1934 due to the light shading process and multiple drawings creating movement that was fluid and coherent.

Sir, the weather seems a bit rough!

From the success of Gigantor, Astro Boy and Captain Harlock, the 1980's became flooded by it in the states receiving English dubbed versions of Voltron, Transformers and Robotech.   Shows like Shadowhawks, Thundercats and G.I. Joe started hiring out artists from Japan to produce the same quality work and thus animation in the states has never been the same since.  Whether the shading is as intense offering greater definition, comical expression or a battle royale with the forces of good and evil, Japanimation has altered cartoons.

TetsurooOOoOoOoo!!!!

Part 2 Week: Halloween II

Well folks we are at the end of the week so good day the last part of Part 2 Week.  This time around we have a bit of debate on whether or not this sequel was needed or did it kill the mystique that was its inception.  From this one deciding factor the original director had nothing more than the credit to the characters and production as his project The Fog was just wrapping up.  I speak of writer/director/editor/composer John Carpenter (Dark Star, Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, The Fog, Escape from New York,  The Thing and Vampires) who may have dipped into this project a bit much.  This is Halloween II.

Sheesh, polyester really catches fire!

Sam Loomis: I shot him 6 times!  I shot him in the spoiler-but...  HE'S NOT HUMAN!







Our movie opens literally that night of insanity as Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis of The Fog, Prom Night, Terror Train, She's in the Army Now, Escape from New York, Trading Places, A Fish Called Wanda and Blue Steel) is being wheeled away on a stretcher for a cracked bone in her leg and multiple lacerations and stab wounds.  Her friends have all been brutally slaughtered and elaborately propped around this house as some sort of macabre viewing.  No sooner has she been moved, Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance of The Great Escape, Fantastic Voyage, You Only Live Twice, THX 1138, House of the Damned, Escape to Witch Mountain and Halloween) links up with the Sheriff and his deputies to exclaim that he shot Michael Myers six times and given it was a .357 that was blasting the cat, you would think a mortal man would bled out by this point.

Mike fought the law and the law lost.

With the mess of bodies to contend with, tricking and treating is being put on hold and a curfew is being established as the law does a house to house search for him.    Laurie awakes in the hospital and is dazed from medicines, trauma and probably that horrible wig on her head.   Our hospital is understaffed as the overactive and hormone driven 20 somethings are giving it their best of Grey's Anatomy impressions that no one seems to be aware that someone else has entered the grounds.

Security goes to investigate some strange noises and finds a few objects broken.  While fiddling with the walkie talkie he experiences a splitting headache or a claw hammer driven in his skull.  Take your pick.   With the stereotypical teens and 20 somethings archetypes fooling around during break or between shifts and little to no monitoring of the premises, Myers moves in silently from the shadows removing all obstacles out of his way in search for Laurie.

Meanwhile, the Institute is covering its collective butt and blaming Loomis for Myers to have ever escaped in the first place in spite of his countless warnings of the impeding evil patiently lurking inside our demented 21 year old.  He cannot rest until Michael is captured or killed and Loomis is of the mindset that killed would be preferred.  Restless from nightmares and vague memories of childhood Laurie gets out of bed looking for help only to run into Michael.  Is he real or another rampant dream?

Just a few comments to make about the film now.  John Carpenter felt that director Rick Rosenthal's version was coming off too pedestrian and shot a few gorier death scenes and a bit of nudity as he felt this was the way of the upcoming slasher genre.  This rubbed our director a bit raw and his vision was to have the film stand on its own and be merited its story rather than resorting to blood, guts and nudity.   This sequel was to be the last film to feature Michael Myers, Dr. Loomis, Laurie and all of Haddonfield as a story arc.

Universal Studios sold the rights to this particular franchise after Halloween III: Season of the Witch did not fare at the box office in spite of an original story and new cast.  The general vibe was the audience was expecting a continuation of the Myers murder machine and instead got a completely different film and couldn't cope with some new creativity.  The irony is of all the sequels, Halloween II falls under a great push ahead into that already dark night and gives some general fright aside from a few technical errors while Halloween III has found love from the cult following it built from VHS and DVD era crowd.

Doctor/Patient disagreement.

