I am under strict orders not to publicize this brook trout stream. So I will only say that it is somewhere in New England, unless it’s in New York, or maybe Pennsylvania.

The hiking is arduous, with the very real possibility of being treacherous. If I turned an ankle or something it would be very difficult to get out.

I tried to capture the steepness of it in these pix.

There are some legitimate 8-10 inch brook trout in here.

I really like hitting the small streams this time of year — before the understory grows up and I find myself in the middle of a thicket of prickers.

Some photos from two recent expeditions on small streams in search of brook trout.

Wachocastinook (aka Riga) Brook, March 12:

Sages Ravine, March 17

In both cases the winning fly was a soft-hackle wet fly, size 14, yellow.

These guys are seeing things. You aren’t.

I recently re-read Tom Wolfe’s “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” and, a couple years earlier, Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.”

Looking back at these books as a middle-aged man with over a decade of sobriety, I expected to have a different opinion or reaction than I did as a stoned teenager or drunken college student.

(Er, um, drunken graduate student also.)

One thing stood out to me — Neal Cassady was psychotic. Not a holy angel spouting beatitudes. A lunatic.

When  the “Electric Kool-Aid” subjects Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters drove their school bus cross country in 1964, with Cassady at the wheel, they filmed everything. They recorded everything too.

Of course they didn’t synch the audio recordings with the film footage.

Which meant that at journey’s end, Kesey and Kompany had miles of footage and tape to edit together.

They tried, but it was a mess, and ultimately the project fizzled.

In 2011, Allison Ellwood and Alex Gibney’s “Magic Trip” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

The Sundance Film Festival audience routinely enjoys the most appalling crap. They liked “Magic Trip.”

The directors managed to put together a more or less coherent account of the fabled trip, and even synched up some of the sound with the pictures.

Which is why I say, without any doubt, that Cassady was a complete whack job.

Where Allen Ginsberg heard an angel speaking, I hear babble from the padded cell.

It may just be a difference in perception — but I don’t want this guy driving the goddamn bus. Especially not while wearing headphones and shaking his head and waving his hands around.

The wheel, Neal.

Or is it “The Wheel, Neal”?

Anyway, despite the best efforts of the filmmakers to restore the footage and add to the myth of the Pranksters, “Magic Trip” boils down to the longest home movie of all time.

Hint to future psychedelic warrior/filmmakers — people who haven’t taken LSD can’t see what you are seeing, so shooting a lot of footage of people standing around in bathing suits will not be very interesting.

It’s probably a good thing that the Pranksters didn’t have modern digital equipment. They would have wound up with 1000 hours of shaky camera footage of people in bathing suits staring at the sky or at a stream or at the mud — not a miserly 100 hours.

Eyes on the road, cowboy

“Invasion of the Girl Snatchers” was the title given to the mid-80s rerelease of the 1973 exploitation flick “The Hidan of Maukbeiangjow.”

That’s pronounced “Mawk bee ang jow.” Just like it’s written.

The story, near as I can figure, has to do with Aph, a hippie wizard, who is under the control of the evil alien Utaya, who is in the body of private detective Sam Trowel and thus forced to wear Trowel’s truly unfortunate double-breasted sport coat.

There are bad guys and less bad guys and big 1970s land barges and hicktastic songs and zombies and alien confusion about human anatomy.

And hippies. Lots of hippies.

Aph wears a robe, has one of those broccoli haircuts and says things like “Oh Queen Shiltipada, hear the words of Aph, son of Jehovah” at the drop of a hat.

At the drop of two hats, you get stuff like this: “Wait! I question the ability of his astral shell to pierce the vortex of Etheria and yield its harvest to the upper kingdom.”

Well, it’s hard to argue with that, although Dope Number One tries.

“Man, you are a sickie!” he hisses at Aph, right before Queen Shiltipada drinks all the nitroglycerin that’s cunningly stored in a Lancer’s bottle.

I don’t want to spoil the end for you, so I’ll just say it makes no more sense than the beginning.

