Long before Redbox, grocery chains were a formidable competitor for video and game rentals.
Many, MANY moons ago, I grew up in a quaint neighborhood where I had the privilege of having both a community center and a shopping mall about a mile away from my house. Just past the community canter and a bridge to the freeway, stood an array of stores that served my childhood basic needs, such as a McDonald’s, Naugles, Pizza Hut, Sav-On Drugs Pharmacy, the ALL IMPORTANT Mom-and-Pop video rental store Action Video, and our local Smiths grocery store-which also harbored its own video rental shop inside the store walls.
It’s another store inside a store! Cue it Mike!
Being able to grab a package of Magic Middles, some cherry coke, and a rental copy of Creepshow 2 is an experience that only 80s and 90s kids really got to live through, and I’m pretty happy I was a part of it. Although I have heard some whisperings throughout the Internet of some being active in small towns around the USA, they have mostly been lost to time and overshadowed by their big brothers of local video rental stores and the dreaded Blockbuster mass market for people looking back on video rental days with their nostalgia hats on; and I personally think they deserve a lot more respect dammit.
To be clear, I was a pretty loyal customer to Action Video, the fact that my mother worked at the deli inside Smiths sometimes made it more convenient for me rent or her to pick up and drop off my weekend requests if they were available. Plus, it never hurt that the clerk gave me free boxes of Raisinets. Also, there was something quite charming about them. They were small, quaint, and very personable. Hell, some of them even donned the ever mysterious black curtain!
It was also something to look forward to if you so happened to be dragged against your will to go grocery shopping with your parents because at least you could make that request to rent Sleepaway Camp a lot more convincing since you (or they) didn’t have to walk a few store pegs down to retrieve it; just to the front of the store by the smokey slot machines!
Don’t forget your free kid cookie card that allows you one free fresh chocolate chip cookie from the bakery on the way up there!
I also have to appreciate that if Action Video or your preferred video rental stop were out of stock of your wishlist movie or NES game, you could usually rely on ye-old tiny faithful here to at least have ONE copy of what you were wanting. Yeah, the place was like the size of my living room, (at least this one was anyway) but goddamn if they couldn’t fit at least 3,000 movies in there with their magic bred’ skills. Napoleon Dynamite would have pleased. These places did well enough mind you, but I just don’t think they had the kind of foot traffic a full sized store would have- hence the chances of your beloved rental being there even higher.
So indeed, I just wanted to take a portion of my day and salute these little video shops inside grocery chains. You made that Saturday morning food shopping trip a little more tolerable.
Short Circuit 2sure as shit might not be anyone’s favorite movie, and it’s definitely received a decent amount of hate as far as sequels go. But I’m here to set the record straight: It’s really not as bad as it’s made out to be.
I’ll admit to most people’s standards, you could consider my taste in films to be pretty awful. I was that kid who actually enjoyed terrible films like Garbage Pail Kids andMac and Me. Are they badly made films? Yes, of course, they are. But I do find some sort of sick nostalgic joy in them every once in a while? Also, absolutely yes. There’s a sly charm inside “Black Sheep” films such as these that you won’t see elsewhere. A great example is the campy and comedic Howard the Duck as it was and still is, panned critically by a lot of cinephile snobs. But, honestly, how can you hate on a movie that showed us the first pair of duck tits ever on a theater screen?
Also, they were, indeed, the first pair of legit boobs I saw as a kid.
The sequel made two years after the original cult-classic Science-Comedy debuted to audiences didn’t seem to fare over well to the same group of people that embraced the now-named Johnny Five as their machine-wired counterpart to our human existence via the glorious 80s. Plenty of people talk a lot of shit about this sweet and sensitive robot turned vigilante scooting around New York City in the 80s- and I’ve had enough of it.
