And then there were the films I actually went to the theater to see in the 1970’s. Some I went to out of curiosity, some because I was tagging along and it happened to be the film being shown. Some are well known and a few are known only to fans of 70s exploitation. For instance, everyone has seen Jaws (dir: Steven Spielberg, 1975) and I’ll bet you--just like most of us (of a certain age) can remember when and where we were the first time we heard Sgt. Pepper’s--the time and place we sat in the darkened theater and first heard the famous notes that usher in the movie are etched forever in our memory. Oswego, end of summer of ’75: I was about the last 17-year-old on the planet to see it. I finally went with Colette Simonetti, the most beautiful foreign exchange student I’d met and very quickly fell in love with. But I digress. My point is, the summer of ’75 was Jaws.
Few however probably have any memory of Glen & Randa (1971), a post-apocalyptic vision from Jim McBride (Big Easy 1983, Great Balls of Fire 1985). It was 1974 and I was staying with my brother Edward in Buffalo for a week. I ended up going with him and his housemates to the on-campus viewing of this X-rated non-classic. What do I remember? Lots of nudity for one. Not much sex but almost everyone was nude. Basically Glen & Randa were young beautiful naïfs growing up in the shards of civilization in the aftermath of a global catastrophe. Glen learns to read from looking at old Shazam comic books that for some reason or other didn’t disintegrate.
The most memorable scene involved an old salesman who peddled wares he had collected and rescued along his way. An old phonograph record played a 45 of the Rolling Stones’ Time Is On My Side. The record sits un-centered on the turntable hence the song is heard slow-fast-slow-fast. Later on, Glen is seen walking along, singing the chorus in the same lopsided way he had heard it. Hilarious...
I believe that same vacation, we trooped off to see Flesh Gordon (dir: Michael Benveniste, 1974). For all the frontal nudity and implied sex (my 2nd X-rated feature), I remember this as being really witty with Flesh & Dr. Jerkoff flying off to the planet Porno to stop the evil Wang from shooting his evil sex ray at the innocents of earth. Along the way, they confront penisauruses, raping robots with rotating drill-like members, and a foul-mouthed bird-flipping giant that would make any Ray Harryhausen/stop animation fan happy. Oh, and Flesh’s rocketship is shaped like a huge erection. Great stuff.
And then there was the great exodus of 1971 when the entire 8th grade class marched off to witness the depravity of Mark Of The Devil. A movie touted to be so violent it was given it’s own rating of V for…well, violence. We were each given a barf bag upon entering the theater too…just in case. Mark Of The Devil (dir: Michael Armstrong, 1970) was the Saw or Hostel of our day. It was a movie we were each dared to see. And how much we were able to stand marked where each of us stood on the evolutionary path from childhood to adulthood. I watched most of it through my fingers: the famous tongue-ripping scene; the eyeball being gouged; someone’s ass punctured on a seat of nails; all great stuff indeed. The most confusing thing for me however was the ending that didn’t seem to happen. Moments after the handsome blond hero got strung up and killed, the theater curtains shut (theater curtains? This was a long time ago!), lights came on and we were ushered out. Mostly to the sound of inflated barf bags being popped.
Next up…The Incredible Melting Man vs. It’s Alive vs. Phantasm
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
HOSTEL 2 and HALLOWEEN
Maybe this is too much of a cop out. Too facile a thought. But I’m thinking if a visitor from another planet wanted to see where we as humans are at this point in time, he should sit down and watch the following movies: Saw, Saw 2, Saw 3, Saw 4, Hostel, Hostel 2, House of 1000 Corpses, Devil’s Rejects and the remakes of Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes. Good or bad, they are an excellent means to measure a world dissolving from the inside out.
Our country is sick and the prospects are not good. The United States of America is terminally ill. Maybe it has more than six months to live, but whatever time is left it must be medicated, palliated, provided comfort care as it moans, wheezes and rattles its way to its inevitable end.
Hostel 2 (dir: Eli Roth, 2007) is bleak, wretched and avoids anything I use to associate with the term ‘entertainment’. It’s two hours of people being cruel to other people; people in control being sadistic to powerless people. If one were so inclined, one could interpret it as an allegory for the disappearance of the middle class and the exploitation of the poor by the wealthy. The twist comes when a would-be victim buys her freedom and pays for the privilege of castrating her would-be killer. Those with power can and will be cruel to those who don’t. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Or something like that.
