Greetings, movie buffs. Has it really been an entire year since we catalogued the dregs of a motion picture season? Have 12 months gone by since we listed the execrable excesses of dying Hollywood? Have 52 weeks elapsed since we saluted with the tip of a sleazy Stetson the crass, thick-headed refuse of a cocaineaddled, agent-infested society that considers the Beverly Hills Hotel the apex of Western culture? Have 365 days blown by since we gave you Boy Howdys Ten Worst Movies Of The Year? Well, look at your calendar, stupid, obviously its a year later!

Seems like only yesterday we were speculating that 1981 couldnt possibly be worse than 1980 had been. After all, didnt Ordinary People, one of last years worst flicks, go on to win the Oscar for Best Picture? How could 81 fail to mark a step forward? Then this seasons movies began to be released and we squirmed to the likes of Excalibur, Postman Always Rings Twice, Outland, Buddy Buddy, Whose Life Is It Anyway, Paternity, and Debbie Does Dakar. Well you get the idea.

Any of those bombs could have qualified for this years list and its a tribute to 81s awfulness that they had to settle for runner-up status. So without further ado, lets get on to citing the Ten Worst Movies Of 1981. In keeping with CREEM tradition, wed like to salute each of the producers with a Boy Howdy been can personally driven over by SueDeath Ray Whitall, and an autographed copy of Lothar And The Hand Peoples single,Let The Boy Pretend. Because in terms of cinematic achievement, these films were solidly in the realm of Pretend.

As usual, theyre in no particular order cause they all stank of rancid anchovy oil about equally.

BODY HEAT-To call this film the American Gigolo of 1981 is to damn it with faint praise. So, when has CREEM ever shied away from damning with faint praise? Long on style and short on everything else, this is the wearisome saga of two bored people forced to plot a murder in a Florida devoid of air conditioning. William Hurt is supposed to be charismatic but fails, Kathleen Turner is supposed to be sexy and succeeds, though Lauren Bacall may sue for plagiarism. Their story is the worst thing to come out of the Everglade State since Jimmy Buffett.

SUPERMAN II -There is no excuse. We knew at the end of Superman there would be a sequel. We even knew the footage had already been shot, in a move reminiscent of Three Musketeers. The summer would be hot and there would be a dearth of movie entertainment. But still there is no excuse. If we went to this sorry comic strip twice removed, it could only have been due to the baseball strike, beach ennui or (and this is the worst) curiosity about the Man Of Steel getting nookie from Lois Lane. Sex has never been so boring. There is no excuse. ASHRAM—You say you never heard of this flick? You ai;e not alone. It'surfaced briefly and drew a devoted following, mostly dressed in orange. See, this is the documentary about an Indian guru who rules his minions through a combination of discipline, psychodrama, goonish grins and color coordination. His orange-clad faithful adore him, but as a cinematic figure the master is a cross between Sabu and Dave DiMartino. Bring back Timothy Leary—or at least bring him back to Canada.

MOMMIE DEARESTEverything you always wanted to know about Joan Crawford but never asked-1cause you really didnt care that much. So she was a vicious child beater. Are any of us perfect? Daughter Christinas whinings reach the screen with all the impact of a Tab-soaked breadcrumb. Faye Dunaway has never been worse or spent so much time in Makeup. The director should be beaten with a wire hanger. Still, not a movie without its charms—in fact, the only picture ever to make my Ten Worst and Ten Best list at the same time. You figure it out. NAPOLEON—Someone sold the public a bill of goods on this one. This picture is 50 years old and were just getting it now. Whats more, it has no sound! At Radio City Music Hall they had to bring in a live orchestra just so there would be some music! But did they bring in the high-kicking Rockettes? Not on your life. I asked for my money back and boycotted the Nativity Show just on principle.

AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON-John Landis made Animal House and we laughed. He made Blues Brothers and we smiled indulgently. He made American Werewolf and we tossed our cookies in the lobby. Not a horror flick, certainly not a comedy, this filmic blob features a dull soda commercial star as its chief attraction and a soundtrack that could double as The Worst Of K-Tel. Hey, David Naughton, how does it feel to make your film debut and farewell at the same time? STEVIE—Glenda Jackson portrays poetess Stevie Smith in the closest thing in a movie theater we˜ve seen to what we can get on Public Broadcasting at home for nothing. Its almost enough to make you wish for Dick Cavett. (I said almost.)

