Joe Bob Briggs, and they're BACK. Remember a while ago when we showed "Grim"? A buncha yuppies go underground and get chased by a pizza-faced monster? Well, from the people who brought you Grim -- yes, they lived to make another movie -- Breeders. A buncha people go underground -- this time under a girl's college -- and get chased by ANOTHER monster.

I don't know why, but this reminds me of my old tenor saxophone. The tenor saxophone is a huge honking beast of a musical instrument that looks like a cobra that's about to strike. I spent about six years trying to play it -- me and Tommy Withrow, the only two white guys in Little Rock, Arkansas, who could swing a tenor side-to-side, arch our backs, high-step, and pop the thing into our mouths right on the first downbeat. We learned this from studying the sax section in the Grambling State University band. If you missed by a half-beat or a half-inch, the tenor sax would dig a two-inch scar in your face. That's why it was so macho.

But Dexter Gordon was a macho macho man. You had the idea Dexter owned a shotgun. He didn't say much -- the sure sign of a MONSTER underneath that quiet surface. Dexter's tenor looked BIGGER than everybody else's tenor. He could make sounds like a car horn on that sucker.

The other reason Tommy Withrow and me liked the tenor sax was that all band directors HATE the tenor sax. The tenor sax is this ugly monster mutant instrument, half brass, half woodwind, that sounds like what a grizzly bear would wanta say musically. In your average high school band, where you're playing Mussorgsky and Bach, the tenor was like a next-door neighbor working on his Monster Truck engine all day. I had one band director who forced us to stuff towels in the bells of the sax in order to muffle the sound. We were like guerrilla-warfare band nerds, Tommy Withrow and me. Those were the days.
I'd love to reminisce all night, but I'm gonna have to get to the inevitable, and that's tonight's movie. "Breeders," starring the late Kadamba Simmons running around the basement of the local girls' college in a most-becoming black patent-leather strapless ahn-sahm. Kadamba also starred in "Grim," of course. Here at "MonsterVision," we have entire oeuvre of the great Kadamba. We'll do the drive-in totals at the first break. One and a half stars. Roll it.

[fading] I know, it's a low rating, especially for me. But I don't wanna build it up too much. Better you should be pleasantly surprised. Check out these opening credits -- I think this is where half the budget went, so don't let em get by you.

Wow, lotta sexual tension between the students and the staff there at the college, eh? Naughty naughty. Anyhow, for those of you who missed "Grim" when we showed it, that's Kadamba Simmons in the stylish little S&M outfit and the weird scars on her face. Kadamba is the model-slash-actress who was killed the year before last by her jealous ex-boyfriend. Only 24-years-old. The boyfriend was a former Israeli soldier turned mobile-sandwich-stand manager, who strangled her and then strung her nekkid body up by a shower rod. In court he claimed that it was a botched double suicide. He claimed that they agreed that she had witches inside her and so she wanted to end it all. And he produced evidence that he tried to kill himself, apparently by taking a butter knife to his wrists and drinking a little bathroom cleaner. Well, now that we're all CHEERED UP, let's watch some commercials. Oh, wait, I gotta do the drive-in totals. We have: Eleven dead bodies. Six fuzzy bewtocks. Exploding police officer. Student-teacher hanky-panky. Gal getting sucked into the ground. Sleepwalking. Green goo vomiting. Sliming. Neck breaking. Panty rassling. Scary gals in negligees. Monster-cam. Go.

[fading] By the way, was the first 25 minutes of this flick basically a meteor explosion investigated by the highway patrol, followed by a subplot about a blonde bimbo who asks her sexy professor to rescue her from a rat. Okay, I just want us all to be on the same page. Continue.

All right, before we go any further, I have to ask -- did the art teacher actually sniff his girlfriend's panties? He did, didn't he? Amazing -- panty-sniffing on TNT. I need to commend the censors for letting that one by. Or you can do it yourself by sending your letters to 1010 Techwood Drive, Atlanta, Georgia 30318. Or send em a message through the "MonsterVision" website: tnt.turner.com/joebob. My personal e-mail address is joebob@turner.com if you have something you wanna keep between us. Anyhow, that's the talented Samantha Janus as the panty-owner. She's actually a sitcom star over in England. As I mentioned earlier, this flick WAS directed by the auteur of our favorite spelunking movie, "Grim," guy named Paul Matthews. Which means that it was made in England, and the whole cast consists of Brits putting on American accents. Who definitely can't play basketball. Fine basket, old chap! They shot this on the Isle of Man, you know where that is, right? It's a little island half-way between Liverpool and Dublin. Perfect place to shoot a horror flick on a twenty-dollar budget. You can hire very cheap movie crews there. Okay, commercials and then back to "Breeders."

[fading] In the opening credits, I also saw a Peter Matthews and an Elizabeth Matthews. Like, producer and editor or something. The director's sister and brother, right? I thought so.