Halloween (dir: Rob Zombie, 2007) is bleak, wretched and avoids anything I use to associate with the term ‘entertainment’. If nothing else, though, it stands as a reminder of just how brilliant, lean, economical and satisfying the original John Carpenter shocker was and still is. We are now supposed to swallow the idea that an ‘auteur’ like Mr. Zombie does not ‘remake’ movies, he ‘re-imagines’ them. What horseshit. While the original depicts the psycho killer Michael Meyers as an unstoppable force of evil, Mr. Zombie attempts to fill in the blanks of Meyers’ youth so that we can ‘understand’ how he came to be an unstoppable force of evil. And in understanding him, perhaps we can be more forgiving of him when he impales his victims or perhaps crushes their heads. “I know it’s awful, but he was abused as a child!” In re-imagining Michael Meyers as a victim of society, the movie actually undermines his mystique leaving the filmmaker nowhere to go but to up the carnage and slop more red colored Karo Syrup around.
I watch these movies because I’m curious about them. The original Halloween frightened me in the way I like to be frightened. Movies like the Hostel series, the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre series and the newly re-imagined Halloween are presented as dares. Sitting through them without becoming physically ill buys you some macho cred on the street, or something like that. Better yet, arm chair quarterbacking, slamming the releases of wimpy PG-13 movies and hailing filmmakers who hold on to their R ratings like badges of courage has become a fanboy pastime.
But I guess I would have to counter with an offer: since ratcheting up the gore seems to be of the order, I maintain these movies don’t go far enough to that end. I think in Hostel 2, when a victim is suspended upside down and carved up with a scythe, the viewer doesn’t get to see enough. Sure we see blood spray across the face of the killer--who seems to be in a state of erotic euphoria--but we don’t actually see blade enter skin. Hence, I believe the gorehounds of the world have fallen to the old bait and switch. Who cares about the story, just pile on the gore. Don’t cutaway before a toe is snapped off, dammit, show everything!
These movies are not horrifying so much as they are horrid. They are only tests for how much the viewer can stand to watch. Like going on the tilt-a-whirl without blowing lunch.
I give Hostel 2 and Zombie’s Halloween 1 severed toe each. Use the other nine to limp your sorry ass out o’ here.
Our country is sick and the prospects are not good. The United States of America is terminally ill. Maybe it has more than six months to live, but whatever time is left it must be medicated, palliated, provided comfort care as it moans, wheezes and rattles its way to its inevitable end.
Hostel 2 (dir: Eli Roth, 2007) is bleak, wretched and avoids anything I use to associate with the term ‘entertainment’. It’s two hours of people being cruel to other people; people in control being sadistic to powerless people. If one were so inclined, one could interpret it as an allegory for the disappearance of the middle class and the exploitation of the poor by the wealthy. The twist comes when a would-be victim buys her freedom and pays for the privilege of castrating her would-be killer. Those with power can and will be cruel to those who don’t. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Or something like that.
Halloween (dir: Rob Zombie, 2007) is bleak, wretched and avoids anything I use to associate with the term ‘entertainment’. If nothing else, though, it stands as a reminder of just how brilliant, lean, economical and satisfying the original John Carpenter shocker was and still is. We are now supposed to swallow the idea that an ‘auteur’ like Mr. Zombie does not ‘remake’ movies, he ‘re-imagines’ them. What horseshit. While the original depicts the psycho killer Michael Meyers as an unstoppable force of evil, Mr. Zombie attempts to fill in the blanks of Meyers’ youth so that we can ‘understand’ how he came to be an unstoppable force of evil. And in understanding him, perhaps we can be more forgiving of him when he impales his victims or perhaps crushes their heads. “I know it’s awful, but he was abused as a child!” In re-imagining Michael Meyers as a victim of society, the movie actually undermines his mystique leaving the filmmaker nowhere to go but to up the carnage and slop more red colored Karo Syrup around.
