For deliciously zany Christmas fun, pucker-up for 'THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT.'

Delectably, deliriously, dementedly awful, THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT is one of the very best Bad Movies of the '90s, no small accomplishment in a decade that also gave us Barb Wire, Boxing Helena, Color of Night and Showgirls.

The fun begins when Geena Davis, a demure, redheaded, schoolteaching single mother who suffers from amnesia and cannot recall having been the world's deadliest hired assassin eight years ago, collides with a reindeer. Voila. Davis begins to get hints of her previous vocation. In a dream sequence Sigmund Freud would have fired a patient for having, goody-two-shoes Davis stands atop a stormy cliff facing her sexy, bottle-blonde image in a mirror. "I want a cigarette," growls the tough-talkin' reflection, to which the nice Davis prissily replies, "I don't smoke." "Ya used to!" snaps the blonde. Director Renny Harlin chooses to cut from this all-too-revealing dream sequence to a dump truck picking up garbage (discuss meaning amongst yourselves).

Soon Davis's dark side starts cropping up during waking hours. The mere chopping of a carrot turns into a dicin', slicin' display of aggression that is, frankly, reminiscent of one of those infomercials for sharp cutlery. Whipping through every vegetable in the kitchen, Davis beams maniacally, "I used to do this. I'm a chef!" Perhaps not. When she nails a tomato to the wall with a perfectly tossed knife, her daughter and boyfriend are justifiably terrified. "Chefs do that," explains Davis. But later, when she tells her kid, who's just fractured a wrist, "Life is pain! Get used to it!" there's no pretending Davis's previous life was benevolent. To make the point even clearer, a one-eyed thug who knew hit woman Davis way back when breaks into the house and hits Davis on the head with a heavy pot, whereupon she knocks him out cold with a cream pie in the kisser, then breaks his neck, and, as her boyfriend watches, tastes the pie filling off the corpse, explaining, "Chefs do that."

Determined to discover the truth about her past, Davis hits the road with "low rent" private eye Samuel L. Jackson. While Jackson watches the classic Robert Altman film The Long Goodbye in a motel room the next evening (two characters are discussing cats, allowing Jackson to utter the line, "Yeah -- pussy is pussy"), Davis looks in a mirror in her room and again sees the skanky blonde version of herself, who suddenly reaches out from the mirror to try to kill her. Alas, she doesn't succeed.

All hell breaks loose when more bad guys from the past show up and try to extinguish Davis and Jackson. The attacks only serve to bring the amnesiac's deadly personality fully to the surface. Davis transforms the drab version of herself into a sleek blonde hit babe, who for some reason is wearing only a bathrobe and excessive eyeshadow. At the sight of a bloodstained arm bandage on Jackson, the new, true Davis suddenly opens her robe, flashes her bare bod at him, then rips off the bandage. "Same principle as deflowering virgins," she says. "I read it in this Harold Robbins book: guy bites her on the ear, distracts her from the pain. Ever try that?" "No," replies Jackson, "I sock 'em in the jaw and yell, 'Pop goes the Weasel!'" This spicy dialogue arouses Davis to pant in Jackson's ear, "I haven't had a date in eight years." Like the rest of us, Jackson isn't buying: "A beautiful white lady seducing the colored help? Get real, sweetheart. I ain't rich, I ain't handsome, and the last time I got blown, candy bars cost a nickel." Who says there's no longer a need for affirmative action?

The next day, a car full of killers chases Jackson, prompting Davis to strap on ice skates to outrace the speeding automobile and blast the villains. The mayhem reached a climax on Christmas Eve when Davis outwits her foes by (1) putting kerosene in a Betsy Wetsy-type doll, (2) taunting a knife-wielding killer with the line, "Oh honey, only four inches?" and, finally, (3) collapsing so that her daughter can reprise the innane line, "Life is pain! Get used to it!" At this point, you'll want to rewind to the scene that provided this movie with its place in Bad Moviedom. Yes, listen once again as Davis, driving an oil rig outfitted with a doomsday bomb, becomes the first (and, we'd bet, the last) action heroine to snarl at her opponents, "Suck my dick!"

Deliciously Awful on EVERY level, GYMKATA will suck away all your resistance with the skill of gymnastics, the kill of karate . . . and the power of cheese.

Well, my darlings, I arrived home the other day, after an exhaustive bout of shopping, only to find my youngest and most precious (little Jimmy, jr.), watching something called GYMKATA. With the third cosmopolitan I had at lunch suddenly kicking in, I felt compelled to sit myself down and see what kind of pornography the little demon had infected my clean home with.

Gymkata is so deliciouly awful, so horribly moronic, we're positve that when MGM studio execs greenlit the project, somewhere, trillions of light years away, a planet exploded. Apparently, someone in 1985 thought it would be a great idea to hire Kurt Thomas to headline a movie. (That person is probably living at the Y today.) Young Thomas — a champion gymnast who got stiffed out of an Olympic appearance because of the 1980 boycott — delivers his lines like he just emerged from a coma ten seconds prior to filming.

