The monthly Kung Fu Grindhouse night
at Ballard’s Sunset
Tavern is an inter-
active experience: a live-action Mystery
Science Theater for moviegoers who feel (and don’t we all, a little
bit?) that they’re secretly a Joel or a Mike or a Tom Servo or a
Crooooooooow! trapped in a nerd’s body. There are no whispered asides
to friends—commentary, funny and less funny, is shouted at the
screen for the benefit of all. As my friend put it afterward, “It’s
like everyone’s competing for Most Hilarious Outburst, but
that’s a contest no one can win.” To be fair, though, if you can get
past the occasional annoying stranger yelling the same joke again in
case you guys didn’t hear it the first time (the Sunset serves corn
dogs—does that help?), Kung Fu Grindhouse night is totally
fun.
This week, the first of three movies was Duel, a made-for-TV
cautionary tale famously directed by a 23-year-old Steven Spielberg.
David Mann, a mustache-heavy businessman on the lone highway between
Los Angeles and Bakersfield, makes the mistake of passing an evil,
belchy tanker truck. Apparently expressing some national anxiety about
the early days of road rage, Duel has to be the scariest movie
ever to rely on frequent shots of a Plymouth Valiant’s speedometer
pushing 70 mph. “He’s got some… some souped-up diesel! My car
just isn’t that powerful,” laments David Mann’s constant and
embarrassing internal monologue. “This guy is crazy! What can I do
about it?” “You could probably rub your mustache some more,” suggested
my friend. And so he does.
The second film was Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive (1977),
alternately known as Death Trap, Horror Hotel,
Starlight Slaughter, and my favorite, Le Crocodile de la
Mort. Oh, and also Krokodil (Turkey) and Die Nacht der
Bestie (West Germany). That’s basically everything you need to
know about the plot, though if I were to add anything, it’d be:
Don’t Put It in My Butt, Please, Mister; Like Fawlty Towers,
but Rapier!; and, of course, Raked to Death in the Face by a
Hermit.
(Fun fact: Angie, the annoying little girl in Eaten Alive, is
played by Kyle Richards, who is the sister of a woman named Kathy
Hilton, who is the mother of two shrinking Hollywood violets named
Paris and Nicky Hilton. If you’re me, you probably recognize Kyle
Richards from her current role as “lady on the E! channel talking about
how totally down to earth her vagina-flashing nieces are.” Kyle
Richards also played an annoying little girl in Disney’s 1980
Bette Davis ruiner The Watcher in the Woods, which I happened to
watch the night before Kung Fu Grindhouse night.)
Since I am a dependably sleepy granny, I had to sneak out halfway
through Eaten Alive—leaving Kung Fu Grindhouse night
before seeing any actual kung fu. (The third film, also called The
Duel, was described on the flyer as “the story of brutal revenge
set to geysers of crimson.”) Next time, Kung Fu Grindhouse night.
Next time. 
