blah blah blah blah I like watching bad movies blah blah blah i’ve been watching them my whole life blah blah blah etc etc etc fuck off man and shut it up. Well, pardners, my movie watchin’ time hasn’t been too extensive lately and somehow the things I have looked at have actually been pretty good and even solid productions so I figured it was time to go back to the well and look at something less than fucking classy and completely unpolished and refined and, much like me, not a part of the upper class. Or even middle class. I mean, hey, I’m clean and I have neuroses in my brains but I’m polite and don’t try to bother you and take showers and shit but I don’t go places where neckties are en vogue and steer clear of social things where I might have to interact with people because:

A) I don’t give a shit
and
B): I don’t have to explain myself to strange people
so
C) those people can just leave me alone with my family or friend(s) and I’ll be fine
and
D) I can’t emphasize enough how little I care about the things that may or may not come out of their mouths
whereas
E) like a glass or two of Old Granddad sippin’ whiskey, if you let me in, I may or may not be unpleasant at first until you get used to that sweet burn
and
F) sometimes you just need a good fixin’ of the stuff that got you where you are – something rough, like when you walk into a building and the floors are tile and you can’t avoid stepping on a line in the floor

Here we go, let me pour you one of those nice and real 8oz glasses, let’s load up the bong with some of the old mexican dirt weed that didn’t kill you and settle down like the suave mother fuckers we are.

Make no mistake, this movie is not good. No, no, nope, no, nope, not good at all. The acting is pure bad, the delivery is as bad as my podcast, the sound is iffy (at best), this thing is full of naked boobs and sex situations, the dialogue is {refer back to podcast}, the actors are not runway or GQ supermodels and this whole thing is a real stinker. “Like your smelly buttocks, meester?” You ask, in fear. “No. I love it….

If the movie poster alone didn’t compel you not to rent this, how about the synopsis: “Young girls are disappearing in and around the Mary Magdalen Halfway House for Troubled Girls. Desperate to find out what became of her sister, Larissa Morgan goes undercover to infiltrate the Catholic-run institution. Once inside, she encounters Father Fogerty, a priest with a passion for punishment; Sister Cecelia, a nun with a dark past plotting an even blacker future; Edwina and her love-toy Cherry Pie; tough Latino Angelina and her home girls and a sinister handyman named Lutkus. It’s not long before she’s caught up in a twisted web of sadism, violence, and wanton lust before finally learning the ultimate secret of the Halfway House”. If those two factors haven’t made you skip on over to the next thing in line, how about the first 12 minutes: an attractive woman is jogging down the streets of Southern California when she gets attacked by someone wearing a monk’s robe. Next up she is bound to the floor with what appears to be nothing but a string, her clothes are ripped off, she’s fondled and the raving-idiot-monk-guy starts turning a giant wheel for some fucking reason. Soon enough, a giant, green, rubber monster with one huge red eye emerges from a cavity in the wall and eats the lady. Queue the opening title. Sold.

Are you still in? With all of that behind us now, your expectations have to be very low – so low that there’s no way you can be truly disappointed: obviously no one is taking this movie seriously – no one involved and no one watching. It also goes without saying that this is a lot more enjoyable if you have the right idea about what you’re in store for and a belly full of rot gut whiskey. Not tea. Not milk. Not Ginger Ale. Maybe Absinthe – did you ever tyr that? OOF. WHEW. Maybe not Absinthe. Oh yeah -when I wrote about Disturbing the Peace, I wondered if those guys were proud of themselves for what they did because it was absolutely awful and I hated it and I wanted to fistfight it. Here – I think everyone knew exactly what they were doing and it shows – and I really fucking appreciate it. I’d go to some sort of horror movie convention and hang out with these folks and drink beers. Maybe we could all even go bowling.

Guess what’s intended to happen with that statuette and that bottle of vaseline? Well, if you’re still interested, after the opening title, this jogging chick’s sister Larissa busts into the police station like she owns the place and comes across a cop named Dick Sheen having some stupid yuks with his boss, Inspector Hinds. They don’t give her the time of day until she starts screaming and it goes something like this:

Hinds: “and he was flopping around like a fucking fish!!” (Mimic man having seizure)

Larissa:  “EEEEXXCUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSSSEEE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!”

