GM to the best two to ever do it!
Here is Chapter 5 of their latest 10-part Maxi-Series!
The peyote hit with the subtle grace of a rusty chainsaw to the frontal lobe.
I was cross-legged in Don Película’s so-called teepee – a chaotic monument to cinematic oblivion. Faded, lovingly ravaged posters for Torso, Lady Terminator, and Dracula vs. Frankenstein formed the tent’s patchwork skin. Above, a cracked reel of Django Kill… If You Live Shoot! Whirred with the frantic energy of a trapped hummingbird, casting manic shadows from candles guttering in repurposed Altoids tins. The air itself hummed with a queasy static, that pregnant pause just before a beloved VHS tape decides to unravel its magnetic soul.
Don, his face a bizarre canvas of crushed magnetic tape war paint, sucked on his Betamax-remote-shaped pipe, looking like a forgotten extra from El Topo.
“Ready to peel back the cosmic onion, carnal?” he rasped, his voice a low growl that seemed to emanate from the very celluloid of forgotten dreams. “Ready to breach the B-Reel and let the bad cinema wash over your soul?”
I nodded, my brain feeling like a scrambled VHS tracking signal. Agreement seemed the safest path.
The world obligingly fractured into a million shimmering frames.
One moment, the low-budget mayhem of HELLCAMP ’82 flickered before my eyes… the next, I was inside its grainy embrace.
But it wasn’t just that cinematic masterpiece of ineptitude. It was a glorious, nonsensical collage of various bad film ideas rolled into one dream theater.
I stood on a soundstage where the sets were in a constant state of flux – a charred summer camp dissolving into the pulsating neon arteries of a futuristic factory, a wedding altar sprouting incongruously from a smog-choked cityscape, and a burnt-out Las Vegas chapel spiraling overhead like a demented carousel powered by regret. Time was a broken editing bay, locations overwritten with reckless abandon. I was adrift in a truly unstable director’s cut – a vision vomited forth by a deity after mainlining bad acid and a triple feature of Ed Wood.
And there they were, shimmering at the edge of a smoke-glazed, impossible skyline, the cinematic deities themselves.
SPECIAL K, a vision of lethal elegance in a leather corset cinching a ravaged business suit, was barking orders at a gaggle of bewildered community theater actors in ill-fitting gas masks, their gestures resembling a particularly aggressive game of charades.
JANEFKNDOE, radiating a dangerous allure in jury-rigged neon tubing and enough smeared eyeliner to paint a small European country, was locked in a passionate, one-sided monologue with a sentient vending machine that hummed with the weary wisdom of dispensing lukewarm Dr. Pepper for eternity.
“This isn’t dystopia, you chrome-plated consumer whore,” she hissed, her voice a venomous whisper. “This… this is late-stage capitalism with a faulty coin slot.”
I tried to yell a greeting, a question, anything to anchor myself in this swirling vortex of cinematic madness, but a crackling PA speaker, seemingly suspended from the fractured sky, blared warped synth tones that sounded like a dying robot gargling bees. A voice, distorted but undeniably the gravelly drawl of Jack Starrett, bellowed, “CUT! Who did I piss off to have to work with this unprofessional excuse of a crew, and who gave the damn android a live badger?! And why is the priest speaking in Klingon?!”
Then, the sky, that tattered celluloid canopy, ripped wide open.
And through the jagged tear in reality, I beheld him. Turbo Frank.
Bald as a freshly waxed bowling ball. Oily as a week-old pizza box. Shirtless beneath a too-tight Members Only jacket, radiating an aura of pure, unadulterated sleaze. He lounged on a tanning bed that inexplicably floated in mid-air, surrounded by precarious stacks of unmarked VHS tapes and enough expired Jolt Cola to embalm a small army.
Don’s voice, echoing from the swirling chaos, resonated with a newfound urgency:
“He’s the linchpin, hermano. Turbo Frank. He guards the holy grail – the one and only untainted copy of their next film, NEONOPOLIS. And he knows… he knows the fevered dreams those two cinematic outlaws are cooking up next. But he won’t spill the beans unless you offer him something truly sacred. Something… rarer than a sober film critic.”
“What in the name of Russ Meyer’s unholy oeuvre could be rare to that… that vision of pure 80s excess?” I stammered, the very laws of physics dissolving around me.
