A very busy week, made suddenly very complicated by a sudden call to complete a long-delayed dental procedure. That is why I haven’t been around.
Monday, Tuesday: city meetings, where I run audio. Wednesday: story for June video magazine due. Also work all evening doing slide slow for my wife’s graduating class this Saturday. It was urgent I get the damn thing done because it is now Thursday morning, we just finished shooting the stand-ups for the magazine, and in three hours I’m going to be in a dental chair getting four or five damaged, increasingly worthless teeth extracted and an immediate denture slapped in. This is something I have never experienced, and I have no idea what sort of condition I will be in tonight. Soup is almost certainly on the menu.
I have the freaking order of the slideshow done, but was frustrated from roughly 10pm to midnight last night because I could not get any sort of music file to play in it. I’ve been using Open Office for the last couple of years because I couldn’t afford Microsoft Office. Last year I managed this trick just fine in OpenOff’s version of Power Point, Impress. This year I’m suddenly being told that any file format – even the ones specifically mentioned in the Open File dialog – are “not supported”. Surfing around forums proves no help. Turns out if I just tell it to embed, save it to a Power Point show and then use Microsoft’s free Power Point viewer the music plays just fine. A bulky, cumbersome workaround, which means I’m timing blind, and still not finished, so hopefully I won’t be too wrecked tonight. Graduation is Saturday morning.
But yeah, I still managed to watch some movies, somewhere in there. Mainly because my landline shorted out and I was without the Net for three days.
I saw Avengers again, this time with my family. Still amazing, still flawless entertainment. I’m still embittered that every bit that would have made me go woohoo had been spoiled for me by the time I actually saw it – where are the Internet outages when you really need them? – but I got to see my wife and son react to them, so that was cool. Had to spend most of the end credits explaining to my son who… that guy at the end was (I still tread carefully for you, dear reader), and I wonder how many nerds had to explain that to non-nerd companions. I checked, and in my copy ofThe Marvel Encyclopedia, he only gets one-sixth of a page.
In any case, my wife is the very definition of a non-comics nerd, and she thought the movie was amazing. Which it is.
My other movies were at the other end of the scale, budget and amazing-wise. Saturday morning I was up at a Godforsaken hour because that’s what your body does to you, and I watched While the City Sleeps, a Fritz Lang-directed piece of newspaper noir from 1956. Lang is always worth watching, and the layered story here is pretty good. First off, a news media magnate kicks off after insisting that his various outlets sensationalize a murder where the killer left the message “Ask Mother” scrawled in lipstick on a wall. Then, his son (Vincent Price!) arrives to take over, without much of any experience in the trade. He creates a new position, Executive Director, and tells the heads of the three branches: Wire Service, Newspaper, and Photos – that whoever solves the case of the Lipstick Killer gets the job.
The cast is great: George Sanders as the Wire honcho, Ida Lupino as a conniving society columnist, Dana Andrews starring as a Pulitzer-winning TV news analyst who used to work the crime beat, and slowly finds himself sucked into the investigation. Toss in Howard Duff as the detective in charge of the case, and you got your very solid detective thriller cast. Andrews finally tucks into the case with glee, eventually putting his girlfriend in danger; it’s pretty amazing to see so many of the threads of the unsub-killer genres being used at this early date, as Andrews and Duff begin profiling the killer. And even if detective stories with a dollop of soap opera aren’t your thing, who could possibly pass up a chance to see Vincent Price in Bermuda shorts?
I also have to say that seeing a story involving journalistic integrity made me absolutely wistful. Man, fuck NewsCorp.
My viewing of While the City Sleeps was also movie number 15 on The List, so goal achieved on watching half of them before Summer hit. Huzzah.
The other movie seen during the outage was chosen at random, something I’d had for a while: You’ll Find Out, which is a parody of Old Dark House movies starring Kay Kyser (and his College of Musical Knowledge), and three guys named Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Peter Lorre.
Kyser is sort of a blip on the landscape these days, but he was pretty darn successful in his day, famous enough that he and Moe-bedecked comedian Ish Kabibble crop up in Looney Tunes. His radio show, a combination variety and game show, was quite popular. It’s unsurprising that he’d make the crossover to movies. It’s also a little unfortunate.
Admittedly, You’ll Find Outis his first movie. Maybe he got more confident, Ish Kabibble less annoying. But I doubt it.
Okay, so Kyser and his band are playing at the 21st birthday party of his manager’s fiancee. Of course, she lives with her eccentric aunt at a creepy old house accessible only by a single bridge, which will mysteriously blow up in the course of the movie. Somebody’s been trying to kill the fiancee, possibly Boris as the old family friend, Bela as the psychic who’s been getting lots of money from the superstitious aunt, or Lorre as a psychic-busting scientist. Or, given that it’s Karloff, Lugosi and Lorre, it’s probably all three. Oh, sorry. Spoiler.
When I was a kid, I was always pissed off that You”ll Find Out kept getting scheduled in the late night horror movie slot. I thought that perhaps now, as an old-timer, I could better appreciate it. Well, nottttttttt really, it turns out. It’s not dreadful, but it’s not a forgotten gem, either. Our big three bad guys act like they’re in a different picture entirely, and I kinda wish I had been watching that movie. The musical numbers are good, but achingly white. I dearly wished Cab Calloway could have dropped by for at least one number. And as I pointed out on Twitter, the final number employs a device used by Lugosi for ghostly voices to make it appear Kyser’s vocalist is singing through the band’s instruments, making it the first instance of auto-tuning, in the year 1940.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go get my jaw ripped out.
I try to impose a bit of organization on my time, and sometimes it even works. I’m not insane about it, because that would make me insane; I am able to put aside blocks of time for The Show, for the various City functions at which I run audio, interviews and events I am videotaping. Past that, life is too chaotic to plan more than two, maybe three days out, usually in the form of “I will watch Movie A Friday night, and then Movie B on Sunday night.” That gives me some free play during the day, and that is when stuff like this happens.
I check on Instant Watcher occasionally, mainly to see if anything I want to see on Netflix Instant is about to expire and vanish from the realm of possibility. This phenomenon once bit a Crapfest on the ass when Dave’s choice, Jaws: The Revenge suddenly vanished from his queue. So I learned to keep tabs on this sort of thing, which is how I finally saw The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and That Obscure Object of Desire. Not to mention Marwencol, which I didn’t write about, and I find that odd. Hm. “Marwencol is a good, interesting documentary.” There. I feel better now.
The upshot of the last 200 words is that, on Saturday last, I found myself adrift and saw that Jean Rollin’s Grapes of Death (Les raisins de la mort) was expiring on Instant. My sole experience with Rollin to this point was Requiem for a Vampire years ago, and since it was dubbed into English, it was likely one of the alternate versions, like Caged Virgins. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t find it particularly memorable, either. But Rollin is held up as a minor visionary in the horror field, so I started buffering Grapes.
Okay, so the setup is we have a vineyard in France where the manager is mixing his own pesticides, and it’s making his workers sick. His advice is to wait for the new airtight masks which are arriving tomorrow, and then we’re off to our heroine, Elisabeth, who is traveling by train to meet him at the vineyard. Elisabeth and her friend have the train car all to themselves, as they are “Holidaying in October!” Until the train stops briefly at a station, one guy gets on, starts oozing green pus and blood from facial lesions, and murders Elisabeth’s friend.
Elisabeth pulls the Emergency Stop, which is sort of reasonable, but then engages in what is only the first of a litany of questionable actions she will commit throughout the movie: rather than running to the front of the stopped train, where the engineer and his assistant, at the very least, would be getting off to see what the hell the emergency is – and since Mr. Pus walks toward the back of the train, and doesn’t see her – we can only assume that Elisabeth runs off perpendicular to the train, into the woods. This is, to be sure, standard horror movie protagonist idiocy, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
And that’s what she gets for being blind!
You saw this coming, or read it in the many breathless blurbs about the movie: the pesticide resulted in a tainted batch of wine which was premiered at the local Wine Festival, and everyone who has been drinking it is turning into pus-spewing homicidal maniacs. After escaping from a house lorded over by one such murderous pus-fiend, she lucks onto an entire village of them, in which she commits the second and third of her extraordinary blunders: first, there is a blind girl she finds wandering around outside the village. Entering the village, she refuses to tell the girl what she sees, which is the aftermath of the maniacs killing (I presume) all the non wine-drinkers and beer drinkers. The blind girl, however, can smell burning buildings and keeps putting her hands on bloody faces, quite understandably does not trust this woman who keeps telling her everything is alright, and escapes into the night at her first opportunity. To be messily butchered.
“You’re wondering if I’m normal.”
The third instance is when she finds a woman in a house who is apparently unaffected by the madness (played by Brigette Lahaie, a fixture in French movies involving nudity) and is holed up in the mayor’s house. Elisabeth demands that they escape from the village right freaking now, although it is the middle of the night. Yes, that is the perfect time to get away from roving maniacs: when you can’t see them.
