Breeders (1986)

My love for Douglas Cheek’s C.H.U.D. has been well-documented for some time now.  It is, for me, the best monster movie of the Eighties this side of John Carpenter’s The Thing.  It has a strong story that’s about more than one thing.  It has excellent performances from some great character actors (including interesting cameos from the likes of John Goodman, Jay Thomas, and Jon Polito).  It has an outstanding synth score by David A Hughes which is haunting, evocative, and melancholy, as the best synth scores are.  It has excellent special effects work by John Caglione, Jr.  It should be said here that Ed French, who was a member of C.H.U.D.’s makeup effects department, not only did the makeup effects for Tim Kincaid’s Breeders (aka Killer Alien aka Breeders: La Invasión Sexual) but also appears as Dr. Ira Markham in the film (special effects artist Matt Vogel also worked on both movies).  The popping up of French on both C.H.U.D. and Breeders makes for a nice, little coincidence, because the similarities between the two movies is enough to say that the former film was, at the very least, a heavy influence on the latter.  There is a monster that has a disgusting lair underneath New York City.  There is a crazy bag lady (Rose Geffen) who runs afoul of the monster.  There is a featured character, Gail (Amy Brentano), who is a photographer.  There is a scene where Gail’s lights go out, and she has to go down to the basement to investigate (like C.H.U.D.’s Kim Griest but, astonishingly, without the shock shower scene).  Now, I wouldn’t declare that Breeders is only a ripoff of C.H.U.D. because it “borrows” from so many other films -  Humanoids from the Deep, Scanners, The Fly, and Lifeforce just to name four – to the point that it feels a bit like looking at old photos of that time you tried to do yourself up as The Wolf Man for Halloween, and you wound up looking like an idiot with a bunch of brown cotton balls glued to your face.  

So.  Breeders.  The film concerns itself with the violent rape and mutilation of a bunch of virgin women by an oily, insectoid creature.  I’d get into more of the plot, but there isn’t one.

This film is a sleaze lover’s wet dream.  Every woman in it is a virgin (sometimes - okay, always -  unbelievably so; a coke-snorting, former-gymnast-turned-fashion-model is a virgin?  I suppose stranger things have happened), and that term is treated like a four-letter word.  The women are all attacked specifically because they are virgins.  The one character who isn’t a virgin is A) ugly, B) insane, and C) torn apart by the experience.  What does that say about the rest of the women?  Well, not much, since the filmmakers don’t really give a rat’s ass about any of them.  Gamble Pace (Teresa Farley) is a doctor, and she’s ostensibly the protagonist.  She’s also as weak-willed and ineffective as every other woman in the film (though Kincaid does give her a poignant scene at the very end that almost saves the film; Almost).  All the women feel a great desire to tell us why they are virgins, as if it were any of our affair.  Kathleen (LeeAnne Baker) states, “In this day and age, it’s almost some sort of dirty word to be a…virgin.”  She even has a hard time saying the word.  Alec (Adriane Lee), Gail’s stylist, explains to Gail about how she’s a virgin for no reason whatsoever other than to fly a giant red flag telling us that she’s the next victim.  All the women strip down at the most unlikely of times (while cooking dinner, while talking with their mother on the phone [okay, one is actually pretty likely], while on a break during a photoshoot, etcetera), and since there’s no reason for any of this, these scenes simply stand out as being the portions of the movie where Kincaid signals to the audience that this is what they are there for, and, hey, it’s been five minutes since you had a boner.  That the women ogled so heavily are virgins plays to men’s craving towards the Madonna/Whore Complex.  These women are willing to get naked for your eyes only, but they’re unsullied, and boy oh boy, unspoiled territory is the most irresistible, just so long as, you know, she’s also great in the sack.

The opposite side of this is, naturally, the Monstrous Male Sex Urge.  Going all the way back to, at least, 1931’s Dracula, the idea of being raped by (or at the absolute minimum, giving one’s body over to) an Other has been present in probably about half or more of every Horror film ever made.  The most famous example is the underwater ballet/sex scene from 1954’s The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and this is what begat Humanoids from the Deep once the walls had been broken down about displaying graphic monster-on-human sex on screen.  What’s kind of interesting in Breeders is that all of the attacks are initiated by normal guys who transform into (apparently) just the one monster.  He keeps popping up like the Great Gazoo.  The mere presence of a woman is enough to arouse sexual urges in men (even gay men are not immune) that cannot be overcome until their base desire is satiated (the film eggs this along by almost always having the women be naked in the men’s presence first).  Even when the men aren’t actual monsters, they’re lasciviousness is brazen and on full display.  Karinsa (the glorious Frances Raines, niece of legendary actor Claude) avers to the guy who barged in on her naked calisthenics, “It’s not like you were after my body” in an almost porno-coquettish come-on manner.  Kathleen asks creepy boyfriend Brett (Mark Legan) how much he saw of her taking a shower.  His unctuous response: “Enough that I know I want you to bear my children.”  But the monster is, as stated, The Other (read here as “non-white male”).  It wants to propagate its race, and it does so by stealing “our women.”  Further, it’s “semen” is described as a “thick, black substance.”  Have no fear, however, since all the beast’s victims later get to frolic together in a giant, gross, “semen”-filled (this time white in color, just to make all the men in the audience think of women frolicking in semen) hot tub, which I’m convinced was taken, unwashed, directly from Plato’s Retreat.  One can just imagine the bacteria in that thing.

