Goofballs and Gaff Hooks - THE MUTILATOR

There is something magical about a good slasher movie, but there is something more magical about a bad one.  Yes, they are formulaic, and most often modeled off FRIDAY THE 13^TH, which itself takes its cue from Mario Bava’s TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE.  So what?  Almost all movies follow a formula, from drama to action to romance.  What makes a movie interesting is how the filmmakers interpret, or misinterpret, the formula.  Wild left turns, tonal shifts, and inexplicable reasoning will keep you guessing, even if it is only to guess what the hell the director was thinking.  For instance, take a cute and fluffy sex comedy, mix in a brutal murderer fueled by whiskey and hatred, and get ready for the wholesome bloodbath that is 1984’s THE MUTILATOR.

The Capsule:

Ed Jr. (Matt Mitler) doesn’t have a close relationship with his dad.  Big Ed (Jack Chatham) drinks, is emotionally distant, and blames his son for his failed marriage.  The last point is valid, as 10 year-old Ed Jr. accidentally shot his mom while cleaning his dad’s gun as a birthday surprise.  So when deadbeat dad calls out of the blue and demands he clean and lock up his beach house for the season, Ed Jr. isn’t keen on doing him any favors.  But Ed’s college buddies think it sounds like just the place for suds and love during their Fall Break, so after a couple of quick driving and cleaning montages, they are ready for some subdued, inoffensive partying.  That is, until Big Ed, who had been sleeping off his last bender in the garage, wakes up in a homicidal haze and commences to ruin all their fun.  One by one, Big Ed takes out his son’s friends in increasingly brutal ways.  Can junior and his squeaky clean girlfriend, Pam (Ruth Martinez ), get mean enough to take on Ed senior, or will they too end up on his trophy wall?

Let’s get the obvious complaints out of the way first.  Of all the holiday inspired horror movie gimmicks, THE MUTILATOR (AKA: FALL BREAK) has the lamest.   Fall break isn’t even a holiday, it’s just the arbitrary period between college semesters.   At least Spring Break is associated with bikinis and alcohol and hedonism.  What images does Fall Break conjure?  Sweaters?  Colorful leaves?  The movie can’t even take advantage of the nearby Halloween imagery, because it’s staked its claim.   No pumpkins or black cats here, this is about the Fall Break, bitches.

Even worse, the movie mostly wastes its best asset, showing how spooky a deserted beach town is during the off season.  There’s a little strolling on the beach at night, and a couple goes skinny dipping in a plastic covered public pool (where the tension is dissolved by an excessively long game of Marco Polo), but the vast majority of the movie is set in one small beach house.  It’s like condensing Camp Crystal Lake into a condo.  That said, the filmmakers do a good job of working with their limited set.  There is a nice hide and stalk scene were the killer hunts around the dark house for victims, but the kids are just playing blind man’s bluff with each other and have no idea the person they are hiding inches away from wants to butcher them.  

Those gripes aside, the movie is a wild ride.  This tonal roller-coaster starts with the very first scene.  The prologue starts off all daises and sunshine, with the smiling mom lovingly decorating a cake in her tidy kitchen, cute Lil’ Ed eager to make his dad proud.  Once that colorful, hand drawn sign comes out, we know it’s all about to go south.  That kid’s “All your guns cleaned by me!” birthday surprise is the worst idea since “Your car’s brake lines cleaned by me!”  Sure enough, a moment later he unintentionally blows a hole through mom’s stomach and the cake is totally ruined. When Big Ed comes home, instead of screaming or crying or calling an ambulance, he wordlessly props his wife's corpse against the couch and starts drinking, with Ed Jr watching from hall.

