For just $6 a pop, you can own any one of hundreds of classic pieces of cinema trash, including some movies we've used for our "found footage" feature — and some movies we will no doubt plunder in the future. Don't you want to witness the terrible awesomeness of movies like 50,000 B.C. (Before Clothing), The Adult Version Of Jekyll And Hyde, Atomic Rulers Of The World, Atomic War Bride, Attack From Space, The Curious Dr. Humpp, Curse Of The Headless Horseman, Deep Jaws (featuring "nympho mermaids"), The Dicktator (about a birth control that accidentally sterilizes almost all men), Dr. Sex, Electronic Lover, Evil Brain From Outer Space, Hercules Vs. The Moon Men, Monstrosity (AKA The Atomic Brain), Space Thing, and so many others.

You can watch our found footage from Curious Dr. Humpp here, and our found footage from Space Thing here.

These movies are not pretty, they're not classy, and they're not politically correct. They're probably not even coherent or made using screenplays or editing or any of that fancy film school stuff. But they are films you won't forget watching. How can you resist downloading a movie that's described as "Doris Wishman's penis transplant movie"?

According to the site's FAQ, these films are in m4v format, but can easily be converted to avi format, and should be playable on your ipod or other video player. They're all around 700 mb, and it doesn't sound like there's any DRM. At $6 each, they're as cheap as most used DVDs.

[Something Weird, via Sherilyn Connelly On Twitter]

This amazing scene comes from Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys, a film so fantastic it's actually a sequel to three different movies. Eat your heart out, X-Men 3. Brick Bardo, aka Dollman (Tim Thomerson), is the hero of Dollman, the story of an alien cop who just happens to be a few inches tall and winds up on Earth fighting crime from a unique perspective. Ginger is one of the women who got shrunk by the evil radio-station monsters in Bad Channels, which we featured a while back. And the demonic toys are from Demonic Toys, a movie about possessed playthings trying to raise Satan. Nobody will believe Tracy Scoggins that the toys are evil, which is why she's been suspended as a cop.

Poor Ginger thinks she's doomed to loneliness as the only doll-sized human, until Dollman comes into her life. But he's not the only one who's excited to have a tiny woman around — the demonic toys want to impregnate her with their miniature Satanic baby, who will grow up to be a doll-sized Antichrist. Here's a great scene where the toys attempt to kill Brick Bardo by pulling him apart with toy trucks, while promising Ginger that soon enough, "We're going to bump and grind."

Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys is only an hour long, and at least ten minutes of that is flashbacks to the three movies it's a sequel to. But somehow, it manages to pack in as much WTFery as three regular films.

Published in the February 1931 issue of Astounding Stories, "Werewolves Of War" by D.W. Hall takes place seven years in the future, after the Slavs have overrun Europe and are now laying waste to the United States. The last scrappy defenders of America are just barely holding off the Slavs at California, and doing battle in the hazardous no-man's land of Nevada. D.W. Hall gives us the kind of writing you just don't see nowadays. Witness:

Trapped again!

But this time, Lance swore, they'd not get away without paying dearly for it!

Under the mesh of his gas-mask the lean lines of his jaw went taut. Tense, steely fingers flipped to the knobbed control instruments; the gleaming single-seater scout plane catapulted in a screaming somersault. Lance's ever-wary sixth sense told him the tongues of disintegrating flame had licked the plane's protected belly, and for the fact that it was protected he thanked again his stupendous luck. He pulled savagely at the squat control stick; the four Rahl-Diesels unleashed a torrent of power; and the slim scout rose like a comet, and hurtled, the altitude dial's nervous finger proclaimed, to ten thousand feet. Lance eased off the power, relaxed slightly, and glanced below.

So the Slavs have amazing super-weapon, the disintegrating flame, which takes out American airplanes by the dozen and whose secrets baffle America's scientists. Only the heroic squadron leader, Lance, is able to strike back at the Slavs using his acidic bullets, which give off "acrid white smoke" after they hit. This is a "scientific war," as Lance's commanding officer notes. But there's a traitor amongst Lance's unit, the Werewolves Of War, and nothing can stop the relentless encroachment of the villainous Slavs:

Werewolves of War, the batch of planes he belonged to had been christened, and it was a richly deserved title. In front of the front they fought, detailed to desperate, harrying missions, losing an average of ten men a day. The ordeal of gas and fire and acid bullets added five years to a man's brow overnight-if he served with the Werewolves of War.

