Mom’s in the bath right now: FRIDAY THE 13TH – THE FINAL CHAPTER’s Lost Alternate Ending

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: “But Bobby, Friday the 13th was yesterday!” Of course you’d be right. But who’s blog is this anyway? As far as I’m concerned, Friday the 13th is EVERY DAY. So spare me your nitpicking.

Fucking nerds.

And hey, I was pretty busy yesterday. I had a lot to do for my mother’s 59th birthday, and that was in addition to everything else I do each damn day of the week. Some of us don’t have the luxury of sitting in front of our computers all day obsessing over the latest casting rumors for Batman vs. Superman.

With that out of the way I present to you the long-lost alternate ending to 1984’s Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, one of my personal favorite sequels of the franchise. With the exception of Jason Takes Manhattan the even-number Friday installments tend to be the best: Final Chapter had the hell directed out of it by the great Joseph Zito (The Prowler, Invasion U.S.A.) and Tom Savini returned to the series to supervise the gloriously graphic gore effects – most of which surprisingly managed to evade the machete-wielding moral hypocrites at the Motion Picture Association of America. When the movie was released on DVD in 2009 the bonus features included over ten minutes of production dailies from the creation of the violent death scenes. Best of all, Final Chapter‘s original, long thought to be lost ending was unearthed and included as an extra.

This ending is important as it resolved in a sense one of the most persistent of questions among Friday fans: the fate of the sweet Mrs. Jarvis (Joan Freeman), who was presumed to have been murdered by Jason (Ted White) but her death was never shown in the final film. Instead she walks outside after hearing a strange noise – always sound logic in a slasher flick – and is frightened by something see spots off-camera. And that’s it. The character is never seen or referred to ever again; she doesn’t even get a perfunctory mention in the last scene, like having a cop say, “We found your mother” or something to that effect. How do you forget someone’s mother? Besides, Mrs. Jarvis was really kinda cool.

The alternate ending was scrubbed up visually for its release on Paramount’s 2009 “Deluxe Edition” DVD, but the audio track is considered forever lost or destroyed. Subtitles were provided in place along with a commentary on the scene by director Zito and leading lady Kimberly Beck. Final Chapter made its Blu-ray debut yesterday as part of Paramount/Warner Bros. 9-disc Friday the 13th: The Complete Collection box set. Contrary to previous published reports, the uncut version of the original Friday is present and accounted for. You can order that set HERE.

Love, Cough Syrup, and Karate: Bill Hicks’ NINJA BACHELOR PARTY

If I have to explain to you who Bill Hicks is then you aren’t the proper audience for this blog. The man’s been dead for nearly two decades but the modest comedic legacy he left behind has made a greater impact on the evolution of modern comedy than anyone who has come along since, even the greatest stand-ups and actors and filmmakers. If you have no idea who I’m talking about then go buy some of his albums or DVDs or at the very least go watch some of his stand-up specials on YouTube right now. Then come back and read this.

Hello, and welcome back. In the years prior to his untimely death from pancreatic cancer Hicks devoted whatever time his increasingly hectic schedule would allow to making a half-hour action-packed comedy short title Ninja Bachelor Party. Along with his friends Kevin Booth (who wrote a fantastic biography of the late comedian in 2006 called Bill Hicks: Agent of Evolution that is currently out of print but I highly recommend a purchase, which you can do HERE) and David Johndrow, Hicks wrote, directed, and played several roles in this epic over-the-top martial arts spoof.

Booth was given the leading role of a hopeless, Robitussin-addicted loser named Clarence Mumford who has long held the desire to become a ninja. His parents hate the idea and his cheating girlfriend Shotsi couldn’t care less. Mumford first goes to martial arts guru Dr. Death (played by Hicks wearing his best pair of Cobra sunglasses and a wisp of pubic facial hair), who proceeds to fracture his right arm and mock him mercilessly. One night Clarence has a vision – which isn’t Robitussin-induced – of the karate guru Master (also Hicks) who tells young Mumford to travel to Korea (represented by a park in Austin, Texas) so he can train him in the art of the ninja.