Part 2 Week: The Hills Have Eyes Part II

Welcome back movie nuts to Day 4 of Part 2 Week and let me just say...  this one was a bit difficult to get through.  Oh, it wasn't gore splattered against the lens, the cliche lines being spouted or even an exorbitant amount of nudity.  It just felt long, uninteresting and frankly I could have been spending time learning how to knit, of which I have no desire to even do.  That in mind, I was a bit surprised and did a bit of research on the old IMDB site to get the skinny to why this follow-up to a genuinely creepy film fell on its proverbial ass.   This is The Hills Have Eyes Part II.

I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. Craven.

Foster: Sue, it ain't natural to be in a place without a spoiler.







Our film opens at a psychiatrist office with Bobby recalling  barely surviving the first encounter of the mutantinous Hill people of Death Valley.  This is a flashback sequence interspursed  with new close up panned daily footage with Bobby still at his wit's end coping with the loss of family and taking lives of the Hill loonies eight years prior.  One would conclude to NEVER EVER TAKE A TRIP in California again but alas our plucky survivors Bobby (Robert Houston of The Hills Have Eyes, The Great American Girl Returns, Shogun Assassin and Growning Pains) , Ruby now calling herself Rachel (Janus Blythe of Phantom of the Paradise, Eaten Alive, The Hills Have Eyes and Soldier's Fortune) and Brenda (Suzie Lanier-Bramlett of  Barnaby Jones, Electra Woman and Dyna Girls, The Hills Have Eyes, Madame X and The Night the Bridge Fell Down) are touring across California with Bobby's rocket fuel formula for the motocross bike team he now owns.  Well, not the people themselves.  I am pretty sure he just owns the bikes and the logo.   The formula is almost out of test phase and should put them on the gravy train with biscuit wheels...   until...  the team is due to race in the very same frickin' desert all the nightmares began!!!

Hmm Slash and Gollum's love child really got messed up.

Yeah that seems like a fairly safe place to camp out.  Hell Rachel even took Beast, that huge dog the Hills had as her own lovable pet.  Along the way they meet Jane (Colleen Riley of Soap, Breaking Away, Deadly Blessing and The Renegades), Sue (Penny Johnson of What's Love Got to Do with It, Molly & Gina, ER, 24 and Castle) and Foster (Willard E. Pugh of The Color Purple, Robocop 2, CB4 and Air Force One) hitch hiking so of course let's pile them in.  We need a higher body count, don't we?

The motor-cross doofus duo Roy (Kevin Spirtas of The Young and the Restless, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, Bloodstone: Subspecies II, Bloodlust:  Subspecies III and Valley of the Dolls) and Harry (Peter Frechette of Grease 2, Profiler, Inside Man and The Savages) screw up in their directions and take a short cut across the old bombing range , thus jacking the gas tank causing a steady leak.  We see an old abandoned mining ranch so of course the Scoobies want to investigate...  None of that, we should find a gas station nonsense, phone booth, cops or some hope of civilization.  Nope, let's go to the creepy mine up the stretch of the hill.   Yup they run into the Hill folks and all hell proceeds to break loose.

Now just a few comments and observations at this time.  Firstly, the principal photography (daily shots) was not finished because our director Wes Craven was shooting it and was yanked from that project to get A Nightmare on Elm Street up and running.  No sooner was that a hit at the box office the producers felt Craven could finish their insipid sequel but not to waste any more time with filming it further.  Yeah, he had to use film stock of the original and pad the film out in order for it to be long enough to meet the requirements.

Craven has gone on record saying he was desperate for the scratch and really needed it for future events.   Let me point out that unlike most sequels the violence level is fairly tame, the nudity is actually mild almost nonexistent and even the swearing is really not there.   Unfortunately, the crux of the continuous story makes little to no sense with Pluto surviving a fairly malicious dog attack in the first flick, why our survivors could not have taken any route but through Death Valley or have just shipped their bikes via train?

Now what was filmed looks gorgeous throughout Griffith Park, San Bernadino and a lot through Joshua Tree and again lovely cinematography but seeing this was not a documentary on the adverse and harsh conditions atomic mutation can do on an indigenous family, well it really doesn't matter then.  You end up with a garbled, lost and unsolvable project.   Think Laid to Rest on accident and there you have it.

Jason Vorhees joins the Hell's Angels!!!