It gets established that the wine affects women more slowly than men, so of course Lahaie is insane, just not spewing pus yet, and throws Elisabeth to the maniacs. She’s rescued by two guys from a local road-building crew who show up with a shotgun and dynamite. They eventually make it to the vineyard, where Elisabeth’s fiance is still holed up, fighting off madness and blaming himself (and rightly so). It all ends up in a downbeat ending that makes you hate everyone involved.
Grapes is usually held up as a novel take on the zombie movie, which it is – if one ignores Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974) wherein an ultrasonic pesticide substitute makes the dead rise, or George Romero’s The Crazies (1973) in which a leaked nerve gas turns people into violent maniacs. I also seem to recall that Grapes is regarded as minor Rollin, at best – but I could be misremembering that.
Here’s the thing: Rollin is best known for mixing eroticism with horror. In Grapes this takes the form of exposing a woman’s breasts – in Lahaie’s case, much more than that – and then bloodily doing away with the owner of said breasts. I admit it, I am male, and have the usual male regard for breasts. I like them. I like looking at them. I do not like seeing terrible things happen to, or around breasts. This probably does not make me the ideal target audience for this movie.
Or a whole lot of movies. I don’t like the Ilsa movies, for instance; generally speaking, I have no use for movies that simply function as catalogs of atrocities, but this is likely the true basis of that disdain.
Add to that the fact that I called it quits with zombie movies some ten years ago, and The Grapes of Death was doomed before that first scene even unspooled.
It seems to be a corollary of my life that every time I manage to get a long weekend, the week after is going to start at an accelerated rate and just continue to speed up from there. How I managed to get last week’s entry on the Good Friday Crapfest is beyond me, but it got done. In this welter of work, the Stanley Kubrick Project may have gone by the wayside, but I did manage to watch five movies, none of which I wrote about here.
I’ll try to not be too wordy.
First off was The Stabilizer, a 1986 Indonesian action flick that pairs boundless enthusiasm with limited skill. New Zealand English teacher-turned-action-star Peter O’Brian, plays Peter Goldson, The Stabilizer. On loan from the FBI, Goldson is that special breed of person who will stabilize the balance between good and evil. He does this by punching and shooting bad guys and driving various vehicles through walls. He’s there to get Greg Rainmaker, international scum, who raped and killed Goldson’s girlfriend by stomping on her with his oversized golf shoes.
If there is one thing The Stabilizer is, it’s action packed, and some of that action is pretty okay. Slow spots are minimized, and you know you’re never more than a few minutes away from another sloppy fight or heavy machinery crashing through a wall. This is accompanied by near-constant unintentional laughs, making this the perfect Crapfest movie. Unfortunately, they won’t let me show it, no matter how many times I point to the box that says, “The Drunken Master’s Grand Theft Auto!” I’m sure Lloyd Kaufmann took the day off after writing that blurb, it’s so perfect.
Yes, Troma distributed the disc here in America, and a gesund on them for doing it. That’s the main reason I’m not allowed to show it, though. There’s an odd, unofficial No Troma rule, apparently, which extends even to stuff they didn’t make, so I might as well not even bring up movies like Sugar Cookies or even a movie Rick has been agitating for, Mad Dog Morgan. Ah well:
This was watched for a Daily Grindhouse podcast, still being edited as I write this. My major contribution was confusing Judd Omen with Jon Cypher, as I mentioned his character at the end of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, in the prison bus, shouting, “Great movie Pee-Wee! Action-packed!”
Which is really all I can say about The Stabilizer.
Late one night I watched American Grindhouse on Netflix Instant. It purports to be a history of the American Exploitation Movie, narrated by Robert Forster. It starts out very strongly, with clips from silent movies that I had no idea had survived, moving through the talkies up until the last decade (it’s a 2010 movie). Sadly it starts getting sketchy in the 70s, as subgenres start proliferating, and a lot seems glossed over. But it’s never boring, and a good primer for the uninitiated; those of us swimming through this stuff all our lives aren’t going to find much new.
Fittingly, the trailer will suck you right in:
Watching Spartacushad left me wanting more Hollywood epics, if only for comparison’s sake, so it was lucky for me that Daily Grindhouse asked me to review one of the new Twilight Time Blu-Rays, Demetrius and the Gladiators. But that meant I needed to watch The Robe first, as one is the sequel to the other.
For all you heathen dogs: The Robe is the tale of the Roman who won Christ’s clothes in a gambling match held at the foot of the cross. That guy is Marcellus Gallio, a debauched Tribune, played by Richard Burton. Travelling with him in his political exile in Jerusalem is his slave, Demetrius, played by Victor Mature. Demetrius becomes a devout Christian and runs off with The Robe while Marcellus is consumed by guilt over what he’s done. The Roman eventually tracks down the wily Greek, only to find himself converted to Christianity, and eventually martyred for his belief by Caligula, Emperor of Overactors, though that means it’s kind of a crock that there is no Saint Marcellus.
The Robe doesn’t feature a whole lot of budget-gobbling crowd scenes, so a lot of the time it feels like the expanded frame of this new-fangled CinemaScope is going unused, though there are great, painterly moments – the scenes on Golgotha, for instance. There are a couple of action scenes, quoted in that trailer, but they are far outnumbered in screen time by proselytizing. There is definitely more reverence on display than rambunctiousness.
Richard Burton’s taciturn portrayal of Marcellus doesn’t truly sell the character’s conversion (frankly, the script doesn’t do him any favors in this regard), and he’s rather overshadowed by Victor Mature. Michael Rennie is marvelous as Peter, and Jay Robinson’s time as Caligula is thankfully short. Jean Simmons is Jean Simmons. In all, I guess it was a pretty good Easter movie.
And then the Extremely Busy Week started. I survived it somehow. In celebration of that fact, I treated myself to lunch at the Star Cinema Grill and The Cabin in The Woods. I had the theater to myself.
I am going to scrupulously avoid saying anything about this movie except that I loved it. You know how tween girls were about Titanic? That’s me with The Cabin The Woods.
I now see that Lionsgate has scrupulously disabled embedding on all of the YouTube trailers for Cabin. Thanks a lot, guys, I’m not really sure what that accomplishes.
It’s amazing how little that trailer gives away. The Cabin in The Woods has the best blend of horror and comedy that I have seen in ages – since, ironically enough, Evil Dead II – and every serious horror fan who hasn’t seen it already, should see it now.
Yes, I’m aware that there are also people who say it’s stupid and it’s over-hyped and they want that hour and a half of their lives back. These people are big dummy stupidpants.
So then I got to watch Demetrius & the Gladiators, which I found to be one of the few sequels that was better than its predecessor. Better compositions, better balance between sermonizing and sword-slinging, it’s like a mirror image of The Robe. Demetrius’ fall from faith is a lot better handled than Marcellus’ conversion, and you’ve got actors like Ernest Borgnine and William Marshall shoring things up. Susan Hayward deserved a better script, and… oh boy, Jay Robinson gets more screentime.
While I was writing this, I see the review went live, allowing me to see every single mistake I made. Oh, well. Such is life on the Internets.
To top all this off, I finished my story for this week early, and now I’m wrapping this up. So I think it’s time to finally treat myself to The Raid: Redemption. Hi-keeba!
So there were a bunch of us who had Good Friday off, for a variety of reasons. Enough of us – back in February, we did it with only four people, and frankly, it has been done with three. At any rate, it was time for an impromptu Crapfest.
We were pretty determined to take it easy, and the first hour – Rick and I arrived at Casa Dave at 3:00 – was spent on the patio, watching Dave grill and smoke these Flintstone-style brontosaurus ribs he had hand-rubbed the day before. Alan made a surprise appearance, having been given the day off at the last minute, and when Paul arrived – his first Crapfest in a while – we began.
How Dave’s ribs tasted: artist’s representation
Well, first, we had some of those ribs. Let me say I am not a great fan of pork ribs, but Dave’s alchemy had wrought magical changes in this meat. The very last scene in Lynch’s Eraserhead, where Henry embraces the Girl in the Radiator in heaven, all white light and one sustained, heavenly note? That was the first bite into these ribs. And every subsequent bite thereafter.
Then we began.
At one of those Crapfests, in the faraway land of 2011, while we were watching 70s variety TV and watching Dave scream with horror, Paul had brought up the subject of Alice Cooper: The Nightmare, an ABC special done in the In Concert time slot. Basically, it’s Alice’s then-current album, Welcome to My Nightmare, done in long video form… in 1975. Well, I dug up a copy – it had ever only been released on VHS – and here is Vincent Price making damned sure the producers got their money’s worth:
(Or rather we would if the YouTube version of Scrooge hadn’t scoured any excerpt from that special off the Innernets. Somebody give me lots of money so I can start hosting videos on my site.)
Shorn of commercials, The Nightmare is only an hour long, and frankly, even then, it comes close to wearing out its welcome (and mind you, this is an Alice Cooper fan talking here). But just when it reaches that point, it ends, so the worst thing that can be said about it is I have been walking around with Alice Cooper music stuck in my head ever since. Not such a bad thing. (again – Alice Cooper fan)
But then, as Dave arose to change discs after the end credits rolled, something happened… somebody had put something on the disc after Alice Cooper. Something horrible. Who could have done such a thing?
