Drive-In (1976)

Recently, I took a trip into the past at the Mahoning Drive-In. It’s a lovely place showing retro films every weekend. I took in a John Carpenter marathon, six films over two nights, and had a blast! With so many films, it was only a matter of time until I hit the concessions stand for refreshments. The stand is adorned with posters, tapes, and various knick-knacks, creating a welcoming atmosphere. One poster caught my eye, promoting a film all about the drive-in experience, plainly titled “Drive-In.” The poster plays host to a bevy of colorful characters, smiling and laughing and causing a ruckus. The tagline reads “There’s nothing but action at the drive-in, and some good stuff on the screen too!” I knew then and there I had to see this film, one way or another.

I tracked a copy of the film down upon my return from vacation and waited patiently for its arrival. When it came, I popped it in immediately. What I seen on screen was reminiscent of how I felt at the Mahoning: a sense of joy. An innocent pleasure encapsulated under the stars, in the comfort of cars surrounding a gigantic screen. I could almost smell the popcorn overwhelming the air supply and taste the hot dogs hot off the grill. However one feels about the film, they can’t take its sense of atmosphere.

Rod Amateau so badly wants to make a love letter to the drive-in that he sometimes feels weighed down by the mechanics of storytelling. He relies on the script, written by Bob Peete, to carry him through. It’s of a madcap variety, with interweaving stories of high-school romance, gang warfare, discrimination, and armed robbery. They’re loosely tied together, with most flimsily stitched together on their own right. Even so, each has their own charm to them.

The stories exist to anchor the main attraction: the drive-in. The final destination for all is the drive-in, which plays host to many memories and important decisions. The drive-in itself isn’t important, but what it represents is. For some, it’s another activity to do on the weekend. For those in this sleepy Texas town, it’s the activity of the weekend. Pay no mind to what’s showing; just attend to get away from it all. The only other option in town is the roller rink, back when they were still a booming business. The teenagers occupy that, with the drive-in acting as a break from it.

To break down each story is inconsequential. Just know there’s a romance brewing between a preppy popular girl and a shy outcast, and of course he stands up to her abusive ex and wins the fight. Understand the gang warfare only exists to show off how intimidating the ex seems when surrounded by backup. Realize there are two bumbling idiots planning on robbing the joint near the end of the show, but they serve no real threat, just guffaws. Even their child hostage doesn’t deem them a threat, cracking wise at every turn. Accept the many go-nowhere subplots involving a doctor feeling discriminated against because of his color, the vigilante who brings his elderly and dismissive mother to the show (and eventually aids in saving the day), the clergymen sneaking into the show to save a buck, and the drive-in owner driven only by greed. These all exist not just because a film requires conflict, but to act as an entryway into the Alamo Drive-In (you better never forget).

Amateau is seemingly more concerned with the film-within-a-film being shown on screen, a parody of disaster films of the time simply titled “Disaster ’76.” A parody so well done I honestly believed it to be authentic. It tells the tale of a crash-landed plane in Rio, with the survivors trying desperately to survive. The captain, looking strikingly like George Kennedy, leads the crew through treacherous terrains, while officials back in safety spout out inane dialogue about the abundance of stairs in the building. The few scenes we see produce the biggest laughs of the film, so much so I had hoped they filmed an entire parody out of it. Alas, they did not.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say I found my interest waning quite a bit during “Drive-In.” The film meanders too often, producing as many dead spots as “Jaws” references. Two upbeat songs, one about the downfall of cinema and the other about God’s disapproval for your sinful ways, play repeatedly on the soundtrack. This becomes annoying, then almost endearing in its simplicity. Amidst all of the dead spots and soundtrack cues is a sense of geniality, even during the darker moments (such as the physical abuse of the popular girl, which is admittedly quite jarring).. The film may suffer from rickety pacing and construction, but it’s never without a smile.

MVT: The atmosphere. Amateau perfectly captures the feel of the drive-in and that feel alone is beguiling enough to keep one’s attention throughout.

Make or Break: The opening aerial shot of the drive-in. It shows off the grandeur of the drive-in, what with its large screen, while also showcasing its quaintness in the form of endless plains and a shack playing host to concessions. It sets the mood for the film quite well.