Part 2 Week: Wrong Turn 2: Dead End

Howdy boys and girls and welcome back to Day 3 of Part 2 Week.  We are sloughing through better that I thought so clearly it is time to drag you all out in the woods to be butchered maliciously, carved into bite sized chunks and shuck and devoured like a plate of oysters.  Oh, don't worry.  We will just have our brains momentarily scooped out for an hour and a half as we trudge through a sequel that frankly I didn't think had enough material to be warranted.  A nice throwback theme to the exploitation days as we wind our way to the wilderness den of damnation.  This is Wrong Turn 2: Dead End.

Manson family photo album.

Nina: What I saw... WAS SPOILER!









Yes back to the hills and dense forest of West Virginia and I have be honest, if I ever travel through this region via vehicle I will be packing a sidearm, long rifle and probably a couple of blades.  Thanks original film!   It has been 4 years since the original was released and we get the general notion that this sequel is to carry on from the last outing with the three hillbilly cannibal hunters but if you recall they were pretty maimed and burnt thanks to Dushku and Harrington.   A reality survival show is underway giving the feel of what how to live in a harsh environment with rudimentary skills and abilities from the land.

Our movie opens with Kimberly (Kimberly Caldwell of Life on a Stick, Twentysixmiles and Franklin & Bash) as a spoiled reality TV star/model that is desperate for the big break cursing out her agent and losing her cell signal.  T-Mobile: guaranteed coverage except a slasher genre film.  No sooner does she almost run a guy over with her SAAB she gets out to investigate only to be slain and made stock of.   Whoops, so the moral is never yell like a horrid bitch to the guy making 15% of your gross.  

So Rollins, done anything beyond that Liar album?

Moving on; our troop consists of Jake (Texas Battle of Final Destination 3, Even Money, Hitting the Bricks and the Bold and the Beautiful), a former high school football player, Amber (Daniella Alonso of  One Tree Hill, The Hills Have Eyes II remake, Friday Night Lights and My Generation) young Marine officer and Iraq vet, plucky Elena (Crystal Lowe of Insomnia, Final Destination 3, Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Hot Tub Time Machine and Primeval: New World) the lingerie model and tart of the group, wisecracking skateboard punk Jonesy (Steve Braun of The Trip, The Skulls III, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and Killzone 3), goth girl Nina (Erica Leerhsen of Anything Else, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, Little Athens, Lonely Joe and The Butterfly Room) and seeing no one has seen neither hide nor hair of Kimberly the show's producer Mara (Aleksa Palladino of Red Dirt, The Ring Two, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Boardwalk Empire) steps in as one of the troopers.  Lead by former Marine Colonel Dale Murphy (Henry Rollins of The Chase, Heat, Johnny Mnemonic, Batman Beyond, Bad Boys II, Feast, and Sons of Anarchy) he feels like he is kicking water up hill but by God he signed the damn contract so time to get down and dirty.

Yes the cliches are all out to play as Murphy finds Three Finger from the first flick trying to blast him with a shotgun and Murphy tags him but good.   Leaving the kids to stay grouped together Murphy hikes around to find any modicum of civilization as he finds the old guy at the gas pump/bait shop/outhouse/entire world he has lived in.  They babble a bit and the old man is very insightful on the hillbilly cannibals as apparently they are products of incest and some biochemical process that the local paper mill botched and dumped... only to reveal he is the father of all this mongoloids and attacks Murphy only to lose to him and get blown up by dynamite.

Okay the pet peeves of this flick are as thus:  More graphic death scenes, cannibalism, incest themes, torture, anguish and buckets of blood do NOT make for a story.  You have some elements in there but they were cast so higgley piggly that no one person could truly get the scope of the flick.  Showing me a girl that bought her implants also not making up for the lack of a coherent story arc.  Sorry fellas but I need my brain stimulated too.   This has no real value aside from new characters being picked off, the reappearance of Three Finger and dragging a simple horror film into a franchise to bilk money and make a mess.

Coupled with the continuity errors and gore gags that did not go off.  A girl gets halved length wise and only the intestines fall out?  Um there would have been some serious blood spurts there gore fans.   Crew members pulling the body apart are seen the the reflection of the red car holding said dummy.  My personal favorite error was mentioning that Amber would have attended West Point for Officer's school.  Now most of us civvies would not know that West Point is for Army officers and not Marines and she would in fact attend the US Navy Academy but I just started out laughing like a nut.  While SFX guru Stan Winston is no longer among us I have to say his crew was fairly top notch in prostethics, make-up and weapons rigs.   Just need to recheck bladders and hide your cable pull crew better fellas.

Eww, dead guy!

