MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE ROBOCOP 3

Remember how I said last month to be sure to come back next month for something that "From Here to Obscurity' fans would love? I'm afraid you're going to have to wait one more month for that one. Not only am I making some adjustments to that particular write-up I'm also hoping to have a YouTube clip or two to accompany it. When I say the stuff I'll be skewering in that Foyeurism will be obscure, I mean really obscure. But one more month you will have to wait because this month I'm going with one that I've been sitting on for the past three months; one I originally intended to use for July and then August. Figured I might as well uncork it this month. Heck, it's kinda obscure too. I know I would have never heard of the film if it hadn't been for a certain TV show.

I'm also toying with the idea of reformatting the layout of the Foyeurisms beginning in January. These little paragraph intros... Before I had my blog I actually had something to write about here. Now, not so much... So if these intros vanish come next year, who really cares since it's the body of the text you're here for.

But I did update the ARCHIVES page this month with recent reviews of such cinematic excitement as ELF BOWLING THE MOVIE, MOTOCROSS ZOMBIES FROM HELL, PIRATES OF GHOST ISLAND, BLOODRAYNE 2 and much, much more.

Now sit back, strap yourselves in, and prepare to get "Cougarized" by a crazed New Yorker and his customized superhero, both of whom got rejected by a TV show that gave its grand prize to a guy who built an tree-top ornament that doubles as a sprinkler system for Christmas trees that catch fire, an invention that didn't even work properly every time.

BLACK COUGARIZED

 

So I'm watching the show American Inventor this past June; technically, my master control job required me to watch it. If you've never seen American Inventor then just imagine American Idol with people showing off their (allegedly) revolutionary inventions. The first couple weeks of the show are essentially like the American Idol auditions with a lot of the inventors and their inventions proving to be quite off the wall, often downright asinine. One inventor appeared on the show this past June not with a device, but with a superhero. Yes, his invention was a superhero.

I don't think I have to tell you that he did not make it to the next round.

His name was Silvio DiSalvatore. Ever see that movie THE FINAL SACRIFICE that Mystery Science Theater 3000 lambasted during its final season on the Sci-Fi Channel? This Silvio DiSalvatore guy could have passed as Zap Rowdower's kid brother. A native of the Bronx who looked like he should be the road manager for Motorhead, an overly excitable little guy in a leather jacket with a head of hair that went out of style at least two decades ago, he looked into the camera before entering the sanctum of the four judges and made a solemn vow to "Cougarize" the world. DiSalvatore then introduced his invention: Black Cougar. "Black Cougar is the first superhero who has one goal and that goal is to protect children," declared DiSalvatore way too many times before the end of his segment.

This notion of the first superhero to protect children made me ponder several ethical questions regarding Black Cougar's superheroics. First of all, don't most superheroes protect children? I'm fairly certain most superheroes make protecting children high priority. Even The Punisher has been known to protect children and he mass murders bad guys all the time. I suppose what DiSalvatore meant was that protecting children was Black Cougar's primary cause for concern as opposed to just be an all-purpose crimefighter. That brings up yet another question; if Black Cougar was walking down the street and saw a bank robbery in progress, would he intervene? Would Black Cougar only stop the bank robbery if he knew for certain there were children within the bank in danger? If not, would he just ignore it and let the proper authorities handle the matter?

And what about MacGruff, the Crime Dog? Couldn't he be billed as the first superhero designed only to protect children? Sure, I realize MacGruff is less a superhero than a policeman that spouts off public safety advice, but shouldn't a six-foot, bipedal, talking dog in a trenchcoat that takes a bite out of crime qualify as something more superheroic than just being labeled a police dog?

Anyway, DiSalvatore was quite the hyper little scamp pitching this superhero that looked like someone cheaply mated Marvel Comics' Black Panther with Japan's Kamen Rider. I couldn't help but first think that Black Cougar might be a bit too scary looking for little kids. Even my teenage niece saw it on American Inventor and noted that she thought Black Cougar looked creepy. Yeah, the first superhero to protect children and give them nightmares afterwards.

DiSalvatore freely admitted that people generally thought he was insane. At least he was honest about it. I realize that his seeming madness was also in part due to how the show was edited; we still never really got a sense of what Black Cougar was all about aside from having "one goal, and that goal is to protect children." He'd brought with him a guy in full Black Cougar costume (who DiSalvatore once humorously called "Mikey" instead of "Black Cougar" by accident) just to stand there holding a Black Cougar action figure and a DVD. Yep, there's a Black Cougar movie that DiSalvatore made himself back in 2002. By now I'm sure you know where this write-up is headed.

