Movieland

Chapter 26

Starlight Drive-In ran the Starlight Diner down the road to account for post-movie excitement and munchies. The best thing to do after watching a spine-tingling movie was to talk about it with your friends over a platter of steaming nachos. It was also a good spot to get a mellow bite to eat on Sunday mornings. More importantly, it was handy to talk strategy with the chief of police and a 90s action movie icon.

Standard inhaled a ham and cheese omelet. He chased bites with slugs of coffee. "Keep it coming, keep it coming," he ordered the waitress, handing her an empty jug.

"Does this Frankie kid know my movies?" he asked, forking a square of waffle down his gullet.

"Better than most," I said. "He's the one who hides the Easter eggs, not finds them. Taught me most of what I know about them. One night we rewatched Death to the Dead and he pointed out the most glaring one in plain sight: on Qwin's desk, there's a framed picture of him and his daughter in front of the Motown Museum. The camera zooms in quickly so you only get a second to catch that he's wearing the same Detroit Lions bomber jacket that Eddie Murphy wears in Beverly Hills Cop."

Applewhite heard me but was lost scribbling on paper. Standard nodded. "I loved that jacket. It's the only thing I took from the set, but someone broke into my trailer and stole it. Lots of regrets in life. That's a big one."

"Tell me about Murder Death Kill," I asked.

He stared blankly. "I'll be honest with you. I don't remember a single thing from that movie. I was doing... a lot of, let's just say I was not in a coherent state of mind."

I exhaled gruffly. He was Standard Lane but come on. Applewhite made a calming gesture. "What do you remember? You must remember something."

While Standard looked inward, which was him making a face like a confused beagle, I surveyed the list of movies. We had crossed off seven of the ten, leaving Murder Death Kill, Bag of Heads, and Death to the Dead. Murder and Heads took place in Atlanta, the setting for all but one of his films.

Death was the exception. It was a post-apocalyptic horror-comedy-noir released in 1987. The opening credits whet the appetite. A pre-breakout Guns N' Roses played the intro instrumental, "Wailing Your Name", with whistles and bass and emphatic guitar riffs by Slash to punctuate the narration by Karen Allen (who also played Standard's love interest, in the film and in life):

The year is 2025, the "near future".

Point Bloc, a city borne out of alliance, sits where Detroit and Windsor previously existed.

13 years ago, the two great cities were embroiled in a bitter war

over access to plastic and fossil fuels.

Tens of thousands were killed in the bloodshed.

Each city trained elite soldiers to infiltrate enemy territory and eliminate high ranking members.

The plans worked to erase the power at the top, allowing for open discussion.

And peace.

It would have worked, if not for the plague.

The dead did not come back to life. They just never died.

The cities banded together to form Point Bloc, a city walled off from the rest of the world.

And the dead.

Once you entered Point Bloc, you never left.

It was simultaneously the most loathed and loved film of his career. The loathers cited his bad southern accent that not only was bad but said mostly in half-whispers that made no apparent sense. It also was not necessary. His character's backstory about working with cattle on a ranch in Texas played no part in his role as retired elite killer.

Critics of the venomous variety stood on the hill of too much violence. Most were okay with the visceral special effects. Tom Savini was nominated for an Academy Award for his work after all. The argument was over unnecessary violence, with the most famous example coming when Standard's character, Qwin Cash, puts the main bad guy's head, Quaid (played by Powers Boothe), in a vice. If that wasn't enough, Qwin attaches one end of a rope to Quaid's testicles and the other to the hitch of a pickup truck. Then Quaid's family -- wife, little boy, and girl -- watch as Qwin instructs his sidekicks to tighten the vice and pull away with the truck. It turns out Quaid has a serum to reverse the effects of the undead plague. To get him to give it up, his brains and nuts are on the line.

It's technically a smart torture move because the dead can't reanimate without their heads. Half of the audience didn't see it that way. The other half described the vice scene as the most intense of Lane's career. They also mentioned it in any argument about his skills as an actor. While he was no Tom Hanks, he also wasn't a wooden statue taking fake punches. He proved that in the vice scene, where he delivered his lines with such pathos that you believed in a world where he needed a serum to save his dying daughter from becoming a zombie.

Cult fans ate the camp up: the one-liners ("Zip it," after wrapping a guy in a sleeping bag and dropping him off a cliff; "Hold my beer," after smashing a zombie's head with a metal keg), explosive blood splatter like water balloons filled with blood, and cheesy dialogue:

QWIN: Say you want me. If you say that, I might make it through the night.

RITA: I don't want you.

QWIN: I'm not going to make it through the night.

RITA: I don't want you later. I want you now.

QWIN: The dead are calling.

RITA: Then we better make it count.

Standard spun the saltshaker in circles, trying to get it to stop with the top perfectly facing him.

"Why did you whisper all of your lines?" I asked.

"I used to make appearances at Comic-Con and Dragon-Con and the other Cons. I got that question more than anything. More than 'How do the two starfish work?' Wait." He gulped coffee. "Go back. Go back."

"Go back where?" Applewhite asked.

"What'd you say earlier?" he said. "You. Max. You said something something tailpipe."

"I'm not going to fall for a banana in the tailpipe again. It's a joke Frankie and I say to each other when we know the other one has something up his sleeve. It's a warning."

Standard moaned and squeezed his head. "Ohhh, kid. Kid!"

He pulled out his wallet.

"This is a first," Applewhite said.

"I'm not paying. You still owe me. However..." He emptied his wallet onto the table. Receipts and a Blockbuster card and a small photograph. He slid the photograph over to me.

It was of him and Karen Allen, taken on set. Their smiles were real and happy and perfect. She slung her arm around the back of his Detroit Lions bomber jacket.

Beverly Hills Cop. Axel. Banana in the tailpipe.

"He wasn't telling me to be careful," I said.

"He was telling you where to find him," Standard finished. "Next stop: Point Bloc. Ma'am?"

The waitress had covered a good mile just helping Standard stuff his face. "Hey, hon. You want another cup I'm gonna have to put on another pot. Fix that up in a jiff."

"Thanks, but I'm caffeinated for a week. Do you soak those beans in jet fuel? We'll take the check. Applewhite here has it. Add some of those cannolis to go, will ya?"