Part 2 Week: Child's Play 2

Howdy boys and girls!  Welcome to Day 2 of Part 2 Week, the progression of sequels for horror films and the hideous and vile need for more capitalism.  Today is no exception in the realm of franchise as we taking a mildly eerie story of voodoo, soul transference and killer dolls to a height or low as it were.  A story of a wee lad that tormented by his bestest buddy in multiple murders and even attacks on his own person.  No, Barney did not get on a drunken terror and threaten to eviscerate a child so sorry.  This is Child's Play 2.

KHAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNN!!!!!!

Chucky: Okay, sport. We're gonna have a little game of Chucky Says.  Chucky says move your spoiler. Snap out of it! Ya act like ya never seen a dead body before!





With director Tom Holland (Fright Night, Fatal Beauty, The Temp, The Langoliers, Thinner and Masters of Horror) passing on the next opportunity, budding horror/scifi director John Lafia (Freddy's Nightmares, Dark Justice, Corpse Killer, Babylon 5, Stephen King's Dead Zone and The Rats) and Chucky creator Don Mancini resurrect the fallen Lake Shore Strangler, Charles Lee Ray for another helping of horror.

So opening with the typical time moving forward it has been two years since young Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent of Child's Play, Just Like in the Movies, Dead Country, House Guest and Curse of Chucky) had any incident with his "Good Guy" doll and the media has lost interest.  Please, 2 weeks and they would have moved on.  The company is backed up with dolls and we need to get production off right.   A slight incident involving a technician getting fried and driving fake plastic eyes through his ocular cavities does sort of set the tone.  I am seeing lawsuits, EPA, regulations people swarming but let us not dwell on repercussions of this nature.  Andy has been moved to a foster home due to his mother screaming in defense that her son was attacked by a killer doll and was sent to a psychiatric hospital.  The cops are staying away from the case in spite of two plain clothes that know the score.   Loosely translated, we could not afford Chris Sarandon's salary this time around.

I could take that leprechaun easily! 

With Chucky's...essence floating back into the newly reconditioned body of his Good Guy hell, He is looking for the one human that knows his true name and will take his body over for his own end.  Foster parents Joanne (Jenny Agutter of Walkabout, Logan's Run, An American Werewolf in London, The Alan Clark Diaries, The Invisibles and The Avengers) and Phil Simpson (Gerrit Graham of Cannonball!, Demon Seed, Used Cars, The Annihilators, Chopping Mall, Police Academy 6: City Under Siege and C.H.U.D. II- Bud the Chud) and who wouldn't want to be looked after by Jessica 6 and Bud the Chud?   Andy encounters Kyle (Christine Elise of China Beach, Boiling Point, Body Snatchers, In the Heat of the Night, ER and Mojave Phone Booth), a quick witted, no nonsense teen growing up way too fast and blah, blah blah.

After a fright with a Good Guy doll, Andy is settling in only to have Chucky nightmares and thrash in his sleep.  Were they truly nightmares or a deep foreboding dread of things to come?

Okay, now I am on about the pros and cons of this creation.  If we look purely by box office, the film actually doubled its investment so no money was really lost here.  We took a creepy story of an evil man prolonging his life through a doll and tried to turn it into a slasher franchise.   Animatronics puppetry and Special FX technician Kevin Yagher (Tales from the Crypt, Child's Play, Radio Flyer, Conspiracy Theory and Starship Troopers) and his production team really bring life into the Chucky puppets.  The effects for the doll have clearly improved and you have a wide range of different puppets  giving forced perspective, a really good POV shot and a rig you could wear on your arm to fight with, so the cheese factor is down a hair but at the same time I am really struggling with how any creature that barely comes up to my knee is that scary.
 
Brad Douriff pre-recorded most of his work so young Alex Vincent was more or less responding to a voice on tape as he interacted with the doll of doom.  Now they do not officially say what time of year this is all taking place but you get the feel it is early Fall and the Good Guy company is probably attempting to push their poorly made hammers, screwdrivers and horribly possessed dolls on the market again hence the big board meeting pow wow.   You should see their Bettie line ups with the doll houses built on ancient burial grounds.

Just my sinuses.  Nothing to worry about.