But beyond our star's’ lack of thespian talent, the real challenge proved to be crafting a suitable vehicle that would showcase his impressive floor routines. Thus, the skill of "gymkata" was born - a hybrid of martial arts and... well... somersaults. This awkward-looking claptrap is shoe-horned into the skeletal framework of a 1957 book called "The Terrible Game" along with a love story where the girl speaks, perhaps, nine consecutive words during the entire film. The cherry on top was bringing in martial arts action film director Richard Clouse, (most noted for helming the Bruce Lee classic Enter The Dragon.) Of course, Thomas is to Bruce Lee what a Barbie Power Wheels is to Optimus Prime.

This laugh-a-minute reimagining of the book, "The Terrible Game" is actually The Most Dangerous Game, as designed by the President's Council on Physical Fitness. It requires the player to run around and climb a rope, and we're told that only a select few can meet this grueling challenge: either world-class gymnasts, like American champion Kurt Thomas, or 11-year olds who've passed sixth-grade gym.

The film opens with an angry white man -- Kurt's dad, (who's apparently playing on the Terrible Game Senior Tour) -- attempting to cross the rope bridge at Camp Snoopy. Villain Richard Norton (we know he's evil because he's wearing Sonny Bono's sheepskin vest from Wild on the Beach) shoots an arrow into Kurt's dad, who falls to his death. Cut to the United States, where the Olympic Games are being held in what looks like a high-school auditorium. American champ Thomas dismounts the parallel bars, and is immediately recruited by the CIA to play The Game, which is held in Parmistan, a mountain kingdom ruled by "the Khan." Kurt will be trained by Princess Ruballi, the Khan's daughter, and even though she spends the first half of the film attempting to do grievous harm to his groin (knee it, stab it, rope-burn it, etc.), Ruballi eventually becomes Kurt's love interest, because she's the only person in the film who's shorter than he is.

Kurt and the Princess white-water raft into Parmistan, where they're promptly attacked by Himalayan ninjas (clad in black Dr. Dentons). Hopelessly outnumbered, Kurt unleashes the secret martial art of Gymkata, and manages to overcome his assailants using the deadly power of Olga Korbut's compulsory floor routine from the '72 Olympics. Once in the capital, Kurt and the other competitors meet the Khan, (apparently a member of The Davy Crockett Hair Club for Men), who explains the rules: Basically, you run around and climb on various pieces of playground equipment until someone shoots you with an arrow. If Kurt wins, the U.S. will be allowed to build a "Star Wars" satellite-tracking station in Parmistan. If Kurt loses, he will be killed in the traditional way: shot with an arrow while playing the "Smack the Mole" game at a Chuck E. Cheese.

The next morning, the Khan announces that Sheepskin will wed Princess Ruballi after the game, with a reception to follow at a Medieval Times restaurant franchise. Then the competitors are off and running. Amazingly, Kurt makes it across the rope bridge without getting arrowed, and enters "The Village of the Damned," (a planned community for the criminally insane.) No one has ever escaped alive from this blood-soaked bedlam, and it is soon apparent why. In short order, Kurt is attacked by a man with a sickle, beaten to a pulp by a pack of Italian grandmothers, and mooned. Finally, the entire populace converges on Kurt, shrieking and waving various farm implements as they surround him in the village square. Fortunately, next to the communal well is the communal pommel horse. Leaping onto it, Kurt manages to kill the axe-wielding maniacs with a quick and deadly series of Magyar and Sivado cross-travel variations.

The surviving villagers give Kurt a 9.2.

The crazed peasants chase Kurt into a blind alley, where, surprisingly, one of the Himalayan ninjas reaches down and pulls Kurt to safety. The ninja then peels back his black mask to reveal that he is, in fact, . . .Kurt's father! (It turns out that he wasn't killed in that fall after all, just maimed.) Their tearful reunion is interrupted when Sheepskin shoots dad with an arrow ...again! Springing into action, Kurt heroically jumps onto a horse ... and rides away.

Sheepskin catches up to our fleeing hero and gives him a well-deserved thrashing. But Kurt cleverly goes into "rope-a-dope," outlasting his opponent until they get to the page in the script where it says he wins. Sheepskin takes a dive, and Kurt proudly rides back into town with Dad, who's been maimed some more, but is otherwise just fine. Now, at last, everyone knows the truth: Sheepskin is a traitor, and Kurt's dad is Rasputin. Oh ..., and Kurt wins The Game -- but it's anyone's guess as to exactly how.

As for my little Jimmy? As soon as Mommy's head gets clear, she's going to start looking into good military schools.

A movie so deliciouly overheated that (unlike the poster tagline) DELICIOUS asks, "Can anyone ever really be ready for MANDINGO?"

Some movies are just so hysterically bad that they pose the question, "Can there really be too much of a good thing?" Purporting to show us what the pre-Civil War South was really like, Mandingo answers this query: You bet. With more violence, more nudity, more foul language, and more racism than any other flick we’ve ever seen, you’ll hate yourself in morning for laughing yourself silly, but if you put this maximum offender into your home video system of choice, just try looking away.

