The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1973)

My undying love for Kris Kristofferson has rarely let me down, but this time, it unfortunately led me to The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea. A little birdy told me there was a very risque, Brown Bunnyesque love scene in this movie, with Mr. Kristofferson on the receiving end. Naturally, I hurried to order it on blu-ray. Alas, no scene exists, at least not in the cut we’ve got. There’s a good dose of steamy Kristofferson, don’t get me wrong, but this movie revolves mostly around a group of shitty kids.

I hate shitty kids, especially when they plot to kill Kris Kristofferson. And that’s exactly what this movie is about: a young boy, whose widowed mother falls in love with a sailor (Kristofferson), is convinced that there is a “natural order” to the world, a delicate balance that can very easily be thrown off. When the sailor decides to divorce the sea and marry his mother, the kid believes the natural order will be disrupted. So, in order to prevent this from happening, he and the aforementioned group of shitty kids plot to knock the sailor out and cut him to pieces, returning him to the sea where he belongs.

Whatever. For the first half of the movie, I was like “whoa, what’s going on, I want to read the book!” and for the second half, I was like “whoa, I hate this.” I hate what it had to say, and I hate the way it said it. But most of all, I hate seeing Kris Kristofferson in danger!

Big Top Pee-wee (1988)

Pee-wee and Vance.

Pee-wee Herman has traded in his awesome bicycle for a farm in the country, where he plans on endowing the world with agricultural advances amazing enough to make him the next George Washington Carver. Pee-wee is content to hang out with his best friend Vance (a talking pig) and have lunches with his fiancee Winnie (Penelope Ann Miller), even though they don’t really seem to have anything in common. The one problem in Pee-wee’s life: the townsfolk. Everyone in town can’t stand the happy-go-lucky youngster, and all go out of their way to make him feel excluded. No one even offers him and Vance a ride when a giant storm is headed into town!

Pee-wee, Mace and Mace’s “little” lady Midge.

Pee-wee and Vance rush home to put all the farm animals in the storm cellar. When the storm is over, and the shutters thrown open, Pee-wee’s in for a big surprise: the circus has landed on his farm! Run by a feller named Mace Montana (Kris Kristofferson), the Cabrini Circus is hurting in a real way – their wagons are broken, their mermaid needs water, and they need to put a show on TONIGHT!

Ever the helpful guy, Pee-wee offers his services to Mace and the circus. It helps that he falls hard for the trapeze artist Gina Piccolapupula (Valeria Golino), and also that Pee-wee desperately wants to be part of the

The one and only Benicio Del Toro as Duke the dog boy.

circus. Again, though, he is foiled by the fogeys in town – none of them want to see the circus, even after all their hard work! But Pee-wee’s determination gets him the girl, the circus, and the act, of course.

This was a favorite of mine as a kid. It has a very different tone than Pee-wee’s Big Adventure; it’s much lighter and goofier, but there is a certain darkness to it. Still, don’t pop this in expecting to see the same type of movie. Certainly it is not as good as Adventure, but it is thoroughly enjoyable and charming; a total joy to watch.  So glad we picked this up at the thrift store! I hadn’t seen it in well over a decade, and it held up to my childhood memories, which is saying something indeed. Also, who ever thought they’d see Paul Reubens and Kris Kristofferson in the same movie? Also still, Benicio Del Toro plays the dog boy!

 

Millennium (1989)

Kris Kristofferson: Dreamy Steamboat

In the interest of our sanity, this Cull* business will be coming to an end very soon. To be fair, though, a girl is pretty lucky when her housecleaning involves two Kris Kristofferson films. While Knights didn’t survive extermination, our second Kristofferson selection, Millennium, fares much better.

Kristofferson plays Bill Smith, a plane-crash investigator whose career consumes his life. While investigating a particularly troubling crash, he meets the strange and charming Louise Baltimore (Cheryl Ladd). Their first date turns into a sleepover, and the next morning Baltimore tries her

Sherman, your favorite robot, talks Louise down from the ledge.

damndest to keep Smith from attending a press conference involving the crash, but Smith is too married to his job to miss it – or is he? Immediately after saying goodbye to Baltimore, Smith turns back to the hotel room – perhaps to stay with her all day and skip out on the conference, or maybe just to say goodbye a second time – but we never know, because mere seconds after Smith leaves the room, Baltimore is gone without a trace.

Kids in the Hall’s own Scott Thompson

Confounded by Baltimore’s disappearance as much as the plane crash he’s investigating, Smith stays on in a room full of wreckage, pondering the events of the last few days. While rummaging through the wreckage, he finds a very strange piece of equipment. Examining the curiosity, he stuns himself and cannot move. As he drops to the ground, futuristic women swoop in to steal the strange device, one of them looking a whole hell of a lot like Louise Baltimore.

The Face of the Future

What follows is a delightful and charming science fiction story involving robots, time-travel, a few Cronenberg alums and a cameo by Canada’s own Scott Thompson. I don’t want to say too much about the plot, because what I liked most about this film is how it  was revealed: slowly and from different points of view. I can’t help but compare this to Trancers, another adorable time-travel flick with a tough-but-lovable male lead. The two might make the perfect double-feature.

*Q and I have decided it’s time for a great cull; an early spring cleaning. We have a large number of movies we have not yet seen. Are these movies any good? This is the question we are out to answer. If it’s no good, out it goes.

Knights (1993)

Henriksen as Job, the vampire robot.

Say what? Another post-apocalyptic science fiction movie finds is way on our cull* list? Shocking, I know, but what can I say; the apocalypse lends itself to very bad writing indeed.

This time we follow Nea (kickboxing champion Kathy Long), a tomboy badass whose family was eaten by vampiric cyborgs (actually robots, but who’s counting?). as she travels through a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Along the hard, dusty road she meets Gabriel (Kris Kristofferson), a good cyborg made by “the creator” to destroy all the other evil cyborgs, who have decided to launch a full-scale war to get the blood of 10,000 humans and rule the earth.

The troop of evil cyborgs is led by Job (Lance Henrisken), a

Kathy Long as Nea, a fast learner of cyborg-killing indeed.

perpetually drooling machine-armed mad-bot with power on his mind. Nea and Gabriel must traverse a great swath of the post-apocalyptic American Southwest in hopes of beating Job and his evil cyborg clan (all named after biblical characters, see) to Taos, the only area populated enough in this barren wasteland to provide the blood they need to take control.

So, yeah, this movie is totally ridiculous, but who wouldn’t want to watch robots played by Kristofferson and Henriksen go at it? Also, kickboxing chicks are cool, right? At first, I thought this movie was going to be a huge piece of shit. In the end, it ended up being a tiny turd. I am sort of ashamed to admit that I kind of liked it. I am a little sad to see the videocassette get thrown to the wolves in the freecycle pile!

*Q and I have decided it’s time for a great cull; an early spring cleaning. We have a large number of movies we have not yet seen. Are these movies any good? This is the question we are out to answer. If it’s no good, out it goes.