*giggle*
Yes, it was the full infomercial for Harvey Sid Fisher’s Astrology Songs, shot with two cameras, a simple video switcher and probably two hours in a studio with three or maybe four interpretive dancers – we kept losing track. Mr. Fisher is still around, and still selling music – give him a shot.
You know, I was expecting the “stop” button to be hit after a couple of minutes, the joke told. But no, you guys surprised me: you stuck it out through the entire zodiac. Respect.
I also suspect that the desire to go through the whole thing was fueled by Dave’s heavy sighs and eye-rollings. And also when his wife, Ann got home and Dave was heard telling her, “No, we are not running it back so you can hear your sign!”
After that… well, the whole thing was so impromptu, we hadn’t really established a battle order. I had brought a stack of DVDs, and Dave had brutally gone through it and arranged them in order of *harrumph* quality (and totally dissed my copy of Wicked World, autographed by Barry “Things” Gillis!). When it was commanded we watch something with “lots of kicking”, it was time for The Magic Blade. Here, have a window-boxed, spoileriffic trailer:
Ti Lung plays Fu Hung-hsieh, a complete badass who may not have been based on The Man With No Name, but he is certainly wearing the only poncho in the World of Martial Arts. He also carries a remarkable custom sword that is a combination of a machete and a tonfa. If that isn’t enough for you, he’s come back to fight Lo Lieh’s character, Yen Nan-fei, a year after their first duel; the rematch gets postponed when somebody tries to kill Yen repeatedly, and Fu as well. As ever, somebody is trying to take over The World of Martial Arts, and is eliminating all competitors in his quest to obtain the legendary Peacock Dart, a sort of martial arts neutron bomb. And he’s doing it with a small army of colorful henchmen, with names like The Wood Devils and Devil Granny.
If, like me, your major exposure to old school Shaw Brothers kung fu flicks had been Chang Cheh’s blood-and-thunder exercises with the Venoms, the films of director Chor Yuen are a bracing breath of fresh air. Largely doing film adaptations of the pulpy wuxia novels by Ku Long, these are like detective novels infused with distilled Chinese martial arts flicks, and they are amazing. I started really getting into Hong Kong martial arts flicks with Chang’s Kid With the Golden Arm, when I realized that, for all intents and purposes, I was watching a comic book made flesh, all superhero battles and internecine conflict; Chor Yuen and Ku Long’s universe embraces that fully, right down to the colorful noms de guerre of the bad guys. Black Pearl, Iron Flute, The 5 Poison Kid, Serpent King… and in my limited time, I can’t find the exact reference, but I recall a villain translated as something like Venomous Eddie, the Stun-Dude.
I am thankful Image Entertainment put out a nice DVD of this using the Celestial Pictures restored print, but with the added option for the English dub. Those old, familiar voices I’ve heard for years. Best of all, if you want to severely injure your friends, use the “But still” drinking game. One of the phrases used by English dubs to fill up lip movement is “But still”, and The Magic Blade has a metric ton of them. Guaranteed alcohol poisoning by the end of the flick.
We had our second wind now, and while Rick warmed up the delicious pulled pork he had brought (which would be enriched by a variety of fruit salsas – amazing stuff) we filled the time with movie trailers from the 42nd Street Forever: Alamo Drafthouse Edition, wherein I discovered that Dave had never seen Message From Space, which I found astounding in someone who had been the Ultimate Star Wars Nerd until the prequels broke him of that behavior – and that Sonny Chiba’s The Bodyguard looks incredible:
Then, our bellies full and far too torpid to make a run for it, Dave decided it was time for his contribution. Keep in mind, now, that Dave is a vengeful monster, probably still smarting over Astrology Songs. Hell, probably still smarting over Things and Darktown Strutters. Therefore, he began the 1997 unsuccessful TV pilot for The Justice League of America. Never shown in America, it was instead shipped over to Europe, because we hate Europe.
(First, HD trailer, my ass, second of all… isn’t that the theme from the infinitely superior animated series?)
If you were smart enough to not click on that, here’s an overview, of sorts. Our licensed DC heroes are The Atom, Flash, Green Lantern, Fire, and Ice – all turned into young twenty-somethings, so it’s a sort of proto-Smallville, though I didn’t hate that series as much as I hate this idea. You see, they’re almost all sharing a house, and there are, therefore, pseudo-Big Brother interludes where the heroes, in their civvies, talk humorously about being superheroes.
Besides the obvious – who are these guys, who supposedly guard their secret identities jealously, making these interview tapes for… well, there’s a plethora of things wrong. The Flash here is Barry Allen, supposedly dead for twelve years in continuity, and chronically unemployed. We never see his origin because that took place on his freaking job as a police forensic scientist. And well, also because they stole his origin for Ice’s origin. A guy trying to get a date with Fire’s secret identity recognizes her as the heroine on TV largely because all she does is smear some makeup under her eyes. Dave, when he wasn’t giggling like the Riddler at our pain, was complaining about the off-model costumes or moaning that Green Lantern was being a dick. That, at least was to expected, because it was Guy Gardner.
Well, not all of us were too stuffed to run away, because Paul and Alan, who are always our designated wusses, slinked out during this. If you are not a Designated Wuss, you can check out the whole heavy-sigh-inducing thing on YouTube. I do not recommend it.
So we remaining three needed a bit of fresh air afterwards, and I convinced Dave to put on Point Blank, because Lee Marvin being a badass can heal many wounds.
I’ll be frank: since the last time I’d seen Point Blank,I’d read the source novel, The Hunter, by Richard Stark aka Donald E. Westlake, and I’d conflated the two; the movie is quite definitely drawn from the book, but the novel is leaner, meaner, more tense. John Boorman directed the movie, and there’s quite a bit of Boorman angst and psychedelic melancholy at play here, way more than I remembered. But it’s a good flick, a good way to decompress, and man, Lee Marvin really does want his money, which became our riff for what was left of the evening. “That guy must really want his money.”
It was late, we started packing up, and Dave found a showing of Mortal Kombat on cable. Rick said goodnight, but I remained through the end. Hey, it was MortalKombat, and if you can’t understand that, then I’m afraid you can’t understand Crapfest, either.
I guess that was a pretty good Spring Break -y’know, outside of the unpaid vacation premise – in that it was pretty low impact. I watched a movie a day, wrote about them. That’s about as close to Nirvana as I’m likely to currently get. Well, all good things, etc, as my family returned from their vacation, I lost my sovereign status over the TV, and found myself trying to care for a wife that had, as usual, pushed herself too far for too long. Shooting video in a thunderstorm system that had spawned three tornadoes the night before. Getting soaked to the skin and wondering if my current sniffling is due to something more pernicious than my usual rampant allergies.
You know, Life’s Rich Pageant.
I’ve managed to get two movies in so far this week, mainly because the Super Soaker day was so long, I was in danger of logging too many hours in my work week, and had to take Thursday off. Though I’m fairly itching to get on with the Stanley Kubrick Project – next up is Paths of Glory – it turned out to be neither of the movies.
First up was Vigilante, the 1983 William Lustig flick, watched for an upcoming Daily Grindhouse podcast. (And knowing that, I placed it on The Other List. I am gaming my own system) It would be pretty easy to dismiss this movie as a Death Wish rip-off, but since Death Wish was made in ’74, that doesn’t wash – you don’t do rip-offs ten years after the fact (you wait twenty, apparently, and call it a remake – but that’s a rant for another time). It’s been pointed out that Vigilante is more like an homage to the Italian revenge flicks that proliferated after the success of Death Wish, making it, at best, an homage to an homage. Or something.
The tragically under-used Robert Forster is a New York mechanic whose working buddies (including Fred Williamson) have gotten tired of the situation on the streets and have formed a sort of vigilante hit squad. For the most part, they seem to satisfy themselves with beating the living crap out of rapists and drug dealers, but it’s obvious they are soon going to be taking it to the next level. Forster isn’t having any of that, even after his wife is stabbed multiple times and his son shotgunned to death by a street gang – he still believes in the courts. Of course, that faith is quashed when a corrupt judge gives the leader of the gang a suspended sentence, and Forster himself winds up going to the pen for a month for contempt of court when he tries to assault said judge. Once out, Forster tells Williamson he is totally down with this vigilante stuff.
Vigilante is way too episodic for its own good; once Forster goes to prison, the movie splits into two movies, one about Forster, the other about Williamson. The two movies intersect when the new Vigilante Squad plus One busts into an apartment so Forster can personally plug the gang leader. After that, Forster splits from the Squad, which leaves Williamson’s movie unfinished. Forster’s movie does come to a literally explosive end, but I am still left wondering about some plot threads left over from Williamson’s flick.
There’s no denying that the movie is well cast and well made; some of the photography, in fact, is damn well gorgeous – it’s not every day you see an exploitation flick shot in Panavision. I’m always down with watching Forster, and this is one of the best things I’ve seen Williamson do; he still gets to be quite the badass, but he’s a conflicted badass. You can see he doesn’t really like what he’s doing, but he finds it necessary, and soldiers on.
