XTRO (1983): or, Like Father, Like Son, Like Hell

Some people are just natural-born Givers. If you go to them looking to borrow a cup of sugar, they give you the whole bag. You ask for the repayable loan of an egg, and they respond by handing you a chicken and a year's worth of feed. You send them a thank-you note for their generosity, and they reply with a thank-you for the thank-you together with a year's paid membership in the Scrumptious Chocolates of the Month club. These people give and give and give, often expecting nothing in return but the acceptance of the offered gifts. All they want is the opportunity to be the vehicle on which you ride to the sunny climes of Happiness.

Of course, these people often also have serious psychological issues.

If it were a human being, the British sci-fi WTF-stravaganza Xtro (1982, dir. Harry Bromley Davenport) would be one of these people.

We open at a country cottage not far removed from the bustling heart of London, where nurturing nice-guy dad Sam Phillips (Philip Sayer) is playing fetch with his adorable son Tony (Simon Nash) and their even-more adorable border collie Katie. Perhaps hoping to recreate his favorite scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Sam hauls back and launches the stick high over the roof of the house. He succeeds better than he could have hoped, as the stick explodes in a shower of sparks and the sky is immediately filled with blinding lights and sci-fi noises of the most sinister variety. As the sky darkens and an unnatural wind sweeps him toward the light, Sam urges his son to run for it, which (being the obedient sort) he does. Long moments later Sam is gone, leaving his son an orphan and his wife Rachel (Bernice Stegers, previously of Lamberto Bava's Macabre [1980]) back on the market.

This dog refused screen credit for this picture.

Three years pass in a jump-cut. Rachel believes Sam's disappearance to be a classic case of Spousal Abandonment, but still has filed neither a missing person's report nor divorce papers. She has not let the sheets of the marriage bed get cold, however, as she now shares her London apartment with her boyfriend Joe (Danny Brainin), a successful commercial photographer and former friend of her disappeared hubby. The lovebirds largely leave the care of young Tony to their French au pair Analise (future Bond Girl Maryam d'Abo, in her debut movie role), whose main job qualifications seem to be a terrible accent and her undeniably smokin' hawtness.* For his part, Tony has never accepted that his father just up and run-oft, and constantly looks forward to the day they will be reunited.

*Nota bene: Maryam D'Abo is the cousin once-removed of Olivia D'Abo, who made her debut as the spoiled princess in Conan the Destroyer (1984), and whom I had previously erroneously assumed to be Maryam's twin sister.

Unluckily for everyone involved, the little moppet's wishes are soon to be granted. Back in rural England, a familiar blinding light falls from the sky, depositing a pool of goop in the woods which soon coagulates into one of the freakiest extraterrestrials it's ever been my pleasure to see on the screen. You want a little practical FX post-Giger nightmare fuel? Check out THIS bad boy:

Xtrordinary

 As you might imagine, that anatomical configuration is not a particularly agile one; as a result, the space beast is quickly smacked by a Citroën doing about thirty-five down the country road. Of course the drivers--one of them sporting one of the most magnificent New-Wave Brit Mullets ever--get out to see what got all up in their grille, with predictably messy results. None the worse for wear, the creature crab-walks to a nearby cottage owned by a thirtysomething spinster. There it gains entry (apparently by teleporting into the kitchen cupboard) and rams its ovipositor in her face before collapsing in a heap of denatured ickiness, which the lady's dog helpfully starts to clean up. (Eww.)

The ickiness is just beginning, however: upon awakening an hour or so later, the woman finds herself the subject of a time-lapse short on the wonders of childbirth, as her belly swells to full 40-week distension in a matter of moments. The strain on her system is too much: she collapses on the floor, dead. Just as well, for this spares her the pain and horror of seeing a full grown man climb out of her vagina, dragging most of her meaty innards with him before gnawing through his umbilical cord with his own teeth! The filmmakers do not skimp on the caro syrup nor the sloppy sound effects, making for a gloriously gross moment of WTF.

Worst party favor ever.