In the first ten seconds, slave breeder James Mason observes, about a slave starlet, "She’s Mandingo wench. You don’t let just any bud get her," to remind his crippled son, Perry King, of his family obligation. Local doc Roy Poole agrees, saying, "She’s craving, in the bud o’ heat. You pleasure her, she get better." The slave starlet tries to stall the inevitable by drawling to King, "I too black, I not fit for you." Mason settles the matter by stating, "Master’s duty to pleasure the wenches first time."


Then it’s back to the family mansion, where Doc Poole suggests that Mason’s rheumatism would improve if he’d put his feet on black children. So for the rest of the movie, Mason (astoundingly) uses two little slave lads as his foot stools.

King brings home a new stud slave, Ken Norton, another slave to be King’s mistress, Brenda Sykes, and — last but not least — a Southern belle whom King will marry, Susan George. King tells his pa, Mason, that Norton is "hung so big he’ll tear the wenches," then orders Norton to "shuck down those pants!" When the wedding night’s a bust — King sneers at George, "you thinkin’ I don’t know a virgin when I sleeps with one and pleasures?" — King turns to Sykes, driving George into Norton’s bed.

Mason tells George that to win King’s affection back, she should "do dirty things to get him in your bed and keep him there." Instead, George — whose incestuous relationship with her brother is her Big Secret — screams at King about Sykes, "That slut! You like black meat? You’d rather pleasure with a baboon?" and then (there’s more), when George learns Sykes is pregnant, she hisses, "You dumb animal!" and pushes Sykes down the stairs. Later, George discovers she’s preggers and — as the doctor’s wife so eloquently puts it after the delivery — "It come, only it ain’t white."

King cheers us up by promptly poisoning George, then finds the baby’s real dad, Norton. You’re not going to believe this — we didn’t — King settles the score by shooting Norton, then pushing him into a vat of boiling water, and then pitchforking him to death. In retaliation, one of Norton’s pals shoots and kills Mason, ensuring that he wouldn’t be able to overact in the sequel, Drum.

Mesmerizingly heinous. 
 

For Deliciously Bad Holiday Viewing, NOTHING Can Compare With SANTA CLAUS The Movie!

Ever wonder where Santa came from, and how it's possible he's been around so long? Santa Claus the Movie will tell you. It seems that in a faux medieval land there was a woodcutter who liked to make toys for children. Returning home one snowy Christmas Eve, Claus (David Huddleston) and the missus (Judy Cornwell) and the two reindeer pulling their sleigh froze to death in a sudden storm. But magic starlight reanimates them, as elves in green felt shanghai them to a Brigadoon-like North Pole HQ. "This is your home now," they titter evilly to the undead Santa, and so he's stuck there forever, amongst the barracks full of elves and sweatshops full of toys, which the immortal elves have been making in anticipation of his arrival.

Ancient elf Burgess Meredith tells Huddleston that he is "the chosen one," and that a prophecy foretold his coming. In this way, Santa Claus the Movie is just like The Matrix, only instead of being cool and exciting it's bizarro and satanically corrupt. More mysterious and unanswered is the question of how an immortal elf can become ancient -- or has poor old Burgess been shuffling and moaning his way around since the beginning of time?

Santa -- who is just as wooden as his toys -- seems not a whit disturbed by the prospect of an eternal, unrelenting hell of catering to spoiled kiddies around the globe. "Ho ho ho," you can practically hear him say, "I'm undead! Might as well make the best of it." Clueless by nature, he's prone to saying things like, one Christmas Eve, "Tonight there's not a child alive who's not bursting with joy and happiness," apparently oblivious to all the non-Christian children he won't be visiting. The question of the poor kids who invariably are forgotten by the Fat Guy is pushed aside as well -- though we imagine that Mrs. Claus, who lobbied for the exclusion of bad children at Christmastime, perhaps attached a rider to her bill disenfranchising the poor, as well.

Or maybe Santa is just an inhumanely callous monster -- perfectly understandable, given that he is, in fact, undead. By the time we reach the present day, and the second of the three plots in Santa Claus the movie, Santa has met Christian Fitzpatrick, a homeless street urchin who has to beg food off strangers. Santa takes Fitzpatrick hot-rodding in his sleigh as a special treat to cheer him up... but does Claus give the kid a home, parents, or even a warm winter coat? No. He just drops him off to fend for himself promising to return next Christmas Eve. (Not even a crappy wooden toy? Thanks for the buggy ride, Santa!)

The third - and final - plot involves an elf named Patch, (played with dexterous apathy by Dudley Moore), who defects to work for a sinister toymaker named B.Z., (played with the usual scenery-guzzling gusto of John Lithgow). Upon medical advice, we’re not permitted to discuss this subplot at all. (Our doctors have informed us that our medications cannot be upped any further.) Suffice it to say that in all the annals of pestilent filmmaking, this ranks right up there with the complete works of Michael Bay.

You must see Santa Claus the movie, if only to boggle at the horrifying-depths to which a big studio Christmas film can sink. It actually perverts the spirit of the holiday into something creepy, itchy, and laugh-out-loud insane Just be sure to set aside sufficient funds for a lifetime of therapy afterward.