Lance was only twenty-four, but his hair was splotched with dead gray strands; his eyes were hard and weary; his face lined with new wrinkles. Ah, well, it was war-and a losing war, he had to admit, that they fought. If a miracle didn't come, America would crumble even as old Europe had, before the overwhelming Slavish troops.

Even now, as Lance knew through various rumors, the Slavs were massed for a grand attack. And with what could America hold them back?

The unit also includes a comical Cockney mechanic, a refugee from a defeated England. My favorite part is when the story mentions that Lance "Immelmanned up." That's going to be my new catch phrase: "Immelman up, why don't you?" Lance suspects his fellow officer, Praed, is a coward and a spy — but he little realizes the shocking truth about Praed's identity, and how it relates to an amazing new secret super-weapon... the Flying Torpedo! But to win, they must destroy San Francisco utterly!

The whole story just went online recently, as part of Project Gutenberg — and in fact, that whole issue of Astounding Stories is on the site, for your astonishment and delight. Also included in the issue: "Tentacles From Below!" by Anthony Gilmore, "Phalanxes Of Atlans" by F.V.W. Mason, and "The Pirate Planet" (not to be confused with the Doctor Who story) by Charles W. Diffin. Enjoy! [Project Gutenberg via Free Speculative Fiction Online]

Youtube user Clonelab79 has posted 37 videos to date, most of them having to do with women and their evil clones. In particular, many of the most popular headlines are "Wife uses double of herself to seduce her husband" or "Blonde superhero clones herself" or "Alien plant grows clone of redhead." (The hair color is part of it apparently — it's just not as hot, for Clonelab79, if the alien plant was cloning a brunette.)

Here's "Wife has clone seduce her husband for her":

And here's "Brunette female cloned impersonated by android robot doppelganger", which is from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:

And here's "Brunette superhero clones herself." The description is great: "Brunette is cloned by scientist to clear her original's name. The clone glitches and the real girl must fight her clone."

Here's "Alien plant grows clone of redhead":

Does anybody know what any of these things are from?

The scene, of course, comes from Leprechaun 4: Leprechaun In Space, a direct-to-DVD entry in the esteemed Leprechaun franchise. To fill you in, the guy whose penis is exploding in the clip above is a Space Marine, one of several who blew up the Leprechaun at the start of the movie. The marine then pissed on the Leprechaun's severed head. And once back on his spaceship, he tries to have sex with the hot bra-wearing babe... only to find something is bothering "Mr. Snake." (That's what he calls his penis, this being a classy movie.) And shortly afterwards, Mr. Snake explodes in a shower of poetic justice as the Leprechaun emerges.

Later, the Leprechaun gets hit with a growth ray and becomes a super giant leprechaun. And then he's caught in a cargo bay when the doors open. Want to see what happens to a giant Leprechaun who's exposed to vacuum? Here it is:

Eat that, Sunshine!

We were lucky enough to get a copy of Max Allan Collins' novelization of G.I. Joe: The Rise Of COBRA. And we had not fully appreciated the dementia of this storyline, which really is all about nanotech and how it'll eat the world.

In the G.I. Joe universe, nanotech can do almost anything — turn regular people into super-soldiers, control your mind, devour the Eiffel Tower. I wouldn't be surprised if this movie's script was actually written by nanobots, which sliced up a million other action-movie scripts and mashed them up into a wonderfully incoherent mess. There are undigested scraps of Sho Kosugi movies and bad war movies floating around this gray goo of a story, and it's nice to watch them sail past.

This might actually be the most prominent nanotech action movie ever — I'm straining to think of another movie where nanotechnology is so central to the plot.

