Guilty Pleasure No. 63: Julie and Jack (dir by James Nguyen)

Posted on September 25, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Sex isn’t the only thing I care about. It’s just that I’ve always imagined myself falling in love with someone …. who’s alive. I know that may sound strange to you, but it’s just the way I was brought up.”

Sometimes, it just takes one line to transform a mere bad movie into a masterpiece of weirdness and that’s certainly what happens in 2003’s Julie and Jack when Jack Livingston (Justin Kunkle) attempts to explain why he’s having trouble with the idea of committing to Julie Romanov (Jenn Gotzon). Jack is a computer chip salesman who has been unlucky in love until he joins CupidMatchmaker.Com and meets Julie Romanov. He quickly falls in love with Julie, despite the fact that she refuses to tell him anything about her past and he never meets her in person. Instead, they spend their time walking around a virtual reality recreation of San Francisco.

Why is Julie so sensitive? Well, Julie is not exactly alive. When she was among the living, she was a brilliant computer programmer but, when she found out she was dying of a brain tumor, she managed to transfer her mind into the Internet. Her body may be dead but her mind and her personality live on, haunting dating websites. When Jack discovers the truth about his new girlfriend, he has to decide if he can be in love with someone with whom he can never have sex.

(It never seems to occur to either Jack or Julie that there also might be issues involved with someone having a relationship in which one person who is no longer among the living and will never age while her partner gets older and closer to his own death.)

It’s pretty dumb but it’s also so earnest and stupidly sincere that it’s kind of hard not to like it. Julie and Jack was the directorial debut of James Nguyen, who went on achieve a certain cinematic infamy with the Birdemic films. Just as the Birdemic films seemed to sincerely believe that they had something important to say about environmentalism, Julie and Jack has similar delusions of grandeur, with the main difference being that the message of Julie and Jack is a bit more heartfelt than Birdemic’s Al Gore-inspired preachiness.

The film has all of the things that we normally associate with James Nguyen’s work. The pointless driving scenes, the meandering travelogue shots of San Francisco, the scenes were everyone in a boardroom applauds, they’re all here with Nguyen’s other trademark obsessions. Because it’s not a Nguyen film without a reference to Hitchcock, Tippi Hedren has a cameo appearance as Julie’s mother and, of course, Nguyen includes a scene in which she talks about how much she loves birds. Do you think Hedren ever got tired of directors telling her to react to birds? I mean, she did make other films. Of course, other than Marnie and Roar, I can’t really think of any of them right now….

Anyway, Julie and Jack is silly and dumb and visually, it looks like a community college student film. At the same time, it’s so sincere and so cheerfully clueless about its inability to be the thought-provoking and mind-bending love story that it wants to be that I can’t help but like it a little. It’s a film that tries very, very hard and it’s difficult not to appreciate, on at least some level, the effort.

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Guilty Pleasure No. 62: Backtrack (dir by Dennis Hopper)

Posted on September 4, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Sometimes, you see a film that is just so weird and incoherent that you can’t help but love it.

Of course, it also helps if the film has a once-in-a-lifetime cast of actors who you would never expect to see acting opposite each other.

For me, that’s certainly the case with 1990’s Backtrack. Directed by Dennis Hopper, Backtrack is a film about an artist (Jodie Foster, channeling Jenny Holzer) who witnesses a mob murder committed by Joe Pesci, Dean Stockwell, Tony Sirico, and John Turturro. An FBI agent played by Fred Ward suggests that the artist should go into the witness protection program but she doesn’t want to give up her life as a New York sophisticate who creates challenging LED displays and who can eat Sno Balls whenever she gets the craving for one. (Yes, this is a plot point.) Turturro and Sirico break into the artist’s apartment and kill her boyfriend, who is played by a wide-eyed Charlie Sheen. The artist puts on a blonde wig and goes on the run, eventually getting a job in advertising.