TODAY MY DARLINGS, WE WILL SAVOR THE DELICIOUS, CAREER-HALTING 'MOMENTS'

At the height of their popularity, Lily Tomlin and John Travolta combined their considerable clout — and lookalike shag hairdos — to bring their careers to a halt with the screamingly funny melodrama MOMENT BY MOMENT about a Beverly Hills matron’s fling with a studly young gigolo. Written and directed by Tomlin’s longtime collaborator Jane Wagner, the movie commits two fatal errors: This ripe-for-parody trash is (inexplicably) played straight-faced, and Travolta’s character is (even more inexplicably) named "Strip." Everytime Tomlin speaks his name, she seems to be asking him to peel — even when he’s already naked, as in the hot tub scene that made audiences cry with laughter.

Travolta: "I love you. Do you love me?"
Tomlin: "Strip . . ."
Travolta: "You don’t love me?"
Tomlin: "Oh, Strip . . ."
Travolta: "I’m not good enough for you, is that it?"
Tomlin: "Strip! This is ridiculous. Oh, Strip!"
Travolta: "When you’re ready to admit you love me, you can have me, but not until."
Tomlin: "Strip!"

Names are not, however, the only problem. Tomlin’s meant-to-be-heartbreaking (but-we’re-afraid-they’re-side-splitting!) telephone conversations with her estranged husband go thus: "Trish," says the husband’s voice, "we’ve got to talk . . . What about the pool filter?" Tomlin replies, sadly "What about it?" "What do you want me to do?" he asks. "You decide," she says, before collapsing in tears.

As embarrassing as all this is, Tomlin never stoops to Travolta’s level. He agreed to be photographed from the waist down while tugging off his pants so the camera can lovingly stare at his, uh, bathing suit as he bumps ‘n’ grinds his way down into the sea. (And what was he thinking of when he agreed to call Tomlin such catchy nicknames as "Miss Ultra-Frost" and "Miss Fabu-Lash"?)

What was anyone thinking of when they decided not to cut out the howler scene in which Travolta says, "I’ve had it with cheap sex, it leaves me feeling cheap," and Tomlin replies, "I’ve never had cheap sex before — I was sort of looking forward to it."? Then there’s the foot fetish show at an art gallery, where Tomlin informs Travolta, "I don’t like to see you drink so much at your age," and he responds, "I’m not so young as I used to be — and this party’s going to turn me gray overnight." (It’s amazing that the movie’s reviews didn’t do just that.)

After they fight, Travolta says, "I’m splitting. Pretty soon you’ll be old enough to be my grandmother." "Where will you go?" Tomlin asks. Travolta runs through his options: "Maybe Vegas. A rich lady asked me to go to St. Tropez," then adds, in the film’s only believable moment, "I got offered a porno movie." When he’s gone, Trish runs through the house, calling "Strip, Strip, Strip, Strip!" then, embarks, wide-eyed, on a drive through Trailer Park America to find the hustler she loves. We located this rare gem on Universal HD cable network. It has never been released on home video. Write your congressman!

COME TO SHANGRI-LA. A MAGICAL PLACE WHERE THE SUN ALWAYS SHINES AND YOU'LL NEVER GROW OLD. A PLACE WHERE ACTORS WHO CAN'T SING OR DANCE ... DO IT ANYWAY!

Hungry for memorably, side-splittingly Bad? Then look no further! The infamous 1973 mega-bomb LOST HORIZON gives you 149 minutes worth, dished up faux Asian style by producer Ross Hunter. Hunter was already richer than Midas from producing such gems as Imitation of Life and Magnificent Obsession when he spent zillions to remake Frank Capra’s classic movie fantasy about Shangri-La into a Burt Bacharach/Hal David musical, all of it starring non-singing, non-dancing, non-actors.

The hilarity begins with a planeload of cardboard characters: diplomat Peter Finch, his surly brother Michael York, engineer George Kennedy, entertainer Bobby Van, and Sally Kellerman as a suicidal Newsweek photographer who, at first sign of air turbulence, starts popping pills. Hyperventilating, Kellerman swoons, "I feel we’re heading for outer space."

No such luck: Instead of a snowy death, our heroes’ plane crash dumps them in a smiley utopia apparently inspired by a Liberace theme park.

Resident guru, ancient John Gielgud (picture a mummy on Prozac), brings Finch to confer with the even more ancient High Lama Charles Boyer (picture a mummy beyond Prozac), who suggests that Finch linger forever. He doesn’t need much convincing; he’s already fallen for schoolmarm Liv Ullman. "Is there some delicious drug in our food?" Finch asks "or is this all a mirage?"

Drugs are the only possible explanation; in any case, only drugs can help get you past the sight of Ullman swinging her hands, bugging her eyes, thrashing in fields, and lip-synching "The World Is a Circle" – it’s enough to make one appreciate Cybill Shepherd in At Long Last Love. (Well... maybe not appreciate so much as tolerate.)
 

