As you might well imagine, the quest of a trash movie fanatic is frought with danger. For every nugget of 70s Eurotrash gold you unearth in a 50-movie budget pack, you're likely to suffer through a dozen or more movies so terrible that even laughing at them is impossible. For every candy-colored goretastic brain-burner from the 80s you stumble upon, you trip over that many more shot-on-video disasters with all the technical skill and enjoyment potential of a public-access broadcast of the local school board meeting. Sometimes you spend weeks and many dollars slogging through pile after pile of cinematic excretia, until the very hope of actually enjoying a movie again starts to look like an impossible dream.
But then the magic happens: you come across a thing of such gleeful, over-the-top batshittery that it bypasses your brain's logic- and taste-containing crenelations and strikes deep into the movie-watching pleasure centers, flooding your system with trash-movie endorphins and reminding you why you put in all that time in the first place.
So thank you, Executioner, Part II. Thank you for reminding me what it's all about.
By 1984 the heyday of the grindhouse phenomenon may have been well past, but thank God nobody told director James Bryan (Don't Go in the Woods, Lady Streetfighter) before he turned out this gritty, low-budget, and completely INSANE paean to vigilante justice. From its hamfisted stabs at social relevance ,to its earnest but clubfooted acting, to its sometimes shocking displays of slimy deviance, The Executioner, Part II is a movie that succeeds by getting everything WRONG. If you can't understand the zen truth cocooned in that little exploitation koan, well then, this is not the movie for you.
She Built This City
Against this seedy background, a vigilante dressed in black stalks the night. Actually he stalks broad daylight too, rescuing women from rooftop bandanna-gang rape by cutting the punks' throats with broken bottles and sticking grenades down their pant legs! Dubbed "The Executioner" by gadfly German-American reporter Celia Amherst (Renee Harmon, the model on which Ariana Huffington must have based her entire personality), the vigilante is bringing the crime rate down in LA through outright terrorism, much to the dismay of Mr. Cassalis and his pet Police Commissioner (a never-been-more-blustery Aldo Ray). While Celia sings the Executioner's praises on television and urges the police to leave him alone and let him keep blowing punks up, O'Malley is assigned by his corrupt boss to bring the Executioner in, dead or alive. But when Mike starts displaying increasingly erratic behavior, the lieutenant wonders if his old friend has found a novel way of dealing with his absolutely monstrous case of PTSD.
"Mike! That's NOT the chocolate gun!"
The joy in this movie lies more in its individual parts than in the overarching whole. For instance, early on Mike and Roger are having a beer at the garage when they notice a gang of thieves stripping down Mike's Executionermobile outside. The leader of the gang is a smartly dressed thug rocking the blond hair/black beard look, dressed in tight jeans, a white button-up shirt knotted at the navel, a black leatherette vest and the required red neckerchief. (Only in the early 80s could THIS guy be the gang leader; the lowest Shark or Jet would laugh him out of the rumble for his fashion sense.)
The Vets run the gang off after a lengthy and moderately exciting brawl, and you'd think that'd be the end of it--but no, the Necker-Chief returns later--alone--to rob the garage, this time putting up a good fight against Mike before getting his head slammed in a car door and giving Mike the goods on Mr. Cassalis. Not enough yet? Well, your favorite gangsta and mine returns yet again later for a final confrontation with Mike in the abandoned building where the gang has its HQ. I don't know who played this role, but he lights up the screen every time he appears, so kudos.
Baddest Man in the Whole Damn Town
A lot of odd details flesh out the characters and add to the overall strangeness of the movie. For instance, Pete has a predeliction for Jimmy Buffet-style shirts and 60s doo-wop, and his apartment looks less like a drug den than like the set of Three's Company. He enlists the help of two of his hookers to break Laura into the business (he can't do it himself since he wants to preserve her valuable virginity for his boss), crooning to them, "Girls, meet my new CHICKAY!" However, when they find out Laura is a virgin, the whores rebel and hold Pete down while she makes her escape. His cries of "Get back here! You're letting my virgin get away!" while rolling around with the two call girls could be the end of a John Ritter sketch, the way it's staged. And his bedroom, adorned with a movie poster for Hot Teenage Assets, samurai swords, and a Black-and-Decker drill on the bedpost (?!) just amps up the weird.
Reporter Celia Amherst is another strange character--despite frilly, flower-print grandma dresses and her almost impenetrable German accent, she gets a lot of on-mike interview time for the LA Television station. She gets almost as much attention from Roger, who puts on the moves while she pumps him for information at a local bar. (The entertainment at said bar is a single dancer in a sequined top and white spandex pants, accompanied by a tinny piano--I guess the Weimar vibe makes Celia feel at home.) Celia also seems irresistible to one of Cassalis's goons, who late in the movie ties her down, pumps her full of smack, and molests her as she trips.
Pete the Pusherman: Nothin' but Class
However, my FAVORITE character in the whole movie has to be Laura's friend and fellow dope-addict, Kitty. Blonde, giggly, irrepressible, and gloriously stoned throughout, Kitty is a bright spot whenever she's onscreen. She's introduced while smoking pot with Laura at Roger's apartment. "I wish this were coke," she snickers, toking a joint. "Oh, heavenly coke!" Then she proceeds to sing the praises of the hustling-for-drugs lifestyle, using peer pressure to convince Laura it's okay. "Kitty, I don't think I can go through with it!" Laura demurs. Kitty sympathizes: "Yeah, that's what I said at first. But as soon as the first sleazeball comes along and slips you a $20, it's a breeze!"
This last sentiment is part of the aforementioned hamfisted social relevance portion of the show: the message is, apparently, that once you're on drugs your life is hopeless and bereft of value. Early on Pete tells Laura she should go ahead and be a whore herself out: "Dope, sex--you already screwed yourself anyhow!" Kitty echoes this thought later on, in her typically mirthful style: "Listen, Laura's on drugs, like the rest of us! Once you're on drugs, just SCREW the rest!" It's actually a rather bleak point of view, meant to bolster the film's other argument: that in a world full of drug addicts and Tattoo Men, the Executioner's methods are really the way to go.