Suffice to say, DiSalvatore did not get enough votes from the four judges to move on. This prompted him to blow a gasket during the post-segment interview, going so far as to mocking one judge in particular like a raving lunatic. It was quite the hilarious tirade ending with DiSalvatore making something resembling a lewd gesture that was covered up with the Black Cougar logo. After he stormed off camera, it was time for "the first superhero who has one goal, and that goal is to protect children" to repeat the obscene gesture. A good message there for the kiddies watching at home. Things don't go your way, f--- 'em!

You might want to just pause right here and watch the Black Cougar segment from American Inventor for yourself currently up on YouTube by CLICKING HERE. Its well worth the short time, not only as a primer for what you're about to read, but also just to see one hell of a meltdown. One does not tend to see a kiddy filmmaker going off like DiSalvatore did, at least not in public. I'm sure Walt Disney had his moments when there were no cameras around.

Now as I said, there was a DVD of a 2002 movie based on Black Cougar. No sooner had the Black Cougar segment on American Inventor ended I immediately Googled "Black Cougar," determined to find a copy of this film. Sure enough, it turns out there's an official BLACK COUGAR website out there. Heck, there's even a Black Cougar TV series that airs in the New York area. Given how that American Inventor segment wrapped I can't wait for an episode of the Black Cougar Show where Black Cougar lectures the kids about not being a sore loser.

As for the movie, I plunked down ten bucks plus shipping & handling honestly expecting an amateurish, shot-on-digital, homemade atrocity of a film. Imagine my surprise when I popped this self-made movie in the DVD player and found myself watching a very professional looking film shot on 35mm with lighting and cinematography vastly superior to many of the low budget crap offerings I generally review for Dread Central and even the direction was competent for a first-time filmmaker. The editing on the other hand, well, that was a bit problematic. The film clocks in at around 104-minutes, inexcusably bloated for a kiddy superhero flick with a plot that grows increasingly flimsy the longer it goes on. It was quite easy to spot where trims could have been made, sometimes entire scenes that felt like they belonged in the deleted scenes section on the DVD and not in the final product. I mean did we really need to see every single bad guy getting perp-walked during the climax? This is BLACK COUGAR, not MISSISSIPPI BURNING.

And yes, as I’ll talk about soon enough, the story also has some serious problems. Still, I'm willing to go on the record and say that BLACK COUGAR was shockingly not terrible. It wasn’t great by any stretch of the imagination and I can’t whole heartedly recommend it, but for an amateur superhero movie that sprung from the mind of an insane New Yorker who clearly loved seeing his name spelled out in the opening credits as many times as humanly possible, this was schlocky kiddy entertainment that looked and felt like a kid-themed superhero flick Roger Corman's New Concorde would have distributed straight-to-video back in the early 1990's. Believe it or not, in this case, that's actually a bit of a compliment.

BLACK COUGAR may also be the most New York superhero there's ever been. Forget The Punisher, forget Spider-Man, I swear about two-thirds of the actors in this film sounded like they could have been characters off The Sopranos. At least half the cast sounds like they learned to speak from listening to Vinnie Barbarino.

This would've been Panthro if Roger Corman had ever produced a live-action Thundercats movie

Black Cougar's human alter ego is that of Silvio Desal, a seemingly average teenage boy who really likes hanging out with the neighborhood children. Concerned parents are initially dismayed as to why this much older teen is always playing with their much younger children; then Silvio pulls one of the kids out of the path of a speeding car and suddenly concerned moms think better of Silvio. At least they did until they began asking him personal questions that suddenly made him nervous and confused, opting to quickly excuse himself rather than attempt to answer. The parents were left not knowing what to make of Silvio: shy teen who likes hanging out with young kids or juvenile pedophile? And there's no Chris Hansen around to settle the matter over some brownies and humilitainment either.

There's a greater concern the parents of the happy suburb aren't even aware of: a local kidnapping ring is on the prowl, stalking the city in their less-than-conspicuous black Sedans looking for innocent children to abduct. I know there have been many cases of parents turning their backs for a moment and having their children disappear, but having a car pull up and snatch their child - who doesn't make a peep even without having their mouth covered - just a few feet away seems a tad far fetched. Or maybe, just maybe, these kidnappers are that damn good! Parents aren't going to be happy when they find out the police have been keeping this string of abductions hush-hush. Though I have to wonder, in this day and age of child kidnappings making national news, wouldn't a series of child kidnappings garner much more attention just from the parents alone? Did the parents just go home and keep quiet that their kid vanished into thin air? Amber Alert anyone? This strikes me as the sort of crime spree that would garner round the clock coverage on the cable news channels. It could even preempt Britney Spears personal meltdown coverage!

