So I finally got to see my pal Dave’s new house yesterday; they were more settled-in (as Dave put it, “I have a place for you to sit now.”) and we both had holes in our schedules. It also resulted in the following unfortunate sequencing of Tweets, when my live Tweet butted up against a queued Tumblr post:
As they say, LOL.
It’s a nice house. He’s put a lot of work into it, and intends to put some more. Dave is one of those handy people, a tinkerer. He’s the exact opposite of myself, who can’t put one piece of paper on top of another without disastrous results. Also, unlike his old apartment, he was able to attack the set-up of his home theater sound from a zero point, rather than piecemeal. Which was also fortuitous, as the room he was allowed for a makeshift man-cave was oddly shaped, and defied a traditional set-up.
After demoing the sound set-up with the battle of Helm’s Deep from The Two Towers, we settled down to some serious martini-quaffing and movie-watching. Dave wished to further shake-down his system, so my choice (from a number of DVDs I keep leaving with him until I can badger him into watching them) was Shoot-Em-Up, which has my vote for possibly the Most Gleefully Stupid Movie Ever Made. Which is not to say it isn’t cool. It is intensely cool. But it also does not pretend to be anything it isn’t.
Afterwards, Dave was amazed I had not yet seen Tropic Thunder (I been busy. Sue me.), so we took care of that.
So I’m thinking that now I might not need to see The Expendables.
This is, of course, a recipe for a very profitable exploitation film. (or at least, it would be, if the box office failure of Snakes on A Plane hadn’t poisoned that particular well) It follows the lines of a classic Hollywood pitch: “It’s Kingdom of the Spiders … on a boat!”
Correspondent Professor Mortis suggests using Bill Cosby rather than the over-exposed Samuel L. Jackson: Cosby’s version of swearing would, at the very least, ensure the all-important PG-13 rating. I would also suggest Steven Seagal as a Buddhist scientist who hampers our hero by insisting that we try to communicate with the spiders. And we must have William Shatner for nostalgia value.
(Despite the title of that clip, I think blaming Shatner for the ridiculousness of the moments is, to quote Bobcat Goldthwaite, like blaming Ronald MacDonald for a bad cheeseburger)
But enough of this. Let’s have a pug dog saying, “Batman!” (He can be in the movie, too!)
Well, yesterday and today we’ve finally been getting the torrential rains promised us early in the week. Alas, there is no longer a hurricane to threaten us with, so we must now live in fear of flash floods. But that’s a rational fear, so you just don’t hear as much about it.
A little over a week ago, I found a copy of the Watchmen adjunct DVD, Tales of the Black Freighter/Under the Hood had washed up at Half-Price Books for cheap, and picked it up. (I also stopped listening to the rational side of my brain and also picked up the Asylum Sherlock Holmes mockbuster for equally cheap). Last night I watched Under the Hood, and I rather liked it. There are currently no plans to watch Tales of the Black Freighter, because motion comics are an abomination before God.
Under the Hood was the title of the autobiography of Hollis Mason, the original 1940s Night Owl, one of the first of the costumed heroes in Watchmen‘s continuity. It was one of Alan Moore’s brilliant touches in an already brilliant book, text pieces in the back of each issue which filled us in on the alternate history, the world of the series.
To make this work in a video context, the material is presented in the form of a TV show, The Culpeper Minute, in which host Barry Culpeper, circa 1985 (the time of the Watchmen movie and book), presents a re-broadcast of a 1975 episode marking the publication of said book.
Much of the information in the text pieces is covered in an interview with Mason; where the piece goes beyond the call of duty is to establish the world further by adding more interviews past Mason’s, and the best part of that is we get to see more of Carla Gugino as Sally Jupiter, which is a good thing.
And we get to see even more of Carla Gugino in 1940s drag, which is a very good thing:
An odd thing – well not so odd, I suppose, given the DC imprint slathered all over – is a jettisoning of one of Moore’s most interesting social culture extrapolations: given that super heroes already actually existed, that particular comic book genre never took off – instead, pirate comics became all the rage (hence Tales of the Black Freighter). Instead, the first appearance of Superman is specifically mentioned, then a few more make their appearance as inspirations to Hollis Mason, alongside the pulp heroes Moore referenced. And so it goes.
We get more screen time with incidental characters who received short shrift in the movie, notably Matt Frewer’s Moloch, Dr. Manhattan’s Pal, Wally Weaver, and Bernie the newsvendor, who was the book’s everyman-on-the-street greek chorus, and virtually nonexistant in the film. And so it goes.
Expanding past the text pieces gives Under the Hood a chance to say interesting things about the necessity of heroes, costumed or not, and does continue the book’s examination of what real-world pressures would be brought to bear on people wearing fetish gear beating up thugs on the street – and if nothing else, makes use of all that Golden Age material they shot for the movie proper that never made it in (except, I suppose, for that Ultimate Edition that came out last Christmas, that I could not afford, nor asked for).
Overall, I still feel there was absolutely no reason to make Watchmen into a movie, except that hey, them other funnybook movies made money, and the geekboys love this’un! It’s like printing money! Looking at other attempts to turn comic books into movies, this one could have been a lot, lot worse. A lot. A bit too faithful to the original material, until that final, disastrous changing of the ending that I still feel damages the movie irreparably – which I should probably go into more detail about, but we’ll leave that for another time. Under the Hood reminded me that although I didn’t care for the movie itself, its casting and production design was absolutely spot-on.
