J.C. Maçek III The World's Greatest Critic!

[Continued from the 2007 Thanksgiving Turkey!!!]

Thanksgiving Day 1994, Shreveport, Louisiana. The leaves had long since turned and the air was filled with a clammy coldness, filled with a wet winter bite. It seemed to the moviegoers at the 6 to be any ordinary Thanksgiving. But they didn't realize how different this day would be, for this Thanksgiving was going to be marked by the appearance of a strange visitor who... um, well visited strangely!

Nagas materialized in a flurry of spinning lights that formed a dissipating sphere around him. He posed dramatically, emulating as best he could the cover to Superman #1, which he had seen in a museum once as a small child. As the tachyon glow vanished, leaving Nagas fully visible, he glanced around for awed onlookers. Seeing none he glanced the other way. There was, regrettably, nobody there either. "Damn it!" he said. "I'll bet that looked awesome, too." He straightened himself up and dusted off his white and red armor. Nagas was on a mission that spanned time and he was determined to make sure this one went better than the "mission" he had given himself to become a great baroque painter before he finished college. Man, he'd fouled that one up, but good! He shook his head and moved on.

Nagas stepped through the back hallway and into the mall. Seeing two teenagers, he immediately thrust his right arm forward and arched his left backward in his Superman position again... but noticing they were unimpressed, he just felt stupid. Therefore he kept going, taking a left at the end of the hall. About three minutes later he crossed the same path after realizing he should have gone right. And that's when he saw it... the movie theatre. He had read about it for years, but it had been closed, converted and ultimately torn down long before his birth. In fact, in Nagas' time, this very site was that of a really profitable Brothel. He'd... he'd heard.

Amid the Thanksgiving Crowd, Nagas looked hard for his target... and behind the ticket box, stood a tall, brown-haired young man who looked almost as excited to be there as Nagas had been at his older brother's bris. Nagas shuddered and walked forward.

"Last theatre on the left." the usher said, tearing a ticket and directing a customer to their house. When that customer promptly went right instead, the usher said. "THAT SIDE!" loudly. After three similar occasions the young man gave up and just started pointing.

Nagas approached him and stood to the side. "You must come with me! The future depends on it!"

"Last theatre on THAT SIDE! Say what?"

"I require you to come with me. I must show you something that will change your future and therefore save my own future. It is imperative that you-"

"Last theatre on THAT SIDE! Look, man, I'd love to, but I'm kind of stuck here right now. You see this crowd? Besides if I left now, J.C. would freak the hell out and he's obnoxious sometimes, man!"

Nagas went on, un-phased. "It is imperative that you-" After a delay Nagas was finally phased. "Wait a minute, did you say J.C. would freak out?"

"Uh, yeah.... Last House on the Left! I mean THEATRE... Oh, just that way!"

"So you're not J.C.?"

"No way, man! I'm Weaz, see?" The usher pulled his nametag forward to give Nagas a better look. He then tore another ticket and told the customer where to go.

"Oh hell! Then where's J.C.?"

"Oh, he's in the projection booth... uh... one of them anyway. It's Thursday, man! He's got long bangs and-"

"Never mind, I see him!" Nagas bumped past Weaz and ignored his request for a ticket, instead seizing on the young man with long bangs and a broom. "J.C., thank GOD! I need you to come with me to-"

"Whoa-ho-ho!" the other Usher said. "I'm not J.C., I'm James... but I get that alot, damn it. He's in... um... see that door?"

Nagas rolled his eyes and stormed down the hall, barging into the middle projection booth. Beneath one of the spinning film platters he saw a young man in faded jeans, a blue button-down shirt and a paisley tie lying on the floor with an open comic book next to him. "Please tell me you're J.C. Maçek III!" Nagas demanded.

"Please tell me the reason you're in my booth. Did Weaz let you in? I ought to-"

"Are you or aren't you J.C. Maçek III?"

The young man paused, looked the time traveler up and down and finally said "Yeah, sure. What, is there a Star Wars convention in town? And if so... why am I not there?"

