THE HEAVENLY KID (1985)

Early 1960's cool dude dies defending his honor in a car race.  In order to get into Heaven he has to do a good deed: helping out a certain "spazola" teenager in the 1980's.

While the story is pretty much by-the-numbers (only the nerd can see ghost; nerd is in love with hot chick even though his female friend is hotter and has a heart of gold; nerd-to-cool transformation montage; nerd bags hot chick and defeats bullies; nerd becomes arrogant but then learns his lesson) it's still an amusing watch. No surprises, no risks taken just a simple story about a dork and his guardian angel.

For some unknown reason when I sat down to watch THE HEAVENLY KID I was expecting it to be a light-hearted sex comedy, but outside of a few humorous moments during the high school segments it's actually a fairly serious film. Zero naked broads, mostly unfunny jokes including a lot about Heaven and Hell, lessons learned, forgiveness, very limited swearing, hell THE HEAVENLY KID is almost a Christian movie!

Worth watching, I guess, but you're not missing much if you decide to skip it.

Out of curiosity I looked up THK's box office run to see if it made any money at all (it didn't...$3.8m total) and it's easy to see why it flopped. During it's first week it went up against: BACK TO THEFUTURE, E.T., RAMBO 2, EUROPEAN VACATION, MAD MAX 3, COCOON, SILVERADO, PALE RIDER, ST. ELMO'S FIRE and THE GOONIES!!! Then the next weekend FRIGHT NIGHT, WEIRD SCIENCE and FOLLOW THAT BIRD showed up and THE HEAVENLY KID isn't even on the chart anymore! My God, the summer of 1985 must have been the best summer for going to the theater ever!!!

Why is there a wedding cake in the high school cafeteria?

ONE MISSED CALL 3: FINAL (2006)

Well, that pesty ol' phone call loving ghost is back again. And I think it might actually have been the ghost from the original film, but by that point in the film I'd already given up hope and I was struggling just to stay awake. The only thing that might've roused me from my stupor is when the main characters started an email attack on the demon possessed computer in order to flood its Inbox and cause it to explode (cause that's how Inboxes work)...and you know what? That's exactly what happened, so you can't say that ONE MISSED CALL 3: FINAL doesn't deliver. Now let's just hope that it delivers on that "final" part also.

The story is about a group of high school kids on a class trip. One of their classmates hung herself due to bullying (you know I'm not even sure this is correct, but who cares?) and now her friend or a ghost or somebody is giving "death calls" to the students and they have an option to forward the "death call" to another person! That aspect was actually kinda cool and funny, but unfortunately the story just kept getting more and more convoluted as it went on until I heard bubbling sounds coming from inside my handsome brain, so I stopped thinking so hard.

Zero gore, crappy CG effects, offscreen kill scenes, zero tits, main character using sign language, respectable body count, confusing storyline. Of the four films I've seen I liked the beginning of this film probably the best, but it quickly went to Hell. Skip it, hell skip the entire goddamn series and never look back. The only reason to watch any of these films is Kazue Fukiishi in the original and she dies half way through!

Part 1 - One Missed Call (2003)
Part 2 - One Missed Call 2 (2005)
Remake - One Missed Call (2008)

Take that you demon possessed Inbox...I mean monitor...what the Hell? Oh God, my brain's bubbling again.

RAT RACE (2001)

Mildly amusing IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD remake. This time, instead of the pre-death ravings of a dying Jimmy "Smiler" Durante, it's John Cleese as a giant-toothed Las Vegas high roller who stages a race (for his high roller friend's amusements) between six strangers. The contestants are picked at random by slot machine tokens then taken to a penthouse where they are explained the rules of the game: here are some identical keys, we're now in Las Vegas and in a locker at the Silver City, NM train station there's $2 million in cash...Go!

Of course, it wouldn't be much of a movie if the participants acted logically so right off the bat they're acting like fucking idiots and everything but the kitchen sink is thrown into this movie. You got a rocket car, a squirrel-loving serial killer, Nazis, Newman, Hitler's car, hookers, a flying cow, a busload of Lucille Ball impersonators, a biker gang, a monster truck, a narcoleptic idiot, a psychotic helicopter pilot, a transplant heart, a hot air balloon and even goddamn Smash Mouth.

Overall, RAT RACE is a fun film.  It's an innocent enough time-waster that never pushes the envelope or shows any real imagination, but still provides a few smiles.

Map of world on the side of the cow.