There was a time when there were not that many people in the world more famous than Mickey Rooney. The star of the hugely successful 1930s and 40s series of "Andy Hardy" movies for MGM, Rooney was the perfect embodiment of all-American male purity, optimism, and energy, a kid whose boundless enthusiasm and willingness to put himself out there couldn't help but result in a happy ending. His onscreen partnership with music and film legend Judy Garland only cemented his star status. In 1940 he shared a special "Juvenile" Oscar with Deanna Durbin "for their significant contribution in bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth, and as juvenile players setting a high standard of ability and achievement." Hell, rumor even has it that Walt Disney named his most famous creation after the lad. THAT'S how famous he was.
But as often happened to actors who achieve their greatest fame as youngsters, Rooney found it difficult to make the transition from Golden Boy to more dramatic, adult roles; the studios and public just weren't willing to accept Andy Hardy as a grown man, and Rooney's diminutive stature didn't help him any there. In the middle years of his career, plagued by drug addiction and unable to find big studio work (with the exception of his now infamously un-PC portrayal of buck-toothed Japanese neighbor Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's), Rooney was forced like others before him to take some film roles that many considered far beneath his ability and reputation.
Perhaps none of these roles was further removed from that fresh-faced boy of the 40s than Rooney's portrayal of demented wannabe-moviemaker B. J. Lang in Yabo Yablonsky's 1971 cinematic freakout, The Manipulator.
We open the film in a pouring rainstorm, showcasing some excellently composed shots of an old-fashioned streetlamp and a decrepit back alley. A trench-coated figure wanders down a lonely back street and finally ends up at the stage- and movie-props warehouse that may or may not be his home. Once inside he takes off his weather-wear to reveal--well, MICKEY ROONEY, but with a bushy gray beard that makes him look like a kinder, gentler Coffin Joe. He's also wearing exactly the same sunglasses Kermit the Frog wore when pretending to be a big-shot producer in The Muppet Movie, which makes me wonder if Jim Henson was a fan of the film.
"I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream. That's my nightmare."
This goes on for a while, and it's to Rooney's credit that it never gets particularly boring--though a viewer gets the very real feeling that Mickey is perhaps more than a little "altered" here, and not just through method acting, Rooney's years of training and experience come through strong and he is able to hold your attention and make you interested in his character's psychosis. He's assisted greatly by the work of cinematographer Baird Bryant, whose work will be consistently wonderful throughout--extreme closeups of dust-covered props and extreme Dutch angles give the creepy old warehouse a "haunted playroom" ambience that's quite effective.
It's during this part of the movie Lang first starts hallucinating what might be scenes from his movie, but in fact are a kind of waking nightmare--kabuki-faced women and naked old men doing a slow waltz in front of the derelict props, mannequins smiling and laughing at the action, and Lang himself pushing them on to great heights of frenzy. I was reminded favorably of the opening sequence of the Roald Dahl TV series "Tales of the Unexpected", in the best possible way.
Hallucinations in a Deranged Mind
Soon Lang starts hearing high-pitched noises that could be whimpers or mad laughter, and at first this seems just another manifestation of his madness. However, the stakes are raised when he pulls back a dusty curtain to reveal the source of the noises: the wheelchair-bound Carlotta (Luana Anders), an actress Lang has somehow kidnapped and is forcing to perform in his "masterpiece." Note that when I say "wheelchair-bound" here, I don't mean she's paralyzed--I mean she's literally bound, tied to the wheelchair with strips of cloth and stout cord, unable to move till Lang calls for ACTION.
Obviously Carlotta has been Lang's prisoner for quite some time, as when Lang appears she immediately starts begging for food. "I'm hungry, Mr. Lang...Mr. Lang, I'm hungry!" Lang ignores her pleas for a while, chastising his actress for being late to the set and reliving a few more memories of his glory days in studio-era Hollywood. Eventually he relents to her pleas, though, feeding her spoonfuls of baby food from a small glass jar. The way Carlotta snaps at the offered spoon every time Lang's attention wanders is actually kind of chilling, emphasizing the mental and physical strain the poor girl is under.