Of course the newborn manchild is Sam, who has been a resident alien on the alien planet since his abduction. ("I had to be...changed...so I could live there!" he later explains.) Now back in roughly human form, he quickly finds his way back to London and insinuates himself into his estranged family's life, claiming no memory of the intervening three years. Tony is the only one happy to see him. Rachel is understandably torn, and Joe struts around taunting his rival with public displays of affection toward his wife, like an alpha dog marking out territory. Still, Rachel thinks, no sense involving medical professionals (or the POLICE) in all this; instead, she invites Sam to stay at the apartment with them until they can sort things out.

This gives Sam the opportunity to start working on his real objective: apparently he's more than happy being a Double-Jointed Killbeast from Planet Yog, but can't go another space year without his dearly beloved son at his side. Left alone with the boy, Sam gives Tony a love bite on the neck--a visual that would be icky even if it weren't for the body-horror effects--which imparts to the boy some of Dad's alien abilities. What kind of abilities, you may well ask? Well, how about the ability, through simple concentration, to make anything he can imagine become real?** Talk about your fringe benefits!

Submitted without comment.

**This explains, one assumes, how Sam was able to teleport into his doomed baby-momma's house earlier--though it sheds no light on why, this being the case, Sam didn't just concentrate on coming to Earth already in human form, or better yet simply imagine Tony on the alien ship with him and have done with it.


The Xtro train has never had a firm grip on the narrative rails since the stick exploded in scene one, but here it really jumps them for good--or rather, points the engine upward and rockets straight into the outer BatShittosphere. Little Tony quickly crosses over into "It's a Good Life" territory, bringing his toy soldier to life to wreak vengeance on a meddlesome neighbor, materializing a live panther in his room, and animating a wooden clown to be his accomplice in evil! (The "real" clown is played by Peter Mandell, a Little Person in exactly the type of role Peter Dinklage hilariously vented on in Tom DeCillo's Living in Oblivion [1995].)

Even though this is far afield from the story's beginnings in Alien Abduction territory, it actually fits in to film better than you'd think. The whole movie has had an odd, otherworldly quality. Scenes shift from day to night and back with abandon. Night scenes are lit brightly from impossible sources. Chunks of context are missing or never existed. Murders happen, and no one seems to notice or care, much less phone the police. Characters speak their lines in a somnolent daze, and motivation is the merest afterthought, when it's thought of at all. In a way, the entire movie has played like an extended dream sequence--like Twilight Zone without restraint, or Tim Burton without horizontal stripes.

"If only Olaf could see me now!"

Tired of her waffling, Joe moves out in a huff, leaving Sam and Rachel to salvage their interspecies marriage. Those two head out to the cottage where it all began, leaving Tony with Analise. Using his alien mind powers and dwarf-clown henchman, Tony kills his keeper's boyfriend and knocks the French girl unconscious before infecting her with his alien cooties in another uncomfortably sexual, age-inappropriate scene. Becoming more and more alien, Tony cocoons Analise up in the bathroom and makes her a Cronenbergian egg-laying machine, then tricks Joe into taking him to the cottage.

Meanwhile (and with absolutely no buildup other than a jump-cut), Sam and Rachel are rekindling their physical relationship (like rabid minx). Unfortunately Sam's alien physiology  causes him to have an allergic reaction to Rachel's sex stank, the symptoms of which include ruptured back lesions and acute horrifying ugliness. Joe shows up and is dealt with via sonic scream, and the reunited father and son walk into the woods, sloughing skin as they go, to be taken back into the mother ship. Either in shock or not too bothered (it's hard to tell), Rachel goes back to the London apartment, where a dwarf, a live panther and one last icky surprise await her. And Fin.

"You've got to be fuckin' kidding me."

Parishioners, Xtro is a movie that delivers the goods, and throws in a bunch of extra snack crackers you didn't even know you  were hungry for. The effects are all practical and wonderfully disgusting, and the creature design is pretty great too. The acting is nothing to write home about, though the actors themselves are probably less to blame than the writer and director on that count. Still, even though the script is all over the place, there's just so much happening at all times it's hard to get too upset about. All the actors seem admirably committed, though, with special props to Maryam D'Abo, who provides some high-quality nekkidity more than once. The sythesizer score (also by director Davenport) made me want to puncture my own eardrums with Q-Tips, but given the unrelenting weirdness of the piece, I wondered if perhaps this was by design.

