The Best Red Soda

The best soft drink ever, Cheerwine, is now sold at all Cracker Barrel locations around the country. Cracker Barrel is selling the glass bottles of Cheerwine for $1.29 apiece. The North Carolina based drink is sold all over North and South Carolina, Georgia, and parts of Tennessee. Now, those of us fortunate enough to have a Cracker Barrel nearby will be able to get us some.......Cheerwine. This is a good day for America.

I Use Hanger 18 For My Nice Blue Shirt

I have now seen "Hangar 18" three times, however, it is only now after my third viewing that I have fully discovered what an underrated movie we have in our midst. In this 1980 film, Gary Collins and James Hampton play astronauts who, while on a mission in space, witness an alien spacecraft being destroyed by one of the astronaut spacecraft's rockets. The alien spacecraft lands in far eastern Arizona. One of the residents of the small town in which it lands witnesses the landing and, of course, nobody believes him---except the two astronauts who witnessed the same spacecraft be fired upon.
The two astronauts travel across Arizona to try to find the spacecraft and anyone who has any information about it. Unfortunately, the astronauts are chased by government bad guys who do not want the nation to find out about an alien spacecraft landing on Earth. I guess they are afraid the astronauts will inform the media, but it is never discussed in the film whether they will or not. The motivation of the astronauts seems simply to make sure that their story about what happened in space is believed. They also want to be cleared of the death of the third member of their team who was beheaded while outside of the spacecraft and was hit by either rocket fire or flying debris.
So....3 astronauts in space, 1 is killed when a rocket hits an alien spacecraft, the same alien spacecraft lands in eastern Arizona, the 2 remaining astronauts want to clear their name and make sure their superiors do not think they are spacey....ha, ha? The government tries to silence the astronauts, random sex scene between astronaut and alien informant...wait, not this movie...it's....another one...don't worry about it...bad reception...I'm going through a tunnel....bru...and I...arth...vietime...cheese...
I enjoyed "Hangar 18." It was retitled "Invasion Force" when it first aired on network television around 1982, NBC to be specific. There isn't really an invasion or an invasion force in the movie, but, there is Robert Vaughn. I enjoyed the actors in the film, especially Gary Collins, known mostly for hosting various television events in the 70's and 80's, James Hampton as the other astronaut, and, as always, Robert Vaughn. Collins and Hampton have some occasional bits of humor as does Darren McGavin (The Night Stalker) as the astronauts' supervisor. Robert Vaughn plays a government official who wishes to keep the entire alien spacecraft landing a secret from the public so the man he works for will be elected president in the upcoming election. Vaughn, as mentioned, is always welcome.
"Hangar 18" does not have a whole lot of action or special effects. It is what you might refer to as "talky." The talkiness, however, moves the action of the film along very well and the acting in it does a lot to convey the emotions of the characters effected by events in the film. At times, it plays like a tv-movie, but that is not a bad thing. I found myself wishing that this could have been developed into a weekly series. For anyone interested, there was an NBC series during the 1977-78 season called "Project UFO" which followed two government officials investigating alien sightings around the country. It was produced by Jack Webb (Dragnet, Adam-12).
Seek out "Hangar 18." It is available for streaming on Netflix. Since I liked "Hangar 18," I am going to try to find the previous 17 Hangar movies. I will report on these as soon as I can.

The Mystery of Jared-Syn Revealed

For some reason, I find fascinating those early 80's 3-D movies which all seemed to be released in 1983. The list includes Jaws 3-D, Amityville 3-D, Treasure of the Four Crowns, Spacehunter, The Man Who Wasn't There, and the rarely seen Silent Madness. Also on that list was Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn, a film well worth 78 minutes of your time.
Ok, it's not great, but I found watching the 3-D effects and imagining what they would have been like to see back in 1983 entertaining. Of course, these 80's 3-D movies were known to have had poor quality 3-D effects, but if what they tried and threw at the audience did work, they likely would have been entertaining. Avatar, for instance, had an unoriginal story and unappealing characters, however the modern 3-D effects in that film made it one of my more memorable film viewing experiences.
For this reason alone---interesting 3-D effects overshadowing lack of story and/or characterization---I endorse watching any of those early 80's 3-D films. I have seen Jaws 3-D, Amityville 3-D, Parasite, The Man Who Wasn't There, and Friday the 13th Part 3. I can endorse these films as well for the same reason.
These films, even though I have not seen a majority of them in 3-D, contains the element, as I have stated, of imagining what it would have been like to watch them in a good 3-D process. I find the random zooming in on a tree branch for the effect of the branch poking into the audience, as is seen in Metalstorm, strangely entertaining. As well, in Metalstorm, you get various weapons being thrown at or being drawn towards the audience. Glass also flies at the audience at various times.
The story of Metalstorm is simple. A young woman's father is killed by the bad guy, Jared-Syn. I had always wondered what Jared-Syn was. It turns out it is the bad guy. Anyway, Jared-Syn has nefarious designs on controlling some sort of ore, mineral, magic crystal or some such. The hero of the film, Dogen, played by Jeffrey Byron, offers to help the young woman--I guess I can give you her name--Dhyana avenge her father's death. Dhyana is played by Kelly Preston, who also appeared in Mischief and Space Camp. Helped by Rhodes (Tim Thomerson) and Hurok (Richard Moll), Dogen seeks out the evil Jared-Syn in hopes of avenging the damsel, Dhyana. Again, in one of these 3-D films, story is not king.
There was enough humor from Tim Thomerson (Trancers) and Richard Moll who, of course, played Bull in Night Court and more famously, Mormon leader, Joseph Smith, in Savage Journey, to maintain my interest through a vanilla story.
Remember, vanilla still tastes good, it just does not make your mouth say, "Wow!" In the same way, the story in a film like Metalstorm is not awful, it just is not terribly interesting. However, those previously mentioned 3-D effects or attempts kept me into it. If you watch Metalstorm through the Netflix instant streaming service, you may ask yourself as I did, is the Universal logo at the beginning of the film from the original print of the film or was it tacked on recently. It is a hybrid of their new logo and their 70's-early 90's logo. It does state that Universal is "An MCA Company," so it may be an original logo. I know this will be the topic of heated debate among my scores of readers, so please----no violence.