There has been a small, but vocal contingent of our little movie group that is demanding the Star Wars Holiday Special. I have been putting them off for most of a year. Occasionally they listen to me, but they seem uninterested in reason this time. Fortune may be with us, as our usual host and Master of the Projector Dave and his long-suffering wife are closing on their first house Tuesday, so they’re going to be more concerned with moving than with hosting a bunch of film masochists.
I keep referencing this classic XKCD strip. though again, this could be losing its efficacy through repeated exposure:
Honestly, Randall Munroe is one of the few cartoonists who can make stick figures look suicidal.
The real problem with the Star Wars Holiday Special is that, unlike The Paul Lynde Halloween Special, the entertainment factor is precisely zero. Paul Lynde’s was hoot-worthy in its every aspect, from the cameos to KISS lip-synching to their albums to the cornball humor. Star Wars Holiday on the other hand, is merely tedious, which is not only the kiss of death for any enterprise that aspires to entertainment, but also means that it lacks the gusto which can transform bad into tacky enjoyment, which is what drives most Bad Movie Nights.
For instance: take in this, which pulls your favorite Star Wars character through ten layers of unbelievable shame, but still manages to be fun, because it looks like the actors are having some fun:
And then compare it with this, which simply screams – no, screaming takes too much effort – it moans with “contractual obligation”:
Although… I was alerted by Mike Sterling, the proprietor of Mike Sterling’s Progressive Ruin, that apparently Bea Arthur’s character in the Star Wars Holiday Special is a character in a new Star Wars novel, Fate of the Jedi: Allies, and you know what that means. THASS RIGHT, BITCHES! IT MEANS THE HOLIDAY SPECIAL IS NOW CANON!!!!!!
First things first: despite misgivings, Lisa performed in the show last weekend. She did great, but was totally exhausted. Sugars generally staying under 200, which is a pretty dramatic change from her last few months, when any slight dip under 200 was cause for celebration.
While flipping through channels yesterday, found myself watching the last ten minutes of the Hammer Hound of the Baskervilles on a local station. Not my favorite version, but a good, solid one nonetheless. Cushing is a remarkably unsympathetic Holmes (he’s much more likable in the BBC series he did later), and Christopher Lee seems uncomfortable in the somewhat boring Baskerville role – but Hammer movies are pretty much always entertaining, and at the very least, pretty.
But what this did was kick my usual lust for Holmes back into my forebrain. I mean, I even sought out that gawdawful Asylum attempt to cash in on the Guy Ritchie/Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes, entitled, surprisingly enough, Sherlock Holmes. That link will take you to Chris Sims’ review of it, so I don’t have to dwell on it too long. I believe my reaction at the time of watching it was, “This is a movie deliberately designed to piss me off.” But let me quote Mr. Sims:
“Believe it or not, this was actually the first Worst of Netflix selection that I was actually looking forward to watching, for the simple fact that it’s got SHERLOCK HOLMES FIGHTING A DINOSAUR on the cover. Call me a man of simple tastes, but that is literally all I need to hear to get excited about something, and that’s before you throw in the sea monster and the dragon that are also pictured on the cover.”
Don't do it, man - you'll regret it!
Oh, if only it were worth that excitement. Now, there are some good points: they pull off a period movie on an obviously small budget quite well, and the acting is several cuts above Asylum’s usual fare. Gareth David-Lloyd’s Watson and William Huw’s Lestrade are particularly good. But the script is a pretty horrifying wreck, invents an entirely new brother for Holmes (when Lestrade says, “I talked to your brother,” I assumed he was speaking of Mycroft), and we find out Sherlock is not his first name, because David or whatever the hell it was wasn’t a good first name for a detective. It also would have been good if I hadn’t had to wait for the end credits to find out that the villain was supposed to be Spring-Heeled Jack.
We’re not even going to talk about how the history books have shamefully overlooked that London was attacked by a fire-breathing dragon in 1890.
The disc is at Half-Price Books. God help me, I should probably buy it.
Fortunately, what I did have to hand was a pre-viewed disc of the movie whose coat-tails the Asylum job was attempting to ride: the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes. I’d seen it in the theater, of course – this was one of the few offerings that could make me overcome my complete antipathy toward what movie houses have become and get me into a comfy stadium seat. I rather enjoyed it, and spent some time defending it to my friends who were getting huffy about the obviously disrespectful tone.
Again, as with his casting as Tony Stark in the Iron Man movies, Robert Downey Jr. brings some life lessons to his portrayal of the brilliant, on-again off-again drug addict Holmes (I still haven’t seen Iron Man II, so I don’t know if they’ve alluded to Stark’s alcoholism yet); they possibly went a bit far in deflating Holmes a bit, but I still find it within Canonical limits.
Hell, yes, I'd watch this movie.
But what I came out of the theater with was a newfound respect for Jude Law, who is an incredible Watson. I generally find my opinion of any Holmes venture rests on the treatment of Watson, and Law’s is a crackerjack. Actors cast as Watson seem to tend to be older than Holmes, which I suppose is a conceit that started with the Nigel Bruce/Basil Rathbone pairing (though Bruce was actually three years younger than Rathbone). I’m not a hardcore Holmesian enough to pull out the character’s relative ages, but the more or less contemporaneous pairing of this movie feels right. And Law is the first Watson I’ve seen since Robert Duvall to play the limp, the result of the Jazeel bullet that put an end to Watson’s military career.