In closing, if you can just shut off your logic centers and let the MADness wash over you, you'll have a great time with this one. Gory, crazy, entertaining and never dull, Xtro deserves a place at the table with 80s scifi insanities like Inseminoid and Galaxy of Terror. 3 Thumbs. Seek it out, and let Xtro make you happy. That's all it wants!

More photos from XTRO (1982):

Xtro Alpo

Didn't figure on this much action

"DWARF FROM ABOVE!"

"You know the rules, Sam. You lost at Connect Four. Get suckin'!"

"What the fuck am I doing here?"

"Mommy! Give us a kiss!"

Indecent Xposure

 

"OBEY!"

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...

Blue Murder (1985): or, Killer Klowns from Canada

So not that long ago I was flipping through Fantagraphics Press's Portable Grindhouse: the Lost Art of the VHS Box, and came across an intriguing-looking movie called The Porn Murders. On the front, a mysterious nude figure behind teasing Venetian blinds; on the back, a murder victim decked out in a dimestore clown mask with blood flowing down his neck. After reading the synopsis about a hard-nosed cop and crime reporter hunting down a porn-hating killer with a thing for clowns, I was sold. It looked grimy, sleazy, cheap and perverse, and I wasted no time in hunting it down for viewing.

As it turns out I, like everyone who grabbed the flick off the shelf of his or her local mom & pop video store back in the 80s, had been the victim of the classic bait and switch. Far from a grindhouse sex-and-gore disasterpiece, what I held in my hands was actually a 1985 movie called Blue Murder, which was made for and originally aired on Canadian TV. Instead of being angry, though, I was kind of delighted--it's been YEARS since I fell for that antiquated marketing ploy, and I had to tip my hat to the folks behind it, swallow my pride, and (like my younger, more naive self) watch the thing anyway.


The movie opens in media beer commercial, as busty big-haired babes in bikinis lounge around a pool, paunchy old men drink bourbon while wading waist deep, and a relentlessly peppy Casio keyboard reggae beat drills its way into our skulls. Soon we see a pair of black-gloved hands readying a silenced handgun, and soon the bloodless killing commences. The killer guns down 8 people before the opening credits roll, leaving them all with his calling card, the creepy clown mask from the back cover of the VHS. Even without blood or naked boobs, it's still a promising opening.

Clarabell had used the old squirting flower trick one too many times.

After the credits roll under the cheestastic glam rock theme song "Blue Murder" (sadly NOT performed by the eponymous Whitesnake splinter group), we meet newspaper columnist Dan Blake (Jamie Spears--identified on imdb as the father of Britney and Jamie Lynn, but clearly not the same guy) and his linebacker of love, a nameless cig-smoking beauty clad only in his football jersey. She informs him he has a phone call, which turns out to be the Porno Killer, who wants Blake to write a column condemning the porn industry, or else more pornographers (as those in the opening scene must have been) will die.

It was at this point the smile cemented itself to my face. First off, our hero Dan Blake has all the emotive ability of Batman-era Adam West, and also seems to have his haircut. Furthermore, we see the Porno Killer from behind on what looks like the set for a video dating shoot, and his voice--well, it's kind of a cross between the Caller from Black Christmas (without the bombasticity), the villain from the Inspector Gadget cartoon, and your best friend in junior high school trying to sound ominous while telling that old hook-on-the-car-door story.

Which is to say, it's PERFECT. Especially when spouting lines like this: "Tell them...WARN THEM...If they continue perverting the minds of innocent people...then...I will beforced...to TERMINATE THEIR EXISTENCE!"

"I'm looking for the Goddess. Are you the Goddess?"

After finishing up with his lady friend ("We've still got 10 minutes," he purrs. "Well," she shoots back, "That oughta be just about right for you!"), Blake goes down to the police station to see his friend Lt. Rossey (Terry Logan) and tell him about the call. The cop has been working the killings, but seems strangely unwilling to credit his friend's story. "I just don't want to think we've some kind of schizo running around out there." What, after EIGHT MURDERS? Perish the thought!

