A greasy guy in a loin cloth fights dinosaurs, purple cavemen and rock em’ sock em’ robots in Yor: The Hunter from the future. Action crap extrodinaire Steve Banton stars as Yor in one of the few films where the ending is actually given away in the title. Yor is a meat headed weight trainer who may actually be the first post apocalyptic redneck that doesn’t drive a firebird. He’s out frolicking in the desert when he finds some cave people getting attacked by a paper machete setgasuaurus and we all know how vicious plant eaters can be. After a few tucks and rolls and a stone axe to the noggin’ he calls a touchdown, drinks the dino’s blood and tells everyone to gather “the choice cuts of meat.” Yor only eats free range dinosaur meat.

One of the survivors is a woman named Kala who dresses in fur bikinis and likes dumb doughy guys in golden mullets. She wants to get busy with Yor, so she takes him back to their village where she shakes her money maker at a dino-death party. This seems to only confuse Yor’s pea sized brain and attracts some purpled faced caveman that attack that kidnap everyone including Yor’s new squeeze. They throw him off a cliff by which he miraculously survives with only a few minor scraps and bruises so he and the old sweaty guy hand glide into the purple guys home cave with a gigantic dead bat. Yor kung-fu kicks some cavemen in the crotch and then floods the cave with river water killing as many woman and children possible just before rescuing Kala. He hates anyone that he can easily bench press. They head up river on a boat strapped together with some hemp rope hoping maybe there’s a grateful dead concert upstream and are captured by some sand people wrapped in oily rags roasting marshmallows.

The sand people take them to their leader, Rowa a pretty young blonde who also wears a giant rapper medallion identical to Yors. She’s been baby-sitting some astronauts who’ve been trapped in ice in the caves making astro-slushies. After avoiding a decapitation and fighting some more sand people off, Yor invites Rowa on the trip with them to try to discover the secret of his origins. Sadly Rowa gets killed by more purple cavemen who show up after a brief cat fight she has with Kala. It ends all too quickly and with no mud or lime jello.

Yor gets the smack down on another dinosaur attacker whose survivors take him to yet another village. It felt like the movie might actually be starting over again, but then some spaceships show up and start blasting everyone in the village. Yor seems to have that luck. After the carnage, Yor

promises to avenge their death by sailing on a boat made of wicker and bat guano to the island where the attackers came from. They get stun zapped by slow moving robots and guys that look like sting dressed in teflon jumpsuits. The island is run by a dark overlord whose plan is to have Yor and Kala breed with his new cyborgs to create a new master race and a whole lotta akward after sex small talk.  Yor is helped to escape by a temp worker there where he joins a resistance against the cyborgs in their basement furnace room. Guard rails are a plenty to toss robots over. There’s a nuclear reactor and a robot caveman battle with lasers, trapeze acts and somewhere a guy in a cloak is impaled with a barber shop pole. That pretty much sums er’ up. Barry Goodall says it’s worth checking out if ya got a hankerin’ for communal living and sweaty old guys on hemp rafts..but then again you’re probably already a dang dirty hippie.

impromptu trapeze acts bat hand gliding high beam hand glow crystal balls with premium cable death by barber pole weenie roast attacks dinosaur rodeos astronauts on ice rock em sock em robots dino blood energy drinks extreme theme music	3 BLOOD Mostly from paper machet dinosaurs. 6 BREASTS Cleavage is plentiful but is mostly covered by fur and giant medallions. I blame PETA. 9 BEASTS Dinosaurs, purple cavemen, giant bats and robots. It’s like a kid’s toy box got dumped out all over this movie. 6.00 OVERALL

Check out the trailer for “Yor: The Hunter from the Future”

Do you like movies about sweaty, shirtless guys punching space aliens? Then Arena (1989, dir. Peter Manoogian) is the flick for you. If not, well, then yer on the wrong website, friend. I’m sure Martha Stewart has somethin’ about puttin’ glitter on pinecones over on her site.

Take Rocky and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (or Babylon 5 if you prefer), toss ‘em in a blender and you pretty much have Arena. On a space station populated with humans and aliens, a human short order cook, Steve Armstrong, dreams of fighting in the station’s popular slugfest.

Now, let’s back up a bit. Our hero, a fighter, is named Steve Armstrong. Get it? That would be like naming Tom Cruise’s character in Days of Thunder, Cole Driveswell, or Roy Scheider in Jaws, Chief Martin Kantswim.

But, given that Steve Armstrong, played by Christopher Reeve clone Paul Satterfield, looks and acts more or less like a poor man’s Flash Gordon, the name works. This is not a serious epic about the tests and trails of a fighter, like in say The Fighter (starring the Batman and Marky Mark). Nah, this is an excuse for a guy to punch a bunch of alien puppets. Need another example? Steve’s best buddy is a short alien guy with four arms, named, of course, Shorty. This film does not take itself seriously, and I mean that in a good way.