The central villain of the movie, of course, is the Scottish James McCullen (Christopher Eccleston), an arms merchant who secretly hungers for power. In a flashback, his ancestor gets tortured by the French by being fitted with a searing-hot metal mask, and so McCullen has a special hatred for French people. When we meet the present-day McCullen, he's selling the NATO brass on his latest weapon — nanomites, which are basically nanomachines that eat anything metal, until you hit their "Kill Switch" and turn them off. They can disarm an opponent without the need for bloodshed, and so one NATO suit jokes that McCullen may be the first arms merchant to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

But McCullen, of course, has other plans — after he delivers the nanomites to NATO, he launches an attack of his Neo-Vipers to steal them back. The Neo-Vipers are supersoldiers who have been enhanced by nanotechnology — which also controls their minds. At one point, McCullen gloats that his troops still have their own thoughts, but they're incapable of doing anything but obey his orders. The convoy escorting the nanomites is led by Conrad "Duke" Hauser and Wallace "Ripcord" Weems, and they're the only ones who are prepared when the Neo-Vipers attack.

The convoy gets wiped out, but luckily the G.I. JOE squad shows up — an international team of super-experts who don't officially exist, but appear as if by magic when they're needed. There's Heavy Duty, who's heavy and does his duty. There's Scarlett, who has red hair. There's Cover Girl, who's blonde. There's Breaker, who... uh, breaks things. And there's Snake Eyes, a ninja who's taken a vow of silence. And then their leader, General Hawk. The JOEs save the day, but Duke is loath to hand over his hard-won nanomite cargo to them, so they take him and Ripcord back to their secret base. And of course, Duke and Ripcord wind up joining the team, to the sound of people shouting "Yo JOE!" (That's their rallying cry.)

Meanwhile, McCullen has his own colorful squad. There's Zartan, a fiendishly exotic killer who can impersonate anyone. The Baroness, who turns out to be Duke's ex-fiancee — but now she's married to a Baron, who's not allowed to touch her, or a ninja will kill him. (Seriously, it's a running subplot: if her husband so much as kisses her, the always-watchful ninja will kill him. Try bringing THAT up in marriage counseling.) There's the ninja, Storm Shadow, who's taken a vow of nastiness towards Snake Eyes. And finally, the Doctor, the fiendish nanotechnology genius with a crazy mask who makes the whole wacky operation possible.

When Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes finally face off, Storm Shadow hisses in Japanese, "You took a vow of silence... Now you will die without a word." Sho Kosugi, eat your heart out.

There's also this great bit, towards the end:

Heavy Duty told them: "You know the mission: Find Duke..."

"...grab the warheads," Rip said.

"And kill all the bad guys," Scarlett said.

"Roger that," Heavy D said.

Snake Eyes, of course, said nothing.

But they all knew that when it came to killing bad guys, he was the man.

Snake Eyes can't talk, but he can send text messages, which is kind of cute.

Eventually, we learn that the reason why Duke and the Baroness are no longer together is because Duke got the Baroness' brother killed on a mission. Except that there's a shocking twist, and if you can't see it coming a mile off, I have no hope for you.

Last year's summer movies were all about the relentless advances of weapons technology, and what they cost us. Iron Man was about a remorseful weapons maker, Incredible Hulk was about a remorseful military experiment, and The Dark Knight bemoaned the fact that all of Bruce Wayne's fancy armaments only spurred on the homicidal maniacs. This year, though, it's gung-ho militarism season, spearheaded by toy movies — literally, movies based on toys.

The advantage that G.I. Joe has over this summer's other Hasbro movie, Transformers 2, is that its human characters are action figures. In Transformers, the robots were toys but the people were just standard movie characters — almost every movie nowadays has an Italian Jewish male stripper who blogs about killer robots, after all. But in G.I. Joe, every single character feels like an action figure walking around — reading the novelization is like watching a five-year-old play with figurines, while a middle-aged guy narrates portentously. In other words, it's probably the most perfect action-adventure novel ever.