No, the only problem I have with the movie is the character of Irene Adler, who has somehow become the Victorian equivalent of Catwoman. Rachel McAdams is pretty enough, but seems dreadfully miscast; then, the character is not given that much to do. I am also sorrowful that the DVD is a bare-bones affair. I would have loved to find out how much research was done for the period, and those fabulous CGI vistas of a London over a century gone.
Inevitably, there’s a sequel in the works. They’ve certainly seemed to set up a Final Problem adaptation with the shadowy Moriarty a presence in this first film, but I dare hope for a Hound of the Baskervilles, in which Sherlock vanishes for the middle portion of the story, and Watson steps to the fore as the confident, capable fellow we all know him to be. Until Holmes shows back up and starts mucking things up.
"Did he actually say we fought a dinosaur?" "Well, I believe we now know who stole my drugs, old man."
It had been way, way too long since our last get-together. A little over a month ago Rick and I forced the issue and there was a small gathering, a mini-gathering as it were, Dave and Rick and myself; it could not truly be called a crapfest because the movies watched that night were Primer, The Loved One and The Kid With the Golden Arm. These break no one, and in some cases were quality entertainment.
But now host Dave was off his beneficent kick, during which we were watching other movies of a non-painful quality. Shogun Assassin, Marjoe, Master of the Flying Guillotine, Starcrash Okay, Starcrash is actually quite painful, but Caroline Munro soothes a lot of pain.
No, this time Dave was threatening us with “the nuclear option”. He wanted us to hurt, and hurt badly. I personally feel this was his lashing out after the finale of Lost, but there is no solid evidence for this. Except for those discussions in the kitchen where each sentence from Dave began with the words, “So you’re telling me that…”
During the arrival portion of the evening, he put on the 1994 version of Fantastic Four. You know, the version that Roger Corman produced so Fox could keep their hands on the FF movie license. This movie is damn cheap, and damn stupid, but you cannot fault its intentions. Roger Corman probably got a lot of people to work on this dirt cheap, if not for free, simply because it was a Fantastic Four movie. And having watched the two big budget abominations that were eventually released, I now feel much more kindly toward this version. If nothing else, this one got Doctor Doom right, and if you get Doctor Doom right, half the battle is won.
Am I right? is that Battle Beyond the Stars music that I’m hearing? And only the finest Video Toaster graphics? Nice John Byrne era costumes, too.
After that, Dave put on the first few minutes of Dondi, because he is a complete and utter bastard. He was not satisfied until Paul burst into tears, and then he finally felt he could unleash his “nuclear option”: Battlefield Earth.
Well, sort of like Godzilla, I’ve seen the nuclear option up close a few times, and impressively though it may suck, it holds little terror for me. Luckily, I was in a room of Battlefield Earth virgins, so I got to feed off their exquisite agony like some Marvel villain. First, I amused myself by claiming I was going to spend the whole movie tilting my head one way or another, so the picture onscreen would actually appear level. This is, of course, a mug’s game and cannot be won. You will hurt yourself if you try.
So after a while, we just fell to playing my favorite Battlefield Earth game, Laugh With The Psychlos. The Psychlos really enjoy their work. Dave himself had not seen the abomination he had set out before us, but I like to think that if he had, it would have been much like what I saw in the living room: Dave standing in the middle of an empty theater, shaking both fists at the screen and bellowing as if the movie could hear him.. I understand he exhibited the same behavior during the Lost finale.
Laugh with John Travolta – won’t you?
Then Dave put on Dondi again, and went outside for a cigarette. “I brought you here to make you suffer!” I could have walked over to his media computer and turned it off, but it’s best not to show weakness in such circumstances.
My turn. First, the only episode of the Japanese TV series Spider-Man that I possess. More appropriately perhaps, Supaidaman. At only about 25 minutes, quite painless, and though people bitched endlessly about the lack of subtitles, there was no need. Supaidaman helps some guy from Interpol fight a bunch of aliens (the faceless cannon fodder dog soldiers distinguished in this series by having duck-like beaks, unlike the faceless cannon fodder dog soldiers in a million other similar Japanese TV series) and their swordfish-headed monster, who spits torpedoes out his mouth.
Supaidaman is out of costume perhaps a minute in this episode, and spends most of rest of the time sticking to walls and kicking bad guys in the beak. Until the monster gets rambunctious (and large) around some fuel tanks and Supaidaman calls in his giant robot.
He’s the Japanese Spider-Man. Of course he has a giant robot.
It was held that the Parker Stevenson American TV version could learn much from the Japanese ratio of kicks to the beak versus talky civilian scenes. I personally like to think of what American comics could learn from this. “Now you will face the wrath of — DOCTOR OCTOPUS!!!” “Now you will face the foot of – my giant robot!” SPLAT!
