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

Prick Up the Pace - DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY

The 1970’s was a weird time for movies. Themes became darker, action became grittier, and characters became, well, jerks.  The flawed heroes (or saps) from Film Noir escaped into the mainstream.  Movies like THE FRENCH CONNECTION, GET CARTER, and THE GODFATHER challenged audiences to get behind some pretty unpleasant protagonists.  Jerks even ruled lightweight comedies (is there a single character in THE BAD NEWS BEARS that you wouldn’t want to pop with a baseball?).  And for drive-in movies, it was the jerkier the better.  Just look at 1974’s high octane reverse kidnapping flick, DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY.

The Capsule:

Ex-racer Larry (Peter Fonda) and his creepy mechanic sidekick, Deke (Adam Roarke), think they are home free after a brazen and morally reprehensible supermarket hold-up.   Their smooth getaway is unexpectedly complicated when Mary (Susan George), Larry’s impulsive one-night-stand, decides to tag along.  Not because of the money, or because she particularly likes Larry, but because she doesn’t have anything better to do.  Try as they might Larry and Deke can’t get rid of her.  The volatile trio can’t help but cause chaos on the roads, and soon every cop in the county is on their tail.  Leading the chase is Captain Franklin (Vic Marrow), a maverick lawman who plays by his own rules, ‘cause that’s what cops did in the ‘70s.  If they can learn to work together, these outlaws might be able to out run, out think, and outlast the cops, if Larry doesn’t kill them all first.

The movie opens with a quiet, intense man in a black cap sneaking into a house.  He makes note of the little girl watching TV in the living room before heading to the bathroom.  He stares at the silhouette of a woman taking a shower for several seconds before tearing back the curtain and grabbing her.  He moves her into the living room (with a robe on, at least), and instructs her to call her husband (Roddy McDowell), the manager of a large supermarket.  If the manager gives the kidnapper’s partner all the money in the supermarket safe, no harm will come to his family.  When the husband hesitates, the kidnapper makes a move towards the kid.  The sound of his wife screaming makes the manager instantly relent and give up the money. 

If this was a Clint Eastwood or Steve McQueen movie, this motherfucker would be the villain.  But psych, Deke is one of the heroes.  Perhaps not heroes, but you are clearly supposed to be rooting for them.  It’s one of those strong anti-establishment, stick-it-to-the-man kind of movies, with a wild free spirited vibe.  While not a straight up comedy, like SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT, there is a lot of humor infused into the story.  Larry and Deke are ripping off an insured business, without using violence, so everything is cool.  Never mind the horrible psychological trauma inflicted to a perfectly innocent family (you know poor Roddy McDowell is never going to recover, he’s so fragile when out of ape make-up). 

Ironically, Deke is actually the nicer of the two.  It’s Larry that is the real asshole.  Peter Fonda does give the character a certain roguish charm, but not enough to excuse his overall dickishness.  He only cares about himself; specifically himself behind the wheel.  He definitely doesn’t care anything about Mary, who he would happily ditch any chance he gets.  By the end of the movie, he’s developed a level of affection for her, but it’s obvious he wouldn’t lose any sleep if he never saw her again.  He also lightheartedly makes a few sexually violent threats behind her back, like “I’ll braid her tits.”  At the time those comments made him sound like a rascal, now they make him seem like he’s begging to be pepper sprayed. 

His closest connection is with Deke, but even that seems mostly out of necessity.  Larry needs a good mechanic, especially one who is so desperate and guilt-ridden that he has to put up with Larry’s bullshit.  Larry needles Deke every chance he gets about his alcoholism and how much he screwed up their racing career.  All Deke can do is take it in silence.  

The movie never addresses it directly, but there are subtle hints that Deke may have an unrequited love for Larry.  This explains his devotion and makes it that much worse.  The one time he stands up to Larry is when he comes to Mary’s defense after Larry pushes her.  They bond over their mutual attraction to a jerk that mistreats them.  He even suggests that she take off with him after they get away, leaving Larry to self-destruct on his own.  It’s a great character arc, and in that moment you almost forget about him terrorizing that naked woman and her child.