The rest of the movie is pretty much Lang tormenting Carlotta by insisting she perform the romantic lead in his version of Cyrano de Bergerac, with Lang himself as her long-nosed hero, of course. More mental torture is in store as the increasingly unhinged director reminisces about the Old Days some more while applying Carlotta's make-up--all while in the persona of the fey make-up man Lang in fact used to be, with Rooney wearing heavy eye-shadow, lipstick, and tons of rouge! Again, Rooney manages through force of acting talent to take the strange, silly scene and make it somewhat chilling, coming off like nothing so much as a crazy old man in Nora Desmond drag.
He's ready for his close-up.
You'd think that an hour of watching an old man act crazy for the benefit of a young(er) lady tied to a chair would get tedious, and unfortunately you'd be right. Despite Rooney's periodically excellent performance, the plot wears thin by the halfway point, and even Carlotta's eventual required escape (accomplished through a piss-poor all-around heart attack scene in which the spasming Rooney releases Anders so she can get his pills) and extended game of hide-and-seek through the creepy warehouse (featuring a cameo by a frankly embarassed-looking Keenan Wynn as a homeless drunk crashing in the costume department) do little to spice things up.
What *does* help spice things up, though, are Yablonsky's frequent detours into cinematic Acid Trip-ville. Not only do we have repeats of Rooney's earlier creepy hallucinations and more extreme close-ups than you can shake a powder-puff at, we also get Mickey doing a rendition of "Chattanooga Choo Choo" at Keystone Kops speed (TWICE), an extremely odd wrap party/orgy sequence (featuring moustachioed men in harem girl outfits, writhing masses of gauze-draped hippie chicks, and a naked toddler Rooney cradles to his chest protectively, whispering "My baby! My baby!"), and a delirious Carlotta dashing down long corridors of hanging sides of beef only to encounter a string quartet performance going on in a butcher's locker, men in tuxes and women in furs enjoying the chilly, meat-scented performance! And yes, it makes just as much sense as it sounds like.
Sonata in D minor, for Cello and Spare Ribs
When it's talked about at all, The Manipulator is often compared to Otto Preminger's infamous LSD-fueled flop Skidoo (1969), in which Rooney also had a role. I haven't seen that film yet, but judging from the synopses I've read, that sounds about right--only replace the all-star cast with a one-star cast, and remove the Preminger prestige factor. While LSD is never mentioned in The Manipulator, one can't help feeling it or some other mind-altering drugs (or perhaps a coctail of *all* of them) had a hand in forming Yablonsky's vision.
Yablonksy himself never directed another film but had some success as a playwright and screenwriter; in fact, the stage version of The Manipulator (entitled B. J. Lang Presents: Cyrano) is still periodically produced. His teleplay for the TV movie Revenge for a Rape (1976) also got some good notices.
Rooney was famously "born again" in the 70s, becoming good friends with Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and making frequent appearances on the PTL Club. He also experienced a latter day career resurgence, as his boyish stature and aged baby-face looks suit him very well playing kindly and/or crotchety grandfather types. He's still working, recently putting in a role as an unlikely heavy in the blockbuster Night at the Museum. Rooney always says he's proud of everything he's done, and only wishes he could have done more--still, I have to wonder if his post-conversion pride extends as far as The Manipulator.
Whatever the case there, for a Mad Movie fan, The Manipulator has an undeniable charm. Despite the late-film drag and the rather silly ending, the joys of the weird visuals and Rooney's kind of amazing performance more than even it out. Though it's been called "one of the most bizarre, inept films ever made" by those who obviously haven't seen as many such films as I have, I give The Manipulator 2.25 thumbs. It's on the Mill Creek 50 Drive-In Movie Classics set, so it's easy to come by for those interested. If you get the chance, give it a spin.
CUT!
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
The Manipulator (1971): or, Hey Kid, Let's Put on a Show!
Friday, March 20, 2009
The Guy from Harlem (1977): or, Al Connors, International Brother of Mystery
Rene Martinez Jr.'s 1977 blaxploitation effort The Guy from Harlem is, there's no getting around it, a bad movie. In fact, it's one of those movies that goes beyond bad. With its high-school Senior Play-level acting, its horrendously choreographed action sequences, its static-to-the-point-of-paralysis camerawork, and its consistently worst-of-the70s set design, it's a movie that practically dares you to find something good about it. Hell, it even largely shies away from blood and sex, two of the virtually required qualities of the subgenre.
Why then did I find myself enjoying it so much?