“A sealed copy of Delta Force II on Betamax,” Don’s voice boomed, the words echoing with the weight of forgotten prophecies. “Factory shrinkwrap. Spanish dub. It’s the cinematic equivalent of the Shroud of Turin for guys like him.”
The vision buckled, the unstable edit collapsing like a house of cards built by a drunken chimpanzee. The sentient vending machine exploded in a shower of sparks and lukewarm regret. Someone screamed, “We’ll fix it in post… with more explosions!” as I spiraled into the comforting darkness of the end credits, the distorted synth soundtrack fading into the deafening silence of non-existence.
I awoke with a gasp, sprawled on the dusty floor of the teepee, drenched in a cold sweat that smelled faintly of ozone and desperation. Crushed popcorn clung to me like a second skin.
The warped reel of Django Kill had finally surrendered to gravity.
Don Película stood over me, his magnetic tape war paint smeared, his gaze filled with a solemn, knowing madness.
“You have glimpsed the truth, peregrino.”
“Turbo Frank,” I croaked, my voice sounding like a rusty projector reel.
He pressed a greasy Polaroid into my trembling hand. On the back, scrawled in a shaky hand that smelled faintly of stale beer and broken dreams, were two words and a directive:
TUCUMCARI.
Ask for Frank.
Bring a sacrifice. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
I don’t know what cinematic hellscape awaits in that sunburnt VHS crypt of a town.
But I know this: the static on their signal hasn’t cleared.
The next reel of SPECIAL K and JANEFKNDOE’s gloriously unhinged saga is still out there, flickering in the void, waiting to be rewound and unleashed upon an unsuspecting world.
And armed with a sacred bribe and a healthy dose of existential dread, I have a lead.
Time to find Frank. And pray he appreciates the subtle nuances of Spanish-dubbed Chuck Norris.
*************************************************
Don Película didn’t speak for a long time after the vision. He just sat by the projector, occasionally poking at the pathetic embers in his incense tin with the mangled remains of a Super 8 reel. The silence stretched, thick with the unspoken weight of the B-Reel.
Finally, he moved. His gestures were slow, almost ceremonial, as he reached behind a precarious shelf stacked with lurid plastic clamshells bearing titles like Santo vs. the Vampire Women and SEX HEX. From a locked drawer, radiating an aura of forbidden knowledge, he produced an object: a Betamax tape swaddled in faded velvet and sealed with what looked suspiciously like a melted Red Vine.
He held it out like a priest presenting a relic. “You will require this offering.”
I took it with a reverence usually reserved for holy grails or first editions of William Burroughs. The label was mostly obliterated by time and grime, but one phrase, glowing faintly beneath the accumulated filth, was still chillingly legible:
Delta Force II — Spanish Dub — Sealed.
The sacred currency of the damned. The key to unlocking the next layer of their twisted truth.
Tucumcari, NM – Present Day
The location was a converted tanning salon, its current incarnation a dimly lit, semi-legal video emporium. The flickering neon signs outside proclaimed:
TURBO FRANK’S: WE RENT, WE DEAL, WE DON’T ASK QUESTIONS (Unless it involves rare Betamax).
Inside, the air hung heavy with the ghosts of burnt tanning lotion, the sickly sweet scent of melting plastic video cases, and a palpable sense of profound cinematic tragedy. Cardboard standees of forgotten B-movie heroes leaned against the walls – Sybil Danning striking a defiant pose, Wings Hauser looking perpetually constipated, and a signed David Carradine, katana in hand, daring you to live dangerously (and pay your late fees).
Behind the counter, reclining in a humming, motorized massage chair that looked like it had seen better decades, and sporting aviator sunglasses despite the perpetual twilight, was Turbo Frank.
He didn’t even bother to open his eyes. “You’re either here for the ‘Special Features’ in the back, or you’re chasing shadows,” he stated flatly, his voice a low rumble that vibrated through the room.
I stepped forward and laid the sealed Delta Force II Betamax on the counter with the gravity of a high-stakes poker player laying down their winning hand.
Frank inhaled sharply, a low whistle escaping his lips as if recognizing the scent of pure, uncut nostalgia. Slowly, dramatically, he removed his sunglasses, revealing eyes that had clearly witnessed too much late-night cable and too many direct-to-video sequels.
“Well, I’ll be damned and double-taped,” he whispered, a flicker of something akin to religious awe crossing his oily features. “You… you are the chosen one. The pilgrim of the obsolete.”
