Did you hear about this? The guy's gettin' off the elevator, it starts to go up real fast while the door is still open. The guy loses his balance, leans toward the elevator, and it cuts his head off, and the head goes rollin' around in the car with five other passengers, and the body falls down the shaft.
And for five minutes all these people had to stand there lookin' at the head until they were rescued.
But what was strange about the news accounts is that there were all these people saying, "What can we do to make sure this never happens again?" "What state agency is responsible?" Stuff like that.
Politicians were demandin' that the elevator company check all its elevators, to make sure nobody's head gets cut off in the future.
Listen to me. This is not ever gonna happen again. There are some things that are not ever gonna happen again. This is a one-time deal. About a hundred things had to go wrong, all at the same second, for this to happen.
Why is it that, when somethin' like this happens, everybody wants to set up an Anti-Cut-Off-Your-Head Elevator-Rights Committee?
Do they really think they were having meetings at the Otis Elevator Company, where a bunch of evil shifty-eyed fat guys sat around saying, "Yeah, sure these elevators could slice off a guy's head, and the head might go rollin' around in the car--but that's a risk we're willing to take"?
What do they want 'em to do--invent some crash-test robots that will stick their heads in an open, out-of-control ascending elevator car, to see if they can survive?
But there are people who still think, "This never should have happened. They should have known about this." And so they get all self-righteous, and by the time they finish, they've convinced themselves there's a conspiracy by American businessmen who are trying to cut off the heads of unsuspecting elevator patrons.
They think some engineer wrote up a set of specs on the elevator and said, "Hey! Looky here, Bob! If we set this gauge just so, it might shoot the sucker up three floors with the door open and rip off a guy's head who's leanin' the wrong way!
"Come on, let's try it! Here, I'll figure out the setting so the head will end up in the car, but the body will fall down the shaft."
It was an accident. There is such a thing as an accident. Even in America. I'm surprised I have to explain this stuff.
Speaking of rolling heads, this week's flick is Inner Sanctum II, which is a horror flick disguised as an erotic thriller, starring Tracy Brooks Swope as the whiny wife in a wheelchair who murdered her slimy husband in Inner Sanctum I.
Now it's two weeks later and she's having nightmares where ex-husband Joseph Bottoms appears to her as a leering, macaroni-faced zombie.
Somebody's trying to drive her crazy again, to collect on her inheritance.
Is it Michael Nouri, her Brooks Brothers brother-in-law with the snotty attitude? How about her live-in nurse, Jennifer Ciesar, who spends most of her time aardvarking with the gardener-handyman in the upstairs bedroom?
We shouldn't forget Nouri's snotty wife, Sandahl Bergman, who likes to throw playing cards at her husband right before they have sex.
And, yes, ladies and gentlemen, she's back. She used to be Margaux Hemingway. Now, for some reason, she's "Margot" Hemingway. But however you spell it, she's the whiskey-voiced one with a lisp, reprising her role as the dead husband's money-grubbing business partner.
I've seen approximately 16,000 erotic thrillers, but it's the zombie thing that makes this one different. Because she's going crazy, but she's not crazy about one thing. There is a zombie in the house.
He takes a long time getting us there, but once he does, director Fred Olen Ray delivers with this one.
Eight dead bodies. Five breasts. (All of them are stunt breasts, adding to the despicable state of the erotic thriller industry today.)
Tomb dancing. Multiple aardvarking. S&M nightmares. Thigh massage. Hypodermic to the neck. Sex with a goo-spitting skeletal zombie.
Neck-cracking. Throat-slitting. Grapple hook to the neck. Strangulation. Catfight. Head rolls. Kung Fu. Zombie Fu. Vase Fu.
Drive-In Academy Award nominations for...
Sandahl Bergman, as the bitchy wife of the wicked brother-in-law, for saying, "I don't feel like being pleasant!"
Tracy Brooks Swope, as the woman on the verge, for saying "They're not like dreams--they're more like horror movies."
Three stars.
Joe Bob says check it out.
Joe Bob's Find That Flick
This week's cranium-crusher comes from...Aaron Humphrey of Edmonton, Alberta: "I've just been reading over the Hubbie nominees. Sounds like some interesting viewing material there, but Bikini Drive-In sounds very much like a made-for-cable movie I saw a few years back.
"There couldn't be two movies with the same plot, could there? (Did that one have a pair of lawyers who aardvarked on the hoods of cars while reciting legalese to each other?)"
A video will be awarded to the correct answer.
Send "Find That Flick" questions and solutions to Joe Bob Briggs, P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, Texas 75221.
In a previous column, Will Safford of Albany, New York, wrote:
"I've enlisted the help of one of my roommates, Jim Nolan, who has also seen this movie. We saw it on cable. I don't know which service, but it probably wasn't one of the 'premium' ones.
"There were three basic groups in the movie. We had the basic zombies running around the woods, eating people. We had the High Priest with his army. We had the normal people-scientists-etc., who were just trying to live.
"The Head Zombie (or Priest) extended his life by sucking the life force-blood-whatever out of virgins-women. The priest group wanted the women from the normal group as a source for their High Priest. There were basic thugs running around, driving trucks.
"They also wanted to capture a rocket guy so they could conquer the world. The rocket guy is a salient point, distinguishing this movie from others of its ilk. The guy had a helmet and shoulder launchers, with model rockets mounted thereto.
"When I say model rockets, I mean these were recognizable kits straight off hobby store shelves. He would launch them at objects, the models would fly through the air, then would allegedly blow up whatever was aimed at."
For the sixth time in history, we received zero correct answers. We aren't giving up and will award a video to the person who can come up with the name of this movie.
Copyright1995 by Joe Bob Briggs. Distributed by NYT Special Features/Syndication Sales.