It is worth noting that this here flick features plenty of folks from both Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5—science fiction TV shows about life on a space station. Both o’ these shows came a few years after Arena, so maybe we have this flick to thank for a pair of classic science-fiction shows. Or it just helped them all get another job. Typecasting, y’know? Kind of like how Don S. Davis played a fair share of military guys, or how Clint Eastwood never plays anyone who smiles.

Arena starts out with Steve picking a fight with some kinda fish man. Reminds me of the time I tried fishing for catfish barehanded. Steve’s throws and ‘bo’s grabs the eye of a fighter trainer, played by B5’s Claudia Christian, and he gets his wish: to be the first human in 50 years to fight in the titular arena.

But, all ain’t cheery in the arena. A shady fight promoter fixes fights and rules the roost. His henchman, DS9’s Armin Shimerman (once again in full makeup), ain’t too nice neither. Steve fights his way through alien after alien as he works his way to the top of the rankings—and yes, we are treated to a mandatory montage.

Hijinks and shady business plague Steve as he works his way up to the championship fight, but you pretty much know how this one is gonna end. Arena does have a neat plot device in the form of the Handicapper—a machine that averages out the strength between the two fighters. This comes in handy when one fighter is a scrappy human, and the other is some sort of horned cyborg-lizard with a welded on codpiece. Yeah.

The real charm of Arena lies in its alien makeup effects. And, thankfully, some of the aliens ain’t yer basic humanoid shape neither. One of Steve’s first fights is against some kind of large-space grasshopper thing. It is a sight to behold, and makes the flick worth a watch on its own. They don’t make ‘em like this no more. A bit of trivia, Hollywood voice over legend, Frank Welker, provides voices for some, if not all, of the aliens Steve fights.

Tiger says, while Arena is predictable with its underdog fighter plot, it is fun and the makeup effects are great reminder of what movies were like before the overuse of CGI and motion-capture. Give it a peep, and play the Count the Star Trek/B5 Actors Drinking Game.

Puppet Punching Alien Punching Poor Customer Service Food Throwing Fourhanded Cooking Fourhanded Massages Gold Shorts Cyborg Codpieces Exploding Skulls Hologram Dancing Girls Future Star Trek Actors Future Babylon 5 Actors

2 BLOOD While there is plenty of fighting, mostly punching and the like, there is little blood on screen. Sure, Steve bleeds a bit here and there, but it is nothing major. 1 BREASTS We don’t see any full on naked boobies, but we get close a couple times, and Steve’s dream girl has some low cut dresses. 10 BEASTS Yes, Arena is lacking a bit in the first two categories, but it piles on the aliens with puppets, body suits and some great makeup effects—especially for a straight to video movie. 4.3 OVERALL

Check out the trailer for “Arena”

The Giallo Goon from a somewhat similarly titled website called “The Giallo Goon” stopped by at our Lost Highway offices this weekend. After stuffing his pockets from our mint tray he finally handed us a package, a plain paper wrapped VHS tape that smelled strangely of whiskey and Cheetos. Turns out it wasn’t the naked midget wrestling tape we ordered 2 weeks ago but his hilarious review of “The Prowler.” A classic slasher from the 80’s that helped make pitchfork shower killin’ the extreme sport it is today. You can view the episode in it’s entirety below and we look forward to his future video reviews…and midget wrestling.

Call me a nay sayer, say I was a doubter. I gotta admit that I didn’t think it was possible to top some of our country’s best combos. Mustard and vienna sausages , chicken and waffles, Starsky and Hutch, but  Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-rama maybe the perfect combo of gawkin’ at half naked woman and drunk bowling on a Friday night.

It all starts when 3 horny geeks want a sneak  peak at a sorority initiation lead by Robin Rochelle. She’s a 38 year old co-ed still trying to pass her freshman year but she has a hankering for paddlin’ some hinnies and covering pledges in whip cream. You just don’t see that sorta behavior  with soccer moms anymore. She catches the peeping toms who were all just watching them shower sans-luffas for what seems like a good hour. The I-felta-thi sorority has a very active bowling league so she sends the nerds and the pledges out to steal a bowling trophy and prove their worth. After breaking into the bowling alley they run into Linnea Quigly whose nearly unrecognizable fully clothed. She plays “Spider” a convict trying to rob the joint with a crow bar and a few well placed f-bombs. The gang grabs a trophy but accidentally lets out a demonic imp with the voice of Don Cornelius who’s been trapped inside for the last 30 years. The jive talking monster midget grants them each a wish and a chance to win a guest spot on Soul Train. Their wishes involve being queen of the prom, bars of gold and Michelle Bauer getting nekkid… but hey, who hasn’t had that same wish?

