The Twilight Tron

The lovely Sherpa stumbled upon a bold piece on the Sleuth network last night. I was surprised, because I thought Sleuth just ran reruns of “Colombo,” "Magnum P.I.,” and “Miami Vice” over and over again, which of course is totally awesome. However, on this All Hallows’ Eve, they busted out with some “horror.” And thank God they did.

Nightmares
Nightmares is broken up into different parts a la The Twilight Zone movie, Creepshow, and that piece of shit about the four rooms in the hotel that Sir Quentin Tarantino was involved with. I only caught parts two and three of Nightmares, but they were a full film’s worth of kickass.

Part two follows Emilio Estevez with vaguely blonde hair on his head, a rat tail running down his neck, and the world’s largest walkman strapped to his waist. Emilio is a videogame master, and he travels through parts of NJ and nyny hustling unsuspecting players. After running afoul of a Mexican videogame gang, Emilio heads back to his mall to take on a game that features an enigmatic computer generated figure called the Bishop of Battle. There are 13 levels of the game, but nobody has ever seen anyone get to the final level. There’s rumors about a guy in Jersey having done it, but let's face it, there are rumors about a lot of guys in Jersey having done a lot of things. Anyway, Emilio turns on his giant walkman and plays to the sounds of that godforsaken rock and roll. He plays like an addict, breaking into a sweat and treating his friends and family like shit along the way. He loses on level 12 and gets booted out of the arcade at closing time. That night, he breaks into the arcade, battles the Bishop, and makes it to the final level. This, of course, involves the enemies of the game entering the real world and battling Estevez in the mall. Just when you think he’s bested the last spaceship with his video gun, he runs into the Bishop of Battle, is swallowed up in the bright blue lines of early ‘80s graphics, and becomes trapped in the game. That’s a 3 ½-Grieco picture right there, y’all.

Part 3 stars Lance Henriksen (shit yeah) as a priest who has lost his faith. As he’s driving away from the small town of his parish he is run off the road by a big ole black pickup truck with tinted windows. After some Duel-type action, the truck just disappears…until it bursts forth from the fucking ground! Some more shit happens, we see an upside down crucifix hanging from the truck’s rearview, and we know Satan is at the wheel. This led the lovely Sherpa to launch into an original song entitled “Satan Drives a Pickup Truck,” which, believe me, is a lot better than most of the crap that passes for country music these days. Henriksen somehow bests the truck, discovers it was never really there, and returns to his parish with his faith restored. Again, that’s a 3 ½-Grieco picture.

I think Part 4 had something to do with a rat and I have no idea what Part 1 was all about, but I can only hope that they were as Grieco as parts 2 and 3. I hope everyone had as spooooky a Halloween as I.

(editor note: see BTS' second comment for proof that Grieco is still holding it down.)