Better Off Dead (1985)

These are for sale!

"Better Off Dead" is hilarious and is an obvious companion/double feature to "One Crazy Summer" which is also a "Savage" Steve Holland directed and written vehicle. This came out first though, and it seemed to show a lot of promise and originality for his career. I would say though, that neither film is without its flaws. They both kinda check out towards the end of the movie and drag (I blame bad 1980s mainstream music, but I'd definitely keep Van Halen) in some parts.

But, I digress, there's just too many good lines, characters and kool animation sequences to dislike these movies. As for Mr. Savage, you can find him banking in the gawd-awful world of tweeny-bopper fare such as "Drake & Josh", "Big Time Rush", and "LIzzie McGuire". Yikes. Well, at least he's working. I see that "Jonas Brothers" is one of his credits. I can't begin to tell you how glad I am those losers have lost their 15 minutes. 

As I said, there so many great scenes and characters in the earlier part of the film. John Cusack is Lane, a suicidal teen (hello "Harold And Maude")with a brother named Badger, We have the late Vincent Schiavelli as the teacher everyone is inthralled with (just a couple of years earlier playing yet another teacher in "Fast Times At Ridgemont High"). Curtis Armstrong (just after playing "Revenge Of The Nerds" fav, Booger) as Charles De Mar, John Cusack's 3 high school years left back, glue-sniffing buddy. Dan Schnieder is "Ricky" who crochets and snorts nasal spray. He is also the guy responsible for "ICarly". haha. He's pictured in the second pin, which is taken from a screenshot of a gift he gives French exchange student Monique for Christmas. She is played (with a bad accent) by Diane Franklin, who I remembered as a princess in "Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure". She plays keys (terribly) in their band at the end.

Also there's character actor, Taylor Negron as the mailman and one of the many who ask Lane (John Cusack) if he could "take out Beth" (Amanda Wyss' character who dumps him). Funny enough, he was born in Greendale, California which is the setting for "Better Off Dead". Kim Darby (who plays the mom who gives everybody tv dinners for Christmas) is also in one of those 1970s Warner Archives DVD-R movies I've wanted to see called "Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark". 

UPDATE: Apparently the remake of this movie just came out. 

For some odd reason, both the DVD and recently, Blu-Ray version of "Better Off Dead" do not have any special features. I think the Blu-Ray has a trailer, but that's it? What's that all about? 

I used a poster for the group shot button. At this point, I didn't quite have the hang of using the "Clone" tool on Photoshop, so I should probably go back and improve on the design. The second, as I said, is a screenshot of a framed picture of "Ricky" that I reformatted into a circle shape. 

Rolling Thunder

This is up for sale.

I forget if this pin was by request for my brother (I usually have extra print outs) or if I just threw it in there because I knew he would like it. 

Unfortunately, I have never seen "Rolling Thunder". Its definitely on my long list of movies that I need to see. As far as I know, it has not been released officially on DVD. You can buy the used VHS for a decent price off Amazon (which I need to do when I have some extra money). I'm kinda surprised that hasn't garnered a nice re-release since Quentin Tarantino uses its name and imagery for his production company. You can see the hook (which William Devane's hand is reduced to after an injury) tear at the "A" and shortly afterwards start seeing the first scenes of "Kill Bill". Tarantino's company put out "Switchblade Sisters" (I have pins for movie too!), why not "Rolling Thunder"? There must some sort of copyright issue or something. You can get the TCM version where they burn copies on demand, but its not the same. Special Features pleeze. Also, there was a short time that you could watch it "Instantly" on Netflix. 

