Vacancy 2007/Director:Nimród Antal/Screenplay:Mark L. Smith Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Luke Wilson, Frank Whaley, Ethan Embry,Scott G. Anderson, Mark Casella, David Doty
The story here is a Psycho type thriller that really was not as bad as the reviews made me think it was going to be. There are a few references to Psycho, for example in the assorted stuffed birds that decorate the office, the quirky manager played very well by the dependable Frank Whaley and the invasive voyeurism that takes place in the honeymoon suite. The voyeurism though lacks the psycho-sexual peeping Tom aspect that characterized Norman Bates though, and here it instead is done in the form of videoing taping snuff films and supplying them in quantity to the booming snuff film trade I guess (though I belong to the school of thought that puts snuff films into the category of urban-myth… but what a suitable myth to base a slasher style movie on).
The film is not a gratuitous gore film and the edgy drama is built up perfectly before the actual mayhem breaks loose. While there are no real surprises for the most part it is a watchable film. The story centers on an unhappy couple played by Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson who have some serious problems in their marriage that are about to break them apart when suddenly in the middle of their ongoing tirade of insults to one another their car fan breaks after Wilson swerves to miss a raccoon on a dark and sparsely populated stretch of highway in the middle of backwater USA. They trek back to a gas station and hotel and reluctantly stay the night to wait for the garage to open. Frank Whaley plays the genuinely unnerving hotel manager who from the very beginning makes you uncomfortable. The simple scene where he is counting out dimes is sheer personality disorder incarnate. He is a Norman Bates type psycho in that he does not belong to the class of modern film "super" pyscho slashers and he dispalys uncertainty and anxiety later in the film as he loses control of the situation little by little. His unimposing physique seem to make his character more believable and common and therefore more frightening. I am so happy there was no "sexy master mind" killer here. God, that is such a bore anymore.
Frank Whaley shows consternation at the realization that his hotel has a phone booth that still only takes dimes for a phone call. After Beckinsale and Wilson get in to their room and continue their litany of complaints and criticism the tension begins in the form of banging doors and phone calls. It is done very well and soon they find copies of video tapes showing the former occupants of the very same room being murdered and taped. The film develops into a cat and mouse game soon as our couple go on the offensive but the predators are well seasoned and have all the upper hands. Beckinsale is a commanding presence of a woman (Underworld and Van Helsing) and this movie would be much different had Mia Farrow been in the lead role, but she is vulnerable and shaken up and out of control here and does some good acting. Wilson is fine in the role of the more sentimental of the wayward couple who wants to salvage some of the relationship and confront some losses (the death of a child?) that Beckinsale wants only to forget. He is not a strong man really but soon takes control and shows Beckinsale he has some testosterone after all, until he is knifed in the gut in front of her. In movies it always works out that as you show the woman what a real man you are you get knifed or shot saving her and she can suddenly realize that she had over looked all this qualities and feel a little bad. Not only is our couple stranded in Hicksville and are the unwilling stars of a snuff movie but they suddenly find out that the magic fingers machine is out of order. The ending is no surprise as Beckinsale kicks all the bad guys asses in no time flat. The movie is predictable in the way a good movie like this will be (the only alternative ending is what, where the bad guys win and kill all the good people and you are left feeling depressed and nihilistic... I guess you could have an ending where the good guys and bad guys all decide to change and team up and become friends, but that would really suck too). But it is how the formula unfolds that makes the difference I suppose, the way two roller coaster rides can be different and yet you expect the same ending from both. The film is well made and well acted and not over the top in the violence department which can be a relief really. There is blood and violent death, do not worry about that okay. But it is controlled effectively by director Nimrod Antal who does not use the film as an excuse to simply show intestines and livers dangling from people, which brings us to our second film, the dismal and forgettable, exploitation mess Maintenance.