This is not to say that Breeders doesn’t have a certain appeal.  After all, I’m a heterosexual male who enjoys seeing a naked woman (or several), and I have a love for special makeup effects going back to my pre-adolescence.  Both of these bins are filled to overflowing by Kincaid and company.  It’s just that the rest of the bins that a truly successful film needs to fill (compelling characters and a narrative, namely) are ignored almost entirely.  If nothing else, this film is an American-made Hentai, and it does that as well as it was going to be done in 1986.  It’s just disappointing that the non-exploitation elements are so clumsy and dull that it dragged down the whole experience for me.  I think I expected too much from a film titled Breeders.

MVT:  The nudity and special effects.  Well-done on both counts.

Make or Break:  The first attack scene is admittedly unexpected in how it plays out, and it raises some questions that the film quickly answers in the most ham-fisted way possible.

Score:  6/10

Bigfoot (1969)

Jasper Hawks (John Carradine) and his feckless poltroon of a partner Elmer (John Mitchum, brother of Robert) tool the backwoods area of (let’s assume) the Pacific Northwest with their carload of tchotchkes and junk.  Meanwhile, Joi (Joi Lansing) is a pilot whose plane crashes in the same mountainous area where she is summarily captured by a Bigfoot.  Also meanwhile, motorcycle enthusiast Rick’s (Chris Mitchum, son of Robert) girlfriend Chris (the fulsomely bestowed, beauteous Judith Jordan) is likewise kidnapped by a Bigfoot.  Chris and Joi are held captive while everyone else does a lot of talking and walking in their search for them.

Robert F Slatzer’s Bigfoot does its damnedest to capitalize on the then-recently released Patterson-Gimlin footage of a Bigfoot sloping around Bluff Creek in Northern California.  Admittedly, the country had gone Bigfoot Crazy, and the beast (and regional variations thereof) swiftly became as much a pop culture icon as it was a figure of myth and speculation (this carries through to today, though in far more cynical fashion).  The first thing that struck me while watching this film was how much it reminded me of 1972’s The Curse of Bigfoot.  The resemblance is not so much in narrative content aside from the subject matter.  While I haven’t seen Curse probably since I was a kid, I clearly recall three things about it.  One, its finale (monster movie endings back then were straightforward).  Two, the monster was discovered wrapped like a mummy in a Native American burial mound.  Three, the monster makeup looked like a giant meatball that someone had dropped into a pile of dog hair and rolled around for a bit, then slapped eyes and fangs on it (and it had a habit of walking directly at the camera as a sort of transitional device).  

Bigfoot shares two of these traits, specifically.  First, the monster makeup is horrible (though, in fairness, better than that in Curse), consisting of an immobile rubber mask and an ill-fitting fur suit.  The kid Bigfoot simply has some black stage makeup around his eyes and nose.  It’s almost sad, really, these yearnings for more Pakuni-esque makeup effects that this thing evokes.  Second, is the creature’s ties to Native American culture and its own tribal structure.  The characters come upon what they take to be an Indian burial ground, but they find a dead Bigfoot in a shallow grave.  Later, a Native American woman, upon hearing of the monster, utters the word “Sasquatch,” thus giving the film a bit of cultural diversity (no, not really).  The Bigfeet are dying off, the same as the Native American tribes had been for a long, long time but had somehow only around this era really become a topic of discussion in pop culture and media in general.  Like the Stick Indians (the more maladjusted version of the Bigfoot legend in Native American mythology), these Bigfeet steal women in order to breed with them.  In essence, they play the role of savages that Native Americans occupied in many a Western.  Of course, all of this takes a back seat to the rip-roaring excitement of walking and talking or getting the latest on Sheriff Cyrus’ (James Craig) love life with Nellie (Dorothy Keller) down at the local store.