No sooner is Kellerman talked down from leaping off a ledge (did she foresee the reviews?) Than she, too, is bleating in song. Then steel yourself for the "Festival of the Family"number, in which James Shigeta and scads of arrythmic extras dance a two-step, singing about family values.

Everybody’s soooo bloody happy except York, who plots his escape with dewy (If obviously pregnant) librarian Olivia Hussey. Gielgud grumbles that Hussy’s youthful facade will shatter if she leaves this magical land – it’s only Shangri-La that keeps her from growing ancient, you see – but York eventually persuades Finch to escape with them. Just as Gielgud predicted, Hussey ages to, oh, about Gielgud’s age, and York tumbles to his death down a mountainside. Lucky them.

Finch, sadder but wiser, returns to his paradise "with its feet rooted in the good earth of this fertile valley while his head explores the eternal." We can’t vouch for where anybody’s head was at in making this movie, but we can hazard a guess.

Be sure to catch it on the recent 2012 issued (restored to its original Roadshow length!) Twilight Time Blu ray. Essential, if life-shortening, viewing.

LIBERACE PLAYS A SIMPLY FABULOUS HETEROSEXUAL IN HIS DELICIOUSLY MISCALCULATED BID FOR MOVIE STARDOM 'SINCERELY YOURS.'

Quick now, who was the least likely musical talent to ever have hoped they'd make it as a star of the silver screen? If you guessed Luciano Pavarotti in Yes, Giorgio, Cyndi Lauper in Vibes, Mariah Carey in Glitter or Madonna in just about anything, then you've never seen Liberace in the 1955 howler SINCERELY YOURS. With his moist eyes, congealed smile and mortician's manners, Las Vegas headliner Liberace was doubly miscast here as a talented concert pianist who is also a practicing heterosexual.

Somebody must have realized just how ridiculous this project was, because how else would you account for this scene: when secretary Joanne Dru offers up a choice of PR opportunities - "How'd you like to ride an elephant for the circus?" then, "Would you like to be king of the avocado festival?" and finally, "Open a new aquarium?" -- Liberace is miffed at their inappropriateness to someone of his stature and storms into his bathroom, where his roommate and manager, William Demarest, is taking a bubble bath and chewing on a very large cigar. As if the tableau alone were not enough, Liberace tosses Demarest a washcloth and says, "Don't forget to wash behind. . . your ears."

But the real fun begins as gorgeous, rich Dorothy Malone understandably mistakes Liberace for a lowly piano teacher and haughtily informs him, "When your family has money, you're supposed to be accomplished. So I learned to paint, to ride, to dance, even to try and play the piano. Some people are born listeners--I'm one of them. But my family won't be convinced until I get a letter from you, saying I should stick to Mediterranean cruises and canasta."

Just as you're about to grab a pen and paper to take care of this matter yourself, Liberace sneers at Malone, "Where did you practice your scales - reaching for martinis?" Now that these two have expressed their mutual contempt, Liberace proposes marriage: "Did you ever wonder what it would be like spending a lifetime married to a musician?" he queries Malone. Just in case she's been overwhelmed by his charm, he goes on to warn her, "It's not easy competing with a concerto!" But hey, it's not easy competing with 10 percent of the male population either, right?

Malone is too in love to heed warnings, not even the one she gets at Liberace's concert from serviceman Alex Nicol, who utters words any bride-to-be should pay attention to: "He respects the classics, but from a sitting position - not from his knees." Meanwhile, up on stage Liberace is bouncing on his bench, rolling his eyes ecstatically, and smiling in such delirious self-enchantment he appears to be deep inside his own musical remake of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. Just when you're thinking you'd rather go deaf than listen to one more note from Liberace, he does. This situation puts an end to his concert career, allowing him to mope around his swanky Manhattan penthouse and, in Lana Turner style, to make many of the 29 costume changes that won this movie it's place in cinema history.

Dim bulb Malone isn't the first girl to wonder why her fiance hasn't been taking her calls, but she's probably the first to be given this excuse: "He's deaf." Putting on a bright face, Malone insists they should marry anyway, explaining, "I fell in love with a person, not a pianist." Actually, of course, he's neither, but it's a nice thought. His spirits restored, Liberace embarks on a 12-week course in lip-reading that goes by in what feels like real time. It all pays off, though, when we get to see how he applies this new skill. Leaning off his terrace while holding a big pair of binoculars, Liberace scans Central Park some 30 stories below. That's right, he's become a full-time, long-distance lip-reading voyeur.

To get full mileage out of this plot point, Liberace's hearing returns, and he races down to Central Park to eavesdrop in person on the latest twists in the two-hankie saga he's been lip-reading from afar. It seems that young Lori Nelson is pulling a Stella Dallas on her white-trash mother (Lurene Tuttle) by telling her she'll never fit in with Nelson's ritzy in-laws. After Nelson leaves, Liberace takes the heartbroken Tuttle in hand and happily buys her just the heels, hats and evening gowns he might have picked out for himself. That night he goes with Tuttle to a charity fund-raiser where all the snooty blue bloods are charmed by Tuttle, particularly when she talks Liberace into performing "The Beer Barrel Polka." Then, as divine punishment for this musical lapse, Liberace is struck deaf all over again.