Maintenance 2007/Directors: Paulo Diaz and Jil Guenther/Screenplay: Paulo Diaz and Jil Guenther Cast: Mark Masten, Melissa DeBaca,Rondi Temple, Justin Frumkes, Doc Pingree
This movie has the feel of the type of films made by the Film Threat Video company. Really low quality, almost with a shot on video look, and usually with an emphasis on gore and graphic violence and no concern towards the acting or technical aspects. I will admit that there were a couple scenes in the beginning where the dialog and basic acting looked promising, but all those hopes disappeared quickly. The story is so simple as to defy belief. Of course the story line in Vacancy is simple too and it has been done in one form or another a million times. The problem with a movie like Maintenance is that it takes a simple form and makes no effort to do anything with it other than exploit it for gore purposes. If you think about it the concept for Rocky is simple and unoriginal, but Stallone made a great script out of it. Okay, not every movie will be Rocky, I know. I did not buy this DVD thinking it would be an Oscar winner (as if that were an indicator of a good movie). Two female victims frantically run down the hall after watching ten minutes of this movie to get their money back. This is the plot. After a short introduction that shows some percentages about the release of dangerous prisoners back into society and their reoffense rate the movie goes right into the story. A guy played by Mark Masten gets a job in a high rise apartment complex with only four female tenets living in it at the time because of ongoing renovations and then immediately begins killing them off one by one. Well, that’s about it. Okay the ad in the classified said no deposit necessary and 1st month's ulities free. Now Ms Pennypincher realizes, if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is. The murders are brutal and are followed up by dismemberment scenes. He stores his “trophies” in his refrigerator and a clueless detective never seems to consider searching his apartment since he is a violent ex-con and he began work the same day the disappearances begin. It ends on a fatalistic note with the heroine being killed by the landlord himself. I hate these kinds of endings as they are not a twist in any way. They are a cop out and an attempt to make the film have some sort of impact on the viewer that the film maker could not acheive in some more subtle or sophisticated fashion. Another thing that drove me up the wall was the camera work. It seems like 80% of the film is shot from a really low angle, like the camera is mounted on a hand dolly and is pushed around everywhere. Even in scenes where two people are simply having a conversation the camera is aimed up from knee level and it gets old real fast. Furthermore, the film is all washed out in some green tone or something. I do not know if this is on purpose or what. The look of the scenes I posted from IMDB.com is exatcly how the movie looks! The happy ex-con thinks of all the fringe benefits his new job has... a nice room... TV... flexible hours...girls to hack up at will... a sauna... It is hard to get into the suspense because the acting is bad and the story is implausible and the camera work is inane. Like I said before, these two films are like two different roller coaster rides. They do the same thing, but take the one with some vacancy because this one needs a lot of maintenance.
David DeFalco Cast: Kevin Gage，Sage Stallone，Kelly K.C. Quann， Stephen Wozniak，Chantal Degroat
Chaos There is plenty of hoopla one way or the other about this film by writer-director David DeFalco and it really does not deserve all the attention it is getting, so I figured I would just give it a little more. A lot of the chatter is directed at the opening statements of the film that are given in a serious "safety film" tone about the dangers that can befall careless teenagers and young women each year. There are even murder statistics quoted for some reason in the Jack Webb style narration. It reminded me of those Criswell intros to some of Ed Wood's cooler films really. It is really as if Defalco believes this load of rubbish has some sort of socially significant message and will save lives. On the DVD version I have there is a commentary by DeFalco and the film’s producer about a review by Roger Ebert that pans the movie. They seem to feel Ebert misses the point of their “valuable” film and go on and on trying to redeem it in a sometimes point by point rebuttal. At one point goofy looking DeFalco says (paraphrased) that Ebert never said it was bad film (technically I assume he means) but that Ebert did not approve of the film’s “stark realism and ultimate nihilism” (quotations and phrase are mine). Okay, then let me be clear: this film is inept and amateurish. The film making is shoddy and simply void of any talent. It makes Murder Set Pieces (search for my review here at The Uranium Café) look like a David Lean epic.