"Thank God... and... no. I need you to come with me, it is a matter of the gravest importance. I must convince you to-"

"Save it, if it means I get to leave, then you got me, let's go!" With that the young man picked up his comic books and (muttering "Maybe we'll start our own convention, man.") pushed past Nagas, leaving his spinning film platter to continue its pointless centrifugal progression. Nagas just stood there wondering how it got so easy.

"Weaz, tell What's-Her-Name that my..." He glanced at Nagas again. "... Uncle? Uncle had a family emergency so I had to zark off. I'll be back in..." He looked down at his Swiss Army Watch and squinted before continuing with "... in all likelihood." And with that, he left, Nagas in tow.

"Thanks, man, I'd been looking for an excuse to get the hell out of there since noon." It was 12:45. "So what do you want to show me?"

"This way!" Nagas said and ushered J.C. into the bar and grill across the way. "If all has gone right, my contacts have rented out the bar portion of this establishment for a private party. This means us."

"Aw, dude, you're not gay, are you? I mean, if you are, that's cool and all, but I should tell you right now that the answer's gonna be no, man! Just ask that Jack guy from the Little Theatre. Ick, no man!"

Nagas sighed. This man was his mission? He wondered if this was a mistake and if he should have grabbed that James or Weaz instead. "No, it's not that. Trust me... and, by the way, even if I was, I'd like to think I could do a little better than you!"

J.C. glared at him and said "Hey, that's my line, man!" but he followed him in anyway.

"Nagas party of two? Thanks!" Nagas motioned for the bartender. "Beers?" Then to J.C. "You want beer, right?"

"No, way, man, I stopped drinking at 19. I don't drink anymore at all!"

Nagas paused, pensively. "You will again!" he said with great surety. Nagas ordered appetizers and drinks (without booze for the temporarily dry J.C.), then he began (thankfully... this is already getting incredibly long). "I have come from what you might call the Future."

"Cool!"

"I need you to- Wait, that doesn't surprise you at all?"

"I'm not saying I'm buying it, I just think it's cool that I'm getting free nachos to listen to a crazy person."

Nagas grunted and continued. "You see, in the future you become a film critic."

"Aw, far out, man! For what newspaper?"

"Well..." Nagas paused again.

"Or, wait, let me guess... A Magazine, right? Though isn't that kind of a conflict of interests being that I'm also one of the world's most popular and well-respected actors?"

Nagas had no clue where to go with that one, so he merely continued. Seriously, though... he thought he'd be an actor? "No, you write for a website on the internet."

"The inter-..."

"Internet... it's a network of... look, it doesn't matter-"

"Oh that computer thing? So only nerds read my stuff?"

Nagas wondered if he should have started at the K&B Drug Store instead, as he was developing a headache of some impressive size with the words "Excedrin-Generic-Knock-Off" written all over it. He took a deep breath then said "The internet changes much over the next five of your years to the point that virtually every-" Then Nagas considered his facts for a moment and said "Yes, actually, only nerds read your stuff."

"Hose, man! Hose!", J.C. said through a twisted (as if by whole lemons) face.

"Regardless, you are considered in the future to be a passable writer and a terrible web designer!"

"Web designer? What is that like basket weaving?"

"No, basket weaving requires skill... let's move on, please! You will find your niche in eviscerating excruciatingly bad movies in hilarious ways and-"

"Oh, like on MST3k?"

"Somewhat, but with less intelligence, humor and wit... but strangely with more robots."

"Cool! Am I driving a flying car, too?"

"No, you're driving a beat-up, red, nineteen eighty-eight Mustang."

J.C. frowned and sipped his O'Doul's. "That's what I'm driving now.", he muttered.

"As your writing becomes more popular you inadvertently popularize bad movies, along with a series of other events that... well... by the time my own time comes-"

"What?"

"Well, I can't tell you, but it's pretty bad. The world as you know it will not exist and darkness will rein everywhere but in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin!"

"Where?"

"I... I don't know."