Part 2 Week: A Return to Salem's Lot

Howdy boys and girls and behold Day 1 of Part 2 Week.  I would like to point out at this time I just finished viewing this movie in question so this is coming at you at about 900 mph so you have been warned.  Okay for starters our film today harkens from Jeruselum's Lot where we saw David Soul and Lance Kerwin fled to the fictional town of Ximico Guatemala... so why are we back?  Didn't the Marsten house and its vampiric scourge burn like so much kindling?    How do you carry the story further?  Will Ben whip the jeep back around and just start torching every house in Salem's Lot or could you in fact start anew with a fresh new cast but the same town?  Impossible some may say but we will see.   This is A Return to Salem's Lot.

We don't take kind to no book learning around here, mister!

Van Meer: I am not a Nazi spoiler.  I'm a Nazi killer!










Dropped into the lap of experienced writer and directer of exploitation/TV/TV Movie and feature films Larry Cohen (Hell Up in Harlem, Black Caesar, It's Alive, It Lives Again, Full Moon High, See China and Die, It's Alive III: Island of the Alive, As Good as Dead and Phone Booth) opens our picture in a remote village in South America (Florida Glades and sound stage *cough cough*) as anthropologist Joe Webber (Michael Moriarty of Who'll Stop the Rain, Too Far to Go, Reborn, The Stuff, Odd Birds, Law & Order, Courage Under Fire and the 4400) as he documents a human sacrifice still being performed and true to his ethics and oaths he dare not directly interfere with another society.  After that round of seemingly distasteful footage, our hero heads to Maine after receiving an argent telephone call from his ex-wife about Jeremy (Ricky Addison Reed of A Return to Salem's Lot) his very strained and delinquent son.  Joe is given the ultimatum of tend to your son or we shack him in the wacko basket by his loving mother and her new anal retentive husband.  Seriously you could sharpen pencils with this man's rump.

You kids today; with you being out of focus and your hula hoops!!

Together they head to Salem's Lot to inquire about the inheritance of this cozy house in Maine...  the town that had more than a few vampire murders, vicious attacks and at least one manor house that WENT UP LIKE A FRICKIN' ROMAN CANDLE but I digress.    Our foul mouthed youth haggles a used car quite well and the two head to Salem... where everything looks intact.  I mean no hint of the Marsten house and frankly we are almost in a completely different location.    Spoiler!  It was not shot in California this time around so the town is both completely different but similar appearance so hello to Salem's Lot Vermont locale.  

The town's shops, gas station and other such establishment seems to be run by doughy pale white folk and normally I am not disturbed by this but this folks look beyond the pale.  Almost as if they are not running on enough pints.   Joe tries to bond with Jeremy and they are actually making decent headway over all so you get the vibe this is supposed to be a father and son reunion and reconciliation vehicle... in a vampire movie.

The suspense of disbelief is a bit difficult as you can clearly make out how sallow and anemic these folk appear to be.  Joe is roaming around town and gosh golly more folks appear out and about but only at night.   The vampires finally come clean and feel that Joe is the man to transcribe their town's legacy for generations to come and you witness a community that accepts vampires but it is also the norm.

Okay now we get to a few tidbits of griping, WTF moments and plot holes.   Our vamp town survives primarily on cow's blood rather than feed on their Reinfields which hey good for them.  The editing comes off as choppy and amateurish as you see people skip frames, arrive in areas they were not traveling to or from prior and you are scratching your head thinking several frames were removed hastily.   It almost looks like there wasn't enough footage to cover the action or the editor was huffing ether during the gig.

 Dialogue gets spouted at random intervals and feel out of place and sync to what you are seeing and feels comical without the intent.  Overall I came away feeling like Larry Cohen got rushed all the way through this and did not give him adequate time, budget and FX makeup to create a scary flick.   The jump scares feel forced and I damn near fell out of my seat laughing as senior citizens with plastic fangs pop out into the day for night shots.  IT'S A CRAP FILTER, PEOPLE!!!  LOSE IT!     Coupled with the fact I can see clouds clear as day I cannot make out which actor is talking half of the time.   With Hooper's rendition of Salem's Lot I felt terror, fear and became easily frighten by kids with the Shawn Cassidy haircut.   This movie made me appreciate that I have a comfortable chair to sit in while viewing so I didn't have to apologize to my neck or butt for going dead.
On the up side it had an amazing musical score by Michael Minard (Losing Ground, Tales of the Unexpected, Special Effects, The Mutilator and Deand on the Money), the location and aerial shots were breathtaking but at the end of the day I really could have found much better film.

Uncle Jesse!!!  NOoOoOoOOOOooooo!!!!