Realizing that his men can’t get the job done, mob boss Vincent Price decides to hire a legendary hitman played by Dennis Hopper (who also directed this film) to track down the artist. However, the hitman becomes fascinating with the artist’s work, finds pictures of her posing in black lingerie, and immediately falls in love with her. Not only does he wants to save her life but he wants her to wear the same lingerie exclusively for him. (Yes, this is a pretty big plot point.) At first, the artist refuses and views the hitman as being some sort of pathetic perv. But then she discovers that he’s covered her bed with Sno Balls….

Meanwhile, a young Catherine Keener shows up as the girlfriend of a trucker who briefly considers giving the artist a ride to Canada.

And then Bob Dylan shows up, handling a chainsaw.

And there’s Helena Kallianiotes, the outspoken hitch-hiker from Five Easy Pieces, yelling at Joe Pesci!

And there’s Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie co-star, Julie Adams! And there’s Toni Basil! And there’s director Alex Cox!

Dennis Hopper not only starred in Backtrack but he also directed and it’s obvious that he placed a call into just about everyone he knew. In fact, one could argue that the only thing more shocking than Vincent Price showing up as a mob boss is that Peter Fonda, Karen Black, Elliott Gould, Robert Walker Jr., and Kris Kristofferson are nowhere to be found in the film. Hopper’s first cut of Backtrack was reportedly 3 hours long but the studio cut it down to 90 minutes, renamed it Catchfire, and Hopper insisted on being credited as Alan Smithee. Later, Hopper released a two-hour version with the Backtrack title and his directorial credit restored.

Regardless of which version you see, Backtrack is an odd film. It’s hardly the first film to be made about a hit man falling for his target. What distinguishes this film is just how bizarre a performance Dennis Hopper gives in the role of the hitman. It’s as if Hopper gave into every method instinct that he had and the end result was a mix of Blue Velvet‘s Frank Booth and the crazed photojournalist from Apocalypse Now. Jodie Foster’s cool intelligence makes her the ideal choice for a conceptual artist but it also makes it hard to believe that she would fall for a jittery hitman and, in her romantic scenes with Hopper, Foster often seems to be struggling to resist the temptation to roll her eyes. Somehow, their total lack of romantic chemistry becomes rather fascinating to work. They are two talented performers but each appears to be acting in a different movie. What’s interesting is that I think a movie just about Hopper’s spacey hitman would be interesting (and, if you’ve ever seen The American Friend, it’s hard not to feel that such a movie already exists) but I think a movie about just about Foster’s artist and her life in New York would be just as fascinating. Taken as individuals, the artist and the hitman are both compelling characters. Taken as a couple, they don’t belong anywhere near each other.

But let’s be honest. This is a film that most people will watch for the parade of character actors delivering quirky dialogue. Even if one takes Hopper and Foster out of this mix, this is an amazingly talented cast. One need only consider that John Turturro did Do The Right Thing before appearing in this film while Joe Pesci and Tony Sirico did Goodfellas immediately afterwards. This film features a once-in-a-lifetime cast, made up of actors who were apparently told to do whatever they felt like doing. Turturro plays up the comedy. Sirico plays his role with cool menace. Stockwell barely speaks above a whisper. Fred Ward plays the one sane man in a world of lunatics. Vincent Price delivers his line as if he’s appearing in one of Roger Corman’s Poe films and somehow, it makes sense that, in the world of Backfire, an Italian gangster would have a snarky, mid-Atlantic accent.

It’s an odd little film, an example of 80s filmmaking with a 70s sensibility. While it’s not touched with the lunatic genius that distinguished Hopper’s The Last Movie, Backtrack is still something that should be experienced at least once.

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Guilty Pleasure No. 61: Double Dragon (dir by James Yukich)

Posted on May 1, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The time is …. the future!

The future looks a lot like a cheap music video. Due to repeated earthquakes, California is now an island and Los Angeles has been left in ruins. The city has been renamed New Angeles, even though the correct name would have been Nuevos Angeles but whatever. The important thing is that city is now a mess. The police allow the gangs to run rampant at night in return for not running rampant during the day. The nightly news, which is anchored by George Hamilton and Vanna White, is full of stories about the federal government refusing to send any more aid to California, despite the fact that Jerry Brown is the Vice President. For some reason, Andy Dick plays the weatherman and gives continual updates on the smog and rain.