"So why are you here? What do you want from me?" Suddenly the projectionist seemed very serious... at least as serious as he had looked when he discovered that Three's a Crowd had been canceled!

"I have come to change your mind, to show you that reviewing bad movies can do you no good, ultimately, and to prove to you that you must change your course and perhaps follow your dream of becoming a clown prophet!"

"But how?"

"I must show you... a terrible movie. One of the worst. One you will review fourteen years from this very day." And with that, Nagas pushed a green, cardboard sleeve with a video cassette inside it across the table."

"A video tape?"

"Yeah, so?"

"Well, in the future wouldn't they have these on like CDs or something?"

Nagas thought he might actually head to that Drug Store after all. "Look, they're not CDs, they're DV- It doesn't matter! What would I play it on in the past, huh?"

"You should've brought back one of the players or-"

"Holy fuc-" actually, the kid was right, so Nagas silenced himself and said "With this tape, I will show you the brutal pain of what it means to truly experience a bad, bad movie. This will curb you from watching more of them and ultimately your future will change, as will mine, and the world will be a better place for humans and hamsters alike."

J.C. glanced down at the tape "Frozen Scream? What the hell is Frozen Scream?"

"No, no, no, we're watching the other one on the tape, it was one of those double feature things! But, since you asked, it was a really terrible Video Nasty!"

"What's a Video Nasty?"

"It's a movie that-" Suddenly Nagas remembered his mission and changed course. "It's better that you not know!"

"Oh, the future... right. So, it's Executioner II, then?"

"Yes, The Executioner, part II!" Nagas said, with a mix of reverence and fear, the way Southern Baptist youth group leaders refer to bands like Megadeth.

"Oh, right, far out, I saw the cover to that one in the video store... that's that guy with the welding mask and the flame thrower? Kind of a rip off of Terminator?"

Nagas spoke patiently as he would have to a child "No, you're thinking of Exterminator 2, which came out the same year and was a sequel to The Exterminator, a film that predates Terminator and is completely unrelated. This is The Executioner, part II!"

J.C. looked confused. "Okay, but I haven't seen part I yet, can we go get that one and, you know, now that I'm out of work anyway-"

"NO! There was no part I, they started with part II. This isn't a sequel, no matter what the title says. There are all kinds of bad exploitation films that present themselves as sequels."

"But that makes absolutely no sense!"

"You have learned your first lesson about avoiding Bad Movies! Now shall we begin?"

The projectionist looked even more serious, wove his fingers into a steeple which he placed over his lips and said "By all means, Future Man... let us save the world."

Nagas rolled his eyes and tossed the battered tape to the bartender. Soon the projection screen (which was usually employed to watch the Saints lose) was filled with the three dimensional, yellow letters that spelled "THE EXECUTIONER PART II" It even had a "Trademark" symbol next to the title.

Surprised, J.C. turned to the time traveler and said "Does that say copyright Twentieth Century-"

"No. Just as the title of this film purports to be a sequel, the company that holds the copyright tried to fool you into believing that they were a bigger name by calling themselves '21st Century Distribution Corporation'!"

Nagas mused over how many times he had to train for this moment in his own time. How often he had to endure this film for the sake of salvation... but no matter how many times he saw it, the opening title card still made him nauseous.

Grainy images of what was supposed to be Vietnam took over the screen with a helpful on-screen setting that read "Vietnam 1970".

"Looks like the beginning of M*A*S*H! Just not as good!"

"It gets worse, watch!"

And suddenly, the introduction was over and the film had set itself in the then modern day of 1984. An expectant look came over J.C.'s face. "Expecting another on-screen setting? You won't get one. Hell, for all you know this is three miles away from the previous scenes, right?" Again Nagas thought about what he was saying and added "Actually, the locations you just saw were shot right outside of Los Angeles, so these two scenes probably were within a few miles. That's cheap."

J.C. reached for the time traveler's beer, then remembered himself and grabbed the nonalcoholic bottle. "This is L.A., huh? This doesn't look anywhere near as cool as the L.A. in Predator 2!" Nagas was starting to get concerned about this mission.

