Aaaaaaaargh!

It’s that time of year again. As even the most worm-like besotted readers (and that includes most of ya) know, each annum The Dauphin scans the charred landscape of Moviedom to see what festering debris has ac: cumulated over the past 12 months. Yep, loyal fans, it’s Boy Howdy’s Ten Worst roster and, as usual, it reflects the drug-addled tastes of a film hierarchy that “cuts deals” in the Beverly Hills Hotel, an inn which has barred The Dauph through the year 2025. It’s enough to make you throw up into every Jacuzzi on Rodeo Drive.

Why 10 Worst? Why not 50? Our 1983 list doesn’t even have room for stupefying dross like Scarface, Two Of A Kind, Staying Alive, The Survivors, Romantic Comedy, Table For Five, (bet you forgot all about that Jon Voight classic—what a cinematic sack of owl droppings it was, too), Beyond The Limit, Angelo My Love, Hell’s Angels Forever, Get Crazy, Mr. Mom, etc. All could serve as counter-evidence to film scholars who believe that prints and negatives should be preserved.

So much for the also-rans. Let’s get to the real Crap. In keeping with time-honored CREEM policy, they’re in no Order at all (why bother, right?) and we salute each 10 Worst producer with a Boy Howdy jock-shirt actually drooled on by Iman Lababedi plus a framed poster from the 1962 film gem, Hercules In The Vale Of Woe—which is where these flicks deserve to be entombed.

OK, here goes nothing. Or, rather, worse than nothing. FLASHDANCE-A Drive-In Saturday axiom states that any film inspiring a fashion trend is just asking for a fistful of Milk Duds thrown right at the screen. Flashdance wais to blame for leg warmers being worn by people who had never danced cind, even, worse, it was responsible for off-the-shoulder tops being sport-

ed by people who didn’t even have shoulders. By now we all know Jennifer Beals didn’t do her own dancing but how many of you know she didn’t do her own acting, either? MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE—Jap veterans liked this movie ’cause it made British soldiers look like sweet boys. David Bowie fans liked it ’cause they got to see him eat flowers and kiss Oriental officers. A total of nine other people liked it worldwide, and their names will be supplied upon request. VIDEODROME—This paranoid epic from David Cronenberg is best remembered for the scene in which

Deborah Harry used her boobies for an ashtray, which I suppose is better than sticking ’em in the blender. Nevertheless, concerned church and civic groups protested that this sequence should have included a warning to viewers: “This stunt has been tested and perfected by a jDrofessional who is nearly 40 years old and has lived in close proximity to Chris Stein. Do not attempt to perform this stunt at home.” WARGAMES—Don’t you hate “what-if” films? This one drew The Dauph’s undiluted wrath. By now, everyone but Sister Theresa knows the plot. What if some videogame/

computer whiz tuned into the Pentagon’s war machine and unleashed thermonuclear devastation? Good question—but what if this film never was made? Huh? Answer me that one.

THE BIG CHILL-What’s more excruciatingly tedious than a houseful of aging hippies? A movie about a houseful of aging hippies, you say? Vou are right, Headcheese Breath. This bilge-athon claimed to star eight of the most promising American actors—in which case, there goes Hollywood’s future down the ole crapper. A 1960s soundtrack only made things worse ^where’s S/Sgt. Barry Sadler when you really need him? Aside to William Hurt: give up your career.

THE HUNGER-Back in the spring, Drive-In Saturday branded this flick chic trash and likened it to a stroll through Bloomingdale’s vampire department. On second thought, let’s make that M.H. Lamston’s. David Bowie aged 100 years in a doctor’s waiting room, which reminded The Dauphin of the last time I went for my memory restorer prescription. Susan Sarandon took off her blouse amid cries of “Put out your cigarettes.” The Hunger left the audiences starving. ROCKY IV—Rocky Balboa returned to defend his heavyweight title against Mr. T. and all of the A-Team. The Rock’s wife left him for an affair with Boom Boom Mancirii. What’s that? You say there was no Rocky IV? Not yet, anyway. But we always have a Sylvester Stallone movie on the Ten Worst list.