A still hearing-challenged Liberace is casually gazing through his binoculars one night when his eyes settle on none other than his beloved Malone with his serviceman pal Alex Nicol in what is certainly a romantic rendezvous. Amazingly enough - since it's pitch-black outside - he reads their lips to learn that Malone is in love with the other man. What will Liberace do? It all ends happily with Liberace so quickly reconciled to life without wedded bliss that he hops up from his piano and tap dances "Tea for Two," which is meant to have you asking, "Is there no end to this man's talent?" You'll more likely be wondering, "Is there no end to this movie?" Well, yes there is, and it happens to have been the end of Liberace's chances at a starring screen career, too.

Douglas Sirk lives on in the deliciously overwrought COLOR OF NIGHT - a 1994 Bruce Willis misfire that had us doubled over with delirium!

Just when you thought they'd never make a mystery thriller as deliriously bad as Midnight Lace, just when you imagined that the gold lame spirit of Douglas Sirk had departed forever, comes director Richard Rush's COLOR OF NIGHT to brighten up your dull evenings. Color of Night isn't just bad: it's bad with raisins in it.

 

 If you were one of the few who saw Color of Night in a theater, you probably remember the plot, but for those millions and millions who missed this gem, let's recap.

 

Bruce Willis stars as a psychologist. (Are you laughing too hard or can we go on now?) Willis is having a crisis of conscience/ confidence because one of his patients leaped out of a window after applying lots of lipstick. (We all know, don't we, that applying lots of lipstick is a sure sign of suicidal depression?) Anyway, Willis goes out to L.A. to visit fellow shrink Scott Bakula, who takes Willis to his group therapy session so that the fun can start in earnest. Remember "The Bob Newhart Show" from the '70's? His group therapy meetings weren't nearly as funny as these: we have a nympho, an obsessive-compulsive, a split personality, the Professor and Mary Ann -- well, you get the idea. Bakula gets killed in a scene that looks like Psycho directed by Mack Sennett. The sad part is that Bakula is the most talented and attractive member of the whole goddamn cast and 30 minutes into the picture he's been bumped off.

Willis stays on in Bakula's grandiosely modern home (crammed with screamingly bad art) despite the fact that someone keeps stalking him and leaving snakes in the mailbox. (Are hotels in L.A. that expensive?) It's like the TV movie where that devil doll keeps chasing Karen Black around her apartment going, "Yanni yanni yanni," and it never occurs to her to just leave.Instead of ruining the horribly implausible and helter-skelter plot for you, We'll just point out some of the more outrageous lapses of sanity: a) Willis's patient jumps out of a Manhattan office tower, causing pedestrians to scream and run, whereas real New Yorkers would have lifted her purse; b) Three days after famous psychologist Scott Bakula is killed in an exceedingly colorful way in his midtown office, his patients still don't know about it -- okay, we've already established that there are no reasonably priced hotels in L.A., but surely there must be at least one newspaper or TV station; c) The whole plot hook -- Willis goes color blind after seeing his patient's blood -- goes nowhere. Period. You keep thinking there has to be a reason for it or a plot twist that depends on it -- but nothing ever happens.

The film is a laugh riot and we don't want to give away all of the jokes. When we saw the film in the theater, the audience laughed all the way through the first sex scene, which took place underwater and was about as erotic as an Esther Williams movie. Oh, yes, we do get to see generous portions of Bruce Willis, though not as much as he'd have liked.

Then there's the acting. Even the extras overact. Keep your eyes out for one unbilled woman playing a hooker in a police station. She only has one line, but she gives it such gusto that she will leave you stunned. Even formerly respected actors lose all sense of self-control; Lesley Ann Warren (decked out in a Shelley Long wig) twitches and twitters like a road company Billie Burke, and Ruben Blades does what appears to be a Jose Jimenez imitation. Willis actually seems like a model of intelligent understatement compared with the rest of the cast, but the truth is, he just wasn't acting at all.

And then there's Jane March. Ever so much of Jane March. Watching her try to match wits with Bruce Willis really makes you appreciate the bang-up job Cybill Shepherd was doing all those years. Jane spends half the movie dressed in disguise as a teenage boy. (How hard is she to spot? She's got teeth like Bucky Beaver! This gal could eat corn on the cob through a picket fence!) It all just gets sillier and sillier until the grand finale, which tried to come off as Hitchcockian but reminded us more of silent film legend Harold Lloyd. Judging by the guffaws from the audience, we weren't alone. So, watch Color of Night if you're feeling down in the mouth. Just don't try to eat popcorn during it -- unless you know the Heimlich maneuver.

'SHOWGIRLS' IS SO HYSTERICALLY FILTHY, YOU'LL BE LAUGHING ALL THE WAY TO YOUR SHOWER TO REMOVE ITS DELICIOUS RESIDUE.