Despite the fact that the city is the most dangerous place on Earth, Satori Imada (Julia Nickson) still makes the time to drive her teenage sons, Billy (Scott Wolf) and and Jimmy Lee (Mark Dacascos, who was clearly not a teenager when this film was shot) to and from their karate tournaments. However, that might all end because Sartori possesses half of a magic medallion and the evil Koga Shuko (Robert Patrick, looking oddly like Sugar Ray’s Mark McGrath) has the other half. Satori gives her half of the medallion to Billy and tells him that he and his brother must keep it out of the hands of Shuko.

That’s not going to be easy because Shuko not only has control of the local gangs but also the police. Fortunately, rebel leader Marian Delario (Alyssa Milano) is willing to help out the Lee brothers. It all leads to a lot of fights, a lot of running, some campy humor, and stiffly delivered dialogue. For whatever reason, the filmmakers decided that the way to make this marital arts film a success would be to push accomplished martial artist Mark Dacascos into the background and instead focus on Scott Wolf, who spends most of the movie looking like he’s either confused by the plot or terrified as to what Double Dragon might do to his career.

Yeah, this movie is pretty stupid and the plot is pretty much impossible to follow. And yet, it is oddly entertaining in its own weird way. If you ignore the story and just focus on the visuals, it can actually be kind of fun. Look at all the bright colors. Look at Robert Patrick, with his goat-tee and his 90s pop star hair. Look at Alyssa Milano, who, surprisingly, seems to actually be in on the joke. Look at all of the Mad Max-inspired fashion choices. From a purely visual point of view, New Angeles is a huge improvement on Los Angeles. Along with the film visuals, the film is also worth watching just so one can witness just how over-the-top Robert Patrick goes in his performance. I don’t normally think of Patrick as being someone who chews the scenery but, in this film, he gives into every cartoonish impulse that he has and it’s actually a lot of fun to watch. There’s not a moment of subtlety to be found in either his performance or Alyssa Milano’s and thank the Angels for that. Finally, I have to appreciate the fact that the film’s main message appears to be that the government and all other forms of civil authority are basically useless. Not even Vice President Jerry Brown can be bothered to help out the people of New Angeles. That pretty much tells you all that you need to know.

In the end, Double Dragon is not a particularly good film but it’s fun in its own deeply dumb way.

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Guilty Pleasure No. 60: The Running Man (dir by Paul Michael Glaser)

Posted on January 7, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Killian, here’s your Subzero… now plain zero!”

Uhm, excuse me, Mr. Schwarzenegger, but a man just died. He probably had a family who just watched you kill him on national television….

Oh well, it happens! In the role of Ben Richards, Arnold Schwarzenegger kills quite a few people over the course of the 1987 film, The Running Man, but they were all bad. In fact, when we first meet Ben Richards, he’s a cop who is trying to save lives. His superiors want him to open fire on a bunch of protestors who simply want enough food to eat. When Richards refuses to do it, he is framed for perpetrating “the Bakersfield Massacre” and is sent to prison. When he is recaptured after escaping, he is given a chance to compete on America’s number one game show, The Running Man! Hosted and produced by Damon Killian (Richard Dawson, oozing smarm in a performance that — in a fair world — would have received Oscar consideration), The Running Man is a show in which prisoners are given a chance to win prizes like a trial by jury or maybe even a pardon. While the audience cheers and puts down bets, the prisoners are stalked by professional killers like Buzzsaw (Gus Rethwisch), Dynamo (Erland Van Lidth), Fireball (Jim Brown), and Sub-Zero (Professor Toru Tanaka). Along with Killian, Captain Freedom (Jesse Ventura) provides commentary and analysis on how the game is going. Ben soon finds himself joined by Amber (Maria Conchita Alonso), who proves herself to be just as tough as he is.