Back to Silvio, the young man has another reason for not being able to answer any of the questions about himself; he doesn't know. Talking to his dad you get the sense they barely even know one another. His father, James DeSal, an old man who describes himself as "the world's greatest toymaker" and who keeps making cryptic statements to a boy with no memory of his past about how one day he'll be ready to tell him the truth; surely you can already sense where this is headed?

Tonight Mr. Wizard teaches young Silvio how to properly cultivate marijuana for maximum potency

Hmmm... An old toymaker still heartbroken over the death of his family and a teenage boy who with no memory... You don't suppose this might turn out to be a Pinocchio scenario of some sort?

I got a microscope, a computer keyboard, some microchips, and a geometric bong; what would MacGyver do with all this?

Two of Silvio's young friends, Lenny and Nicole, are out playing hide & seek with the Christmas decorations in their front yard when along comes a convoy of sinister black vehicles. A hiding Nicole witnesses her brother get quickly snatched by the men in black, even getting a look at a stogie-smoking man with a mustache in the back of one of the vehicles. Nicole then goes into catatonic shock.

Word gets out of about Lenny's kidnapping - finally some parents not afraid to raise a ruckus over their missing children - and Silvio pays a semi-comatose Nicole a visit in the hospital. Too bad he chose to stand right under the television set on the hospital room wall when the man with the mustache appears on it; Nicole wakes up and begins point and screaming in the direction of the TV set before slipping back into a state of shock. Everyone immediately thinks she was pointing at Silvio, meaning that he abducted Lenny, and a foot chase breaks out that goes from the hospital to out in the woods. Though he gets away this time thanks to his speed, agility, and acrobatic fence leaping capabilities, Silvio is now considered the prime suspect in the kidnappings.

Little does anyone except for a young girl in a shock-induced coma realize the true fiend behind the child kidnapping ring is none other than the Mayor - Mayor Creeps. Swear to God; DiSalvatore named the character Mayor Creeps. I can't even begin to imagine what his campaign slogan must have been.

Rudolph Guiliani's "Get Out The Vote" campaign is in full swing

A brute of a man with a penchant for smoking cigars and carrying a walking cane with a crocodile head on it, Mayor Creeps commands a small army of henchmen, some of which dress like goombas and others looking like the killer from CRY WOLF. He uses his political influence to help cover up his true stock & trade: abducting children and then selling them to the highest bidders. His henchmen scowl the city in their black automobiles for kids that are then abducted and kept caged up like SPCA animals inside the confines of a black-painted dungeon somewhere within a seemingly innocuous warehouse in the heart of the city.

Inside Michael Jackson's basement!

Mayor Creep's got a kiddy dungeon and barrels full of children - literal drum barrels with children stuffed inside of them for easy transport being forklifted into the backs of trucks. Before the film is over we'll repeatedly see a pair of henchmen dragging small children to be caged up the way you'd expect a prisoner from a 1920's gangster movie to be forcibly taken to their jail cell by prison guards.

Not even a young Mr. Spock is safe!

This child kidnapping ring turns all the more goofy when we see who wants the children. Mayor Creeps holds a gathering for potential buyers, all of whom gather around a table drinking from skull goblets the likes of which you'd find at Spencer's Gifts around Halloween. You got upper class WASP types, hip-hop gangstas, fat Latinos in Hawaiian shirts that look like South Miami drug dealers, and Middle-Eastern sheiks. It's like a set-up straight out of the opening of the first NAKED GUN movie.

Seriously, when does Frank Drebin show up?

The highlight of this meeting being when a henchmen brings a Duffle bag into the room; Mayor Creeps places it on the table, unzips it, and produces a small girl from it. Topping this moment of zen off is one of the female buyers seated at the table angrily yelling out, "You still owe me three more of those!"

Exactly what gangtas and sheiks and socialites and so forth want with these children is anyone's guess; the closest we get to any sort of explanation is someone accusing the sheiks of wanting to use the children as suicide bombers. Guns are drawn and threats are leveled; Mayor Creeps tries to assure everyone that there will be more than enough children to fill everyone's order. Not if Michael Jackson ever finds out about this racket.

Meanwhile, James realizes the cops are out looking to arrest Silvio for the kidnappings. A black cat inspires him to make Silvio invisible, and by invisible he means physically transforming into a black-attired superhero. Someone should explain to this old man that "invisible" and "disguised" are two entirely different concepts. You also have to begin wondering about the sanity of someone whose mentality when it comes to evading arrest is to dress like a feline-themed Power Ranger.