In fact, I’ll just let Johnny himself tell those people exactly what I think about their distaste for Short Circuit 2…
Number Five, now dubbed Johnny Five as he so enthusiastically named himself at the end of the first film, now finds himself in New York helping Ben Jahveri (Fisher Stevens) and tag-along scumbag street-slinger “friend” Fred (Michael McKean) get Ben’s business going into mass production with mini Johnny Five robot toys for kids. Cute, right? Well of course in the middle of this old warehouse Fred had scrounged up as ground zero for the assembly line, is right in the way of a couple of diamond burglars’ plans to heist a very valuable set of jewels. And of course, we all know that our formidable heroes will have to face off against these scoundrels towards the end of the film so we have to throw in a bunch of zany subplots to fill the void until then. Such as:
Upon Johnny Five realizing he’s in a city, the once midwestern town robot immediately gets duped into ripping off car stereos by a Latin gang; and then make him an honorary member. “Los Locos kick your ass! Los Locos kick your face! Los Locos kick your balls intoouter space!”
Ben falls in love with the girl who discovered his toys and got him a deal for a line and is too socially awkward to tell her how he feels. J5 to the rescue as he hijacks a Times Square billboard where he helps woo his friend’s love interest while teaching us some insults in Spanish.
Fred tries to sell J5 on the side of his Rolex watch hustle, and our pre-Wall-E robot falls out of a skyscraper via the fear of him being a corporate slave. Just like Batman, this guy has all the gadgets and is saved by his backpack wing glider, and we get a fantastic pre 9/11 view of the New York City skyline!
Johnny gets arrested on the street because the cop thinks he’s a man in a suit or someone playing a joke.
Ben and Fred get locked in a freezer by the jewel thieves and are rescued in the most ridiculous way possible: calling Ben’s love interest (Cynthia Gibb) and using ye’ old faithful touch tones keypads to play oldies pop songs that give her clues to their location. Oh, with the help of a very nice taxi driver- which is already bullshit fantasy because ain’t no taxi driver in Manhattan that friendly.
All those filler antics have their place in the film for some sort of progression I suppose, be it the hammer over our heads that Johnny Five has emotions like the rest of us, or that we goddamn better remember the exact tune to “Doo Wah Diddy” if ever I get locked in a fish freezer. But perhaps the best moments in this follow-up film that originally starred Alley Sheedy and Steve Guttenberg, is when J5 is cornered by the jewel thieves and beaten to a “battery fluid bloody pulp” in broad daylight on a public sidewalk.
Hey, just another day in New York in the 80s!
What a fucked up segment in a movie that was aimed more at kids this time around. But eh, that’s just the beauty of 80s movies’ trauma.
This is where you might get some sort of feels going, or just laugh your ass off depending on what kind of sick fuck you are, (personally a mix of both is totally acceptable). Left for dead, J5’s backup power kicks and miraculously gets up, rather painfully and makes his way down an alley where Fred finds his frenemy. Lucky for them, Johhny damn near collapses by a Radio Shack and as we all know, that place is the Johns Hopkins Hospital for robots. With a little aid from Fred, the former military robot rebuilds himself into Travis Bickle from TAXI DRIVER and goes on a revenge rampage to track down the men responsible.He is so pissed off, he ignores his low battery warnings and literally revenges himself to death. Well, close to it anyway because what kind of ending would that be for kids?
It’s a 80s flick aimed at kids, so it would be a proper ending if you asked me.
Let’s get one thing straight. This movie may suck to a lot of people. But for the rest of us, it’s a feel-good kind of suck that we want to revisit over and over again. As a kid, we all liked these movies, this one in particular, but as I grew older, the child in people just died and formed some sort of disdain for this film; like it was idiotic to like this movie or something. And honestly, the hell with those people.
Worth noting, however, is the “Brownface” donned by Fisher Stevens as an immigrant from India, whereas looking at it now is a tad cringe and unacceptable. At the very least, they made the guy a scientist and not some corner store worker. This isn’t a dig at Fisher Stephens by any means. From what I understand, he worked very hard at getting the accent down and he is a talented guy. However, to this very day, the only guy able to pull this off and get away with it is Robert Downey Jr in TROPIC THUNDER. Other than that, looking back at films like this and SOUL MAN (1986), it’s just a little uncomfortable, especially in today’s climate of change.
Aside from the unpolitically correct problem there in SHORT CIRCUIT 2, the film does a pretty decent job of sending a good message about not being accepted in America and the tribulations of those going through the system to become a citizen. It’s a little subtle for young eyes, but upon viewing it as an adult, the theme seems a little more apparent. And hell, we get to see our Johnny become the first robotic citizen!