Find a new tattooist.
I fully understand that BATSHIT CRAZEE is not a high recommendation for everyone, but if it is for you, then The Executioner, Part II has everything that you want. Sure, it's inept and poorly put-together, but it's also as strangely gleeful and enthusiastic as Kitty on a coke-binge. Works for me! I give The Executioner, Part II a satisfied 2.5 thumbs. Check it out. And just say no to drugs.
Unless Kitty's with you. Then, what the hell--go for it.
"Oh, Heavenly Coke!"
Thursday, January 22, 2009
The Executioner, Part II (1984): or, Just Say No to Drugs
Monday, January 19, 2009
Satanico Pandemonium (1975): Or, Spiked Penance Belts Save Lives
Greetings my fellow readers! It is I, The Duke, back from the gutter, and this time I’ve brought something back with me! I know it has been a while since I last regaled you with my acumen on all things cinematically awesome, but I swear the results will be worth the wailing and gnashing of teeth that my absence no doubt caused you all.
The holiday season saw me taking my annual trip to Roma for Saturnalia, and as typical during this festive time, I consumed way too much food, and had my way with way too much young flesh. Let us start from the beginning: A rather long train ride, during which I could only amuse myself by counting the gypsy dung carts that I saw passing by the window outside, and suddenly I was in the outskirts of Rome, in a little village called Nomentano. This year the festival was being held in the church Corpus Domini, a fitting name given what was about to take place.
As luck would have it, I had been elected Saturnalicius princeps due to a rather large donation that I had sent the Vatican earlier in the year, a gift consisting of several man-eating boars reared in Sardinia, a gilded cross depicting a nude Jesu, and 52 coupons to Taco Bueno for $1 off a taco with purchase of a large soft drink. This meant, of course, that I would preside over the festival and generally bear the brunt of all the fornication, something that I welcomed with much satisfaction.
Donning a loose toga, I reclined on a silken couch and watched the merry-making. Such sights I beheld! A Moor, who bore a striking resemblance to a rotten tree trunk, presented a staged version of Hamlet using only trained monkeys. A troupe of nymphs from Moldavia took the stage only to disrobe and begin fondling each other, which went on for 5 solid hours until someone thought to ask them how much longer the show was, much to their surprise and embarrassment. Seems they weren’t part of the show at all and instead had thought the central stage open to public lounging. The list goes on and on.
A week later, I awoke facedown in a gutter, nude except for a crown of thorns on my head. I vomited, righted myself, looked around for my clothes, only to instead pick up a half-empty goblet of wine. Suddenly, the monkey-trainer was at my side, one of his leashed charges ambled over to me. “Josephus wants you to have something, sir”, the Moor mumbled. I glanced down to see what the monkey proffered to me, and it was…
Satanico Pandemonium. The name rolls off the tongue like a hot Jujube. As most of you are well aware, my dedication to all things nunsploitation knows no bounds and so it was with bated breath that I put this one in the royal DVD player. I was greeted by a never-ending cavalcade of depravity, a movie that enters the exclusive company of Alucarda and School of the Holy Beast.
Our movie tells the story of one Sister Maria, a hot young nubile nun who blissfully wiles away the day, picking flowers, never knowing the hidden sexual desires hovering barely beneath her tanned flesh. Whilst out picking flowers one fine summer day, Sister Maria is rudely interrupted by a nude man. As with anyone who suddenly finds themselves staring at naked Mexican genitals, she flees in a blind panic. Coming upon a shepherd boy named Marcello, she relaxes, but not for long as the Mexican dude shows up again, only this time with clothes, offering Maria an apple (see where they are going here?)
"Excuse me, I'm looking for the nearest Ambercrombie & Fitch..."
Thinking back on his throbbing Latino member, Sister Maria flees in terror, back to the convent. Seems Mr. Handsome Latin-dude is none other than the Prince of Darkness Himself. His Infernal Majesty has nothing on his normally busy schedule, so he decides that today he’s going to corrupt a sexy young nun. Note to Self: Upon reaching life goal of becoming The Devil, put this at the top of your to-do list!
Life in the convent is just how you usually see 16th century convents depicted, i.e. – lots of nuns singing in chorus, lots of nuns eating with wooden spoons, lots of nuns doing nun things. This particular convent has two dark-skinned servant nuns, who are treated as outcasts by everyone but the kind Sister Maria. Finding one of them crying, she consoles her. Sister Outcast is suicidal, it seems, but Maria assures her that if she is steadfast and loves God, then all will be well. At this point I’m wondering why they don’t start making out, and am disappointed when this fails to happen. Luckily, my patience was about to pay off!
Maria heads to her room, which is perfect for cloistering. Doing just that, she begins to pray, only she can’t stop thinking about Mr. Juan Long Dong who so fabulously introduced her to cock earlier in the day. Deciding, rightly so, that the only cure is self-flagellation, Sister Maria employs the use of a spiked belt and a whip. Baring herself to the waist (ahh, yes!), Maria wraps a leather belt, studded with spikes, around her midsection, then begins to whip her back via the tried and true over-the-shoulder method, commonly employed by priests and nuns alike.
"When a problem comes along, you must whip it!"
The servant nuns interrupt this personal time with news of a sick cow. Sister Maria heads to the barn, where she quickly concocts an herbal remedy for the hapless bovine. Satan beams himself directly into the barnyard, eating another apple, as is his custom. Tossing the half-eaten apple at Maria, he teleports out again. Maria spies the apple and flees back to her room in horror. Upon entering the room she strips to the waist again, revealing that she’s still wearing The Punishment Belt™. She doesn’t notice, however, the nun hiding behind the door!
Turns out this nun is in love with Sister Maria (as we all are, by this time), and proceeds to confess her love. Not being able to contain herself, she jumps Maria’s bones, furiously kissing her on the mouth and teats. Suddenly, this sex-starved Sister is replaced by Naked Gypsy Satan! The Son of Darkness sure does love teleportation. He finally reveals himself as Satan (as if we weren’t already aware, come on, he’s eating apples for Christ’s sake, the Devil’s Own Fruit!) and tells Sister Maria that should she ever want or need him, then she has but to speak his name and he’ll come a’runnin’ (or in his case, teleporting into her shower, bed, etc).