Seen today, The Running Man feels more than a bit prophetic. Due to worldwide economic collapse, the poor are getting poorer while the rich are getting richer. The American government has become both increasingly corporate and increasingly authoritarian. The citizens are entertained and manipulated by “reality” programming. On camera, Killian is a charismatic host who delivers his lines with faux sincerity and who loves to meet and give away prizes to the public. (There’s something both undeniably creepy and also rather familiar about the way that Killian sniffs the hair, rubs the shoulders and holds the arms of the audience members to whom he’s speaking. It’s all very calculated and one gets the feeling that Killian washes his hands as soon as the camera are off of him.) Behind the scenes, he drinks, smokes, curses, and is full of contempt for everyone around him. He may not be happy when Ben outsmarts and kills the show’s stalkers but he definitely cheers up when he hears how good the ratings are. The film is set in 2017, which was 30 years in the future when The Running Man was first released. Seen today, The Running Man’s 2017 feels a lot like our 2017….

That said, The Running Man is also a big, flamboyant, and undeniably entertaining film. It’s also surprisingly funny, at times. Living in a dystopia ahs turned everyone into a quip machine. None of the bad guys die without Schwarzenegger making a joke about it. (“Buzzsaw? He had to split.” Yes, he did.) The show’s vapid studio audience, who go from cheering the prospect of witnessing a bloody death to crying when their favorite stalker is killed, is both disturbing and humorous. (Also memorable is the faux somber dance number that is performed while the show memorializes all the dead stalkers.) For all the costumed heroes and villains, the film is practically stolen by an older woman named Agnes who becomes Ben Richards’s favorite fan. The gaming “quads” may be dark and dangerous and full of angry people but they’re also full of advertisements for Cadre Cola. Dey Young of Rock and Roll High School and Strange Behavior fame has a cameo as Amy, who pays six dollars for a can of Cadre. (That may seem like a lot for a can of anything but Cadre is the official cola of The Running Man! Damon Killian endorses it! And, of course, when The Running Man was produced, the studio was owned by Coca-Cola so the jokes about Cadre’s corporate dominance also serve as a “take that” towards the corporation who put up money for the film. Either that or Cadre is stand-in for Pepsi.)

It’s easy to compare The Running Man to The Hunger Games films but The Running Man is infinitely more fun, if just because it doesn’t make the mistake of taking itself as seriously as The Hunger Games did. (Add to that, The Running Man manages to wrap up its story in 90 minutes, whereas The Hunger Games needed four movies.) Like The Hunger Game, The Running Man is based on a book, in this case a very loose adaptation of one of the pulpy novels that Stephen King wrote under the name of Richard Bachman. While King said that he enjoyed the film, he also asked that his real name not be listed in the credits because the film had little in common with his book, which is fair enough. The Running Man may have been inspired by a Stephen King novel but it’s an Arnold Schwarzenegger production through-and-through.

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Guilty Pleasure No. 59: Teen Wolf (dir by Rod Daniel)

Posted on October 29, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1985, Teen Wolf is a bit of an odd film.

Michael J. Fox is Scott Howard, a 17 year-old high student in Nebraska. There’s nothing special about Scott. He plays on the school’s lousy basketball team. He has a crush on the most popular girl in school, even though she barely seems to know that he’s alive. He’s completely oblivious to the fact that his lifelong best friend, Boof (Susan Ursitti), is totally crushing on him. His parents are clueless to Scott’s angst. Maybe the only thing that Scott has going for him is that he is friends with the coolest kid in school, Stiles (Jerry Levine). How cool is Stiles? He’s so cool that his name is Stiles! Actually, to be hones, Stiles seems just as dorky as Scott but this is an 80s film so who am I to argue with the film’s argument that everyone wants to hang out with Stiles?

