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It was a dark and stormy night. On the twelfth floor of the Acme building in a nearly-empty office, a single yellow lightbulb hanging from the ceiling swayed gently with the building. Facing the door sat the old Victorian desk, its surface bare save a single rotary phone and various stains that looked suspiciously like they'd been made by tomato juice. He leaned back in his chair and swung his boots up onto the table. He listened to the rain lash the window like the partisans had lashed him. The phone's ringing might have startled him, if it were possible. Instead, he just cocked one ear at it, then picked it up. As he did, Grumps McGruff smiled to himself. (Actually, I just lied. Hhe did not know how to smile.) It had been long. Too long.

Is this the reconstructed Live Gruff or Die Belgian, the legendary final film which was said to be stolen by the cameramen and destroyed in a cocaine lab fire?

Wabbit Season:

Ford Prefect wrote:Is this the reconstructed Live Gruff or Die Belgian, the legendary final film which was said to be stolen by the cameramen and destroyed in a cocaine lab fire?

First scene, in fact. (Did you know that the director had already made his copy for initial review, and the US government seized it? It's now in permanent archives at the Library of Congress, classified as "fragile" so that nobody can check it out.)

It is somewhat disconcerting that Google has nothing on this phrase. Am I missing something?

Gawd, I am sick to death of hearing how 'ground breaking' this fucking movie was.

Grumps McGruff waited. The yellow lightbulb above him blinked and sparked out of the air. There were socialists in the building. He didn't see them, but had expected them now for years. His warnings to Chief Inspector Joson were not listenend to and now it was too late. Far too late for now, anyway.
Grumps was a detective for thirty-four years. When he was young he watched the news reports and he said to dad "I want to be a detective daddy."
Dad said "No! You will BE KILL BY SOCIALISTS"
There was a time when he believed him. Then as he got oldered he stopped. But now in the creaky old building of the UACD he knew there were socialists.
"This is Joson" the phone crackered. "You must fight the socialists!"
So John gotted his .44 magnum and blew up the wall.
"HE GOING TO KILL US" said the socialists
"I will shoot at him" said the anarcho-socialist and he fired the shotgun shot. John revolvered at him and tried to blew him up. But then the ceiling fell and they were trapped and not able to kill.
"No! I must kill the socialists" he shouted
The radio said "No, Grumps. You are the socialists"
And then Grumps was a commie.

Dalton wrote:It is somewhat disconcerting that Google has nothing on this phrase. Am I missing something?

You're only missing out on the finest piece of cinematical entertainment ever conceived.

I've always wanted to see that bootleg laserdisk that made it's way around all the conventions in the 90s, the laserdisk with the director's first, unfinished cut. It will never see the light of day (outside of the black market), though, because Bruce Broughton still won't release the rights to the soundtrack, which you can't really blame him for since it was used without permission and he never got paid. Besides there are so few film nerds who even remember this movie that there really isn't much money in it for the studio.

Havok wrote:Gawd, I am sick to death of hearing how 'ground breaking' this fucking movie was.

I think you're thinking of the original Grumps McGruff.

It's still overrated, though. Everything that movie did the French did first. Sometimes better, too.

For better or worse Grumps McGruff did pave the way for Grumps McGruff II: The Reckoning, which is undeniably oneo f the defining moments in American cinema. While you can say the first film was basically just Le Fou in English with Harrison Ford, The Reckoning left it in the dust.

Ford Prefect wrote:

Dalton wrote:It is somewhat disconcerting that Google has nothing on this phrase. Am I missing something?

You're only missing out on the fienst piece of cinematical entertainment ever conceived.

Then some reference to it should be found on at least one of the search engines; I've tried Google, Yahoo, Bing, and even Wolfram Alpha on a lark, and none of them have any reference to it, not even this thread. And I've seen Testing threads indexed in Google before.

Obviously Google is too mainstream to appreciate the wealth of excellence which is the Grumps McGruff Cantos.

Oh, jesus, if you guys thought Grumps McGruff II was awesome, you would have peed your pants at the footage that was cut. Part of the sequence where McGruff gets his final revenge on McCoy was supposed to include McGruff fucking McCoy's wife, and the casting director actually managed to get Sam Waterston's wife in on the sly. The footage had to be cut and hidden away after Sam found out because otherwise it would have completely held up the release due to the ensuing divorce trial.

That later scene where McCoy tries to shoot Grumps? Yeah, somehow Waterston managed to get live bullets in his gun. Grumps was a stand-up guy about it, though.

Winston Blake wrote:Grumps McGruff waited. The yellow lightbulb above him blinked and sparked out of the air. There were socialists in the building. He didn't see them, but had expected them now for years. His warnings to Chief Inspector Joson were not listenend to and now it was too late. Far too late for now, anyway.
Grumps was a detective for thirty-four years. When he was young he watched the news reports and he said to dad "I want to be a detective daddy."
Dad said "No! You will BE KILL BY SOCIALISTS"
There was a time when he believed him. Then as he got oldered he stopped. But now in the creaky old building of the UACD he knew there were socialists.
"This is Joson" the phone crackered. "You must fight the socialists!"
So John gotted his .44 magnum and blew up the wall.
"HE GOING TO KILL US" said the socialists
"I will shoot at him" said the anarcho-socialist and he fired the shotgun shot. John revolvered at him and tried to blew him up. But then the ceiling fell and they were trapped and not able to kill.
"No! I must kill the socialists" he shouted
The radio said "No, Grumps. You are the socialists"
And then Grumps was a commie.

Don't you ever soil the name of Grumps McGruff like this again.

Uraniun235 wrote: That later scene where McCoy tries to shoot Grumps? Yeah, somehow Waterston managed to get live bullets in his gun. Grumps was a stand-up guy about it, though.

