The Documentary “Last Days Here” focuses on Bobby Liebling, the Lead Singer (Frontman) of the virtually unknown 70′s Heavy Metal band Pentagram. Many people at the time considered them a kind of “street” Black Sabbath, but due to a self-destructive drug addiction, multiple band break-ups and record deals gone awry, the band fell into obscurity and Heavy Metal limbo. Years later, Bobby, now in his 50′s, completely ravaged by years of drug use and abuse, we find him living in the care of his Mother and Father, in a dirty and dingy basement of their home. Pentagram’s music is eventually discovered by Heavy Metal underground music collectors and with the help of huge fan-turned-manager, Sean “Pellet” Pelletier, Bobby tries to find away to overcome his dug addiction in order for him to record a new album and perform on stage again, in the hopes to claim some of the recognition that he believes that should have been more back in the day.

Full blown drug addiction is not a pretty sight, not a pretty sight indeed. Bobby has been using drugs for some 44 years. He has been addicted to heroin for 39 years and simultaneously addicted to crack for for the past 22 years as well. All he has ever known is sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It is extremely hard to watch him banter away on the couch, looking deathly gaunt with uncontrollable tics and twitches and exclaiming, ” I’m not supposed to be alive.” Believing that he has some type of parasitic infection, he obsessively picks at the skin on his arms and hands until they are raw and bleeding. It is truly a disturbing sight to witness and one has to wonder if his friend Pellet and Manager has any chance at all in helping to sober up so he can record another album and tour.

There are other factors, besides the drugs that lead the band down the path of near misses and not into Rock & Roll fame and fortune, and the film deals with early Pentagram stories as many of the Ex-Bandmates fill in the dirt and details. Last Days Here is a film that should appeal to more than just a Rock & Roll audience, and is filled with many ups and downs as Leibling struggles with kicking his 44 year old habit cold turkey. To give away anymore details would spoil the story, so I will say no more. It is an engrossing portrait of a man fighting for his life as he tries to find some kind of redemption through hope, love and recognition. Hard to watch sometimes, but definitely worth checking out.

Dick Hollywood Has Spoken!

“Last Days Here” opens 3/23 at the Cinefamily with an opening night party at 8:00pm. Pentagram frontman Bobby Leibling will introduce the film and there will be a Q&A with Bobby, Co-Director Don Argott and Producer Sheena M. Joyce afterwards. There will also be a Q&A on Saturday with Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce.

Click on the link below for more information regarding the film’s opening night and Q&As at Cinefamily.

Cinefamily “Last Days Here” Information

Holy percussion Batman! These renegade rhythmic anarchists performing their “musical apocalypse” on an unexpecting Swedish city makes for quite a fun and uniquely odd little flick indeed. They make music and create full blown symphonic sounscapes by utlizing various and normally non-melodious objects, machines, and combine them everyday sounds and noise, in which they then sync in time with the help of a metronome. Magnus and Sanna roll there eyes and look down on boring traditional symphonies and orchestrations. While performing a live piece of music from inside their speeding van, they get into an accident and now must evade the law.

The police call in the bomb squad when they hear a ticking sound coming from the wreckage. Coming from a family of famous and child prodigy musicians, Officer Amadeus Warnebring recognizes the all to familar sound of a metronome and difuses the situation by pulling it out of the van. The tone deaf Amadeaus actually hates music, but is singled out by his superiors and assighned to the task of apprehending the fugitives. He is reluctantly determined to bring the two musical terrorists in to custoday. He postuates that the duo are musical extremists determined to sonically wreak havok upon the unsuspecting city. After having a close call with police , Magnus decides to pull out his Opus entitled “Music for One City and Six Drummers”, and they begin to recruit four more drummers to pull off and perform his pièce de résistance. As the motley crew of professional drummers are recruited, rehearsed and begin to play Magnus’ symphony, it becomes quite clear to Amadeus and the Police that his suspicion was correct.

Magnus’s musical attact is broken up into four movements involving the use of hospital rooms, banks, construction machinery and eletrical poles. With each act of musical terrorism, the gang of drummers become more and more infamous in the city and on the nightly news, as Amadeus becomes more and more obsessed with stopping them along with the incessant noise in his head. It’s a gleefully absurdist flick with genuine warmth and frivolity. In a time in which Hollywood only has to offer filmgoers Sequels, Prequels, Remakes and Reboots, “Sound of Noise” shows us that originality is always better than any rehashed or recycled ideas and stories. It is one hell of a fresh, unique and funny movie that I highly reccomend to anyone who loves good Cinema.

