Rob Reiner (1947–2025)

I'll address the elephant in the pages toward the end of this review.

I was in my early twenties when THIS IS SPINAL TAP came out, and it quickly became a favourite. I'm a music freak, and I'd already heard a lot of stories of dumb things that had happened to real bands in real life. So when this came out, I totally got the joke... and over the years, it just got funnier.

So now, listening to the story of how these guys somehow fell into the idea, and cobbled together a cult classic that show more ultimately not only predicted the future shenanigans of real rock figures, it also turned three actors into an honest-to-god rock band.

The story is both fascinating and hilarious. I can't tell you how many times I laughed out loud through the course of this book. It brought back all the fun of the movie, all the fun of sitting in some friend's basement, watching the rented VHS over and over and over until we were reciting the lines along with the actors.

And then came the really tough part. I own the book, but I happened to be listening to the audio when I listened to Rob Reiner say, "Let's face it, we're all getting closer to being reaped by somebody or something grim." Then a minute or two later, he's thanking his entire family, naming each one, including the one that ultimately did something grim.

It's a sobering moment in a book filled with such humour and friendship. I had to just stop the audio and wrap my head around the insanity.

This book is a love letter to the utter insanity that both instigated and ultimately fed the life and legend of Spinal Tap. And though it was never meant to be, it's also a fitting tribute to one of the four minds behind it. show less

Before VH1s Behind The Music; before YouTube; before Borat and Bruno; before Heavy: The Story of Metal; but not before The Jerk or Airplane! or SNL, but before In Living Color and Dumb and Dumber, but not before Monty Python or Anaconda....what I mean to say is, In The Beginning, before Wholly Moses or Holy Moses, but not after Armageddon, either, there were the legendary British mock stars, Spinal Tap, a band of mini-Stonehenge proportions, both sonically and stuffed-sock-in-crotchily, and show more it was rad, and it was bitchen, and it was unquestionably clear their artistic intentions, when they opened with, Tonight We're Gonna Rock You, Tonight. Tonight We're Gonna Rock You, Tonight, brought new, profound meaning and depth of insight to the oft-redundant (and more often than not, banal) realm of heavy metal lyrics. But there's nothing banal about Spinal Tap's music, or their movie, or their music. If by Tonight We're Gonna Rock You, Tonight, Spinal Tap set out to rock you, tonight well then, hells bells if they did not indeed rock you tonight like you'd never been rocked tonight either that night or any night since!

True, Queen gave the world Fat Bottomed Girls in 1978, but Spinal Tap, ever aspiring to outclass the oftentimes raunchy and debauched competition of late 70s/early 80s heavy metal and hard rock music, in 1982 (the movie wasn't released until 1984) countered Queen's crass and pejoratively deplorable objectification of a singular asspect of the glorious female anatomy with a tribute to rotund derriers uniquely its own, Big Bottoms. Hold your Sweet Honey close and listen to (or merely read, if you can) the lyrics below. Make a romantic evening of it, admiring the subtlety and complexity of Spinal Tap's nuanced word play and puns from a Big Bottoms excerpt, as featured in the film, This Is Spinal Tap.

My baby fits me like a flesh tuxedo
I'd like to sink her with my pink torpedo

Big bottoms, big bottoms
Talk about bum cakes, my girl's got 'em
Big bottoms drive me out of my mind
How could I leave this behind?

Ahhh. They sure don't write sensitive love ballads like that anymore, do they? Certainly not in heavy metal. And if you call in the next 6.66 seconds, we'll send you Spinal Tap's classic follow up albums - Break Like The Wind and Smell The Glove for FREE!

This Is Spinal Tap is even better than a double-enema or a robust and blustery bowel movement after an unduly, days long, bout of constipation. Better than a transesophagealechocardiogram, for my money. Watch This Is Spinal Tap, and you may not need that extra-strength laxative.

