Sexy Cineplexy: Reviews

Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss
(directed by Tommy O'Haver, 1998)



I've known of this movie forever, but never had any interest in watching it until now. I'm glad I waited -- the purpose of this gay romantic comedy is to tear your soul to shreds. It goes from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert to Hellraiser in 90 minutes. You'd think I'd really like that, but I don't. Those two things do not mix well.

This is the story of a gay man (Sean Hayes, who else?) who meets a handsome guy working in a coffee shop, named Gabriel. Sean Hayes is a photographer who takes pictures using a Polaroid camera that his mother gave him as a birthday present after she found out he was gay. Sean Hayes wants to take pictures of Gabriel.

Let me just warn you now that the rest of the review is going to be SPOILERS because discussing the ending of the film is crucial, as I want to warn you before you see this movie, if you see it. In a way, I'm glad the movie didn't turn out to be as simple and cutesy as I expected. But -- big BUT -- I also didn't expect the movie to end with emotional murder, which made the whole movie really, really horrible, which is sad because it actually was a good movie until the very end.

The story of Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss revolves around the relationship of Sean Hayes' character -- Billy -- and Gabriel. Is Gabriel gay? We don't know. Billy suspects something, but maybe he's just "projecting." We learn that Gabriel has a girlfriend back in San Francisco, but it doesn't seem to be going well between them.

After about an hour, Gabriel gets into bed with Billy and they fool around -- but Gabriel stops it before it goes too far. So, now we know that Gabriel is at least open to the idea of gay love.

Gabriel ends up going to Catalina for a photo shoot he's modeling for. Billy follows him there.

The knife in the heart moment comes when Billy discovers that Gabriel appears to be going FULL ON GAY -- but with SOMEONE ELSE. A sexy male model he must have met in Catalina. We see Gabriel ditch Billy and run off with the sexy model, putting their hands around each other and disappearing to go do gay sexual adventures, while Billy is now alone and destroyed.

The movie ends with a completely brand new character entering the picture and essentially being introduced as a replacement for Billy, who's been devastated about Gabriel. The new guy, named Joshua, seems more interested in Billy. He's also a photographer into taking pictures with a Polaroid. FADE TO BLACK.

In real life, that's great. In a movie, IT TOTALLY SUCKS. Hello?! You can't just put characters like that in front of us and then get a stick of dynamite and blow up everything and destroy them. That's what they do in Saw movies. Yes -- in real life, situations like this happen all the time, I'm sure. It's very "realistic." But is this really what you should do in a movie?

And then we get a "things will get better for Billy!" tacked on ending when he meets another guy who seems more like him. The camera pans far away from Billy and this new guy, Joshua, as they meet for the first time, leaving us feeling like we're abandoning Billy ourselves. This is a horrible, horrible example of gay romantic cinema. I wasn't even rooting for Billy and Gabriel to get together in the end, but I didn't expect the Gabriel character to suddenly turn into an ice cold, bitchy, vain little whore. And yes, it really does come across like that.

I can see hints now during the movie that a disappointing ending was coming, if you really think about it, but I didn't think that ending should have happened. As someone on IMDB.com said about this movie, when they watch a romantic comedy, they want to be comforted. And I can understand that. And Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss plays out like it's going to be a comforting movie, which is why I despise its ending. If you're going to be that dark, you should at least set the tone early on that darkness is coming, even in romance movies. I don't think the tone was really there. Hints in the story were there, but not in the tone. The tone of the whole movie ended up being pathetic -- that Billy was pathetic and that being gay is miserable. And while I don't see anything wrong with making a statement like that in a film... the whole film needs to warn you that it's coming. Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss doesn't do this. It's like watching E.T. and E.T. gets gunned down and shot to death in front of little Drew Barrymore and that kid who played Elliott at the very end. E.T. going home is sad, yes, but it feels right. E.T. dying, though, is a whole other thing, and not right. That's the problem with Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss -- it exchanges a sad ending for a hopeless ending. Because even though this new guy, Joshua, is waiting in the wings for Billy -- the viewers at home don't give a damn about Billy's future love life. They give a damn about Billy and what they've just seen him go through. Joshua is a cheap last minute attempt at happiness after the movie's just destroyed all the happiness we already had. There were other options it could have taken. Instead, they went for the more shocking "truth."

Another reviewer called this movie, "CUTE! CUTE! CUTE!"

Suffering is not my idea of cute.

Glad you didn't like it because I didn't want to try it.

I caught the last half hour of this on TV the other day. Been a while since I've seen it. Good, made me want to rewatch the first two in their entirety, but I don't like it as much as the first one, which genuinely creeps me out.

The weirdest thing about it, is the makers say they had no idea they were making such a gay film. That's hard to believe.