Final Score: 6.25/10

Demonwarp (1988)

A minister (John Durbin) reads the Bible to his horse whilst trekking along a trail (his extremely clean “Old West” costume is the only indication we get that this is set before the turn of the Twentieth Century [okay, and the fact that he’s reading the Bible], because a subtitle would have been too tricky to put on screen, I suppose) when he catches sight of a “meteor” which crashes to earth nearby.   Cut to: a bright, sunny day, at a cabin in Demon Wood (duh duh DUUUHHHH!), where Bill (bulletproof check casher George Kennedy) and his doting daughter Julie (Jill Marin) are playing a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit™ when a Bigfoot-ian creature bursts through the door, roughs Bill up, and kills his daughter before dragging her corpse off into the unknown.  Cut to: a van full of idiots, including Jack (David Michael O’Neill), nephew of the owner of the aforementioned cabin, wending its way through the woods to investigate (unbeknownst to all but Jack and his girlfriend Carrie [Pamela Gilbert]) the expanding circle of weird goings-on in the forest (including the disappearance of said uncle).  Horror wants to ensue!

And so we come to Emmett Alston’s Demonwarp, an interesting premise in search of a good execution.  It’s set up initially as a slasher film with an animal (even though we can call the Bigfoot an alien, considering the prologue, but it still acts like an animal) as its villain (most precisely, the one we see the most).  It has the group of horny young people going out to a remote location to be killed in gory fashion.  It has bare female breasts galore (including two belonging to the lovely [and wasted, unless you count her boobs, though it could also be argued that they are the long and the short of her, if one were inclined to be a bit mean about it] Michelle Bauer).  It has a crazy old coot, trying in vain to warn the youths away from the area.  It has POV shots from the monster’s perspective (and I’ll get back to this later) as it stalks its prey.  And this got me thinking.  In many ways, a creature feature isn’t all that different from a slasher movie.  Both have antagonists who pop up at the worst possible times to dispose of irritating characters.  Both have antagonists who represent unknown quantities.  Both have antagonists who are non-verbal in the main (characters like Freddy Krueger and the more charismatic baddies notwithstanding), and in this way are even more inscrutable.  After all, if you don’t know why bad things are happening to you, they seem more tragic (this being based on the notion that most people believe that they are, at heart, good people).  The thing that should separate them is the human psyche, yet the way characters like these are regularly portrayed, there is little indication that such exists outside of the impetus for their individual geneses.  The Bigfoot in this film is not going to answer questions and develop a relationship with Jack like Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling.  The Bigfoot is irrational, animal, primal.  So, the Bigfoot (or something like the bear from Grizzly, let’s say) are essentially the same as Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers, and both types can then be viewed as universal/natural forces.  They do what they do, they do it very well, and they are inescapable because their victims exist in the villains’ world.  

Another aspect that the film plays with is the concept of fanaticism.  Jack is fanatical about solving the mystery of Demon Wood.  Bill is fanatical about killing the Bigfoot.  The two characters are identical in this way, but they don’t trust one another, fanatics tending to be a bit paranoid.  This fanaticism reduces Jack and Bill to the goal of their myopic quest, and it removes them from the normal world.  They become loners, and, distanced from humanity, they become a bit deranged.  Of course, Kennedy is about ten times (maybe more) the actor that O’Neill is, so it’s possible that Alston and company were trying to delineate the interior conflict between Jack’s crusade into the Bigfoot’s world and his desire to escape from it with his friends and return to the ordinary one.  It doesn’t work, because O’Neill plays Jack as so intense and unlikable (he snaps at Carrie and Cindy [Colleen McDermott] no matter what they say, no matter how much sense or nonsense they talk) that not only do you not want to follow him to the culmination of his journey, but you kind of wish the monster would just appear and rip his head off so that the film would just end.  There is also the fanaticism of the minister, but his fanaticism is purely religious in nature, though, like Jack and Bill, his narrow world view allows him to be lulled in by what he believes to be an angel, though the alien villain (hint: not the Bigfoot) is in actuality a “devil.”  The zealotry of his believer’s mind ultimately makes the minister do evil, because he has essentially met God (to his mind), and since he was devoted to this deity before it asked him to sacrifice human beings (and, of course, there is at least one story with sacrifice at its center in the Bible), it is just a short trip from faithfulness to maleficence (a theme which feels all too easy to believe in the face of what we know about and learn more of in our non-cinematic reality).  All this said, that Jack is allowed to live, even though he doesn’t come to any revelation about his shortcomings, makes no attempt to change himself, and is still a grade-A peckerwood by the time the film ends, makes the film less satisfying than it was already.  His arc is a flatline.  