The writers, Rob Reiner, Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest, and Michael McKean, tapped in oh so sublimely (if not so spinally), with satiric precision, as they pierced the bloated, bombastic heavy metal bubble of that time, and let out in whoopee-cushioned-flatulent-fashion, as they pricked, with their monumentally phallic, mockumentary flick, all that heavy metal hot air and excess. Think Screaming For Vengeance era Judas Priest - studs and black leather - without a doubt, the model of a metal band that Spinal Tap mercilessly mocked, down to the last malfunctioning Alienesque-pod-prop detail. Or think Herman Rarebell (his real name, and not a Spinal Tap invention), the drummer for the then hugely popular, Scorpions, who was quoted saying, after watching the film, This Is Spinal Tap, how offensive he thought it was. Offensive because he felt people would see the movie and then not be as likely to take their music - the Scorpions' in particular and heavy metal in general - as seriously as they once did. And he was serious!

Spinal Tap, as a band, moreover, was strangely prescient when it came to crafting en vouge album covers, having just released their own "black" album long before Metallica's classic "black" album broke all heavy metal sales records a decade later; though at the time, they were poking fun, of course, at AC/DCs uber-successful, Back In Black, completely black album cover.

Spinal Tap was louder than most heavy metal bands as well, because their guitar amps went to...eleven! instead of ten. Imagine if that type of guitar amplification technology and sound innovation had existed for Pete Townshend in his Who's Next to Quadrophenia prime? -- how many more than 120 Guinness-Book-of-World-Records-decibels would have been recorded at that May 31st, 1976 WHO concert in Charlton, South London? Undoubtedly, at least eleven more decibels would have been recorded.

Famous rock critic, Reginald Yardcoch, in his seminal heavy metal treatise, first published in the fanzine, Play Metal, Boys!, entitled, "How Spinal Tap Reshaped Metal The Way Silicone Reshaped Breasts," said a Spinal Tap gig "made him gag for all the right reasons."

May watching This Is Spinal Tap make you gag (assuming you get it, the movie, I mean) in a good way too! show less

Paul Sheldon is tired of writing his massively popular Misery Chastain books. He'd like to start writing the kinds of things that win awards, so he kills Misery off in his latest book and then starts working on something fresh and new. He's just finished that book and is on his way from a hotel in Colorado to deliver the manuscript in New York when he crashes during a snow storm and is rescued by Annie Wilkes, a nurse who proclaims herself his #1 fan.

Paul has injured both legs, and Annie show more tells him that the phones will be down for a while due to the storm. In a show of thanks, Paul lets Annie read his newest manuscript, and she's outraged by its profanity, which she thinks is beneath Paul. Things only get worse when she reads his final Misery book and learns that he's killed off her favorite character. Annie forces Paul, trapped in her home by the snow and his injuries, to write a new Misery book that brings her back to life.

It's been ages since I last read the book, and although I'm pretty sure I'd seen this movie before, it had to have been equally as long ago, because I barely remembered anything about it other than that James Caan and Kathy Bates were amazing in it.

One major thing I'd forgotten: how much humor was worked in via the scenes involving the sheriff and his wife/deputy. Rather than feeling out of place, the humor lulled me into a false sense of security that made the last half hour or so of the movie hit a lot harder than I expected.

Kathy Bates was perfect as Annie, a deceptively cheerful and prudish "Christian" woman who was hiding a deep well of murderous craziness behind her smile. Paul got a few initial glimpses of what was hiding below the surface - her out-of-proportion rage as she ranted about Paul's use of profanity, her reaction to his request for a different kind of paper, etc. - but there wasn't really a lot of gore or violence until much later. From a modern horror standpoint, even that wasn't as bad as it could have been. Only a little of the hobbling scene was on-screen, and the gore was limited to blood (and possibly some eye stuff that I couldn't watch because I can't deal with eye stuff).

The tension was still top-notch, though, and even though I remembered enough of the story to know how things would turn out, I was still incredibly anxious for Paul during the few times he ventured outside his room while Annie was out.

This is a classic "unhealthy side of fandoms" story that still holds up.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

Four friends hike for a day to find a dead body.

It's weird that this movie is as good as it is. Its components are things I don't usually like in movies, but in this case they all come together to make something quietly poignant.

Concept: D
Story: B
Characters: A
Dialog: A
Pacing: B
Cinematography: C
Special effects/design: B
Acting: B
Music: B

Enjoyment: A

GPA: 3.0/4