Then, one night, Scott discovers that he has inherited the family “curse.” He’s a werewolf! But, on the plus side, he’s a really popular werewolf. Everyone at school loves the werewolf. The popular girls want to date the werewolf. Everyone loves seeing the werewolf van surfing. And, even more importantly, the werewolf is really good at basketball! It’s weird because the Werewolf is just as short as Scott was but apparently, being a wolf makes you good at basketball. You have to wonder why the other teams wouldn’t protest having to play against a werewolf. I would be worried that the werewolf would get mad if it missed a shot and kill everyone on the court.

Anyway, Scott is popular but he soon learns that popularity is empty, regardless of whether you’re a werewolf or not. He also realizes the Boof is the girl that he should be going out with but Boof only wants to date Scott. She doesn’t want to date the werewolf. Will Scott find the courage to go to the school dance as himself?

This is a pretty stupid movie but Michael J. Fox brings a lot of heart to the role of Scott and his romance with Boof (who really needs a better nickname) is actually rather sweet. The highlight of the film are Scott’s interaction with his supportive but nerdy father (played by James Hampton). There are a lot jokes that fall flat and the plot never makes much sense but the film itself so amiably dumb that it’s hard not to kind of like it. That said, don’t ever try to surf on top of the van. Werewolf or not, that looks dangerous!

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Guilty Pleasure No. 58: Robot Jox (dir by Stuart Gordon)

Posted on August 5, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the future, the world has been ravaged by a combination of nuclear war and infertility. The face of diplomacy has changes as well. Instead of wasting time with negotiations, treaties, or lengthy wars, countries now settle disputes through giant robot combat.

In fact, robot combat is the most popular sport in the world! The men who sit inside the head of the giant robots and who push the buttons that make the robots do their thing have all become national heroes. They’re even more beloved than the robots that they control. America loves Achilles (Gary Graham). Russia loves Alexander (Paul Koslo). Every fight is observed by hundreds of spectators sitting in the stands.

That becomes a problem when Achilles and his robot accidentally fall backwards and land on top of the stands. Not only does this mean that Russia will claim ownership of Alaska but it also kills a lot of people who were only there because they thought they would get to watch some good old-fashioned giant robot combat. Achilles is so upset that he announces his retirement. He leaves robot combat camp and walks around the most depressing, dreariest city imaginable. It’s hard not to notice that the city is full of signs imploring couples to have as many children as possible. The humans would seem to be on the way out, regardless of what happens with the giant robots.

Fortunately, Achilles’s retirement only lasts for a day or two. Once he learns that he’s going to be replaced by Athena (Anne-Marie Johnson), Achilles returns to fight Alexander. It could be that Achilles is in love with Athena. It could also just be evidence that it takes a lot more than a nuclear war to wipe out misogyny and Achilles can’t handle a woman controlling his robot. Who knows? Achilles is determined to redeem himself but Athena still wants her chance and it turns out that there is a double agent who is giving information to Alexander and the Russians!

Featuring a plot that was apparently made up on the spot, 1990’s Robot Jox is about as silly as a movie can get. Several scenes are devoted to showing Athena and the other young robot pilots going through their training and it’s hard not to notice that none of it actually has anything to do with sitting inside the head of a giant robot and telling it what to do. Instead, they do a lot of physical stuff, which makes no sense because piloting a robot would be a mental task, not a physical one. But it gives the film an excuse to put a bunch of toned 20 year-olds in skin tight outfits and that was probably the main concern. As for the double agent subplot, there’s only two possible suspects and it’s not difficult to guess which one is guilty. The actors, for the most part, go through the motions though Michael Alldredge has some good moments as Achilles’s trainer and Paul Koslo is a blast as the maniacally evil Alexander. In the future, it’s just not enough to destroy a man’s giant robot. You have to laugh about it, too.

But, to be honest, Robot Jox is one of those movies that is so extremely silly that it’s impossible not to kind of like it. The special effects may be on the cheap side but the robots themselves are actually fairly impressive and it’s hard not to smile at the sight of them stiffly walking across the combat area. The film’s finale features not only a giant chainsaw that is stored inside the crotch of one of the robot’s but also a bizarre and impromptu trip into space. I’m not really sure why the robots flew into space but it really doesn’t matter. No one is going to watch Robot Jox for a coherent story. This is a film that people watch because they want to see giant robots fighting. And, on that front, Robot Jox delivers.