I can see that.

Just going back and tagging a bunch of reviews that were missed before, and stumbled on this:

Hard to imagine the same person who wrote a Casino Royale review about Daniel Craig's abs and doing his taxes wrote that last sentence, but bravo.

Sexy is so evil.

FREDDY'S DEAD:
The Final Nightmare
(directed by Rachel Talalay, 1991)



Why do people like confusing crap like David Lynch movies so much and yet turn around and blast fun, interesting, easy to understand films like Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare? This thought came to my mind while watching the movie. The film is the sixth (but not final -- although it was supposed to be at the time) entry in the Nightmare on Elm Street series. Because a movie is a "part six" people are gonna automatically think low of it, no matter what it is. Even Star Wars gets trashed as it goes on. Watch -- the new films starting to come out in that series next year will probably get trashed somewhat, too.



In Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, Freddy Krueger is out to start a new gameplan. He's killed every kid in Springwood, Ohio, where he's been on a killing spree throughout the rest of the Nightmare on Elm Street series, but he hasn't killed one teenage boy, yet. This guy winds up in a different town where he meets Maggie (Lisa Zane) and the black guy from Alien (Yaphet Kotto). They want to help him because he's got amnesia and he hasn't slept in a long time (to avoid being killed by Freddy). They drive him back to Springwood (minus black guy from Alien) with some other teenagers in tow and they come face to face with Freddy Krueger, as well as Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold in cameos.



The other teenagers all come from a shelter for troubled kids (or something like that), which is where Maggie and Black Guy from Alien work, as social workers and dream psychologists. One of the teenagers is deaf and this leads to Freddy killing him by cutting off his ear and replacing it with some kind of creature hearing aid with legs that makes him have super strong hearing so that when Freddy scrapes his finger knives across a chalkboard, it's so loud that it makes the deaf guy's head explode. Anyway, Freddy is out to move out of Springwood and into a new town -- preferably the town where the shelter is -- so he can kill all of the kids there since Springwood is now dry of teenagers and there's only adults suffering from mass delusions, caused apparently by Freddy.



There is a mystery, though, involving Lisa Zane's Maggie character (the mystery is that she's Freddy Krueger's daughter) that runs throughout the entire movie until the end when we finally learn the truth, even though you may be able to figure it out early through clues (or, you know because I just told you). She ends up becoming the woman who finally kills Freddy in the end. Freddy's Dead, you see, is a tale about bad parenting and the ever annoying father figure who stalks your traumatized psyche through life until you finally vanquish him (unless you had a good father who doesn't need vanquishing). Maggie has not seen her dad, Freddy, since she was a very little girl. She was the one who told the authorities about her demented dad, which led to his arrest and his "death" by fire from a mob of angry citizens. He had, you see, strangled to death her mother after her mother found his secret murder room in the house. So Maggie is plagued by dreams of water towers and being chased around a yard by a man throughout all of her life -- she's totally forgotten her life as Freddy Krueger's daughter. Until... now.



Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare.

I saw this when it first came out. It was released in 3-D. Only the last act of the movie was in 3-D, though, when they kill Freddy. My DVD had the option to turn the 3-D ending on. I do have glasses, but I did not watch the 3-D ending.

This is a fast moving, sort of entertaining, enjoyable, yeah whatever kind of movie. I'd rather watch it than so many other stupid movies, though. I have, actually. I've seen this movie lots of times.

There's not many deaths in the movie, though. Also, all of the deaths are of males. No female deaths at all. So the movie has a kind of anti-male subtext going on, I feel. Different than the other Freddy movies. And this one was directed by a woman. But, I like it and I look forward to watching it again someday.

You watched a Nightmare film without me?!?!?!?!?!

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

I liked the Nightmare movies growing up. Halloween was always my favorite slasher series, but Nightmare was an easy second. Michael Myers was a slow lumbering and unstoppable killing machine, but Freddy was always the most fun to watch.

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Fear and Loathing in MoFo... The Gunslinger 45's Top 50 Favorite Films

In the 10 Ring: Gunslinger45's reviews

You mentioning the 3-D made me realize this is one of the two or three Nightmare movies I have seen. I watched it in the theater. This is the one where Freddy plays nintendo with one of his victims?

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Letterboxd

Now I'm playing with power!

Truly a terrifying scene.

Not at all the word I was going to use but lets just go with that.

RAW DEAL
(directed by John Irvin, 1986)



Arnold Schwarzenegger is the Raw Deal.

A small town sheriff, Mark Kaminsky (Schwarzenegger), is given the task to infiltrate a Chicago mob family as part of a revenge scheme dreamed up by FBI Chief Harry Shannon, whose son, Blair, was killed by the mob family at a log cabin in the opening scene of the movie.