I’ve said often that POV handheld camera shots do not work all that well when used for an extended period of time (Dark Passage and The Lady in the Lake being the two notable exceptions that always spring to my mind).  In horror films, they tend to work even less, since we know that they are either going to be false (a cat jumps onto a character’s back or whatever) or exactly what they appear to be (yet still somehow unsatisfying in their predetermination).  The effectiveness of this technique varies by filmmaker, and I can confidently say that Emmett Alston is not a director who should employ POV very often, or even at all.  That’s the problem.  Just about every two minutes of Demonwarp, we get either shaky handheld POV shots or shaky handheld shots of legs running or walking (sometimes both).  You may think I’m exaggerating this.  I’m not.  In fact, I may be underestimating the frequency of these occurrences.  I’m guessing that the filmmakers thought this would keep pacing up and build some tension in the stalking scenes.  Instead, it becomes swiftly redundant to the point that I actually groaned every time I saw yet another of these shots (though it does give us Kennedy swinging an ax in direct address, so that’s one in the plus column).  This level of (what I can only surmise is) naiveté, which can be charming even in junk movies, is herein merely annoying, and worst of all, boring.  This is yet another example of a film that has everything I like (mashing up pulp horror and science fiction and revenge and survival genres, amongst other things), but is so breathtakingly dull, it’s a chore to sit through.

MVT:  The Bigfoot costume (and other creature effects), courtesy of John Carl Buechler, are solid fun.  Unfortunately, like a twig placed under a hunk of pig iron, it just can’t hold up enough of the picture to make any of it worth one’s time. 

Make or Break:  The scene where Tom (Billy Jayne of the late, lamented Parker Lewis Can’t Lose television series) goes full Jack Nicholson not only made the large vein in my forehead begin to throb, but it also made me want to grab my television and stomp it to death for showing me this travesty.  Thankfully, the latter never came to fruition.

Score:  3/10

Ministry Of Vengeance (1989)

There are certain things in life for which we all have an instinctual preference, and these preferences are usually of a binary nature.  Even when they are not, however, there is still a strong predilection to dislike one rather than simply tolerate all.  For example, you may like brunettes and dislike blondes, or you may like blondes and redheads but dislike brunettes, and so on.  But I would wager damn near all of you favor one more strongly than the others, and for the life of you, you can’t quite explain why (but I’m sure many have tried).  Maybe it’s some psychosexual thing going back to your upbringing and bizarre Oedipal/Electra issues.  That’s not the point.  The point is that anyone who has ever spent any length of time following the adventures of a couple of “good ol’ boys” from Hazzard County is partial to either Bo (John Schneider) or Luke (Tom Wopat) Duke.  You don’t know why.  It doesn’t make sense.  They were essentially the same character, but there it is for you.  Which one of the Brothers Duke do I root for more?  That’s for me to know, and for you to find out.  But just to give you a hint; Peter Maris’s Ministry Of Vengeance didn’t garner Schneider any points from me.

Deep in The Shit in Vietnam with his platoon, David Miller (Schneider) is the stalwart among Colonel Freeman’s (James Tolkan) soldiers.  After going down into a tunnel to try and clear out the enemy, he winds up blowing it up and bringing it down.  Years later, Miller is a well-adjusted reverend in Rome with his beautiful wife Gail (Meg Register) and daughter Kim (Joey Peters).  A group of terrorists from “The People’s Army” led by Ali Aboud (Robert Miano) shoot up the astoundingly-bingo-hall-looking airport, killing Miller’s family.  Miller ordains himself as the Ministry Of Vengeance!  Boom!

There are some interesting base thoughts in this film, key among them, of course, being that of the Holy Warrior.  By and large, this trope deals with the idea that there was some pivotal defining occurrence in the life of a Man of Violence which caused him to renounce his old life and seek peace and solace in a religious life.  And while the good parts of world religions teach us to be kind to our fellow man and so on (and this is the part our protagonist fools himself into believing is the totality of this life), it is impossible to deny the fact that the holy tomes of most religions are filled with violence, acted out by both gods and men.  But we’re not here to discuss theology.  We’re here to look at how (if at all) theology can be used in Action films and how (if at all) it does here.  So, the Violent Man who became the Holy Man is almost invariably drawn back into his former life.  The key is in which path he takes or if he tries to merge the two (witness: Eight Diagram Pole Fighter, Pale Rider, El Topo, et cetera).  Miller’s discovery is that he is not made out to be a man of the cloth, and even though we never find out if he is even still religious-minded (the crucifix he wore in Nam is never seen again, if my memory serves), he knows that his faith isn’t what he thought it was.  This disillusionment is only reinforced by what he encounters on his quest to find Aboud, but it is not only the duplicity of those thought to be devout which shakes him.  He also has to deal with the government on whose behalf he once fought.  Essentially, both worlds Miller lives in are artificial and untrustworthy on some level, so he chooses a third route away from both.  Of course, this is only after he has shot up a nice chunk of the Middle East.