The wild card in the situation is Mary.  I think she’s supposed to represent a liberated gal who fearlessly goes after what she wants, even when she doesn’t know exactly what that is.  She is a lot like Laurie Bird’s free love hitchhiker from TWO LANE BLACKTOP, but with more of a ditzy Goldie Hawn vibe.   Susan George doesn’t play her as stupid, though.  Mary is worldly (or so she claims), reasonably well read, and matches Larry insult for insult.  She’s just not the best decision maker and a terrible judge of character.  At the time, the way she stubbornly inserts herself into a risky get-away with two men she barely knows would have been considered kooky, instead of, you know, blatantly suicidal.

She does excel at getting under Larry’s skin (or breaking it sometimes, she’s a biter).  After Larry does his first show-offy car jump of the movie, Mary looks unimpressed and says “average.”  Clearly, this was one of Immortan Joe’s favorite movies.

Vic Marrow does a good job with what could easily have been a stereotypical hayseed sheriff.  Franklin is obsessive and rude, but he isn’t malicious.  This is nothing personal, he’s trying to do his job.  And he is completely justified.  The guys he´s after are unquestionably despicable criminals (except Mary, who just has criminally poor judgment).  Plus, they are on the hook for destroying approximately eight police cars, several billboards, a pick-up, and a gas station.  They are a legitimate menace.  

Even though he is technically The Man, Franklin has a rebellious streak in him, too.  He refuses to wear a uniform or a gun, and gets into a fight with his stogy old superior, Donahue (Kenneth Tobey), who is more concerned with politics than catching the fugitives.  And of course, he plays by his own rules.  He’s kind of an older, pricklier, less muscle bound version of Dwayne Johnson’s Hobbs character from THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS series.  I know you’re not supposed to want him to win, but I kind of did.  

I’ve been a fan of ‘70s grindhouse car chase movies since as long as I can remember.  Or, more specifically, since Tarantino’s DEATH PROOF.  DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY is one of the more famous ones, and a favorite of Tarantino, but surprisingly, the car action is pretty light.  There are a number of great stunts and a lot of general destruction, but much of it seems routine after all this time.  It’s not up to the level of VANISHING POINT.   

The chases convey a sense of speed, but they are mostly straightforward and over quickly.  Even Hanks (Eugene Daniels), the macho hick dipshit driving the souped up interceptor, only lasts a few minutes before getting clobbered by a telephone pole.  It is an inauspicious end for such an offensive loud mouth.  At least it follows with a scene where he, after boasting the entire movie about how he’s going to nail the suspects, has to get on the radio and admit he can no longer pursue.  I hope the girls at the dispatch got a good laugh out of that.

One stunt does stand out, though, particularly because it was done practically and was incredibly dangerous.  After Franklin has lost all of his cars, he bullies the helicopter pilot who has been flying him around to stop Larry’s bat-out-of-hell Dodge Charger.  He doesn’t specify how.  So the helicopter gets down side by side with Larry, zooming down a tree lined road, and tries to force his car off to the side.  The helicopter is going at full bore, no more than four feet off the ground at times, with a swerving car right beside it.  That is the kind of stunt no one would walk away from if anything went wrong.   It’s a marvel of old school stunt precision.  

Even though its ‘70s social sensibilities can be wince-inducing, and Larry is a colossal douche and Deke can be creepy as fuck, DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY is still a fun flick.  Like a lot of the movies of the time, it is about yearning to be free.  These days, that message can be more attractive than ever.  The idea of hopping in a tricked out muscle car and outrunning the cops—without cameras at every intersection and streaming video and instant nationwide APBs (or whatever they are called today)—can be a thrill.  It could make you long for the simpler days.  But then you would have to deal with more assholes like Larry, so you’re probably better off where you are.

