Is It Monday Yet?

In case my eagerness to insert Frogs or Empire of the Ants into any unrelated conversation has gotten past you, I really, really really, really really really, and did I mention really? love the strange pocket of genre cinema known as Nature Strikes Back. Whether we’re dealing with two-story high chickens or Leslie Nielson wrestling a bear bare-chested, there’s just something about animals banding together to take us silly opposable thumb wielders down that never fails to make me smile.

Colin Eggleston’s Long Weekend (with a script from Patrick scribe Everett de Roche) is best described as the arthouse interpretation of what is otherwise considered a fairly silly (yet incredibly enjoyable) batch of films. Think of it as Day of the Animals That Are Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

Quick Plot: Marcia and Peter are an incredibly unhappy married couple with some disposable income and a lot of harmful secrets. To maybe mend some of their troubles, they begrudgingly embark upon a small road trip to what they expect to be a secluded beach located deep into the forests of Australia. Though Marcia would rather be basking in the comfort of a five-star hotel, Peter insists on lugging his expensive camping gear and chubby dog Cricket for one of those manly back-to-nature vacations that only rich people can actually take.

The ride there is not without its difficulty. Peter receives some strangely contradictory information at a local gas station that seems to be urging him away from his destination, although it’s the brutal running-over-of-a-kangaroo that sets an eerie tone. As news reports drop hints about bird attacks and Eggleston’s camera glares ominously at wayward wombats (band name trademark pending), we get the increasing sensation that nature isn’t crazy about these bickering humans.

Neither are we. Ever so slowly, Marcia and Peter reveal some of the reasons for their coldness towards each other, including infidelity and unwanted abortion. Throughout it all, Marcia seems to share our sentiment that something in this natural paradise wants them out. A sea cow (yes, it’s apparently a thing) washes up onshore. Peter gets Fabio’d by a giant seagull. 

Harpoons shoot on their own. A grime coated Barbie doll with Marcia’s haircut ominously shows up naked as Marcia sunbathes a few feet away. 

Something is off, and perhaps, the film surmises, deservedly so, as we witness Peter litter and nonchalantly chop down a tree while Marcia sprays pesticide at innocent ants. Their disregard for the outdoors is noted.

Long Weekend is a supremely strange film, one that sort of uses the guise of Nature Strikes Back to serve up a far more haunting story about a toxic relationship. Although we do get hints that animals are misbehaving elsewhere in the country, the two-character thrust of the film could almost lead you to believe all these seemingly ‘unnatural’ natural acts are actually part of our leads’ unraveling psyches. Certainly the fate of one character seems, albeit unclearly, to be more an act of human than god or goose. 

Some might find it pretentious, especially since the film is often categorized alongside much lighter fare like Food of the Gods. This is a horror movie in the way that Picnic At Hanging Rock is a horror movie: something supernatural is at work, but that’s ultimately just an excuse. The horror exists between a man and woman who seem to derive more pleasure in hurting their partner than loving them, and yet, as Peter points out so pointedly to Marcia, as clear as it is that the love is gone, the need for one another will probably never die. These people have ruined each other, and therefore, who else can take them?

Long Weekend isn’t shy about its metaphors (re: broken egg), but Eggleston makes them work by creating such a haunting and unusual mood through his depiction of nature. From both an audio and visual point of view, Long Weekend is incredibly atmospheric. Once you plop the saga of Peter and Marcia inside such a landscape, the results are bound to be intense.

High Points
Enough can’t be said about the look of the film, lovingly captured by director of photography Vincent Monton. In an age of forced perspective effects or artful editing around ever putting an animal in the same frame as a human, Monton finds ways to use close shots of creatures to hauntingly brilliant effect

John Hargreaves and Briony Behets have an uphill battle in playing two extremely unlikable characters, and credit must go to both for making such strong commitments 

Without spoiling, let me say that I adored everything about the ending of this film

Low Points
Well, the thing is that the very nature of Long Weekend feels like an uncomfortably long weekend where you ended up stuck tagging along as a third wheel to the most miserably married couple in Australia. So this isn’t exactly a fun romp, which can, you know, be a bit of a drag

Lessons Learned
A domesticated pet is, to the natural animals of the wildness, something of an uncle tom

Whatever you do, do not feed the possums

It’s not smart to leave your dog home alone unsupervised for three days, but when all is said and done, it might be preferable to spending a dreadful weekend in your company

Rent/Bury/Buy
Remade in 2008, Long Weekend is something truly unusual and well worth a quiet night of watching. The Synapse released DVD includes a fascinating commentary track and photo still gallery with an audio interview of the late Hargreaves (which comes with a spoiler warning, something I find endearingly adorable). White it won’t give you that fun beer & friends party night feeling like Frogs, Long Weekend is an eerie descent into marital hell that just so happens to be spoken in the language of animals amuck. Give it a try.