Maybe it was the funky, Isaac Hayes-ish title song over the credits that first started me boogeying toward The Guy from Harlem's side. ("UNGH! The Guy from Harlem! [Watch out!] That cat's a baaaad dude! [Get on down!] Watch the moves! [The Guy from Harlem!] He's a mean, clean, fightin' machine!") Maybe it was the deliciously Ed Wood-ish, passionately amateurish aesthetic apparent from the unnecessary pre-credit scene and the way the character-credit crawl played over the *front* of the movie rather than the end--as if acknolwedging no one would stay around that long, so best to get the credits up there now. Maybe it was the way emotively challenged star Loye Hawkins seemed completely convinced of his own awesomeness and badassery, despite the voluminous evidence to the contrary. These things all played a part, no doubt.
But perhaps the real reason is something metaphysical--the way a movie can sometimes sink so deeply into the depths of Bad that it comes out the other side of the wormhole. It happens, right?
Or maybe there's just something wrong with me.
"UNGH!"
It seems that Princess Ashanti, "a person from an African Nation...she's the wife of a head of state," is coming into town for a meeting with the US Secrectary of State, which is presumably a photo-op/meet-and-greet, since the Princess herself tells Connors later she gets bored while her hubby is doing all this country-running stuff. The CIA has reason to believe someone might try to kidnap the Princess--a mysterious gangland drug lord named Big Daddy--which is why they've secretly moved the meeting from Washington DC to Miami--which kind of defeats the PR purpose, but let's move on.
McCloud wants Connors to be Ashanti's bodyguard, because "it's possible there could be a leak somewhere in the CIA," and so presumably none of the federal agents can be trusted. (Imagine!) Therefore they outsource security to Connors, giving him carte blanche to make his own arrangements for Ashanti's saftey without filling them in. Makes sense to me!
"Don't worry ma'am--we're with the Government."
So basically what we have here is a story that could have been written by a couple of action-movie addicted 3rd graders with no idea how politics, crime-fighting, or gangland warfare actually work, but nonetheless want to incorporate it all. The acting is about that level too--the actors seem to know basically what they're supposed to say and when, but have no sense of the emotion of the scene, or even timing--repetitions and stepped-on lines are par for the course, and in fact get more frequent as the movie goes on. And the cinematography by Senor Miguel de Medio-shot Tripod makes the security cam footage from the women's dressing room at JC Penney's look positively dynamic. Or at least so I'm led to believe.
"Please--just try to relax."
After some extremely undiplomatic flirtation from Al which the princess is powerless to resist ("I'm very lucky to have you as my bodyguard!" "Baby, you don't know how lucky you are!"), Al orders some New York Strip steaks brought up to the room, even though the princess wants to eat out. ("No, for SECURITY PURPOSES, we have to eat up here!" Al informs her.) But when the maid brings in the room service tray, Al shocks us all by pulling an Austin Powers and leaping across the table to cold-cock the broad!
"It's a MAN, baby!"
You see, Al can smell a New York Strip a mile away, and there weren't any steaks on that tray, just a bottle of J&B and a Midnight Special. After an awesome...ly bad fight scene with the remaining toughs, Al takes Ashanti to his main squeeze's apartment, kicks the chick out, and settles in to protect the princess from everybody but himself.
While all this has been sometimes painfully, most often hilariously terrible cinema, the movie has a couple of points in its favor. For one thing, Al's aforementioned COMPLETE confidence in his own awesomeness, which seems unfounded and yet somehow manages to convince. (It helps that he's the best actor in the admittedly bad lot, keeping his velvet tones and smooth moves pumping even when his costars are stumbling over their lines or stepping on his.) Also, the decor of just about every room in the movie is so wonderfully 70s ugly-cool, it's kind of mesmerizing. The orange shag carpet that appears in at least two of the sets is particularly difficult to look away from.
Al and Ashanti finally GET IT AWN (though the movie seems very shy about going further than "beginning to undress and then fade to black"--again, I'm wondering if awkward 3rd graders wrote the script) and he delivers the princess to the meeting offscreen and returns to his office the next day to put more moves on Sue and go over his accounts.
They even had enough fabric left over to make an 8-track tape cozy!
The actor playing Harry DuBaul is Steve Gallon, and he is AWESOME. Like a jolly, foul-mouthed Don King with the volume turned up to twenty, Gallon seems to detonate his lines rather than speak them. Though his acting style has only one setting--FULL THROTTLE--he overwhelms all the other characters onscreen, Al included, and I was grinning like an idiot for every foot of filmstock he owned.