So Says Dick Hollywood!

Also if you live in the Los Angeles are, please check out “Sound of Noise” at the Cinefamily Theater: STARTING FRIDAY THE 9TH : ONE-WEEK RUN OPENING NIGHT PARTY FEAT. LIVE DRUM BATTLE BY MELVINS DRUMMERS!)FRIDAY MARCH 9TH – THURSDAY, MARCH 15TH

SCREENING SCHEDULE (Tickets – $12/Free for members. Opening Night Party screening – $14/Free for Members. Showtimes subject to change.)
——————–
Friday, March 9th: 10:00pm (Opening Night Party feat. Q&A with filmmakers, and live drum battle by Melvins drummers!)
Saturday, March 10th: 9:50pm
Sunday, March 11th: 3:45pm, 10:15pm
Monday, March 12th: 7:45pm, 10:15pm
Tuesday, March 13th: 7:45pm, 10:15pm
Wednesday, March 14th: 4:45pm, 10:00pm
Thursday, March 15th: 7:45pm, 10:15pm

Check Out The Trailer!

When I received this invite in my email box:

Two of this spring’s wildest rides with free poultry and suds!

In between screenings enjoy some chicken and beer

Well what else could I possibly do, but RSVP to these Flicks ASAP and see if I could bring a guest to get in on this delicious offer of food, beer and silly double feature.  Arriving just before 5pm, my guest and I sign in and take a seat in the screening room. A fellow critic talked the PR people into passing out a beer to the audience before the first Flick started, so I gladly accepted one of the Natural Light Beers and cracked that mother open.

First up: Hobo With A Shotgun

Hobo comes riding into to town on a freight train looking to make a change in his wandering rootless ways. He has his eye on an old lawnmower at a local pawn shop and starts to raise the money by appearing in a bum fight video and humiliating himself in the process. This town is corrupt, really really corrupt, and while the Hobo prepares to buy his lawn mower he witnesses a robbery in progress and decides to take a stand by choosing a shotgun over the mower. And then all Hell breaks loose.

“Hobo With A Shotgun: Delivering Justice One Shell At A Time” This Hobo is out to rid this town clean of all the filth and crime that it has succumbed too. Just like Melvin the Mop Boy did when he turned into “The first Super-Hero… from New Jersey!” This Flick lovingly pays homage to both Lloyd Kaufman’s The Toxic Avenger and J. Michael Muro’s Street Trash. It is a crass cartoon-ish revenge flick with buckets of blood that fills the screen from scene to scene. This Hobo  is as mad as hell and he ain’t going to take it anymore, blasting the filth off of the streets, and just trying to make it a decent town again. Mayhem ensues when the city’s kingpin offers a reward to the town folk to bring him the Hobo, so he can take care of him once and for all.

Well I could tell you that there were multiple decapitations, burning school buses, mutilation by lawnmower, and a very bad Santa, but I will refrain from spoiling the flick for you. For folks who have a nostalgia for 80′s exploitation flicks, this one is just right for you. And for people that do not enjoy cheesy, bloody, campy, over-the-top violence and all around bad taste, then I believe you should just stay away from it. Stay far away from it!

Good Times!

-So Says Dick Hollywood

With an Intermission, I downed some Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pabst Blue Ribbon. Mmm Mmm Good Eatin!

Up Next: Rubber

Robert was just a little ol’ rubber tire buried halfway into the desert sand, when one day he wakes up, and comes to life. He beginning to wander around his desert home and soon he discovers that he enjoys killing and destroying things. Rolling over and crushing a scorpion and other small creatures, but not heavy enough to crush a soda bottle. When he stairs down the bottle and begins to shake, the bottle suddenly explodes and shatters into pieces. He then gets all Scanner-like on us and tries it out on small animals and humans that get in his way. He is one bad-ass evil Tire! Then there is the other story in the film that is running at the same time. A group of people are brought out to the desert to watch Robert’s exploits from afar with binoculars as if they were watching a movie.

Between the two stories we get a satirical look at moviegoers and horror movie spoof all rolled into one fun little package. Rubber is a slight flick that works because it is fresh and original. It looks self reflexively at movie viewers and absurdest horror premises. It is an enjoyable little film that made Dick Hollywood giggle and smile. Yes, I said giggle…

All in all, a very fun and pleasurable evening was had by Ol’ Dick Hollywood!