So because this is all about toys, there are lots and lots of loving descriptions of military hardware, from flying drones to fighter jets to a stealth van called the Scarab. You've already seen the ridiculous Iron Man-esque power suits which Duke and Ripcord wear in one crucial Paris sequence, but the story is loaded with insane hardware. Scarlett gets to wear a special combat suit, which renders her totally invisible.

At one point, Collins refers to Heavy Duty as wielding a massive "machine-gun-cum-grenade-launcher," which put a mental image in my mind that I don't think he intended.

When the Vipers attack the convoy, they arrive in a super-armored stealth ship called a Typhoon, shooting pulse lasers that fling the dead bodies of Duke's Special Forces squad "like discarded refuse." And then there's this great description of the Baroness, who shows up on the scene:

The neckline of the body armor exposed the upper part of her swelling bosom, an exposure of flesh that arrogantly dared bullets to try for her, as if she could walk blithely across the battlescape.

Even amidst an army of plastic characters and silly dialogue, the biggest problem is probably Ripcord, who's played by Marlon Wayans in the movie and is exactly as emasculated as you might have feared. Towards the beginning, when the convoy is attacked, Ripcord gets startled by a shape coming up behind him, and squeals "like a Girl Scout whose cookies had been snatched from her" — before he realizes it's just a stray cow. Later, in the big Paris chase scene, Ripcord runs through a lingerie store and winds up with a bra on his powersuit helmet. He's the one who spouts the jokes about "kung-fu grip," and he's the dumb one who needs everything explained to him. He's constantly saying things like "I'm livin' a brother's dream, man." To be fair, though, he does get to save the day in the end, and he has a quasi-romance with Scarlett.

Here's my favorite passage in the whole book, after the JOE squad gets back to their base:

In his stateroom, General Hawk was in the office area, at his desk, humming a jaunty military tune.

He was going over the paperwork regarding the new JOEs, Hauser and Weems, when a crisp knock came at the door. He rose, answered it, and found his lovely blonde aide, with the smart tablet in one hand and a stylus in the other.

"Sorry to disturb you, sir."

"Not at all, Cover Girl."

"I just need you to sign here, here, and here..."

He did so.

Then she said, "And here, and here."

This he also did.

"Anything else?" he asked.

"No, sir, just this..." She gave him a rare, unguarded smile. "And another thirty-six pages."

He grinned at her. "Maybe you should step inside."

She hugged the smart tablet to her, and began to say something, but it never got said, because the tip of a Katar dagger thrust through the tablet, having taken a path through Cover Girl's back.

As she fell to her knees, eyes large with the shock of dying, the figure of Zartan in camo-cap and jacket revealed the source of the blade.

Her name is Cover Girl... but she gets stabbed in the back. Get it? Get it??

A lot of the violence is amazingly sexualized, actually — there are several scenes between Duke and Baroness where they're so close they can feel each other's breath, as they grapple or wield guns at each other, and it's the nearest and hottest they've been since they used to make love. When the Baroness and Scarlett have their inevitable girl fight, Collins describes the two women as being "locked in a violent embrace." There's a flashback where the young Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes train together and vie for the approval of their teacher, the Hard Master.

Oh, and I should mention that Max Allan Collins is one of my fave writers, and he does a great job with an incredibly silly story. His Ms. Tree is one of my favorite comics of all time, and I love his work on Batman. Here, he occasionally manages to channel the great Mickey Spillane, his idol with whom he collaborated on the underrated Mike Danger series, with some very loopy prose and action-packed jaw-gritting.

It all explodes into a James Bond villain-esque climax where McCullen plans to wipe out three major cities and do something unspeakable to the U.S. president. (And it ends on a genuinely lunatic cliffhanger, which I won't spoil.) The nanotech threatens to devour everything, unless our heroes can hit the kill switches, or unless Ripcord can shoot down the nanotech warheads in mid-air. And as you've probably heard, James McCullen's face gets hideously scarred, and he winds up with a new mask made out of nanotech. A mask made out of nanotech! Sadly, it doesn't reshape itself into new forms or create emoticons or anything.