Paul Schrader, who wrote this movie, also did "Hardcore" (hey, I have a pin for that too!) and "Taxi Driver". William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones (in a real early role) star in it. Devane always seemed like a creep to me. Maybe not in real life, but a great casting decision to play one for sure. In the second "Bad News Bears", he was a total deadbeat Dad to Jackie Earle Haley (in his Kelly Leak days). Whenever I've read Richard Bachman/Stephen King's "Rage", I always picture Devane as the Dad who talks about slitting noses over a campfire. And of course, Jackie Earle Haley could have played the main character, Charles Decker (who could also just as easily have been Michael Kramer from "Over The Edge"). That book was never made into a film because it apparently caused some real school shootings. Times certainly have changed. When was the last time you heard a string of crimes were committed by a fictional novel? 

Let me rack my brain for the artwork process. I basically combined a couple of different posters together to get the best quality and legibility in the title. I think I took the image from one source and the title from another if I remember correctly. I'm not sure. I know I edited out the "tagline" from the image. I may have brightened the red lettering as well.  

Upon my research in this post, I believe I may have found a link that streams the entire film. My internet is kinda slow, so I can't confirm this at the moment. UPDATE: Sorry, its in Spanish. :( UPDATE #2 (7/2012): I finally saw via this link. Amazing! 

"Head" with The Monkees

I just sold this pin on eBay.

"Head" featuring the Monkees is a crazy film. Its been a long time since I've seen it though. Its funny to me that its a G Rated movie since it seems so drug related, psychedelics and such. I guess that's what happens when Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper are involved. Today, this movie would have NEVER been made with today's stale teeny boppers. I mean, the Monkees were considered safe, teen idols, but with great records. It seems as if this movie could have been a major risk on their reputation, that maybe parents wouldn't think of them as nearly as squeaky clean as their TV show. Who knows? I could be wrong. What did parents think of Frank Zappa (who appears as "The Critic")? I bet they didn't know that he wasn't a drug user, just a coffee addict.

It has a really good soundtrack (with a mirrored front cover), with such greats as "Circle Sky", "As We Go Along" and the Jerry Goffin/Carole King penned "Porpoise Song". That song is in an amazing opening sequence when the Monkees run from the cops and jump into the ocean to escape them. 

From what I remember, there's also some funny, strange dialogue such as "Bring me a large glass of gravy with a hair in it". There's also a segment where they play dandruff in someone's hair. 

With this pin's artwork, I simply cut out the group and pasted the word "HEAD" over them, playing with opacity so you could still see them underneath. I'm not sure why I didn't use the original logo. Maybe it didn't pan out the way I wanted. 

Beach Ball

I just sold this button to an all inflatables company. How funny!

It's "Beach Ball"!

A too cute, bad-lip syncing, everybody looks too old for their roles type of movie. It's the not best in the Beach Party genre, but it certainly isn't as bad as one reviewer off the Internet Movie Database claims. I think talking about Edd Byrnes "showing off his hairy, flabby chest" is a tad harsh. The movie is total fluff, and sometimes borderline sexist, but I still liked it. I always love the credit introductions on Beach Party movies. This one has adorable, 16 Magazine, Archies esque simple drawings. 

They must've had a hell of a budget on this movie, because there's a lot of music groups featured like The Walker Brothers (so weird!), The Righteous Brothers (Sid Haig plays their drummer!), The Hondells, The Four Seasons, The Nashville Teens, and finally the Supremes. They (Diana, Flo-who's a better singer, and Mary) do a great song similar to "When The Lovelights Shine" called "Surfer Boy". 

The fictional group that "Beach Ball" is about, called the Wigglers, end up playing in drag at a custom car show. Man, they were one UGLY band! I couldn't help but think of this predating the New York Dolls. Also, how (off the top of my head) this is second time I've seen a fictional group dress in drag in a beach party movie. The other was the opposite, girls dressed up like guys (The Beatles in this case, singing "I Wanna Marry A Beatle") in "The Girls On The Beach" (which I also have a pin for).

Let's talk about the artwork for this pin. I took a movie poster, removed the extra balls, removed "technicolor" and blanked out the background. In retrospect, I probably should have used the light blue instead of the dark, or just erased the lettering off the "wave" design and moved it up. I didn't want to keep it white because that's boring. There's always next time, always room for improvement on anything. 