As zany, whacky and ridiculous as most of the movie is, at the end of the day, it really isn’t that bad of a sequel. In fact, I actually PREFER it over the first! Yeah, I said it. I just wish they would have made a third one!
Let’s face it. Martin is pretty fly for a monster alley.
It was February 1989 and a pretty highly spoken about film around the Mom-and-Pop video store (ACTION VIDEO) where I had frequented, rummaging around the horror video section like the very young gorehound I was, had just been released. At the time, I had only actually seen bits and pieces of David Cronenberg’s body horror masterpiece, THE FLY, mostly because I was six-years-old, and I had only caught a few scenes of the film courtesy of my cousins. The word around the video store via the owner and employees was that THE FLY II was highly anticipated around there, and I distinctly remember hearing those adult horror fanatic conversations as a young genre fan who had just made her crossover into able to rent slasher movies; (A Nightmare On Elm Street, Friday the 13th, etc…) I was truly fascinated by ugly movie monsters, so my parents allowed me to rent THE FLY for a watch so I could be cool like the clerks at Action Video. And holy fucking gross-out I had no idea what I was getting into.
And to be quite honest, nothing grossed me out and stuck with more than the hand-wrestling scene.
Now, being six-years-old, I didn’t really understand the true complexity of THE FLY. I knew it was gross, but also kind of sad. I also knew I kind of really dug it. So I had BEGGED my mother for us to go see the sequel because I knew it had to do with Brundle Fly Jr; and I had to see what the fuck would come next after this. She reluctantly agreed, and guess what? I lasted 30 mins before I began crying hysterically inside the theater over a beautiful dog that was turned into mush. I was immediately taken out and brought to the nearest Toys ‘R’ Us to try and help soothe my hyperventilating ass.
I cried for a damn week, y’all. Also, I’m reliving some PTSD and welling up now, even thinking of that image. Excuse me while I go cover my dog in kisses and hugs.
Anyway, it took me a few years and a lot of balls to finish the movie, I think I may have been around 12. Getting past the traumatic dog scenes was just as hard as it was the first time, but I managed to push through it- and beyond the PTSD, I actually rather enjoyed the movie.
Listen, we all know THE FLY II is in no way better than its predecessor, so let’s just get that out of the way. That being said, the sequel had some massive shoes to fill and with all the low-critic scoring on this one, I’m here to say that’s a bit unfair. Directed by the first film’s makeup and animatronic effects specialist Chris Walas, with a screenplay by Frank Darabont and Mick Garris, the sequel suffered “intense meddling” by studio execs on what they wanted to see; and according to Darabont himself, these were people that hadn’t even SEEN the first movie! That in itself is a crime and makes me want to regurgitate my own acid reflux.
That being said, THE FLY II went through at least several different ideas, scripts, and rewrites before settling on what we know starring Eric Stoltz as Martin Brundle (fun fact: Keanu Reeves was the studio’s first choice to play Brundlefly 2.0, but he turned it down), and Daphne Zuniga who took some time off from the Planet Druidia to play his love interest. We open with a woman who is supposed to look like Geena Davis giving birth in a laboratory surrounded by the assholes of Bartok Industries. She dies in childbirth as a horrified and hysterical and also now crippled, Stathis Borans looks on as what is pushed out is a wriggling larva pod (I’m so glad his smart ass in this movie) and the baby is now the sole property of Bartok Labs and what we see from the get-go, a very evil Dr. Bartok himself. The larva pod cracks and out comes a perfectly, beautiful baby boy! Or, well, so it looks like.
They name him Martin and the child grows at an enormous rate. When he’s 11 months old he looks like he is four; and to top it off his IQ surpasses that of even his own father, who he was told died of an aging disease that was passed down onto him. By year two, he looks to be about 10 and is becoming more curious about the world outside his small one, where he’s closely monitored. He eventually manages to copy a passkey that allows him to wander about the facilities late at night. He ends up in a room filled with animals that are used for experiments and befriends a cute Golden Retriever. He visits the dog often and it becomes his only friend and companion in a world where he’s led to believe he’s going to die soon from his disease. Then, that one part happens that fucking traumatized the hell out of me.
