The Grapes of Death.

Desperate to find something by Jean Rollin that Starkwell and Lovelock might actually enjoy, I’ve decided to go with “Les Raisins de la Mort”.  Not a traditional flesh-eating zombie based movie, this is still always mentioned when people bring up zombie films from the seventies.  Oddly enough, even though the premise is very similar to that of Romero’s “The Crazies”, people don’t consider Romero's film to be a zombie film.  Even though it was a million years before this.  People are dumb.  Anyways, take “The Crazies”, throw in a dash of “Manchester Morgue”, add a famous French porn starlet, and you get "The Grapes of Death".  Let’s see what happens when we throw in a dash of Starkwell and Lovelock.

[...]

Starkwell: If it is possible for a guy to have both the worst hair and the worst moustache, I think that guy has done it.

[...]

[Ugly Guy is not feeling well, foreman says, “Back to work, we get new airtight masks tomorrow.”]

Starkwell: Why would they be working without airtight masks?

Lovelock: Times were tough, not everyone can afford such luxuries.

[...]

[Ugly Guy runs into our heroine on the train.  His face is melting.]

Lovelock: You think she’s running away from him because his face is melting, or because his hair and moustache make him look like a rapist?

Starkwell: Probably a little bit of both.

[...]

The pace was, deliberate, at best.  As Elisabeth flees the train into the French countryside, she stumbles upon a farm house, where the farmer has a melty hand.  I should mention Starkwell was angry that many shots appeared to be out of focus.

[...]

[Farm Guy kills his daughter after she tries to help Elisabeth.]

Starkwell: Obviously he had to rip her shirt off first.

Lovelock: Well… yeah to show that she had sores just like him…

Starkwell: Obviously the sores were next to her breasts.

[...]

Lovelock: The French countryside looks lovely… well, except for the melty homicidal maniacs.

[...]

Starkwell and Lovelock weren’t saying very much.  It’s hard to have much to say when not much is happening on screen.  That being said, I wouldn’t say they weren’t still somehow enjoying it.

[...]

[Elisabeth runs into wandering blind girl.]

Starkwell: Oh yeah, blind girl that needs constant help and talks loud… that’s not going to get old real fast.

[...]

[Blind Girl finds her husband.]

Starkwell: His “sores” look more like runny crepe batter.

Lovelock: Well he is French, maybe he’s not sick, maybe he was just whipping up a batch of crepes…

[He nails her to a door, topless, chops off her head.]

Lovelock: Scratch that.  Unless he needs her head for his crepes.

Starkwell: Of course she’s topless.

[...]

[Brigitte Lahaie strips down to prove to The Vigilantes that she has no sores.]

Starkwell: Obviously…

Lovelock: Hey, just be thankful that it’s Brigitte Lahaie and not a dude.

Starkwell: I love that even the on-screen characters are like "you didn't have to strip, you know."

[...]

Starkwell: Lesson number one, if the fake severed head looks that fake, probably would be wise not to have such a long close-up of it.

[...]

Lovelock just fell asleep.  The Two Dudes that rescued Elisabeth and are now bringing her to her vineyard.  Somehow, they manage to IMMEDIATELY figure out, EASILY, that all of this must be caused by the wine… as if it was somehow obvious.  It wasn’t.  Well, not to the viewers anyways, unless you've read the back of the box.

[...]

[Gun Dude shoots Elisabeth’s fiancé, because his face is melting.  Elisabeth then decides to kill Gun Dude.  All of the noise wakes Lovelock up.]

Lovelock: I guess I’m still half asleep, everything looks all blurry.

Starkwell: No no, that’s still just the terrible camera work.

[...]

Then the movie ends.

The Vineyard.

James Hong, who I will always know as the guy from "The Golden Child", "Big Trouble in Little China", and the 'Chinese Restaurant' episode of "Seinfeld", wrote, directed and starred in a unique zombie movie in 1989.  It was a movie called "The Vineyard", and Lovelock and Starkwell are totally pumped.  Although released by Anchor Bay on DVD, from what I have read, this appears to be an Image release.  If the song playing during the DVD menu is any indication of what we are in store for, I’m as pumped as they are.

[...]

[James Hong in a sex scene.]

Starkwell: You think he wrote this movie because no one else would cast him in a sex scene?

Lovelock: Man, he’s really going for it.

Starkwell: As a viewer, I very much am not going for it.

[...]

[Rapidly decaying Dr. Po drinks Black Magic potion of youth.]

Lovelock: That dude has a glass eye!

Starkwell: Is that all that you got from that whole sequence?

Lovelock: Well, I also noticed that there were two needlessly half naked girls chained up…

[...]