Hinds: “(ahem) How can we help you, young lady?”

Larissa: “My sister went missing, Here’s her picture.” (hands it over)

Hinds: “Nice tits!!”

Further – after filling out the required paperwork, Larissa leaves the station and Dick Sheen runs out after her:

Sheen: “Hey! Wait!”

Larissa: “What? Did I forget my email address???”

Sheen: “huh?”

A common theme in this beauty is that when things start to get a little boring, they just strip everyone of their clothes and continue. I get the feeling here that there had been too little action for ten minutes so Larissa and Sheen decide to go have some sex and talk the entire time about their plan. The plan involving her 30 year old self being enrolled into the Mary Magdalen Halfway House for Troubled Girls and see what happened to her sister. Ok. That’s not really how I ever enjoyed making The Sex – as in – talking about my plans to infiltrate something other than something I planned to make The Sex with – but OK. Talkin’ it up during sex. One of the least erotic things I’ve experienced, IMO.

Person A: hump hump hump
Person B: Whatcha up to back there, sir?
Person A: hump hump huuuuuuum what?
Person B: I was just thinking about all of these vendor applications we’ve been getting lately and how maybe we’re just not organized on the reporting side of things. I mean, if we ever got audited we could –
Person A: what? I mean, wait. What?
Person B: I mean, I-9s and everything. I’m not sure we’re really storing those correctly. Who can really take a look at those? Just the Accountability folks or the Reseller folks? Also, should we be breaking this up by county for FIPS reasons?
Person A: But. We’re. Wait. FIPS?
Person B: C’mon. And don’t stop.
Person A: Ok, um. I’ll try. Huuuum hummm hump.
Person B: Hey nice, that feels great. Remember? The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has taken over the management of geographic codes from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Under NIST, the codes adhered to the Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS). The Federal Information Processing Standard Publication 6-4 (FIPS 6-4) is a five-digit Federal Information Processing Standards code which uniquely identified counties and county equivalents in the United States, certain U.S. possessions, and certain freely associated states.
Person A: *whimper*

Eventually, after more dissertations on Zip Codes and Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, she puts on a black leather jacket, smokes a cigarette, fails to blow decent smoke rings and Dick takes her in – into the loving arms of Mary Woronov and the reading-bondage-magazines-in-his-bible Father Fogerty. Elsewhere…. in the rec room, she is immediately accosted by a trio of Latino toughs, shown to her room and a group of those ladies you won’t see on the cover of Penthouse get naked, fiddle with each other, take showers, drink and fight – oh – and get tied to the ground and eaten by the giant, green, rubber monster. Reminds me of what happened after our podcast. Minus the fiddling with each other.

One thing I tried to incorporate into my poster I made for the featured image of this post is the term “The Power of Christ Compels You”. Why? Father Fogerty spends a lot of time spanking the bare asses of his wayward charges with a paddle studded with diamonds spelling the name “Jesus”. As he whacks away, he makes them scream that phrase – “The power of Christ compels you!!” SWACK! “The power of Christ compels you!!” SWACK! “The power of Christ compels you!!” SWACK! “The power of Christ compels you!!” SWACK! I guess I can relate since my dear old dad made a paddle for my ass and drilled holes in it spelling [NAME REDACTED] BE GOOD. For real. That mother scratcher really burned.

If anything is compelling you to continue reading this – I am going to give away the ending here. It turns out that Sister Cecilia (Woronov) was abused by a bunch of boys at her last stint so she turned from her faith, got a hold of the Necronomicon, made a pact with the green monster and wants it to come over to our world where she will – gulp – mate with it and breed a new master race that dominates mankind. *Nods in acceptance* Those poor half naked girls that have been food for the guy was just that – supper – so it could get strong enough to come on over to our world. Luckily Larissa has dead Dick’ Sheens handgun so she shoots it and it blows up in a fiery explosion – like it was a car or something.

Yeah, kind of like that except for the tires.

And there you have it – The Halfway House – a bad movie… that I really like. A sleazy, dirty, bloody movie with a fake rubber extra-dimensional monster. And a Jesus paddle. And Mary Woronov. For real, it’s kind of fun if you are into something so bad. Need another whiskey?

FILED UNDER: THEY ALMOST MADE IT TO THE HAPPY FINISH

P.S.: (FIPS)