This true Grade Z filmmaking — spastic cuts, horrendous lighting, and the same two breasts, off and on.

An all-time classic Four coils, and a nomination for the next Iron Coil award.

The Godz — Whiffenpoof Song

I love bad movies. I admit it.

A giant man-eating shark/octopus hybrid that terrorizes a Mexican beach resort for no particular reason? Sign me up.

A sword and sorcery flick, made for about $11 and featuring the worst sword fight in cinematic history, plus an evil warlock dressed up like Gloria Swanson in “Sunset Boulevard”? I’ll buy the 30th anniversary DVD.

But even someone with an advanced degree in bad taste will have a problem with the latest entry in the “Let’s Infantilize the Elderly” sweepstakes, a wretched piece of dog doo called “Dirty Grandpa,” currently infesting a theater near you.

It stars Robert DeNiro and Zac Efron and Zac Efron’s abdomen. And his butt.

And everybody else’s butt. There are a lot of butts in this film.

That’s the best thing to report.

The idea is that Dick Kelly (DeNiro) crotchety old guy, has just lost his wife to cancer, so naturally he convinces his grandson Jason (Efron) to take him to Florida.

Hilarity is supposed to ensue.

The high point is a spring break party. This is also the low point. The net effect is to make eternal celibacy look like the only sane option.

Although Kelly having an intimate personal moment while watching pornography is pretty bad. And it says something about this film that somebody — director Dan Mazer, screenwriter John Phillips — thought it was funny.

I was under the impression that somewhere in the process of making a big feature film, with a big star, some rational adult casts an eye over the production and makes a decision — thumbs up or thumbs down.

Or, in the case of “Dirty Grandpa,” a thumb jab in the butt.

How any sentient being could give this thing the green light is beyond me.

Even  gross-out humor, something, somewhere has to be funny. A constant spew of unfunny material does not add up to a funny film.

It does add up to a headache and a resentment at having 102 minutes of precious life shot to hell.

Here are some suggested activities that would be much more fun than seeing “Dirty Grandpa”:

1. Join the Church of Scientology and then try to defect.

2. Attend a modern dance recital

3. Binge-read 30 years’ worth of back issues of The New Republic.

4. Take a lot of amphetamines and watch a presidential debate with the closed captioning on.

5. For the month of February, have someone strap you to an uncomfortable chair with a continuous loop of Jefferson Starship’s “We Built This City” playing at top volume

Or see DeNiro in 1988’s “Midnight Run,” which was truly funny.

You know you’ve got a stinker on your hands when the argument starts about what Medusa’s sisters were named.

That is the case with a 1964 Hammer film, “The Gorgon,” which fails to grip despite starring the dynamic duo of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.

I watched it with my friend Steve, who is precisely the sort of person who is going to say “Wait a minute, I don’t remember a Gorgon named Megaera.”

He did get off a good one, as the dopey hero goes back to the evil castle where he has already been zapped by the Gorgon once.

“Well, that’s a gorgone conclusion,” said Steve, planting his feet on the coffee table and looking pleased with himself.

Hahahaha.

That’s as good as it got.

Two coils, for good atmosphere and snaky-headed Gorgon.

With nothing else to do except watch meaningless college football on TV, I went fishing on Saturday, Jan. 2.

“Wait, what?” you exclaim. “Isn’t it cold and snowy? Aren’t the streams iced over?”

The answers: Yes, a bit; not really; and no.

We had a minor snow storm last week that dumped at most a couple of inches of slushy stuff, and it is pretty much gone.

The Housatonic is running high, but the feeder streams are in nice shape.

And of course the Farmington is a year-round river with a regulated flow.

I chose to clamber up Sages Ravine and throw little streamers at brook trout. Big streamers, too.

And in the eternal quest to do things in an unorthodox manner, I rigged up a three-fly cast with a Madame X at the top and two bead head size 12 Wooly Buggers (olive and black) beneath.

That wouldn’t be remarkable except I was using a seven-foot four-weight rod in a itty-bitty mountain brook for itty-bitty wild trout.