"You're good, but you're no Naked Gypsy Devil..."
This visitation causes Maria to slide off into the precipice of darkness. Suddenly, the paintings in the hallways take on new meanings, revealing devil faces and such. She has dark thoughts, naughty thoughts that won’t go away even with the employment of The Punishment Belt™ or the liberal use of a Sham-Wow™. This is evidenced by her accosting of poor Marcello, the shepherd boy. Maria finds him sitting on a riverbank as the sheep graze nearby. Sitting down next to him, she wastes no time in revealing too much leg, before finally jumping on Marcello and kissing him. Obviously fearing eternal damnation (and, perhaps, hairy Mexican vagina), he flees in terror.
"With the power of Satan!"
Sister Maria is conflicted by the thoughts she’s having, and contemplates suicide via scissors after having a vision of snakes inhabiting her drinking cup at the evening meal. The Mother Superior tries to help, offering Maria solace, but she’s having none of it. The Naked Gypsy Devil’s pull is too much to resist! Not content with molesting under-aged shepherd boys, Maria goes prowling the convent at night. Entering the kitchen, she sees the suicidal servant nun about to hang herself by climbing upon the kitchen table and stringing a rope through the rafters. Instead of just watching like anyone would, Sister Maria goes the extra mile by rushing into the kitchen and shoving the girl off the table, then satisfactorily watching her swing!
Performing assisted suicide is just the beginning of this night’s activities for Sister Maria, however. Next she sets off to young Marcello’s house, to finish what she started earlier. Marcello lives with his elderly grandmother, who welcomes Sister Maria into the house. While the old lady nods off in the living room, Maria sneaks into sleeping Marcello’s bed, naked, and begins to sex him up. Horrified beyond belief to be this close to a naked woman, Marcello struggles mightily, until Maria gives up, grabs a nearby knife, and stabs him repeatedly!
Now, my dear readers, what follows are one of the greatest mind-fuck scenes ever. We see Maria stab Marcello (with the most obvious use of a stunt knife in the history of film), she stands up, covered in blood, looks at the bed with a horrified look, the camera pans over and… it’s Marcello’s aged grandmother in the bed, dead! WTF?! The confusion is further compounded by the fact that, during their initial struggle, Marcello grabbed the necklace from around Sister Maria’s neck, clutching it in his dead hand. Only, when the camera pans back, his body is nowhere to be seen! Sister Maria sets the house on fire and flees.
Not having any other real use, the convent also doubles as dead body storage. Marcello and his grandmother are both brought to the convent, I guess to await burial. Sister Maria uses this opportunity to sneak down and pry the necklace from Marcello’s lifeless hand. Somehow both Marcello and his grandmother were killed by Maria, yet Maria was making out with Marcello AND the grandmother? I re-watched this scene 3 times and still couldn’t figure out what the director intended. Ahh well, suffice it to say that Maria’s secret was safe, though just for the moment, as Mother Superior sees Maria fleeing the makeshift morgue.
Maria goes to her room, and the Mother Superior follows, confronting her. Sister Maria decides there’s no going back, so she promptly denounces God, which causes the Head Nun to turn her back and begin praying for Maria’s immortal soul. Maria realizes through some buried instinct that since she’s the instrument of Satan on earth that she can do anything she damn well pleases. Muttering a quick prayer to the Devil, she conjures an Infernal Strangling Rope™ out of thin air, and proceeds to strangle the Mother Superior with it!
"When erotic asphyxia goes horribly wrong..."
She wraps the body in a sheet and drags it down into the crypts, hiding it in a handy tomb. A funeral is had for the grandmother and dear Marcello, which causes Maria to have 2nd thoughts as to her current life situation. She flashes back to taking communion and what that meant (obviously, it means she’s a cannibal), and this causes her to begin to repent her sins to God.
Suddenly, Naked Gypsy Devil ports straight in, dressed to the nines. Using his smarmy Mexican good-looks, he purrs to Maria that she now has a choice. He points down the hill, and we see a procession of nuns, bearing flaming crosses and torches. He informs Maria that they’ve found out about the Mother Superior’s death, and know that Maria did it, and they are coming to hand her over to the Spanish Inquisition (which she obviously didn’t expect, since NO ONE EXPECTS THE… eh, you know the rest).
"Maria's friends at the convent warned her about Beer Bong Nite..."
He fills her mind with visions of what they’ll do to her, visions that resemble quite well the last party that the Vicar threw in my honor. We see them pouring boiling liquid down her throat, we see them using a yard rake on her tits, plucking her eyes out, and generally giving her what we call The Satanic Make-Over™. His Infernal Majesty informs her that he can make it all go away, that he can give her the world, if she will just accept him.
"Hell. Yes."
At first she rejects him, but as the torch-bearing nuns get nearer, she reconsiders and cries out that she’ll accept Lucifer’s bargain. Suddenly, the burning crosses turn to crosses covered with flowers, as the Sisters crest the rise and inform Sister Maria that she’s the new Mother Superior! She will lead them into a new realm of nunnery.
Heading back to the convent, with Satan in tow, Maria opens the door to… the Best Little Convent in Mexico! Debauchery is in full swing. The director gives us a nice panoramic shot of the corruption. A naked, singing nun stands in the doorway, strumming a guitar whilst displaying her cultivated bush. Other nuns dance in a drunken circle around a large table. One nun, naked, holds another in her lap, also naked. The mind struggles to take all of this in. Satan turns to Maria and says, “You should go to the window and address your people, they are waiting to hear from their new Mother Superior.”
"The party room at the Hilton ended up being worth the money..."
Maria walks over to the window, opens it, and sees a crowd of sheep. I’m sure there’s a deep meaning here, about how the Devil corrupts and we follow blindly like sheep, but I just chose to nod sagaciously and to get back to watching the naked nuns. Suddenly, all of the nuns, naked or otherwise, rise up and stab poor Sister Maria to death! Before we can wonder why, a quick star-wipe takes us to Maria, lying dead upon her bed. The convent is back to normal and we learn from some passing nuns that Sister Maria has died in her sleep due to the plague! The End!