Likewise, the film calls back hard to 1933’s seminal King Kong as well as 1740’s Beauty and the Beast (to which Kong also calls back).  In the opening credits, the creature is billed as “The Eighth Wonder of the World,” just like Kong.  After the film’s climax, Jasper laments that “It was Beauty killed the Beast.”  This wouldn’t be so egregious if it weren’t so wrongheaded.  Certainly, comparisons can be made between Jasper and Carl Denham, but the Carradine character is portrayed as avaricious and opportunistic to an almost villainous degree (plus, he’s really mean to Elmer).  Denham, at least as played by Robert Armstrong, had a fatherly, caretaking connection to Ann Darrow, motivating his sometimes-selfless acts in the efforts to rescue her.  Yes, he could be myopic in his lust for fame and fortune, but he wasn’t a total jerk.

What’s intriguing in this movie is the idea of bestiality and sex in general which it puts at the forefront.  Joi and Chris are being held specifically to have sex with the male Bigfoot and carry on its bloodline (Joi somehow intuits this as if she were Jane Goodall).  Further than this, the two actresses’ pulchritude is prominently on display throughout.  By 1969, depictions of sex on screen had become much more graphic, yet Slatzer and company never go the extra mile into pure exploitation.  It feels as though they wanted to have just enough salacious teasing for the teenagers in the audience (which also explains the “biker” angle, and yes, that word should be in quotes with regard to this film) while also being chaste enough that parents could take their families to see it.  Like the beasts in the movie, the audience is allowed to get fired up about the possibilities available for sex in the film but will ultimately be denied the experience, even vicariously.  Add to this the fact that the Bigfeet have no discernible personalities.  They are pure animals, acting on vicious instinct, and this robs the film of any empathy we may have about their plight.  Unlike Kong or the Beast, who formed connections with their captives and made us care about the deep emotions that undo them, the Bigfeet are the proverbial pack of rabid dogs in need of putting down.  But, then, to expect more from this movie is to not understand it.

Slatzer varies scenes shot on location with scenes shot on stage sets.  The country store is perhaps the best lit (in a fake sense) one of its kind ever put on screen.  These staged scenes serve to give the movie the feeling of something made for television.  One can understand this, as indoor sets are far easier to control from a technical perspective, but their insertion here undermines (or augments, depending on your point of view) any of the low budget charm this film could have had.  It’s too sterile, too unnatural.  I can guess why the filmmakers chose to shoot so much filler of people ambling through forests or motorcycling through forests or chatting in forests.  It’s cheap and easy.  But I would surmise that most people would want to see this thing for a little bit of skin (a very little bit) and some Bigfoot action.  Watching actors (even the great Carradine) spout variations on the same theme over and over again with the occasional glimpse of what you’re anticipating feels more like a carny cheat (and maybe Slatzer worked in carnivals, I don’t know) than the buildup and payoff that an audience would actually want.  At least the Patterson-Gimlin footage got it right.  It’s roughly two minutes of what people desire: to have their sense of awe and wonder stoked.  Bigfoot is the equivalent of roughly ninety minutes of moving furniture, and who desires that?

MVT:  The idea isn’t bad.  It just never lives up to the come-on of its advertising.

Make or Break:  The extended scene of Cyrus and Nellie discussing the local goings-on in their neck of the woods about which no viewer in their right mind would give even the slightest shit.

Score:  3/10      

Day of the Triffids (1962)

A meteor shower blankets the Earth, and with it comes a new plant, the Triffid.  While the plants are certainly ugly as sin, they also have the added benefit of being lumbering maneaters.  Bill Mason (Howard Keel) wakes after eye surgery to a world in chaos, as everyone who witnessed the celestial event is now blind.  Desperate to find a sanctuary, he crosses Europe, picking up travel mates like young Susan (Janina Faye) and French well-to-do Christine (Nicole Maurey).  Meanwhile, in a lighthouse off the coast of Cornwall, marine Biologist Tom Goodwin (Kieron Moore) and his long-suffering wife Karen (Janette Scott) race to find a way to stop the vicious plants from destroying all life on the planet (seeing as they’re carnivorous, this wouldn’t really benefit them).

