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Twenty dead bodies.
Three hundred dead fish.
Frozen
village in the desert.
Torture.
Bloody river.
Bloody moon.
Stabbing God's messenger (a no-no).
Attempted wrist-slicing.
Neck-breaking.
Earthquake.
Three stars. Check it out, and
we'll be here with you.
[fading] Pull your chair to a full upright
and locked position for this. You know how they say that on airplanes?
What does that mean? I mean, I understand what "upright" means, and I
understand what "locked" means. But what's a "Full" position? How do you
put your chair in a "full" position? Does that mean SIT IN THE CHAIR
before you put it upright? Make sure it's NOT EMPTY? Make sure it's FULL
of your butt? "I'm sorry, sir, we can't take off--your chair is empty.
Please fill it."
"The Seventh Sign" Commercial Break #1
"It's interesting to
me that the best performance in this movie is given by the guy you just
saw, playing Jimmy--John Taylor is his name, and he obviously has Downs'
Syndrome. He was 20 years old at the time of this performance, and
actually it's not uncommon for people with Downs' Syndrome to be good
actors. They've put together repertory companies with Downs' Syndrome
children, and they have none of the common inhibitions or fears that most
actors have. They have no preconceptions about how something is SUPPOSED
to be done, and so their performances are often very original. This was
John Taylor's first film. Anyway, they went to Dominica to film that
little opening sequence with the dead fish, but they did NOT go to the
Negev Desert for that sequence about the frozen Arab village. That village
was built in Hollywood with movie magic, and that vast desert plain that's
supposed to be the Negev--it's Death Valley, California. When this movie
first came out, in 1988, people complained about not being able to follow
the story. So I'm gonna help you out here just a TINY little bit. There
are seven signs. Every time we SEE one of these signs, Jurgen Prochnow, of
"Das Boot" fame, breaks one of those ancient seals. So, the first sign was
the opening scene. Dead fish in Haiti. The second sign was the frozen
village in Israel where Sodom used to be. Oooooooo. Two signs so far--five
to go. Got it? Okay, roll film.
[fading] You notice how NORMAL Demi
Moore's house looks? She's supposed to be in Venice, California. You been
to Venice, California? Freakarama. Transvestite bodybuilders dancing in
tribal drum ceremonies. Hippie palm readers. Razor-cut surfers named Kevin
trying to sell you T-shirts. And Demi, of course, as the suicidal pregnant
woman hallucinating about torture all the time. Yeah, it does make sense.
Forget it."
"The Seventh Sign" Commercial Break #2
"Demi Moore is
really not bad in this movie. I don't know why people like to make fun of
her so much. Because, let's face it, this girl has had a whole slew of
movies where people say, "That stinker was so bad she'll never work
again"--and then she not only WORKS again, but she remains one of the top
female stars in the world. People in Bangladesh know her name. And I'm
surprised that women don't like her more, cause she's the ultimate
survivor. "Demetria Guynes" is her real name. She was born in Roswell, New
Mexico. Her father was a newspaper ad salesman--kind of an unsuccessful
one--and he moved around all the time, trying to get a better deal. She
moved 30 times by the time she was 15. Never stayed in the same school,
always had to leave her friends. She was cross-eyed. And then when she was
14 she found out her father wasn't her real father after all. Her mother
had been married to an Air Force guy for two months, and HE was her
father. Then, when she was 15, the guy she THOUGHT was her father
committed suicide by breathing car exhaust, and so her mother and Demi and
her half-brother all moved to West Hollywood to start a new life. She
dropped out of high school when she was 16 so she could become a movie
star--she told everybody. She got married to a rock musician, Freddy
Moore--that lasted two years. She posed nude for the cover of "Oui"
magazine. She got her first acting break on "General Hospital"--she was on
there for about a year and worked her butt off, everybody says. She
started getting movie roles in el cheapo pictures like "Parasite in 3-D"
and "Young Doctors in Love," and she made a little bit of a splash in
"Blame it On Rio." But by that time she was divorced and she had a drug
problem, and, worst of all, she was a member of the Brat Pack. "St. Elmo's
Fire." "About Last Night." Then she fell in love with Emilio Estevez--it's
funny, she always calls him "my first love," even though she MARRIED that
other guy, Freddy Moore. They were on-again, off-again for three years.
And then about ten years ago she married Bruce Willis. And right about
that time is when she made "The Seventh Sign." And after "The Seventh
Sign," everybody said, "Yep, there you go. One more Brat Packer, starting
to peter out." What they didn't count on was "Ghost." Made her a
superstar. And then she had a BUNCH of flops after that. And then she had
"Indecent Proposal" and "A Few Good Men," which were both enormous hits.
And then she had some more flops, like "The Scarlet Letter" and "The
Juror." And then she made "Striptease," one of the biggest flops in the
history of the world, even though Demi got $12.5 million for it. And now
she's probly gonna make a few MORE turkeys before she makes ANOTHER
comeback. I admire her. All the time this was going on, she had three
kids! Usually, a woman has three kids--other women ADMIRE that. Not Demi.