It all suddenly goes bad though when the imp turns some of the girls into demonic minions with bad skin and a hankerin’ for evil. They cram a fat guy’s head into a ball polishing machine and deep fries another guy’s face in the fry cooker taking time out to  pick up a few spares with a severed head. Spider and her new nerd boyfriend must fight their way out  with the help of a partially deaf janitor and put a stop to the evil muppet’s plans of world domination by stuffing him in a coffee can. If they can’t, it could be a fate far worse than death…a movie sequel. Sorority Babes is a fun 80’s throwback to when the jocks were dumb and the bimbos were big breasted. Barry Goodall says check it out and don’t forget to bring your bowling shoes and some 10 pound balls.

If you got 10 pound balls, how did you walk to the videostore so fast? That joke never gets old.

Roadside Attractions:

- Gratuitous spank-athon
- Whip cream-tastic
- Extensive use of a crowbar
- Magic demon trophy
- Head polishing
- Face frying
- Girl pulled in half like a pulled pork sandwich
- Flaming bimbos
- Severed head roll and bowl
- Evil imp impalement
- Car crash with roll

it’s the booooooooowwwwlll-train.

1980’s “alligator” might just do for pool parties what Jaws did for swimming at the beach as a giant mutant alligator terrorizing the sewers and streets of Chicago. Robert Forester stars as detective David Madison, a  former hair club member with a nasty habit of getting his partners killed. He’s called in to investigate why some pets have suddenly gone missing and random body parts are clogging up the sewers. Turns out, a flushed baby gator grew to the size of a Eldorado while snacking on hormone injected canines and is now moving up the food chain. Side effects also include insatiable hunger, dry mouth and an overall improved batting average.

David heads down into the sewer to check out the disappearance of a sanitation worker and that’s where he runs into the beefy reptile. His new partner is quickly made into a giant gator chew toy proving that David goes through partners faster than red shirts guys on Star Trek episodes. Back at the precinct, nobody believes the detective’s story and some even suspect that he might be a serial killer but a snooping reporter gets some glamour photos of the giant lizard right before getting killed.

The city gets gator fever and the mayor orders a bunch of police officers to bang on trash can lids like rejects from a Stomp recital to scare it out of hiding. The gator’s a no show since he’s been sunbathing in a backyard pool… relaxing, drinking margaritas, and eating the occasional kid dressed up as a pirate. Meanwhile, David has been making night moves on the local lizard queen (Robin Riker), a scientist who specializes in reptilian behavior and how to brutally reject guys at pickup bars. She’s immediately attracted to David’s receding hairline and his sweat stained t-shirts which leads to a late night of love making and watching Chip re-runs.

David discovers the laboratory responsible for making the mega-gator food, but the CEO is best buddy with the mayor, so he just ends up getting fired instead. Left with some free time David makes the sign of the two horned platypus again with Marisa, while the gator heads out for another kiling spree smashing up cop cars and tail spanking rich white people around like a frat hazing.

The mayor decides to hire a safari hunter to track the gator down in the streets who also enlists the help of some local gangsters as guides. They end up finding a big pile of gator poop right before a gator ninja sneak attacks them from behind. Another inner city gator drive-by.

With the police in hot pursuit, it escapes into a nearby lake where some cops in speed boats do some stunt jumps off it’s back and a cop gets his legs chewed off. It’s probably the worse boat show ever. David is put back on the case and he corners the reptile back in the sewer. Using some spare dynamite he ignites the methane in the tunnels just before barely escaping when the “where’s the beef lady” parks on the escape tunnel. Sure he blew up 20 square blocks, but at least the gator is dead….and smelling delicious.

Somewhere in heaven Steve Erwin sheds a tear.

Barry Goodall says “Alligator” is a bloody good time, just remember to never flush your pets down the sewers or you could end up with a giant man-eating alligator…or even worse, mutant ninjas turtles and a kung-fu rat.

gator wrestlin’ multiple severed arm multiple severed leg dead dogs with gigantis disease improv stomp garage band. alligator hunter sorta like crocodile hunter alligator poop pirate pool parties alligator drive-bys gator jumping stunt spectactors boat and car crash and burn gator tail baseball	9 BLOOD Multiple severed body parts and gator chomping with splatter. 3 BREASTS talked of often but never actually seen..sorta like bigfoot. 10 BEASTS A sleazy guy in a hawaiin shirt and one 30 ft. mega-gator. 8.3 OVERALL

Check out the trailer for “Alligator”