After a fight training montage and some of the Master’s deranged fortune cookie philosophy Clarence returns to America ready to kick ass. He finds Dr. Death in bed with Shotsi and a ten-minute battle royale ensues that takes Clarence and the evil Death from street corners to rooftops and back to Shotsi’s for a showdown that features the best use of a bicycle as a killing implement my eyes have ever witnessed.

No on-set audio was recorded; all of the voices were dubbed in later by Hicks, Booth, and Johndrow, even the female parts (tee hee). Hicks also wrote or co-wrote with Booth and Johndrow the entire soundtrack. How I wish the original recording sessions would surface one of these days. The songs of Ninja Bachelor Party achieve a sort of epic tranquility, and the more aggressive tracks are more laid back than typical action movie musical accompaniment.

Shot on videotape over the course of a decade on a budget of approximately $5,000 (accounts vary), Ninja Bachelor Party is thirty minutes of unfiltered lunacy stuffed with a metal pole into a boilerplate plot straight of The Karate Kid. It features insane, quotable dialogue laced with non sequiturs and some imaginative physical comedy (during the climatic fight Clarence and Dr. Death fall into a swimming pool and take a break from the battle by jumping into drying machines). The most important to remember is that it was birthed into existence by the power of pure love for everything the short film contains, and as Hicks’ wizened Master says in the final scene, “Love is all there is.”

Hicks and Booth had begun to plot a sequel shortly after the original became a cult hit in video stores and on college campuses all across Austin. Unfortunately their plans were brought to a screeching halt by Hicks’ passing. We may have been deprived of future adventures with Clarence Mumford the cough syrup-chugging ninja warrior and his beatific guru, but the rowdy and audacious Ninja Bachelor Party remains a genre-riffing head trip that few amateur comedy filmmakers could ever hope to top.

Ninja Bachelor Party has never received a commercial release though a mock trailer for the short was included as a bonus feature on the Blu-ray release of the amazing 2010 documentary American: The Bill Hicks Story, which you can buy HERE; I ordered it yesterday myself.

The Corner of Bedlam and Squalor: Tom Waits on FERNWOOD 2 NIGHT

Fernwood 2 Night was a short-lived television comedy series that aired in first-run syndication from July to September 1977. The show was a Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman spin-off created by Norman Lear and starring the inimitable Martin Mull and Fred Willard as Barth Gimble (the twin brother of a character Mull played on Mary Hartman) and Jerry Hubbard, the hosts of a low-rent talk show in the fictional town of Fernwood, Ohio where Mary Hartman was set. The following year the show was renamed America 2-Night and the location shifted from dumpy Fernwood to the fictional “Tri-City” area of Alta Coma (“the unfinished furniture capital of the world!”), Petaluma, and the City of Merchandise in scenic California. America aired from April to July 1978 in syndication.

Although the complete runs of Fernwood and America consisting of 130 episodes total have never been released on DVD the shows have garnered a cult following through rerun broadcasts on Nick at Nite and TV Land and bootleg videos. They served as an early showcase for the comedic talents of Robin Williams and Jim Varney and featured recurring characters played by Dabney Coleman and Kenneth Mars. Occasionally on the shows minor celebrities stopped by as guests but not because they went out of their way to be there. One of the funniest moments in Fernwood‘s three month history occurred during the twenty-first episode that first aired on August 1, 1977. That was the night the show hosted Tom Waits as a guest.

Having been stranded in Fernwood by a broken-down tour bus Waits makes the best of a bad situation in his own unique way by appearing on the show to perform his non sequitur-laced barroom hymn “The Piano Has Been Drinking” and talk about his experiences in the little Ohio burg. The song is plenty strange, especially when Waits is belting it out with his raspy pipes through eyes wide shut, but the real comedy from the bit comes from the cutaways to Mull’s priceless double takes. He doesn’t say anything during the song but his reactions are pretty easy to decipher and their evolution from “….THE HELL?!” to “This guy must have problems” to finally “Jesus Christ, I want to die” is typical of the Waits newbie.