Common myth, and one started by the studio. It was circulated before the release to increase discussion. It worked marginally well, but has stuck around ever since, although it has been invalidated time and time again. If you watch the scene carefully, the wounds don't match up correctly with the angle of the barrel, meaning they were blood packets, not actual wounds.

Common myth, and one started by the studio. It was circulated before the release to increase discussion. It worked marginally well, but has stuck around ever since, although it has been invalidated time and time again. If you watch the scene carefully, the wounds don't match up correctly with the angle of the barrel, meaning they were blood packets, not actual wounds.

You're shitting me. I'm going to have to watch that scene again.

On a related note, is the chicken scene in the third movie really real? It looks so fake, but we tend to think real things look fake because of cinematic hyperbole.

Surlethe wrote: On a related note, is the chicken scene in the third movie really real? It looks so fake, but we tend to think real things look fake because of cinematic hyperbole.

I'm still not sold that the bullets were fake, so I'm inclined to think the hyper-realism inherent in the Grumps movies carried the day here. If the chicken scene is faked, it's faked by a master and is thus a masterpiece.

Surlethe wrote:On a related note, is the chicken scene in the third movie really real? It looks so fake, but we tend to think real things look fake because of cinematic hyperbole.

I was at a con a little while back, and I actually ran into a member of the crew. Apparently, it was not only real, but was also mostly adlibbed.

Lord Relvenous wrote:

Uraniun235 wrote: That later scene where McCoy tries to shoot Grumps? Yeah, somehow Waterston managed to get live bullets in his gun. Grumps was a stand-up guy about it, though.

Common myth, and one started by the studio. It was circulated before the release to increase discussion. It worked marginally well, but has stuck around ever since, although it has been invalidated time and time again. If you watch the scene carefully, the wounds don't match up correctly with the angle of the barrel, meaning they were blood packets, not actual wounds.

Yeah, he had blood packets, because they intended for the gun to be loaded with blanks, so when Waterston fired they triggered the packets. Sam Waterston's not a good shot though, so even though the gun was live, Grumps didn't get hurt.


I mean, jesus, if Sam Waterston had actually shot Grumps, he would have gotten more than a stern talking to (and the worst tittie-twister since the Belushi incident in 1977) from Grumps.

It's pretty easy to tell they're real shots. Just compare how Waterston handles his .38 in any other scene in the film. With the blanks loaded there's shit-all recoil, but in that scene? Iron Arm McCoy can't handle it at all. It sounds the same because all the sound effects were made by firing each gun and dubbing it over (there are some subtle differences, bt they're very subtle). This is probably where Waterston got the live rounds. The effects guys bought something like eighty five thousand rounds across all the guns in the film, but there's only six thousand or so shots fired in the actual film.

Jezus, that is a real gun. Waterston has balls. By the way, though they cut the actual sex, in the famous "rain on the window" shot during the scene you can (apparently) faintly see the reflection of two people fucking. I've never been able to make it out, but they say it's a lot clearer in the fan-made high-def cleanups.

Uraniun235 wrote:

Lord Relvenous wrote:

Uraniun235 wrote: That later scene where McCoy tries to shoot Grumps? Yeah, somehow Waterston managed to get live bullets in his gun. Grumps was a stand-up guy about it, though.

Common myth, and one started by the studio. It was circulated before the release to increase discussion. It worked marginally well, but has stuck around ever since, although it has been invalidated time and time again. If you watch the scene carefully, the wounds don't match up correctly with the angle of the barrel, meaning they were blood packets, not actual wounds.

Yeah, he had blood packets, because they intended for the gun to be loaded with blanks, so when Waterston fired they triggered the packets. Sam Waterston's not a good shot though, so even though the gun was live, Grumps didn't get hurt.


I mean, jesus, if Sam Waterston had actually shot Grumps, he would have gotten more than a stern talking to (and the worst tittie-twister since the Belushi incident in 1977) from Grumps.

Of course he would have gotten more than a stern talking to, that's why he never loaded the gun with bullets in the first place. Waterston might have been a prankster, but he wasn't monumentally stupid as you seem to be suggesting. You really think he's gonna load a .38 when he and Grumps are going to be having a close range fist-fight/struggle over the gun on slippery glass?

Ford Prefect wrote:It's pretty easy to tell they're real shots. Just compare how Waterston handles his .38 in any other scene in the film. With the blanks loaded there's shit-all recoil, but in that scene? Iron Arm McCoy can't handle it at all. It sounds the same because all the sound effects were made by firing each gun and dubbing it over (there are some subtle differences, bt they're very subtle). This is probably where Waterston got the live rounds. The effects guys bought something like eighty five thousand rounds across all the guns in the film, but there's only six thousand or so shots fired in the actual film.

Nothing we haven't heard before. Waterston himself admitted that his performance in that scene didn't live up to the rest of the movie because he was experiencing great fatigue from the busy shooting schedule. He couldn't keep up physically. That explains the seemingly incongruous reaction to recoil. He was tired.

Hey, everyone, list your favorite scene in the movie.

Mine is the 18-wheeler backwards chase. When you think about it, it's so contrived, but the way the movie sets it up so seamlessly, you don't even blink when they start after each other.

Call me sick, but the fight scene in that restaurant's walk-in freezer was my favorite. It also helped explain why the director spent so much time on the earlier scene where Grumps stole that staple gun.

The most rewarding scene for me was the one where the character of Michael Moriarty (inserted as a direct response to Moriarty fucking over the first movie) was executed by gunshot-to-the-crotch by Janet Reno. It was such a fitting send-off. The little bastard tried to send a bill to the studio for alleged therapy he needed after hearing about it, but it was properly laughed off.