Of course, being a soldier first and foremost, Miller knows all about violence in the mechanical sense.  However, being a veteran of one of the most unpopular wars in American history, he can make distinctions about the righteousness of violence (basically, does the end justify the means; something rarely, if ever seen in films pre-Vietnam War).  Having seen and been ordered to participate in acts of aggression counter to most peoples’ innate compassion, he understands the idea of an eye for an eye, and he sees his mission against Aboud as one of punishment for a killer.  This also presents the viewer with a notion of duality in the film (above and beyond that of Warrior/Priest).  Normally in this type of film the former warrior is typically pared off against a fellow ex-warrior, and he is the exact opposite number of our protagonist (think: Matrix and Bennett in Commando).  In Ministry Of Vengeance, Miller’s opposite is Aboud, obviously, but unlike what we are used to, Aboud is almost characterless.  He is as devoid of personality as any of his minions are.  The only thing we know about any of them is that they are Middle Eastern and terrorists, so in the realm of the Eighties Action film, they are as legitimate a group of candidates for cinematic villainy as anybody else (certainly in the fact that they are foreign).  But let’s make no mistake, Miller is also as flat an Action hero as has ever been, so in this way, I suppose you could say he and Ali are like a five-and-dime version of Matrix and Bennett.  It’s just extremely difficult to drum up any investment in their conflict due to the film’s shortcomings.

This is the sort of film where advocates tell you that you need to turn off your mind in order to like it.  I would say I’m fairly adept at this method of viewing, though I also have problems with it, because I don’t think it’s possible to do completely (at least I can’t; maybe it’s a sickness), and I certainly don’t feel it’s beneficial when you’re watching a film in order to write about it.  With that in mind, Ministry Of Vengeance is a hot mess.  Even looking past the unenthusiastic acting across the board (and from such talents as Ned Beatty, George Kennedy, and Yaphet Kotto) and the actual sight of excitement draining off the screen like a gas tank siphoning out, there are coincidences going on in this film that just made me shake my head.  For instance, after asking government agent Mr. Whiteside (Kotto) for help in identifying the man who killed his family, David goes home, opens a magazine, and just happens to find a photo of Aboud.  Later, he sneaks into a village, and his guide takes off to locate our villain.  Glancing around, Miller spots the very man in a house directly across the street from him.  It feels as though Maris and company may as well have simply filmed the first and last scenes of the film, since none of the scenes in between build off one another.  They’re simply filler to suck up screen time, and the script dismisses obstacles with offhanded facility.  But worse than being insulting to one’s intelligence, the film is boring, and for that reason alone, you can give this one the last rites.

MVT:  The template of the film is for your standard Action/Revenge film, and it is as predictable as expected.  Everything else is largely a waste of time and celluloid.

Make Or Break:  The Break is the aforementioned scene in the village.  Coincidence in film is a funny thing.  We can usually accept one (okay) or two (well, maybe) incidences of it.  But when the entire plot and action of a film is a neverending series of coincidences (oh, c’mon, already), it reeks of amateur hour.

Score:  4.5/10    

Uninvited (1987)

Given the option, most people would consider themselves to be either dog people or cat people.  Now, there are all-around animal lovers, and people who love both dogs and cats but not other animals (and even other animals but not dogs or cats), but we’re not talking about them.  Personally, I’m a dog person.  Dogs seem to want to be friends (you know, barring the ones that want to take a piece out of you), and they love letting you know it.  They love when you give them some attention, and they’ll wait all day for it, if they have to.  Cats, not so much.  If you’ve ever been on the internet, you’ve seen at least one photo of a cat doing whatever it damn well pleases along with a sentence or two describing how selfish and aloof cats are.  I’ve been around cats that loved being petted.  I’ve been around cats that couldn’t care less if you lived or died, so long as they stayed fed.  But this is the defining difference in the perception of the two animals.  Dogs are seen as warm and friendly.  Cats are their polar opposites.  I don’t think preferring one or the other defines a person in any way whatsoever in the same way I don’t think the animals prefer the type of owner they have if that person simply cares for them.  So, before the five of you who read these reviews decide to bombard me with passive-aggressive hate mail or just your garden variety hate mail (I know, I laughed at the thought of hearing anything from anyone, good or ill, too), kindly bear two things in mind.  One, I know this is not an in-depth dissection of the psychology of our four-legged friends.  It’s not meant to be.  It’s an introduction to a crummy film review.  Two, I do not hate cats.  I simply like dogs more. 

