MOVIE REVIEW "The Karate Kid"  by Mike Smith
RETRORAMA Comic Book Confidential: The Seven Soldiers of Victory  by ED Tucker
FANGRRL Father's Day Cinema Therapy:Ten Film Fathers Worse Than Yours (Or Mine)  by Lisa Scherer
THE ASIAN APERTURE Ako (1965)  by Jason Fetters
MIKE'S RANT Merle .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... Mike's Record Shelf e  by Mike Smith

Father's Day Cinema Therapy:Ten Film Fathers Worse Than Yours (Or Mine)

Was your father a workaholic who never had time to play catch with you after dinner? Or perhaps was your dad the withholding type, stingy with both allowance money and positive feedback? For any readers for whom Pops isn't tops, here's a suggestion on how to deal: cinema therapy. Now, I'm not talking here about using movies as an escape from reality -- although I highly recommend doing that as needed, and then rinse and repeat -- but using movies to remind yourself that things could be worse.

So, to that end (and because this damn column refuses to write itself), I give you TEN MOVIE "BAD DADS" WORSE THAN YOUR OWN (OR MINE):

10. Vito Corleone in The Godfather trilogy: A neglectful, vengeful father who was too busy "at the office" to pay much attention to his kids until they'd grown up into dysfunctional adults. Not to mention that whole Mafia thing.

9. George Lutz* in The Amityville Horror: Poor George. The new wife's a nag, the new stepkids are obnoxious and the new house is the fixer-upper from Hell. Who wouldn't fantasize about murdering them all with an axe?

8. Nathan Grantham in Creepshow: As the head of the family, he was a murderous jerk always demanding a piece of Father's Day cake. As a re-animated corpse, he was ... well, a murderous jerk always demanding a piece of Father's Day cake.

7. Don in 28 Weeks Later: Don is a sucky husband who abandons his wife during a zombie attack. He's also a sucky zombiefied dad who chases his son around London in hopes of having the ultimate father/son picnic.

6. Mallory's dad in Natural Born Killers: A sweaty, greasy loser who was abusive both sexually and physically, he learned that what goes around, comes around (Mickey and Mallory style, natch).

5. The Judge in Die Screaming, Marianne: A greedy, corrupt judge intent on killing his daughter before her 21st birthday, when she would inherit damaging, top-secret info that can put him away for life. Geez, having to pay my own way through college doesn't seem so bad now.

4. Noah Cross in Chinatown: A greedy, double-crossing, manipulative, powerful city official who knocked up his own daughter and murdered his son-in-law. Ick.

3. Jerry Blake* in The Stepfather: Being intensely determined to have a solid, happy, perfect family is a good thing. Ranting to yourself in the basement, having crazy paranoid delusions and beating people to death ... not so much.

2. Jack Torrance in The Shining: He was a recovering alcoholic with anger management issues before he caught crazy cabin fever and began wasting reams of paper, wielding an axe and terrorizing his wife and poor little Danny.

1. Darth Vader in the Star Wars series: An arrogant mama's boy who embraces the dark side with gusto. He kills children, chokes his wife, destroys planets, kidnaps and tortures his daughter, amputates his son's hand and commits various other evil acts of darksideyness. (But he's redeemed at the end when he kills Palpatine! Oh, please. Tell that to the people who lived on Alderaan.)


Now how ‘bout buying the old man something besides a tie this Father’s Day, hmm?


*Technically he was a stepfather, but that's close enough for government work and this column.