Can’t really recommend it, unless you’re a Forster, Hammer, or Italian Revenge fan. In that case, go for it.
I watched Vigilante on Netflix Streaming, and as a side project to that, remembered that there were various websites that laid out when movies were expiring on that service. Found to my shock (or something like it) that two Luis Bunuel movies were going offline on April 1, and as they were a part of my goal to get better educated about film, they got pushed waaaaay up the queue. First up: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.
This was my first full-length Bunuel; I had seen Un Chien Andelou years before, his short in collaboration with Salvador Dali, but none of his long-form stuff, so I wasn’t quite sure of what I was getting into. Bunuel is best known as a surrealist, but Charm is, I think, more appropriately absurdist rather than surrealist. I am down with the absurd, as the kids say, I get it, and, as such, I really enjoyed it.
A marvelous cast is led by Fernando Ray, who plays an Ambassador from the fictional Latin American country of Miranda, who is smuggling cocaine in his diplomatic pouch. He and his two French friends (and their spouses and one sister) will keep trying to sit down to a meal, but never quite get to it due to a series of increasingly bizarre and chaotic events.
And that is about the most concise and sensate synopsis I can manage. Going into too much detail would take longer than watching the movie and serve no real purpose; I’m kind of a lunkhead when it comes to these things, and have to have any symbolism that prances by explained to me. I’ll try to just point out some of my favorite bits:
In the scene where Ray starts pulling bags of coke out of his pouch, one of his compatriots points out there’s a pretty girl on the sidewalk in front of his office, selling mechanical cat and dog toys. Ray’s response is to take a sniper rifle out of a nearby cabinet and shoot one of the dogs. (He explains that she is a terrorist from Miranda spying on him, but still…)
The ladies are at a stylish restaurant (complete with string quartet) for what appears to be brunch. They order tea and switch places because the young sister cannot stand the sight of cellists. After being told that the restaurant is out of tea, they order coffee, and a young army lieutenant joins them. He tells them the tale of how he poisoned his stepfather while young. The ladies accept this without batting an eyelash, all smiles. Then they are told the restaurant is out of coffee.
Later, in a similar scene, their dinner party is interrupted by a squad of soldiers who will be using the estate for war games. Of course, they are invited to join in for dinner, but just as they are starting their meal, a messenger arrives and advises the colonel that the opposing army has started the war early. Before they leave however, they all sit to hear the messenger relate a dream he had the night before. Afterwards, everyone is captivated. One soldier says, “Now tell the train dream!” “Oh, yes, yes!” cry the ladies, but the Colonel demurs, “No, no, we must get to the war.”
Dreams play an increasingly important part in the proceedings, as the more outrageous and violent incidents are terminated by a character awakening from a dream. In fact, one states that he was having a dream about another character having a dream – that’s the complexity with which Bunuel layers his imagery. It’s not as confrontational or frantic as the cascading imagery in Head, but it is so much more, well, bourgeois. As one can tell from the sarcastic title, these are terrible people being terrible because it is their right to be terrible, even to the point where being terrible is blase. So much of this movie is striking and haunting, I feel I must recommend it highly, even knowing that it is not for all markets.
I’m going to have to find time this week for the other Bunuel movie in danger of expiring, That Obscure Object of Desire. And possibly carve out some time to break into Paths of Glory. These are good problems to have.
An odd thing, this watching movies because someone has died. I mean, it seems wholly justified to watch Head after the departure of Davy Jones a couple of weeks ago, but I woke up this morning to the sad news of the death of French artist Jean Giraud, better known, perhaps, under his signature as Moebius. His stories were one of the reasons I kept buying Heavy Metal after the readable Ted White years, and long long after the allure of thinking “That’s a really well-drawn breast” had worn off. His stories, besides being brilliantly drawn, were puckish, unusual, and often mind-blowing. And much as I respect his body of work, there is no way in hell I am going to watch the Heavy Metal movie in his honor. Maybe some day, I should examine why I hate that movie so much. Maybe.
The one movie I do possess which would be more in line with my current viewing template is Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, for which he did design work and has a story credit. That, however, is on laserdisc. Current duties prevent me from setting up my mothballed player. He did concept art for Tron and Masters of the Universe, but again, no way in hell. There is Alien, and The Fifth Element (which is everything the Heavy Metal movie should have been, but was not), but I’ve seen both of those too recently.
The movie which would be most appropriate only exists in a parallel dimension: Alejandro Jodorowsky’s version of Dune. I’ve had a strange yen of late to watch the Lynch version again, but that is nowhere near the same thing. I guess I should dig out my copy of The Lost Incal, the impressively whacked-out comic series Moebius did with Jodorowsky – that would be a much better tribute than watching a flick only tangentially associated with his genius.
Anyway.
Yesterday (Friday the 9th, as I write this) brought the news that Peter Bergman of The Firesign Theatre had passed away. It literally stuns me that people only ten years younger than me will say “Firesign what? Who-?” Perhaps Firesign was too distinctly of its era, but I can’t really get my head around that. Funny is funny, and it’s not like the four guys who made up Firesign were overtly political or topical. Perhaps it was the fact that their best work was pretty much in the form of long radio plays, strange science-fiction constructs with pyrotechnic wordplay. Their occasional forays into video were pretty hit and miss, running the gamut from brilliant (Nick Danger and the Case of the Missing Yolks) to disappointing (Eat or Be Eaten).
Well, Number One on The Other List was Americathon, which the box assures us is “Written by Firesign Theatre veterans Phil Proctor and Peter Bergman”. The movie credits claim that the “Adaptation” was by Proctor and Bergman from their play, with a screenplay by director Neal Israel, Michael Mislove, and Monica McGowan Johnson. Such mongrelized credits are not uncommon in Hollywood, but it does cause one to wonder just who is to blame for Americathon.
With a phrase like that, you can assume I was somewhat disappointed.
Now, the movie starts well enough, if you can get past the literal lynching of then-President Jimmy Carter. By 1998, America has run out of gas, oil, and money. It owes 400 billion dollars to multi-billionaire Sam Birdwater (Chief Dan George), who wants his money in 30 days or he’ll foreclose on the country. Our hero, media expert Eric McMurken (Peter Riegert) wakes up in his car. You see, he lives in a trailer park where all the trailers have been replaced by cars. He gets on his bike and goes to work, on a street, and finally a highway, populated only by bicycles of every make, skateboards, and joggers. Even a passing firetruck is actually mounted on a bicycle.
The freeway actually vacant of any powered vehicles is a pretty bracing sight, and sets you up to hope for great things. The president is Chet Roosevelt (John Ritter), an EST graduate who was elected purely on his last name. He and his First Old Lady are in the Western White House, a condo sub-let in San Diego. McMurkin is called in to help find a media solution to the current crisis, and that ultimate solution is a telethon to raise 400 billion in 30 days.
A villainous Presidential advisor, Vincent Vanderhoff (Fred Willard), though, is in cahoots with the United Hebrab Republic (Israel and the UAE having made peace once they realized they both liked blonde shiksas), which wants to buy America once it’s been foreclosed upon. Vanderhoff attempts to sabotage Americathon first by hiring faded matinee idol and egomaniac Monty Rushmore (Harvey Korman) to MC the show, then insisting only government-cleared acts perform, resulting in five days of ventriloquist acts. Ultimately, the money is raised, thanks to Rushmore’s getting wounded live and on the air by Hebrab terrorists attempting to kidnap McMurkin, and Birdwater himself ponying up the last $100,000 because he really liked the show.
I’d love to say Americathon was a glorious mess, but it’s really just a mess. I can see Proctor and Bergman’s sense of absurd insanity peek through every now and then – Birdwater, for instance, made his fortune by foreseeing the great Clown Shoe craze of the 80s, and then high-fashion roller-skates once the gas started giving out. China turning into a major capitalist power is accurately predicted, though it is fast food that powers its rise to prominence. Meat Loaf appears as “Oklahoma Daredevil Roy Budnitz”, whose act on Americathon is dueling “The Last Living Car” with an array of hand weapons. It’s outrageous sketch comedy like that the central concept cries out for – and sadly, never gets.
The real standout for me – at least in the realm of high weirdness – is Vietnamese Puke Rock star Houling Jackson (Vietnam, incidentally, has reinvented itself as the gambling mecca of the world). Zane Buzby plays Houling, and she is terrifying. Roosevelt, of course, falls immediately in lust with her, as she is the extreme polar opposite of his First Old Lady (the extremely lovely girl next door type, Nancy Morgan). Buzby literally chews up and spits out any scene she’s in; she went on to a fitful acting career, and a much more successful – and, I hope, satisfying – career directing sitcoms. I mean, really: I started out thinking what the hell and ended up wanting more of her.
But past that, past isolated bits, Americathon plays out like a TV comedy sketch that goes on too long (so another thing it accurately predicts is SNL movies). The subplot with the Hebrabs never quite reaches its full potential, which would have helped leaven the comedy with some dramatic tension.