And watch your back. A koala might be doing the same.

You Know I'm Bad

Hop in!

We're riding over to Rupert Pupkin Speaks for my list of favorite (cough cough) bad movies.  Blogmaster Rupert has been inviting a slew of cinemaniacs over to his virtual crib to share the best of the worst, and I encourage all to browse through his recent archives for a ridiculously unhealthy, yet oh so enjoyable batch of recommendations.

And let's face it: you know you've found the right film loving community when you're not the first, but the SECOND person to mention The Guy From Harlem.

Day of the Nielsen

If we continue to damage the ozone layer, the following will happen:

That’s right. Leslie Nielson will shirtlessly hug a bear and rats will be thrown at your face.

In other words, rev up your camping gear kiddos! It’s time to experience Day of the Animals.

Quick Plot: A touristy hike through the mountains gets moving, filled with an assorted group of white people and one Native American. Though the landscape is lovely, the paying customers get a trip that wasn’t on the brochure when some chemical imbalances cause the region’s wildlife to gang up and declare open season on all humans.

Boy do I love animalsploitation. Socially relevant AND adorable. Day of the Animals takes a cue from Frogs and knows that a good killer wilderness film is a diverse killer wilderness film, and thusly do we get a nice assortment of killer rodents, mountain lions, wolves, dogs, rats, and birds...so very many birds.

But really, let’s address the main reason Day of the Animals still gets talked about in film and teenage girl circles: shirtless Leslie Nielsen wrestles a bear. He also attempts rape and acts like the most raging “hate this guy” character I may have ever seen onscreen, but because it’s Frank Drebin, that is completely okay. Watching him insult and literally throw annoying children down mountains is a plus, plain and simple.

His ghost can babysit my phantom children any day.


There’s actually a surprisingly amount of poor child-rearing, which makes for (again) an inappropriately enjoyable little film. A subplot involves a little Them!-like girl who shuffles through the wilderness and ghost town with a man who has just about no idea how to treat a kid. Nielsen refers to his bratty companion as a “little cockroach” on multiple occasions. For whatever reason, these things made me quite happy.

High Points

Day of the Animals introduces a pretty large group of victims, but it does a surprisingly good job of making each character memorable enough to care of at least acknowledge their deaths. We don’t necessarily know all their names, but we know exactly who they are, even when they’re stuck under a pack of wolves

Lynda Day George’s Terry isn’t the beacon of feminism, but it’s nice to see a woman helping out to beat off a band of angry mountain lions

Low Points

...only to spend the next major attack scene standing in a corner with her hands over her face, then wining about how she can’t swim when survival moves down to the river

It’s a shame that the sound quality is so awful as to muffle much of the dialogue. It’s a bigger shame that the DVD inexplicably is sans subtitles

Lessons Learned

When the going gets tough, the tough order pineapple pie with ice cream on top

An ideal solution to disciplining children is to threaten to scalp them

Rats are adorable, even when being thrown at your face

The Winning Line

“I use my head all the time. A lot of people use their butts.”

I know he’s dead, but I’m just saying: Leslie Nielsen can use his butt on me whenever he feels like it

Rent/Bury/Buy

I own my copy of Day of the Animals (it shares a three-room box with Grizzly and Devil Dog) and without question, I’ll put it on as background noise sometime in the future. It’s an enjoyable and goofy lil ‘70s treasure filled with about zero scares but high camp, though in fairness, it’s also a whole lot more competent than some of its dreadfully awesome peers (Frogs and Food of the Gods come to mind). Leslie Nielsen fans owe it to themselves to see him play the baddie, plus, did I mention he wrestles a bear?

Mmmmm...Ambrosia Salad? Oh. A DIFFERENT Food of the Gods

Going into Food of the Gods, I had no intention of doing a review. I turned it on, hit up the Internet, and had planned to spend the next hour or so occasionally glancing up at the screen for ‘70s wackiness while paying bills and answering old emails.

But then a rubber chicken the size of Chewbacca attacked our permed quarterback of a hero and I realized there was no way I could not write about this film.

