Horror at Party Beach (or is it Party at Horror Beach?)

(the Monster picks himself up off the deck of the ship, dusts himself off, and starts all over again. Servo says something about the Monster doing a one-man version of The Pirates of Penzance. Mike sings “I Am the Very Model of Modern Major General”)

The Pirates of Penzance was a musical by Gilbert and Sullivan, and was made into a movie with Kevin Kline, Linda Ronstadt, and Angela Lansbury. Despite its staginess (I do believe a fence or gravestone shakes when someone bumps into it) it’s actually rather good. If you like people singing very, very fast, then this is the movie for you. It’s got two fast-talking songs—one being “I Am the Very Model of Modern Major General” and “A Paradox”, in which Rex Smith, Lansbury, and Kline have a bit of a contest to see who can sing the fastest (Kevin Kline wins, but promptly faints thereafter). This was one of those movies my parents raised me on (some others being Tommy, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Oliver!, which may explain why I’m such a weird kid) so I’ve fond memories of it.


(a skull mutates [at a ridiculously fast pace, might I add])
Crow: It’s turning into Oliver Reed’s liver.

I wonder why they like making fun of Oliver Reed’s liver. Poor little guy, it didn’t ask to be an organ of Oliver Reed, and damn if that thing didn’t take a beating. I’ve already written about Oliver Reed in Prince of Space. But here's some more useless trivia for ya'. Oliver Reed died during the filming of Gladiator (the rest of his scenes had to be done by a stand-in, with his face inserted by CGI), not of liver failure but of a heart attack—after having several rounds of drinks in a Maltese bar and arm-wrestling a bunch of sailors. This (and I don’t intend to sound disrespectful to the man) seems fitting, and I can’t help but think that this was as good a way as any for the guy to go.


(A sweet little sports car speeds down a road. Crow and Servo sing “Mrs. Robinson”)

I’m pretty sure that Simon and Garfunkel did the entire soundtrack to The Graduate, and if they didn’t then at least a lot of their songs were used. There’s the classic “Mrs. Robinson” (which began life as "Mrs. Roosevelt", after Eleanor Roosevelt, but was changed to Anne Bancroft's character in the film), which the ‘Bots are singing here because Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) drives a little red sports car through most of the film, and there’s also “The Sound of Silence” which is played at the beginning and end of the film. I personally like “The Sound of Silence” better, especially when it was used at the very beginning. Benjamin is getting off of a plane and going through the airport and damn it all if his face doesn’t set the tone of the entire movie. Go see it. It’s good.


(the First Victim swims over to a rock)
Mike: Hey, look guys, it’s…the rock.

Okay…The Rock is an action movie starring Sean Connery, Nicholas Cage, and Ed Harris. In the movie, a terrorist (Harris, being awfully sympathetic for a terrorist) takes over Alcatraz (i.e. “The Rock”), so a cop (Cage) hires the only man who has ever escaped Alcatraz (Connery) to break back into it. I saw this in the theaters when it came out, and I must’ve been in the eighth grade when I saw it, but I specifically remember a scene where Connery (who’s chained to a chair) uses a quarter to unlock himself, and cut open a window. Which is a pretty good trick to know, really. I also remember Cage’s character really liking The Beatles, and owning one of their guitars. I thought that was pretty cool. The movie was alright for what it was—a fluffy action film in the same vein as, say, Broken Arrow and any Stallone movie made in the eighties and nineties. By the by, Mike is impersonating Connery when he says “the rock”.