I’m not sure if the post-performance banter between the hosts and Waits was scripted or improvised because it always seems more the latter than the former. Waits looks like he’s throwing out whatever absurd homely comes into his mind and Mull and Willard awkwardly play along and keep the discussion light and bemused, which is exactly what two hosts of a local talk show would do in a similar situation if they were any good at all.

This features one of the greatest quotes I’ve ever heard in my entire life, and it makes so much sense: “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.”

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK: If You Lived Here You’d Be Dead by Now

S.D. Plissken. Lieutenant. Special Forces unit “Black Light”. Two Purple Hearts, Leningrad and Siberia. Youngest man to ever be decorated by the President. You can call him Snake, and he’s in for one long night.

Released in 1981, Escape from New York is a wicked post-apocalyptic thriller stripped of unnecessary plot and loaded with memorable characters and balls-out action scenes done as only John Carpenter can.

The year is 1997, or as people in the eighties refer to it, “the future”. The crime rate is the US has risen to over 400 percent. The government establishes the United States Police Force and turns New York’s Manhattan Island into a maximum security prison, with Liberty Island as their base of operations. En route to an important summit conference the President’s plane Air Force One is hijacked by revolutionaries. The President (Donald Pleasance) jumps into a pod and manages to escape the plane as it powers into the World Trade Center, an image that resonates strongly to this day.

Police commissioner Bob Hauk (Lee Van Cleef) attempts to lead a rescue mission but his team finds the pod empty. They see a strange man named Romero (Frank Doubleday) emerge from the darkness and orders to them leave, producing one of the President’s fingers as further motivation. Back on Liberty Hauk summons a new prisoner to his office: Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell). Snake is on his way to Manhattan to serve a life sentence for the crime of armed robbery, but Hauk offers him a way out. If he will infiltrate the prison and rescue the President and an important briefcase he was carrying to the summit in 24 hours Snake will get full immunity. Snake reluctantly accepts but once Hauk has a doctor inject his neck with miniature time bombs that will kill him in 10 seconds he realizes he has no choice.

Climbing aboard a slingshot plane, Snake flies into Manhattan and lands on the roof of the World Trade Center. From there he must journey through the blasted urban jungles of the once prosperous city and fight through gangs of “crazies”. Along the way Snake gathers some unexpected allies including a cabbie named Cabbie (Ernest Borgnine), not to mention his old partner-in-crime Brain (Harry Dean Stanton) and Brain’s main squeeze Maggie (Adrienne Barbeau). Eventually Snake must take on the Duke of New York (Issac Hayes), the self-appointed leader of the prisoners and as dangerous as Snake himself, if he’s to retrieve the leader of the free world and save his own skin.

When it comes to horror movies John Carpenter knows how to work his audience like a master. But when you watch one of his action movies like Assault on Precinct 13 or Escape from New York you can’t help but get the feeling that Carpenter is more in his element here. Nearly every interview with the man has some mention of his love for filmmakers like John Ford and Howard Hawks, directors from the old Hollywood guard who valued character and emotion over mindless sensation. Their best films never featured square-jawed pretty boys as their heroes but rather broken down old warriors haunted by their pasts and tired of fighting even though it’s the only way they know to live. Most of Carpenter’s films always had some trappings from the classic westerns, the genre favored most by Ford and Hawks: the lone hero with a sense of honor, the isolated settings, and the large scale cinematic compositions. From Assault to Big Trouble in Little China to even Ghosts of Mars, Carpenter always knew how to dress a western in any genre he preferred.

With a story he concocted with co-writer and frequent collaborator Nick Castle, Carpenter sets out to make one of the best films of his career with one of the coolest heroes of 1980’s cinema and modern action films in general. Snake Plissken is an enigma from the moment we meet him and will remain so until the end credits. Throughout the film we’re given minor clues about the things he’s done in the past but we come to realize that it’s not important. Snake is who is he is, and that’s all. Accept it, or go watch a Steven Seagal movie.