BABY, IT'S YOU-The female lead was played by a squirrel who, in real life, goes out with a member of Toto. The male lead resembled a reject from Abbott & Costello Meet Sha Na Na. The music was 1960s revisited, with bewildering fast forwards to Bruce Springsteen. Director John Sayles should go back to alligator and piranha films. Or, at least, he should not be allowed to Work on dry land.

THE DRAUGHTSMAN’S CONTRACT—What’s' wrong with the English? Why do they think any movie set centuries ago where people speak like damned fops and wear powdered wigs will be of any interest to anyone normal or, in The Dauph’s case, para-normal? Art house rubbish, Contract opened tp raves in New York but probably never made it across the Hudson. Further proof that Great Britain is finished. Everyone who worked on this movie should be buggered, and maybe we should invade Grenada again. ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS-Not even in the heyday of Stallone and Travolta has a single actor made Boy Howdy’s 10 Worst list three times. Well, make way for David Bowie. Then again maybe this should have qualified for 1973’s listings, since it’s 10-year-old footage, much of it hand-held, supposedly documenting Mr. Wan-derful’s “farewell concert.” Would that it had been his last appearance. By the way, many of the people shown in the 1973 audience have since grown up and even a few may have died.

So, celluloid sniffers, we’ve plumbed the depths again, unearthing a harvest of uncalled for spilth. See ya next year, when there should be another bumper crop!

A Date With Elvis

THIS IS ELVIS (Warner Home Video)

As an obsessive Elvis fan, I found the theatrical version of This Is Elvis just a tad disappointing. The “home movie” sequences were neat, but most of the performance footage wasn’t that rare (or, arguably, his best), while the dramatized reenactments (featuring actors who barely resembled the'persons portrayed) were irritating. When I needed a shot of Elvis video, I found myself watching an Elvis In The ’50.s bootleg more than the version of This Is Elvis 1 taped from HBO.

With the home video version of This Is Elvis, producers-writersdirectors Andrew Solt and Malcolm Leo have finally released the film they originally intended, and what a gem it is! Containing 42 minutes of new foOtage, it more than compensates for the irksome dramatizations

which now seem fewer and farther in-between. My only complaint is that two explicit sexual references heard in the original are now censored (there was something intriguing in hearing Elvis mention his groupie exploits) , but this is a minor complaint, and I bet This Is Elvis would have done a lot better on the theater circuit had the producers released this version for exhibition.

Some of the new material (which has been doctored to excellent quality) includes: Elvis performing “I Was The One” on the Dorsey Bros, show; performing “Hound Dog” in a tuxedo (“a monkey suit” according to Sam Phillips) on the nauseating Steve Allen show; an early interview with Wink Martindale on a Memphis dance show (the Memphis punk meets the Memphis wimp!); “Ready Teddy” on The Ed Sullivan Show (his wildest TV performance); the complete “Don’t Be Cruel” (abbreviated in the original) on the infamous “from-the-waist-up” Sullivan appearance (what he accomplishes with his eyes is breathtaking!); color “home movie” footage from a King Creole cast party; “Stuck On You” from the 1960 Frank Sinatra special; outtakes and off-camera footage from ’ the movie years; additional footage from the ’68 “comeback” special (including “If I Can Dream” and the censored bordello scene); footage from the Aloha From Hawaii concert; additional (extremely sad) footage from Elvis’s final concert, and a hilarious ’56 “jam session” between Elvis and Liberace in Las Vegas. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

My younger sister—who religiously watched Elvis movies as a kid— once told me that Elvis was the initial spark that made her “like boys,” and you’ll see a lot of that appeal here. A friend has told me that some of Elvis’s more dramatic songs make hirri think of what the voice of God might sound like, and you’ll hear a lot of that here. Much has been written about the socio-cultural implications of This Is Elvis, not to mention

what it has to say about the tragic effects of fame in America, and while this is true, what keeps me coming back to this video repeatedly is that it’s just damn entertaining. If you’re an Elvis fan, it’s worth buying a video machine for. If you’re not a fan, it will help you better understand what the fuss was all about.

Someone should send a copy to Albert Goldman.

Bill Holdship

Limes Sucked Free!

by Edouard Dauphin

Travels With A Dauph:

Friday Morning. The Dauphin deplanes in London. No trouble at Customs. Nothing to declare. Small arms, moonshine and pet ocelot concealed under opera cape go undetected. Taxi to Mayfair. Sleep 18 hours.