What the hell is wrong with me? I mean seriously, what the hell am I thinking! Time and time again, I do this and it is beginning to get out of hand. Take for instance, I have coined the phrase, “Friends Do Not Let Friends See (Fill In The Offending Director’s Name) Flicks. Like recently earlier this year I was ranting to anyone that would listen when the Flick 2012 came to your local theater, “Friends Do Not Let Friends See Roland Emmerich Flicks.” And then what happens? well, I’ll tell you what happens. This 2012 piece of crap shows up on NetFlix Streaming and some how I find myself clicking a button and it begins to play. But the worst of it is that I actually watch it from start to finish and then feel so dirty afterwords.

This seems to be happening to me a lot lately. It’s like with this one click Netflix Streaming, all of my common sense is just thrown out the window and I find myself watching Flicks that I SHOULD never be watching. Just like with this Hostel rip-off “Train”, starring Thora Birch from Ghost World and American Beauty fame. This Flick was getting bad, bad reviews, and still somehow I decided to give it a shot. After all, I only have to push one button to stream it instantly to my laptop. What could be the harm? Well 94 minutes of my life that I will never be able to get back for one. Wow that sure was an easy cliche No, but really, “I WANT MY 94 FUCKING MINUTES BACK PLEASE!”

OK… American College wrestling team in Russia misses their train to thier next destination because they went to a party the night before. Four members, 2 girls and 2 guys plus the assistant Coach and the super mad Coach board another train that is supposedly going in their direction. BEEEEEEEP! Wrong Choice. Bad Train! Fucked Up Train! Torture Train!

No Suspense. No real scary moments. Very predictable. I would go on, but I do not want to waste your time anymore. Be warned. I am not joking. This is not a good flick! Stay Clear. I beg you…

- So Says Dick Hollywood!

Okay, I get it… Writer, Director, and star of the film, Vin Crease (aka D.C. Mann), makes a trippy, hippy-dippy horror flick in the 70’s only to get mad and kill the Producer in fight over the final cut. Keeping the film tied up in legal mumbo jumbo until now. No this is not the plot of “Slaughterhouse of the Rising Sun,” it’s the faux back-story created for the film, for fun and marketing purposes, which pays homage to the 70’s Horror/Exploitation genre, maybe just a little too well (at least in style). The colors are garish, there are negative scratches throughout the movie, most of the actors seem to be from the 70’s, etc… Well that is all fine and Craven-like, but what about a plot, an engaging story, or some truly scary and disturbing moments.

The story is “The Hills Have Eyes” meets the Manson Family. Young Jennifer lands herself in the loony bin after rupturing her “Blue Movie” co-star’s testicle and comes close to scratching his eyes out. It seems as though Jennifer is prone to hearing and listening to voices and experiencing haunting nightmares while being awake as well as asleep. After six months she is let out on her own recognizance, with the recommendation that she go and stay with her parents for a while. On her trip home, a merry band of pranksters (not affiliated with Ken Kesey) save her from some down and dirty rednecks that are just about to rape her. She joins them on their little madcap adventure and end up squatting at “the House at the edge of the woods”, where things start getting weird and Family Members start dying.

On the positive side, the film looks really cool. Cinematographer Stuart T. Lillas recreates the 70’s exploitation genre look and feel with style and glee. I particularly liked the opening credits montage. It had a nice Mary Tyler Moore opening feel to it. I’ve always liked Mary Tyler Moore, especially the Dick Van Dyke years, bit I digress…

Now for the negative… I like the idea of a “lost horror” film, but not the fact that it is a mediocre “lost horror” film. Why not make a great or at least a very good “lost horror” film. The characters Violence Onelove and Guilty Karma respectfully played by Michele Morrow and Ryan Rogoff are two kick-ass killer chicks (pun intended), but they do not even remotely feel like they are actresses from the 70’s, but more like some babes with guns in an 80’s Andy Sidaris flick. (Look him up on IMDB.com if ya don’t know who he is).

Overall, “Slaughterhouse” is not terribly scary, nor a touch disturbing. At moments funny and stylish, but the overall finished product is disappointing. Where is the Horror?

I give it an “O” for OK, they tried, but don’t bother… – So Says Dick Hollywood