It must be said: Food of the Gods makes Frogs look like a masterpiece.

Quick Plot: Eager to take a break in the comfort and innocence of nature, football star Morgan grabs a few buds and heads off to a sparsely populated island. Before you could say touchdown, one member of the posse is mauled to death by oversized wasps. It’s a tragedy. It’s bizarre. But the levelheaded Morgan decides alerting the authorities is a dreadful idea because they’ll never believe him.

Also, because he’s an idiot.

Elsewhere on the island are the recently widowed Ida Lupino (hamming it up in a film just a hair better than The Devil’s Rain), an evil scientist and his assistant (And Soon the Darkness’ Pamela Franklin), and a very pregnant couple who are boring and very pregnant. 

Oh, and herds of Rodents of Unusual Sizes that would be adorable if they weren’t trying to rip you apart with their fuzzy little mouths.

The terrible evil scientist, you see, has been developing some form of toxin that makes living things grow to immense proportions. Much like Lisa Simpson in that science fair subplot, he rationalizes his Frankensteinian crime with the idea that such food could be fed to all the poor orphans of the world. 

Don’t worry: he gets eaten by the cuddly rat puppets too.

You don’t need to know much else about this movie, made by that incorrigible, oft-MST3K’d Bert I Gordon (Earth Vs. the Spider, Village of the GIants, childhood favorite Empire of the Ants, etc). Too many characters survive. The mean ones die painful and hilarious deaths. The dumbest narrator in the history of film (yes, I’m including Diary of the Dead’s Deborah) slurs his way through a framing setup. Not a single creature looks anywhere near either a) real or b) large. If these descriptions don’t make you grin, this is not the movie for you.

High Points

Sorry, but I can’t not love a movie that has its female protagonist sweetly proposition the male hero with sex right as he’s about to set fire to a bunch of bear-sized rats

Low Points

For what it is, this is a perfect(ly bad) movie that will make anyone expecting an animals attack tale exceedingly happy. HOWEVER, a bone to pick with the ending: I’m not one to ever quarrel with a film that ends on what is supposed to be an ominous shot of a cow mooing into the future, but I don’t think the twist makes any of the sense Gordon was intending. See, ingesting the Food of the Gods makes you giant. Soooooo what’s the problem with drinking it in milk form, especially if all other creatures are already getting a head start? Shouldn’t you WANT to grow to insanely large sizes in order to better defend yourself?

Lessons Learned

Jobs for female bacteriologists are just not that easy to find

A plus side about shooting giant toxic bees: instead of exploding into gutty messes, their innards just melt and evaporate upwards

if you live on a farm, you’ll know everything there is to know about birthing babies (unless, I suppose, you’re black)

Rent/Bury/Buy

Currently streaming on Instant Watch, Food of the Gods is a riot and joy for those who enjoy awful ‘70s cinema. Great for kids or easily amused adults, it offers no intelligence, no scares, and no good taste. In other words, it’s some kind of wonderful.

One Hot Wax, Courtesy of the Lightning Bugg

With summer burning its way through our sanity, it's only fitting that I should accept a recommendation from not only an esteemed blogger, but one named for the season's rare good find. This month, T.L. Bugg over at The Lightning Bug's Lair has assigned me the 1999 low budget wackjob Hot Wax Zombies On Wheels while I ordered him a serving of the Hong Kong actionfest, We're Going to Eat You . Head over to the Lair  for his take as I dust off some leather for...

Aggressive campiness may very well be one of the hardest sub (sub) genres out there when it comes to film. How do you secure audience involvement when the very nature of your work is to not take itself seriously? Generally, the answer lies in attitude. For every John Waters joke that falls on its face, there’s the simple smile you find yourself making at the sheer silliness of what’s onscreen.

As you may surmise from its title, Michael Roush's Hot Wax Zombies On Wheels is 90 minutes of pure goofballary with little regard for sanity or sense. It features lots of hot wax, zero zombies, some wheels, many pairs of boobs, an offensive amount of kooky sound effects and enough puns to make the Crypt Keeper seethe.  Take those lactose pills and dig in:

Quick Plot:

The quiet town of Davenport gets rocked when a European waxing salon sets up shop. As quaint citizens line up to remove that pesky body hair (a phrase repeated just about every 65 seconds throughout the film), Sharon, the owner of the world’s tamest lingerie store, begins to suspect something amiss. Aided by her boyfriend’s best friend Sven (a barber with both a crush and a need to have hairy clientele), Sharon declares war on Yvonne, the she-beast waxist with a horrendous Halloween store wig and dangerously misguided early 90s sense of fashion.