I watch these movies because I’m curious about them. The original Halloween frightened me in the way I like to be frightened. Movies like the Hostel series, the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre series and the newly re-imagined Halloween are presented as dares. Sitting through them without becoming physically ill buys you some macho cred on the street, or something like that. Better yet, arm chair quarterbacking, slamming the releases of wimpy PG-13 movies and hailing filmmakers who hold on to their R ratings like badges of courage has become a fanboy pastime.
But I guess I would have to counter with an offer: since ratcheting up the gore seems to be of the order, I maintain these movies don’t go far enough to that end. I think in Hostel 2, when a victim is suspended upside down and carved up with a scythe, the viewer doesn’t get to see enough. Sure we see blood spray across the face of the killer--who seems to be in a state of erotic euphoria--but we don’t actually see blade enter skin. Hence, I believe the gorehounds of the world have fallen to the old bait and switch. Who cares about the story, just pile on the gore. Don’t cutaway before a toe is snapped off, dammit, show everything!
These movies are not horrifying so much as they are horrid. They are only tests for how much the viewer can stand to watch. Like going on the tilt-a-whirl without blowing lunch.
I give Hostel 2 and Zombie’s Halloween 1 severed toe each. Use the other nine to limp your sorry ass out o’ here.
Sunday, January 06, 2008
HORROR...70s STYLE
Growing up in the 70s and left alone late at night with the family TV set, I discovered a world of horror and fright that to this day remains unequalled on Sci-Fi or any other channel. Cheap horror, exploitation and Vincent Price were always available in the wee hours of Friday and Saturday night when I’d find myself flipping between Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, The Midnight Special and any fright fest I could lay my eyes on. The following is a short list of movies I’ve, well, never quite forgotten regardless of whether I saw them in their entirety or only partially. Rock n roll and horror films, I have to agree, were two great taste treats that tasted great together. Read on, if you dare…
Abominable Dr. Phibes (dir: Robert Fuest, 1971)
One of the all time great Vincent Price movies features diabolical death scenes, post-Avengers wit and humor, sexy assistant named…Mulvania (?), a home filled with a life sized mechanical band and a most-excellent theater organ that rises from the floorboards. Most memorable death: what patience it takes to drill a large hole directly above the head of a sleeping soon-to-be victim, slip a plastic tube through the hole, pour honey through the tube covering the face of the soon-to-be victim and then finally, through another tube, releasing hundreds of locusts who feed on the honey and flesh of the…well she’s a victim now! And to think she never stirs during any of this. Priceless!!
Blue Sunshine (dir: Jeff Lieberman, 1976)
Memorable for the plot that had people who had all dropped some bad acid, man, back in the 60s experiencing horrifying side-effects ten years later like losing their hair and becoming homicidal zombies. It was the 2nd movie I’d seen starring Zalman King, this time taking the role of dashing hero shooting the bad baldies and getting to the bottom of things. Best scene: guy loses hair and turns zombie at a party and holds another partygoer’s head in the fireplace fire.
Ouch, dude!
Deathdream aka Dead of Night (dir: Bob Clark, 1974)
Caught the last third of this late one night and found myself simultaneously baffled and intrigued. I wasn’t privy to the fact that this was based on Monkey’s Paw with a distraught mother bringing back her deceased Vietnam veteran son with a wish. He’s back but guess what: he craves blood! Best scene and BIG TIME SPOILER: the end where the boy returns to his gravesite, lays down in it and reburies himself. Absolutely freaky and chilling. Director Bob Clark went on to direct the Porky movies as well as one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time, A Christmas Story (1983)
Dr. Phibes Rises Again (dir: Robert Fuest, 1972)
The follow-up is more of the same and features one of the strangest endings I’d seen in my young life involving an underground stream to…ever after? Eternity? More laughs, more gruesome dispatching, more British wit. Most disturbing death: guy is…folded up? Crushed? Squished...inside a cube that comes at him in two halves and is slowly brought together and fastened. Only his sad head is visible peering out of a hole in the top. Very odd and quite unsettling.