In any other slasher, that kind of trauma would be Junior’s catalyst for becoming the killer. Plus, being raised by a guy who actively fantasizes about different ways of murdering you rarely leads to a happy childhood. Somehow though, he ends up being a mild mannered, well adjusted college kid.  A little boring even.  In fact, his whole crew is sort of a toned down, smooth jazz version of the typical slasher archetypes.   There’s the practical joker, the horny couple, the prude, but all in an inoffensively low key way.  They are so corny they break out a game of Monopoly.  Not strip Monopoly, either, just plain Monopoly.  They are kind of endearing, really, especially compared to the aggressively annoying group of victims populating most slashers.  Those dickheads deserve what’s coming to them, but I kind of feel bad about seeing these kids get bumped off.  

Especially in the ways they get bumped off, because for such an unassuming lead up, this fucker gets brutal incredibly fast.  One kid gets chewed up by an outboard motor, one gets pinned to a door through the neck.  A helpful cop gets stabbed in the face with a machete before being decapitated.  The most gruesome kill involves a giant gaff hook inserted into a region no hook was meant to go.  I suppose you wouldn’t want a gaff hook in any region of your body, but definitely not this one.  All the death scenes go just a little bit longer than is comfortable, at least in the unrated cut.  It would be kind of a bummer if the gore effects weren’t so laugh out loud excessive.  Maybe not that hook scene, though.  That was straight up traumatizing.  

One of the problems with low budget slashers is the lack of a distinctive killer (I’m looking at you, whatever-the-fuck-your-name-was from FINAL EXAM).  I’m happy to say that’s not the case here.  Big Ed doesn’t wear a cool mask or have a deformed face.  He’s not even physically imposing, just a middle-aged dude.  What makes Big Ed unique is his motivation.  I’m not talking about his resentment toward his son for killing his wife.  If that was the problem, he could have taken the kid out years ago.  No, the real reason he goes on a kill crazy rampage is because he is an angry, drunk asshole.  I don’t even think he planned any of it.  He just wakes up with a hangover, hears the kids upstairs, and simply decides, “Fuck it, I’m going to kill all those little college pricks.”

At no time does Big Ed look demented or maniacal.  He just looks annoyed.  Stupid punks making fun of my fishing trophies, I’ll show them.  Stupid cop with his nosy flashlight, I’ll show him.  Stupid other cop trying to stop me from murdering my son, I’ll show him! 

On the surface, the movie seems to follow the sex=death trope to the letter.  The super sexed up couples buy it first, while the clean cut virgin makes it to final girl territory.  It’s a better example of how this trope, or the way it is typically framed, is bullshit.  Big Ed is an asshole, not a prude.  He gives no fucks about who fucks.  This guy would have killed these kids if they were slipping away for bible study.  Now, judging from that one scene with the hook, Big Ed clearly has a nasty misogynistic streak, but he doesn’t let it overwhelm his even larger misanthropy.  He has enough murder in his heart for everyone.   

As with most slashers, the sex=death paradigm serves more of a technical function than a moral one.  Sneaking off for a quick one is a handy excuse to put the soon-to-be victims in a quiet, isolated setting.  It’s also a fine setup for the classic situation where the girl thinks she hears or sees something, but the dude is too focused on getting into her pants to pay her any attention.  Speaking of that, has a movie ever reversed the gender of that scenario?  “Hold on, Tina, I think I heard something!”  “Relax, Steve, you’re too wound up.  Let’s just loosen those tighty whities and you’ll feel better.”

Yes, the final girl does turn out to be the virginal Pam, but that just makes sense.  Not being consumed with thoughts of preppy, white bread sex allows her to pick up on all the warning signs.  Plus, she redirected all of her repressed energies into something more productive, like self defense classes.  This makes the level-headed wall flower the only person even remotely capable of dealing with Big Ed’s murderous, asshole rage.  She is certainly better prepared than her utterly useless boyfriend, who actually locks her in the garage closet while he attempts to be the hero.  After he fails miserably, she has to save herself and his lame ass.  