Although the studio execs were pushing for Carpenter to cast Charles Bronson as Snake (no way, but he would’ve made a great Hauk), the young director had already found his man: Kurt Russell, a former minor league baseball player who had been acting since he has a child mostly in cheese ball Disney flicks and television westerns. Carpenter and Russell had began their working relationship when Russell played Elvis Presley in a TV miniseries directed by Carpenter, but Escape from New York was the first feature film they did together. Thus a powerful creative duo was formed that would bring the geeks of the world much great genre entertainment for years to come.

As for Russell, Snake Plissken will always be his signature role. A bona fide icon of badass, Snake is someone you do not want to mess with right from the start. With his trademark eye patch and laconic manner in place, Russell makes the character his and never lets go. Just as Clint Eastwood will always be the Man with No Name and Dirty Harry and Bruce Willis will always be John McClane, Kurt Russell will forever be Snake Plissken. Like the western outlaws of old, Snake is interested in his own survival but he has a code of honor from his days as a soldier. If someone earns his respect, Snake will back them up all the way. But the world has grown cold and oppressive, and trustworthy people are in extremely short supply further cementing his cynical worldview.

Over the course of the movie Snake will encounter a variety of characters that will either help or hinder his mission, and Carpenter finds the right actors to populate his post-apocalyptic world. On the side of law, there’s Lee Van Cleef as Commissioner Bob Hauk. Hauk is a hard ass but he’s not unsympathetic. Like Snake, Hauk is a former Special Forces soldier who is determined to get the job done by any means necessary. He secretly sympathizes with Snake but knows he might have to sacrifice him for the greater good. Veteran character actor Lee Van Cleef, best known as Angel Eyes from the spaghetti western classic The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, is appropriately leathery and no-nonsense in the role and he gives a terrific performance. The great Tom Atkins (Night of the Creeps) is pretty solid as Hauk’s second-in-command Rehme.

On the island of Manhattan Carpenter lets the casting rip. Ernest Borgnine shows up a friendly cab driver ready to provide a surefire getaway anytime. Borgnine plays the role with enthusiasm and sweet humor; you really like the old guy. Harry Dean Stanton as always is stellar as Brain. What more can you say about this great man? Adrienne Barbeau should’ve been a movie star based on her performance here and in other films. As Brain’s paramour Maggie she’s a real woman in a era of scared little girls running from masked killers, tough and sensitive. Barbeau rules; she’s a goddamned goddess. For several years Carpenter was married to her…the lucky bastard.

Who knew Mr. Hot Buttered Soul could be a classic action movie villain? Issac Hayes puts the sweet soul music aside briefly to rule New York as the Duke. A Number One motherfucker! Hayes matches Russell blow for blow in the soft-spoken stakes, but the Duke doesn’t need words to communicate what’s on his mind when a gesture or sudden action will suffice. Hayes fights for what he believes is rightfully his and never pussies out. When the chips are down he doesn’t depend on subordinates to do his dirty work. The Duke knows how to take care of business. Ol’ Issac was never much of an actor but with his smooth attitude and strong presence he’s a force to be reckoned with.

Let’s have a hearty round of applause for the creative team Carpenter assembled to bring his vision to life. Production designer Joe Alves, best known from his work on Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, creates a brilliant visualization of a devastated Big Apple on an indie movie budget. Dean Cundey, a regular collaborator of filmmakers like Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, gives the dark world of Escape from New York the scope of a Big Sky western. Cundey and Carpenter first worked together on The Fog and they would enjoy a healthy professional relationship for several years after. James Cameron got a few early big screen credits as a special effects cameraman and painting some beautiful matte backgrounds.

What would Escape from New York have been without the guidance of the master cinematic craftsman John Carpenter? From the good ol’ days before the existence of MTV when people could enjoy great long takes and sumptuous visuals without squirming in their seats, Escape is a wonderfully composed classical adventure. Underscoring the action is another virtuoso synthesizer score from Carpenter, fittingly moody and hard-driving.