Leaving behind his bored, depressed, beautiful alcoholic wife, Schwarzey heads to Chicago once Shannon promises him a better job back with the FBI if he pulls this task off. To get inside with the mob, he has to act like the mob, so he does various stunts to appear mean and badass, such as stealing a wealthy woman's limousine and forcing her to give up all of her jewelry.

The mob runs some kind of gambling casino in the basement of a building, and it is here that Schwarzey joins forces with them, along with meeting a sort of haggard looking woman (Kathryn Harrold) who falls in love with him, but could she just be trying to seduce Schwarzey into giving up private information he shouldn't? Will she get him to sleep with her slutty, gambling addicted ass thereby ruining the monogamous relationship Schwarzey has with Blanche Baker, AKA Molly Ringwald's older sister in Sixteen Candles? The beautiful alcoholic wife left out alone in the country.



Raw Deal looks exciting, and a large amount of the film is kind of exciting and beautiful to watch and observe, but ultimately the film is sadly kind of boring and somewhat plot heavy, but worse of all -- a kind of confusing mess. It reminded me a little of that Whoopi Goldberg movie, Jumpin' Jack Flash, which I believe came out in the same year. Whoopi Goldberg is trying to have a lot of fun, but the movie is largely an action film and the plot comes first. Same thing with Raw Deal. Possibly because it's 1986 and maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger, despite being in The Terminator, hasn't really grown into being ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER yet, totally, with popular culture -- Arnold doesn't really come first here. It's an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie that doesn't really give him much respect, I feel -- HOWEVER, there's no stopping the power and charisma of Arnold, so he steals and steals and steals.

Quotable Arnold Schwarzenegger quotes are coming at you right and left, even if they're not really that quotable. He appears in beautiful suits and leather jackets and commands the screen with authority, fun, humor and a zest for the a$$hole character he's pretending to be for the mob. At times he strips off his shirt to reveal his muscular physique to impress the ladies, notably his haggard looking stalkeress, the Monique character played by Kathryn Harrold.



A memorable moment comes near the end of the movie when Arnie takes off in a convertible with a missing windshield and uses big, blasting guns to kill all sorts of construction guys in trucks and vehicles and forklift things at a gravel pit to the tune of The Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." Probably the best scene of the whole movie, but I could not follow why Arnold was even there at the gravel pit killing all of these unknown people to begin with. I don't know. This film is ridiculous. Just listen to the music and watch them die.



Raw Deal.

Destructively plot heavy with a really lame female counterpart for Schwarzey in Kathryn Harrold. There's so much they could have done that would have been more interesting, even if it would have seemed unoriginal. What if Blanche Baker, Arnie's alcoholic wife, had tagged along with him to Chicago? Why was the ending to this movie rather anti-climatic, despite the energetic atmosphere that was going on? WHO were all of these characters, especially those in the mob? Why did they suck so much?

1986, as I've said before, has a certain feel. For me, you can tell when a movie came out in 1986. I have no idea what it is with me and 1986. Maybe, since I was born in late 1983, maybe 1986 is when my first solid memories of life starting taking place and I have a strong feel for the air of 1986 because my brain got its first big memorable tastes of life? You know how you can't really start remembering sh*t until you're about two or three years old? Maybe that's the case with me. Maybe all of my memories started being active in 1986 and thus I have a solid connection with 1986. I don't know. Anyway, Cobra, the Sylvester Stallone movie, also came out in 1986, and Cobra feels kind of like Raw Deal, too. They both have a very bold, rockin', charged atmosphere about them. I mean, Schwarzenegger driving around a gravel pit in a windshield-less convertible to the tune of The Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" could ONLY happen in 1986. What was going on that year? Someone get me an astrologer. I want to study the planets as they were in 1986.

Anyway, Raw Deal -- a beater car for Schwarzenegger, but one he really drove recklessly and sported like it was the best damn car in town. Much more fun than Cobra, but not as good, really, because of the story. And yet at times I felt like I was watching a D-list Godfather.

You could skip this, but if you're looking for a comedy and there's nothing else available, try this. Possibly drink alcohol to it, although I don't really understand the connection between alcohol and movies and how it gives pleasure.

I liked Raw Deal enough, but I agree it is not Arnie's best. The Rolling Stones song is great, and I like Pamala Stanley's If Looks Could Kill. The song at the club Arnie was in while undercover.

I do not remember that song. Then again it has been a while since I saw Raw Deal.

I watched Raw Deal for the first time last year and felt it was probably the worst action movie I've seen from Arnold.

I just remember it being a very bad film and the reason I couldn't listen to that Stones for for a good decade or so. I hated that scene.

I used to enjoy that Stones song, before that scene in that film.