Big spoiler for the movie’s ending, but it is just too bonkers not to address.  After Pam lodges a lead fishing sinker into Big Ed’s noggin and stabs him in the chest, she and her useless, wounded boyfriend make it to the car and share a triumphant moment while we wait for Big Ed to make is inevitable return.  As expected, the drunken mutilator pops up and starts hacking through their car top with a battleaxe.  Lil’ Ed, who only now puts it together, screams “That’s my dad!”  Pam throws Big Ed off the car, and not being the kind of gal who gets fooled twice, throws it into reverse and plows her tormentor into a wall, cutting him in half.  But Big Ed is so much of an asshole that even though he is just a torso, he still manages to chop off a cop’s legs with his dying breath.  The best thing is the smile of satisfaction as he expires.  Some people hope to die peacefully surrounded by loved ones.   Big Ed dreamed of dying in a pool of his own blood, taking one last dumb son of a bitch with him.

True, THE MUTILATOR doesn’t break new ground as far as plot goes.  The characters never venture beyond their one dimension, and the acting won’t set the world on fire.  Yet, for all its predictable broad strokes, it's the nutty detail work that gives it charm.  I’ve never seen such a weird mix of harmlessly corny and gleefully vicious in one slasher before.  And I love that the killer is just a mean drunk.  It’s a pity the movie didn’t take off, because the Big Ed Halloween costume would be super easy.  You just need a bottle of bourbon, a gaff hook, and a simmering well of familial resentment. Come to think of it, maybe it makes a more appropriate Thanksgiving costume.  In any event, have a great Fall Break you goofballs.

C Chaka

Balls to the Wall - PHANTASM II

I’m a stickler for order these days.  Even before the age of massive serialized movie properties like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where everything is connected and the movies just assume you’ve been keeping up, I felt weird about jumping into the middle of a series.  I’m always afraid I’ll be missing out on cool in-jokes, vital backstory, or emotional beats.  I can’t just walk into the latest MISSION IMPOSSIBLE movie without knowing the full details of Ethan Hunt’s marital history.  I need to understand the deep emotional subtext built into the FAST AND FURIOUS franchise (something about family).  Walking in blind to an ongoing series is the kind of thing I have anxiety dreams about.  It wasn’t always this way, though.  In fact, my introduction to horror, possibly my favorite film genre, came almost exclusively in the form of Part Twos.

In my defense, the mid-Eighties were the golden age of the Part 2 horror movie, sort of a Wild West for sequels.  The franchise boom was rolling strong, but franchise formulas had yet to be perfected.  Dozens of popular to semi-popular horror titles were exhumed with hopes of making them into inexhaustible sequel factories.  However, many of these stories were never intended to go beyond the final credits. Re-configuring them often took a bit of creative thinking and a wild tonal shift.  The best ones retooled the often serious minded original with a healthy dose of humor, excess, and crazy ‘80s fun.  In doing so they made them accessible to a new generation of fresh faced horror fiends.   Movies like Sam Raimi’s EVIL DEAD 2 and Tobe Hooper’s TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2 brought me into the horror fold.  So while Don Coscarelli’s PHANTASM II may not be as artistically important as his original movie, it's the one that most gets my blood pumping.

The Capsule:

After spending 8 years in the Morningside Hospital for spouting wild tales about a mysterious Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) who crunches down corpses to supply a trans-dimensional slave trade,  Michael (James Le Gros) finally admits it was all a dream and is released.  He is picked up by his best friend Reggi (Reggie Bannister), and they return home just in time to see Reg's entire extended family blown up by the Tall Man as a welcome back gift.  They hit the road in a '71 Hemicuda filled with weapons, intent on putting an end to the Tall Man's evil once and for all.  With the help of Mike's dream-linked soulmate, Liz (Paula Irvine), he and Reg track the Tall Man through a series of dried up ghost towns until arriving at his latest haunt, Perigord Funeral Home.  The Tall Man has a few new tricks up his sleeve, though, and Mike, Reggie, and Liz may be in for more of a fight than they were prepared for.