For some reason, in my head, Americathon is always connected to the previous Summer’s movie, FM. You never really hear about FM anymore, either; it was up against a re-released Saturday Night Fever and Grease, and sank without a trace. But it did have a very successful soundtrack album – hell, that Steely Dan “No Static At All” song will still crop up occasionally on Classic Rock stations. Americathon tried to till that soil itself, with a theme song by the Beach Boys and a puzzling appearance by Elvis Costello. I had quit my job at the record store about the time the Americathon album came out, but I recall a pretty high-profile release.
So really, it would have been a better tribute for Bergman had I dug out my VHS of the aforementioned Nick Danger or the re-dub jobs of J-Man Forever or Hot Shorts. Those were hilarious, and a lot more indicative of the man’s talents and strengths.
The Boys circa 1971. Peter's the handsome chrome dome on the left. RIP, fella; you done good.
This is an Election Year, and I am tempted to just keep that title for the rest of the year, which I’ll likely spend pretending to not be a member of the human race. Have you looked at the paper lately? It’s scary out there.
But this is not about politics. I will freely discuss this morning’s bowel movements before I will discuss politics, and let me be frank here, I will not discuss this morning’s bowel movement. Banging my head repeatedly into a brick wall is preferable to discussing politics, as the brick wall will let me stop, yet the end result is the same.
So now that I’m discussing politics, let me segue smoothly into what this is actually about, which is what I did on President’s Day.
Now, I realize that I am a poor excuse for an American because I did not buy new furniture on President’s Day, which is apparently the traditional method of celebration. No, in a series of mishaps and professional obligations, there had not been a Crapfest in many months. Some of us felt this absence quite keenly, and bemoaned the fact that there was a major project at Main Street Theater that was taking host Dave out of the equation through March.
Then Dave remembered President’s Day.
That was going to be a day off for him, and for Alan, who is another actor who wouldn’t be doing children’s shows on a school holiday. I work at a State college, so I was also free for that day, and the economy had finally caught up with Rick, who was unemployed, or as he put it, “Finally free to find a decent job.” Paul and Jeff had to work, as they are employed by Nazis who care nothing for our great country’s heritage and furniture shopping. The Other Dave had to bow out at the last minute, dealing with a flu epidemic in his household.
So there was just the four of us, the original four. Haha, how we laughed at the others, and indulged in the sudden glut of fabulous junk food that had brought in anticipation of a crowd twice our size. We were the Hardcore of the Apocalypse!
And, judging from the way the evening played out, we were determined to put that to the test.
As we counted coup, doled out the chips and various dips and party trays, the Warner Archive disc of The Mighty Mightor and Moby Dick played in the background. Yes, the glorious days of a caveman superhero and a literary giant reduced to fighting supervillains with two teens named Tom and Tub. You can safely assume Tub was the fat one.
Dave then started the ball rolling with… oh God… with… (just take a deep breath and say it) …Jokes My Folks Never Told Me. You will get nervous during the opening credits when you notice the number of Woolerys involved in this production – not one of which is Chuck. This could generously be called a sketch anthology movie in the vein of Kentucky Fried Movie, though lacking the wit, originality, or energy of that movie. The script for Jokes is apparently taken from one of those “adult” joke books I kept seeing in bus terminals back in the 70s. The reason your folks never told you these jokes were a) your parents likely had some wit and taste, and b) they knew how pathetically ancient the jokes were, and assumed they had long ago been buried in the cornfield.
Actions which – in the source joke, in its original form in that joke book – would be glossed over with a few words, are played out in real time to pad the running time. There are plenty of naked women to make sure you don’t demand your money back, yet not enough to dull the ennui that somehow also cuts like a knife. Here’s a couple of clips. Don’t click on them.
YouTubes of this movie come and go, so let’s see how long these last, especially that NSFW first joke. The second joke is significant, I am told, because the teen is a young Anthony Keidis from The Red Hot Chili Peppers. That is still no reason to click on these clips, which, incidentally, you should not do.
FOOL! I TOLD YOU NOT TO DO THAT! Well, now, imagine this going on for 82 minutes. I also swear that the movie was actually three hours long. In fact, Dave was surprised to discover that the second gorilla sketch was NOT the end of the movie, and that it in fact went on for another twenty minutes/years.
I took this photo of Rick at the very moment his soul left his body, after about the third “Farmer’s Daughter” sketch:
Dave claims he was introduced to this movie at the age of 12 by some hellspawned classmate whose parents had Showtime or something. Dave is also a horrible War Crimes Nazi whose word cannot be trusted in any way, manner or form.
We started doing serious damage to Dave’s vodka supply during this, and decided to cook up the pulled pork Rick had brought to fortify ourselves, and to let scar tissue develop over our raw, bleeding psyches after Jokes My Folks Never Told Me. During this, we played Sh! The Octopus which I was introduced to by Sandy Peterson at the last T-Fest. Sh! is a darned fine parody of Old Dark House movies, made during the heyday of old dark house movies, featuring some jokes the Three Stooges would later rip-off and that odd comedian who goes “Woo hoo hoo! Woo hoo!” during old Looney Tunes. It is also available from Warner Archive, a gesund on them.
It was also apparently too full of quality, as it was pulled off before finishing, even if it is only about an hour long. Too bad, as we never got to the best damned part of the movie. THIS IS A TREMENDOUS SPOILER, so don’t watch it if you ever intend to see Sh! The Octopus or if you have a head full of drugs:
And what did we take Sh! The Octopus off to watch? Things. This is bitter irony at industrial levels of bitter.
There is an alternate timeline in which I never fell in with the Daily Grindhouse guys, and in which I never saw Things. This alternate me is much happier, and does not have the pale, haunted look which I now sport. Things is a Canadian straight-to-video horror movie, from the spectacular salad days of Canadian straight-to-video horror movies. By which I mean a couple of metalhead hosers decided they liked horror movies, so they should make a horror movie. How hard can it be, eh?
Things is made on Super 8, the sound is almost totally dubbed, the music editing is done, charitably, with a hatchet and scotch tape. In order to get some name recognition for the box, they gave porn star Amber Lynn $2500 to play a news anchor and to read some cue cards which get further and further away from the camera. The only bit I can find on YouTube is a mash between one of Lynn’s more lucid news bumpers, and an appearance by star/producer Barry Gillis on actual Canadian TV to pimp the movie:
Thank your lucky stars that there’s no more of Things on YouTube. This movie is maddening. A horror movie plot is set in place, which is then studiously ignored for most of the movie. Excuses like “Dream logic” and “surrealism” are tendered in its defense – and the trouble is you can almost buy that. Why would characters be doing strange, nonsensical things in these circumstances, unless the script meant them to? Is there even really a script? Is this genius, or hackwork?
If I were to go through every bizarre … thing… in Things, we would be here all night. Here’s The Daily Grindhouse podcast that started this misery. Joe Bannerman says I sound defeated throughout. That’s a fair assessment. I can tell you it hit Crapfest like a neutron bomb. Alan’s brain seemed to shut itself down in self-defense. His wife would later ask us what we had done to him. “Destroyed his ability to ever again feel joy” was the answer.
Curse you, Canada. You fight dirty.
There really is no way to follow up Things; everything tastes like ashes. Dave put on possibly the only thing he could, which was Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. This is the short film that traces the professional life of Karen Carpenter and her ultimate death due to anorexia nervosa – and it’s all done with Barbie dolls. Despite that, it’s a serious look at the disorder, and quite sympathetic to Karen, although this is accomplished by making everybody else unsympathetic. The work with the dolls is pretty remarkable, especially the sets. However, filmmaker Todd Haynes didn’t get permission for the umpteen songs used on the soundtrack, lost a copyright infringement suit, and all copies of the movie were ordered destroyed (though apparently MoMA keeps a copy it cannot show). Therefore, WE WERE STRIKING A BLOW FOR LIBERTY ON PRESIDENTS DAY, YO.
Alan excused himself about midway through Superstar; he had early morning shows the next day. He was currently involved in Jackie and Me, which is about Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball, and he was apparently playing Utility Racist #1. Too bad he left early, because we finished up the evening with something Rick had been plugging for a long time, and I finally came over to his side after hearing a Projection Booth podcast on it: Darktown Strutters. If he’d stayed, Alan could have picked up some Racist Tips.
Holy cow.
The Darktown Strutters is a small (four members) female motorcycle gang who all ride trikes and have impressively outre helmets. The leader, Syreena (Trina Parks, who played Thumper in Diamonds are Forever) is looking for her missing mother; she joins up with a street gang/doo-wop gang, finds out the corruption goes deep into the police’s reactionary Alert Squad, and is led by the local philanthropist/food magnate, who is a dead ringer for Colonel Sanders.
That short synopsis sounds like pretty typical blaxploitation fare, but what it does not tell is how bugfuck insane this movie turned out to be. This is basically a human cartoon, complete with sped-up foot chases and comedy sound effects. It is so far removed from reality that at its most racist, it somehow doesn’t seem too mean-spirited, and believe me, this movie is racist against everyone. At one point I opined that this was actually the movie Robert Townsend was in at the climax of Hollywood Shuffle, where the white director is telling him that his pimp character should thrust his butt out because “You know how those people walk.”
