Hiya, masochists. It’s movie caca time again. Normally this review of the year’s worst pictures appears an issue earlier, but the very thought of writing about 1982’s releases sent The Dauph into a month-long depressive tailspin that could only be relieved by electroshock massage and the promise of a CREEM check upon completion of typing, to be delivered in person by a scantily clad Phoebe Cates.

Things must be rough in the creative think tanks of Hollywood. In other words, the quality of the cocaine out there must really be declining. How else can you explain that the following bombs that would normally be shoo-ins for the Ten Worst roster only qualified as runners-up this annum? I’m talking about unmitigated ambergris like Hanky Panky, The Beastmaster, A Little Sex, Cannery Row, An Officer And A Gentleman, The Amateur, If You Could See What I Hear and Six Pack. Whew! Vom-inducing dreck, all of it, but only second rate.

So here goes first rate and, in keeping with CREEM policy, we’d like to salute each producer with a Boy Howdy chemise top once slept in by Rick Johnson, along with two tickets to a September ’82 screening of Psycho From Texas. Enjoy your prizes, folks, you had to nose out a lot of slime to win ’em.

Here’s our winners list—in no particular order since The Dauph forgot how to alphabetize back in 1967.

FRIDAY THE 13TH—PART 3 —The gimmick of 3D proved enticing so we went. The opening credits were pretty good. From there, the picture went careening downhill. Who owns Camp Crystal Lak£ anyway and could it please be shut down before Part 4 is unleashed upon us—no doubt in Cinerama?

E.T.—Sure, it’s Oscar material. Of course, some six year olds liked it. But if you woke up the average person at three in the morning, shone a flashlight into their eyes and asked if they really thought E.T. was a great movie, you’d get some surprising answers and maybe even a trip to Knuckly Junction if one of those sleepers was The Dauph. Let’s face it, E. T. was recycled Spielberg. He re-used the space creatures from Close Encounters, the suburban kids from Poltergeist, the man-eating shark from Jaws. You say you don’t remember the shark in £. T. ? Go back to sleep.

CAT PEOPLE—Here’s another one you probably erased from memory. Nasty Kinski—she of the distended belly and the snakeplayed a mystery girl with a yen for large felines. Malcolm McDowell portrayed her incestuous brother ' and spent most of the movie leaping up and down from bureaus. The Dauphin spent most of the movie out in the lobby playing Defender.

THE TOY—This is not even a film. It must have been conceived in a Polo Lounge meeting and born in an agent’s deal memo. Jackie Gleason buys Richard Pryor as a toy for his son. And that’s it. What? You say you want a plot with real characters? Huh? You want to laugh too? Jeez, that’s asking a lot for five dollars. Gleason and Pryor, who reportedly hated each other on sight, looked like they were filmed on two Separate soundstages, maybe even two separate continents. Fifteen minutes into the celluloid smell-a-thon, the audience began to stir and a palpable resentment began to build in the theatre. The Dauphin exited just as the crowd stormed the box office and savaged the ushers.

AUTHOR! AUTHOR!-He starred in Serpico, both Godfathers and Dog Dai; Afternoon. In a given year, he must be offered thousands of scripts. So what does Al Pacino choose to devote 1982 to? A lame-brained tale of an off-Broadway playwright whose wife leaves him with a passel of boring children. See Al be & doting dad. See Al get a terminal case of the cutes. Even The Dauph’sfave, Dyan Cannon, couldn’t save this bomb. But then what Could one expect from a picture with two exclamations in the title? May the "author of this screenplay have his fingers fall victim to vicious paper cuts. And better luck in ’83, Al, or your career is headed for the toilet. PARTNERS-Admit it. You forgot all about this movie. You put it out of your mind the minute you saw the poster showing Ryan O’Neal pointing a police revolver at his head while “partner” John Hurt pointed a hair blower. Story had a -straight cop (O’Neal) and a bent one (Hurt) teaming up to solve a series of murders in the gay community. Pretty hilarious premise, eh? You were right to forget about this movie.

ROCKY III—Since the inception of this feature, no year has passed without a Sylvester Stallone film on the 10 Worst List. But Rocky III was truly in a class by itself. As if you didn’t know, Rocky returned to the square jungle wars vs. a hulking Negro named Mr. T. who looked like a cross between a Mohawked Rick James and an armored personnel carrier. No one in their right mind would fight this brute, so Rocky jumped right into the ring with him. The negative of this film should have been slashed in the developing room with a razor.

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP—If you liked the book, changes are you hat’ed the movie for leaving out the European passage. If you despised the book, as I did, you probably hated the film for being so faithful to it. If you like Robin Williams, you should be shot at dawn. If you despise him, as I do, sitting through this movie was more unpleasant than having dried weasel flesh driven down your throat on a spike.