Here is a clip with subtitles, so it is already apparent I like you more than my movie-watching mates:
Oh, didn’t I mention the subtitles are in French? Foolish man-animals! HAHAHAHAHA
I think it was about this time, during between-movie trips to the snack table, that I was informed Art Linkletter had died too far away from the Gary Coleman epicenter, and could not be considered one of “The Three”, so therefore there was another celebrity death on the way, hopefully one that would be more comfortable sharing a motorcycle with Gary Coleman and Dennis Hopper.
Then it was time to address a certain lacking in our evenings. One that had grown worse, tellingly enough, with the rise of the more *harrumph* quality entertainments, and that… was the lack of boobies.
Yes, these things started with a hideous marathon of movies like Beach Girls and Surf 2: The Movie, leading into Joysticks, H.O.T.S. and Evilspeak. All delights to the adolescent male just discovering cable TV, because of one thing – well, often, two things – boobies.
I was just getting ready to go to college when HBO came to our town. This was the days of the set-top box with one button, the red one for HBO and the black one for regular cable. The young punks I hang with had all sorts of flavors to choose from, Cinemax, Showtime. Punks. I had to make do with drive-ins.
The very first R-rated drive-in booby movie I saw was The Student Teachers, and I had been attempting to get it shown ever since I’d found a copy. Well, tonight was the night. A 1973 movie, I must have seen it in ‘74, and man does it take place in the early 70s. A new teacher at Valley High starts to have “rap sessions” with her kids about sex, which totally riles the squares in charge (Dick Miller included!), especially when some rapist wearing a clown mask starts plying his trade, which is obviously the fault of the sex-ed classes. (Talk about “ripped from today’s headlines”…)
Uh, there’s also some alternative school going on, that needs money, so they’re doing some sort of complicated scam to rip off the local drug ring. It was pointed out that Rube Goldberg would have found the scheme overly complicated, but that it was still more believable than any plan in Battlefield Earth. (“And it makes more sense than the finale of Lost!” Dave complained. “Hush,” said we, “there’s boobies.”)
Besides. The “plot” is merely the mortar that fills the gaps in between topless scenes, and they are plentiful. The movie opens with one, even. There’s only one suspect for the rapist, they don’t even bother with any red herrings. (okay, okay, it’s Dick Miller. You knew that the minute I mentioned him, right?) Look fast in the karate class at the alternative school. That’s Chuck Norris instructing.
The next was mine, too: The Paul Lynde Halloween Special. Man-animals are so simple. All I had to do was say. “KISS is in it.” Well, Alan helped, as he had forced his parents to watch it with him when it was first broadcast, and he assured us that at one point Gene Simmons spit blood or blew fire or balanced his checkbook or something equally awesome.
I didn’t see this the one and only time it aired, October of 1976. That would be my first semester as a Theater Major (Our motto: “Your ass is ours from 2pm until Midnight”). But. It is hard to imagine there was a time when Paul Lynde was a bona fide cultural treasure, doing variety specials every year… then I look at what passes for celebrity today, and suddenly, it’s not so hard.
The plot is almost as lucid as Student Teachers, something about Paul’s housekeeper (Margaret Hamilton) being a witch – fancy that – and witches want Paul to mastermind a way for people to realize that witches are fun people. She is helped in this by Billie Hayes in her Pufnstuf Witchiepoo character, causing the first of many Dave screams of horror.
The witches grant Lynde three wishes, which will result in comedy sketches and songs (yes, Lynde sings), and more screams from Dave, when folks like Betty White and Pinky Tuscadero show up. As Dave also points out, this special is a window to a very narrow period of time; Pinky shows up in Lynde’s first wish, which is to be a trucker with a CB radio and an Elvis jumpsuit. Yes, this is the period in 76-77 when truckers were heroes and people knew who the hell Pinky Tuscadero was.
I realize that’s not her real name, but I defy anyone to tell me her real name without using the Internet. Come on. I dare you. (Alright, it’s Roz “Pinky Tuscadero” Kelly. There.)
Tim Conway gets off the one line, obviously ad-libbed, that makes Dave laugh. Florence Henderson appears (hot as hell in a black sequin dress, I might add) and sings a disco version of “That Old Black Magic”, making Dave scream. And KISS actually do three songs (the last one being Lynde’s last wish). When song #2 appears, it is “Beth”, because it is 1976, and that makes all the KISS fans in the room scream. But I tell you what: you could have heard a pin drop during the other two KISS songs. The Florence Henderson song did not receive such reverence.
Okay, I realize that clip was 85% Pinky Tuscadero and 0% KISS. Here:
Our Paul (not Lynde, but the one sitting on the couch next to me) seemed to truly enjoy the Special just as much as Dave reacted to it like a bulldog chewing on a rabid wasp. I think Dave was more peeved that I had hurt him instead of vice versa, or as I said in my worst Sean Connery, “It’s the Chicago way! They Battlefield Earth one of yours, you Paul Lynde Halloween Special them!” Dave was using words like “kill” “get you”and “you’ll pay for this”, so, yeah… mission accomplished.
The evening wound down with Shriek of the Mutilated, which is a perfect winding-down movie as it plods like a mammoth on its way to bed, enormous nightshirt and cap, with a candle held in its trunk. Where was I? Oh yes. Shriek.
Dave played his old version of it, the one with Hot Butter’s “Popcorn” on the soundtrack. Then he switched to the recent DVD release, with all the gore scenes restored (but the rights to “Popcorn” deemed too expensive). I hadn’t seen this version, I’d only seen the TV print, and their inclusion does aid the movie a bit, if only because their omission was really glaring before, edited out with a cub scout pocketknife and a dull spoon.