It is one bewildering moment after another; The Colonel has the world’s smallest cotton patch in his front yard, faithfully being picked by compliant darkies clad in Antebellum clothing, and numbers among his servants ringers for Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben (in fact, Aunt Jemima hands out huge pancakes to be used as throwing weapons in the final fight scene). Syreena, escaping the extensive dungeons under the mansion, comes upon The Dramatics, in a cell, who proceed to sing a medley of their hit, “What You See Is What You Get”, while Syreena grooves nearby (that particular alarm system certainly stopped her escape). There are Klansmen on motorcycles. The Alert Squad has a light the size of a Volkswagen atop their car. And, of course, the fat cop who is always getting stuck in the back seat of that car (and any doorway he encounters) is named Officer Tubbins, which is surely the best name since Porkins. Or maybe he was meant to be the character from Moby Dick, all grown up.
This is where Darktown Strutters – which was later re-titled Get Down and Boogie when it became apparent that no one wanted to see a movie named after a somewhat racist Ragtime standard – becomes a worthy follow-up to Things: is it a parody of blaxploitation movies? Or merely the worst blaxploitation movie ever made? (I still say that’s Blackenstein, but that’s a discussion for another day – we’re already over 2000 words here).
This movie will WHAT?
After Darktown Strutters, Dave, Rick and I just sat there for a while, silent, stunned. It had been a brutal evening, to be sure. Usually Crapfests are punctuated by at least one movie that is enjoyable and affirming in its own way – the musical version of Jack the Giant Killer, the unfettered mayhem of Shogun Assassin… this time, though, it was three movies that probably shouldn’t exist, for which there is no good reason, and we felt like we had gone ten rounds with Rocky. Dave later said he hadn’t felt that whipped since we had sat through an evening composed of three movies by or featuring Graydon Clark.
I wish to point out that was Dave’s brilliant idea, and everyone regretted it. Except for Rick, who finally got to see Joysticks again.
I felt tired, but it was a good tired. In a lot of ways, it was facing the worst life had to throw at you, and coming out the other side, shaken but alive and triumphant. There will some day be another Crapfest – and hopefully we will have some movies that have actual plots – but when those who did not attend complain about the movies, we will look at them from our battle-scarred heights and intone, “Fuck you. I’ve seen Things,” but only because it would take too long to say “Fuck you, Tinkerbell, I saw Jokes My Folks Never Told Me, Things ANDDarktown Strutters all in the same day.“
Okay, last week I daringly shared my list of 30 quality movies I fully intended to watch (or rewatch) in the coming year, with a rather optimistic goal of watching half of them by the Summer. I also made oblique mention of another list.
Look, I can’t go cold turkey off the stuff I usually watch. Can’t, and won’t. I fully realize that watching every single Kubrick film in one go is a dangerous enterprise. All that clinical artistic detachment would be likely to start a horrific (but meticulously controlled) psychotic episode. So there is an alternate list of more questionable *harrumph* fare that I can use as a safety valve.
Again, the ground rules are similar. All are movies I own (in some cases, for years) . I must have not seen it – no dispensations for viewings a decade or more in the past, as with the Quality List. There are some movies on this list that could have easily gone on the former list, but are marginal enough that I plopped them on this one.
1. Americathon – the first of several Warner Archive discs on this list. Rather surprised no one’s attempting a remake of this one yet, given the events of the past decade.
2. The Big Doll House – well, I saw The Big Bird Cage years ago, it’s high time I did the predecessor.
3. The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! – What has to be my favorite Andy Milligan title, for a movie I’ve never seen. I enjoy Milligan’s threadbare period pieces far more than I should.
4. The Cell – so I can finally get Dave off my ass about not having seen it.
5. Jackie Brown – yeah, yeah, for a Tarantino fan, I sure have dropped the ball on this one. On top of that, it’s the one everybody seems to love. The first one that easily could have gone on That Other List.
6. Cleopatra Jones and The Casino of Gold – another Warner Archive offering.
7. Big Bad Mama – Angie Dickinson and William Shatner embarrassing themselves in a Corman-produced Depression crime/exploitation flick? Sign me up. I have the disc that identifies this as one of “Roger Corman’s early films”. Should really try to get the Shout! Factory version.
8. El Mariachi – I know, I know, what rock have I been under.
9. Drive Angry – picked up the Blu-Ray at a Black Friday sale for like 4 bucks. Screw you, I like Nic Cage. Speaking of which:
10. Bad Lieutenant, Port of Call: New Orleans
11. Vigilante – a part of exploitation cinema I’ve been missing out on.
12. Fight for Your Life – same as the above. Also similar in that I only theoretically own them, as I am still waiting for them to arrive from the legendarily tardy Horror Movie Empire.
13. Eyes Without A Face – I am told this also could go on the Quality List. Having not seen it yet, I can’t really say.
14. The Fountain – I’m told this should be on the Pretentious List, but I don’t have one of those.
15. Johnny Firecloud – owned for years. An incredibly mean-spirited revenge drama, by all indications.
16. Dark of the Sun – Warner Archive again. Some revival showings in LA got good press, and I tend to like movies about mercs.
17. Major Dundee – proving there’s still some Peckinpah I’ve never seen.
18. Machete – I know, right? I been busy.
19. The Reaping – another sub-sub genre I like but rarely see done well: biblical prophecy coming true.
20. Ravenous – shut up. I been busy.
21. [REC] – ain’t bothering with the American re-make. Ain’t gonna do it.
22. Shaun of the Dead- Shut UP.
23. Hot Fuzz – see number 22, above.
24. Snakes On A Plane – can you really blame me for not seeing this yet? Was there ever any way it was going to live up to that title?
25. Sucker Punch – then there are movies that I hear terrible, horrible things about, and I still have to see them because I have to make my own decision about things. I would really like to join in on the general lynch mob, but I have to actually see the movie first. Jonah Hex, for instance, is a total waste, but I still say nice things about Star Trek V and Robocop 2.
26. Then Came Bronson – yet another Warner Archive disc. I actually remember when the series, short-lived as it was, played on TV. Don’t remember anything else about it. And I really like Michael Parks.
27. Vanishing Point – the original version, dammit. Yet another I cannot believe I have spent my life not watching.
28. The Good, The Bad, The Weird – You knew some Asian oddity had to show up, didn’t you?
29. Ronin – One of John Frankenheimer’s last films, this has also been on the “to watch someday” list for a long time.
The more astute at this point might say, “But wait – this list is only 29 movies long, and The Other List was 30! Aren’t you short-changing yourself?” Well, thank you for being astute, but no, I haven’t. This is because last weekend I watched number 30 on that list, Horror Express.
Horror Express was pretty hard to miss on TV runs in the 80s, I’m told. Apparently it was on Elvira’s show more than once, in which case I probably passed over it. I was reasonably certain it would be cut under such circumstances, and TV cuts of horror movies usually wind up being worse than useless. Also, with the advent of VCRs and then DVDs, commercial interruptions to a movie’s flow became ever more onerous to me.
I found Horror Express to be a delightfully odd movie. The suspense was fairly nonexistent for the first act, but picked up considerably once the creature started moving through the train, and the eventual veering into science-fiction territory was very fresh, even if there was some questionable science on display. Christopher Lee was his expected powerful monolith, letting Peter Cushing have all the good lines. Telly Savalas was even more off the rails (so to speak) than usual. Still not certain about the rationale behind the resolution, but what the heck. An enjoyable 90 minutes, and the Blu-ray from Severin Films was absolutely gorgeous, showing only occasional damage around the reel changes.
Now the increasing pressures of the last few weeks and having a sick kid this week are beginning to show: a mild tickling in my throat is turning into a full-bodied cough, and I’m feeling a bit light-headed. I’ve informed my body it cannot get sick until next Tuesday, and even then there are scheduling pressures, but it doesn’t seem to be listening.
In other words, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Have a nice weekend.
T-Fest was a small B-movie festival started by myself, Chris Holland of StompTokyo, Ken Begg of Jabootu, and Sandy Petersen of Call of Cthulhu (and a ton of other games); we did it because we wanted a reason to get together in the Summer, after the New Orleans Worst Film Festival ceased operations. The first, tiny iteration was in a hotel meeting room near me in Sugar Land; after that, Sandy was able to wrangle venues for us in the Dallas area, so my dream of minimal travel time was quashed, but big deal.
This year Chris couldn’t make it, and I did. Sandy and Ken have apparently been putting together something called “Tween Fest” in the Spring, but my getting-away time is limited, holding down two and a half jobs as I do. I try to make the big one in July/August as often as I can.
The other character in this tale, offstage through much of it, but always making its presence felt, is the frankly unrealistic heat of this Summer. We had been sweltering in 103 degree days here in Houston, so of course I drive up to Dallas where I can enjoy 108 degree days. I have done stupider things, but not recently. The air conditioner in our meeting room was not cutting it when we arrived in the morning, and lading in 30+ movie nerds didn’t do much to help. Sweat was never running into my eyes, but it wasn’t, shall we say, ideally pleasant.