The acting (especially by usually reliable Kevin Gage) is not always bad though the actors seem to be hamming it up for fun at times, as if they know they are trapped in a bomb and are going to enjoy the ride until the check comes in. In the end however the film lacks any humor or wit. This it could be argued by supporters of the filmn (and there are more than few on the net) was the intention of DeFalco because how could you imbue such a socially serious subject with anything other than despair and gloom. The Last House on the Left plot is very simple and in more talented hands (or hands with some talent) the film could have been an homage to Satanic stalker, Manson family, psycho revenge films of the 70’s, rather than this exercise in gratuitous and meaningless excess. Okay, okay movies do not have to have deep meaning here at the Cafe, but they cannot simply suck either. Real quick: A group of drugged up social misfits target and brutalize anyone that crosses paths with them and wind up in a cabin in the woods (I forget how and refuse to rewatch the film to remember) and are soon bored and send out Sage Stallone (Sly’s fat little boy) to bring back some chicks to have fun with. Of course there are two “nice girls” who can’t help but rebel against mommy and daddy so that when they arrive at the usually-pretty-safe-to-be-at (unless you wander off with strangers) rave they are so taken away with Sage’s moody, aggressive “so do ya want some free ecstasy or not” charm they decide to wander off with him into the woods to the cabin full of sexually deranged psychos. They are immediately set upon and tortured and assaulted and chased through the woods and caught and killed in horrible and, yes, disgusting fashion. However the deaths are far from the most brutal deaths ever put to film and the movie is in no way as shocking as all the banter would lead you to believe.
Eventually the killers wind up back at the house of one of the girls with her parents aware of who they are and what they did (ala Last House on the Left). Unlike Last House we are treated to an ending not where the killers receive their just desserts of warm revenge but an ending where everyone but Chaos (Gage) is killed and he leaves to continue his bloody rampage on more ecstasy hungry rave goers… so like the opening monologue preaches… beware young ones who you wander off into the woods with for free ecstasy, HE IS STILL OUT THERE! So please listen to ex-wrestler and amateur porn star David DeFalco and watch his “training” film on how to survive raves and bad hitchhiking experiences! Ultimately the problem with this film is not the so called brutal murders but the lameness of the film making and script. The DVD commentary is entertaining but the movie is pointless in a pathetic way while taking itself way too seriously. It fails on all points and even Kevin Gage is a let down. He was far more menacing in Heat as DeNiro’s protagonist and hooker serial killer. I saw a review on the net that says it best. Just keep telling yourself… it’s only a rip off, it’s only a rip off…
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning 2006/Director: Jonathan Liebesman/Screenplay: Sheldon Turner (screenplay) Sheldon Turner (story) Cast: Jordana Brewster, Taylor Handley, Diora Baird, Matthew Bomer, R. Lee Ermey, Andrew Bryniarski This is yet another chapter in the life of Texas born and inbred cannibals the Hewitt family. Contrary to how the narration sounds this is in no way a true story. It is a patchwork of serial killing cases (such as Wisconsin’s Ed Gein) all wove together but there has never been a real Hewitt family in Texas. I lived most of my life in and around San Antonio Texas and so some of the landscapes and stereotypes are familiar to me. I have never seen so much road kill as in Texas and the sweltering heat and road kill are what I remember most sometimes. There are expanses of land that seem all but unexplored by civilized folk from places like New York City and it seems far from inconceivable that some family of fruitcakes like this might be hidden out there somewhere. So the deep plot here if you do not already know it before you even see the movie is that this family of twisted degenerates get a hold of yet another car load of hippies and kill them off one by one in assorted gruesome fashions, usually with sledgehammers and chainsaws, but sometimes even a shotgun. The story line here goes a bit under the surface and tells the story of lovable Tommy “Leatherface” Hewitt. I do not really know if we need to know the story of little Tommy but there it is for us. It even shows how he made his first mask of human flesh and this touched his uncle (R. Lee Ermey)who tells him how much he likes it. There is nothing much new here at all but the movie is not a total waste of your time if you like this sort of thing. I guess it is more exciting to someone who not seen a thousand or so of these things. The hippies all look like they are from the 90’s really and murder for murder