Then we meet Big Time Pornographer Carlos Vespi (the awesomely monikered Henry Malabranche), who is less a skeezy porn-loop pusher than a minor-league James Bond villain, complete with outrageous accent and musclebound minions (including one with only one eye, though sadly not wearing a pirate patch), and who wants to move in on his dead rival's territory. Back at the newspaper, Blake confers with his editor and a priest (for some reason) about whether to meet the killer's demands. Afterwards the priest gives Blake a crash course in Serial Killer 101, and Blake tells Rossey he's going to "take the case," apparently forgetting that he's supposed to be a WRITER, not a homicide detective.

As close to porn as we get.

Luckily the cops forget this too, inviting Blake along to every subsequent crime scene and sharing all information about the investigation with him as a matter of course. They also don't mind that he's constantly packing a gun, which he uses often, and never flashes a license for. (Later when Blake asks for information, Rossey says, exasperated, "You're the detective!" Uh, no. I'm the NEWSPAPER COLUMNIST.)

Blue Murder tries hard for a gritty neo-noir vibe, with crooked cops, several red herrings, plenty of possible suspects, and even a love interest for Blake who happens to be the daughter of the media conglomerate executive who stands to gain the most from the shut-down of the porn industry. (They conveniently forget about Blake's girlfriend from the beginning--presumably a skanky one-night stand.) Unfortunately the bright sets, stilted line readings, and high school-level script thwart it at every turn. Director Charlie Wiener (what's so funny?) does okay with the opening murder and a later killing, but sadly has absolutely NO knack for building suspense, so that long chases that lead nowhere and investigations into brightly lit living rooms are just plain boring.

Somebody hit the after-Halloween sale at Walgreens!

So yeah, Blue Murder is pretty bad. However, it's also littered with touches of wrong-headed stabs at humor and inexplicable weirdnesses that help make watching it at least a little fun. To wit:

• That football jersey Blake's ladyfriend is wearing in the opening scene? Get used to it. He wears it A LOT. So much, in fact, I began to wonder if Jamie Spears was a CFL star turned actor in this project, wearing his own number! Can any Canucks help me out here?

"Doug Flutie, NO!"

• In addition to the awesome title song, we get a torch singer crooning the love theme, "Madly in Like with You"--inexplicably sung by a Marilyn Monroe impersonator!
  

• "There's a certain kind of woman that gets turned on by cops with moustaches. It's a well-known fact!"

• Blake and Rossey get slurringly drunk together, and Rossey is called into the latest crime scene. He sobers up fast and brings Blake along, literally carrying him into the room when they arrive!

• Why the killer thinks Blake will have the power to close all the hardcore movie houses in Canada and shut down production of all blue movies with a stroke of his pen is at best unclear.

• At one point we see visit a porn movie set, complete with underwear-clad actors writhing in satin sheets. The camera pans down to reveal a TIME BOMB under the bed...then cuts away to another scene, never showing us the explosion or even referencing the incident again!

• Blake has some colorful informants all over town, including a teenaged Jamaican bodybuilder who appears to have a morgue in his basement, and a Charles Nelson Reilly lookalike on a yacht with his Venezuelan houseboy, who upon seeing Blake has been roughed up by the porn moguls' henchmen quips, "What happened to you, did you pinch the wrong boy's BOTTOM?" (This line becomes a running gag.)

He had his very own line at the DMV, and made sweet sweet love to a manatee...

--Weird Al Yankovic, CNR

• As Blake and his date get ready to open a bottle of champagne, he suddenly stops her when he notices A BOMB wired to the wine bottle! He runs out to his garage, grabs some wire cutters, and quickly disables the IED, after which they carry on with their date as if nothing ever happened!

• In the most head-scratching scene of the movie, Blake and Rossey brainstorm possible leads on the Porno Killer case--while Lieutenant Rossey takes a bubble bath! (No context, no explanation, and no indication that either thinks it's unusual. Rossey even asks Blake to pass the bath soap!)