Steve Sekely’s (with an assist from an uncredited Freddie Francis, who directed the lighthouse scenes, making the film feel like two films but still working despite this) The Day of the Triffids is an adaptation of the John Wyndham novel of the same name.  Of the novels he wrote, I would suggest that this one is only edged out in popularity by The Midwich Cuckoos (which was adapted for films under the title Village of the Damned).  Wyndham dealt in a style he called “logical fantasy,” one in which the descriptions and functioning of the normal world are integral to how the fantastic elements play.  This certainly is the case in this film.  Bill is a sailor and all-around handy man.  He is the Common Man hero that was the norm for many decades in genre cinema.  These are people who work for a living.  They are resourceful and pragmatic, and they care about their fellow man as much as is humanly possible to do without getting themselves killed.  For example, Bill knows how to get a car moving when it’s bogged in the mud.  He knows how to get the generator working at Christine’s chateau.  He knows how to repair a radio.  He knows how to electrify a fence.  He knows how to turn a gas truck into a makeshift flamethrower.  But he knows these things because he has a working knowledge of the world.  Necessity insists that he be able to do these sorts of things, so they are second nature to him, even if he doesn’t necessarily know a transistor from a transformer (in other words, general knowledge, not specific).  Tom is a specialist, and he and his wife are cut off from society (but not from the threat).  Tom is also an alcoholic, a condition that gives tension to the situation they are in and humanizes him.  He is further normalized by his inability to find a weakness in the Triffids.  As a scientist, he cannot succeed in this turmoil, but as a Common Man, working with his hands and wits, he discovers the ultimate weapon against the plants totally by accident.  In the modern film world, where every protagonist is either super-powered or super-sophisticated to the point of ennui, I always return to characters like the ones here as a respite.

Society in the film breaks down literally overnight.  It goes from business as usual to complete disarray in a matter of hours.  This is heralded by a fantastic sequence in the Royal Botanic Gardens.  A night watchman (Ian Wilson) sits alone at his desk as a Triffid sneaks up on him.  The man knows that there’s something wrong but doesn’t act, and the tension builds until the creature is upon him.  He is a representative of the world, its inability to prepare, and its fate for its inaction.  This is reinforced by several sequences of mass transit systems (a ship, a plane, a train) as they traipse over the proverbial cliff, the people in charge of them lying to the passengers in their last moments, trying to salvage some normalcy in the face of death.  But it doesn’t avert the inevitable, salvation being a wish that shall never be granted.  As Bill explores the hospital the next morning, the place looks like it was ransacked by Cossacks, trays strewn, glass scattered all over, and the building is like a ghost town, bereft of souls.  Only Dr. Soames (Ewan Roberts) remains, now blind, and his prognosis for the world is grim.  Discovering that Bill’s surgery was successful, he states, “I don’t envy you.”  Soames knows what comes next, knows that it won’t be pretty, and knows that Bill’s options for survival are limited (but not as limited as his own).  Throughout the major cities like London and Paris, the streets are littered with cars and blind people stumbling and pawing around like zombies in search of some fresh brains.  Bill learns that sight has become not only an asset but also a weakness.  At a train station, people hear that Bill can see, and they swarm over him with pleas for assistance.  After a train derails coming into the station, young Susan is almost kidnapped for her eyesight (there is a slight pedophilic air to this moment, as well).  People have become pathetic, desperate, and callous, yet maybe they were always that way.  

The bleak tone of the film is perhaps best displayed in the sequence at Christine’s chateau.  She is taking care of her friends who have gone blind, including the young Bettina (Carole Ann Ford, likely best known as Susan on the first few seasons of Dr. Who).  Bettina takes to Susan, and in a scene that’s positively heartbreaking, she guesses multiple things about the younger girl (hair and eye color, etcetera), all of which are wrong, and all of which Susan lies about to keep up Bettina’s spirits.  Bill suggests that Christine and those who can see should abandon the manse, as it makes them sitting ducks, but Christine can’t bear to leave her friends to die (which is most certainly what it would be).  This decision is taken away from her when a gang of convicts overrun the chateau and force the blind women to “dance” with them.  Bettina, stumbling outside after escaping being raped, is surrounded by Triffids and killed.  There is no mercy here, if there ever was before, and even that was illusory.  It if isn’t plant monsters, it’s human monsters.

Nevertheless, The Day of the Triffids contains elements of birth and rebirth.  Bill is reborn with his eyesight.  Susan is a sighted youth that must be protected and allowed to carry on the human race.  Tom and Karen are surrounded by water, the giver of life, and Bill and his companions spend a lot of time racing to sea ports in search of rescue (it doesn’t hurt that he’s a seaman).  Tom is forced to give up booze, and he finds a new purpose in dissecting a Triffid, looking for flaws.  His marriage is renewed in a way by this.  Bill comes upon a blind pregnant woman, and Christine assists in the birth.  Life will go on, just drastically changed.  Though the world is in apocalypse mode, the human will to survive remains, bloodied but unbowed.  The film tacks on a quasi-happy ending that speaks a little too bluntly of hope, but it also acknowledges that the world has a long way to go before it recovers from this situation.  As End of the World fictions go, that’s pretty much the best we can hope for, right?

MVT:  The foreboding wasteland that the world has become is effectively presented both visually and attitudinally.

Make or Break:  The greenhouse sequence is a standout in the horror genre, in my opinion.

Score:  7/10