Labor Day, You Jive Suckah

I continue to be impressed and enamored with The CineFamily's set-up at the Silent Movie Theatre. As if the lure of seeing long-forgotten and extremely rare gems as well as amazing music documentaries from the comfort of a plush couch wasn't enough, bossman Hadrian is prone to moments of demented genius like the insane Five-Minute Game the theatre hosted on Labor Day.

Get your mind out of the gutter for a moment. The five-minute game isn't what you played in junior high when you were locked in a closet at a party with a member of the opposite sex (hopefully) while someone stood outside the door with a stopwatch. This is something Hadrian said was born during his video store days as a game for geeks by geeks.

Occasionally after the store closed, the employees would scramble to all corners of the building to unearth the most obscure title they could find. The kind of thing that never, ever, ever got rented. Hadrian said it was key to look for layers of dust on top of the video box or seriously faded color on the box art done by years of sun damage.

The geeks would then scramble back to the VCR where everyone would watch exactly five minutes of each title, the rationale being that every movie is good for at least the first five minutes. Everyone would vote on which they wanted to watch in its entirety, and the winning film would roll.

Brilliant, right?

The game was preceded by one of the semi-regular CineFamily cookouts, which is yet another stroke of genius. If you haven't read any of my earlier blogs about the Silent Movie Theatre, they have a swanky back patio with a barbecue which occasionally is opened up for a BYOM throwdown. Pimpadelic Wonderland, the house disc/video jockey and Hadrian's co-conspirator, spins tunes while the geeks try not to burn themselves and chow down on some grub and several cans of Tecate, which always seem to be in abundance at the theatre.

Fellow New Beverly regular Michael and I grilled for a bit before the preceeding, my veggie-dogs sharing real estate on the jam-packed barbecue with his swanky chicken-apple sausages. Chewing became a luxury we couldn't afford as Hadrian summonsed the geeks into the theatre shortly after cooking was completed.

Ballots were waiting on the seats, and though I was sure I'd have heard of at least a couple of the 15 titles, none of them rang even a tiny bell. Hadrian and one of the video-store geeks who helped create the game explained its genesis and the rules before the parade of cinematic abominations began.

And an interesting mix it was, indeed. TOOMORROW (That's not a typo), a lightweight Olivia Newton-John disco sci-fi thing, kicked things off and seriously worried me. I make no secret of my severe hatred of all things disco, especially when disco and cinema are joined in an unholy union. All we needed was a couple people like New Bevver/disco-musical lover Jen in the crowd and I'd spend 90 minutes in Hell.

My fears were doubled a little later when a disco horror film, NOCTURNA, also reared its ugly head. (Damn thing even had the balls to promise appearances by one-hit wonders Gloria Gaynor and Vicki Sue Robinson in the opening credits.)

Most of the films were terrible, and not in a potentially entertaining way. I gathered few of them had a chance, so I only remained fearful of being stuck with one of the disco films. SECOND SIGHT, an utterly forgettable late-'80s piece of cable fodder comedy with Bronson Pinchot playing a psychic detective and John Larroquette playing...Uh, Hell if I remember...was the only one I had ever seen before let alone heard of, as it turned out.

There were only two I really wanted to see, the first being Z.P.G. (Stands for Zero Population Growth) which looked like a laughable bit of socially conscious '70s sci-fi in which world leaders on a smoggy, insanely overpopulated Earth try to fend off the apocalypse by banning reproduction for a generation. We caught a glimpse of a youngish Oliver Reed during the film's five minutes, and I imagine he kicked the crap out of his agent once filming wrapped.

Z.P.G. had potential, but my clear-cut choice was DEATH PROMISE, which I fell head-over-heels in love with from the moment it opened with an aerial view of a pair of dudes (One of which was a black dude rocking a physics-defying afro) jogging through Central Park in matching banana yellow track suits accompanied by a funky "Death Promise" theme song which sounded like something from the late Isaac Hayes, only much, much worse.

An unintentionally hilarious voiceover explains that landlords will often go to extreme measures to drive tenants out of rent-controlled buildings in order to replace them with residents who will have to pay a higher rate. When this happens, the victims are only left with one choice...

...to FIGHT!

The non-afro sporting jogger then thwarts an attack by a couple of landlord-sponsored goons on an elderly neighboy by using some of the clumsiest martial arts ever captured on celluloid before DEATH PROMISE's five minutes were up.

It was EPIC!

We adjourned to the patio for more grilling while the votes were tallied. DEATH PROMISE was getting a lot of buzz around the barbecue and did receive a rocking ovation, so I liked its chances. Micheal and fellow New Bevver/frequent partner-in-crime Cat also voted for DEATH PROMISE, but a few of Michael's friends weren't loving the kung-fu exploitation, which concerned me. Hadrian called us all back in, and by now I wanted to see DEATH PROMISE so badly that I was gonna be a little more than annoyed if it didn't win.

In third place was SECOND SIGHT. I guess there's something to be said for Gen-X nostalgia and the fact that its five minutes included three recognizable actors. That said, it would've made for an extremely boring and anti-climactic night, so I suppose it recieved a few tallies from the casual films fans milling about but didn't get much of the hardcore geek vote.

Hadrian said Z.P.G. came in second by a mere vote. Again, it looked like a great source of unintentional comedy, but it just didn't grab me the way one of the films did. Things looked really good at this point.

And the winner...



DEATH-freakin'-PROMISE! And it was all I hoped it would be.

The hero (If you can call him that) and his afro-ed partner take a stand against a landlord who has joined in an axis of evil with several others to drive out their tenants so they can raze the buildings and sell to a developer. The axis included a stereotypical late-'70s Italian, a stereotypical late-'70s Jew and a stereotypical late-'70s African-American pimp/pusher. A little something to offend everyone.

The clothing and music were atrocious, the acting and dialogue was even worse, and the martial arts scenes were done s...o s...l...o...w...l...y that you wondered if the cast was trained at the same YMCA in Newark that taught Daniel Larusso. It did, however, have an attempt at a twist ending, so I'll give the writer props for the effort.

Just awesome!

Based on the huge turnout, Hadrian promised to do this kinda thing again. Can't wait, but DEATH PROMISE is going to be a tough, tough act to follow.