A side of police work you don't often get to see.

The non sequiturs and craziness of the first half of the movie was almost enough to redeem it, but unfortunately the second half is made up largely of the suspense-free chases and nowhere-investigations I mentioned earlier, together with some shoe-horned family drama and an obvious red herring, which make the slog to the end credits a bit of a drag. Contributing to the boredom is the disappearance of the Porno Killer himself for much of the second half of the movie, removing the entertainment factor of his growly line readings and curly head of hair.

Still, it's got enough weirdness to offer a few chuckles, from both the non sequitur plot developments and the extremely stiled acting from everyone involved. VHS renters who expected some kind of porno holocaust were doubtlessly HUGELY disappointed, but I'm not sad I took the time. If you've got a taste for the inept, you might find something to enjoy. 1.5 thumbs.

"Okay , but you still haven't explained how the patio furniture got into the kitchen!"

MORE MADNESS...

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Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988): or, You All Scream When I Scream

Most people have heard the phrase, variously attributed to horror greats throughout the ages (commonly to the granddaddy of all horror icons, Lon Chaney Sr.)--a phrase so succinct, catchy, and undeniably true that it's almost entered the annals of folk wisdom:

"There ain't nothin' funny about a clown in the moonlight."

It's a feeling that predates John Wayne Gacy, Pennywise, and Captain Spaulding, a phobia so common as to have its own psycho-analytic name--coulrophobia, for those playing along at home.* What is it about the festively painted, zanily joking jester that fills some with glee and a nostalgia for childhood, and others with a paralyzing dread and desire to flee? Is it because the clown's stock in trade is his license to do the boundary-crossing things that most dare not even consider? The slapstick violence that could so easily cross the line into actual brutality, before the audience and victim even knew what was happening? The make-up that proclaims it's all an innocent gag, and the nagging fear of what corrupt monster might lurk behind it?

*True confession: for many years, the Vicar quite seriously thought this disorder was properly named "bozophobia."

These questions are not exactly answered in the Chiodo Brothers' 1988 classic Killer Klowns from Outer Space--however, the film does deliver an hour and a half of fun and fear in almost equal doses, and rightly earns its place in the Mad Movie pantheon.

"Howdy kids! Are you ready to have some fun today?"

The movie starts as a throwback to the 50s and 60s sci-fi classics--specifically the original 1958 version of The Blob. A group of local teens--well, pretty much every teen in the whole town, including hero Mike Tobacco (Grant Cramer) and his girlfriend Debbie Stone (Suzanne Snyder)--see what looks like a shooting star flash over their heads and crash in the woods outside town. They immediately head off to investigate, but not before crotchety old forest-dweller Gene Green (the legendary character actor Royal Dano) and his bloodhound Pooh-Bear find the meteorite first.

Of course it's not a meteorite at all, but an interplanetary vessel in the shape of a yellow-and-red striped big top! Thinking the circus has come to town (and for some reason set up camp in the middle of the woods), Farmer Green tries to get tickets to the show, only to meet the ship's strange inhabitants, the titular interstellar jokesters.

Royal Dano learns the shocking truth.

Not much later Mike and Debbie arrive at the crash site, and are also taken in by the bright colors and flashing lights. Going inside to check out the show, they soon stumble into the ship's power core--a wonderful matte painting that purposefully recalls the underground complex from Forbidden Planet. Realizing the big top is not what it seems, they soon discover the awful truth--a largely empty storage center with a few cotton candy cocoons hanging from peppermint-cane hooks...and inside, the slowly liquefying bodies of townspeople, including poor old Farmer Green! Debbie's screams draw the attention of the ship's inhabitants--huge, nightmarish clown-creatures whose wrinkled faces and crooked smiles are the stuff of coulrophobic nightmares everywhere. They flee for their lives, barely escaping the Klowns' fiendish popcorn-tommyguns and sugar-floss web-spinners. The innocent kids hoof it back to town, hoping to warn the authorities before it's too late.