So by this point, you may be wondering: is this a story about one woman’s resistance to hair removal? The question is valid. The answer is mostly.

See, there are a few minor kinks thrown into Hot Wax Zombies On Wheels (still no zombies or wheels though). For one, removing that pesky body hair doesn’t just make you feel smooth: it also turns you into an insatiable horndog. This is convenient enough when all your fellow villagers share your sudden lustful enthusiasm, but poor Sharon can’t seem to say goodbye to her Lady Bic..

Even though she must be sustaining a leg worth of nicks from never rinsing her razor. See despite the fact that Sharon’s career would seem to be greatly enhanced by her clientele’s increased libidos, this independent woman would much rather bike with Sven and make funny faces at the oddness going on around her (side effects include a newfound addiction to cleaning). Luckily for Sharon, a pair of traditional pun-spewing sailors are also on hand to help fight the villains. With sawdust.

The first issue that simply must be addressed is the title, a catchy but misleading name that saves itself by being sung in the opening scene. I’ll give my due to any film that manages to make a song out of “Hot Wax Zombies On Wheels,” though it would have been a little more justified had this film involved a single actual zombie. Sure, the townspeople do seem to lose their individuality in a Body Snatchers-esque way, but to call them zombies is to call the gigantic toads that plague Sam Elliot in Frogs ...well, it’s like calling them frogs. 

Putting titular issues aside, Hot Wax Zombies On Wheels remains a rather atrocious film that nevertheless gets more and more charming as it runs. None of the cast can actually act, but all truly do put every ounce of energy they have into having a good time. As a result, their enthusiasm eventually wears you down enough where you have to chuckle at what they do. Then again, for every clever pun that actually works, about twelve pass by with a loud thud. Such is the nature of cheap verbal slapstick.

High Points

If I did a pun-by-pun breakdown, I can’t say that the ones that worked hit the majority. Still, there are a few that end up being genuinely amusing, particularly the pure ridiculousness of those f*cking rats

I wouldn’t cast lead Jill Miller as Lady MacBeth, but she maintains a guilt-free attitude throughout the film that helps to make her likable enough for us to care about

Low Points

If you’re going to act like a horror sci-fi movie, can you at least give us some form of horror/sci-fiishness? Tanned bare breasts don’t please ALL audiences you know.

Don’t mind some of the odder evidence of low budget or 12 day shooting schedule, such as Sharon’s early conversation with her mother where for whatever reason, neither character makes any eye contact with one another

Lessons Learned

When wielded correctly, a roll of tinfoil is a powerful weapon

You’re never too old to cheat at Candyland

If there’s one thing Irishmen don’t like, it’s people who dare to creep inside their psyches

When you’ve reached the limits of human horniness, the next logical step is to join a swim team

If Sarah Palin can invent words like refudiate, then I suppose there’s nothing particularly wrong with Yvonne’s defiant use of the term ‘sensuism’

Rent/Bury/Buy

It’s hard to recommend this movie because in all honesty, it’s pretty gosh darn aggressively atrocious. At the same time, it’s made with such gung ho spirit that once you round out the first half hour, you just might find yourself cracking a smile. Most of the jokes are cornier than Nebraska, the boobs more artificial than Meg Ryan’s new mug and the story about as involving as a SyFy original, but those with a taste for good-natured trash may very well find enjoyment. The DVD includes a commentary with stars Miller and Somm, as well as director Michael Rousch who remains proud enough of his campy little film. Rent it--if you must-- with the knowledge that you’re not actually watching anything good...just a lot of American cheese grilled to a guiltily mild enjoyment.


And speaking of culinary delights, don't forget to follow the trail of butter all the way to The Lightning Bug's Lair for a hearty helping of We're Going to Eat You.

Patrick Still Lives...in a different continent, body, language, and movie

Pop Quiz: What’s the best way to make a sequel?

1. Retain as much of the talent from the film’s original source and continue to develop the story in a linear and sensical fashion
2. Multiply the budget and retell your story TO THE EXTREME!!!
3. Don’t do it.
4. Sell the rights to another country and let new hands do what they want, including transforming the tale into a trashtastic good time and increasing the amount of nudity and slapping by 189% 

If you selected D, the Patrick Still Lives!* is the movie for you. 

Oh boy. Is it ever.