  

Anyone going directly from PHANTASM to PHANTASM II is bound to get tonal whiplash.  The elliptical, non sequitur structure of the first movie is gone, replaced with a more traditionally linear plot.  The sequel is no paint by numbers retread, though.  Coscarelli totally switches gears by upping the action and making a kick ass road movie.  While I love the first movie’s surreal weirdness, this was the perfect Phantasm intro for 16 year old me.  I was still years away from fully appreciating deliberate pacing, metaphor, and indie gumption, but a couple of armature monster hunters driving around in a bitchin’ muscle car with a trunk full of weapons was just up my teenage alley.

 

One of my favorite elements to those early franchise sequels was the opening catch up, the part that linked the happenings of the previous movie with the current setting.  It could come in the form of a lazy, best-of clip show, but the best one took the effort to seamlessly merge the preceding ending into the new open.  PHANTASM II has one of the best.  It starts with some psychic exposition narrated by Liz, simultaneously giving us the major points while establishing her dream link with Michael.  New, well-matched footage kicks in after the original’s crash cut ending, continuing the flashback the second it left off nine years before.  Coscarelli immediately sets the new tone by throwing Reg into a badass rescue sequence that has him punching out dwarfs, climbing up laundry chutes, and blowing up his house to save young Mike.  It is a total thrill that hooked me from the start.  

Given that this was my first taste of the Phantasm world, I had no resentment about James Le Gros replacing A. Michael Baldwin as Michael.  Le Gros doesn’t have any of the original Mike’s punk-ass bravado or emotional vulnerability, but he has plenty of dumb charm and great chemistry with Reggie Bannister.  And while Reg is played by the same actor, that character has undergone a serious evolution as well.  Taking a page from Bruce Campbell’s Ash, Reg has put away his folk guitar and ice cream man uniform to become a heroic goofball.  He never backs down from a fight, but it rarely goes as smoothly as he is expecting.

Before starting the hunt, Coscarelli indulges in a distinctly ‘80s action trope, the "getting ready" sequence.  It’s the scene that stokes our commercialism fantasy of the ultimate badass shopping spree, where the hero(s) break into a store and grab every weapon in sight.  Think of Schwarzenegger’s gun store looting scene from COMMANDO, except that since this is a horror movie, Reg and Mike break into a hardware store.  Seeing them load up on sledgehammers, chainsaws, and cordless drills gave me a giddy anticipation of the bloody mayhem to follow.   It’s not just off the shelf stuff, either.  The boys get crafty with their DIY demon hunting arsenal.  Mike builds a flame thrower by lashing together several blow torch tanks and Reg mods a couple of shotguns to make his legendary quad-barrel, anti-killer dwarf cannon.  Literally tooled up, Reg leaves a wad of bills on the register to cover their haul.  You know, to show that he is an honest citizen at heart.  Of course, that does beg the question of why they didn’t just go into the hardware when it was open and buy everything like normal people.  I guess it wouldn’t have looked as cool.

Angus Scrimm is back as the Tall Man, still scary as hell with no need of mask or makeup application.  All the menace comes solely from Scrimm’s physical performance, booming voice, and subtle, but wicked, sense of humor.  Coscarelli gives him meatier dialogue this time, but never resorts to the sort of quippy puns that changed Freddy Krueger from a primal fear into wacky game show host.  The mystery of the Tall Man and his quiet, devilish grin is far more unsettling than any clever threat.  The closest he comes is when he is toying with Kenneth Tigar’s alcoholic priest who unwisely attempts an exorcism.  “You think when you die you go to heaven.  You come to us.”    He doesn’t even bother to kill the poor sap, only to destroy his faith.  He leaves the messy work to his staff.

Speaking of the staff, the Tall Man’s roster of creepy cronies has expanded over the years.  He still has his army of killer dwarfs, but new employees include a grampa zombie, a mangled dream monster, and the gravers, hulking, gas mask wearing mutes who exhume the coffins and know how to throw down with a chainsaw.  The Tall Man also employs a couple of normal (if pallid) mortuary assistants for menial tasks, like disposing of bodies, alive or dead, and gathering up cremation ash (for a Mr. Sam Raimi, according to the label). 