In one part of the facility, Seth Brundle’s telepods are being experimented with and of course, they decide to use Martin’s new friend as a guinea pig. And well. Ya’ know. Didn’t turn out so well. And poor Martin watched the whole thing.
Fast-forward to Martin (Stoltz) at his fifth birthday party and he is a fully grown man at this point. His gift from Dr. Bartok is his very own “private apartment” which turns out to be anything but, and his own work area where he can work on the secrets of his father’s telepods. Since Martin doesn’t sleep. he works all day and night and befriends Beth ( Daphne Zuniga) a night shift worker at the labs. The attraction to each other is noticeable right away and is kind of sweet. Kind of like watching a teenage kid discover love for the first time.
She invites him to a party at the lab and this is where the real heart of the story begins: Martin discovers that his dog hasn’t been put down, but rather being kept at the bottom of what looks like a dirty, dungeon. The mutated dog is in pain and barely mobile and Martin bursts into tears and runs away only to return later that evening and euthanize his old friend.
Things start to hit the shit fan from here.
Just like with Seth, Martin slowly begins to transform. The trigger point was an accident with an injection that left a wound that instead of healing began to ooze and drip out slimy, sticky goo. Just like with his discovery of the dog, he also finds out his real fate and what he is turning into and that Bartok is truly excited for his transformation. Hell, he straight up tells Martin upon the discovery, that’s why he’s kept him there and calm all those years. A truly devastated Martin, who looks at Bartok as the only parental figure he’s ever known,pushes him to the side and goes on a rampage inside the labs until he finally escapes. Ending up at Beth’s home, they both go on the run from Bartok and his cronies until Martin is physically unable to run anymore. A horrified Beth says he is getting worse.
But you know what, Martin at this point is starting to embrace this shit and delivers the best line of the whole movie.
Caught and taken back to the lab, Martin makes the full transformation and that’s where THE FLY II really starts to shine as a GREAT special effects monster movie of the 80s. The revenge and rampage of Martinfly is fucking perfect. IN Cronenberg’s THE FLY, we sympathize with Seth, and we feel sorry for him, but we’re really rooting for Geena Davis as Seth has completely lost his humanity side and just has “Insect Politics”brain. With Martin’s transformation, he is COMPLETELY in control. His humanity is still there. He might be a homicidal fly on the loose killing everyone in that lab, who goddamn deserves every bit of it mind you, but he still loves the puppies! And the puppies totally love him.
I fucking love this so much
Also, can we sit and appreciate the makeup effects? Chris Walas nad his huge team of artists really pulled it off here in making something similar, yet totally different from Cronenberg’s version. In fact, one could arguably say, superior in some regard as the devil is always in the details. You could see every damn insect hair on Martin’s body as clear as day and for me personally, it’s right up there with Pumpkinhead as far as extremely well-thought-out monsters go.
The killings along the way on the final rampage are gory as HELL. Also, quite satisfying as unbeknownst to Bartok and his cronies, Martin has actually figured out the cure for himself that involves swapping his DNA with another healthy human via the telepods. Of course, the human donor would render up dead pretty much so Martin, because he’s a pretty nice guy for a fly, never once considered it an option. Until NOW.
SPOLIER ALERT: Don’t continue if you’ve never seen this.
In a twist of beautiful fate and poetic justice, Martin has a showdown, wild west style, in the telepod lab with Bartok and once he tries to harm Beth, who was being held as bait for Martin, and then Martin being shot at by Bartok, Martin has enough of this shit and grabs that fat fuck, dragging him to the telepod for some Gene Swapping Therapy.
Once the teleportation is complete, Martin and Bartok are fused in a gooey mess but only by some sort of slime. Martin returns back into his human self as the gene swapping therapy was successful and Bartok.. Got his just deserts as he comes out looking just like Martin’s beloved dog. The kicker is he is placed in that SAME gross dungeon, force-fed gruel and to live the rest of his miserable and painful days paying for his karma as a terrible human.
I’ll never watch that dog scene again, but I’ll watch this a million times.
THE FLY II may not be the masterpiece that Cronenberg made, but it certainly has its own merits and deserves a little praise for the things it set out to accomplish with so much standing in the way. It’s a great revenge film with a cool as hell monster. It also has one of the most brutal kill scenes I’ve ever seen.
Nightmare Nostalgia 