The film-proper began with a team of jackasses attempting to gang-rape a woman on top of a crappy Los Angeles building while helpless neighbors hear and do nothing. "Hey, isn't this like the beginning of Batman where the hero shows up and holds the guy over the street below and threatens to drip him... I mean, DROP him?"

"Watch."

With that a man in a black mask with a poorly dubbed cartoonish voice appeared out of nowhere and beat the holy crap out of everybody on the roof (except for the still-clothed woman)!

"Hey, cool! I wonder if the got the idea for that Batman scene from this!"

Nagas patiently responded "Almost certainly not!"

J.C. laughed, "This is hilarious, though. What's with their voices? They sound like Cat Man from Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park!"

"In my time, that's a lost film!" said Nagas.

"Probably for the best!" J.C. responded.

The film (such that it was) moved on into a bland mishmash of protection rackets, suburban drug addicts, some perverted mobster called "Antonio the Tattooed Man", a nerdy pimp/ dealer caught in between the suburban addicts and the mobster, an exotic dancing club with fully clothed dancers... and one good cop!

"Hey, wake up!" Nagas said.

Starting, J.C. jumped up and said "I wasn't asleep yet. But please, man, I don't think I can sit through fourteen more hours of this! I've probably already missed Thanksgiving Dinner and EEK! The Cat should be coming on any minute!"

Nagas shook his head. "It hasn't been fourteen hours! We're only twenty minutes into this film!"

"REALLY?"

"Yes."

"Okay! So far some masked guy beats up some criminals, then blows them up with some cheap explosives... then we meet this chick who needs drugs and might become a hooker to buy them and then what?"

"Some mobster and the Cheif of Police played by Aldo Ray!"

"Aldo Ray? Is that name supposed to mean anything to me?"

"No."

"Holy contrived coincidences, Nagas! Is that cop guy the druggie's father?"

"Yes Christopher Mitchum's Lieutenant Roger O'Malley is the druggie girl's dad. Oh, and that Robin thing from the 1966 Batman where you add the word 'Holy' to everything?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't ever do that. It's not endearing or clever."

"Oh!"

"At all."

"Okay."

"Ever!"

"Got it!"

Nagas watched his subject more than the film before them. Young J.C.'s fists began to clench and his face began to turn green. "Are you okay?" Nagas asked, hoping that this experiment would yeild success, but praying that it wouldn't also kill the kid.

"Ah... yeah, I'm okay. I just... am having a hard... ugh. Who the hell is this reporter chick and why is she in this movie?"

"Ah, yes, TV Journalist Celia Amherst who teams up with Officer O'Malley to fight crime and to praise The Executioner during all his vigilante antics. She's played by Renee Harmon."

"Oh, man! How'd she get this role? Her accent is horrible and even though she's speaking English every line looks badly dubbed! What the hell, was she sleeping with the Producer or something?"

Nagas narrowed his eyes as if the next thing he was going to say actually caused him pain. "Um, actually, no. She... was the Producer."

J.C.'s eyes widened in shock. "That explains it. Man, this is horrible, though! She couldn't possibly have made any more movies, right?"

Nagas laughed, absently. "Well, actually she also produced..." He cut himself off, remembering his mission. "No! You're right, she never made a single other film!"

"Good move. Aw, wait a minute... is she going to get naked? That might be worth her being in the film!"

The first time Nagas had been forced to sit through this nightmare he had hoped the same thing. Sadly, he knew it wasn't going to happen, though he scarcely had the strength to tell poor J.C. (who hadn't been laid since January of that year) that bad news. Besides some lovely nudity was coming up shortly.

"WHOA!" J.C. said at the brief, but wonderful nude scene of one of the hookers in the film. "She's incredib- AW, MAN, WHERE'D SHE GO?"

"That's the end of it."

"Really?"

"Sorry."

"Who was she?"

"We... don't really know... I'll explain that later! Or you'll see, actually!"