This movie is available to watch "instantly" on Netflix. The instant only Netflix movies have the oddest movie poster/box front interpretations. 

Repulsion

This button is up for sale.

The last (and first) time I saw "Repulsion" was when I was home alone since my sister was out of town for the weekend. This was in maybe 2004 or 05. I went over to Stardust (when they were more of a video store) to rent some movies and I must've completely had "Repulsion" mixed up with another movie I wanted to see. For some reason, I thought it was a sexy, 1960s "romp" (don't you hate that expression?), you know, semi-pornographic fluff with kool music and nice vintage scenery. Boy, was I wrong! I quite possibly rented the worst thing I could've picked up considering my situation. What's even funnier is that I somehow managed to sit through the entire movie!

To give you some background, yes, I've watched lot of scary movies in my day, but the older I get, the wimpier I've become. Sad, but true. I'm a strange one when it comes to fears (hell, I'm even getting scared as I write this while my fiance Jeffrey sleeps and the whole room is quiet, let me turn on the TV!). Ok, I'm back. Certain television production company jingles scare the crap out of me. The 1970s version of Paramount's logo (the one that came after "The Brady Bunch" if I recall), and most recently the WGBH Boston one that they play on the "Degrassi Jr. High" DVDs. I get so scared that I start thinking that I'm seeing things in my house. I mean, my hair stands on end. Silly sounding, I know. Also, the theme to the 1980s version of "The Twilight Zone" is the scariest thing to me. I can't explain it. Doesn't the Grateful Dead do that version? 

Anyway, in case you don't know, "Repulsion" is about a quiet shy girl who completely loses her mind while she's alone in her apartment because he sister has gone out of town to see her boyfriend. Yikes. I told you it was a bad movie to rent. The movie was very slow from what I remember, but I still recall some of the scenes pretty vividly. Such as one where she starts seeing people (that may or may not even be there) grab at her in her apartment, or when she cuts this lady's finger at the nail salon she works at. I think it was Roman Polanski's first English language movie.

I had a hard time deciding which poster to dissect when looking at all the great artwork out there. A lot of times when I'm designing pins, I try to create something from a few sources and put them together. The design I chose is a foreign poster with an English title pasted on top, changed to white instead of its original red. I multiplied the paint strokes to round out the image for the button face. I remember trying originally to use the "razor blade" image, but I was concerned that it wouldn't translate into a one inch surface. It might be too small to see what it is. I also moved the straight razor to the right side of her face instead of below.

18 Again!

This one's for sale. I thought maybe there would be a pop cultural irony sorta revival with making an "18 Again!" button. That maybe some hipster would buy it, pin it to their fanny pack and clumsily run off in their water shoes to meet up with their buddies at the nearest watering hole. Ha, I didn't realize til I ended that sentence that I said "water" twice. Just insert another snappy term for a bar (alcohol joint).

In Hollywood's grand tradition of running out of ideas, they decided to remake "18 Again!" for the 2000s (I guess) as "17 Again!" (or its alternate title, "I Want My 17 Dollars Back"). They had then, hot and now (no, not the fast food chain with olive burgers, ew) teen heartthrob, Zac Efron (fresh off "High School Musical" hell) playing the Charlie Schlatter role. Would you believe that Matthew Perry (one of those "Friends" douchebags) is in the George Burns role? My, have things changed since 1988.

Yet another Dickies reference (what a co-inky-dink!), be sure to look for them playing "You Drive Me Ape" in a club scene in "18 Again!". I never saw "17 Again!", so I'm not sure who (if they have one) their counterpart is.

As far as creating this pin's artwork goes, it was pretty simple to alter the poster image for a circle shape.

Upon my little research for this entry, I found this video of these guys who REALLY like the food from "Hot'n'Now".