It worked.

Later on I used a bigger streamer and hooked (but did not land) a substantial fish for this water — maybe 10 or 12 inches.

Soon enough it will snow and make this sort of thing impractical, but it sure was fun to get out on the second day of the year and catch fish.

Of the many things that were awful about the late 1980s and early 1990s, let us consider the “Witchcraft” films, and the many attempts to replicate “Animal House.”

“Witchcraft II: The Roman Numerals Begin” (aka “Witchcraft II: The Temptress”) features a threadbare plot about witchcraft, stupid teenagers, and Delia Sheppard as The Temptress, who anticipates Miley Cyrus in the final scene by twerking, insofar as twerking is possible while casting evil spells and clad in a tight dress and garter belt.

It takes an awful long time for the Temptress’ dress to come undone. A competent temptress could have seduced an entire regional school district in the time it takes this gal to throw some pixie dust on a dopey parent.

Nice incestuous touches though, and high-waisted jeans.

“Fraternity Demon” answers the question “What happens if you chant ancient spells during a frat party?”

Why, a scantily-clad female demon shows up.

Depending on your level of intoxication, this can go either way. The stone-cold sober computer nerd  gets yanked by his crank, if you get my drift. So from his point of view…

But fun-loving Tony has the time of his mortal life, in an extended scene  underneath Isha, the demon (played in a rather detached manner by the immortal Trixxie Bowie).

This scene has some wonderful dialogue:

Isha: More? More?

Tony: Uggh. Aagh.

Isha: Oh, oh, oh. It’s been centuries.

Tony: Grrr. Uggh.

Isha: (Wriggling) More? More?

So while the Witchcraft flick accurately captures some of the horror of the time — the feathered hair, the acid-washed denim — the makers of “Fraternity Demon” actually thought about their movie a little.

One coil for the former, and three for the latter.

Top: Belcebu, the world’s worst Satanic rock band getting down while the audience enjoys themselves in unique ways. Bottom left: Johnny smacks around a martial arts babe while a lesbian blood sister does calisthenics. Bottom right: A slow night in the dungeon of Count Regulu, after he delivers one of his patented 15-minute revenge lectures.

It looked promising: the immortal Christopher Lee in an adaptation of “The Pit and the Pendulum;” made in Germany, in 1967, perhaps trying to out-hammer the Hammer Studios in girls ‘n’ gore.

What could go wrong?

Well, everything.

Just the coach ride to Count Regula’s castle takes about 15 minutes of screen time.

And once they get there, the count seems determined to talk everybody to death.

As I scour the offerings on Amazon Prime, I realize there is a reason these films are being given away, in effect.

It’s because they are lousy.

Another case in point: The incomprehensible “Belcebu: Diablos Lesbos” (which even I can figure out), or “Belcebu: Tomame, soy tu puta del infierno” which is a little trickier but boils down to “Take me, Beelzebub, I’m your bitch from hell.”

This exciting Spanish horror film is shot in the dark. I had to check the settings on the TV to make sure I hadn’t set it on super-dim by mistake.

There’s this junkie hooker and she goes to jail for a while and when she comes out she goes back to her old ways but in the meantime her old squeeze Toni has become Belcebu the death horror Satan rock star and they have a party and there’s sex and devil stuff and really horrible devil rock and fat businessmen in their shorts and the Devil in the bathtub and heroin and everything burns up and it’s in Spanish with half-hearted subtitles.

Rounding out this Trio of Tripe is “Blood Sisters of Lesbian Sin,” which stars a guy who looks like a tall Tom Cruise, minus the Scientology, and some witch sisters from Golgotha County, only one of whom appears to be of the lesbitatious persuasion.

This film was shot with decent lighting and features eight distinct sets of breasts.

Plus lines like this: “Please don’t hurt me any more. I can give pleasure as well as pain.”

The last two flicks are distributed by Troma, but on Amazon, at least, the viewer is spared the idiotic Lloyd Kaufman introduction that the DVD won’t allow you to skip.

Taken together these three turkeys get two coils.