Brad, I found the following on my VCR one morning after an evening of Old Overcoat, cheese blintzes and Hostess Ding-Dongs. The picture was a little fuzzy but I was able to transcribe the following fairly completely. I suspect that it may have been divine interference with my TV set but I don't know what it all means. - Daemon Spooler Gene Cshell and Roger Egrep review "Gremlins III - The Daemon Spawn" Gene: It seems every fall, the box office is plagued with another barrage of yawners, this year being no exception. Thinking that Sylvester Stallone should have played Mumbles in the release of Dick Tracy left me awake long enough to catch this year's sleeper, "Gremlins III". Now I'm not a big fan of computer movies - "War Games" left me wishing Alexander Haig (and Ally Sheedy) would both get real jobs - but I was frankly tickled pink at the thought of turning one of these lower life-forms back into a pool of sickening green slime. The basic plot revolves around a group of pre-adolescent, computer hacker wanna-be's known as PSUdopods [sic] (pronounced soo-dough-pods), inhabiting a well-known Eastern university. As in the first two Gremlins movies, there are three basic rules that one must follow in order to live in harmony with the little cretins: 1. Do not expose them to a VM1 system; 2. They are all wet, NEVER dry them off; and 3. Never, never allow them on UseNet after midnight (but of course it's always after midnight somewhere! ). Of course, these three rules are quickly violated early in the movie (for reasons that no one with any sense can fathom), resulting in two-and-a-half hours of the hero and heroine grudgingly following the antics of these little ne'er-do-wells, being bombarded with their pathetic efforts at humor, and attempting to purge them from the system. I give this movie a thumbs-up and these little monsters a thumbs-down. Roger: For once I agree with you, Gene. Although I am not a violent person by nature, I actually found myself enjoying the clever, albeit sometimes cruel, ways in which the writers and director finish off the creatures. Deemed "black humor" by many critics, most of the scenes were no more violent than Saturday morning cartoons or a Def Leppard concert, and indeed the final scene, in which an aging HP-9000 crushes the gremlin leader between two parallel processors, surely won't make anyone toss their chips. Certainly there are violent scenes, like when a dozen or so have their pointy, little heads extruded through a tape capstan, but these scenes are minimal. At the end, caught in kill files, flamed by sysops and eaten by news sharks, the dragnet tightens and they are forced to retreat in humiliation, branded forever by a header file. Still, with Rocky LVII looming over the horizon, we are left with enough uncertainty to make countless inane sequels. Gene: Roger, I really hate the way you spoil the ending of a movie under the pretext of enlightened intellectual commentary. Roger: You've got a lot of nerve, you hack writer! You're just a bald Rona Barrett! Gene: If you didn't always have a greasy sandwich sticking out of your face, I'd punch you right in the mouth! Roger: Oh yeah, you.... *************** The remainder of this review has been censored due to repeated violations of FCC guidelines. We now return you to Sermonette. Tonight, the Reverend Billy Bob Ed Jimmy-Bud Loone of the Evangelical Church of the Divine Wonderbread discusses "Did the Twinkie Evolve from the Penn State UseNet (Ab)user, or is Their Common Eponym Another Plot of the Godless Humanists?".
(From the "Rest" of RHF)