Doctor Grey (director, writer, producer Greydon Clark) and assistant Paul (Paul Martin) work at a genetic testing lab.  Discovering something odd about an orange tabby (I think) called Subject ST-618, they decide to have a look-see, but before they can sedate the little bugger, he manages to get away.  While in pursuit, it’s revealed that there’s an angry, mutant cat monster (cat-ster?) living inside ST, and it swiftly takes out its pursuers and makes good its escape.  Meanwhile, Wall Street honcho Walter Graham (the ever-crusty Alex Cord) and cronies Albert (Clu Gulager) and Mike (George Kennedy) need to cruise to the Cayman Islands before the SEC (that’s the Securities and Exchange Commission, for those who don’t know) can close in on them.  The naturally charming Walt manages to tempt Spring Break bimbos Bobbie (Clare Carey) and Suzanne (Shari Shattuck) aboard his yacht.  Of course, the girls want to bring along more age-appropriate companions in Corey, Lance, and Martin (Rob Estes, Beau Dremann, and Eric Larson, respectively).  As well as a certain orange tabby.

Uninvited has at its center a premise which is both keenly interesting and fundamentally ludicrous.  The cat-ster lives inside the normal cat.  Actually, it would be more accurate to say it wears the cat as a disguise (which I suppose makes some sort of sense from a predatory perspective), making the tabby a kind of Trojan horse.  By that same token, I can’t help but think that this particular mutation would really only be useful in very specific circumstances (say, stuck on a yacht with a bunch of jerks?).  So, was the mutation created to produce some type of living weapon so that the military could just drop cat-sters into the homes of feline-loving despots and let nature take its course?  Was it an unforeseen mutation that still doesn’t make any sense, since it’s the monstrous equivalent of a jack-in-the-box?  In an odd way, the creature is reminiscent of the armpit penis from Cronenberg’s Rabid, but whereas in that film (and in the films of most storytellers presented with a basis like this) the ridiculous aspects were a jumping-off point for the story.  Here, it is the story in total.

Conversely, the aspect of symbiotes and parasites is intriguing as it relates to the characters in the story.  The cat-ster has a kind of symbiotic relationship with the tabby (though, the more I think about it, and not to get too graphic, the cat-ster and cat have a relationship closer to foreskin and penis rather than human and tapeworm).  Just about everyone in the film forms a parasitic relationship with Walt, needing what he has to get what they want or need.  Mike and Albert want money from him.  Rachel (Toni Hudson) wants ownership of her boat from him.  The other guys and gals want to use what he owns to enable their own carefree good time.  Walt, on the other side of this coin, is happy to grant these things, so long as he remains on top and richer than all of them.  He’ll let the others leech him, but he can get rid of them any time he wants, or so he believes (ever tried removing a tick you can’t see?).   

 While these wants (most of which are strictly of the base variety) drive the characters’ actions, it’s also interesting to note that the truly bad characters (creature notwithstanding) are all older.  The young characters are basically dumb and want to get their rocks off and have a good time, and Corey is even outright venal, but they’re not out to hurt anyone.  It’s the older characters who kill to get their way.  Most people’s natural inclination is to look to their elders for proper guidance of some type (at least for a few years).  In Uninvited, however, you can’t trust anyone over thirty.  The filmmakers equate the point-of-view of the film with the film’s target audience.  For my part, I give Clark and company credit for matching up the disparate generations, and the first two-thirds of the film actually works fairly well developing the relationships between the characters and creating some compelling conflicts and foreshadowing.  

The last third of the film, on the other hand, just disintegrates, trying to satisfy generic tropes, both Horror and Exploitation, in general and not quite doing either.  The film’s climax is so farcical and impossible to swallow, I refuse to believe that the filmmakers didn’t go in with that knowledge and just played it up to the nth degree.  The film is still entertaining to some extent.  It has aerobicizing, some wicked hot licks, and Cord, Kennedy, and Gulager in a three-way race to see who can eat every last ounce of the scenery before they all drown.  Plus, the silly cat-ster puppet does have a cheapjack charm all its own.  You know, I thought about writing this review as a dialogue between myself and my dog, Pepper Ann.  In retrospect, I probably should have.   

MVT:  As stated, the cat-ster is pretty neat as a monster.  Despite the monster’s ever-changing size, it’s still the thing I looked forward to seeing most throughout the film (not including the female skin I was deprived of setting eyes on).  The creature looks like a shrunken-head version of King Seesar from Godzilla Versus Mechagodzilla (1974), which is probably why I like it as much as I do, since Seesar was basically a giant dog with a jewel on his forehead.  Irony, no? 

Make Or Break:  The monster makes its presence known on the boat in quasi-spectacular fashion.  There’s a little bit of blood, some chaotic violence, and George Kennedy swinging for the fences of Histrionics Memorial Field.

Score:  6.25/10