Howdy Doody, Americans and others, Roland McShyster here, you there. Now that we've set the stage, let's get on to the movie reviews: Sadly, there's only one new movie out to review this week, but on the happy side, I've taken this opportunity to give the full McShyster treatment not usually possible due to time constraints. Hold on to your Eggos, kids.


In Theaters Now:


The Spamityville Horror

Few consumer products of the last half-century have been more terrifying than Spam, the spicy cured pork by-product sold in tins to the uninformed and desperate for meat nationwide. And few bullshit stories that are supposed to be true have haunted the nation like the tale of the Spamityville Horror, which chronicles a family moving into a house that was haunted by the ghost of Spam.

Urban legend has it that the house was built on the grounds of an old Spam factory in upstate New York, which once supplied quasi-edible tin meat for the entire eastern seaboard. According to kooks and teenagers, the house was then forever haunted by the souls of all the pigs who had met with a tacky end on the way to becoming Spamfodder.

The story of the haunting was the subject of a bestselling book in the 1970's, which owed some of its success to the fact that it came packaged free with every can of Spam sold in 1976, until the company actually read the book and realized it was a very poor promotional tie-in. Hollywood execs took the hint, however, noticing that Spamericans had a powerful built-in fear of unsettlingly generic bricks of meat, and funneled this into the terrifyingly bad 1979 original film. This year, realizing that an entire generation of Spamericans have yet to learn to be terrified of pink pig snack, Hollywood is at it again with a remake that won't let you out.

The latest is a Spambitious remake of the original film, which was hampered by the poor special effects of the day and the fact that the producers weren't able to strike a deal with the makers of Spam. Because of this, the product in the original movie had to be called Slam, which led to great confusion with audiences. The original Slamityville Horror was plagued by unsatisfied moviegoers who thought they were going to see a hard-core horroporno, a few who thought the film would involve poetry competitions, and numerous dyslexic viewers who had been eagerly awaiting a new movie about salami.

The new film avoids these problems, yet otherwise follows the original very closely, only with better Spam effects. In both versions, during the day, the house is Spamiable enough, but at night the family realizes something is Spamiss when the house starts chanting "Spam-Spam-Spam-Spam!" keeping the entire family up with its geeky Monty Python fandom.

At first thinking the Spam-chanting to be only a minor quirk, the family realizes the house means business when they wake up to find their cabinets and pantries filled with Spam, even though they hadn't been to the grocery store in weeks.

After a few days of this, at their wits end and hungry for something unrelated to dead pigs, the family calls in a Catholic priest to exorcise the house. Unfortunately, upon entering, a bossy male voice tells the priest to "Go Buy Spam!" The terrified old man rushes home, relieved to find that his house is, indeed, well-stocked with spiced ham in a can.

But the final straw for the family, and the scariest effect in the film itself, is Jodie the Pig. A Spam mascot who haunts the family with her glowing red eyes and sickly-sweet ham texture on a daily basis, Jodie is enough to put even the staunchest Spam fan off the stuff. The filmmakers wisely chose to avoid cheesy CGI effects in creating Jodie for this remake, instead covering a Great Dane with actual spam to terrifying effect.

So does the remake do justice to a case that has fascinated Spamericans for nearly 30 years? Will you be Spamazed, or will you be Spamused? Well, let me just say this: I'll never eat Spam again.

Granted, I was already never going to eat Spam again, but the movie certainly didn't change my mind. Spamen, brother.

April 11, 2005
No time for chatter this week. I have a full stock of Don Cheadle movies to review (they're Cheadle-icious) and them I'm off to see Sin City for the third time. I'm convinced this time I'll be able to make it to the end of the film, or at... (4/11/05)

April 4, 2005
El Vita Loca, commune readers! Whatever that means, it's time for some more Entertainment Police fun. And nobody needs a translator to know what that means! Unless they've never heard of Entertainment Police before. But even then a translator... (4/4/05)

March 28, 2005
I'm shocked into a rare non-sweating state by the wealth of first-run movies hitting DVD shelves in the next two weeks. So as much as I'd rather banter to fill dreadful column inches, I'm afraid I have actual reviews to get to this week. Lucky me…... (3/28/05)

March 21, 2005
Shazam, America! We're back and there's not a goddamned thing the Swiss can do about it. It's been a long two weeks and I don't know about you, but Roland McShyster is ready to get back to the viewing and re-viewing. So bring out the clowns! ... (3/21/05)

March 14, 2005
I've been hearing a lot of this controversy on the film Diary of a Mad Black Woman. There are many who claim critics have unfairly slammed the movie, that they haven't looked below the surface to find the real value of the film, and instead... (3/14/05)