The Caustic Critic

This weekend I ended up with an accidental double feature--didn't even realize that the two movies had anything in common until we started watching the second one. Can you guess what the common thread is between True Romance and The Langoliers?

Give up?

Bronson Pinchot!

Yeah, okay, so that's not actually exciting. As a matter of fact, I have often said I find Mr. Pinchot (or as The Boyfriend calls him, "Hey-it's-Balky!") brain-splinteringly annoying. The mere sound of his voice is kind of obnoxious and gives me headaches. However, what we have here is one good solid performance from him wherein he did NOT annoy me.

I will first point out that I LOVE True Romance. It's the only movie of Quentin Tarantino's that I actually like, probably because he neither acted in nor directed it. When I first saw it several years ago, I didn't even KNOW it was a Tarantino movie (although seeing it now I can definitely point out a few spots where the Tarantino comes throug…

This past weekend, The Boyfriend was out of town and I happily had the place all to myself. Obviously, what I did was hang out, eat pizza, and watch terrible movies OnDemand. One such movie that I found was Scare Jessica to Death. (In case you are thinking of watching this movie--which I don't know why you would, but some people are funny that way--there are going to be some spoilers. Be warned.)

First of all, there's the most important factor: 1971. Yes, this movie was made in 1971, and it was NOT a high budget blockbuster. In fact, when watching it you may suspect that the director simply rounded up a couple friends, his grandparents, and a video camera to put this thing together. Also, he may have written the entire script in two hours while he was stoned. You know the kind of stoned: the kind of stoned where you're like "Hey, let's order a pizza!" and everyone's really psyched and thinks it's a most excellent idea, and then an hour later you're…

I was so excited when I saw that the show F-Troop had finally been released on DVD. I remember watching it on Nick @ Nite with my grandparents, and in my memory it was a hilarious show. Why, I wondered, had it taken this long to get released? Why wasn't it still being shown on TVland or late at night on the Western Channel or something?

I ordered it from Netflix and anxiously awaited my chance to reconnect with something from my childhood.

Then, the DVD arrived, and I suddenly realized why the show had all but disappeared.

The show is about a western fort sometime during the civil war era. The commanding officer is typically clueless, and his underlings get up to all sorts of shenanagins under his nose. Nothing wrong with that, right? The first indication of a problem comes during the theme song (an infectious little ditty, written in the days when shows had theme songs that actually provided information about the show.)


The end of the Civil War was near,
When quite accidentally,
A hero…