most of these later Chainsaw flicks still are not as cool as the first low budget Tobey Hooper one for some reason. Maybe simply because they all are doing what the first one did over and over, and yet, honestly, what else would you want them to do right? I have seen them all and this one works well enough as a follow up to the remake a few years ago The movie follows the trend of a lot of newer slasher movies where there is no hero or heroine who survives at the end. Maybe this is suppose to convey some sort of message about the ultimate meaningless of life and that evil wins out over good in the real world, I just don’t know. I just find it sort of pointless to sit through an entire movie and have everyone killed off one by one and not have one person end up alive, even if they are in an insane asylum babbling to themselves. The movie is not really scary and there are no big surprises but it is well made and the acting is good over all. Ermey is redneckishly loathsome as the “cop” but the rest of the family is not too strange here. We learn why he is a cop and we learn why the guy in the remake has no legs, but the characters are not really that strange. Not as strange as the ones in Rob Zombie’s Devil's Rejects films that are basically the same story. It is not a super great movie of the genre but is not too bad either and has some "fun" moments.Not for the squemish or vegetarians. Note: I know the animation here is not from this movie, but from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remark movie that came before it, but it is such a cool little ditty I did not want to waste it. See No Evil 2006/Director: Gregory Dark/Screenplay: Dan Madigan Cast: Christina Vidal, Luke Pegler, Glen Jacobs, Samantha Noble, Michael J. Pagan , Rachael Taylor This movie is directed by ex (?) porn auteur Gregory Dark who is best known in polite society as the genius behind the New Wave Hooker series. It stars as the imposing protagonist Glen Jacobs (a.k.a. Kane) of WWF fame. The direction is not bad but it is simply annoying in a way. It looks like a heavy metal video, the type you see late at night on Headbanger’s Ball. That style of camera work is okay for a five minute Morbid Angel video but can really become distracting in a 90 minuteish movie. It has all those shaky faces things like in Lost Highway and sometimes the camera will come in from three or four angles and the sound will develop in to a swooshing crescendo to simply show something like a fly on an ashtray. I begin to think the fly or whatever is central to the plot or is telegraphing an approaching scene but it is all simply technical excess. The plot is simple: teenagers in a type of reform school are sent to renovate an entirely dilapidated old hotel that harbors in the secret passages the 6’8” religiously motivated psycho killer played convincingly by Kane. So then, guess what, he begins killing off the teenagers one at a time in brutal fashion and since most of them are unlikable you really do not care who gets it and how. The movie is pretty bleak and some of the deaths seem to take away from there being a possible good hero winning against the evil psycho element to the story. The cop character who lost a hand to Kane years before and so has a grudge is killed off way too soon and senselessly I felt. There are survivors at the end, but they are a pimpish thug and two bitchy teenage girls. It is really pointless anymore to try and understand these endings, since the thing called the movie leading up to the ending is usually more inexplicable. What is important here ultimately is the quality of the deaths and a couple of them are pretty good as Kane hooks people with chains and drags them then crushes their skulls with his bare hands and removes their eyeballs and saves them in mason jars. There is one rather unique death scene where one of the more likeable female delinquents falls through the roof of a glass atrium and dangles from a rope upside down and is devoured by street dogs. Kane is totally sexually frustrated because his puritanical mother never let him watch any of Gregory Dark’s earlier movies when he was boy locked up in a cage in the backyard. Nothing will surprise fans of the splatter genre and if you like this style of in your face edgy photography (I do not) you will enjoy the ride. It is well made and the acting is okay, but I only give a mild recommendation because of the jittery, overblown camera work that could have been fantastic if it was just a little toned down. Murder Set Pieces 2004/Director: Nick Palumbo/Screenplay: Nick Palumbo Cast: Sven Garrett, Tony Todd, Gunnar Hansen, Edwin Neal, Jade Risser I was duped into this one by the so called rave reviews plastered on the DVD jacket, one comparing some of Palumbo’s shots “of visual brilliance” to “the best works of Dario Argento.” Well, that’s a load of crap. While I am not a big fan of Argento’s narrative style I do respect his technical ability with camera shots and movement. To say that even one