Still Shriek of the Mutilated is a movie where the story is advanced by people giving long, detailed speeches about things that have happened offscreen. This is bad enough, but by the time the movie is starting to shamble toward the finish line, people are giving long detailed speeches about stuff that we actually saw happen.
It was a wonderful, wonderful evening though. I hurt Dave more than he hurt me. He was muttering about the Star Wars Holiday Special when I left, which is one Alan always brings up, but that is only because they haven’t seen it. Like having a red-hot wire shoved up your ureter, there is no way to actually know until you have experienced it. Still, I admit that I am amused. I have seen it. It holds no terror for me. But the man-animals think that by showing it, they will hurt me.
This could be fun.
Incidentally, Alan and Paul left right after Shriek started. That might have opened up a couch seat for Rick, but they are total wusses, and that should go on the record.
Another more-than-a-month passed, and our little clique thought itself ready once more for another evening of terrible, terrible cinema. The Greeks had a word for this: hubris. At least, as these things have continued, our choices in food for the evening have gotten better. We started with chips and dip, and have added more and more, until this night: a selection of fajitas, beef and chicken. Host Dave is a very good cook.
Last time, a surprise hit was the Christploitation flick, If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, in which Southern preacher Estus Pirkle and reformed filmmaker Ron (Please Don’t Touch Me) Ormond showed us how Commies would take over a Godless America and proceed to torture and execute Christians, all with a cast composed of Pirkle’s congregation and a few actors from Ormond’s more heathen days.
In case you forgot that combination of bad acting and bargain-basement gore:
So of course we felt behooved to check out the next picture on the sadly small Pirkle/Ormond ouvre, The Burning Hell, which concerns, unsurprisingly, Hell. This one’s got some money behind it, as apparently Pirkle, Ormond and crew actually went to the Holy Land to shoot some footage; the Biblical sections, in which backgrounds of actual antiquity are cut against painted backdrops that would cause high school theatricals to shake their heads sadly, are quite astonishing. Pale-skinned Beduoins argue with each other in Southern accents, while gentlemen wearing buck-fifty Santa beards pontificate.
Then, of course, there is the Rev. Pirkle’s hyperbole:
The mod fellow looking uncomfortable is Ormond’s son, Tim; in the story that moves our atrocity footage forward, his friend (the one dressed in denim), just got his head ripped off in a motorcycle accident some twenty minutes earlier. Pirkle comforts Tim with the words, “Right now, your friend is burning in Hell.” Oh, yes, this is a scare film in every sense of the word, as every syllable is bent toward expressing how being in Hell sucks, heck, it supersucks. The makeup in the Hell sequences have a sort of raw effectiveness, but all the fearmongering and outright hatefulness get very wearing after a while.
Everyone then decided we were through with Mr. Pirkle forever, but when has that ever stopped me? Apparently Pirkle and Ormond had a bit of a falling out, and Pirkle’s next movie, The Believer’s Heaven was done partly or wholly without Ormond. Turns out Believer’s Heaven was excerpted in Diane Keaton’s excellent documentary, Heaven (The Ultimate Coming Attraction), which explains why I found Pirkle so eerily familiar:
Though it’s good to see that Pirkle had a non-yelly, even gracious side, I still wonder where he’s getting his numbers, especially since it seems Heaven should be infinite in size. Or perhaps not, as it appears, in this cosmology, that only a small percentage of people ever make the cut for Divine Residency. Ormond went on to make a couple more movies, the most notable being The Grim Reaper, in which it takes Jack Van Impe and Jerry Falwell combined to make one Estus Pirkle. YouTube appears to be sadly lacking in clips, but there is one photo I’ve tracked down:
Oh, my, yes. That must be Hell. And isn’t that Alan Cumming on the right?
We plunged into secular Hell after that, also known as Night Warning, or originally Butcher Baker Nightmare Maker. This was infamous, at the time, for starring Kristy MacNicol’s younger brother Jimmy, and for having some rather disturbing undertones. Susan Tyrrell plays a woman who’s raised her sister’s son son from a toddler after a (harrumph) suspicious auto accident. Now the boy is preparing to go to college, and she’s starting to unravel, plotting ways to keep him with her forever.
Psycho pictures like this are not my cup of tea, but I was kept entertained by a superb performance by Susan Tyrrell, a lady who never got the acclaim she deserved. Also impressive: Julia Duffy plays Jimmy’s teenage love interest (creatively named Julia). Yes, there is a nude scene. And she was 30 at the time. We had no idea until we started poking around in the IMDb and doing math.
And then we came to the corker of the evening. You see, one of our group – we’ll call him Rick – is the hand on the tiller of our torment. Somehow, he manages to choose one movie per outing, and somehow we still let him. He is the one who inflicted Dondi upon us. He is responsible for the psych-scarring Naked Ass of Clint Howard in Evilspeak; yet, somehow, when he sent a group e-mail that said, “I wanna see Myra Breckinridge!”, we did not hit the “delete” button as a man.
