THE DOOM GENERATION (1995)

"The world sucks."

Two attractive twenty-something year old teenage lovers (Blue and White) accidentally pick up a third attractive twenty-something year old teenager (Red) in their crappy old car and then set out on an aimless road trip around Los Angeles. Occasionally stopping along the way for some good ol’ American robbery, dismemberment and cock mutilation. Sounds cool, but it’s nowhere near as exciting as you would imagine. Not even close. Oh yeah, you did catch on that the three main characters, Red White and Blue, all have names that coincide with the colours of the American flag, right? Okay, cool. Just making sure. Cuz man…that’s fucking deep.

Featuring a cameo by Heidi Fleiss (among other forgotten celebrities), a joke about "Richard Gere's butthole", a Ministry shirt and music by everybody from Nine Inch Nails to MC 900 Ft Jesus, THE DOOM GENERATION is definitely a product of its times. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it is an interesting historical (and low budget) look back to the mid-1990’s America.

I remember seeing THE DOOM GENERATION when it first came out on home video (probably 1996) and being disappointed that it paled to NATURAL BORN KILLERS. Revisiting it now, the whole thing just looks cheap.  And the dialogue is cringier than I remember. Also, the whole gay thing (two dudes) is so lightweight that is almost doesn’t exist. Lame.  And the ending sucked.

Worth watching if you’re curious and / or interested in 1990’s independent cinema. Others would probably just find it boring. Writer, Director, Editor and Producer Gregg Araki would later go on to make the devastating MYSTERIOUS SKIN in 2004.

COLOR OUT OF SPACE (2019)

"Maggot dick."

A family (wife, husband, two teenage kids and one younger son) live way out in the fucking woods. One evening, a meteor lands in their front yard. Just a few feet from the well where they get their water. A hydrologist, who just so happens to be wandering by, tells them that the water (which is now oily and icky looking) is contaminated, and that they should stop using it. No shit. They keep drinking it anyway. Morons. As the viewer would expect, drinking deep space meteor piss isn’t healthy for humans. Or llamas.

It’s been a few hundred years since I read H. P. Lovecraft’s original “The Colour Out of Space” short story that was published back in 1927, but I do remember it being creepy and awesome. This 2019 film adaptation was neither creepy nor awesome. Right from the beginning I felt zero connection to the family, other than find them annoying. I wouldn’t care if a giant Slor took a giant Slor shit right in their well, but even worse than annoying characters is the alien invasion stuff starts almost immediately. Very little build-up or character development. Just…BAM! Family, woods, aliens attack.

Zero nudity, zero gore, very little blood, zero sense of self-preservation, annoying dialogue, multiple characters completely leaving the contamination zone and then returning, Tommy Chong as a burnout hippie squatter (how original), zero tension, a house with excessive outdoor lighting (most likely purely for the fact that it would look neat in the wacky alien-vision scenes), disappointing ending.

I went into THE COLOR OUT OF SPACE hoping for an extremely creepy story full of inescapable dread and mind-breaking cosmic horror. Instead, I just got a bleh, PG-13 level, yawn-inducing snoozer. Worth watching, I guess, if you're like super bored, but you’d probably be better off reading one of the hundreds of pulp horror novels with a similar story.

IN HEAVEN THERE IS NO BEER? (1984)

Straight-forward, no-frills documentary about people (of all ages) enjoying various polka festivals in the US in the early 1980’s. And…that’s about it. Lots of enjoyable shots of people dancing and a few random quick interviews with polka fans talking about different polka-related subjects. My favorite being the high schooler talking about how she fantasizes about walking into her high school with a giant boombox blaring polka. Goddamn, how awesome would that be? How is it that an imaginative filmmaker hasn’t turned that idea into a scene in a movie or an entire movie itself? And, if they have…I need to see it!

Anyway, at only 51 minutes, IN HEAVEN THERE IS NO BEER? goes by quickly enough, but honestly it feels more like a well-made home movie than an actual hard-hitting investigative documentary. Nothing wrong with that though, that was probably the intent of the filmmakers. To simply capture the events as they happen naturally.

No smart phones or tablets, lots of happy people dancing their brains out and sweating all over the joint, a polka pool party, a polka awards banquet, awesome vintage fashions and hairstyles, early 1980’s human bodies, a male wearing female clothing without some brainwashed toughie on social media having a complete mental breakdown about it, great camerawork, people of the same sex happily dancing together and nobody giving a fuck, lots of catchy polka jams that I actually found myself tapping my handsome toes to.

Even if you’re not into polka, IN HEAVEN THERE IS NO BEER? is still an interesting little film that left me wanting more.