America Terminator 2: Judgement Day Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe Porky’s Screwballs Paul Corupe Canadian exploitation cinema VICE: So what are the most worthwhile Canadian B movies out there? Paul Corupe: One of my favourites is Rock N Roll Nightmare, a vanity project for a rock star based out of Vancouver named Thor. He’s the star of a rock band and they head to a barn in northern Ontario to record their album because there’s a studio in the barn, and that’s when strange things start happening. One by one the members of the band start disappearing, until eventually Satan appears and accosts Thor in probably the craziest ending to a film I’ve ever seen. It’s pure cheese, but wildly enjoyable. I talked to Thor about it, and he’s not terribly proud of the film, but he knows what it is–one of those monster movies with bad heavy metal and a lot of fun. I didn’t figure Thor for the bashful type. Well, he at least realizes it’s not the best-made film in the world. The Mask Agreed. Jim Carrey scared the hell out of me. The Mask Nobody Waved Goodbye The Mask surreal, 3D dream world with sacrificial altars Anything that actually manages to be decent? Crime Wave is one of the films that actually got me started on the site. It was made in 1984 by John Paizs in Winnipeg, and it’s a comedy about a frustrated screenwriter trying to make the perfect crime film, and he can always get the beginning and end of the film, but he can’t come up with a middle. He lives above the garage of a family, and he befriends their daughter, who narrates the film and helps him try to come up with that elusive middle. The gems of the movie are the dramatized half-started and half-finished vignettes he writes for his crime film. One’s about an Elvis impersonator trying to break into the world of… well, impersonating. Another’s about a couple trying to sell Amway to people, and it ends with them at the Amway awards ceremony shooting people with shotguns. It really is a brilliant dark comedy. Although we have a lot of comedic talent, we haven’t had a lot of comedy films come out of Canada. This was a huge film to me–it showed me that Canadian films don’t have to be about cottages or the plight of bass fishermen.