Really Awful Movies

“Men like us can’t make it in a 9-to-5 world.” That colossal understatement is a reference to Brute Corps, a bunch of, well…”brutish” drunken mercenaries causing havoc in the Mexican desert, abusing staff at the local cantina while the sweating, ineffectual Latino stereotype of a police chief turns a blind eye.

The soldiers-of-misfortune are under the command of The Colonel, who takes a casual indifference to the unit’s various transgressions, which includes the above, as well as urinating out the back of moving vehicles.

They all camp out on the outskirts of town, engaging in macho feats of strength bravado while they await instructions to venture down to Central America and take part in some coup (some nebulous mission that isn’t really adequately addressed).

Draft dodger Kevin and his blonde paramour Terry, whom he’s recently met and instantly become better acquainted with if you catch our drift, are hitchhiking through the same territory. Their paths cross with the soldiers, and to their peril, the couple accepts an offer of dinner with the rowdy troops.

Everything’s convivial at first, with play fighting, jocularity and judo demonstrations. That is until alpha second-in-command Wicks takes charge. Wicks is the same guy who’s pushed the limits of propriety with his drunken cantina antics, threatening to assault the waitress, the bar owner’s daughter.

Mid-martial arts demo, he gropes young Terry in front of the assembled. When her beau Kevin intercedes, he’s beaten down, threatened and forced to flee into the brush. It should be mentioned that Wicks is played by Alex Rocco (pictured below), the man who got it through the peeper in The Godfather as Moe Greene.

The troops organize a two-person search party to go find Kevin, including taciturn Ross, a reluctant mercenary played by Paul Carr, who seemingly appeared in every TV show ever produced in the 1970s.

Ross spies the man cowering in the bushes but fails to turn him in, finally indulging his moral conscience.

Meanwhile, back in camp, the warriors and co-conspirator colonel are laying out the ground rules of a round-robin combat tournament to see who gets to ravage Terry.

Because we’re in grindhouse revenge world, eventually hippie Kevin mans up and goes in to rescue his girlfriend, assisted by Ross.

Brute Corps is a flawed yet interesting vetsploitation, making great use of its desert setting and genre stalwarts like Roy Jensen (Soylent Green) and Felton Perry (Robocop and Magnum Force).

*** (out of 5)

Director Chuck Russell is the guy behind one of the Top 3 horror sequels of all time, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. So it’s no surprise that his directorial fineries heighten The Blob, a practical effects-a-palooza and fitting tribute to its 1958 predecessor.

A remake of the seminal cheap teen drive-in Steve McQueen starrer, 30 years after the fact we realize that Kevin Dillon (as Flagg) is no Steve McQueen. But hey, few are.

And while the Blob creature’s origins are outer space, what’s truly otherworldly is Dillon’s mullet, an entity unto itself that looks like it could become sentient and float into orbit at any moment.

Most people know The Blob story already. It’s a 50s set-up that’s been told time and time again: a meteorite crashes into the California countryside. And inside the space rock, is a slime mold (interested readers may want to check out the piece we wrote for Daily Dead: Unforgettable Ooze: A look back at horror movies and slime).

A hobo goes to investigate, at his own peril. Soon, the transient’s extremities are melllllllllting….like the Wicked Witch of the West and the goo is spreading all over town. And it’s up to some teens, including rebel without a cause (or a competent barber), Flagg to fight it off.

We soon find out that the slimy stuff’s origins are Cold War-related…a germ warfare experiment gone awry, much like the plague that had residents running for the hills, who were subsequently killed or quarantined, in George Romero’s The Crazies.

And much like that film, there’s a lot of guys running around with machine guns and NBC suits in The Blob, but it’s not ammo that can tame the title beast.

It’s the deaths that make The Blob so memorable. It features some incredible gooey tentacle-kills. Particularly noteworthy: the garbage disposal death scene – one for the ages. But there’s also the diner owner’s demise, getting crushed inside a phone booth, a death which exploits claustrophobia to its compelling conclusion.

Chuck Russell, who calls the original “a real shocker” says “a lot of heart and soul” went into the remake. And you can tell. The touches of humor are an added bonus, particularly the prophylactic procurement scene (“ribbed!”), one-upping Jason Alexander as the condom wrangler in The Burning.

***1/2 (out of 5)

[*Candy Clark plays victim Blob Fran Hewitt (pictured). She received a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination for her work in American Graffiti, and was (briefly) married to noted weirdo and B-movie hero, Marjoe Gortner (The Food of the Gods/Starcrash/Hell Hole)]