In the end, that's the thing that still gives me hope for G.I. Joe — with Christopher Eccleston playing McCullen/Destro and Joseph Gordon Levitt playing The Doctor/Cobra Commander, all of this over-the-top growling about using nanotech warheads to blow up the world may actually cure our recent villain ennui. Like so much else about this film, it really depends on whether flesh-and-blood actors can fully embody the plastic miens and jerky-limbed heroism of the toys of your youth. If not, you can always buy the newest line of toys and zoom them around your bed while you read Collins' musky prose.

Oh, and this scene is probably work-safe... we think. If only we'd known about this scene when we put together our video compilation of shower scenes.

In Alien From The Deep, aka Alien degli Abissi, a plucky activist and her cameraman infiltrate an evil corporation that is dumping nuclear waste and radioactive materials into an active volcano. What could possibly go wrong, right? Sadly, they wake up some kind of extraterrestrial monster that's been sleeping under the volcano all this time, and it's immune to almost every kind of weapon.

Luckily, it turns out the creature isn't immune to being rammed with a construction truck, which the woman does in an obvious shout-out to the "Get away from her, you bitch" scene in Aliens. (Her post-decontamination underwear are even intended to make us think of Ripley, supposedly.) In any case, the movie's not content with having the female hero defeat the monster in a Ripley pastiche — the two guys have to step in and help out, with a specially designed monster-killing flamethrower. This clip also showcases how ridiculous-looking the monster actually is. It may be bigger than the Ridley Scott Alien, but that's about all it's got going for it:

All the message-board poster knows is that the book was published around the same time as A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter Miller, or maybe a bit earlier. And he gives this description:

The novel ... is "set in a post-nuclear holocaust world, in which some of the main characters appear to do miracles or magic, but it turns out they're actually using technology - either rediscovered or reinvented. So we have 'spears' that emit killing beams - actually lasers - etc."

As with many of the other similar incidents where someone remembers vague details but not the name of the story or the author, it turns out to have several possible answers. Possibilities include Roger Zelazny's Lord Of Light, Robert A. Heinlein's Sixth Column, one of Isaac Asimov's Foundation books, Gather, Darkness by Fritz Leiber, Gene Wolfe's Book Of The New Sun and Harry Harrison's Deathworld trilogy. According to one poster, the Leiber and Heinlein books are similar because editor John W. Campbell fed the same idea to both writers, not worrying about there being too much overlap.

Of course someone has to bring up Clarke's law:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

To which someone else responds, puzzlingly:

Got your nose.

Star Command is a totally ludicrous attempt to do a Trek-esque space opera on a shoestring budget. During the first hour or so, all of the female cremwmebers wear a white formal uniform that makes them look like strippers during Fleet Week, complete with white dress jackets, white caps and teeny white miniskirts. Later, there's a drill when everybody's asleep, and all the young cadets run onto the bridge of their ship wearing their pajamas... or in some cases, nothing but a T-shirt. Star Trek never did that! And no, I really don't know why my copy of Star Command is only playing in Hungarian. I think it's because the scene isn't dramatic enough in English.

But back to the weird virtual reality world. It's not just crazy torture sequences. There's also a scene where another one of our heroes has a pleasurable V.R. simulation... in which, for some unaccountable reason, he's wearing the puffiest sleeves outside of a Fabio cover. Later on, the ship's captain catches him doing this V.R. simulation, and the hot chick in the bathtub morphs, without any warning, into the captain's scowling head.

According to AFP:

Policemen from the South Korean Coast Guard's Special Sea Attack Team (SSAT) board a patrol boat during an anti-terror exercise on their training ground in Incheon, west of Seoul, on June 30, 2009. South Korea's defence chief said on June 30 that North Korea appeared to be pushing forward with a uranium enrichment programme, stoking fears the secretive communist state may use it for nuclear weapons.

Images by Associated Press and AFP/Getty.

Who demanded a sequel to Tarsem Singh's The Cell? Whoever it was, he or she is even more sadistic than The Cusp, the serial killer/paramedic who keeps bringing his victims to the brink of death and then reviving them. It's mostly standard torture porn, only with the same psychic crap as the first movie. And there's this great snippet, where the serial killer turns her psychic powers back on her, using them to destroy her childhood memories somehow.