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Guilty Pleasure No. 57: The Voyeurs (dir by Michael Mohan)

Posted on June 27, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Voyeurs premiered on Amazon in 2021 and I have to say that I’m a little bit angry that I didn’t bother to watch the movie until last week. Seriously, someone should have alerted me about this film because this is exactly the type of shamelessly sordid, narratively nonsensical film that I always end up enjoying. Seriously, I expect better from my friends.

The film opens with Pippa (Sydney Sweeney) trying on lingerie in a chic shop, just to suddenly realize that anyone looking through the shop’s front window would be able to see her. Pippa glares reproachfully at both the window and, presumably, the people watching this movie. That’s right, the film opens with the lead character judging you for watching. However, as we soon discover, Pippa is a bit of a hypocrite.

Pippa was buying the lingerie as a way to celebrate moving into a new studio apartment with her boyfriend, Thomas (Justice Smith). Unfortunately, Thomas is kind of a lame-o and he ends up falling asleep as soon as they move in and before Pippa can show him what she’s bought. When Thomas does eventually wake up, he and Pippa discover that they can stare straight into the the apartment across the street from them. That apartment is inhabited by a handsome and sexy photographer (Ben Hardy) and his beautiful wife (Natasha Liu Bordizzo). Pippa and Thomas find themselves obsessively watching as Thomas and Pippa make love in the kitchen and basically everywhere else in their apartment. (Meanwhile, Thomas is still complaining about how much he hates his job.) Eventually, Pippa and Thomas even figure out a way to capture the vibrations of the other apartment’s windows so that they can “hear” what the photographer and his wife are saying to each other. While Thomas worries that Pippa is becoming too obsessed with the neighbors, Pippa is busy fantasizing about the photographer and befriending his wife. When Pippa discovers that the photographer is cheating on his wife and cruelly gaslighting away her concerns, Pippa makes a decision that leads to….

Well, it leads to a lot and I certainly won’t spoil it. I will say that it’s all wonderfully melodramatic and silly. The Voyeurs has multiple twists, none of which make much sense. Indeed, it’s best not to think too much about any of the twists or the film’s rather macabre conclusion. Instead, watch it for the sex, the glamour, the spacious apartments, and the beautiful people. Don’t worry about logic. Instead, just accept The Voyeurs as a dream. Sydney Sweeney brings some much-needed sincerity to her role while Hardy and Bordizzo both appear to understand exactly the type of film in which they’ve found themselves and, wisely, they fully embrace the sordidness of it all. At times, Justice Smith seems to almost be taking the movie too seriously but even that adds to The Voyeurs off-center charm. Someone always takes things too seriously in a film like this.

The Voyeurs is the type of sordid daydream-turned-nightmare that we can all love.

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Guilty Pleasure No. 56: Once You Understand By Think

Posted on June 7, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Things get a little easier

Once you understand

That is the message of TSL’s latest guilty pleasure, a little song from 1971 called Once You Understand. In case you missed that message the first time, don’t worry. It will be repeated. In fact, it’s the only lyric in the entire song. The song starts with one voice singing, “Things get a little easier/once you understand” but soon, several other voice join in until there’s a heavenly choir of sorts. It’s really enthusiastic choir, too. In fact, it’s so enthusiastic that it’s a little bit creepy. No one’s that happy about understanding.

While the voices are singing to us that things get a little easier once you understand, we also get to listen to a few scenes from the late 60s/early 70s generation gap. The scenes are acted out by a bunch of uncredited actors who give it the old community theater try. We listen to teenagers argue with their parents and parents talk down to their children and what we immediately notice is that no one is trying to understand and therefore, things will never get a little easier.