And that's when the torture scene began. J.C. didn't know whether to guffaw or recoil. The special make-up effects were neither special, nor effective in their makeup! "Okay, so the Tattooed tool-bag is burning her with a cigarette out of foreplay! But the cigarette isn't actually lit and there's no wound."

"Until?"

"Until the camera cuts away and they add that off camera... and it looks like a piece of rejected seafood, man. I think I'm going to be sick!"

"Why, because of the disturbing nature of this moment?"

"No, at the poor quality of this terribly constructed scene, man! I hate this! How dare they pass this off as a movie! And as he's ripping her shirt, it looks like they're actually TRYING to avoid nudity here with the ridiculous camera work. Who the hell did the cinematography on this dragon scrotum?"

Unfortunately, Nagas knew this answer by heart. "A man named James Bryan."

"Horrible. Why wouldn't the director demand a reshoot of these scenes? Just budget, or..."

Nagas laughed nervously again. "Good observation, ordinarily that would be true, but in this case the director was also James Bryan!"

J.C. darted his eyes toward Nagas. "They let that idiot direct this movie? Oh, man, please tell me he never worked before or since!"

Nagas was still shaken by having to lie about Harmon's carreer. He could no more tell J.C. that Renee Harmon produced Frozen Scream than he could tell him that James Bryan directed nine terrible films, including Don't Go in the Woods, yet another Video Nasty!

But J.C. could just sense something was wrong. "He... he did, didn't he? Oh, man! You're lying to me, aren't you? And that Harmon chick with the great boobs we never see, she... she..."

Nagas tried to throw a bone to J.C., to give him something true to steer him away from certain subjects. "Okay. Yes, I'm sorry. They both collaborated again in a 1985 film called Lady Streetfighter!"

But this didn't help. "Like the video game?" J.C. started to look frantic, his eyes wide, his chest heaving, his mouth agape. It looked to Nagas as if this young man was confronted by a cinematic evil so deep that he scarcely knew such a thing could exist. He had been an usher and projectionist through films like Mr. Nanny, Airheads, Man's Best Friend and even Brainscan, but it wouldn't be until 1997's Batman & Robin that he would experience a film quite this bad. "I can't go on!" he said.

"I'm sorry, but it's important that you finish this experiment."

J.C. sighed and his shoulders slumped. Then he nodded, his long bangs bouncing like the ears of a disappointed dog and he turned to face the fearful screen once again.

Nagas was not without pity. This ridiculous film of vigilantism, attempted rape, idiotic depictions of drug addiction, flashbacks of Nam (that made such scenes from Magnum P.I. seem brilliant by comparison), happy hookers, reluctant hookers, dorky cops and the airheaded reporters who love them and dialogue that was almost as bad as the dubbing (but not quite as bad as the grating synthesized score that made the film seem much older than its ten years). J.C. shuddered... and Nagas felt his pain.

Then suddenly, like ripping the tape off or experiencing a flu shot, it was over... just like that.

"Whoa, wait a second. That's it?"

"That's it. Aren't you relieved?"

"Well... well, kind of, yeah, but damn, man! Nothing was really resolved. This silly excuse for the Midnight Bomber what Bombs at Midnight kills people and blows them up, then we get some montage of lame scenes and... what kind of ending was that? I'm a projectionist, man! Tell me the truth, is this thing missing the last reel? There weren't even any closing credits. This can't be right!?" He was even more frantic.

"I'm sorry, no, it's the truth. That was the ending! That's all there was! There were no closing credits, but you may have noticed, there were no opening credits either. That's why I can't tell you who actually wrote this thing. I can't tell you who the hot naked woman was and I can't tell you who half of the other actors are either. I only know those who had the audacity, gall and ego to cop to being associated with this piece of piss!"

"What? You don't even know?"

"No clue. Our best historians figured that most of these people just didn't want it known that they agreed to be in such a filmic butt-weed."