Good God, the things I will do to watch bad movies with people of a similar bent.
Now, Ken had begged off (pun not intended, but…) of any movie choices, as he claimed to have been monopolizing the Tween Fests. This left Sandy and I with three choices apiece. I wound up supplying a bit more than that, but let’s not get ahead; I think I have a bit of reputation at T-Fest of being a nice guy. I rarely bring things that put a big hurt on the audience. Probably the worst thing I ever brought was Mystics in Bali, and even that was exotic enough to take some of the sting out. The year before when the copy of Mystics I had brought turned out to be Region 2 and unplayable, I whipped out Sugar Hill, which was warmly received. I brought Island of Lost Souls and Dinosaurus. I like entertaining people.
So, when the original schedule started being rearranged, I was a little nervous that one of mine was up first: The Deadly Mantis, which cannot truly be called lively. One of the things I want to do before I kick off is watch this movie with a stopwatch in my hand and finally determine how much of it is stock footage. I reckon it at 50%, as a rough guess.
This is pretty much classic late 50s Universal programmer claptrap: competently made and entertaining. It’s no Them!, but it is a nice enough Giant Bug movie, and at less than 80 minutes, a good warmup for the day’s anti-festivities.
I also had the next movie, which was to be the 1983 Sandahl Bergman version of She, which has absolute bupkiss to do with H. Rider Haggard’s novel. In a post-apocalyptic world, She guides a couple of guys to… something. And on the way they do… stuff. Hell, I’m not even sure the reels are in the right order on this custom DVD I have, taken from a VHS with a strong picture. The costumes were basically pulled from everybody’s closets and, seemingly, by raiding the costume departments of colleges or local theatres and using everything. Football helmets with swastikas painted on them, Italian Renaissance jester costumes, wetsuits, you name it. It’s like some half-assed comic book Jack Kirby came up with while he had the flu. Like I said, a good, stable picture, but not strong enough audio to continue watching. Which is too bad, as people were getting off on the WTF nature of all this, and they never got to see this guy: (whom I could only find en Espanol. Sorry.)
So we resorted to my backup movie: The Lost Empire. (Intriguingly, Ken had also brought a copy of that movie, just in case).
Yes, remarkable as that may seem, it is a Jim Wynorski movie with an actual budget, possibly in the tens of thousands of dollars. It is entertaining trash from roughly the same period as She – both were released in 1985 – and honestly, Empire is a lot more fun, if infinitely more disposable. And in case you were wondering, yes, that is Angelique Pettyjohn in that one fight scene.
Please note that the Youtube uploader added the fight music from Amok Time himself.
Here’s the thing: Lost Empire runs a lean (one might even say economical) 85 minutes, while She is a much more turgid 106. We were clipping along at a good pace, and had time to spare. Sandy slipped in an episode of Ultraman (the original TV series, which I think is Ultra Q, and if it isn’t, someone will tell me soon), concerning Blowhole Monster Gamakujira, who likes to eat pearls. This (of course) makes the sole female member of the Science Police very, very angry (“It is a woman’s wrath!”). Most notable for Ultraman not doing anything particularly useful, and for the Science Police literally ramming a rocket up Gamakujira’s ass and shooting him into space.
Youtube, alas, has failed me here.
Sandy next cued up Sh! The Octopus, which I believe he also mentioned was the movie his father singled out as “the scariest movie ever”. I was looking forward to this, as I had only heard about it before, and it did not disappoint, even though I was not sure what to expect. It is basically a spoof on “old dark house” movies, particularly those modeled on the play “The Gorilla”, which had been made into a movie umpteen times by 1937. It is also a spoof that feels like it is directed by David Lynch, as it has a dreamlike and frequently nightmarish quality throughout (appropriate, given its denouement), which I was not expecting in a comedy. It also stars Hugh Herbert, who is that comedian who keeps going “Woo hoo hoo!” in really old Looney Tunes.
Still running ahead of time? Well, says Sandy, here, have the very first episode of the 1966 Batman series, featuring Jill St. John and the Batusi.
And then it was finally deemed time for Sandy’s annual B-movie quiz. This year, the subject was Mad Scientists. The posters for 30 science-fiction/horror movies was shown. The goal: write down the name of the Mad Scientist for each one. This is harder than you might think, as none of the Mads was named Pretorious or Mabuse. In a gesture of munificence, the last poster actually was Frankenstein. I got 4 and one-half correct. High score was 6 out of 30. Brutal.
Dinner break at the nearby Twisted Root Burger Company. Delicious food. I was tempted by the idea of a deep-fried hot dog, but I’m also getting old enough that I don’t think pouring grease into my arteries is a good idea. Instead, I wrecked other parts of my body with a peanut butter shake.
I dropped my wife off at our cheapass hotel (truthfully, she did make it almost 30 minutes into Deadly Mantis…) and returned to find that the ungrateful wretches had started my third movie, The Super Inframan, without me. Though, as Scott Hamilton pointed out via Twitter, it wasn’t like I don’t have that memorized.
Inframan is Shaw Brothers’ sole entry into the Kamen Rider-style Japanese superhero market, which is a pity, because there is not a single frame of this movie that does not please. The monsters are creative, and… well, that’s really all we need, right? The monsters are cool and they all know kung fu. The fact that Inframan is played by Danny Lee, who 14 years later would play loose cannon cop Li opposite Chow Yun-Fat in John Woo’s The Killer, just makes it better.
They couldn’t have started the next movie without me, noooooo, because Sandy Petersen is a monster who decided to unleash H.G. Lewis’ children movie Jimmy the Boy Wonder upon us. To those who have not experienced the mental disconnect necessary for this event, allow me to explain. H.G. Lewis is the director who graced us with such fare as Blood Feast, 2000 Maniacs, and The Wizard of Gore. He made two children’s movies. This is one.
In Sandy’s defense, the other one is even worse.
The Jimmy of the title is a boy who wishes time would stand still so he wouldn’t have to go to his first day of school. Unfortunately, he does this at the exact time that such a thing can happen each year. So Jimmy has to take a giant Christmas tree ornament to the Clock At The End Of The World (which is located in Coral Gardens in Florida, for all you Nude on the Moon fans), all the while pursued by the evil Mr. Fig, who, um… well, we’ll let him explain it.
Look, I had to sit through four of these damned musical numbers, you can do one.
Jimmy is reportedly 69 minutes long, but because that little bastard stopped time, it seems to be six hours long. It is not helped by some strange padding; Lewis bought a then-unfinished French cartoon, reportedly The Curious Adventures of Mr. Wonderbird, re-dubbed it, and edited it into the middle of the movie as a “story” told to Jimmy by Aurora, his distaff Virgil in this guide to the Inferno. I am hoping that the sync on this print used in the Something Weird DVD is off, otherwise Lewis and crew (Lewis is apparently the voice of the Captain of the Cats) just didn’t freaking care that it looked like lines were coming out of the wrong mouths. Never mind attempting to lip sync.
A couple of years ago, when Sandy showed Nightmare City, a joke petition demanding that he never be allowed to choose another movie was circulated. This time, the petition was bypassed and we went into full-blown lynch mob. He quickly defused this by showing the infamous kung-fu sex scene from Chinese Torture Chamber Story. He then squandered that good will by following it up with Neil Sadaka’s “Do the Jellyfish” from Sting of Death.
This was followed by the final battlescene from the Turkish Rambo clone, Rampage (Did you know? Rocket launchers go “toont!” when you fire them? And spare rockets litter the ground, like in a video game?), a clip from the Mexican demon movie, Don’t Panic, with unfortunate subtitles (“Do you believe in Stan?”), and the remarkable dog vs cat kung-fu scene from 1000 Year Cat.
Once again, we were running ahead of time, so I was able to slip in an old favorite: Dark Intruder, a failed TV pilot from 1965. It starred Leslie Nielsen, still in his leading man days, as an occult detective in 1890 San Francisco. In this episode, he’s investigating a series of murders: each victims is savagely slashed, apparently by claws, and a carving is found at each murder scene. The movie has a brief mention of Lovecraftian gods, and flirts with them several times over this course of its brief hour run.
In the past, I’ve been pleased to show movies that have not yet had a DVD release, which, within a year or two, actually got one. Chamber of Horrors at the very first T-Fest, Island of Lost Souls (which is getting a Criterion release in October, for Pete’s sake.) I kinda hope this carries through on Dark Intruder. As Ken points out, a set of failed TV pilots for occult detective shows would be most welcome: Dark Intruder, Chamber of Horrors, the Louis Jourdan Fear No Evil and Ritual of Evil, Dan Curtis’ The Norliss Tapes, Gene Roddenberry’s Spectre…
But that’s enough fantasizing about good things, it’s time to face the hard, cold reality of bad things, like the last movie. We always try to finish out the festival with a movie featuring a T Rex, or at least a dinosaur. (The “T” in “T-Fest” stands not only for “Texas”, but also “Tyrannosaurus”). And this year, the movie was The Mighty Gorga. This was theoretically Sandy’s choice, but Ken supplied the disc. Monsters, the both of them.