The Cell 2 came out on DVD a couple of days ago, so you know what you have to do.

This scene comes from Ghost In The Machine, the 1993 movie starring Raiders Of The Lost Ark's Karen Allen. Marion+hip-hop soundtrack = awesomeness.

That babysitter, incidentally? Was so asking for it. In the scene just before the above clip, she does a sexy dance for the two teenage boys she's babysitting, and she undoes her top and shows them her norks. That, plus watching In Living Color, are enough to mark her for death. I love how the washing machine is pre-programmed with messages like "explode" and "kill." But there's nothing symbolic at all about the way it explodes with white foam. Nope.

Is there any way to stop this deadly cyber-killer from coming into your house and turning every electronic gizmo into a deadly killer? Why, yes there is. Apparently, it doesn't know how to deal with pieces of tape and Q-tips:

This is a classic science fiction illustration by Golden Age great Wally Wood, which just went online at the Hooray For Wally Wood blog. You can see loads more amazing Wood art over there, and the whole image is below. So what is that guy saying?

To be fair, this clip takes place in the year 2019, and most of the human race has been wiped out, so possibly movies like Black Caesar and Hell Up In Harlem may have been lost in the nuclear holocaust. But as if to compensate, Williamson is wearing a gold headband, and ginormous gold gauntlets with explodey jewels in them. And he's toting a huge compound bow that fires exploding arrows.

I had a really hard time finding just one clip to feature from the spaghetti post-apocalyptic film Warriors Of The Wasteland, also known as The New Barbarians. There are all the scenes where the Templars (a society dedicated to wiping out the rest of the human race) swoop down in their bubble cars and kill the survivors of armageddon. There are the scenes where the Templars' leader, One, gives a speech about how he's going to punish people for the crime of being alive. Or the dialogue like, "The world is dead. It raped itself."

There's also several million awesome scenes of Fred Williamson being amazing. Like when a hot chick in space-age panties is pointing a gun at him, and he disarms her with his sheer animal charm. And the scenes where another chick, in a shiny silver bikini top, goes to bed with him while talking about prophecies.

(And then later, the movie's other good guy, who's totally forgettable, walks in on Williamson and the lady in bed together. And Williamson is like, "Okay, have fun roaming around the post-apocalyptic landscape. I'm going to stay in bed with this hot lady." And the other guy will not take a hint — he just stands there and stares. So Williamson, says, "Bye." and the guy still stands there staring. So Williamson widens his eyes more and says, "BYE NOW!" And finally the guy leaves.)

Luckily, you don't have to take my word for it. Here's an obsessive review of every facet of this movie's charms. And here's the whole thing, streaming online, which I wish I'd known about before I spent $1.99 for a copy on DVD:

This moment from Italian space opera film Cosmos: War Of The Planets is justifiedly legendary. Despite being released around the same time as Star Wars, the film manages to feature a Death Star sex toy, which provides sexual thrillification without the need to remove any clothing — even the dorky Flash Gordon headgear can stay on. Of course, rugged Captain Hamilton feels the need to prove he doesn't need any machines to get his bomp chicka wah wah on. There's always one sex luddite. [IMDB]

I wouldn't exactly describe 1945 as a good book, but it is a great towering piece of cheese. If it was a movie, we'd be giving it a primo spot in our "found footage" series. Co-written with historian William R. Forstchen, it takes place in an alternate version of 1945.

But wait — it's not quite your standard Nazis-win-World-War-II book. Okay, it mostly is. But it's slightly different. In this version, Hitler gets injured in a plane-crash just before Pearl Harbor. While Hitler is in a coma, the remaining Nazi leaders manage to avoid war with the U.S., which concentrates on defeating Japan conclusively (and also crushes the Maoists in China.) The Nazis, meanwhile, defeat the Soviet Union and conquer Europe — except for England, with which they form an uneasy truce. But now, as both Germany and the U.S. declare victory, a new war between them seems to be brewing.