Women LOVE to diss her. She travels with an army. She's got bodyguards, an
assistant, an assistant to her assistant, a tutor, a masseuse, a trainer,
a yoga instructor, and a cook. She and Bruce had a house in New York, a
couple houses in El Lay, forty acres somewhere in Idaho--the woman runs an
organization as complicated as General Motors! And she turns a profit on
it, too. AND she's now a single mom, cause she and Bruce called it
Splitsville last year. Let's give the girl some credit, okay? Back to the
movie.
[fading] I'm looking over here at the women to see if they
agree with me. What? You don't like her being nekkid all the time. You
don't like her getting all that plastic surgery. She's got three beautiful
children--Rumer, Scout, and Tallulah Belle. And probly a whole gaggle of
nannies. Hey, it's not easy being a zillionaire single mom."
"The Seventh Sign" Commercial Break #3
"Well, Demi's
getting a LITTLE creeped out by Jurgen living in her garage apartment. And
now we've had the THIRD sign. Are you counting? Number one, dead fish in
Haiti. Number two, frozen village in Israel. Number THREE, river turns to
blood in Nicaragua. Just trying to help you out, because this movie IS a
little bit hard to follow. I think something went wrong with it, because
the screenwriters took their names off of it. It's actually written by
Clifford and Ellen Green, but screenwriters have a right to use pseudonyms
if they don't like the way a movie turns out. So it says on the credits
that it's written by W.W. Wicket and George Kaplan. Clifford and Ellen
apparently didn't like the way it was directed by Carl Schultz. Carl is an
Australian director--he's actually Hungarian, but he fled Hungary in 1956,
during the revolution there, when he was 17 years old, and he ended up as
a cameraman and TV director in Australia. Then he made a film called
"Careful, He Might Hear You" in 1983 that won the Best Picture Award in
the Australian version of the Oscars, and during this period Hollywood was
in love with Australia. They were snatching up Australian directors and
actors left and right. George Miller, the guy who made "Mad Max." Peter
Weir came over here and did "The Year of Living Dangerously." The guy who
did "Tender Mercies"--he was from Australia. Mel Gibson came over. So Carl
Schultz was one of those guys, on the strength of that one film. And after
"The Seventh Sign," he hasn't directed any more films. I don't what that
MEANS--maybe he's just back in Australia, doing TV again--but it was
apparently NOT a pleasant Hollywood experience for the people involved.
Okay, let's continue.
[fading] I feel like we're doing a countdown
here. "Thirty dead fish, Frozen Arabs, River Turns To Blood--and a Sparrow
on Demi's Babeeeee."
"The Seventh Sign" Commercial Break #4
"The actor playing
the rabbi did a good job of being a hysterical Hasidic rabbi, right?
That's because . . . he's a real rabbi. Rabbi William Kramer. He's not
Hasidic, though. You can touch him. So now we've got Jews, we've got
Catholics, we've got ancient stories about sparrows that bring down the
souls from heaven, we've got a Downs Syndrome guy on Death Row, and we've
got Michael Biehn as Demi's husband, being a LITTLE insensitive, yelling
at her about "placental insufficiency." Michael Biehn is one of those
actors who's had a deceptively rich career. Think of all the stuff he's
been in. The first thing most people saw him in was "The Fan," in 1981,
with Lauren Bacall. Then he was in "The Lords of Discipline." The
Terminator, OF COURSE. "Aliens," OF COURSE. After "The Seventh Sign," he
was in "The Abyss," "Navy Seals," "Tombstone." And when he wasn't
appearing in big movies, he was starring in little B movies--erotic
thrillers, stuff like that. All right, I THINK the count is still at
three. We just had an earthquake, but I don't think that's the fourth
sign. Only three signs. I'm making a ruling--the little earthquake we just
saw doesn't count. I'll go to the Vatican and tell the cardinals. By the
way, that scene at the Vatican--that was the Wilshire Ebell Women's Center
in El Lay. If I was a woman, I wouldn't go near that place. That's a
SPOOKY place to be called a Women's Center. Okay, back to the
flick.
[fading] They have Women's Centers, but they don't have
Men's Centers? Why not? You know what you call a Men's Center? A
bar."
"The Seventh Sign" Commercial Break #5
"Okay, we got the
fourth sign. The moon turns to BLOOD. That's Manny Jacobs as the Jewish
divinity student--another excellent performance. You know what I can't
figure out? Who exactly is Jurgen Prochnow supposed to be? He uses the
name David. He says he's God's messenger. He says he died once before. Is
he Jesus? Is he an angel? He says he used to be a lamb, but now he's a
lion. He says he's the wrath of God. Are we supposed to like him or hate
him? He has this long New Age mystical story about "The Guf," some place
where they store up the souls of the new babies, and they're about to run
out of souls and so Demi Moore's baby will be the first one born without a
soul--I guess that makes it the Anti-Christ, right? Of course, it's a baby
born in California beach community--it was gonna be born without a soul
ANYWAY, right? You know what? I'm not gonna even TRY to figure it out. I
kinda like it that you can't figure it out. If there's all that stuff from
the Bible in it, then it must be really really PROFOUND. All right--four
signs, three to go. Let's get on with it. Go.