I had never seen Myra before, so my hand was complicit in its screening (not to mention that it was my DVD). This is an odd movie – I mean, look at that hat on John Huston – yet the surrealism never totally takes hold. Old movie scenes are cut into the action, possibly the first time that was tried in a major Hollywood flick. But really… this is not a very good movie. Had it been confident enough to be as brash as it wanted to be, it might have been much better; as it is…
Paul slinked out before Myra began, muttering something about an early morning. He was branded with the epithet “wuss”. Later, I’m sure he was envied. Rick kept up a constant barrage of pseudo-intellectual claptrap about the symbolism that was unspooling before us, possibly to maintain his fragile sanity, but more likely to keep an increasingly enraged Dave at bay. Finally, we reached a point at which Dave asked, “Now, what does that represent?” and I answered, “Rusty represents the audience, and Myra is about to represent the movie.” A look of slow-dawning horror. “No! NOOOOOOOOO!”
Ah, yes. The infamous dildo-rape scene, which supposedly ended the career of actor Roger Herren. Neither as explicit nor as shocking as you’ve been led to believe (you never even see the strap-on Myra uses on the jock). Farrah Fawcett and Tom Selleck’s careers survived, though, and Mae West went on to make Sextette, with which I have threatened our little group.
Here’s Raquel talking about Myra Breckinridge on the Dick Cavett show, and referring to it as a “smash”, at about the two-minute mark. Bonus: Janis Joplin.
About ten minutes from the end of Myra, Dave announced, “This movie has not broken me. I still have power. Do you have power?” I allowed that I did, and we set to looking through his collection. And that is how we came to end the evening with Robot Holocaust.
Robot Holocaust is bad. It is very very very very bad. It is legendarily bad. Post-apocalypse robots rule everything, the air is poison (except when it’s not), and some warriors fight the power that be. This YouTube compilation has boobies, and it’s still four and a half minutes of your life you’ll never get back.
And now, because dammit, I deserve it – and so do you – More Raquel:
I’ve been away from the movies for a while., concentrating my nerdlight elsewhere. I reveled in the world of crap cinema for quite some time, and in fact got a small amount of notoriety from it. But after a certain amount of time rubbing your own nose in a highly questionable pursuit, you start asking yourself questions. Hateful, hurtful questions like, Why am I doing this to myself? Wouldn’t I rather be watching something good? What am I doing with my life?
So, yeah. You try to distance yourself from the once- defining pursuit that has become toxic. You try to watch those movies you think you should be watching, but even then you steer away from Bergman and Fellini, no, you watch Key Largo and Kiss Me Deadly and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Eventually, though, you just need your entertainment in a different form. In my case, you start reading. And even then, if you’ve looked at the past few entries, you’ll know it wasn’t what the world at large would define as “real” reading.
The last week, however, I ran to the precipice and did a cannonball back into the world of the crap cineaste. My pal Dave did one of his Bad Movie Nights on Sunday, and the following Saturday was the fifth iteration of T-Fest, a small semi-official gathering started by three of the B-Masters and a gaming legend. But let us take this in order.
Dave began this odyssey of ordure with the classic If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? It was not one of the scheduled entries, but at 58 minutes or so, it was a …”pleasant” surprise, a movie I had only heard of, but had never seen. Exploitation filmmaker Ron Ormond, legend has it, walked away unscathed from an airplane crash and found Jesus waiting for him, which is a very understandable conversion experience. Ormond then fell in with Baptist preacher Estus W. Pirkle, who was having quite a bit of success with a sermon of the same name, already turned into a book and one of them fancy long-playing records the kids like.
In the sermon – of which the movie is basically an illuminated version – Pirkle warns of what will happen if America as a whole does not turn to Jesus in the next 7 years, which is that horse-riding Communists will take over the country. And it is all the fault of TV, Saturday morning cartoons (which apparently encourage fornication – I was watching the wrong damn cartoons, let me tell you), sex education, dancing and beer.
Now where Ormond’s exploitation chops come in is during the depictions of the various atrocities which are visited upon the god-fearing folks by those damn Commies. Low-budget gore abounds, as well as some Sunday school acting.
This is crap cinema at its finest. You actually feel the trap door open underneath you and you find yourself in Pirkleland, a land of starched dogma and crazed horror movie tropes. Highly recommended.
This was followed by Evil Town, which is not so highly recommended. Evil Town is constructed, Frankenstein-like, from at least two unfinished movies (some claim three or even four). One stars James Keach and a post-stroke Dean Jagger, and is about a town of old people who waylay unsuspecting travelers to harvest their pituitary glands to extend their own lives. The other movie features Lynda Wiesmeier’s boobies, and that’s about the only notable thing (or two, actually). The experience was made more tolerable by trying to keep track of what movie was what (made easier by the difference between 70s and 80s car models and fashions) and the expectation of the return of Ms. Wiesmeier’s ta-tas (in which we were disappointed).
The evening closed with Dondi. Yes, the escapee from one of the Medved’s Fifty Worst books. Based on a comic strip which ran from the 50s through the 80s, about an Italian WWII orphan who is semi-adopted by an Army unit, and who then stows away to America. Oh, yes, it is supposed to be charming, cute and heart-warming. And we all know how badly that can turn out.
David Janssen stars, about six years before The Fugitive, and appears to be drunk in every scene. Arnold Stang is in the unit, but as there are already two over-acting goofballs in the barracks, Stang elects to underplay everything. The kid who plays Dondi was the result of a nationwide talent search, and appears to have an eternally stuffed nose, because that’s cute.