J.C. just sat there. He stared into the corner in the light of the blued out screen before him. Occasionally he shook his head in depressed resignation. Then he reached over the table and grabbed one of Nagas' beers and took a long, deep swig. "I needed this. I really, really did!"

Nagas paused for a second. "Yes. Yes, you did. One day you'll come to describe movies like this as 'Dogs'... mostly because the term 'Turkey' was already taken by better writers than you. You'll be drinking a lot more of those, too."

J.C. shook his head again and gave a dejected laugh. "Hah. It's Thanksgiving and I got my Turkey, didn't I?"

Nagas sat down before him and said, "So, do you see how important it is to avoid movies like this? Avoid sequels without prequels! Avoid any movie with a budget lower than a community theatre production of Our Town! Avoid anything with Renee Harmon! Do you see? What did you think?"

J.C. laughed. This time for real. It was a deep, genuine laugh out of humor, not insanity or irony. "Actually, now that I really think about it... it's kind of interesting. I mean, my dad would turn off most movies like that... you know, the ones he'd borrow from Mr. Jimmy... just right when they started getting 'crappy'. I'd never seen the whole thing. It was... almost funny. You know, in that MST3k kind of way. And then there was the nudity!"

Nagas started to worry again. "The nudity? All bad exploitation films had something like that."

"Really? Well that's cool! Maybe I need to-"

"No!" Nagas was tapping into some of J.C.'s frantic hysteria. "No! Don't you see how important it is to avoid these? You need to go back to college... get your degree in something high minded. English Literature, maybe!"

"But I dropped out of College!" J.C. said without pride.

"You can go back. If you have to review movies, review the good ones... the ones people want to read about... and not for ironic or sarcastic reasons. It's the best thing for your mental health!" Nagas stared into J.C.'s eyes, knowing it could go either way. If J.C. ever got his hands on Hell of the Living Dead this could all be over.

J.C. looked back, then swallowed hard. "Okay. Okay, I see your point. No more of this. No more. You've shown me how bad things can get and I... barely survived."

Nagas hadn't the heart to tell him that it could indeed get worse. This very year the release of Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation had been released. Even The Executioner, part II had that one beat.

"Listen to me... I can't stay much longer. Do you see how important it is for you to finish your education, avoid these movies and help to save your future and mine? Can I trust you?"

J.C. paused and nodded a nod as serious and pensive as his dejected head-shake had been. "You bet!"

A weight was lifted from the shoulders of the Time traveler named Nagas. He smiled and shook J.C.'s hand, then ordered the young Projectionist three more Red Stripes before he left him to his thoughts. But first he reached behind the bar and took back the double feature video of Frozen Scream and Executioner II! In the beautiful future he had waiting for him he would enjoy nothing more than watching the cassette melt and burn before his eyes, secure in the knowledge that he had avenged the victims of this man who would one day become "Kneumsi". Ricky, the criminal... and the cop whose name, ironically, was also O'Malley. Nagas had done a good thing that day. He stood in the parking lot again, posed dramatically (in his best Superman look) and the tachyons began to dance and swirl around him. Soon he would be gone to a future that he was ready to relearn.

J.C. finished his last Red Stripe and just sat and thought about things before he staggered out to his beat-up, red nineteen eighty-eight Mustang and drove away without a word to James or Weaz. He thought to himself that he was kind of like, maybe, the anti-John Connor from Terminator. He wondered why this guy didn't just go back and blow him up, like that Executioner douche had done. Ha! This week he would get the paperwork together to re-enroll at LSUS! Crit-Lit, all the way. Then he'd forget, forever, about these movies.

Still... he had lived through it, and it had been kind of a rush! Plus, the nudity was brief, but delicious. He wondered how many more were like that. Maybe it would be a challenge. He thought about it for another moment, then redirected his path to the local Blockbuster, which, in those days, still had a section called "Le Bad Cinema". One more bad exploitation flick wouldn't kill him, right? And it wouldn't, couldn't ruin the future... Just one?

[Continued in the 2009 Thanksgiving Turkey!!!]