KNIGHT RIDERS-Once upon a time there was George Romero who directed Night Of The Living Dead. His films were so good we forgave him for coming from Pittsburgh. But that was in the from Pittsburgh. But that was in the past. Knight Riders, Romeros latest, is an attempt to update the King Arthur legend by putting it on motorcycles. Think about that for a minute. Then try thinking about it for two more hours and twenty minutes, the running time of this crushing bore of a film that would be enough to cause Arthur to drive Excalibur back into the stone. George Romero can no longer be excused for coming from Pittsburgh.

THE HOWLING-How often do two werewolf movies make the same Ten Worst list? Actually, three if you count Mommie Dearest. No doubt about it, though, The Howling is the sorriest lycanthrope flick since 1961s Werewolf In A Girls Dormitory—which at least had the saving grace of its theme song,The Ghoul In School. Twenty years is a long time to wait ...for nothing.

ENDLESS LOVE-Come on. You didnt think The Dauph could compile this years list without including Endless Lump. But so what. I still love the Calvin ads, Brooke, and you can meet me out back of the CREEM building next time you want to playDoctor.

If I Had A Black & Decker Chain Saw

HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING: PETE SEEGER by David King Dunaway (McGraw-Hill)

Music and revolution go hand in hand—as everyone knows—sort of like GomerPyle and mass murder. You know:Ser-prahz, ser-phraz, ser-phrazl The most revolutionary form of music is certainly rock music and theres no use in arguing about it. Its probably the only significant rival the Childrens Crusade has ever had.

Now there was this really terrible time (a long time ago, granted) when people didnt have any rock music at all! Look it up; its true. On top of that, people lived in all manner of misery and despair and sort of eked out their unfortunate lives the best they could. What caused all this woe, anyway?

Well, it seems that there was this class of people who lived mighty high off the hog and got fat on the labor of the miserable worms who were so far below them. Those terrible people were called capitalists—if there were any around today you might find em working at an FM radio station.

Be that as it may, people still had music in that backward age. What they had was called folk music and it was made by the common people to sort of raise their depressed spirits. What a terrible time it was!

It so happened that this one fellow, whose name was Pete Seeger, got real interested in this folk music and even learned how to play this strange folk instrument called a five-string banjo (which is sort of like a real crude Les Paul) managably well. And he was a pretty fair songwriter, to boot.

This Seeger fellow came from a kind of well-to-do family. It seems his father was a professor of history, or some such and his mother was a classical musician, which was about as far as you could go back then. So you can see that he was no slouch, and probably could have lorded it over other folks—but he wasnt cut from that bolt of gabardine.

No sir, he saw straight away that he could try to help people out of their misery and woe with his songs. This was pretty amazing for a person who could have maybe been a capitalist if hed tried and wasnt even colored. But its the gospel.

One thing he did was write a whole slew of songs to rally folks to something calledUnionism which ' nobody knows much about nowadays. It appears it had something to do with getting those capitalist people off everybodys back sos they could make a halfway decent living. Of course, those capitalists didnt take to that notion, and they werent the least bit scared to go around beating up those poor Union people just like that! Seeger got beat up lots of times. One time they even shot at him and his little kids and another time they threw him in jail! Wasnt that just the way it was, though?

None of this daunted Pete Seeger, though. He kept on plugging and wrote all sorts of songs that people remember right up till this very day. He just persisted until rock music came around to lead people out of the darkness and he got awful mad at Bob Dylan, who everybody knows about, because he started playing fearsome loud at something called the Newport Folk Festival and then a lot of musicians got real wealthy and Pete Seeger could only appear on Sesame Street because nobody could remember if he was a real revolutionary or not and then everybody started taking drugs and this Dunaway fellow wrote this book about Mr. Seeger, the same one Im talking about.

Its a real good book, even though it seems mighty far-fetched to think some of these adventures really happened. If you have any money left after you buy a whole bunch of albums those nice folks at the record store sell, you might want to buy it.

J. Kordosh