You know, the last B-Fest I attended showed what was theoretically a Lassie movie, but was actually three episodes of the TV series strung together (and the reels in the wrong order, to boot). I think I was the only one in the auditorium during that; it was refreshing to find myself in an irony-free zone.
Dondi would love to be irony-free, but it had the misfortune to be directed by Albert Zugsmith. Anyone who has seen Sex Kittens Go To College knows what that man does to comedy. Now apply the same ham fist to family-friendly fare. My God, what an inferno.
But at least at T-Fest I was able to say, “Suffer, bitches! I’ve seen Dondi!”
T-Fest was held at SMU’s legendary Guildhall, where Sandy Petersen is currently teaching Game Design, and interested students swelled the attendance to a record 50 or so. Not bad for a bunch of friends who wanted to get together in the Summer and create something to replace the late, lamented New Orleans Worst Film Festival.
Things kicked off before the coffee had totally kicked in with Hausu, a 1977 Japanese movie chosen by Sandy.
Hausu is about some Japanese schoolgirls spending the holiday at one girl’s auntie’s country home. Alas, auntie is still waiting for her beau to come back from World War II, and has become a demon, and her house has a tendency to eat young ladies in the most bizarre ways. Actually, I probably could have just stopped at “It’s Japanese”.
If there is one thing I learned from Hausu, it is that if you are confronted by demon disguised as a roadside fruit vendor who demands to know, “Do you like melons?”, answering, “No, I like bananas!” will reduce him to a smoldering heap of bones. Unfortunately, you will then turn into a pile of bananas.
Like I said: Japanese.
This was followed by Ken Begg’s choice, R.O.T.O.R. Anyone who has known Ken for any length of time could have picked that one out of a lineup; Ken has a perverse love for all things R.O.T.O.R., and this time it was especially apt, since R.O.T.O.R. was made in Dallas.
Generally R.O.T.O.R. is referred to as a Robocop wannabe, as the story concerns an attempt at constructing a robot policeman; but since the prototype is accidentally activated and proceeds to shoot a man for speeding (and attempting to offer him a measly $20 bribe), and then spend the rest of the movie chasing his girlfriend, it is more appropriately a Terminator wannabe.
R.O.T.O.R. ain’t terrible, but it’s not particularly good, either. The budget is definitely low, and there’s plenty of touches guaranteed to trigger audience hoots (an earlier comic relief robot, a “Sensor Recall” mode that allows R.O.T.O.R. to see event that transpired when he actually wasn’t there, and an incidental character that defines the term “muscle bitch”). Ken was hopeful of looking up the director while he was in town and encouraging him to produce R.O.T.O.R. II. The sick bastard.
Then, to everyone’s dismay, came my first choice: the 1932 Island of Lost Souls, which I had ripped from my laserdisc, since for some reason it has never been given a DVD release. Heads crane to quizzically look at me. “What a minute… isn’t this supposed to be a good movie?” What can I say? I’m a nice guy.
Charles Laughton’s Dr. Moreau effortlessly upstages everyone else in the cast, and the presence of The Panther Woman (Kathleen Burke, though the credits don’t seem to want you to know that) guarantees many furry/catgirl jokes. Good times, good times.
Then the first of Chris Holland’s choices: Big Man Japan. Chris had intended to substitute another film, but apparently the kvetching about another of his choices – two years ago! – the utterly bizarre and frequently disturbing Funky Forest, convinced him to go with his first choice.
Japanese comedy is, I suspect, an acquired taste, and I don’t think the audience was interested in acquiring it. The buildup to the monster fights were protracted interview scenes, which provoked much shuffling and some unfortunate remarks about not enough bombs being used in World War II. Overall, like Funky Forest and Titanic, I’m glad I saw it, but won’t be revisiting it.
Somewhere around here, there was a horror movie trivia test. I only missed two, and won a DVD of Weasels Rip My Flesh. I think that was a win.
After dinner was supposed to be my second choice, an Indonesian horror movie called Mystics in Bali (“If you see only one movie about the penanggalen this year, make sure it’s Mystics in Bali!). But the disc wouldn’t work, so we used my fallback movie instead: the 1974 blaxploitation zombie flick Sugar Hill. Another flick that’s evaded DVD (though one is rumored in the works) I had a nice widescreen print pulled off Turner Classic Movies.
I’ve always considered Sugar Hill a fun but somewhat middling horror movie; its major plus is Don Pedro Colley’s turn as the voodoo god Baron Samedi, a death god who reaaaaaaaally enjoys his work. The fact that former Playmate Marki Bey as Sugar is hella cute and Robert Quarry is, as usual, wasted are icing on the cake. As is the fact that the movie became a crowd favorite by not causing any suffering. Like I said, I’m a nice guy.
I returned from the restroom to find a familiar sight upon the screen: it was a short film about Lapland, which can be found on the Something Weird DVD for Attack of the Animal People. A bunch of young, attractive Laplanders, dressed in traditional attire, herd up the reindeer for the yearly ritual. We are told that “Some will be slaughtered, some will be bred, and some will be castrated in the traditional way.” And we are then treated in the traditional way, which is handled by the Lap women, using their teeth.