[fading] "Hey, honey,
I know you aren't gonna believe this, but God sent a messenger to make
sure my baby dies. And it's that German submarine captain." What I wanna
know is why Michael Biehn doesn't have her in the nuthouse
already."
"The Seventh Sign" Commercial Break #6
"All right, I don't
wanna get all theological here, but if God is sending these signs as a
message that he's about to destroy the world--and, by the way, that was
the fifth one, the giant hailstorm with the earthquake--then why would
someone who BELIEVES in God want to STOP God? I think that Vatican
position on this would be that, if God has decided to end the world, then
they would CELEBRATE. That's what they've been WORKING TOWARD. Some day
when it's all over and everybody is spiritualized. But the message of this
movie is not only that God's doing a bad thing, BUT that he's not REALLY
God. If he was really God, then we couldn't stop Him. But Demi Moore
demands to know "Can't we do anything to stop it?" And remember, she's not
trying to save mankind, either, she's just trying to save her own baby.
And the messenger says, "Yeah, there IS one thing. Hope can stop it."
Hope? This is the whole message of the movie? We gotta have HOPE? And Demi
says "I DO believe!" Believe WHAT, honey? This is where it kinda falls
apart for me. All right, enough nitpicking. Only two signs left--the death
of a martyr, and the birth of a soulless baby. Let's see what Demi can
come up with, in the exciting conclusion of "The Seventh
Sign."
[fading] Do you know what I'm saying here? A monk in a
monastery, a really religious guy, would say, "That's what God wants? Then
OKAY, that's what I want!" It's a person who does NOT believe in God who
would try to stop Him. And if Demi really believes that, why doesn't she
just drop down on her knees and pray about it. For a movie about God,
there's very little actual TALKING to him in this flick. You know?"
"The Seventh Sign" Outro
"Excuse me, but, at the end of
that movie, does Demi Moore die for our sins? That's what happened, right?
That's scary. With the Jesus guy watching. So she saves the world in one
movie, she sells her body for a million bucks in another movie--I guess
she just represents every woman in America, doesn't she? Demi! "I Am
Woman!"
And speaking of scary, next week we got a fierce alien
monster running around scaring people in an underground lab. Does it sound
like "Aliens"? Well, it's not, it's "Xtro II," starring the great
Jan-Michael Vincent. And after that we'll have a flick about a secret
government organization called Men in Black that suppresses knowledge of
U.F.O.s. Except it's not Men in Black, it's "The Silencers" from 1996.
Check it out next week.
That's it for me, Joe Bob Briggs, wondering
what was the greatest thing BEFORE sliced bread?
Did you guys hear
about the brunette, the redhead and the blonde who all work together for a
female boss? They start to notice the boss leaving early every day. One
day, the gals decide that, when the boss leaves, they'll leave, too. After
all, she never called or came back, so how would she know? The brunette is
thrilled to be home early. She does a little reading and goes to bed
early. The redhead is elated to be able to get in a quick workout at her
spa before meeting a dinner date. The blonde is happy to be home, but when
she goes to her bedroom she hears a muffled voice from inside. Slowly,
quietly, she cracks open the door and is mortified to see her husband in
bed with her boss. Ever so gently, she closes the door and creeps out of
her house. Next day, at coffee break, the brunette and redhead mention
leaving early again, and ask the blonde if she's with them. And the blonde
says, "NO WAY. I almost got caught yesterday!"
Joe Bob Briggs
reminding you that the drive-in will never die.
[fading] Okay, this
one goes back to the first movie. What's the difference between the
Rolling Stones and a Scottish shepherd? One of em says, "Hey, you, get off
of my cloud!" and the other one says, "Hey, McCloud, get off of my ewe!"
To shew unto his servents things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent it by his angel unto his servant John - Book of Revelation, Chapter 1, Verse 1
Host segments for Xtro 2 and The Silencers
Joe Bob Briggs looks at a previous controversial movie that got everyone upset The Last Temptation Of Christ. Mel Gibson's current Passion took 9 years to get to the screen, though doesn't that part at the end where the devil screams from the bottom of a pit remind you a little of a similar scene from one of the Nightmare On Elm Street movies? Cool devil baby. Creepy.
Passion of the Christ movie trailer
* Fun fact -- babies born June 6 of 2006 have the birthday 6-6-6. If you're looking for the 7th Sign, maybe it's the following summer when babies born July 7th have the birthday 7-7-7. Course, there's the old joke of the guy who puts his money on the 7th horse in the 7th race at 7 O'Clock, only to see the nag come in 7th...
By the way, Demi also starred in The Scarlet Letter (reviewed by a guy who watched movies in space with 2 robots)
Back to Monstervision.org
Host segment transcript of 1-9-99 broadcast
©1999 Turner Network Television. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved
Do not use old MonsterVision email or websites. Joe Bob's new one is: www.joebobbriggs.com
By the way, the author of the book this movie was based on doesn't believe Hollywood was faithful to it. In fact, this week's weird link is that list of 10 things from the author's original book the way it might be written today: ten-words.com
And don't covet thy neighbour's ass - that's in rule #10 in the original version
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