"Et Tu, Sister?"
Now, I’m sure we can all agree that the use of the “Oh, it was all just a dream!” ending is typically NOT something we can accept, but I feel in this case it works. I’m sure the plot of this movie can be explained away by some existential mental meanderings: Naked Gypsy Devil represents the plague, the evil plague corrupts young life, nuns like debauchery and playing the guitar whilst naked, etc. However, I choose to believe that the plague was the means, not the end, that the Devil used it as his instrument to deflower the minds of young, sex-starved nuns, before they succumbed to the ravages of The Great Mortality.
The final shot of the film shows The Devil following yet another young nun while she goes about gathering flowers, or perhaps she’s off to paw a shepherd boy. The cycle continues.
Satanico Pandemonium has been made semi-famous by Quentin Tarantino’s evangelizing of it, and he even named Salma Hayek’s character in From Dusk Till Dawn after the film’s title. I’m glad he approves, and makes me wish he’d throw caution to the wind and make a big budget nunsploit film. Make it happen, Quentin! I, for one, loved it, and as I said earlier, rank it right behind Alucarda and School of the Holy Beast in terms of nun defilement. I highly recommend to all my readers that you should hunt down a copy and your earliest convenience.
Three enthusiastic Thumb’s Up!
Friday, January 16, 2009
Death Warmed Up (1984): or, Trepanation Island
Hey, remember the 80s? Remember the over-moussed hair, the bright primary-colored clothes, and the bloopy synth music? The salad days of MTV and Miami Vice? Remember Olivia Newton-John? Remember Men at Work?
Good. Keep those images in your mind.
Now add a healthy dose of mad science, a dollop of pre-code horror comics'* carnage and general disdain for logic, a dash of homoeroticism, and a villain straight out of Mad Max's The Wall, and you're almost in the brainspace to appreciate this New Zealand-produced mad movie from 1984, David Blyth's frankly mindfuckling Death Warmed Up.
*of the sort provided gratis daily by the inestimable Karswell over at MMMMMovies buddy site, The Horrors of It All! Check 'em out!
After some brightly colored collage-style credits, we open on young Michael Tucker (Michael Hurst) running like mad through a forest in full daylight. Dressed only in an AC/DC-approved school uniform, Mike seems dazzled by the sunlight falling through the branches of the trees as he keeps the knees pumping high, as if some fearful beast doth close behind him tread. Where has he been? What's he running from? These questions remain tantalizingly unanswered: within seconds the pastoral paradise gives way to a metropolitan cityscape, but Michael doesn't slow down for an instant--he sprints down the urban avenues right up the stairs of a local hospital, where the nurses seem to know him and don't think it at all odd that the sweaty schoolboy has burst in as if crossing the finish line at the Sydney Olympics.
"So...wanna get physical?"
After a short elevator ride Mike finds his way to the neurosurgery department, where his father, Professor Tucker (David Weatherley) is having a heated discussion with colleague Dr. Archer Howell (the wonderfully evil Gary Day). It appears some vaguely defined experiments of Howell's cross Tucker's ethical lines, something to do with immortality through brain surgery (?). The frank exchange of views gives way to fisticuffs, as Dr. Howell throws his puny partner against the wall and threatens bodily harm if the funding is cut off. When Howell sees Michael spying on them, the horrified youngster flees the scene.
Not fast enough, though, as a couple of dimly lit corridors over Dr. Howell catches up with him. Noticing the young man is sweaty and out of breath, the doctor--in the most menacing voice possible--suggests that Mike take a quick shower in the surgeons' locker room to "freshen up." Having just witnessed this same man roughing up his dear old dad, Micheal readily agrees!
It's here that we get our first dose of homoeroticism in the flick (if you don't count the hospital's extremely phallic edifice--which I do), as the fit young man takes a very gratuitous, red-lit shower, throwing his head back and opening his mouth for the gentle spray in the way Linnea Quigley and others have made a career of. This boy *really* enjoys his showers--so much so that he doesn't notice the wicked Dr. Howell sneaking up on him with a syringe the size of a billy-club, which he uses to PENETRATE Mike's taut buttocks and pump them full of his mysterious SCIENCE JUICE. Gripping Michael firmly from behind, the doctor drags him off into the shadows. Doubtless for a perfectly innocent purpose.
Gratuitous Butt Shot
Anyone who remembers the early days of MTV should get a warm fuzzy feeling of nostalgia from Blyth's visual style here--impossibly bright colors, glowing red and blue gels, and copious Venetian blind-shadows are the order of the day. The periodic synthesizer stings out of nowhere only add to the feeling that any moment Simon Le Bon and Murray Head are going to step out from behind a pillar and get the party started right. (Unfortunately, this NEVER happens.)
Later that evening Ma and Pa Tucker are undressing after a formal evening out, watching a news report on Dr. Howell's research. "He's MAD!" the professor exclaims, obviously still reeling from his office ass-whupping. Mrs. Tucker, clad in what looks like a cross between an old-fashioned slip and a Merry Widow, pulls herself away from her floor-to-ceiling closet full of shoes long enough to comfort her husband with some hot MILF action.
Meanwhile Dr. Howell is driving his obviously altered new friend back home after whatever sordid tryst followed the fade-to-black. He deposits Mike at Chez Tucker then scarpers, an evil gleam in his eye. Mike stumbles across the front lawn, cradling a shotgun.
"Mike? Is that you?"
Of course Michael creeps upstairs, interrupts his parents' first sex in years, and proceeds to go all DeFeo on them in one of the films' many excellent gore scenes. Dad gets several squibs and stark splatter, and Mom even gets a shotgun blast to the gut, right in front of her precious shoe-stash. Not sated with murdering his parents, Mike blasts the table lamp on his way out--it's always the innocents who get hurt.