Escape from New York is a spectacular futuristic action classic. It’s one of Carpenter’s best from his prosperous early days, and a stunning reminder that Kurt Russell is an icon of brooding cool.

And remember….“The name’s Plissken!”

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE on Atari 2600: “There’s just some things you gotta do. Don’t mean you have to like it.”

“The article which you are about to read is an account of the tragedy which befell an enterprising young video game company, in particular Wizard Video and its owner Charles Band. It is all the more tragic in that they thought they knew what they were doing. But, had they lived very, very long lives, they could not have expected nor would they have wished to see as much of the criticism and lackluster sales as they were to see when their effort was released. For Wizard Video an idyllic venture into the burgeoning game market became a nightmare. The events of that day were to lead to the discovery and eventual burial of one of the most bizarre video games in the annals of American history, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”

In the days before the existence of the Resident Evil, Grand Theft Auto, and Mortal Kombat series video gaming was widely perceived as innocuous home entertainment whose only long-term negative effects were insomnia, irritability, and a lack of interest in doing your household chores. Then in 1982 Wizard Video, a home video distribution company owned by future Empire Pictures/Full Moon Entertainment overlord Charles Band, decided to throw its hat into the ring by releasing a game based on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (which received its first video release courtesy of Wizard) for the Atari 2600.

In the game the player assumes the role of Leatherface….except that here the pixelated Leatherface resembles a repainted General Custer from Mystique’s notorious, sexually explicit Custer’s Revenge game released the same year as Chainsaw for the 2600 only with the raging erection replaced by a long blue blob with a paper bag ripped open at both ends for a head. The amorphous object was supposed to be Leatherface’s famous saw but it looked more like a diseased dong. The object of the game was for Leatherface to hunt down and slaughter trespassers on his property before the saw ran out of fuel, which could be earned with every 5,000 points accrued. But there were many obstacles for you to navigate, like walking around fences and avoiding random rolling wheelchairs. The deaths were rather bloodless and when Leatherface actually claims a victim the avatar gets scrambled up and vanishes from the screen. It was like an idiotic fever dream remake of Pitfall, only jumping was not involved. That would have been too challenging.

Beating the game was nigh impossible to accomplish because the saw always ran out of the fuel before Leatherface could win. As if starring in a shockingly subpar video game based on a classic of modern horror cinema wasn’t bad enough, the human flesh mask-wearing psychopath had to suffer the indignity of being kicked in the ass repeatedly by his potential prey. There was no point to the Wizard game’s existence except to bilk money out of hungry consumers believing they were getting in on the ground floor of a next gen experience in interactive horror gaming. It was marketed to adults with the back of the game box reading:

“Put aside your childish pastimes; stop eating dots and chasing ghosts! A ripping revving chainsaw is at your command as you wear the leather mask of a madman! Your victims come face to face with a living nightmare as you wield the ultimate weapon-an unrelentless chainsaw! Let your most wicked fantasies run wild! Know the total pleasures of destruction as you pursue your victims with the razor sharp teeth of a hungry chainsaw! The story is true, the movie is chilling, the video game is horrifying!”

Controversy surrounded the Texas Chainsaw Massacre game’s release mostly due to the reputation of the film leading those who hadn’t before played it to believe it was a relentlessly violent gore-fest. Some stores refused to stock the game on their shelves. The following year Wizard released a game inspired by John Carpenter’s Halloween that was received with less controversy than their Chainsaw cartridge. The company officially bowed out of the gaming industry after an adult game based on the 1974 sci-fi porno spoof Flesh Gordon went unreleased. Wizard’s horror video games weren’t instant classics but they paved the way for titles based on the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street franchises for the Nintendo Entertainment System to hit stores by decade’s end.

Wizard Video’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre video game may have turned out a rancid hunk of head cheese but at least it started a trend toward merging horror and gaming that improved creatively in the years that followed and became a collector’s item following its disappearance from stores that remains highly sought after to this day. However, Pong remains way more exciting.