C Chaka

Insanely Fast: REDLINE

Japan, land of the rising sun and robot hotels, has its own special brand of crazy.  A million different influences are filtered through its unique cultural outlook.  This is especially evident in its movies. Sometimes they can be too obsessive to hold my attention.  Occasionally they can be so disturbing I don't even want to translate the title, much less watch it. Often, though, they hit a sweet spot between relatable and unexpectedly bizarre.  This is why BATTLE ROYALE is so much more interesting than its slick, melodramatic western ripoff, HUNGER GAMES.  Japan's cartoons are probably the purest distillation of this. Anime is unbound by anything but imagination. I’ve been out of the anime game for a while, but a recent recommendation pulled me back in.  Weirdly, it’s a movie about car racing.  For a movie to get me interested in car racing, it would have to be pretty special.  REDLINE is pretty special.

The Capsule:

Years after transitioning to fancy “air cars”, traditional car racing has gone underground.  By traditional racing I mean no rules vehicular mayhem over miles of dangerous terrain driven by aliens and cyborgs firing missiles and grappling hooks at each other.  I’m not that familiar with NASCAR, but I’m assuming it’s similar.  The most popular and most dangerous of these events is the Redline.  The long shot this year is “Sweet” JP, a human rocking a huge pompadour and a badass yellow muscle car.  He is only in on a technicality after being “accidentally” blown up by his mobbed up partner Frisbee just before finishing the qualifying race.  His competition is considerably more intimidating.  There’s Machine Head, a huge cyborg with a piston shaped skull and his own theme music who is literally built into his vehicle.  The Mad Brothers, Lynchman and Johnny Boya, are a pair of bounty hunters with a penchant for sabotage.  Gori Rider is a renegade cop who plays by his own rules, most of which involve demolishing people.  The Super Boins are glammed up psychotic sex starlets from Supergrass, “a planet ruled by a princess with magical powers.”  The odds on favorite is Sonoshee, a perky but single minded human racer with a tricked out hover car.  The chances of surviving, much less winning, are astronomically low, though, since this year’s Redline is set on Roboworld.  The ultraconservative militaristic autocracy that rules Roboworld considers itself the moral paragon of the known galaxy and will stop at nothing to wipe out the lowlife racing scum.

First off the bat, this movie is gorgeous.  It is practically all hand drawn cell animation, as far as I can tell.  It’s beautiful from the opening frame, and that’s literally a shot of garbage.  Scenes of actual pretty things look even better.  The animation seems to be a mix of styles, all working perfectly together.  Sometimes it reminded me of non-Japanese stuff like Aeon Flux or HEAVY METAL.  You don’t need to know shit about animation to appreciate this, though, only eyeballs.  

 
Second off the bat, this movie is mind-bogglingly insane.  It’s the kind of movie Vin Diesel’s character from THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS would dream up after watching a STAR WARS marathon while on peyote.  There are so many bizarre layers swimming around together that it’s almost overwhelming.  There are some parts that are literally indescribable.  As in, I cannot figure a way of accurately describing them.  They look cool, though.  

The alien designs are outstanding.  There are dog people, guys with “T” shaped heads, guys with no skin who are extremely emotionally sensitive, tiny parrot headed swindlers in track suits.  JP’s partner Frisbee is some kind of reptilian dude with narrow bands of regular flesh across his scaly face, like a stencil pattern.  Even his crusty mechanic, Old Man (or Pops, if you are reading the subtitles) is 8 feet tall with four arms and moves around like a spider.  After all that, the cyborgs from Roboworld seem quaint. 