Seven years later Michael is released from the world's smallest padded cell and put back out in the world, his hair gone bleached-blond from the trauma. In the intervening years Dr. Howell has taken his work to the corporate sector, founding TransCranial Applications Incorporated and purchasing a private island where he is governor and god. We get some pretty good mad science action here, as Dr. Howell performs graphic brain surgery on a hapless patient while nurses with dead eyes and mesh surgical masks stand by to assist. If you look at the expressionless cadre of medical women here and start singing "Addicted to Love," well, I won't stop you.
Blaming the Doctor's butt-juice injection for his parents' deaths, Michael rounds up his girlfriend and two other mates and sets out for revenge. The first part of the revenge plan involves getting to the island on one of the rustiest ferries imaginable. While Mike and his Olivia Newton-John-channeling girlfriend Sandy (Margaret Umbers) talk to the captain, their friends Lucas and Jeannie decide to have sex on the hood of their car. When they see a couple of Mad Max rejects getting an eyefull they retire to the relative privacy of the backseat of the same car, where Jeannie shucks out of her top and gives us some female nudity, for a change.
"The next time I see you, you'd BETTER have eyebrows!"
It's here that the movie takes its *really* hard left turn, as a hunchbacked mutant in a Devo-esque jumpsuit interrupts the lovers in flagrante de Pinto. Moments later Lucas retaliates by pissing on the baddies' van, leading to some harsh threats from their leader Spider (David Letch, subscribing to the Bob Geldof/Jess Franco's Faceless school of "shaved eyebrows == MORE EVIL" thought). A ferry brawl ensues, followed by a Mad Max-ish car chase on the mainland. Our protagonists ditch the bad guys in an actual ditch, and our story can get on its way.
Or so you would think. After an odd scene where Dr. Howell and a henchman stop into a local convenience store to buy pineapples from an incredibly offensive Indian ethnic stereotype (obviously a Kiwi "comic" in brown-face), we join Mike and his mates at a beach where they've stopped for a picnic. If you're hoping for hott bathing suit shots here, you won't be disappointed:
"No more sandwiches for me, thanks--I'm stuffed."
In the tunnels under the island, the baddies catch up with our heroes again, this time on motorcycles! There's a long chase through the tunnels--and I mean LONG, several minutes too long, really--and Jeannie is clubbed by a passing cyclist just before they escape. Enraged, Lucas goes back in, grabs a length of pipe, and succeeds in impaling one of the bikers on it--though it magically changes to a piece of rebar once it pierces the mutant's back. Versitile material, that.
Spider takes his mortally wounded friend to Dr. Howell, and the doc expresses his unconcern by shoving Spider's eyebrowless face right into his friend's exposed intestines! Harsh, but fair. A bit put out over this, Spider retaliates by going down to the basement of the clinic and releasing a roomful of slavering mutants to wreak havoc through the hospital.
A real mind-blower.
It's not long before the clinic and most of the island is in flames, and Mike finds himself face-to-face with his nemesis and ready to get some answers about Howell's motivations. No dice--Howell is a mad scientist of the pre-code horror comics mode, doing these horrible things because he's EEEVIL, and he CAN. As to what he hopes to accomplish--apparently it's destruction for destruction's sake:
"I had a vision! There are HUNDREDS out there who've undergone the process...it's only a matter of hours before they all start to melt down! But there are others out there who HAVEN'T EVEN STARTED!"
No arguing with that logic. When Mike gets the upper hand with a carelessly unsecured scalpel the size of a butcher knife, the Doc plays his trump card: "You must realize that I must survive if this is to be stopped! Only I can make you well again!"
Unimpressed, Mike gets very stabby indeed on the good doctor, pinning him against the wall and THRUSTING his PENETRATING BLADE into Howell's EXPOSED FLESH, AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN, until THE FLUIDS HIT THE FLOOR AND...say, is it hot in here?
It all leads to a non-confrontation with spider and a bleakish non-ending that makes about as much sense as a set of Ronnie James Dio lyrics, but fortunately is just as much fun.
The Vicar's Happy Place, circa 1985
I had a blast with Death Warmed Up, but I should warn viewers that it's not without its problems. A lot of the driving and chase scenes seem to take place in real time, which slows the movie down considerably, especially against the frantic pace of many of the other scenes. The acting and dialogue are as over the top as comic book speech bubbles, which can be good or bad depending on your point of view. There are a few really out-of-nowhere video wipes that pull you right out of the film, and at least one scene where the actors are upstaged by a boom mike. But for someone like me, that's just gravy on the chips, baby.
That said, the gore is good and goopy, the plot is wilder than it needed to be (in a good way) and the wacky homoerotic undertones (in addition to the MASSIVE SYRINGES and PIPE IMPALEMENT, the guards at the clinic use MAGNIFICENT CATTLE PRODS to keep the inmates in line) and Mad Max/80s Music Video sensibilities all push the scales in the movie's favor. If you're looking for Oscar bait, look away--but if you're looking for FUN, you could do a lot worse.
A bit of an oddity and a TOTAL product of its times, Death Warmed Up is worth at least one viewing by Mad Movie fans, and thus gets an easy 2 Thumbs Up. Grab a few beers, fix up a plate of Vegemite sandwiches, put your legwarmers up on the table, and enjoy.
"You call that a knife? That's not a KNIFE..."
Friday, January 9, 2009
99 Women (1969): or, Jess Dials it Back
It's funny how the pendulum swings. Earlier this week I was watching an Italian cannibal movie that I *thought* was tamer than other representatives of the subgenre, only to find upon further research that it was worse than I could have imagined. And now I find myself reviewing the SPECIAL UNCUT VERSION of a women-in-prison flick directed by infamous international sex fiend Jess Franco and starring Eurohottie Extraordinaire and top-10 Vicar Happy-Dream Subject Rosalba Neri, a confluence of awesomenesses you would think could spell nothing but Eurosleaze greatness. And what do I find? A movie that, even in its uncut version, barely earns an R-rating for either sex OR violence. What the fuck, Jess? How did you let THAT happen?