Those are guys are just small time shotgun fodder, though.  The Employee of the Month is smaller, shinier, and far deadlier.  As the tag line states, “The ball is back.”  Not only is it back, it brought a couple of friends.  For such an innovative and eye catching (as well as brain sucking) murder gizmo, the first movie gave an unceremonious introduction to the Silver Sphere.  This batch gets a more fitting introduction, rolling out of a cute mini-coffin like little round rock stars.  The standard model has a few new tricks, like an ear slicing rotary saw, but the big addition is the golden sphere.  It can burn through doors, shoot lasers, and has a brand new, overly elaborate kill sequence, as one unlucky embalmer discovers when it buzzsaws into his back, churns through his torso, and pops out of his mouth.  It turns out the spheres can even be inserted like keys into special doors.  They are the supernatural horror version of a Swiss Army Knife.  

Reg and Mike are joined in the fight by a couple of new faces.  Paula Irvine’s Liz is Mike’s psychically linked romantic interest.  At first she seems like the standard damsel in distress plot device, but Coscarelli smartly subverts this expectation.  In one scene, Liz is abducted to the mortuary and is poised to slide straight into a flaming crematorium.  It looks like a Perils of Pauline style setup, where the helpless woman inches closer to doom before being rescued by the dashing hero at the last second.  Instead, Liz rolls to safety herself, kicks her kidnapper in the nuts, and sends him into the crematorium.  No rescue necessary, thank you very much.  Mike saves her from the Tall Man, but she returns the favor right away and keeps pace with the dudes for the rest of the movie.

Also in the mix is Samantha Phillips as the mysterious hitchhiker Reg picks up on the road, one who happens to look just like the dead woman Mike saw in his dream.  Oh, and her name is Alchemy, so nothing suspicious there.  Mostly she is there to be Reg’s bad girl counterpoint to Mike and Liz’s innocent romance,  and her only lasting contribution to the series is to establish Reg as a somewhat pathetic horndog.  Still, Phillips adds a nice chaotic vibe to our happy band.  

The original movie's nonsensical mine shaft showdown with the Tall Man was its weakest moment.  Coscarelli more than makes up for it here.  We get to see how tough this lanky bastard is when Mike redirects a silver sphere into his forehead.  After it does its fountain of (yellow) blood routine, the Tall Man just plucks it out and crushes it like an empty beer can.  Of course, we know there is something even better waiting in the wings.  Earlier Reg makes the point of replacing the formaldehyde in an embalming pump with hydrochloric acid, and as Chekov says, if you show a hydrochloric acid pump in the first act, you have to use it by the last. Needless to say, the end result is a spectacularly goopy display of practical effects even the Tall Man has a hard time walking off. Sure, everything ends on another circular, crash cut cliffhanger, but the road to get there more than makes up for it.  

While the PHANTASM saga continues on through another three sequels, my coverage does not.  I hate to say that none of the sequels engaged me like the first two movies.  Coscarelli made some Phanatics (fans of Phantasm) happy by bringing back A. Michael Baldwin for PHANTASM III, but since James Le Gros was my original Mike, I didn't care for it.  Plus, the plot was more convoluted and sillier.  PHANTASM: OBLIVION returned to a more serious tone, but it sent the story on a more disjointed, metaphoric path.  PHANTASM: RAVAGER was an extremely heartfelt and emotional farewell to the characters, and to Angus Scrimm himself, but the movie surrounding it was a godawful mess of terrible CGI and jarring transitions.  I still like them all, but as far as reviews go, the hearse stops at two.  That's more than enough balls for me.

C Chaka

Holiday in Confusion - PUNK VACATION

Tonal shifts in movies can be risky business.  A perfectly timed hairpin turn is exciting; startling the audience and deepening their engagement.  Perfect is hard to pull off, though.  An awkward shift breaks the flow, pulling the watcher out of the story.  The filmmakers need to know exactly what they are doing or it could be disaster.  If you can't nail it, don't even try.  Alternatively, go in all the way.  Throw in so many tonal shifts, redirections, and crazy tangents that the watcher is left punch drunk, staggering through the movie in stunned fascination.  Guess which approach Stanley Lewis took for 1990’s PUNK VACATION?