Saturday afternoon. Phone Cynthia Rose. She’s in America for 6 weeks. Consider calling CREEM HQ suggesting we trade columns. Go to nearest pub instead, get blasted on Cointreau and Guinness.

Dauph is in the U.K. for the usual sinister reasons; still it’s a perfect opportunity to check out the current low grade movie tastes of jaded folk who

gave us Hammer films, the Carry On series and The Great Rock TV’ Roll Swindle. Which reminds me—must drop a note to that train robber...

Sporting a title like Drive-In Saturday, one is immediately disconcerted in Britain, since there are no driveins. People here would rather park their cars and look at a field full of sheep. But trash cinema lives anyway in late night weekend shows, bizarre couplings of B movies in local theatres and even on TV, where America’s “Golden Turkey” festival of 3 years back has surfaced as The Worst Of Hollywood—same week as the Grenada invasion, too. 1 call that kicking a country when they’re down.

Though The Dauph has yet to see a better London midnight show than 1979’s double bill of Suspiria and It’s Alive!, current witching hour fare is enticing enough. The Brixton Ritzy offers Mad Max and Road Warrior back to back. Or how about the Gate’s Blade Runner teamed with Easy Rider? That should get you out on the street about 4 a.m. with a heady dose of paranoia. Then there are the strange ones—cult films here that drew only yawns in the States. Excalibur, I The Jury, Exorcist 2—The Heretic. But then these are the people who invented scones, so what can you expect?

The tradition of multiple features, long doomed in the U S., thrives here with oddities like Warhol’s Heat, Trash and Flesh together at the Everyman and, for those of you Cinematic lepers with a Stallone fixation, Rocky, Rocky II and—you guessed it—Rocky III at the Dominion, billed as “the triple event of the year—all three films in one main event.” The Dauph would sooner suck on old Leon Spinks mouthpieces than be subjected to that.

Then there’s The Worst Of Hollywood, seen on TV every Saturday eve, complete with one of the Medved brothers leaping around wildly while introducing each drecktaCular to a British studio audience that look like extras from Zombies Of Mora-Tau. An added featuremissing from the original Turkey fest—is the occasional use of superimposed arrows indicating the true identities (“Producer’s Wife,” “Director’s Girlfriend”) of bit players in classics like Plan 9 From Outer Space and Godzilla Vs. The Smog Monster.

Newly unearthed atrocities unavailable at the 1980 screenings include Wild Women Of Wongo (“Prehistoric Thrills As Never Before— Untamed Maidens Capture Their

THE ROCK YEARBOOK 1984 Edited by A1 Clark (St. Martin’s Press):: This Anglo-American (mostly Anglo) annual, now in its fourth edition, remains the best bathroom rock read of all, thanks to its almost endless variety of articles, photos, charts, lists, and quotes from the year in pop. In fact, The Rock Yearbook 1984 lavishes so much color and flash and wit oh creaky old pop that a browse through the book can easily become more fun than a listen to its subject records. Which maybe is what the Limeys — with their relentlessly healthy respect for the ephemera of pop—have been trying to tell us all along. Personally, 1 always find The Rock Yearbook’s full-color ranking of the Best & Worst album covers of the year (with suitably snotty annotations) to be the essential critics’ poll around. R.R. THE MICHAEL JACKSON STORY by Nelson George (Dell):: While this book is brief, it’s laced with interesting facts and quotes that would provoke the most loyal of Jackson fans. Though no serious insights into the personality of Michael are provided, the conclusions we can draw about him simply because of his chosen religion—he’s a devout Jehovah’s Witness—are

Mates!”). And there are fresh personal revelations. For example, bet you didn’t know that Phil Tucker, director of Robot Monster,. was so devastated by the flick’s bad reviews that he took a drug overdose and was hospitalized for the next nine years. And Tom Greiff, who helmed Teenagers From Outer Space, was similarly distressed by critical lambasting to the extent that he fled America, legally changed his name to Jesus Christ 2 and was never heard from again.

This month’s Media Cool was written by J. Bassett, Dave DiMartino, Ann Marie Fazio and Richard Riegel.

startling. No sex, no booze, and an aversion towards eating. He avoids discos or parties and lives with mom because he’s “afraid to be alone.” This is Michael Jackson?? This is the same guy millions of us would love to be?? If there is a moral to this book (and Aesop would kill me for drawing one), it’s that the real Michael Jackson—without the stage and glitter—is like sex without intrigue.

