Posts Tagged ‘fraternities’
Monday, May 6th, 2024
April 29, 1994
PCU fits nicely into my theory of the summer of ’94 – that it was a time when boomers were looking back while gen-xers were moving in – by sort of melding those two things. The first sound you hear in it is Mike Bloomfield at the Monterey Pop Festival saying something about “this is our generation, man,” and then a song sampling Jimi Hendrix’s voice over modern dance music. It seems to be saying “Look, this is like the ‘60s, only it’s the ’90s!,” and in fact comes from an album called if ’60s were ‘90s.
This is the directorial debut of DIE HARD’s Harry Ellis himself, Hart Bochner, but it’s written by two fresh-out-of-college twentysomethings, Adam Leff & Zak Penn. It’s probly meant to speak to young people, but its attitude is that almost all young people are brain dead idiots… all but a few wild and crazy guys brave enough to scoff at everyone else’s beliefs because they don’t personally care about that kind of stuff so people who do must be faking it.
All fraternity comedies are pretty much based on ANIMAL HOUSE, right? A canonical boomer classic. PCU follows the standard campus comedy storyline: a rowdy fraternity hated by the authorities is going to get kicked out of their building if they don’t raise a bunch of money fast, so they throw a big party. And the modern spin on it is yeah, you have your old idea of fraternities, but it’s different now, it’s harder to get away with that stuff. But we do what we can, on account of we are outrageous party animals like you wouldn’t believe. ’90s style! I have a Hammerbox poster in my dorm room, to name only one example. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Leff, Chris Young, David Spade, fraternities, George Clinton, Hart Bochner, Jeremy Piven, Jessica Walter, Jon Favreau, Kevin Thigpen, Megan Ward, Sarah Trigger, Zak Penn
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs | 72 Comments »
Monday, August 8th, 2022
“They’re nerds. With their advanced knowledge of computers they can get any information they want!”
REVENGE OF THE NERDS is about as ‘80s of a movie as could exist. Raunchy sex comedy, fraternities, evil preppies, cartoonish nerd characters, gay stereotypes, Asian stereotypes, things that are now recognized as sex crimes played as fun hijinks, a part where they rap very badly. Those things weren’t entirely washed away by the new decade, but they became less common. You weren’t really gonna see many movies like that on the big screen anymore.
But that didn’t stop those vengeance hungry nerds from seeking further retribution on network television! I don’t remember being aware of this at the time, but REVENGE OF THE NERDS III: THE NEXT GENERATION aired at 8 pm July 13, 1992 on Fox. According to tvtango.com it rated lower than its competition: repeats of FBI: The Untold Stories, Evening Shade and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Also its last half hour overlapped with coverage of the first day of the Democratic National Convention.
The director is Roland Mesa, who had only previously directed an interview with Tim Burton about EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, and only followed with a 1994 episode of Tales from the Crypt that was the first credit for Ethan Suplee. But it has the same writers as the theatrical movies, Steve Zacharias & Jeff Buhai. Guardians of the REVENGE OF THE NERDS saga. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bernie Casey, Brian Tochi, Chi McBride, Clancy Brown, Curtis Armstrong, fraternities, Grant Heslov, Gregg Binkley, Henry Cho, James Cromwell, Jeff Buhai, Jennifer Bassey, John Pinette, Julia Montgomery, K.T. Vogt, Larry B. Scott, Laurel Moglen, Lawrence Wolf, made-for-TV-sequels, Morton Downey Jr., Richard Israel, Robert Carradine, Roland Mesa, Sean Whalen, Steve Zacharias, Ted McGinley, Tim Conlon
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Wednesday, October 9th, 2019
One problem with doing Slasher Search every year is that I’ve watched so many vaguely similar movies that they really blend together. It’s disturbing how many times I’ve looked at a box having little idea if I’ve seen it or not. So when I came across RUSH WEEK I had to think it through. I’d seen FINAL EXAM, THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW, KILLER PARTY, SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE, THE INITIATION, GIRLS NITE OUT… but no, this was an ’80s college campus slasher movie I had not seen.
At least it was supposed to be an ’80s movie. It was made in ’88, but it went straight to video in ’91. So it’s from when Chucky and Maniac Cop were born, HELLRAISER, PHANTASM, SLEEPAWAY CAMP, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD and FRIGHT NIGHT were at Part II, and Michael Meyers was returning, but it came out when SILENCE OF THE LAMBS was best picture and they were killing off Freddy and moving on to finding people under the stairs and shit. It was left over from another era, not just in its approach to horror, but in its glorification of dumb fraternity assholes. It sort of centers on frat president Jeff Jacobs (Dean Hamilton, who went on to write, direct and produce such films as SAVAGE LAND starring Corbin Bernsen and BLONDE AND BLONDER starring Pamela Anderson and Denise Richards) and his rivalry with some other more preppie frat. They play such hilarious pranks as going to the other house’s presentation to tell parents “we’re the first homosexual fraternity on campus” and replace part of a film they’re showing with gay porn. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bob Bralver, fraternities, Gregg Allman, Kathleen Kinmont, Pamela Ludwig, Slasher Search, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 19 Comments »
Monday, June 29th, 2015
SCHOOL DAZE is Spike Lee’s sophomore jointational work, and was never one of my favorites from him. But man, looking back at it now I love its youthful exuberance. Here’s 30 year old Spike having access to the studio’s resources for the first time – he goes from a few actors in apartments in black and white to a huge cast on a college campus. He even has a full-on song and dance number. It’s the first example of what I think is one of his weaknesses: his overreach in tackling too many things at once, creating an unfocused and overstuffed narrative. But in this context that’s kinda charming. He’s really goin for it.
Since DO THE RIGHT THING and MALCOLM X were Lee’s most culturally recognized movies, certain white people pigeonholed him as a guy who only makes movies about white people being racist. Of course that’s not even a complete description of the content of those two movies, let alone applicable to most of his filmography. And joint #2, just like joint #1, I’m pretty sure doesn’t show a single white person in it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Art Evans, Bill Nunn, Branford Marsalis, college, Darryl Bell, Erik Dellums, fraternities, Giancarlo Esposito, James Bond III, Jasmine Guy, Kadeem Hardison, Kasi Lemmons, Laurence Fishburne, Ossie Davis, Roger Guenveur Smith, Rusty Cundieff, Samuel L. Jackson, Spike Lee, Tisha Campbell, Toni Ann Johnson
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Musical, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Tuesday, October 30th, 2012
PLEDGE NIGHT, that could be a good slasher movie, right? It’s got “Night” in the title, that’s scary. Implies a horrific massacre that occurred on one specific date in history. And after dark. The “Pledge” part means it takes place at a college, so it’s the young people whose blood usually fuels the slashers, but not too young. Kind of adults, in a way. I don’t know.
This was the first one by director Paul Ziller. Alot of the guys who directed these types of slashers have a handful of other IMDb credits at most. This guy went on to do BLOODFIST IV, BACK IN ACTION, SHOOTFIGHTER II among other action and thriller type business. In the 2000s he’s become more of a SyFy type with SNAKEHEAD TERROR, SWARMED, BEYOND LOCH NESS, YETI: CURSE OF THE SNOW DEMON, STONEHENGE APOCALYPSE… He’s still at it, having recently done a TV remake of THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT. The script is by Joyce Snider, whose other four IMDb credits are all pornos: PUBLIC AFFAIRS and RAW TALENT I-III. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthrax, fraternities, Paul Ziller, Slasher Search, slashers, Will Kempe
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 11 Comments »