The Capsule:

In a quiet Californian desert town, Deputy Steve Reed (Stephen Fiachi) fills his days with unsuccessful target practice in an empty field, responding to false alarms, and getting yelled at by his paranoid, commie hating boss, Sheriff Virgil (Louis Waldon).  The monotony ends on the night an eclectic gang of bike punks ride into town.  An altercation over a Dr. Pepper vending machine outside a diner leaves the owner dead, his young daughter catatonic, and one punk in the hospital.  While Reed and the other cops bumble around, his girlfriend, Lisa (Sandra Bogan), vows vengeance for her father and sister.  She hunts down the gang on her own, but finds herself on a head-on collision with its equally strong willed--and frighteningly psychotic--leader, Ramrod (Roxanne Rogers).  Lisa's fate, and that of the entire town, will wind up in Deputy Reed's hands, and no one is happy about that.

This direct to video cheapie was released in 1990, but is a product of the '80s all the way.  Early '80s, at that, Billy Idol "White Wedding" period.  The anachronistic aesthetic is just the first sign of this movie's serious case of multiple personality disorder.  In the beginning, our punk vacationers seem like they have rolled straight out of DEATH WISH.  They come just short of Jeff Goldblum’s vile band of caricatures as they torment and ultimately murder Mrs. Kemper.  The DEATH WISH comparison is so pronounced they even use the same catatonic daughter cliché, though thankfully the sexual assault is implied rather than shown (at least I think its implied, there is zero exposition explaining what is wrong with her).  The trajectory is set for a full-on revenge flick, swapping a despondent father for a pissed off sister.  Straight forward, right?

Except, a weird thing happens.  The longer the movie spends with the punks, the less they seem like vicious animals and more like a quirky collection of misfits, each with their own unique look and personality.  There’s the French chick who looks like Siouxsie Sioux from Siouxsie and the Banshees.  The bandana wearing emo guy who plays a sad harmonica.  The bald Goth punk who carries nunchucks but doesn’t know how to use them.  The skinny white dude who dresses like Prince.  Two valley girl punks discuss future career opportunities while on guard duty (one wants to be an electrical engineer).   

They are an odd crew, and none odder than Feggy (Billy Palmieri), who clearly did not read the entire job description when he answered the Punks Wanted ad.  He’s a bit of a hippy peacenik, always whining when Ramrod wants to play it tough.  He usually falls in line, until eventually making a stand and declaring he doesn’t want to be involved in "senseless violence or car theft."  Not exactly the poster boy for the renegade punk lifestyle, yet everyone in the gang not only puts up with him, but genuinely cares for him.  The family that stabs diner owners together stays together, I guess.

Incidentally, true to the title, this is literally a punk vacation.  The gang aren’t on a drug run, or on the lamb, they are just taking a road trip, getting out of the hustle and bustle of L.A. for a few days.  When they are holed up in a barn after the unplanned murder, Feggy even complains that he thought they were just going fishing.  I think he is actually carrying traveler’s checks.  

Whether this was the intent or not, I started to like these lunkheads.  Every once in a while, there will be another radical tone change and they will become threatening again, but for only so long.  For instance, pistol packing Lisa confronts Ramrod at their barn hideout, but the punks get the jump on her.  The next scene has her tied to a tree in her underwear, which doesn’t bode well.  It turns out she was only stripped because Ramrod needed her clothes to sneak into town disguised as a normal, non-punk girl (pretty clever, really).  The punks guarding Lisa have their minds more on stick sword fighting rather than anything sordid.  At one point, Lisa is tied to the ground with rat cages at her hands, but no one lets the rats out, and Lisa doesn’t seem overly concerned.  It’s like the Spanish Inquisition staged by elementary schoolers.