[sleeping] And so start many many scenes where people walk through dark tunnels in search of . . . the monster. Oooooh. Who IS that lieutenant character? Is he a mobster, or is he a cowboy? I have no idea. Did the SWAT team just go down there? I think the lieutenant is an actor named Oliver Tobias -- it's tough to find accurate information on this obscure cult classic, though, so I can't be a hundred percent sure. He looks kinda like my pal Bobby Forster, except that Bobby does something a little different in his movie. It's called acting. Okay, let's go walk around the tunnels some more, after the ads.

[fading] An English actor playing a Bostonian cowboy gangster. Auditions for that part were tough. "Can you do an American accent? Great. Actually, can you do more of a 'Goodfellas' kinda thing? Okay, now put on this cowboy hat. Perfect, tell your agent to call us." By the way, tell me if you think the director of this flick is a leg man -- we got enough gam shots in this movie to put the Rockettes outta business. And also tell me this: Are there cops with Boston Police shoulder patches driving cars that say "Highway Patrol" on the side? I think it's one of those wacky Isle of Man jokes. Next time, don't wake me, okay?

Did I just see twenty barefoot girl zombies? I didn't really see that, did I? And why does the rubber-suit gill-man toothy monster pack his victims in a bed of ice? What is that about? We just saw one of the basic rules of cinema. When someone is supposed to be guarding a place, and someone else decides to enter that place, the guard is always distracted. In fact, we covered TWO of the basic rules in that last part -- right before the cop blew up himself and the monster, he fell down. And of course, once you fall down in a horror movie, you can't get up. So Kadamba was abducted. I believe we actually had a plot point there. Kadamba decided to bail on the American accent. Because people who have been abducted by aliens normally speak with one of the accents of the British Empire. Little known fact. Okay, commercials and then back to the flick.

[fading] So the only employees at this college are the art teacher, the dead janitor and the principal, right? I thought so. Tell me the truth, the progamming department bought another package from the Netherlands Antilles, right? "Well, I don't know, if you want 'Critters,' you gotta buy 'Breeders,' too." It's really the same movie, just without lighting. Because isn't this the DARKEST movie you've ever watched? Fortunately the plot is so fast-paced and engrossing. Okay, I'll shut up, because, as my mother said, "Sarcasm is never nice."

Todd Jensen doing a fine job as Ashley Roth, the Ken-doll art teacher. "Hi, first day of school, let's see, who's gonna be my girfriend?" Do we know what's going on with the slime cocoons? The monster made the sign of the silver-sided damselfish with all of em, right? But luckily Kadamba Simmons did the old two-by-four fu to Samantha Janus, breaking the spell on her, so she could model her brassiere for us. Thanks, Kadamba. What a career she could've had. How sad to be cut down with such a promising life ahead of her. Okay, back in a minute.

[fading] My favorite part is coming up -- scary girls in gold lame nighties walking around the tunnels. Let me go on record right here and now: Tunnels bad. Caves bad. Basements bad. All dark places where you cannot see the actors: Bad for B-movies. Sorry.

"Dog pile on the principal!" When you run out of ways to kill people, just have all the females in the cast JUMP ON HER. Did you like those scary girls? I think they brought in George Romero to help out with those scenes. They added their own touch though -- the scary hands. Very effective. All right, I have to confess something. I haven't gotten through the end of this movie yet. In fact, no one at TNT has ever gotten to the end of this movie. I think EYE got farther than anybody. I DID watch past this commercial break. Everybody else stopped two commercials ago. I think we bought the rights to this thing from some guy at a video store down on Broadway. He says it's good. Okay, we're all going to watch the end of the movie together now, for the first time. This is a special event. Let's do the commercials, and I'll see you when it's over.

[fading] This might be the first time ANYONE has seen the end of this movie. That's the way MY bet would go, anyhow.

You probably noticed that the sewer exploded because of all the oil refineries in downtown Boston. And they invented a new rule in the last five minutes of the movie: "Don't look in his eyes." I don't think we heard about the "Don't look in his eyes" rule before now. Well, that was worth staying up for, wasn't it? Of course it was. We'll continue with our series of Paul Matthews films, starring his protege Kadamba, at a later date. I wanna let you know, though, that next week we have something almost as good, Project Metalbeast, where Kim Delaney from "NYPD Blue" grafts some aluminum skin onto a cadaver and creates the guy who played Jason!

That's it for me, Joe Bob Briggs, reminding you to never do card tricks for the group you play poker with.

You guys hear the one about the hillbilly and his new bride who are on their honeymoon? The husband jumps into bed to wait for his wife to get herself ready. The wife comes out of the bathroom in a sexy negligee and says, "Honey, I have something to tell you. I'm a virgin." The man grabs his clothes and rushes out of the house yelling at the top of his lungs. He heads straight to his father's house. When he gets there, his father says, "Son, what are you doing here? You're supposed to be on your honeymoon." Son says, "Daddy, my new wife just told me she's a virgin." Father says, "You did the right thing by leaving, son. If she wasn't good enough for her family, she sure as hell ain't good enough for ours!"

Joe Bob Briggs, reminding you that the drive-in will never die.

[fading] Arkansas state trooper pulls over a pickup truck on I-40. He says to the driver, "Got any ID?"
Driver says, "Bout what?"