DRIVEN SATURDAY

DRIVEN SATURDAY

Pressed To Swill

by Edouard Dauphin

“The second before she screams will be the most frightening moment of your life.”

Maybe. If you’ve never seen The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, ridden New York City subways or glimpsed Bun E. Carlos without his clothes on.

The “she” is Angie (Police Woman) Dickinson, playing, if you can believe it, a sex-starved hausfrau. The film is Dressed To Kill, latest horror concoction from director Brian De Palma, a man who has ripped off Alfred Hitchcock so many times he ought to be arrested for grave desecration.

j The “second before she screams” occurs When Angie, fresh from an afternoon delight with a bespectacled cunnilingus freak pick-up with venereal disease, steps into an elevator only to be butchered to death by a transvestite psychoanalyst. Serves her right; she shoulda taken the stairs.

Chief suspect in the brutal razor slaying is Nancy Allen (De Palma’s real-life spouse— wonder if she had to audition), a wise-cracking hooker whoplays the stock market for a hobby. Before long, she gets bullish on a junjor scientist, son of the deceased, who vows to help her clear her name. He puts his scientific know-how to '

work with results good enough to make Mr. Wizard stroke his Bunsen burner for joy.

After several red herrings have been disposed of, the finger of guilt points to Angie’s shrink, played by Michael Caine, that terminally awful actor who after 15 years in Hollywood, continues to talk with a Cockney accent. He was one of the last people to see Angie before her syphilitic whoopee session, he lisps, walks funny and can’t wait to show America his Underalls.

Skip Dressed To Kill and show us your Underalls.

☆ ☆ ☆

“In war, you have to kill to stay alive. On the streets of New York, if s ofteh the same.”’

Fighting words, huh? Could be a quote from one of Ronnie Reagan’s campaign speeches, right? Nah, it’s the philosophy of The Exterminator, title character in a sleazoid film that disproves Drive-In Saturday’s long held adage:

“Any movie that begins with a decapitation can’t be all bad.”

The Exterminator is all bad Aside from its technical shoddiness (microphone booms drop into frame with more regularity than white splotches at a pigeon convention), the script is contemptible (a character excuses himself from the dinner table with: “Before I eat another meal,

I’fl better get rid of the one I had last night”) and the performers look like graduates of the Sonny Bono School Of Acting.

Using an urban violence recipe combining the grossest elements of Death Wish and Taxi Driver, the film depicts a Vietnam-scarred hero who sets out to avenge the senseless mugging that paralyzed his best friend. His solution: go on a one-man slaughtering rampage that will have every moviegoing sadist singing “I Love New York.”

This professional strength dynamo uses a commendable assortment of wipe-out methods. He drills a mercury-poisoned bullet into the obese hide of a chicken-hawking sex perv, later identified as a state senator from New Jersey (probably from Bruce’s district). Two members of a scuzzy youth gang, the Ghetto Ghouls, are chained down and served to a horde of rats. And a mafia don who specialized in shaking down hard working meat wholesalers is fed painstakingly into—what else—a meat grinding machine. I may never order steak tartare again.. See The Exterminator. It’s better than Roach Motel and D-Con combined!

☆ ☆ ☆

The time: A night in June. The place: The St. Regis Hotel, NYC. The event: The Dauphin’s prom. The orchestra: (Jesus) Lester Lanin. The Charge Against Yours Truly: Drunk and Disorderly.

Yes, my prom was memorable, punctuated by a bleary-eyed, wild-swinging brawl initiated by yours truly, who became enraged to see a certain Jim Kavanaugh, noted student government stooge, blithely-crashing a senior event when he was, in fact, nothing more than a lowly ass-kissing junior! Yes, the fists flew that night a more than a few cummerbunds were bloodiedr Which brings us to Prom Night, a film infinitely more boring than real life. A flimsy whodunit masquerading as a shock flick, this pale imitation of/Halloween features the most goonish assortment of suburban teen dullards this side of a James Taylor concert. When it develops that the jerks chose disco as their prom music, we lose all sympathy for them and can only long for Lester Lanin and wish the axe murderer stalking their school would strike soon.

He does, butnot soon enough. Skip Prom Night and, if you see Jim Kavanaugh, tell him to meet me in the alley out back of the St. Regis. Don’t tell him I got brass in pocket this time.