This is not to say that 99 Women doesn't have pleasures to offer--I could watch Rosalba Neri brush her teeth for half an hour, and she does much more than that here; and Jess does manage some striking visuals and coaxes at least one awesomely nuts performance out of a collaborator. It's just that for a movie whose original title is "Der Heiße Tod" (literally, "The Hot Death"), you might be expecting just a little more.
The movie opens on a dead, flybuzzed carcass on the desolate shores of a hot, rocky island. This is the ilse of Castile de la Muerte--the Castle of Death--a South American women's prison renowned for its impregnability and the cruelty of its wardress. In the distance a small boat approaches, bearing three new inmates to the prison: redheaded junkie Nathalie (Luciana Paluzzi), brunette showgirl Helga (Elisa Montés), and shell-shocked blonde Marie (Maria Rohm). Apparently justice is harsh and swift in South America--so swift that Helga was apparently tried, convicted, and transported without ever having time to change out of her can-can outfit!
Yes We Can-Can
We get some of the aforementioned beautiful shots of the prison as the girls approach--it's an old fortress of some kind, all sand-colored stone and sharp planes under bright blue, cloudless skies. As they disembark the girls notice a body beign carted out the prison's front door--"Suicide," one warden helpfully informs us, though not convincingly. The wardress, Thelma Diaz (a wonderfully over-the-top Mercedes McCambridge) shows up and lays down the law by getting slappy on Marie when she offers her name instead of her assigned number. "From now on you have no name, only a number. You have no future, only the past. You have no hope, only regret. You have no friends--only me." The strange, half-Spanish half-German accent McCambridge affects only gives lines like this more bite.
After the girls are issued their fetching gray prison frocks (Marie's with the stencilled number "99" over the left breast, justifying the film's title), they are shown to the Big Communal Cell, where the main reason for watching this movie awaits:
You Know You Want It
Rosalba Neri aka Number 76, is Zoe, and apparently has special dispensation from Madame Thelma to wear her sheer black stockings AT ALL TIMES--even when on work detail in the salt mines! This is the kind of Wardress's Pet privilege to which a fair-minded, progressive person can only shake his head and say "ZANG." Rosalba seems to spend most of her time lounging around in on pillows in the communal cell, fondling her harem of fellow prisoners/admirers and saying nasty things to Helga, who we learn has spent some time at the prison before. Meanwhile Marie is concerned about Nathalie's withdrawal pains and tries to convince the guards to send a doctor; Madame Thelma puts her in the Punishment Cell for her compassion (which is surprisingly light on the punishment, it must be said), and Nathalie passes on in the night, glad to be quit of such a terrible, sexy world.
The next day Wardress Diaz gets a visit from her corrupt partner in correction Governor Santos, played to shaven-headed, tan-cheeked perfection by a wonderfully oily Herbert Lom. Santos lets Diaz do whatever she wants with the female prisoners, so long as every now and then she lets him drop by to "correct" some of the hard cases--particularly if they're petite and blonde. As such he's very interested in #99. However, the recent deaths at the prison have drawn the attention of more scrupulous higher-ups, and they're sending a new wardress to take Thelma's place; in order to keep themselves supplied with all the female flesh they can whip, Santos and Diaz begin to plot the new boss's downfall.
The following afternoon Rosalba and Helga get embroiled in a work-detail catfight; when Marie steps in to help her friend, she and Rosalba are sent to the sick bay to lick their... wounds. Later that night Santos comes in to punish the girls, or more specifically Marie--Rosalba gleefully helps the Governor by slapping and undressing Marie, molesting the new girl under Santos's leering eye. Franco picks this scene to get artistic on us, filming the molestation in extreme close-ups and nearly indecipherable blurry shots, all to a strangely romantic musical score. While visually interesting, this directorial choice would also seem to subvert the conventions of the WiP genre--after all, the molestation and whipping are what put people's asses in the seats for this type of flick.
You'd weep too if your life were this beautiful.
Soon the new wardress, Leonie Carroll (Maria Schell) arrives, and sets about making changes to the way things are run at the Castile. Preferring compassion to the lash, she abolishes the Punishment Cell and cuts back on the nighttime guard details, much to the demoted Diaz's strenuous objections. The juxtaposition of Schell's smiling, soft-voiced administator and McCambridge's overblown Frau Hitler impression is amusing, particularly in a later scene where Diaz derides her new superior's methods while flailing her arms dramatically. In fact, McCambridge's whole acting method in this flick is pretty amazing in its gasket-blowing intensity--it's almost expressionistic in a way, hyper-real, and I agree with Franco when he says in the accompanying interview that whenever McCambridge is onscreen, you can't take your eyes off her. A commanding presence, and one of the highlights of the film.
Unfortunately the other highlights are few and far between. Franco hits the required notes here--the girls plan an escape into the island jungle, hoping to make it to the harbor and hitch a ride to the mainland, they meet up with a male prisoner who had the same plan for some cave-bound nookie, and arrive at their destination only to find Lom and his goons waiting for them--but it's all done slowly and with a strange reticence to focus in on the sexual and violent elements of the story; all the stranger because this is Jess Franco we're talking about.
For instance, after their correction by Santos, Rosalba and Marie wind up in the same cell again, only this time they decide to get friendly. Rosalba shares the story of how she came to the prison, and we get a groovy flashback to her days as a stripper for an audience of public school lesbians and how her jealous female boss killed Rosalba's boyfriend, which led Rosalba to murder the boss in return. Rosalba's striptease in this scene is done with colored lights and candles that recall Soledad Miranda's nightclub act in the far superior Vampyros Lesbos, and the whole thing is done in a dreamy, psychedelic style that's quite appealing. Inspired to compassion by the sob story, Marie decides to comfort Rosalba with lesbian sex--willingly this time--and again Franco breaks out the blurry shots and extreme closeups, as if unwilling to show what's actually going on. Some might find this a laudable choice, but again, given the milieu here, I couldn't help but feel it was (ahem) anticlimactic.