frame of this movie comes anywhere near Argento’s best work is a blatant lie. I perused a few reviews before doing mine to maybe gain some sort of relevant insight in to the movie that I may be lacking and decided I was wasting my time. I am fully qualified to dismiss this movie as a load of garbage. Not because of the murders and gore and so called sickenly repulsive violence (which I did not find it to have but rather found the violence comic bookish in the way a Hershell Gordon Lewis film is) but because it is simply a poorly written, poorly acted and poorly directed movie. The basic story is about some Nazi guy who takes porno pictures of women around Las Vegas but has a tendency to practice zero self-control and murders most of them as well as most other people he encounters. He seems to get away all this with utter impunity. He drives around and picks up hookers and kills them, kills his porno models, his girl friend and some woman who may be his German ex-wife or current wife, we never know, a little girl who is a schoolmate friend of his girlfriend's sister, a fortune teller who won't tell him what the cards say and a disgruntled porno book store clerk played by Candyman Tony Todd and it goes on and on into sheer absurdity. He is never questioned by the police or rouses any suspicion except in his girlfriend’s little sister played by Jade Risser but no one will believe her because SHE'S A KID! The whole move feels like it was shot in the 70’s. Some great movies came out of the 70’s, but some shlocky ones did too. This one patterned itself on those substandard 70's movies that are sort of fun now in a bad movie way. But this movie is not trying to be a bad movie and we do not need the 70's done over except in parody. The music score is weird too, with some really poor heavy metal stuff that was probably done by friends of the director. The rest of the movie score sounds like typical incidental music from a 70’s exploitation film, which is what this feels like. I like exploitation films from the 70’s, they are campy and fun. This film is not either. Look, the murders here are not that shocking or brutal or original. There is one scene where the guy lunges out at Jade from a hole in the closet and is suppose to scare you, I guess, but it was so ridiculous I replayed the scene like six times for a laugh. I am tired of DVDs that advertise themselves as the “sickest movie of all-time” and then deliver Z-Movie entertainment at best. Sure, there is a ton of off color blood everywhere, again the type that looks like the too red goop used by Hershell Gordon Lewis, but so what. I like blood and gore and that is basically what I buy a DVD like this for, but to just pour blood all over the walls and on top of some moonlighting porn star because the film maker cannot do anything to get the story across simply gets boring after a few scenes and that is what this movie was, boring. I cannot believe the reviews that seem to see something more to this movie than poor film making. The victims never seem scared and all look like porn actresses, which is what I read Palumbo hired for this film. Original Leatherface Gunnar Hansen has a small role as a Nazi gun dealer. Sven Garrett, who plays the photographer killer, is not really too bad in some ways as a serial killing, misogynist Nazi, but it is simply too unbelievable and poorly made to get anything but a weak nod from me. And it only gets that because Tony Todd was great as the burned out porno clerk and Gunner Hansen made an okay suburban Nazi.
Hostel 2006/Director and Cast: Director Eli Roth Cast: Derek Richardson, Jay Hernandez, Takashi Miike, Rick Hoffma, Barbara Nedeljakova, Jennifer Lim Of the three short reviews I have here I must like this one the most because it is the only one of the three I have seen four or five times. Real basic plot of American college guys traveling through Europe on summer vacation partying and having sex then running into a collection of psychos in some remote area (of Slovenkia I think, wherever the hell that is.) Starts off in no special way and luckily the annoying guy from Iceland is the first to go. Without giving too much away the guys (and some girl from Japan) become victims of a ring of rich, educated thrill seekers who are members of a secret club that like to chop people up. Okay, so that gives the whole movie away. So what. But the mood is pretty bleak and unrelenting after things get going. I read some review that talked about the movie's sense of humor, but I didn't see it. It had an oppressive feel and little seemed tongue in cheek, unless it was some guy's tongue and cheeked being ripped from his face. Chainsaws, drills, pistols, scissors and eye ball removals, cut ham strings and homophobia and naked Slovakian girls. How can you pass this one up. Cameo by Japanese director Takashi Miike (and I have a review coming of his Imprint soon. Still have not found Audition in Beijing) and Quentin Tarantino did something because his name was on the cover.