"Instant camp classic," giggled The New York Times about SHOWGIRLS. And how! It's been well noted that writer Joe Eszterhas lifted the plot of Showgirls from All About Eve, 42nd Street and Flashdance. It should also be pointed out that Showgirls owes a major debt to one of my favorite bad movies, Valley of the Dolls. What Eszterhas has done is combine the four femmes from Dolls into just two gals -- with schizo results. Elizabeth Berkley behaves like both a nice newcomer seduced by her boss and a self-destructive, psychotic bitch; costar Gina Gershon is both a sweet showgirl and a seen-it-all, show-biz monster. Even the stars we hear the filmmakers wanted for the Berkley and Gershon roles, Drew Barrymore and Madonna, couldn't have pulled off playing such split personalities. With two glassy-eyed doorstops in the leads, Showgirls is unadulterated farce from the get-go.

Our show begins when tough, young hitchhiker Berkley gets a lift from hunky sociopath Dewey Weber, who generously drives her to Las Vegas, then steals her suitcase (what does he think is inside?). Down-and-out Berkley moves in with dim-bulb waitress Gina Ravera, who remarks, "I haven't gotten laid in six months. My right hand's so tired I can hardly thread a needle!" Soon Berkley's got a gig as a cheesy stripper, but when she gets a look at the Big Time at the hotel Ravera works at, she witnesses a real Vegas show starring Gershon (who, despite the rhinestones glued to her boobs, is indistinguishable from any of the other dancers). A coked-up Gershon turns up at Berkley's strip joint with her hotel boss/lover Kyle MacLachlan, and pays Berkley $500 for a nude lap dance, during which Berkley, in a fit of originality, licks her own nipple. Whereupon Gershon encourages Berkley to audition for the hotel show.

Surveying the line of hopefuls, snide show producer Alan Rachins snarls at the first, "What are these, watermelons? This is a stage, babe, not a patch!" Viewing Berkley's nipples, he leers, "I'm erect, why aren't you?" Berkley is hired and proceeds to witness the dog-eat-dog world of showgirls: one chorine growls at seamstress Ravera, "You're gonna see a smilin' snatch if you don't fix this G-string." Well, maybe it's more dog-eat-dog-food: over lunch Gershon tells Berkley, "I've had dog food. I used to love Doggie Chow," and Berkley gushes, "I used to love Doggie Chow, too!" The brief bonding over pet food experiences ends when Gershon plays with Berkley's breasts, cooing, "You are a whore," and Berkley rejects her, sneering, "Bitch!"

Berkley is visited in her new, "classier" digs by her old strip-club pals, one of whom thinks Berkley "looks better than a 10-inch dick," and the other of whom comments, "Must be weird not having anybody come on you." Flush with success, Berkley goes after druggy McLachlan. Naked in his pool, she sits on him and does a whiplash-like imitation of sex which resembles nothing so much as an epileptic fit. (You'll want to add some Tide and throw in your laundry!) Then, having stolen Gershon's guy, she shoves Gershon down a staircase, and that night she takes Gershon's place in the show and becomes a star (although she, like Gershon, blends right into the chorus). Her triumph is spoiled when pal Ravera is gang-raped by a rock star and his friends. Suddenly, Showgirls veers off into Cleopatra Jones/Coffy territory, with Berkley becoming a martial-arts super-heroine -- Ninja Showgirl? -- who kicks the rocker senseless. After French-kissing Gershon farewell, an older, wiser Berkley blows town, hitching a ride with, yep, luggage thief Weber. The duo heads for L.A.--to work, we hope, for Zalman King in a sexy cable TV series lifted from their roles here: each week, a little lap-dancing, a little crime-fighting. (Well... I'd lap it up).

In her delicious screen debut - THE CRUSH - flash-in-the-pan Alicia Silverstone proves that as an actress she was always 'Clueless.'

The Crush a 1993 gigglefest about a teen psycho-nymphet who makes life a living hell for the twice-her-age writer who's renting out her parents' guest house, is a fabulous Bad Movie gem. Alicia Silverstone plays this Lolita-ish minx -- think Poison Ivy in a Wonderbra -- who one second is displaying herself nude to renter Cary Elwes and the next is trying to murder his photographer girlfriend, Jennifer Rubin, by shoving swarms of buzzing wasps into a darkroom's ventilation system. We'd guess that Silverstone, who rapidly exhausts her repertoire of three expressions (coy, steamy, wacko), honed her acting licks studying the oeuvre of Cybill Shepherd. When she chirps lines at Rubin like, "Don"t worry, Amy, some guys really like girls with small breasts," we can only hope for Silverstone's sake that some guys like girls with teensy talent. And we'd guess that Elwes, who rapidly exhausts his repertoire of one expression (self-enchanted), honed his acting licks by studying the oeuvre of Ryan O'Neal. Just like O'Neal in What's Up, Doc? -- but that movie was intended as a comedy -- Elwes hopes to pass himself off as an intellectual by donning specs. Indeed, when Silverstone finds him chomping on a cigar while writing, he explains, preposterously, "Helps me think."