But first, he has to reveal to Silvio the truth and that truth is that he's actually a robot and only a couple months old to boot. James pours his heart out about how he was well on his way to becoming a great heart surgeon when his family was killed in a car accident. This tragedy made him want to do something else with his life, i.e. quit the medical profession and become a mad scientist toymaker tinkering with the concept of building himself the son he always wanted. Silvio is surprisingly cool with this revelation that he is not human and also has no problems with James' plan to transform him into a superhero.

This isn't just a case of putting a fancy costume on the teenage cyborg; he's built a transformation pod, or "the cylinder" (as James calls it) that transforms Silvio back and forth between teenage boy and costumed crimefighter. James will tell Silvio to "just step into the cylinder" so much before the films over you could turn it into a drinking game. "Just step into the cylinder" is his answer to so much Silvio asks it almost becomes a running joke. Between that line and the number of times we hear a wildcat growl on the soundtrack during Black Cougar fight scenes, yeah, there's one hell of a drinking game to be created here and maximum drunkenness is guaranteed.

Upon emerging from the teleportation pod, Dr. Seth Brundle came to the horrifying realization that he was not alone during the transfer and his DNA had merged with a member of Sirque du Soleil

Only 40 minutes into the movie and it's already time for a music video montage recapping everything we'd previously seen. The song playing is the Black Cougar theme that sounds like something the house band should be performing at a lounge in New Jersey. I suspect that may very well be where DiSalvatore found the song's performers. The theme song, which I like to describe as being "booze rock", in the sense that it's the sort of music you'd hear in a bar while you're getting hammered, is so bad it almost, almost, achieves greatness. So close. So very close.

By the way, Silvio will be shown frequently working out in the makeshift gym in his home, working the heavy bag and lifting weights. I can understand brushing up on his fighting skill but would a robot really benefit from lifting weights? Couldn't he just program it into him?

Black Cougar also gets his own car that looks like something the Green Hornet would drive.

But James does all the driving via remote control (using his Fisher-Price controls it would seem)

By this point the kindly old toymaker with the robotic superhero son he built in his secret high-tech toy lab has turned into some sort of demented combination of Alfred the Butler and Santa Claus. James will first send his son the Black Cougar on a reconnaissance mission into the Mayor Creeps' warehouse. Once they know what they're up against they prepare for the next night's commando raid. Nunchuks, bolos, glowstick batons, and super powerful mini fans that generate enough air blast to send people flying are just a couple of the weapons that make up the Black Cougar's child-protecting arsenal. And let's not forget the crown jewel of the Black Cougar cadre of non-lethal weaponry: 10 miniature Black Cougar Warriors - an army of ten super-strong Black Cougar action figures at James' command.

It's like we're looking directly into Charles Band's soul

What started out as a sort of Kyle XY meets Pinocchio meets Batman went horribly awry somewhere about the point that Silvio discovered he's actually the most elaborate toy of all. It was about this point BLACK COUGAR turned into a reverse PINOCCHIO. By that I mean that the toy that longs to be a real boy, and eventually does, instead becomes a toy that thought it was a real boy only to find it wasn't and then proceeds to become even less so. James may have always wanted a son but the second he hatches the Black Cougar idea that son becomes little more than the old man's favorite toy of all. Silvio's character development ceases as he disappears behind the costumed exterior of Black Cougar. Silvio's even mute in Black Cougar form, a major problem for character development and displaying personality given he spends almost the entire second half as such.

Papa just keeps accessorizing his son, drives the car himself, and spends the entire time Black Cougar is raiding Mayor Creeps' hideout and beating up the bad guys talking into his son's ear and laughing uproariously at the mayhem he watches live via video monitor. James really does start sounding more than a little like an overexcited kid playing a video game. Almost the entire second half of BLACK COUGAR has James living vicariously through his truly live-action action figure of a son: giving orders, telling him where to go and what to do next, endlessly mocking the incompetence of the bad guys, cheering on the violence, etc. The man jabbers on so much that you just know if Black Cougar could speak I suspect Silvio would do one of the most human actions a teenager can - telling a parent to shut the hell up!

"Next I'll create my own race of atomic supermen... to conquer the world!"

I have a theory that perhaps the problem with James Desal's mental state might be due to the air quality in his lab. The lab has a perpetual ground fog and that cannot possibly be healthy. I don't know what keeps smoking but you have to figure inhaling it long enough might eventually affect one's state of mind. Doubly so in the case of a man who quit the medical profession to become a toymaker after his family died and then built himself a robotic teenager that he ultimately transforms into a superheroic life-size action figure.