And speaking of those assholes, Roboworld is a piece of work.  It’s like Donald Trump’s vision of a future utopia.  The whole moral angle is bullshit, they are just scared people will find out about their sneaky deals and plots.  We’re first introduced to the President of Roboworld as he’s complaining about all the refugees on one of their habitable but kind of shitty moons.  They can’t touch the racers who are using the moon as sort of an Olympic Village because they gave the refugees autonomy in exchange for staying out of Roboworld proper.  Now all they can do is whine about it and try to intimidate the racers.  Once they set foot (or wheel, or hover) on Roboworld, though, the top brass plans to obliterate them with an orbital cannon.  Luckily, Redline is a big deal in the galaxy, and the organizers sabotage the cannon and cause enough of a diversion to get the competitors in.  They are still being dropped into the middle of a war zone, however.  Roboworld throws everything they have at the racers, including a massively powerful illegal bioweapon that looks like a giant plasma baby.  It’s named Funky Boy.  Because why not name your secret superweapon Funky Boy?  You would think this was in response to a full scale planetary invasion, but no, it’s just to stop a bunch of racers.  Slight overreaction, if you ask me.

Not that the racers themselves are harmless.  With the exception of JP, everyone’s vehicle is loaded with missiles, machine guns, eyeball lasers, and other dangerous racing accessories.  Some of the missiles have faces and laugh manically when launched.  The Super Boins’ lady car transforms into a full-on (and ludicrous) humanoid mecha.  All of this is fully sanctioned, even encouraged, by the Redline organizers.  They seem oblivious to any corruption or unfair advantages as long as the competition remains popular and brings in the money.  You know, kind of like FIFA.  

For those of you who thought the physics in the Wachowski’s SPEED RACER was too grounded in reality, REDLINE should be right up your alley.  Virtually everything that happens in this movie would kill a normal person.  JP goes so fast he begins hemorrhaging from his nose, and that was just in the qualifying race.  It would be impossible to control any of these vehicles.  The conditions are so extreme that even little Anakin Skywalker would sit this shit out.  At one point, JP’s car spins like a top and skips over the water, only to recover afterwards.  In the context of this movie, it seems plausible enough.  The action is so far over the top, you just go with it.  

It gets so crazy near the end that, in order to stop the out of control Funky Boy, one of the Roboworld generals transforms himself into a giant, um, thing?  That’s one of the indescribable moments I was talking about.  So, suddenly in the middle of a race movie, there’s a huge kaiju (monster) fight.  Who wins?  No idea.  Once the racers get past the battling beasties, it’s never brought up again.  If it’s not part of the race, it’s incidental.

At its core, though, REDLINE is a simple underdog sports story.  JP is like the lifeline, just hold on to his story and you’ll make it through unharmed.  He’s a great anchor for the movie.  Even though he’s established as a rebel with a devil-may-care attitude, he’s also a pretty good guy.  He has a laid back charm that’s easy to like.  He’s fiercely loyal to his friends (even to those who don’t deserve it), relentlessly confident (but not cocky), and fearless.  He’s even a romantic.  Sonoshee catches his eye because of her racing prowess and determination, not just because she’s a cutie.  Their chemistry together is very sweet.

[Spoiler]  When Sonoshee’s vehicle is taken out of commission, JP even lets her continue the race in his car.  She’s not just a spectator or a passenger.  They become a real team, working together towards the common goal.  The two of them cozied up in JP’s one person cockpit is pretty sexy, even.  It reminded me of the trunk scene with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez from OUT OF SIGHT, except ridiculously more unsafe.  

[Even more of a SPOILER] The end of the race takes it just as far as it could possibly go.  JP is pushing it so hard in the last stretch against Machine Head that his car completely disintegrates.  His and Sonoshee’s bodies are sent hurling across the finish line a millisecond before Machine Head.  Either there was some kind of anti-gravity safety net or it was a mystically transcending experience, because they just float together in each other’s arms instead of becoming red paste.  The best thing, though, is the reactions of all the other racers.  They are all happy for JP and Sonoshee, even the ones who were trying to kill them a few minutes before.  I think it’s because they know it was an amazing finish to the race.  And it’s all about the race.

I would like to know what happened to Funky Boy, though.

C Chaka