But it's in its crackpot plotting and kamikaze ripoffs of other moviemakers that The Crush attains Bad Movie nirvana. When Elwes can't hack a Pique magazine assignment about a Michael Milkenesque arbitrager, 14-year-old Silverstone secretly rewrites his story so brilliantly that it becomes a career-maker for him. Later, explaining her actions, Silverstone -- who sounds to us like she's learned every word of her dialogue phonetically--says, "Your split infinitives put such stress on the adverbs."

For plot reasons, Elwes's character just up and becomes stupid, which the actor does manage to convey. Long after Silverstone has etched "c-cksucker" onto the hood of his car, made a room into a candle-lit shrine to him and phoned him to say, "Guess what? Got my period. Definitely not pregnant," you'll be screaming aloud, "Ever think of moving, Cary?" Of course, if he did, we wouldn't get to savor such prize moments as Silverstone cooing, "Ever do a virgin?" Or the scene in which the heroine's rich daddy, wielding a pair of pliers, tells Elwes what he plans to do to the horny guys his little girl will soon attract: "Some friggin' kid'll be standin' there with his hard-on stickin' out of his pants," he says. "Hope I don't go breakin' it off!" By the time Silverstone gets around to the most implausible plot twist of all--she accuses Elwes of raping her and people actually believe her -- you'll be breaking in half with hilarity.

With two stars incapable of having a crush on anyone but their mirrors, we're afraid that writer-director Alan Shapiro's crush on Alfred Hitchcock is the only crush on display: Silverstone freaks out in full riding gear, like Tippi Hedren in Marnie; when Rubin fights off those wasps, it's shot like the finale of The Birds; then, falling, she grabs a curtain, like Janet Leigh in the Psycho shower. In the absurd climax, Elwes fights for his life on a twirling carousel straight out of Strangers on a Train, only this one's in an attic (don't ask).

 

Our favorite moment, though, is an original. Elwes, disturbed from his sleep by chopping noises and angry screams, investigates to find a sweaty, crazily wide-eyed Silverstone hacking away at lemons. He asks what she's doing and she hisses, "Making lemonade. Want some?"

Take it from your Auntie Helen, when you're ready for a long cool drink of laughter, catch The Crush.

Deliciously inept in almost everyway, SWIMFAN - a water-logged 'Fatal Attraction' junior for collectors of the unintentionally bad - makes one yearn for the subtle nuances of 'The Crush.'

Ripped from the pages of the See 'Dick Run, See Jane Stalk Him' handbook, SWIMFAN is as Deliciously dumb as it gets. At the center is Erika Christensen – who caught movie-goers’ attention with her riveting performance in Traffic – generating (at least) half of the unintentional laughs in this aquatic would-be thriller.

Swimfan is the story of high school good-guy Jesse Bradford. who has cleaned up his act following trouble with drugs and break-ins (since when did doctors’ teen sons get sent off to ‘juvy’ for six months after problems like that, anyway?). He’s a competitive swimmer with lots of friends, the perfect girlfriend, and the attentions of seriously psychotic new girl in school Christensen. Following a highly unlikely tryst, Bradford soon finds himself the object of his fellow flinger’s ongoing affections and before you can say ‘Haven’t I seen this jilted psycho movie a thousand times before?" Bradford’s competitive swimming dreams are on the rocks and his friends are dropping like flies.

In case anyone wishes to suggest that we oldsters may have missed the appeal of this teenpic epic, I need to point out that my girlfriend Sylvia and I watched Swimfan with an audience filled with its target demographic (her two teen girls along with my oldest son Thad and his new boyfriend Enrique), and they were all laughing hysterically at Christenson’s supposedly menacing glare from various windows as her carnage unfolded below. It's like going to a house party and watching the host defend himself against a frothing ex-girlfriend. You don't want to call the cops. You want to call Domino's.

Some of the more ludicrous touches in this junior version of Fatal Attraction include a hospital where part-time teen-aged orderlies hand out medication to the patients (we don’t think we’ll be checking in there any time soon); where intensive care wards are entirely without staff (we’ve heard of health care cutbacks, but this is ridiculous); and where teen-aged volunteers wander the halls at night with stethoscopes hanging around their necks and scalpels in their hands (are the volunteers doing surgery now?). And Swimfan, just like Fatal Attraction, eventually goes overboard with a loony melodramatic denouement in which a high school swimming pool substitutes for a bathtub.

Maybe the script is responsible for the lack of character development (we’ve already described everything we learn about Bradford, and Christensen is nothing more than a girl from elsewhere who’s in town because her parents are away), and possibly the film’s modest budget may be responsible for supporting player Dan Hedaya’s embarrassingly bad hair, but we’re certainly not going to blame editor Sarah Flack entirely for the sloppy-looking and sometimes disjointed mess that we’re left with (particularly the atrocious ending of the film, which looks like it was literally picked up off the cutting room floor and taped into place). With this film (and with his follow-up effort HIDE AND SEEK) on his resume, perhaps it would be wise for director John Polson to return to his undistinguished acting career; there’s no hint that he knows how to direct.