There are many joys to be taken from Killer Klowns from Outer Space, but chief among them is the amazing production design brothers Stephen, Charles, and Edward Chiodo--who famously did the stop motion work for the Large Marge scene in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure--pack into every scene. It's all bright primary colors in front of dark backgrounds, like a skewed cartoon come to life. The klowns are both funny and terrifying, and their endlessly inventive weaponry--the popcorn guns, cream pies filled with acid, and even balloon animals that double as tracking beasts--will keep you smiling throughout.

Hydrochloric Banana Cream

Of course the local authorities have a hard time crediting what Mike and Debbie tell them. Debbie's ex-flame, Officer Dave Hanson (John Allen Nelson), promises to get to the bottom of things and find the elusive "rational explanation," but crusty misanthrope Officer Curtis Mooney (a wonderfully hateful performance by character actor John Vernon) puts it down to teenage pranksterism and wants to lock them up for juvenile delinquency. While Debbie and Mike struggle to get someone to believe their warning, the Klowns have free reign to harvest the town's populace for their hilarious, nefarious purposes.

The rest of the movie is pretty much devoted to watching the klowns do their business, and this is not at all a bad thing. Many of the set-pieces are played as straight comedy. The klowns deliver a pizza to a scantily clad single babe, with predictable results. One of the creatures impersonates an animatronic dummy to hide in plain sight. Later, an impossibly large klown emerges from a tiny puppet show booth to candyfloss his disbelieving audience, and another "drives" an invisible car next to a teen drag racer to force him off the road. And in my favorite scene, a klown entertains a group of people waiting at a bus stop with some incredibly ornate hand-shadows, culminating in a man-eating T-Rex that leaves only the stumps of their feet behind!

" *Okay guys...try not to act suspicious.* "

It's not all funny ha-ha, though. A few of the klowns' antics are genuinely disquieting. For instance, Mike and Debbie watch in horror as a disgustingly obese klown comes down to the cocoon-hold for a midnight snack, which for me called to mind both Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Bloodsucking Freaks. A scene where a very frightening klown plays peek-a-boo with a small girl at the local burger joint--the grown-ups are oblivious to his presence outside--is more than a little disturbing, particularly as slowly lures her away from the safety of her parents, hiding a giant, deadly hammer behind his back. The same klown later uses one of his victims as a ventriloquist dummy, pushing his hand gorily into the poor sod's back and manipulating his spinal column in order to say his only English words--"Don't worry--we just want to KILL YOU." And a late parade scene in which the klowns wander through town sucking up the cocoons with a giant, festive machine is equal parts Tim Burton and Dr. Seuss.

Eventually Officer Dave comes round to the truth of the matter, Mike calls in the aid of his comic-relief/ice cream truck-driving friends Rich and Paul Terenzi (Michael Siegel and Peter Licassi), and they storm the klowns' big top in a desperate effort to save the town. Once the heroes are inside they find themselves in a strange other-dimensional funhouse, full of more Burton/Seussian landscapes and kids' toys turned deadly. Finally they must battle the king of all killer klowns--Klownzilla!--for the fate of the human race.

"I said, 'Where does a 50-foot clown sleep?' FUCKING ANSWER ME!"

Obviously Killer Klowns is chiefly a comedy, but the comedy is surprisingly dry given the subject matter. Like the teens in The Blob, all the characters here play the premise entirely straight--overacting a bit, perhaps, but no more so than lil' Steven McQueen and company--letting the visuals sell most of the jokes. (The Terenzi Brothers' bits are the exceptions here, and most of their funny falls flat.) The Chiodo Brothers really craft a wonderful cartoon world, one that I never get tired of looking at, and that never fails to impress. (I still don't know how they did the popcorn locomotion, for instance.) It's also fun for a horror/sci-fi movie buff to play "spot the reference" here, as the Chiodos are clearly fans of the genre they're working in.