Homebodies (dir: Larry Yust, 1974)
Old folks are being kicked out of their long-time domicile by greedy real estate moguls and they take matters in their own hands…by ruthlessly dispatching each in wonderfully gruesome ways. Can’t remember the ending except that it seemed to get trippier and trippier as it progressed. Imprinted in my memory: the old timers wheel a bound and gagged victim over to the construction site where they cover him in cement. Better hold yer breath!
SSSSSSS aka SSSSnake (dir: Bernard L Kowalski, 1973)
Strother Martin is a mad scientist who wants to turn people into cobra snakes. I have no idea why although I’m sure he feels it will be for the benefit of mankind. Poor boob who begins working for him as an assistant winds up a guinea pig. Movie ends with a climactic fight between cobra and mongoose. Guess who the cobra is. Creepiest scene: guinea pig-guy wanders into a carnival side show and witnesses one of the doctor's…failures: a moaning humanoid with no arms, no legs, scales and reptilian face. Very disturbing.
Tender Flesh aka Welcome to Arrow Beach (dir: Laurence Harvey, 1974)
Director Laurence Harvey, nowhere in the vicinity of his Manchurian Candidate days, stars as a Vietnam veteran who has learned to love the taste of…tender flesh. What’s that in the fridge in the basement? Is the lovely green-eyed Meg Foster going to be his next victim? Stand out scene: nothing aside from the lovely green-eyed Meg Foster who is indeed lovely...and green-eyed.
Theater Of Blood (dir: Douglas Hickox, 1973)
Another brilliant entry from Vincent Prices wonderful early-70s period. He plays, of all things, a ham Shakespearean actor who commits suicide after getting skewered by the critics for his latest performance. He doesn’t die and in fact is able, with the help of the sewer dwellers who rescue him, to off each critic in a manner described by the Bard himself. This features very British wit and the fetching Emma Peel, I mean Diana Rigg, as his foxy assistant. Best scene: hell, all of it. Then again I’d have to say Mr. Price throwing lit torches from the stage into the box seats still has kind of an apocalyptic feel to this day for me. Burn, baby, burn...
Trip With The Teacher (dir: Earl Barton, 1975)
Gruesome exploitation features the crazed Zalman King as, get this, a psychopath who abducts a mini-school bus of three students and their hot teacher. They're subjected to rape, torture and murder before the big Z winds up impaled on a big metal rod. In movies, it’s always possible to shove a big metal rod completely through someone with one’s bare hands with equal parts sticking out the front and back. Scenes I regrettably remember: dude gets run over by a biker and girl is smothered having her face forced into the sand. Yuck.
Twisted Brain aka Horror High (dir: Larry N. Stouffer, 1974)
I remember almost nothing of this except for the twisted brain boy running down the halls of his high school with some pretty awesome pre-punk punk music blaring. I think it was filmed with a fish-eye lens too. How cool is that? Best scene: boy runs down the halls of his high school with some pretty awesome pre-punk punk music blaring. Gabba Gabba Hey!
Well, that's it for now! Up next: movies I actually saw in the theater way back in the fabulous day-glo seventies! Stay tuned and...make sure your night light works.
Abominable Dr. Phibes (dir: Robert Fuest, 1971)
One of the all time great Vincent Price movies features diabolical death scenes, post-Avengers wit and humor, sexy assistant named…Mulvania (?), a home filled with a life sized mechanical band and a most-excellent theater organ that rises from the floorboards. Most memorable death: what patience it takes to drill a large hole directly above the head of a sleeping soon-to-be victim, slip a plastic tube through the hole, pour honey through the tube covering the face of the soon-to-be victim and then finally, through another tube, releasing hundreds of locusts who feed on the honey and flesh of the…well she’s a victim now! And to think she never stirs during any of this. Priceless!!
Blue Sunshine (dir: Jeff Lieberman, 1976)
Memorable for the plot that had people who had all dropped some bad acid, man, back in the 60s experiencing horrifying side-effects ten years later like losing their hair and becoming homicidal zombies. It was the 2nd movie I’d seen starring Zalman King, this time taking the role of dashing hero shooting the bad baldies and getting to the bottom of things. Best scene: guy loses hair and turns zombie at a party and holds another partygoer’s head in the fireplace fire.
Ouch, dude!