Probably the best sequence in the movie is Marie's flashback to the events that landed her in prison, told to the compassionate Wardress Carroll. Her story of her abduction by a motorcycle gang, subsequent rape, and murder of one of her attackers in order to escape is done with a surreal tone--the bikers all wear white hoods during the attack, and the leader uses lipstick to paint a mouth on his, which is a disturbing image. The rape itself is shown in silhouette, which works in this case, as Franco's closeups and moody lighting give the story the horrifying unreality of a nightmare.
Would you accept a ride from these men?
But apart from this, the movie comes across as reticent, tame, and (most criminally) kind of boring. The story moves along sluggishly and predictably, there's hardly any tension to speak of, and the one scene of whipping--again, a staple of the WiP genre--is just as reticent as the sex scenes. If not for the periodic visual flourishes and the presence of Ms. Neri (who later shows up in an amazing piece of lingerie that is definitely NOT up to the prison dress code), there would be little here to hold one's interest at all.
The DVD also includes an interview with Franco himself discussing the production, and he's as enthusiastic and interesting as always. His anecdotes about Mercedes McCambridge, his tales of the movie's distribution and unexpected success, and other tidbits are fun to listen to. As often happens, listening to Franco talk about his work almost convinced me that the movie was much, much better than what I had actually just seen.
However, much as I admire Jess's enthusiasm and passion, The Hot Death left me rather cold. It may seem strange that I fault his movie for NOT being as ugly and violent as WiP flicks usually are, but in this case the flick could have used a little more of that, if only to make the viewer concerned about the protagonists' safety and nervous about their chances of getting away. Lacking such, 99 Women unfortunately falls flat. 1.5 thumbs, with an added quarter for Rosalba's stunning gorgeosity, for a total of 1.75. Serious Franco fans might find something here, but others might want to stay on the straight and narrow.
OBEY!
Monday, January 5, 2009
Slave of the Cannibal God (1978): or, Sometimes Shorter is Better
Most of my parishioners should understand by now that, while your ever-lovin' Vicar could not really be called a "perfectionist," he does take pride in having at least a rudimentary idea what he's talking about. That's why it's often not enough for me just to watch a movie and then foist my opinions on the breathlessly anticipatory blogosphere; no, sometimes I have to go that extra mile, do that extra little bit of research, find that one bonus tidbit that will make everyone's visit to the dungeons of the Vicarage worthwhile. Say what you will about me, but if there's one think I hate, it's going off half-cocked.
Sometimes, though, the knowledge I gain is hardly worth the torment of its possession. Such was definitely the case with my inaugural movie of 2009, Sergio Martino's infamous 1978 cannibal flick, Slave of the Cannibal God. The version in my collection comes from the Mill Creek 50 Drive-In Movie Classics box set, and clocks in at a lean 82 minutes. It had its gruesome moments, but even to an untrained eye it's obvious some censor has taken a hacksaw to the print. A cursory glance through my Internet Sources (the BEST sources!) told me I was missing anywhere from 9 to 19 minutes of prime sex-and-gore infamy. Not one to let an omission like that stand, I put on my pith helmet and struck out into the jungles of the web, searching for that elusive lost footage.
But before I discuss the result of *that* ill-fated expedition, let's talk about the shorter, kinder, gentler print.
In both versions, Martino (who showed a much defter touch in the previously reviewed All the Colors of the Dark) opens with a seemingly conservation-minded text crawl:
New Guinea is perhaps the last region on earth which still contains immense unexplored areas, shrouded in mystery, where life has remained at its primordial level. Today, on the dawn of the space age, it seems unimaginable that only twenty hours' flight from London there still exists such a wild and uncontaminated world. This story bears witness that it does...
Fair enough--but that green message is accompanied by examples of what Alfred Lord Tennyson famously called "Nature, red in tooth and claw": we get to see an alligator eating a snapping turtle, an albino cobra spreading its hood, and various other shots of animals basically being beastly to one another. Of course this is to establish the metaphorical backdrop for our tale's easy moral, which as usual has to do with men not being any better than komodo dragons when it comes to compassion and survival. However, next to the above sentiment, it seems a little out-of-context.
After striking out at the embassy, Susan heads to her husband's jungle compound where she meets his partner Professor Edward Foster, played by a young, buff n' scruffy Stacy Keach. Edward has a hunch about Professor Stevenson's whereabouts, as the old man had been fascinated by the legends surrounding the island of Roaka and its sacred mountain, Ra-Ra Mi. Unfortunately, Ed tells us, the island is off-limits--"They say it's for conservation reasons, but the truth of the matter is...they're afraid of the curse too." Resolved not to leave Papua without her Papa, Ursula recruits Keach and his band of merry natives to lead an illegal expedition to the mountain to get her husband back.
From there it's a short helicopter ride to the middle of jungly nowhere, and our intrepid band of explorers spends quite a bit of time hacking through the brush in close-up. Ursula gets the first brush with death in when she falls over to find herself face to face with a gigantic tarantula! The tarantula, in turn, gets the first ACTUAL death as Keach cleaves it in twain with his handy machete. (Yes, as is usual with this kind of flick, ANIMALS WERE HARMED.) Keach then delivers a chilling monologue about what Ursula could have expected had she been bitten by the deadly beast--a cautionary tale that would carry more weight, I think, if Keach himself were clad in more than mid-thigh camo shorts. I guess he's relying on his cunning to keep him alive.
"Of course the surest way to make them bleed is when you bust their ass and steal their weed."
As it turns out, the spider got off easy. Believing the killing of a spider was a bad omen, the natives in Keach's outfit set about appeasing the gods...by killing an iguana! The tied, writhing animal is gutted graphically for your viewing pleasure, and one of the natives goes the extra mile by pulling out the lizard's heart and using it for chewing gum. My brain was spinning a little--if killing the spider was bad, wouldn't killing the lizard be worse? Will they have to kill a goat to make up for the lizard? Then a tapir for the goat? Then a pygmy hippo and so on? WHERE WILL IT END?
Luckily the natives are untroubled by sacrificial escalation scenarios, and our group continues through the jungle, narrowly avoiding a police copter patrol and giving Arthur the chance to show his douchebaggy side when he interrupts the sacrifice and gets some Keach-knuckles to the gums for his trouble. Offended by the guy's Teutonic insensitivity to their customs, some of the natives split, leaving the band short-handed but still determined. They eventually reach the ocean and (presumably) sail across to the cursed island.