I said the acting was a little hammy, and the worst offender is probably Grant Cramer as Mike. He reminded me a little too much of Dave Coulier with his smarmy delivery, and that is never a good thing. Suzanne Snyder comes off slightly better as Debbie, attractive and energetic if a little airheaded--which I'm going to generously presume was the way the part was written. Best here are John Allen Nelson and John Vernon as the warring police officers. Also, keep an eye out for Christopher Titus as a nerd in red-rimmed owl glasses who gets captured by the klowns--Titus would later become inexplicably famous and have his own TV show on Fox, which a few people somewhere probably watched.

"There's something funny about these guys..."

And the movie would not have been half the success it is without the frankly fantastic score by John Massari. The odd instrumentation of standard circus-music themes is just off enough to make it slightly creepy as well as fun. And the theme song that plays over the beginning and end credits, performed by The Dickies, is worth having on your iPod right next to 45 Grave's "Partytime" and Calamari Safari's "Poultrygeist."

I love this movie, and am pleased to make it Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies' 200th entry. 3+ thumbs, and remember: in space, no one can eat ice cream!

"That's all, folks!"

More images from Killer Klowns from Outer Space!

She's clearly dealt with clowns like these before.

"Have you put on weight, dummy? You used to be ganglia."

John Wayne Juicy-Juice

The most chilling scene of the movie.

Keep watching the skies!

Laugh, and the world laughs with you.

MORE MADNESS...

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Coulrophobics and Capitalists, Look Away!

All others, feast your eyes on THIS:

The End of Neoliberalism

I'm not sure I grasp all the politics at play here, but still--HO-LEE SHIT.

MORE MADNESS...

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Pick-Up (1975): or, Swingin' in the Swamp

Here is the complete plot synopsis of Pick-Up from the back of the Deimos DVD Welcome to the Grindhouse Double Feature:

"An off-beat story about two young women whose lives are forever changed when they hitchhike a ride in a mobile home."

And strictly speaking, that's accurate--or we assume it to be, anyway, since there's really no way at the end that we can tell whether the events depicted here have indeed changed the girls' lives forever. But basically that's the plot--two girls, a mobile home, and a hitchhike ride. But allow me to draw your attention to one little hyphenated word in that synopsis: "off-beat."

Never have seven letters and a punctuation mark encompassed so much entertaining weirdness.

Quick, how many movies can you name that open with a tight shot of a huge rectangular belt buckle? How many of those follow that opening with a slow pan down the button-fly and then the tell-tale sound effects of a beside-the-road pit-stop? I can name only one, and this is it.

Groovy dude Chuck is the driver/roadside whizzard, who is in the middle of a cross-country mobile home delivery and soul-searching road trip. Thanks to the Fickle Bladder of Destiny, he has stopped at just the right place and just the right time to meet up with Carol and Maureen, two free-spirit hippie-chicks sitting in the waist-high weeds and communing with nature and child-like Carol's boo-boo kitty. Carol skips up to solicit a ride from Chuck, despite Maureen's spiritual objections. Chuck is an Aries, she can tell by looking, and with Aries in ascention and passing through the house of Saturn or Pancakes or something or other, he's giving off a real bad vibe that Maureen does not at all dig, not in the least. Carol pooh-poohs Maureen's astrological reservations, however, and soon enough they're boarding the bus, destination unknown.

There it is, ladies.

Once on the bus, Carol and Chuck sit up front and proceed to get high while listening to groovy tunes on the mobile home's sound system. We quickly learn that this is indeed a high-tech transportation machine, as it boasts not only a hi-fi stereo but also a mobile phone! (It's a rotary, kitchen-wall-phone model bolted to the vehicle's frame right behind the driver's seat.) Chuck gets a call from his boss, played in dripping-with-fried-chicken-grease Southerner mode by Tom Quinn, who seems to be channelling the spirit of Charles "Doc Hopper" Durning from The Muppet Movie, four years in the future! The boss threatens to withhold Chuck's $20 bonus if he doesn't make it to Tallahassee by nightfall. Meanwhile the instantly-baked Carol is go-go dancing for a truckload of libidinous hillbillies on the road in front of them, shakin' her money-maker and flashing her breasts for their amusement. Maureen sits in the back, morosely reading tarot cards and predicting gloom and doom. Chuck and Carol predictably ignore her Cassandra-like warnings.