Deathdream aka Dead of Night (dir: Bob Clark, 1974)
Caught the last third of this late one night and found myself simultaneously baffled and intrigued. I wasn’t privy to the fact that this was based on Monkey’s Paw with a distraught mother bringing back her deceased Vietnam veteran son with a wish. He’s back but guess what: he craves blood! Best scene and BIG TIME SPOILER: the end where the boy returns to his gravesite, lays down in it and reburies himself. Absolutely freaky and chilling. Director Bob Clark went on to direct the Porky movies as well as one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time, A Christmas Story (1983)
Dr. Phibes Rises Again (dir: Robert Fuest, 1972)
The follow-up is more of the same and features one of the strangest endings I’d seen in my young life involving an underground stream to…ever after? Eternity? More laughs, more gruesome dispatching, more British wit. Most disturbing death: guy is…folded up? Crushed? Squished...inside a cube that comes at him in two halves and is slowly brought together and fastened. Only his sad head is visible peering out of a hole in the top. Very odd and quite unsettling.
Homebodies (dir: Larry Yust, 1974)
Old folks are being kicked out of their long-time domicile by greedy real estate moguls and they take matters in their own hands…by ruthlessly dispatching each in wonderfully gruesome ways. Can’t remember the ending except that it seemed to get trippier and trippier as it progressed. Imprinted in my memory: the old timers wheel a bound and gagged victim over to the construction site where they cover him in cement. Better hold yer breath!
SSSSSSS aka SSSSnake (dir: Bernard L Kowalski, 1973)
Strother Martin is a mad scientist who wants to turn people into cobra snakes. I have no idea why although I’m sure he feels it will be for the benefit of mankind. Poor boob who begins working for him as an assistant winds up a guinea pig. Movie ends with a climactic fight between cobra and mongoose. Guess who the cobra is. Creepiest scene: guinea pig-guy wanders into a carnival side show and witnesses one of the doctor's…failures: a moaning humanoid with no arms, no legs, scales and reptilian face. Very disturbing.
Tender Flesh aka Welcome to Arrow Beach (dir: Laurence Harvey, 1974)
Director Laurence Harvey, nowhere in the vicinity of his Manchurian Candidate days, stars as a Vietnam veteran who has learned to love the taste of…tender flesh. What’s that in the fridge in the basement? Is the lovely green-eyed Meg Foster going to be his next victim? Stand out scene: nothing aside from the lovely green-eyed Meg Foster who is indeed lovely...and green-eyed.
Theater Of Blood (dir: Douglas Hickox, 1973)
Another brilliant entry from Vincent Prices wonderful early-70s period. He plays, of all things, a ham Shakespearean actor who commits suicide after getting skewered by the critics for his latest performance. He doesn’t die and in fact is able, with the help of the sewer dwellers who rescue him, to off each critic in a manner described by the Bard himself. This features very British wit and the fetching Emma Peel, I mean Diana Rigg, as his foxy assistant. Best scene: hell, all of it. Then again I’d have to say Mr. Price throwing lit torches from the stage into the box seats still has kind of an apocalyptic feel to this day for me. Burn, baby, burn...
Trip With The Teacher (dir: Earl Barton, 1975)
Gruesome exploitation features the crazed Zalman King as, get this, a psychopath who abducts a mini-school bus of three students and their hot teacher. They're subjected to rape, torture and murder before the big Z winds up impaled on a big metal rod. In movies, it’s always possible to shove a big metal rod completely through someone with one’s bare hands with equal parts sticking out the front and back. Scenes I regrettably remember: dude gets run over by a biker and girl is smothered having her face forced into the sand. Yuck.
Twisted Brain aka Horror High (dir: Larry N. Stouffer, 1974)
I remember almost nothing of this except for the twisted brain boy running down the halls of his high school with some pretty awesome pre-punk punk music blaring. I think it was filmed with a fish-eye lens too. How cool is that? Best scene: boy runs down the halls of his high school with some pretty awesome pre-punk punk music blaring. Gabba Gabba Hey!
Well, that's it for now! Up next: movies I actually saw in the theater way back in the fabulous day-glo seventies! Stay tuned and...make sure your night light works.
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