By Jon Burstein
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Most of the time, these "I Like to Watch" columns talk about sweeping, high-faulting movies directed by people with entirely too many consonants in their names. I, on the other hand, watch crap. Not just any crap, but cheesy horror films with poor special effects, bad acting and a lot of buxom women chased by slow-moving zombies/slashers/slimy monsters. I fall asleep during movies like "Terms of Endearment." But how can you fall asleep during a "Friday the 13th" movie where Jason pops out of a refrigerator and puts an ax in someone's head?
Anyway, if you are in the mood to watch some B-movies, here's just a few of my picks. Ask for them at your local video store, if you dare:
"Basket Case": Alright, here's a quick plot rundown. There's this guy walking around New York City with a basket. In the basket is his gruesome, Siamese twin brother who was cut off by three evil doctors in the family dining room years earlier. After the twin brother was axed off, his brother found him in the trash and nursed him back to health. While in the Big Apple, the guy and the twin brother (which is a head, an arm and some gooey stuff) hunt down the doctors, woo women and the twin rips off people's faces for no good reasons. This movie has it all Äclaymation, a hooker with a heart and a lot of people who say, "Hey, what's in the basket?"
"Sleepwalkers": This is by far the cheesiest of all Stephen King movies. It even eclipses "Maximum Overdrive," in which a guy is killed by a vending machine and a kid is squished by a steamroller. "Sleepwalkers" is about a mother and son, cat-vampire duo who can make cool cars materialize from thin air and need to suck the marrow of pretty virgins every so often.
This movie rocks because Ä 1) a guy is killed by a corn cob. A corn cob! 2) another guy has a pencil shoved through his head and still stumbles around, and 3) the hero is a cat known as Clovis. Clovis actually leads a squadron of cats . oh, I won't say any more. It's a must see.
"Night of the Lepus": What happened to DeForrest Kelly after his stunning run as Dr. McCoy in Star Trek? Well, he starred in "Night of the Lepus," a movie about a herd of 30-foot mutant rabbits which terrorize a Texas town. The slow-mo, mutant-bunnies-bouncing-in-the-desert-scenes, bring tears to my eyes. My God Jim, those are wascally wabbits.
This flick came out in the '70s during the "big animal" horror movies boom. Other recommendations: "Food of the Gods" (in which a bunch of animals are huge) "Ben" (big rats) and "Alligator" (he was once a little lizard flushed down the toilet. Now he's pissed off, rather than on).
Because of space constraints, I can't talk about too many other movies, but some of my quick picks are: "Student Bodies," "Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-Rama," "Citizen Kane" and any movie which has a Roman numeral after its name.
So next time you're at the video store, why waste your time watching some deep movie, when you can see someone disemboweled?
"I Like To Watch" is a weekly column in which favorite films, available on video, are recommended.