Quick Plot: A young man and his father are standing on the side of a quiet country road when a passing vehicle hurls a bottle(? Three rewinds and I still couldn’t confidently identify the object) out the window. While the assailant is never fully identified, I’ll assume it’s someone along the lines of Roger Clemens or Johann Santana, as this one toss sends the son (a revamped, straight-haired Patrick) into a coma.

Fast forward some unidentified amount of time later, when Patrick Hershell is under the care of his slightly mad scientist dad in a secluded private hospital with a luxury resort connected to its backyard. Papa Hershell has invited a few mystery guests to spend a few days bathing, dining, lounging in the nude, being blackmailed, and eventually, murdered.

There’s a stiff Parliamentarian and his horny wife, a single young rich fellow wonderfully named David Davis, a hairy-chested playboy and his not girlfriend played by Burial Ground ’s boob-bitten mother Mariangela Giordano (and, it should be noted, her bare breasts). Also on the grounds is a pretty young secretary, two German Shepherds, and a maid/world’s worst dog trainer and bad omen warner. Everything’s all fun and Italian until Lyndon, the asexual politician, takes a morning swim and ends up a steamed and skinned corpse.

This somehow inspires Giordano's character to drink like Margot Kidder at a wedding and crash dinner naked. If that weren’t enough, she proceeds to pick a catfight with the grieving widow, then attempt to seduce David Davis (I have no plans to stop writing out his entire name). Shocking enough, not all men dig plastered middle aged women who spend 71% of their day in the nude. Instead of sweaty Euro sex, David Davis and Giordano's breasts engage in a three minute slap fight. It’s even more incredible than I can possibly explain.

Oh wait! But where did Patrick go? Not very far, since he’s comatose and only able to communicate via typewriter (the budget has clearly increased; note that this time, the keys move themselves) and once again, harnessing a crush on the attractive clinic employee. It’s a tad hard to even remember the title character amongst the sleazy joy of our soon-to-be victims, but in case you hadn’t figured it out, this is a sequel in name only. The concept remains while the tone and essentially, the genre get a turn of the decade makeover. Patrick keeps his telekinetic homicidal tendencies to kill his way through the (possibly responsible for his condition) party guests but that almost seems secondary to watching amusingly unlikable rich Italians embarrass themselves. It’s certainly more fun than Patrick, albeit a whole lot less classy. 

Depending on your mood, that can be a wonderful thing.

High Points

One death-by-car-window is pretty damn memorable and makes Rose McGowan’s garage door demise in Scream look a little less impressive

I’m not normally one to recommend a film based on its abundance of female nudity and women being slapped silly, but the ridiculousness of how both are featured in every other scene is rather amusing in itself

Low Points

At around 100 minutes, the running time isn’t unreasonable, but with such poorly paced and drawn out “chase” scenes, Patrick Still Lives (!) drags like a paraplegic learning how to walk

The death by dogs is possibly the tamest animal attack put on film since pipe cleaner spiders and drugged up toads were placed atop people pretending to be actors in Frogs

Lessons Learned

Italian women really don’t like to wear clothes or undergarments. Similarly, everybody in Europe sleeps buck naked

If a very menacing sharp object is aimed your way, it’s probably wise to close your legs

Denying your wife sex for months at at time may cause her to develop a serious case of nymphomania 

Syphilis can be transmitted through catfighting

Googly eyes floating over a green tinted set may resemble some of the baddies in Super Mario World, but they are also quite difficult to survive

Winning Line

“His death was due to a fatality.”

Is it me, or is this like saying a puppy is due to a baby dog?

Rent/Bury/Buy

If you loved the slow buildup and haunting atmosphere of Patrick, you may very well despise this film. HOWEVER, if exploitation is your cheese, melt this movie over nachos and feast like you’re the dude from Stephen King’s Thinner. This is the kind of film where the lead female, after discovering a second dead body, flees the scene shrieking, stops at a fountain to splash some water over her conveniently thin white dress, and resumes her escape. It’s a blast, but only if your definition of party involves ‘70s style Eurotrash. The DVD includes interviews with a producer and title star Gianni Dei, which are informative in a casual we-knew-what-we-were-making kind of way. I don't really see myself rewatching Patrick Still Lives(!) anytime soon, but it sure did brighten my evening.

*Since these filmmakers took liberties with the story of Patrick, I give myself the permission to adjust the title. There is no exclamation point, but doesn’t it sound better with one?