If only The Dauph could do the same...

But he can’t, so:

Wednesday night. Back in the U.S.A. Strip-searched at Customs, detained overnight, all contraband seized including private videotapes of Ozzy Osbourne at ferret-eating competition. Phone Cynthia Rose. She is back in Britain. The lengths people will go to in order to avoid The Dauph can be staggering.

Thursday afternoon. See Strange Invaders. Not to be confused with the same director’s Strange Behavior of 1981, Invaders is a cold-blooded but ultimately genial sci-fi/horror film that pays loving homage to mindless 1950s efforts like The Day The Earth Stood Still and the original Body Snatchers. Paul LeMat, looking pudgier than ever (Better ease up on those Ring Dings, Paul, unless you want to be the spokesman for Fat Boy jeans.) plays an entymologist trying to uncover the awful secret of Centerville U.S.A., a Midwest town where, as in Birmingham, Michigan, the residents have remained unchanged since 1958. Your town too, you say? Sorry to hear that.

LeMat is accompanied on his quest by Nancy Allen as a reporter for a national sleaze tabloid called The Informer. She tries to discourage him (“Two-headed dogs are big right now but aliens are passe.”) but Paul persists and, naturally enough, comes face to face with the inhabitants of a UFO who have assumed the bodies of average corn husk-

The fantasy is better than the reality. J.B.

ROLLING STONE ROCK ALMANAC (Rolling Stone Press):: FEBRUARY 23, 1984: On sale date of CREEM issue containing a disinterested pan of the Rolling Stone Rock Almanac with a smirking aside that it wouldn’t be above CREEM to appropriate much of the “useful” information the book provides for its very own monthly calendar. D.D. THE COMPLETE AIR GUITAR HANDBOOK by John McKenna and Michael Moffitt (Long Shadow Books):: Until now, I thought nothing could be more annoying than air guitarists energetically picking at their raised knees or vigorously strumming their hips as popular music loudly wah-wahs from the stereo. But something more obnoxious has appeared—this. At first flip through, the book looks pretty funny. It’s full of grainy black and white pictures of air musicians going at it. If you’ve ever seen any in person, you can imagine how hilarious a still picture of them is, with their posture and expression frozen. But the rest of the book is just plain dumb. Not clever, not funny, barely amusing, just D-U-M. When it defines air guitar as “a clean, safe way

ers in order to study the ways of our so-called planet. Some very nasty special effects take place when said aliens divest themselves of earthly skins, with one of them even gorily doing so in a room at the New York Hilton. (Last time I’ll ever stay at that place.)

Strange Invaders is true drive-in fare-pviolent, disturbing, even camp —though its heart is as soft as a Twinkie left overnight on the radiator. See it. And if you should happen to speak to Cynthia Rose, tell her I’ll stay out of her country if she’ll stay out of mine.

to bring the fantasy of rock ’n’ roll stardom to everyone,” you can’t figure out if the book is failing in its attempt to be sarcastic-and-thereforehysterically-funny or if it’s being serious. Dumb. A.M.F.

GET CRAZY Directed by Alan Arkush (Rosebud Films):: Despite ardent pre-release notices (see Feb. ’83 CREEM), Get Crazy seems to have glanced off the theatre screens without a trace, as it’s already making the cable TV rounds. Get Get Crazy when and where you can, as Arkush has largely scrapped the M.A.S.H.-like us & them-isms that mired his Rock ’N’ Roll High School so badly, and has come up with a film much higher in trash integrity. A semi-autobiographical account of Arkush’s days as a Fillmore East stagehand* Get Crazy is more valuable for its dry & dopey satire of our rock scene. The casting alone is worth your Viewer’s Choice plunkdown: Lou Reed as the dunced-out folk prophet “Auden” (= “Dylan”), Malcolm McDowell as a chubbier generic Jagger, the Doors’ John Densmore (!?) as his Keefish Katzenjammer buddy, Bobby Sherman and Fabian Forte as Tattoo-IQ hoodlums, etc., etc. Rock life in all its glamor! R.R.