The Mangler Reborn 2005/Director and Cast: Directed (and written by) by Matt Cunningham and Erik Gardner Cast: Weston Blakesley, Aimee Brooks, Scott Speiser, Rhett Giles, Reggie Bannister I never saw the first Mangler, based on a Stephen King short story (red flag!) because it starred Robert Englund and I can’t stand that guy. He just isn’t scary in anything. I did like those Nightmare movies and he seemed to be an okay Freddie, but I never thought Freddy was scary to be honest but the movies were usually well made for that genre (I knew I would eventually have to use the word genre if I did a site like this.) Anyway in this part I assume it takes up where part one ends. There is some maintenance worker guy who has a possessed dry cleaning machine upstairs that feeds on humans. Sort of like the old Ted V. Mikel’s Z-movie classic The Corpse Grinders in some ways here. This was not a bad movie really. It takes place mostly in one house. It is moody and slow paced and creepy, but not really as scary as it could have been maybe. Worth a look and maybe I will check out the first part if I see it. Stars Reggie Bannister, the ice-cream man with a pony tail from the Phantasm movies. Every one gets killed and the killer is not very interesting but sort of creepy in a psyho plumber sort of way. Are You Scared 2006/Director and Cast: Directed and written by Andy Hurst Cast: Brent Fidler, Caia Coley, Carlee Avers, Alethea Kutscher This movie was the worst of the three to me. It is one of those Saw type movies (though the style predates Saw of course) where there is some brilliant master mind serial killer who offs people in elaborate and uniquely grisly ways and is always one step ahead of the cops. For any movie like this to work there has to be suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewer. But the story has to have some plausibility and the ending has to have some acceptable resolution. This movie had neither and the acting and camera work was sort of shoddy. Basically some bitter burn victim is able to somehow acquire huge abandoned warehouses where he (all by himself I assume) arranges the place into maze like game room with video cameras everywhere. He promotes a TV show called Are You Scared where people come to be challenged to face their deepest fears and on the basis of being told you are accepted to the show people show up and allow themselves to be put into unbelievablly dangerous situations simply because they figure they are on TV. There is some clueless but dedicated detective on the case who reluctantly (he is the lone wolf cop with a personal vendetta of course) is forced into teaming up with a simply too sexy female detective.They suddenly begin putting the pieces of the horrible jigsaw puzzle together in no time (the case has baffled the cops for years now). They see no reason to bring in the rest of the police force or even call one fat cop from the donut shop to help in nabbing this master mind serial killer. They just go to the deserted warehouse alone at night. Of course the cop is an idiot and gets killed right off the bat when he finds the killer. I forget what happened to the female cop. The killer is suppose to be incrediblly brilliant (as the killers in all these movies are, to the point of inanity anymore) but leaves his real name and address on a purchase invoice for supplies for one of his torture machines, or some such crap. It never explains where his money comes from or how he can get these warehouses and build these complicated torture machines all alone IN HIS APARTMENT then move the things to the warehouses. Really nothing is explained and the deaths are boring and stupid. One guy is shot like by a dozen shotguns, but somehow returns later all bloody and dazed in an “open the door and get spooked by the bloody guy gag”. The ending is essentially a "return from the dead" ending... I guess, since the guy was burned all over (again), but reappears for some final revenge against the person we think kills him. He would have been in a burn ward for a year at least, but he shows up in a suit and looks the same as at the beginning. So is he supernatural, like Freddy and Jason or what?
When a Stranger Calls 2006/Cast and Crew: Director:Simon West, Writer: Jake Wall (II) Actors: Camilla Belle, Tommy J. Flanagan, Tessa Thompson, Brian Geraghty, Clark Gregg, Derek DeLint, Kate Jennings Grant, Lance Henriksen (The voice of the caller)
When I bought this last night I was really in the mood for a wild suspense ride and I hoped the fact it was a remake of an older and genuinely creepy flick was some sort of guarantee, but this movie was a sheer waste of time. While many people will compare the quick editing and lush sound production to the original's 70's feel as a sign of a better movie than the original 1979 version this movie simply fails on all points, and not to say the original didn't have some problems by descending into the stalker in the house returns to torment the heroine formula, but it also worked on other levels. You knew the stranger in the 1st movie and the fact he was some skinny, middle aged introvert made him all the more unnerving. You never see the stranger in this movie until the end for a second in the police car and the shot makes him into the super evil, cold calculating, remorseless and even a little sexy ultra-villian people like these days. Even given all that, the movie could have been better and I can enjoy a good psycho in the house thriller the same as anyone else. But this just went no where and I was so bored by the middle I only watched the movie in order to pan it and give fair warning. All the gags are parodies of suspense gags (a black cat jumping out to a burst of music, the frig door closes and no one is behind it and the music goes flacid at the same moment etc.) but the movie takes itself too seriously for these to be funny. They are rather absurb and irritating instead. There is no blood, no real combat between heroine and killer, no insight into the killer, and the phone calls just are not chilliing enough. Avoid it an see the original with quirky Carol Kane as the babysitter and Tony Beckley as the emotionally disturbed stranger.
Two female victims frantically run down the hall after watching 
Okay the ad in the classified said no deposit necessary and 1st month's ulities free. Now Ms Pennypincher realizes, if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is.
The happy ex-con thinks of all the fringe benefits his new job has... 
WIDGETIZE