Anthony Eisley plays a down-on-his-luck circus owner who journeys to Africa to meet up with a guy who is tracking down a giant gorilla. In this case, Africa is being played by California, a zoo, and parts of Bronson Canyon. There is a giant gorilla (with hideous expressionless doll-like eyes) on a rocky plateau, worshiped by curiously Caucasian natives.There are more words in this movie than in your average dictionary, the “Talk is cheap, action costs money” taken to an extreme. So many words that several times John Woo style gunfights with nerf darts broke out in the audience. One unfortunate lady caught a dart in the eye. Once she recovered, she returned, gamely, but was soon begging for someone to shoot her in the eye again. Both eyes, preferably.
Back when Hong Kong movies hit in the early 90s, there was a lot of talk about “The Scene”, that one segment of a Cat III movie, the one thing you sat through an hour and a half of dreck to see. Like when I was assured that you sat through 90 minutes of Evilspeak and Clint Howard’s naked ass just to see the Carrie rip-off ending. Well, Mighty Gorga is like that. You sit through static dialogue scenes and endless rock climbing (yes, there is rock climbing) just to see the T Rex, in a very bad process shot, shouting “RAR rar rar rar!” while someone shakes it to make the jaw move. I have no idea why Youtube will not satisfy me with the T Rex’s best scene, but here is the “fight scene” that follows betwixt Rex and Gorga:
That is apparently director David L. Hewitt in the Gorga suit. Later on, our heroes run into a stop-motion creature from Goliath and the Dragon; luckily for them, it stays on its side of the poor process shot.
And then, praise God, the sweetest words in the English language: THE END.
A fun time, a good time. Sandy, with his showing of Jimmy the Boy Wonder, has opened a very dangerous door, I must say. On the other side of that door lurks The Wonderful Land of Oz and The Magic Christmas Tree, If I were a meaner person. Or Mr. Fig.
Well, the 4th of July Parade (held on the 3rd of July) was, as predicted, a dreadful ordeal. Setting up cameras in the heat, moving the camera back into the shade so the electronics wouldn’t cook, walking back and forth from the cameras to the air-conditioned control center. At one point when I checked, the heat index was 111 degrees. The nice thing about control being air-conditioned was having that place to retreat. The bad thing about it was it necessitated running a lot of cable. Cable we did not possess or even own, as it turned out. Could have been prevented by moving control out to the heat with the rest of us, but that wasn’t going to happen. By the time the Parade actually began, we had six out of seven cameras online, which was a minor fucking miracle. The Parade itself was rather underwhelming, but the fact that we managed to pull our part off carries with it a certain feeling of accomplishment.
I wasn’t needed for the actual 4th of July broadcast, which was very good, since when I got up Monday morning I couldn’t put any weight on my bum leg. So I spent most of the day with my leg up, searching out episodes of Mythbusters I had not yet seen on Netflix Instant. For America.
I knew it was going to be like that. I knew there was a fairly good chance that the 3rd would be the day that either crippled me permanently or outright killed me. (As I write this, it is the 6th. I was able to come to work without the cane, and I am not dead. I attribute this to my willingness to sit down as much as possible and let the enthusiastic younger employees do all the work) Therefore, I bullied all my compatriots into a Crapfest on July 2nd. I had no shows that weekend, a financial problem but not an emotional one, as I’m also pretty sure I might have murdered or at least maimed a few drunken audience members.
This still almost did not happen; Dave called about 2pm to inform us that he had a clogged drain problem affecting his whole house. A Crapfest canceled by plumbing problems? My irony gland was throbbing. A quick visit by a plumber, though, and we were underway only an hour later than planned.
While we got settled down, food was set up and cooked, I trotted out my three disc This Is Tom Jones set, which was not crap by any means. Tom Jones is a hell of an entertainer and these selections from his 1969-1971 ABC variety series… well, here is a taste:
That is a bare minute and a half out of a set that lasts some fifteen minutes at least. The very first show has The Moody Blues, Mary Hopkins (“Those Were The Days”), Richard Pryor and Peter Sellers. One episode. We went on to episodes featuring The Who, and, as seen above, that luminous appearance by Little Richard. The eps always end with Jones in a concert setting, sweating and singing his heart out.
Well, it’s kind of hard to force yourself to sit through crap after that, so rather than ease us in, I went for the throw-the-patient-into-some-cold-water treatment, and an episode of Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos, of which there appears to be only five episodes anyway. Enough to run each afternoon for a week, and sell some action figures.
There is a real desire evident to make this the Chuck Norris equivalent of GI Joe; Chuck and his troops have far-ranging authority in his fight against an organization of super terrorists. There is a lot here to work with, and some day I should do a full review.
Food still not ready? Time for some Birdman!
Birdman is one of the lesser Hanna-Barbera superheroes, frankly (I still have no idea who this BIRMAD might be…). He got a complete season DVD set due to the Adult Swim Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law series, and since The Other Dave was a big fan, I brought it. We watched two Birdman stories and one of The Galaxy Trio shorts, and I remember nothing about them. Except Birdman constantly shouting “BIRRRRRRRRRRDMAN!” because he was very conscious of his branding.
Thank God, the fajitas are finally cooked, and now it is time for a movie. Dave was foiled when he discovered that Netflix had removed his choice, Jaws The Revenge, and instead trotted out Jack The Giant Killer. The musical version.
Jack was a fairly infamous attempt to imitate the success of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, right down to hiring its two leads, Kerwin Matthews and Torin Thatcher, and its director, Nathan Juran. Columbia threatened a lawsuit, and in an attempt to recoup their investment somehow, the producers had to change Jack into something 7th Voyage was not: a musical. But not by bringing back the actors and shooting additional footage, noooooo. There was already a leprechaun in a bottle (an ‘imp”, if you believe the script), who spoke in verse; that’s a natural for some music. But the rest…
It is best to simply let this version speak for itself, as it were. Jack is trying to sneak into the evil sorcerer’s castle to rescue the princess:
If anything, we thought this version of Jack needed even more musical numbers. It was very, very bizarre, easily the high point of the evening. Having created and uploaded that clip, I am becoming obsessed with the idea that seems to be Thurl Ravenscroft providing the basso side of that duet.
By now, Rick was positively vibrating to complete the Ginger Trilogy by watching Girls Are For Loving. I have a longer review of it here, but suffice to say: It ain’t no Abductors.
There is a lot more money invested in Girls, and perversely, the movie suffers for it. There is a general bid for respectability; Don Schain (or, as I prefer to think of him, Mr. Cheri Caffaro) really wants to do a Dr. No-style movie, but doesn’t have the chops. The sleazery is there, though not enough to salvage the flick for Ginger fans. Ginger is sluttier than ever – no, that’s not fair. Caffaro is playing a Liberated Woman, 1973-style, and that means being bewilderingly frank about engaging in the carnal act. Yeah, I still miss the 70s. You youngsters missed out on all the good stuff.
As alluded to earlier, Girls is not a very good movie. Not that this is a requirement for Crapfest, but it is largely bad by dint of being boring, which is bad for a Crapfest. Cheri sings in this one – she’s undercover as a lounge act – and sure enough, just as someone says, “I liked her better when she was taking off her clothes,” she switches to a strip-tease number. There is a Ginger movie struggling to get out, but it’s lost in an ill-defined plot by the anti-Ginger to get rich. Even the nudity seems to be somewhat toned down. This must have really frustrated the grindhouse patrons familiar with the Ginger brand.
Finished up with Five Fingers of Death, which Rick and I both claimed we had watched before, but Dave claimed we had not. Not that it matters – it’s a good flick, and I needed some winding down time to sober up for the drive home. Paul and the Other Dave had already wussed out. Wusses.
So I faced the grueling Next Day with something approaching some peace in my heart and a song on my lips. “A spectacle! A spectacle!”
But yeah, I still managed to watch some movies, somewhere in there. Mainly because my landline shorted out and I was without the Net for three days.
My other movies were at the other end of the scale, budget and amazing-wise. Saturday morning I was up at a Godforsaken hour because that’s what your body does to you, and I watched While the City Sleeps, a Fritz Lang-directed piece of newspaper noir from 1956. Lang is always worth watching, and the layered story here is pretty good. First off, a news media magnate kicks off after insisting that his various outlets sensationalize a murder where the killer left the message “Ask Mother” scrawled in lipstick on a wall. Then, his son (Vincent Price!) arrives to take over, without much of any experience in the trade. He creates a new position, Executive Director, and tells the heads of the three branches: Wire Service, Newspaper, and Photos – that whoever solves the case of the Lipstick Killer gets the job.
The other movie seen during the outage was chosen at random, something I’d had for a while: You’ll Find Out, which is a parody of Old Dark House movies starring Kay Kyser (and his College of Musical Knowledge), and three guys named Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Peter Lorre.