There was an auction scene with some of the eightiest hair you’ve ever seen.  And, as we all began to drown in a sea of huge shoulder pads, awkward hats, terrible acting, even more awkward dialogue, oddly place random nudity, and some of the worst action sequences ever choreographed and committed to film, the writers not-so-subtly plant the seeds for an insanely convoluted and nonsensical plot.  Lovelock seemed intrigued, but Starkwell spent at least ten minutes crying, possibly because he was laughing so hard or possibly because he was terrified of just how bad this may turn out to be.

[...]

[Dr. Po performs interpretive dance.]

Lovelock: Is it still racist against the Chinese if it’s an old Chinese guy being racist?

Starkwell: I can’t answer that, but I can tell you that I’m offended.

Lovleock: Oh and obviously the German guy is evil.  And gay.

[...]

There’s a character named Jeremy, and he has a great hat, big round glasses and the voice of a fourth grade girl.  Also he doesn’t drink, which might be important if it turns out the wine is bad.  Spoiler alert, it ends up meaning nothing.  But if he is going to be the hero and voice of reason in this movie, as Starkwell said “Does it have to be so high pitched and nasal?”

[...]

[Lovelock on the Jeremy character.]

Lovelock: He kind of looks like if Brandon Lee dressed up as a nerd.

[...]

[Girl vomits out live spiders.  African-American servant with bushy ponytail takes her screaming friend away.]

Lovelock: That’s why I never take candy from strangers.

Starkwell: Wait, that’s why?

Lovelock: Oh shit, Milly Vanilly!

Starkwell: Well, at least the peeping tom guy died too… apparently from an exploding neck?

[...]

[Flashback to some kind of ancient Chinese warrior attacking Po’s mother.]

Starkwell: In ancient China, men wore skateboarding shoes?

Lovelock: Are you kidding me? Hell yes.  The ninjas invented sneakers…

Starkwell: But… you… oh never mind.

[...]

[Po picks up the blonde bombshell.]

Starkwell: I’m just not buying James Hong as a suave and debonair ladies’ man.

Lovelock: Are you kidding me?  After seeing this, I’m hoping he’s cast as the next Bond.

Starkwell: You do realize that he's like seventy-five now?

Lovelock: He could still kick Roger Moore's ass.

Starkwell: Yeah but... oh never mind.

[...]

[Jeremy uncovers the truth, and talks himself through it.]

Lovelock: If I sounded like that, I would never talk to myself.

Starkwell: I’m glad someone knows what’s going on, since I sure don’t.

Lovelock: Correction.  If I sounded like that, I would never talk period.

[...]

The movie has a way of waking you up right as you fall asleep.  Nothing happens for a while, and then just as you dose off… BAM, something out of control flies at your face, hard.  Lovelock thinks it’s a good thing.  Starkwell thinks it’s less than good.  Both, however, begged the question “does Jeremy really need to wear such lame looking cardigans?”  And then the overly sweaty Jeremy found Dick Print Guy dead at the hands of creepy zombie woman thing locked upstairs, and Lovelock and Starkwell cheered.  Look, it makes sense if you've seen the film.  Wait, no, it still doesn't.

[...]

[Expendable characters chase a decomposing Po.]

Starkwell: Chapter one of the vineyard survival guide: Follow old crazy sword-weilding melty-faced Chinese guy into his secret basement laboratory.

Lovelock: I think chapter two talks about refining your bow-hunting skills.

Starkwell: I think it’s going to be a short book.  

Lovelock: Oh shit, Milly Vanilly!

[...]

At this point, Starkwell and Lovelock both realized that the wackiness of the movie has distracted them from the fact that we are twenty minutes away from the ending and the zombies haven’t come yet.  As Starkwell put it, “this is bullshit.”  But then he got distracted when Lucas shot a guy with a bow and arrow and Lovelock chimed in with a high volume “ARROWED.”

[...]

[Jeremy is caught and chained up.]

Starkwell: So the girls are stripped to their underwear when caught, but they leave Jeremy in his cardigan and khakis?

Lovelock: Thank you James Hong, I guess…

[...]

I don’t really know what happened next, or what they said, because we were all laughing too hard.  The zombies did finally come.  As Starkwell and Lovelock laughed and danced to the closing credits, it is safe to say, that this movie is the purest form of “so bad it’s good”.  They talked about the open ending, and the possible potential for a sequel and Lovelock noted that he felt “cheated like when Skeletor said he’d be back after the credits in "Masters of the Universe" but then never was actually back ever, and then Dolph Lundgren all but disappeared...”  Starkwell commended him on successfully referring to that movie for the second time.  One thing is certain though, Michael Wong would have to play Jeremy again.  It’s the only way.