Big Daddy is a riddle wrapped in an enigma, says DuBaul--nobody ever sees him, and he has henchmen do all his dirty work. "All I know about him is this--he's big, six feet tall, and has a lot of muscles! Curly blond hair, and always wears these bands around his muscles! That's all I know!" Wow, he really *is* a man of mystery, isn't he?
"I'm STEVE GALLON, BITCH!"
Anyway, the rest of the movie deals with Al's mission to rescue Wanda from Big Daddy's goons and his eventual confrontation with the pasty, musclebound drug lord himself. Highlights of this section of the movie include Wanda's incredibly confrontational bad attitude that seems to be the only thing protecting her from rape at the hands of the henchman assigned to guard her (well, that and the guards bottomless stupidity and almost adorable hesitancy to actually make good on his threats--at one point he even goes all sour grapes after being rebuffed particularly roughly: "Ah, you're probably no good anyway!"), Jim's incredible powder-blue leisure suit, Martinez's...interesting decision to film Al's action-packed fight scenes from about thirty yards away, another appearance by the endlessly entertaining Harry DuBaul, and of course the final fight between Al and Big Daddy for pride, honor, and triumph over racism.
Let me say again--by just about any standard (even mine!) this movie is BAD BAD BAD. The acting, the cinematography, the editing (more than once entire exchanges of dialogue are repeated, seemingly because the actors ran out of things to say and so went back to the Important Bits)--nothing raises its gloriously Afro'd head above amateur hour at any point, and in fact seldom even approaches it. Even the n-bombs flung around by Big Daddy's gang seem half-hearted, and while Martinez *does* finally give us a little nudity (Wanda takes a nicely gratuitous shower post-rescue), nobody seems that interested in backing up all of the movie's innuendo. And as for pacing, the movie really drags in the second half, with three too many repetitions of the initially entertaining but eventually tiresome rebuffed rape attempts by Big Daddy's henchman on Wanda.
Scintillating Action!
And yet, to steal a phrase from BC over at Horror Movie a Day, the movie reaches a point where it's *so* bad, it's kind of lovable. In spite of everything--hell, even because of it--I found myself grinning like an idiot almost all the way through, awash in trash-movie euphoria.
So can I recommend The Guy from Harlem? In good conscience, no--most people, even those who usually like bad movies, are probably going to hate it. But criticism is subjective by its nature, and I can only rate *my* experience of the film, which as I say was positive overall, even though it was for all the wrong reasons. Therefore I'm bucking the trends and giving The Guy from Harlem 2 thumbs for the fun it provided. Your mileage will almost CERTAINLY vary though--you were warned.
Nota Bene: Apparently director Rene Martinez made only one film after The Guy from Harlem, the amazingly un-PC titled The Six Thousand Dollar Nigger, starring the irrepressible Steve Gallon as a character named "Wildman Steve." I...kinda have to see this one now. For SCIENCE. ;)
"Eat it, Whitey!"
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Savage Weekend (1976): or, Don't Judge a Book by Its Boom Mike
It's easy to see why, when they talk about it at all, people like to rag on David Paulsen's 1976 slasher obscurity Savage Weekend. After all, this is a movie that features not only a pre-"Dr. Hill in Re-Animator" David Gale as a rugged, moustachioed lumberjack Lothario, but also William "This is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl" Sanderson of "Newhart" fame playing pretty much exactly the same character he played in the long-running sit-com, only going for menace here instead of yuks. Add to that some egregious continuity flubs, shots framed with some foreign object (possibly the cameraman's thumb) obscuring the top of the lens, and a boom mike that has not a cameo but a essentially a meaty bit-character part in the film, and you've got yourself a b-movie snark-target that's really almost irresistible.
But to dismiss Savage Weekend because of its myriad technical faults is to do the film, the director, and yourself--the audience--a grave, grave disservice. Because underneath all those problems is a genuinely *good* slasher flick, even bordering upon the Awesome. It has interesting 3-dimensional characters, a serviceable plot with well-developed subplots that actually pay off, and some genuine tension in the exciting climax. In fact, with just a little more technical prowess, I posit that we'd be hailing Savage Weekend as a hidden gem, a lost classic in the annals of late 70s horror.
And no, I'm not kidding.