INCHON—This was an inspiring motion picture produced by that revered leader, Rev. Sun Myung Moon. It starred Sir Laurence Olivier in a magnificent performance as that splendid military genius, Gen. Douglas MacArthur. It depicted the glorious efforts of U.S. troops to combat the forces of the godless Communist conspiracy during the war for the freedom of that great democracy, the Republic of South Korea. Please send more Twinkies and white bread. And tell my mom and dad they’re invited to my wedding when I will marry a Korean girl 1 haven’t met yet. Do not attempt to kidnap me: I do not need deprogramming. This has been a recording.

YES, GIORGIO—Following in the cinema footsteps of Mario Lanza was a questionable proposition at best. Doing it badly was unforgiveable. With any luck, Luciano Pavarotti will not be making any more films.

And with any luck, we’ll be back again next year when the state of the.art in Hollywood just has to be better. Or does it?

Too Many Creeps

by Edouard Dauphin

When you walk the junk movie beat, life can be maze of shattered dreams and lost illusions. What’s the word they use to describe us hard-bitten critics with screening room eyes? Oh, yes. Jaded. They say we’ve sat in the dark so long in •cramped, smoky surroundings that we’ve ceased to be surprisable and, worse still, we’ve abandoned all expectations of ever seeing a really' : good motion picture.

To those charges, The Dauph replies “Bulldicky.” Why, this year alone I’ve been eagerly awaiting a bevy of new films: the sequel to Revenge Of The Shogun Women; the new Hitchcock; any wrestling or Aztec Mummi/ picture from Mexico and, perhaps most of all,

Creepshow, the first movie teaming schlockmeisters George (Living Dead) Romero and Stephen King.

First off, Creepshow is an episode horror film, A troubled, even cursed genre that over the years has resulted in only a handful of gems, notably Dead Of Night, Asylum, Torture Garden and Tales From The Crypt. The last named pictures was based on an EC comic, which is the impression Creepshow’s makers would like to give about their picture, though it isn’t true. A more serious problem is that Creepshow attempts tcf combine comic book graphics with celluloid shock effects—and this is where the movie falls apart like a pair of Iggy Pop’s trousers at a live concert.

“Father’s Day,” the first episode, ,is a painfully predictable story of a corpse who returns from the grave to kill off his sniveling relatives while bellowing for Father’s Day cake. It sounds funnier than it is, which is more than you can say about episode two, in which author King plays a Ripple-'Swilling, backwoods rube who fondles a meteor only to have his whole body become* infested with slimy green fungus.

Next up. is “Something To Tide You Over." an obvious tale of revenge distinguished chiefly by Leslie Nielsen’s sly, tongue in cheek performance. This old duffer, who once romanced Debbie Reynolds in Tammy And The Bachelor, is finally getting some well deserved recognition via Airplane and The Dauph’s fave TV show,-the recently departed Police Story.

“The,Crate” stars Adrienne Barbeau and a bunch of other people I paid absolutely no attention to. Lasf up is “They’re Creeping Up On You,” a tedious tour de force with E.G. Marshall as a tyrannical businessman besieged by legions of cockroaches, a common enough experience for those of us who live in New York. Then the film is over and you feel as though you’ve just watched five bad to mediocre TwilightZones in a row. It’s enough to make you jaded.

☆ ☆ ☆

“Close your eyes and sleep forever” notes the ad copy for The Slumber Party Massacre and those of us who padded into the midnight showing wondered if that might be a portent of just hbw boring this movie would be. Fortunately, it wasn’t, and this nifty little shocker could well go on to become the - sleeper—you should pardon the expression—of the year.

“Mass Murderer Of 5, Russ Thorn Escapes” shrieks the newspaper headline shown at the start of the film and even then you know that the dim-witted girls arranging this slumber party are not the newspaper reading types. The action unfolds in Venice, Cal., last bastion of ’60s hippiedom, though a wholesomer, more scrubbed bunch of coeds haven’t been seen on a movie screen since Gidget Went Hawaiian.

Even Russ Thorn looks well groomed, though there’s nothing , refined about the way he wields a power drill as he proceeds to tum a frolicsome conclave of lissome teenettes into a multi-bodied bloodbath of epic, sometimes humorous, proportions. Even the hapless delivery man who comes to the slumber party bearing a large pizza gets a drill through the eye.

New—to us, anyway—director Amy Jones has fashioned a classic genre film in the Halloween tradition. At times, Slumber Parti/ winces at its own violence but the clever humor more than makes up for the occasional squeamishness. I mean, when’s the last time you say a film where the mass murderer worked out of a telephone truck? Reach out and touch someone!