It's been said that a lot of alternate history contains an element of wish-fulfillment, and it's possible there's some of that at work here. After all, here's an alternate world where Communism pretty much gets nipped in the bud in the 1940s. As long as the U.S.finally does defeat Germany, you could argue that it's a nicer version of events than what actually happened. (Apart, of course, from all the extra Jews and other Europeans the Germans manage to slaughter in this version.)

In any case, whether 1945 is as historically dodgy as many have claimed, it contains several vital elements of total awesomeness. For one thing, the triumphant Nazi Germany spends its time developing what the back cover describes as "science fiction super-weapons." You think I'm kidding? How about rockets that are remotely guided via television cameras?? Or super jets with "drop tanks" to provide ground support? Plus super-rockets? And hydrogen-powered submarines?

Plus, every villain in the book is hideous and crazy. Hitler has surived the war, but thanks to his 1941 plane crash, he's scarred and demonic. And then there's the book's main villain, a Nazi agent named Skorzeny who's trying to sabotage the Manhattan Project. (In this universe, the U.S. doesn't have the atomic bomb yet.) At some point, Skorzeny gets injured and loses an eye, so he can get either an eyepatch or maybe some kind of cyborg eye. In this passage, our hero, the square-jawed Jim Martel, tries to shoot down Skorzeny's plane and fails:

Now, ammunition gone, he could only watch as the second and then the third plane lifted off. Unlike the second plane, the third stayed lowe as the pilot pushed in just enough left rudder to cause the plane to crab onto the edge of the grass strip so that it passed by not twenty feet away from where Jim stood. Otto Skorzeny looked down, grinning demonically.

And James Martel finally understood the meaning of hatred.

Lots of passages in the book end like that, by the way. There's also a sequence where Jim is accused (falsely) of being a double agent, and he stands up to the FBI bullies who are pushing him around. And it ends with the sentence: "Grierson was learning to hate James Martel."

Oh, and another Nazi agent, Richer, likes to kill and occasionally brutalize teenage girls. Caught in the act by some U.S. cops, he gets injured and captured. A cop named Lloyd points his shotgun first at Richer's chest, and then it slowly drifts downwards as Richer protests, "I was just having a litlte fun. It got out of hand, is all. I got excited. You know how it is." Lloyd replies: "Yeah, 'yer right. There ain't nothin' like havin' a little fun." As his shotgun continues to drift down... You can see where this is going, right?

"I wasn't the only one!" Richer's voice was high-pitched as a girl's.

"The other ones didn't have blood on their hands," the sheriff replied, then added calmly. "Now you see if you think this is fun, you Nazi bastard."

They left Richer lying there, his groin a red mass. He was still alive, but he wasn't having any fun.

I like the subtle understatement of "he wasn't having any fun." Plus it calls back to the earlier part where Richer says he was having fun. Subtlety is what 1945 is all about. There's also a wonderful subplot involving a sexy Swedish spy who seduces the president's Chief Of Staff and gets him to give her massive infodumps while performing an unspecified sex act. She has really big eyes that he can't resist.

Sadly, 1945 ends with a cliffhanger, and Gingrich and Forstchen have never continued the saga. Will the U.S. win this version of WWII? What about those Nazi science fiction super weapons? Will camera-guided rockets, with 1945-era cameras, really work? Maybe we'll never know.

Here's secret footage of a meeting of the U.S. Congress' secret UFO committee, where chain-smoking men get together to watch stag films about mysterious 50-foot cones, and "fiery horse-drawn sky chariots." Your tax dollars at work! [IMDB]

Other great moments include all the amazing product placement throughout the film, and the wonderful salute to consumerism when our heroes arrive in the future Mumbai and discover that ads are now holographic and can lunge down your throat. (It's awesome!) And there's a snake charmer — with a robot snake! Plus the bit where they find a derelict sex bot and repair her, so she becomes their true companion.

And the bit, earlier on, where our hero tries to use the time machine to get some nookie from his girlfriend — who doesn't put out, so he coaxes her into running out into traffic to get him an ice cream. "Hurry up! I'm waiting for my cold kiss!" he yells just before a truck smushes her. Ah, love. [IMDB]