Chris, mad genius that he is, was at the front of the room, taping with his iPhone:
And I still feel the best part of this whole folderol is that we expected to believe that the men then lasso the woman of their choice, magically causing them to be married, and these young folks then take to the hills to fornicate madly even though the men know that these gals just bit off a reindeer’s wang.
Things were running long, and Ken sacrificed his second movie, Cat Women on the Moon, so that we could, alas, watch Sandy’s second choice, Nightmare City, which is an Umberto Lenzi Italian zombie movie. Which should tell you all you need to know about it.
Yeah, a plane disgorges a bunch of zombies that either do or do not infect you when they suck your blood (see, they’re not total cannibals. That would be derivative!) Society collapses, a journalist and his panicky girlfriend try to get out of town, nobody seems to notice that the only time the zombies stay down is when they get shot in the head, and in the end the journalist wakes up and it was all only a dream.
Yes, you read that right. In the end the journalist wakes up and it was all only a dream. Then he goes to the airport and it all starts over again. I believe a petition began circulating to prevent Sandy from ever choosing a movie again. I’m not certain, as the document was likely suppressed. Especially after what came next.
You see, it is traditional that every year, T-Fest end with a movie featuring a Tyrannosaurus, or something close (the “T” stands not only for Texas, but Tyrannosaurus). It was apparently Chris’ turn to choose the end film, and what he came up with was Theodore Rex. You remember Theodore Rex, doen’t you? Here, let me jog your memory:
Apparently the most expensive movie ever released direct to video at the time. Any movie that begins with a text screen detailing the plot is going to hurt. In the future, some genetic genius has managed to revive dinosaurs, but instead of opening a park, he’s given them intelligence and turned them into muppets. One gets murdered because it gets wind of the plot – I guess it read that opening text – and Teddy Rex and Whoopi – who is some sort of cyborg cop – get the case.
Theodore Rex is one of those movies where you wonder why somebody didn’t pull the plug on it sooner, like in the script stage. When a movie makes me think fondly of Howard the Duck, you know you’re in trouble.
So that was my week. In closing, just let me say: suffer, bitches. I’ve seen Dondi!
As everybody knows, I remain perpetually behind the curve. For instance, perhaps by this time next year, I will have finally seen The Dark Knight.
Which is why I am here to proclaim my love for the Nintendo DS.
Before I bought a used one a little over a month ago, I’d had very little time with one, but I distinctly recall reading the pre-release stuff and thinking, “Two screens. Huh.” And also recalling any number of NES peripherals that went unsupported and wound up on the Toys’R’Us clearance aisle. The Powerglove still looked cool, though. And dig that proto-Wii gameplay:
Time has, of course, proven me wrong, especially if the number of DS Lites I saw being pulled out while people were waiting in line at Disneyworld. Lots of kids, sure, but several adults, too.
The most remarkable thing to me – besides the actual utility of two screens – is the quality of the speakers on this dang thing. Little, tiny thin things, and they sound fabulous. At least one writer called them “surround sound”, and I scoffed… but the dimensionality of the sound coming from these things is awesome.
I picked up an affordable used copy of Final Fantasy III (the one that had gone untranslated for many years, for those keeping score). Uematsu’s music sounds very rich, even coming off a tiny chip. There are some things about modern times I wholeheartedly endorse.
Etrian Odyssey has gone by the wayside for the moment. There was sort of a story in there, but only released in small, puzzling droplets. SquarEnix excels at sort of thing, so I’ve been engrossed in FFIII’s story quite happily.
Also: when Etrian would eventually serve up a boss that ate my lunch, I would go out and grind levels until I was strong enough to take it on. In Etrian, I would think in terms of 10 levels or so. Final Fantasy, generally one is sufficient.
Viewing wise: Watched the first disc of The Wild, Wild West, Season One, and you can’t go home again. Love the steampunk spy gadgets, adore Michael Dunn as Dr. Loveless… but twice in two episodes we’ve seen Jim West turn women from the dark side by simply being Jim West and having smoldering good looks, thereby saving the day. I find I didn’t buy it with James Bond and Pussy Galore, either.
Hadn’t seen The Battle of the Bulge in many years, either, so thank you, Netflix. I liked it, but it still doesn’t beat Tora! Tora! Tora!, in my book. Though TTT seems equally crowded, it had a marvelous, semi-documentary feel. Bulge has a lot of extraneous material that could have been cut with no detriment to the story, and I really have my doubts about that final battle at the fuel depot. Still, good stuff, and it is wonderful to see the Cinerama moments, comparable to the roller coaster sequence in This is Cinerama, which did not translate at all during my first viewing on network TV, in pan-and scan. Blech.
Lastly, saw the first disc of the new version of The Andromeda Strain, which was one of my favorite movies because the science fiction is so darn hard. I had my doubts about this, as the travails of the scientists working inside the underground bunker of Project Wildfire has taken a back seat to thoroughly modern tropes like competing agendas of various government agencies (including the Office of Homeland Security, an unthinkable concept when Crichton first wrote Strain), a cocaine-addicted investigative reporter, and ground-level views of the unfolding effects of Andromeda. Taking the story largely out of the bunker has limited the pressure-cooker race against time feeling the original movie possessed, but darned if it ain’t still compelling viewing.
As they say, LOL.
drfreex.com 