After a brief shot of a python eating a monkey, it's back to the close-up trek for several minutes, never showing more than a few square feet of coverage around the actors. Just when you think they might be filming this in a greenhouse, however, we're on-location and river-rafting! This is supposed to get us to the mountain quicker, but really it's just an excuse to show one of the native guides getting his arm chomped off by an alligator. Which admittedly is pretty awesome. A little later another native is caught in an animal trap, letting Keach show his acting chops by spouting nonsense "native language" to calm his rapidly dwindling crew.
Stumped.
About this time the Evil Cannibal Natives appear in Nightmare Mummenschanz masks and attack the crew, graphically beheading one guide and chasing Ursula through the forest, separated from her protective menfolk. Luckily another stranger, Manolo (Claudio Cassinelli) comes out of nowhere to save her. Danger averted and a few more expedition members gone, they make it to the jungle Mission of Father Moses, played by the awesomely named Franco Fantasia.
Not much happens at the village except for a booty-shakin' native ritual and Arthur availing himself of the opportunity to beat some native bush, IYKWIM. Unfortunately the Cannibal tribe attacks again, killing the girl in flagrante de douchebag and inspiring Father Moses to kick them (the fuck) out of the village. Having conquered the jungle and needing a new challenge (not to mention getting some serious play from Ursula), the manly Manolo agrees to join them as they press on to the last leg of their quest.
So on they trek--Keach dies in a freak waterfall-climbing accident (aided by Arthur's douchebaggery), we see our crew torturing and eating seafood, Ursula is attacked by a snake and saved by Manolo, we learn that the prof had actually been looking for uranium on the island, we get a nice heel-turn by Ursula, who reveals she doesn't care about the Professor, she just wants that radioactive loot. She asks Manolo to help, but the steadfast good guy refuses for reasons even a Greenpeace member would have to find suspect at this point: "Help you exploit this island and its peoples? Help you destroy the forests and bring your so-called progress to a place like this?" Um...dude, have you SEEN this place? It's crawling with fucking CANNIBALS!
Schnitzel on a Stick
As if on cue, the Cannibal tribe shows up, spears Arthur, and FINALLY they get taken back to the cavern where most of the grodiness the film is infamous for will take place. There they find the corpse of Professor Stevenson with a Geiger counter in its chest, Ursula is recognized from a photo the doc had with him and dolled up to become the Cannibal God's queen, and Arthur is gutted and eaten by the cannibals, leading to a meat-crazed sex orgy that in my version is cut very, very short. (More on this below.)
Highlights in the cut version include EXTENDED CANNIBAL DWARF sequences, a rapey native who snuggles up to Ursula and gets castrated for his transgression, and an escape that relies heavily on the Cannibal Warriors' practice of NOT shouting for help, even when mortally wounded. Clinging to a log in the raging river with the man(olo) she loves, Ursula has a change of heart and the movie ends happily. Ta-da!
So that's the cut version. Apart from few scenes of animal cruelty (which while bad, is nowhere near the level of what we see in most of the other films of the genre) and not much gore fx, it does have brisk pace with some entertaining twists to keep it moving. Actually, except for being a little bland, at 82 minutes I had to say it worked pretty well as a jungle-adventure movie--without the animal deaths, it would run even leaner and better, imo.
He may be little, but he eats a LOT.
So WHY couldn't I leave well enough alone? WHY did I have to pick at the scab? I can't tell you, but driven by journalistic integrity, I delved further and came up with an uncut print of the movie (under the alternate and more literal title Mountain of the Cannibal God) for research purposes. I didn't rewatch, but fastforwarded through just to see what, if anything, I missed.
The uncut version, as you might assume, is just MORE SICKER MORE. It was first noticeable in the monkey-eaten-by-python scene, which is much longer and more agonizing: you can see the primate looking at the camera several times, as if pleading for help, before his expressive face disappears into the snake's gullet. The snake/falcon fight is longer too, though with nothing like the same brutality.
As for the NON-real sections of the flick, those up the ante as well. The alligator-gets-arm scene is longer and grosser, as are some of the natives' deaths. When Arthur is made a douche-kebab in the cavern, the gutting and ripping out of entrails goes on much longer, with much more detail and gnawing on the part of the natives. The dwarf cannibal's death by falling backwards on a rock is more graphic too, as in this version he actually pops the top of his skull off, revealing the quivering brain beneath. The rapey cannibal gets a post-castration close-up as well, which while not exactly realistic, still gets the point across.
The centerpiece though is the meat-mad orgy the natives go into after feasting on Arthur's Germanic goodness, which makes up the bulk of the cut footage. Natives eat live snakes and hump each other against the walls of the cavern, and a native girl masturbates graphically for a good two minutes while the drumbeats blare. (I guess German food makes her horny.) But the ne plus ultra occurs when, in the midst of the frenzy, we see a warrior performing energetic (and hopefully simulated) intercourse on a BIG-ASS DOMESTICATED PIG. This probably only goes on for a few seconds, but believe me, a little dab will do you.
That pig has haunted me ever since I saw it. Where did it come from? These natives were obviously NOT agriculturally advanced enough to have domesticated livestock--no goats or chickens or ducks in evidence--and the thing was so large it was obviously fed well. And what about human meat made this guy immediately and uncontrollably want to go have his way with the cattle? And why eat people if you have all the pork you want? Then again, maybe that question answers itself.
Yes, there you have it--some things you see and can't unsee, and they diminish you. It happened to me.
Had I stopped with the 82 minute version, I might have given Slave of the Cannibal God 1.75 or even a soft 2 thumbs; however, getting a glimpse of it in its full terrible majesty, I have to knock it down to a 1.25 at the highest. In an attempt to get that piggy image out of my mind, here's a picture of Ursula Andress in a state of undress. And may the Cannibal God have mercy on us all.
"Let me change clothes...I feel dirty."
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