Maybe She's Born With It
From there we cut to the Manhattan skyline, from whence we pull back to the apartment of main character Marie Pettis (Marilyn Hamlin), our shell-shocked heroine from the opening flash-forward. She's preparing for a weekend getaway with her sister Shirley (Caitlin O'Heaney), their flaming gay friend Nicky (an excellent Christopher Allport), and Marie's middle-aged stockbroker boyfriend Robert (Jim Doerr). After a few minutes of preparation Marie's ex-husband Greg shows up (TV veteran and John Holmes lookalike Jeff Pomerantz) to take custody of their young son while Mom goes away for her dirty weekend. Greg is a former political power player whose boss the Governor has recently committed suicide, and his subsequent fall from influence is the unspoken cause for the dissolution of the marriage. There's some nice establishment of uncomfortable tension between Greg, Marie, and Robert here (when the broker gives the child a baseball glove as a present, Greg sweeps the boy away with a look of hatred and spits, "Get your hands off my son!"), and once the party-pooper and son have vacated the premises, our upper-middleclass group can get on its way.
"I just cain't fuckin' believe it was all a dream..."
It seems Marie's sugar-daddy has bought a lakeside cabin and a large unfinished boat from a family of bumpkins upstate, who had to sell after the paterfamilias died unexpectedly. The plan is to go into the wilds of upstate New York, have some fun, and oversee the completion of Robert's new yacht; to assist, he's invited along shipwright and engineer Jay Alsop (Devin Goldenberg), who's married but not that married, apparently, since the slutty Shirley sets her sights on him from the get-go. Slow-but-intense Otis is supposed to be finishing his father's boat, but has let things slide because of his resentment of the city folk coming in to steal his daddy's dream. "My boat now," he says over the grave of his pa. "I won't promise what I'll do if'n they try to steal it away from me!" Given what we've seen and heard of Otis up to this point, it seems pretty clear who the villain of the piece is shaping up to be.
On their way to the remote cabin and lake, our group stops at a convenience story where Shirley purchases a rubber horror mask as a gag gift for Nicky. Meanwhile, Nicky slides into the local redneck bar and orders a Tanqueray Martini (he has to instruct the retired trucker barkeep how to do it: "Have you got gin? Well, splash some in a pretty glass for me. Vermouth. Divine.") while a couple of local toughs eye him hatefully. When the two come up to start early on the weekend gay-bashing, Nicky surprises them and everyone else by totally mopping the bar with them single-handed! He smashes chairs over backs, breaks a bottle and threatens a slit throat, and ends by kneeing the biggest of them in the groin. "I wasn't brought up in the South Bronx for nothin'!" he declares, and then prances out of the establishment, officially the Queen of the Mountain. Of course he's made some enemies now...enemies who know where they're heading...
Unfortunately, he'd left his spinach in his other pants.
It's around this time that Paulsen starts adding a few weird touches of the sort that always make me smile. For instance, while Mac tells about Otis' previous obsession with a local girl and his revenge for being spurned, sunbathing Marie imagines herself as the girl in the story and ex-hubbie Greg as the rival lover Otis supposedly bludgeons. This excites her, apparently, as she starts feeling herself up even as Mac details the way Otis branded the girl's chest with a hot iron! Her excitement obviously has an effect on the storyteller too, who eyes her a little too laciviously...
"Actually, I always dreamed of becomin' a scientist..."
So really, story-wise, there's a lot to like about the film so far. Paulsen has deftly established a number of possible villains/red herrings for the eventual murder mystery (hey, it said "slasher" on the marquee, it's no secret there will be blood), and has even managed to flesh out the backstories of his characters believably, dramatically, and economically. And the tension between the entitled-feeling city dwellers and the poor rural folk is played up nicely as well, never in the forefront but always noticeable in the way the groups interact. (The catchy, banjo-centric folk song "Upstate Man" that plays every now and then also helps in this regard.)
The cinematography has actually been fairly interesting up to now, with some nice scenic shots and a few cool compositions in the graveyard and the ship barn, and the pacing has been moving us along at a nice clip. However, Paulsen was unfortunate enough on this film to have hired what has to be the WORST BOOM MIKE OPERATOR OF ALL TIME. It's expected in low-budget horror flicks that every now and then the boom mike or cameraman's shadow will appear, but this is really one for the record books. Dude CAN NOT keep it out of the frame! It sneaks in for the first time around the 22 minute mark, then again at around 38 mins during an important dramatic scene from Gale (and it doesn't just pop in and then out--it stays on screen for a good 10-20 seconds, shamelessly!) , again at 47 minutes, and then AGAIN in shadow-form at 53. It's funny, of course, but it's also kind of a shame, as it's distracting and the movie really deserves better.