He cracked the seal on the Betamax with a delicate, almost reverent snap, then barked, “Skip the foreplay. Follow me.”
We passed through a beaded curtain that shimmered like dying pixels into a back room lined floor-to-ceiling with unlabeled VHS tapes stacked precariously, dusty Betamax decks humming their lonely songs, and a taxidermied ferret wearing tiny sunglasses, its vacant stare somehow judging my life choices.
Frank gestured towards a milk crate labeled, with ominous finality, “THE UNHOLY TRILOGY 1”. He carefully extracted a VHS tape with a hand-scrawled, violently neon-pink label that simply screamed:
NEONOPOLIS
He blew a cloud of dust from the top of the case. “Here’s the gospel according to the gutter,” he rasped. “You wanna know how this… masterpiece… came to be? Sit your ass down. Uncle Frank’s gonna spin you a yarn.”
Frank’s Retelling (Approximately 42% Embellished and Heavily Filtered Through the Mists of Memory and Mild Delirium)
“See, after the Bad Timing debacle and the legal problems of HELLCAMP '82, those two were hotter than a stolen VHS player. Radioactive. Nobody in Hollywood – hell, not even the Moldolvan direct-to-video scene – would touch ‘em with a ten-foot pole. But then, fate, in its infinite cinematic perversity, threw ‘em a lifeline. A tech-bro oil heir from Scottsdale named Skyler. Kid got real deep into the whole exploitation thing during some kind of… ‘spiritual awakening’ involving sensory deprivation tanks and a metric ton of uncut Bolivian marching powder. Somehow, he ended up on the same Greyhound as our Jane, and by the time they hit Albuquerque, he was ready to finance anything she pitched, no questions asked. The kid was enthusiastic, let’s put it that way.
They spun him some yarn about wanting to ‘reimagine’ Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. But, you know, sleazier. Grittier. With ‘less of that fascist subtext, more glitter and gratuitous robot nudity.’ Jane, bless her twisted heart, sold it as ‘the proletariat rises… but this time, they’re wearing fishnets and wielding flamethrowers.’
With Skyler’s forty grand – which was originally earmarked for a silent meditation retreat in Sedona – they started filming in a condemned mall outside Santa Fe. Prime location for urban decay chic, you dig?
Then came the ‘talent.’ They sweet-talked a local community theater group – a motley crew of washed-up method actors, failed mimes, and one poor bastard who genuinely believed he was the reincarnation of Robert Blake – into thinking this was some kind of avant-garde art-house revival. Told ‘em it was headed straight for Cannes. Called it ‘Metropolis: The Reawakening.’ Yeah, right.
And then… the coup de grâce. They somehow wrangled Jack Starrett. Yes, the Jack Starrett. The man who unleashed Race with the Devil upon an unsuspecting world. They told him they were shooting a ‘gritty, character-driven pilot’ for a new anthology series called ‘Cinematic Redemption.’ Promised him a cut of the nonexistent merchandising and a lifetime supply of cheap bourbon. He signed on under the pseudonym ‘Johnny Clutch’ – said he didn’t want his SAG card spontaneously combusting from the sheer artistic bankruptcy of the project.”
Frank shook his head, a nostalgic smirk playing on his lips. “It was beautiful, unadulterated chaos. No permits. No continuity beyond ‘more explosions.’ No actual script by day three. But by God and the ghost of Sam Arkoff, they finished it. And the result? Neonopolis. It played once. At 3 a.m. on a pirate UHF station out of Las Cruces. And then… poof. Vanished into the static.”
He slid the Neonopolis tape across the dusty table towards me, treating it with the reverence usually reserved for the Holy Grail. “This, my friend, is one of two known copies. The other? Probably melted in a storage unit fire. Or buried in the backyard of a particularly disgruntled grip.”
I stared at the neon-pink label like it held the secrets of the universe. “Where… where are they now?” I finally managed to croak.
He exhaled smoke from a suspiciously dented cigar.
“No one knows for sure. But rumors say they were spotted in Branson, Missouri. Under new names. Laying low. Waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
He leaned in, eyes wild with knowledge and caffeine.
“To be found.”
He tapped the tape.
“And if you want to find them… you need to watch this. Frame by frame. There are clues. Hidden cuts. A symbol here, a billboard there. It points to the next reel.”
I nodded.
Because I knew what this meant.
The journey wasn’t ending.
It was spooling up.