Things go awry when a hurricane strikes (out of a clear blue sky! Seriously, all we get are stormy sound effects over a sparsely-clouded skyline while a Howard Cosell-like radio weatherman details the path of the tempest) and the freeway is closed to through traffic, leading Chuck to take a detour into the heart of the Everglades. Thanks to the heavy if invisible rains, once they get a few miles in the bus gets stuck in the mud up to its axle, and our trio of counter-culture travellers are stuck in the swamp, miles from nowhere.

It's here in the swamp that the psychoactive drugs that the characters are on (and presumably the filmmakers too) start to have their most serious effects. Chuck and Carol prance off into the undergrowth for fun and frolic, while Maureen does some morbid meditation. It's not long before Chuck and Carol are both buck naked, apparently having found the one square acre of the Everglades where mosquitoes and deer ticks are not indigenous. Over the next hour we see the Adam and Eve-like pair going at it in several paradisaical settings, including but not limited to a prehistoric-looking fern grove, a surprisingly crystal-clear swimming hole, and in the wildest segment on a huge sex swing that they must have fashioned from hanging creepers and a couple of old sticks! Hey, if you've got it, why not exploit it?

Wheeeeeeeee!

Meanwhile Maureen is having a trip of her own, not quite as jolly but just as entertaining. Wandering away from the relative safety of the mobile home, the spiritual-minded hippie chick is not at all surprised to discover a marble altar to the god Apollo, where she is entrusted by a white-robed priestess with the ultra-phallic Scepter of Apollo, for reasons that are deliciously unclear. Honored, Maureen throws off her own white robe and writhes on the altar like a living, sexy sacrifice. Later, back at the mobile home, she receives an out-of-nowhere visit from a campaigning politician (complete with straw hat and oversized "Vote for Me!" button), who panders to her every political opinion in the name of getting her vote. (Maureen is notably unsurprised by the politico's going door-to-door in the middle of the swamp; I guess once you've held the Scepter of Apollo, it takes a lot to shock you.) Once the political/social commentary requirement is fulfilled, we're ready to get back to our regularly scheduled program.

During this psychedelic, surreal section of the film we also get the backstories of each of our characters, told in flashback to each of their tender youths. (You can tell the girls are young, because they wear their hair in pigtails!) We see music-student Maureen molested by a priest at her religious conservatory, leading to her rejection of Christianity and embrace of alternative religions. We see a teenaged Carol acting out against her repressive mother by going into the woods with a group of boys in the ZZ-Top Mobile, then inviting the dumpiest and blondest of them (who it must be said looks about 15 in real life) to take her virginity. And finally we see young Chuck, the HAM-radio enthusiast (?) being berated by his gravel-voiced mother for some reason or other. So that explains everything.

As the movie speeds toward its conclusion, however, things take a turn for the sinister. Searching for her oversexed friends, Maureen goes into the swamp and meets one of the most disturbing clowns in cinema history. The jester's silent, mime-show actions and slasher-mask visage will haunt your nightmares and make you view every bunch of balloons with suspicion, I assure you. Somehow Chuck and Maureen end up together, and they make wild pagan love on the altar of Apollo. Meanwhile, Carol is found and pursued by the group of hillbillies from the pick-up truck at the beginning, who want to see a little more of her show. Just when it seems all of Maureen's awful predictions are coming true, though, the movie takes a twist you probably saw coming and brings us full circle right back to the beginning. Carol and Maureen re-board the bus, the worst behind them, and Chuck drops it in gear and heads toward the horizon...but why is there now a sinister bunch of balloons attached to the back of the bus? (Dun-dun-DUNNN!!!!)

Don't sleep. Don't ever sleep again.

Pick-up is an awful lot of fun, but only if you're in the right mood for it. If you're looking for engaging story, great acting, or competent filmmaking, then you'd best look elsewhere. However, if you're in the mood for drugged-out nonsensical plotting, laughably over-the-top performances, and loads and loads of gratuitous nudity and sex, then you're in the right place. 2.25 thumbs for this exploitation odessy oddity. Dig it, man.

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