"Check one..."
"...two..."
"...three!"
As the weekend wears on we get more character development on Marie, who feels overwhelmed by the events of her post-divorce life. "Things happen to me--life happens all around me and I don't have any control!...I don't feel anything but fear. I've been so numbed by what happened with Greg!" She's obviously looking to feel things, to do something, anything to reassert her control. And in this case that takes the form of fantasizing about her porn-star ex-hubby Greg while screwing Robert. We all cope in different ways.
With all these nodules of dysfunction popping off like so much popcorn, it's time for the murderer to make his appearance, in hand-held POV fashion, of course, donning the mask Shirley bought and snooping through the house while everyone's away. It takes a while for the actual killings to begin, but once they do, it's pretty exciting, inventive, and mostly well-done. But as the movie barrels toward its conclusion there are a few more bits of strangeness that merit special mention:
"Milk it, baby!"
As for the kills, we get a hat-pin lobotomy, hay-bale hooking, defenestration to impalement, post-mortem hanging, and in the real centerpiece of the flick, an extended bondage scene in which the killer ties the still lingerie-clad Shirley to a table saw, plugs it into a light fixture, and then neglects to turn on the juice--which leads to some very effective tension in the final climax.
As for that final confrontation--perhaps lulled into a feeling of smugness by the technical gaffes, I admit I thought I had things figured out. And then, like Otis and Mac, the filmmakers proved themselves much more crafty and resourceful than I would have given them credit for. Maybe others will see the twists coming, but I was pleasantly surprised, and won't ruin them for you here. I will say this though: CHAINSAW/MACHETE DUEL. That's the stuff.
It Takes All Kinds
I really, really liked Savage Weekend, and to all the haters, I say go soak your heads. If you can get past the boom mike's ubiquity and the occasional lens shadow, you'll find a surprisingly effective and intriguing little slasher here, ripe for rediscovery. 2.5 Thumbs--if you're in the mood for something unusual, give this one a try.
Nota Bene: according to Internet sources (the BEST sources!) this movie was put out on DVD a few years back by a company called Substance, in a hacked-up print that removed most of the nudity and gore. Avoid that one. I watched it on the Mill Creek Drive-In Movie Classics box set, and while there is a bit of print damage and some strange fluctuation between full screen and letterbox ratios, all the good stuff seems to be intact. That may make this the only instance in history where the Mill Creek version of the movie is actually the preferred print!
Life is a Cabaret
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."
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Don't Open Till Christmas (1984): or, Die Santa Die!
I've gone on record before as saying that I generally just don't "get" the appeal of the Killer Santa movie. I mean, I get the whole "twisting something innocent and childish into something dark and wrong" thing. I can appreciate the fact that Silent Night, Deadly Night got a lot of squares bent out of shape when it came out in 1984, and the idea of people picketing a slasher flick because the killer dresses as Santa does give me a little bit of holiday cheer. (Come on folks, we're not saying he WAS Santa--that would have to wait until Goldberg's turn as St. Nick a couple of years back.) But once you get past the "OMG It's Santa and he's KILLING PEOPLE!" idea, there's really nowhere to go but down in my experience.
That's why for my nod to the season I chose Edmund Purdom's festive holiday offering, Don't Open Till Christmas. Also released in 1984, this is a Santa Killer movie with a twist--rather than centering around a Santa who kills a la 1980's Christmas Evil, this British production turns the formula on its head and gives us a killer who only kills Santas! You see what they did there?
I know, the plot sounds like it would be just as one-note as its inverse, and in truth it easily could have been. But due to some likable actors, a breezy pace, a serviceably intriguing plot, and an absolute barrage of entertaining and creative Santa kills, Don't Open Till Christmas manages to keep the Vicar smiling from start to finish. And that's more than you can say for last year's rancid eggnog--I speak from experience.