Fortunately, BLACK COUGAR redeems itself with a go-for-broke finale that's almost too silly for words. It quite literally ceases trying to follow any real world logic or coherent narrative, and that's saying something given logic had already been jettisoned the moment dad decided to make his son "invisible".

Mayor Creeps, who had angrily adjourned the meeting with his buyers the day before, now returns the next day to find they're holding a surprise birthday party for him. I'm talking about the sort of birthday set-up you'd expect at a child's birthday party. I'm talking about the sort of kiddy birthday party you'd see at Chuck E. Cheese.

Nothing the Axis of Evil enjoys more than some refreshments after a spirited game of Bunco

Black Cougar sneaks in through the air vents again - I do believe Black Cougar spends more time crawling around ductwork than Bruce Willis did in DIE HARD - to rescue the kids and beat up the bad guys in a sort of low rent Kamen Rider kind of way. Fight choreography is decent if unspectacular, but all things considered, impressive for such a production. If you want spectacular you'll have to settle for bad guys getting attacked by the action figures in scenes that will bring back memories for anyone who has ever seen ATTACK OF THE BEAST CREATURES. Didn't know an action figure could knock a man unconscious with just two mighty blows to the head or latch on with such a vengeance that it makes them repeatedly flip to the ground? You will after you watch BLACK COUGAR. DiSalvatore actually has an overpriced Black Cougar action figure for sale on the website; I bet it can't actually kick your ass though.

And how about the female henchwoman who gets thrown through a brick wall in such a comical manner it leaves behind a cartoon outline?

Despite a heck of an audition, Birdie's dream to transition from McDonalds secondary character to becoming the first ever Kool-Aid Woman would not prove to be

Or how about when Black Cougar crashes the birthday party and proceeds to beat up all the prospective buyers and the sword-swinging sheik begs off saying, "Can't we talk about this over a frozen Squishee" in a voice like Apu from The Simpsons?

Or the breakdancing henchmen?

Or when suddenly - from out of nowhere - it turns out that Mayor Creeps has his own robot army consisting of the least menacing cyborgs ever all dressed like lower-level office managers?

Or when the kid friendly superhero sprouts razor claws and had Mayor Creeps not ducked, would surely have had a hole punched through his head?

Or the way the freed children are repeatedly shown running around corridors as if this warehouse were some sort of complex labyrinthine maze?

It's amazing how random henchmen just keep showing up one after another after another after another to get smacked around by Black Cougar. There's a new baddy lurking around every corner of the warehouse. One after another, bad guys keep getting smashed through walls with impunity - and cardboard boxes too. More cardboard boxes come crashing down during the last ten minutes of BLACK COUGAR than in the extended director's cut special edition of FUTURE WAR.*

*There is no such thing as an extended director's cut special edition of FUTURE WAR. Thank god!

Topping off the lunacy of the final 15-minutes is one of the parents being reunited with their missing kid who then tells the media that Mayor Creeps has another thing coming if he thinks he's going to get re-elected. I'd like to think getting busted as the mastermind of a child-kidnapping ring would pretty much guarantee the only terms he'll be serving are of the life sentence variety. If you can get re-elected after that then I say more power to you.

The big emotional pay-off at the end is supposed to be Silvio/Black Cougar finally developing true human emotions. He supposedly begins crying underneath the Black Cougar exterior. We know this because James tells us so. I think it was supposed to be from the joy he felt having rescued the children. From everything I just watched, I preferred to read it as Black Cougar weeping from the joy he felt from whoopin' ass. Screw cans, Black Cougar opened up a case of whoop ass at the end.

And then it segues right into another music video featuring the rockin' Black Cougar theme song mixed with behind the scenes footage. Though that song is so corny bad it certainly has some kitsch value, having to hear it twice in the film is just too much. That it also plays on the DVD menu screen as well... Let's just say the equally laughable Black Cougar rap song that played over the closing credits suddenly proved to be a welcome relief.

So will the world ultimately get "Cougarized" as Silvio DiSalvatore vowed? It remains to be seen. My guess would be no. Still, I tip my hat to DiSalvatore for what he was able to accomplish with his Cougar-themed obsession, warts and all. After reviewing the dismal SARAH LANDON AND THE PARANORMAL HOUR (REVIEW HERE), another family-friendly bit of entertainment produced by a family whose last names appear all throughout the credits, I now come to realize that what DiSalvatore did was actually more successful than that of a film with what I'm sure was a bigger budget that somehow managed to get a wide theatrical release.

Finally, a little something for the kids out there courtesy of the movie about "the first superhero who has one goal, and that goal is to protect children"...

"I got your Black Cougar right here, buddy!"

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE GHOSTBUSTERS 2