Fun_People Archive
7 Oct
Joe Bob Briggs reviews Flesh Gordon 2

Date: Thu,  7 Oct 93 13:43:59 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: Joe Bob Briggs reviews Flesh Gordon 2

 From: vangogh.CS.Berkeley.EDU!bostic (Keith Bostic)
 From: casey@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom)

  For the last few years, infamous sleeze-horror film commentator Joe Bob
  Briggs has dedicated the first part of his film review column to various
  wide ranging issues.  Why?  Who knows.  It's Joe Bob and you just have
  to stare in wonder.  In any case, I thought his commentary in the
  attached column would appeal to you.  The movie review isn't too bad
  either ... :-) Casey

 From the Sunday, September 26, 1993 San Francisco Chronicle/Examiner
	pink section, page 22.  _foo_ indicates italics.


Flash Gordon 2
Porno Get Hokier In Gross Out Sequel

By Joe Bob Briggs
Drive-in movie critic of Grapevine, Texas

  They just announced that they can ram 500 TV channels through the same
cable.  You know what this means, don't you?  It means that any day now
it can require _six hours_ just to go around the dial and discover that
_nothing's on_.

  But you know what it _could_ mean?  It _could_ mean we could have the
greatest TV in the world.  We could have the Drive-In Channel, the Nookie
Channel, the Fat-People Channel, the Pakistani Chiropractic Channel --
and we could have them all paid for, too.  Moneymakers.  We wouldn't have
to go around making cheap videos on access TV if we had some weird thing
to put on.

  There's only one thing standing in the way.

  The F double-C.  Which stands for the ``Fraidy Cat Court.'' These are
the guys who spend all their time fining Howard Stern and threatening TV
stations with the loss of their license.  The latest thing they did was
pass a rule that you can't have as much advertising on Saturday morning
children's shows as on adult shows.  Immediate result: the cartoon
animation got even _worse_ than it already was.  And now we got a
Congress that wants these geniuses to have _more_ censorship powers.

  Aren't we getting a little old for this?  The FCC was created in the
1920s for one reason.  There was a ``limited radio spectrum,'' and so
they had to allocate signals and keep the airwaves free for everyone.

  Listen up, you Rhodes Scholars in Dee Cee.  _It's not limited anymore,
bozos!_ You can have as many TV stations as you want.  You've already got
so many radio signals that a lot of em aren't even used.  You can _buy_
radio stations for $5,000.  We've got scientific gizmos from the military
that can mix signals, scramble em, parcel em out, spread em through the
air, and play gin rummy with em, so that they _never interfere with one
another_.

  So the original reason Congress gave for the FCC -- that we can't have
unlimited First Amendment rights for broadcasters, because they would all
try to broadcast over the same signal -- _doesn't apply_.

  So we've got this organization that only the British could invent.
It's like an organization set up to _decide_ how many newspapers each
town in America can have.

  You want good TV?  Put in the 500 channels.  Get rid of the FCC.  Get
rid of the ``Fairness Doctrine.'' Get rid of _all licensing of what people
can say_.

  These guys are _not_ American.  I don't care _what_ they say.  They
don't _really_ like democracy.

  Sorry to get worked up, but stuff like this just _burns my bacon_.

  Anyhow, on to more important topics, like the long-awaited sequel to
``Flesh Gordon.'' It took em 18 _years_ to make ``Flesh Gordon 2: Flesh
Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders,'' but I'll tell you, it was worth
the ...  Well, it's better than getting wopped up side the head with a
bag of nickels.

  Remember the corny '70s porno acting in the original ``Flesh''?  Well,
it's gotten _even hokier_.  And they said it couldn't be done.  Vince
Murdocco stars as the over-sexed superhero in purple tights and a
penis-shaped rocket, with Robyn Kelly as his whiny big-lipped
girlfriend.  And basically it's the story of how Flesh gets kidnaped by
cheerleaders, taken to the Ice Planet, subjected to sensory-overloaded
Busby Berkeley swimsuit aerobic dancing, captured by Robunda Hooters
(played by the enormously talented Morgan Fox), and kept for scientific
research because a deadly impotence ray has knocked out all of the men of
the world, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

  Meanwhile we've got some of the grossest gross-out scenes I've ever
seen in _my_ lifetime, and I have _not_ spent my life in Ardmore, Okla.

  For example, when the girlfriend and her mad-doctor friend are chasing
after Flesh in their breast-shaped rocket ship, they must first pass
through, not an asteroid field, but a _hemorrhoid_ field.  And, I mean
it's _scarier_ than anything they ever had in ``Star Wars.'' I don't even
wanna go into it.

  But it gets worse.  They go to a place inhabited exclusively by
excrement beings.  That's all I'm gonna say.  I'm not gonna describe it.
I don't wanna think about it.  The worst part of it is, they _stay_
there, in this one scene, for what seems like _hours_.

  In other words, it's gross, it's tasteless, it's cheap.  They managed
to make the whole movie without hiring a single actor.  It's kind of like
a movie for people who think ``Police Academy'' is too intellectual.  I
_worship_ this movie.

  Three dead bodies.  Forty-eight breasts.  Monster flatulence.
Breast-shaped mountain range.  Homosexual whang-doodle-head monster.
Octopus nookie.  Pig fight.  Gratuitous aerobic dancing.  Kung fu.
Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Morgan Fox, as Robunda Hooters,
for saying, ``We don't want your money, just your virility''; Bruce
Scott, as the Igor character, for saying, ``We will export impotence
across the universe!''; William Dennis Hunt, as the Evil Presence, for
saying, ``Stop your blubbering and tie her up!''; and Melissa Mounds,
whose name says it all.  Featuring that great rock ballad, ``When I Met
You in the Bowl of Love.''

  Three stars.  Joe Bob says check it out.

  History preserved!  The Cross Keys Drive-In, on State Route 30 just
east of New Oxford, Pa., died many years ago, but the marquee has been
preserved for the State Museum, set to open in Harrisburg in 1995.
Remember, with eternal vigilance, the drive-in will never die.


[It's all true about Flesh Gordon 2, and more - I went to see this film
after meeting Vince Murdocco's father, a very nice guy ("you live in LA?
My son, he's in LA, making movies ... I think...").  Vince is a champion
kick boxer and went to LA to make martial arts films.  I guess you never
know when (or how) fame will find you.  -psl]

© 1993 Peter Langston