Ramrod is the only legitimate badass in the bunch and stays on point the entire time.  It’s an interesting group dynamic.  She is so intense that no one dares question or challenge her, but she has a fierce, almost maternal attachment to her band of freaks.  She keeps things democratic, like asking for a vote on what they want to eat. Her administrative skills are solid.  She gets seriously fucking scary at times, like when she faces down Reed, ignoring his gun and makes her gang vote if they should rape the deputy before killing him.  I think she’s just trying to intimidate Reed (it works), but since she was the one getting aggressive with the daughter, who knows?  During a Viking funeral for some of her fallen punkmates (they just toss the bodies on the fire rather than making a fancy pyre), she advocates rampaging through the town and killing all the cops.  So, yeah, she’s a firecracker.  The dodgy kind, that might blow up in your hand as soon as you light the fuse.

Whether this was an intentional feminist nod or not, I like that the story is advanced by two assertive and (comparatively) competent women.  Lisa, while not as badass, is fearless in her personal pursuit of justice (not just revenge).  She certainly runs rings around the fantastically inept, all male police force.  Maybe if Lisa was the sheriff instead of the clueless, commie obsessed doofus, Virgel (“Did Patton call for the State Troopers when he invaded Iwo Jima?”), they wouldn’t be so useless.

This includes her boyfriend, Deputy Reed.  I’ve never seen a main character this bad at his job outside of a (intentional) comedy.  He  takes out one of the punks fleeing the scene of Mr. Kemper’s murder completely by accident.  He hits him with his car while pulling into the parking lot, knocking himself out in the process.  His investigative skills aren’t exactly razor sharp, either (“If they haven’t left the area, they might still be around.”).  At one point, he goes into the hospital carrying some girl we’ve never seen before.  When the nurse inquiries about what happened, he just says “Don’t ask.”  Both the girl and the nurse react like this isn’t unusual for Reed, and we never hear about it again.  My guess is that he accidentally shot her while trying to get her balloon out of a tree.  Again.

After Lisa is kidnapped, the movie switches tracks once more as Reed teams up with fellow cop Don (Don Martin) to come to the rescue.  Kind of a LETHAL WEAPON vibe, but with morons.  So, more like SAMURAI COP.  They make the smart call of not telling Sheriff Virgil what they are up to, because that lunatic would have gotten everyone, killed.  Instead they break into an unspecified house, steal some guns, and handle it themselves.  Astonishingly, not only do they get Lisa out unharmed, the take out a couple of punks along the way.  Also, Reed shoves a cucumber on to the barrel of his shotgun before shooting someone.  I…don’t know why that happened.

The climax brings another whiplash, putting us in the punk's camp when they face off against Virgil’s posse of drunken redneck hunters (including a Vietnam vet wearing a pith helmet, as Vietnam vets are known to do). The punks are automatically more sympathetic because ‘80s movie law always has drunken rednecks higher on the asshole scale.  Only Nazis rate worse.  The punks initially have the advantage because of Ramrod’s decisive planning.  Then they split up, and without her direct motivation, everyone’s bloodlust tanks, even the dude who was Special Forces in ‘Nam (or maybe just ROTC, they weren’t super clear on that).  The traps they set for the hunters make Kevin from HOME ALONE look like Jigsaw.  Rednecks get knocked off a pipe into a four-foot ditch, tripped down a slight hill slope, and caught in a net.  Luckily, the boozed-up gun nuts are too dumb to just lift the net over their head, so that buys some time for our heroes/villains.  

Everything boils down to the final confrontation between Lisa and Ramrod, the movie's emotional core.  And yes, there is an emotional core, and character arcs, though they resemble a Richter scale measurement more than a graceful arc.  Bullets are exchanged, justice is served.  Maybe?  I might have mentioned early that this movie can be a tad confusing.  

So many questions are left unanswered, such as what the hell did I just watch? Was this a gritty revenge story or a screwball comedy?  Will Feggy ever go fishing?  Director Stanley Lewis followed this up by not making movies anymore, as did most of the cast, so we may never know.  PUNK VACATION is a mess, but for reasons I can't explain, I still dig it.  Sometimes we should just follow Deputy Reed's advice and don't ask.

C. Chaka