One mother accuses her daughter of doing more than babysitting and demands that she stay out of a certain neighborhood. A father demands that his son get a haircut and reminds him that he had to work hard when he was young. Another kid is super excited to have gotten a guitar and he’s planning on starting a band. His father replies that there’s more to life than music.

Things get a little easier

Once you understand

Things get a little easier

Once you understand

Things get a little

Suddenly, the music stops. We listen as one of the fathers gets a tragic phone call about his son, the one that he didn’t understand. The father sobs uncontrollably as the song ends and I guess it could, in theory, have been a powerful moment if not for the fact that father is so obviously reading a script. The other problem is that 99% of the song consists of parents acting like jerks but then, in the final few moments, it turns out that at least one of the parents was right about his son throwing his life away. So maybe, it was the son who needed to understand. Who knows?

Anyway, Once You Understand is one of those songs that’s often included in lists of the worst songs of all time. However, much like The Dawn of Correction, I like Once You Understand because it is so totally a product of its time. It’s a cultural artifact and listening to it is a bit like stepping into a time machine. That said, I kind of doubt this song inspired anyone to understand. If anything, everyone comes across as being kind of whiny.

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Guilty Pleasure No. 55: The Dawn of Correction

Posted on June 6, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The year was 1964 and folk singer Barry McGuire had just released a new song called Eve of Destruction. In Eve of Destruction, McGuire painted an apocalyptic view of the world and put a lot of the blame on the Cold War. McGuire wrote about 18 year-olds being sent to war when they weren’t even allowed to vote. (At that time, the voting age was 21.) McGuire wrote about the nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and Russia, saying that nuclear annihilation was just one push of a button away. McGuire sang about the Civil Rights struggle and the feeling that all of the well-meaning protests hadn’t led to any real change.

Not surprisingly, this early protest song was as controversial as it was popular. While many claimed that McGuire was one of the few singers willing to sing the truth, others said that he wasn’t being unpatriotic and excessively negative.

That’s where The Spokesmen came in. The Spokesmen were a trio, made up of John Madera, David White, and Ray Gilmore. Feeling that McGuire wasn’t being fair in his critique of the good old U.S., the Spokesmen released an “answer song,” one that addressed all of McGuire’s charges and which dismissed them all. McGuire sang about the “Eve of Destruction.” The Spokesmen decided that they would sing about the …. DAWN OF CORRECTION!

As the song’s chorus says:

So over and over again, you keep sayin’ it’s the end
But I say you’re wrong, we’re just on the dawn of correction

What exactly is “the dawn of correction?” I honestly have no idea. But it probably sounded profound while the song was being written. Plus …. destruction …. correction …. it rhymes!

Anyway, the Dawn of Correction was a minor hit when it was released, though it was soon forgotten about as the protest movement grew and teenagers in the 60s saw far more evidence to support McGuire’s vision of the world than the vision of the Spokesman. Among music aficionados, Dawn of Correction has developed a reputation for being one of the worst songs ever written.

I have to admit though that, when I recently listened to the song, I kind of liked it, in much the same way that I like zero-budget polemical films and kitschy dance scenes. It’s one of those songs that is so definitely rooted to one cultural moment that, from a historical point of view, it becomes rather fascinating. It’s lyrics are just so strangely literal. (It takes a certain …. something …. to try to put a positive spin on the policy of mutually assured destruction in a folk song.) Even more than that, lead singer John Madera attempts to duplicate the raspy growl the McGuire used while singing Eve of Destruction and, even though he doesn’t succeed, there’s something oddly touching about how hard he tries. With a Dylanesque harmonica playing in the background, the song is so determined to be “with it,” that you just know some government teacher in 1967 probably tried to reach her apathetic students by forcing them to listen to this song in class.

Finally, to be honest, that chorus is kind of catchy. Watch the band perform below and be sure to pay attention to the dancers.

Lyrics

The western world has a common dedication
To keep free people from Red domination
And maybe you can’t vote, boy, but man your battle stations
Or there’ll be no need for votin’ in future generations