The movie wastes no time getting down to business, as we open with a drunken party-goer in a Santa suit stumbling out into the alley with his date, heading for his parked car and a backseat tête-à-cock. As they climb in and climb on, the previously stationary camera becomes a hand-held pov, the soundtrack fills with heavy breathing, and we approach the unsuspecting lovers--all to the tune of an obvious and hilarious synthesized Jaws score rip-off. After circling the car once, the POV character is shooed off by the annoyed and horny Saint Nick, who gets a knife in the ribs for his trouble! Which of course drops him like a rock according the b-movie biology rules. Ms. Claus manages to escape from the car and plaster herself against an alley wall before meeting the same fate.
After a credit sequence featuring a flaming Santa gnome, a nice minor-key music-box rendition of "Jingle Bells," and a mysteriously missing apostrophe, we're right back into the action. A fancy dress party is going on at the local discotheque, where Kate (Belinda Mayne) and her boyfriend Cliff (Gerry Sundquist) are helping Kate's father dress as Santa for the party-closing skit. Unfortunately Dad's delivery is interrupted by an unscripted SWORD THROUGH THE BACK OF THE HEAD, right there on stage in front of his horrified daughter! Someone is DEFINITELY on the naughty list!
"Ho-ho-HO-LEE SHIT!"
Next we cut to Scotland Yard, where Chief Inspector Harris (Edmund Purdom) and Sgt. Powell (Mark Jones) are discussing the recent rash of one-horse open slayings. "It was the costume he was wearing," the velvet-voiced Harris intones. "He was the victim...of another SANTA MURDER!"
And there you have the flick's set-up almost in its entirety. There's a maniac loose in London, raining jolly death upon anyone with the misfortune to cross his path dressed as St. Nick. Harris and Powell do their best to get to the bottom of things, but since "the whole of the West End is crammed with Santa Clauses!", containment proves difficult. The cops question Kate and Cliff, and it's clear that Harris counts Kate's flute-playing Significant Other as one of the top suspects. The herrings get redder when investigative journalist Giles (creepy Howard Stern/Jeff Goldblum hybrid Alan Lake) advises Sgt. Powell to keep a close eye on his superior officer. Powell laughs it off at first, but when Harris starts acting strange and proving oddly elusive to the tail Powell orders, the sergeant has to widen his net.
As I mentioned above, the flick moves along at a breezy pace, with plenty of amusing dialogue and off-the-wall character moments (such as the disappointment of Harris's sweet-old-lady housekeeper when she doesn't get to peek at the police photos from the murder scenes) to keep you smirking. Director Purdom does a great job as the harried but grimly jocular Inspector Harris--his voice and looks remind me of Albert Finney's best roles, and he carries a similar gravitas. Belinda Mayne is appealing if stiff as the grief-stricken daughter (though it has to be said she recovers pretty quickly from seeing Dad shish-kabobbed before her eyes), and Mark Jones also does well as the capable, wry sergeant. In fact all the actors are very likable, except for Sandquist (whose character is kind of a twat, so that's no fault of his acting) and Lake, who it's not much of a spoiler to say comes out of the herring barrel and into the open water fairly quickly.
The movie was never going to win any awards on technical merit. Besides a few good pov hand-held sequences and one or two effective lighting set-ups, the cinematography is fairly static, the shot-framing uncreative. To call the editing "slapdash" would be kind. And while many of the actors are likable enough, their delivery is often stilted and the dialog clumsy--sometimes hilariously so. Plus, with the killer's identity revealed definitively 2/3rds of the way through the flick, the movie's one claim on suspense goes out the window.
But Don't Open Till Christmas manages to overcome all these drawbacks with sheer entertainment power, thanks largely to the sequence of darkly hilarious Santa kills that pepper the plot development like bloody commercial breaks. Whenever you see a guy in a Santa costume stumble into frame, you know he'll soon become a cooling Corpse Kringle--and yet the kills are so varied and creative that it never stops being fun. For instance, in addition to the aforementioned opening stab and sword-through-the-head shots, we also get:
Somebody spiked my punch.
Maybe some day I'll give one of those other Santa Killer movies a go with a more open mind, but it's hard for me to imagine enjoying any of them more than Don't Open Till Christmas. 3 thumbs for pure entertainment value. It's been released on its own and as part of dozens of public domain cheapie sets, including the so-far pretty good Mill Creek 50 Drive-In Movie Classics set. So if you're in the mood for some holiday cheer, pour yourself some egg nog, grab a candy cane off the tree, and settle in to watch Santa die, over and over again. You'll be glad you did.