The Manitou

The Manitou

United States – 1978

Director – William Girdler

Charter Entertainment, 1986, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 44 minutes

Our present understanding of women’s sexuality and anatomy is a very flawed result of modern science. From a strictly lexical standpoint it is adequate for textbooks and the like, but with the gradual acceptance of empirical inquiry we’ve managed to forget the appropriate tradition of visceral horror. What we have lost is an understanding of the disgusting, hideous and supernaturally evil aspects of menstruation, childbirth and in general, the non-intercourse functions of female genitalia. In 1979 The Manitou (from a novel of the same name by Graham Masterton) sought to correct this glaring oversight (as did The Brood four months later) with an eye toward reestablishing patriarchy’s time honored conflation of women and witchcraft.

The man (because it must be a man) who will mercifully make this reconnection is Harry (Tony Curtis), a con-artist posing as a psychic. His friend-with-benefits Karen (Susan Strasberg) shows up at his door with a hideous swelling boil containing a fetus growing from her neck. The medical community, blinded by facts and evidence, can’t seem to categorize or carve out a solution to Karen’s freakish condition. Instead Harry turns to superstition, and what better place to find tenaciously perennial primitive beliefs than Native America? Teaming up with John Singing Rock (Syrian actor Michael Ansara), a medicine man from the Souix Tribe, and Dr. Snow (Burgess Meredith) an anthropologist who specializes in primitive cultures, Harry defeats the deformed, goo-covered troll that emerges from Karen’s neck-womb.

Is this all to suggest that we had better be careful lest we have to be responsible for the unfortunate but logical consequences of sexual intercourse? Harry seems to have the right idea from the beginning; do not get attached. The only reason he helped Karen is because she is his “friend” and it is implied that they had sex in their first scene thus making him somehow (reluctantly) responsible. What a drag! The remainder of the film serves as a horrific reminder of why anything but the sterile, idealized female form must be diagnosed, vilified, subdued and most importantly avoided. It is thus appropriate that a film concerned entirely with a woman’s body and its associated “problems” should be worked out exclusively by men.

Lowrez Spanish poster from Movie Poster Database

Japanese poster and Australian poster from William Girdler.com

The Dirtbike Kid

The Dirtbike Kid

United States - 1985

Director - Hoice C. Caston

Charter Entertainment, 1986, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 31 minutes

I did not have high expectations for The Dirtbike Kid, and bought it merely out of morbid curiosity. Peter Billingsley who you may be more familiar with as Ralphie in A Christmas Story plays Jack, a kid who basically rehashes Herbie the Lovebug with a dirtbike. I shall present the argument however that just under the surface, The Dirtbike Kid is a not-so complex analogy for puberty, masturbation and freshly minted Oedipal masculinity.

Jack is at first a typical little kid watching cartoons and eating potato chips. His mother Janet (Anne Bloom), a frazzled woman barely able to keep the house from burning down sends Jack to the store with 50 bucks to buy groceries. On the way Jack stops at a dirtbike rally where he admires the noisy and flamboyant machines of the confident and cocky older boys as they leap into the air and spray mud. At that moment a kid with a bike that doesn’t work well stalls it out right in front of him and frustrated, offers to sell it to Jack for 50 bucks. Suddenly a strange old man appears and tells Jack that the bike has magic powers if it has the right rider…

The problem is, Jack’s single mom is unemployed and that was their last 50 dollars. She sends Jack to bed with a promise to sell the bike and recover their money in the morning. That night Jack sneaks out to the garage and lovingly cleans and polishes his bike, which literally becomes erect, and together they go on a wild midnight ride, only barely escaping detection by mom.

Notice Jack's pose in the top set.

Soon Jack has been transformed into a confident and proactive young man, he and his new Bike do things together, go on adventures and even fly through the air in several wet-dream scenes reminiscent of the finest wrinkly E.T. sequence. Jack and his crotch-rocket’s biggest challenge is yet to come however when local bank mogul Mr. Hodgkins (Stuart Pankin) selects the location for his new branch building. It happens to be the exact site of that community institution, Mike’s Dog House, Jack’s favorite hot-dog stand and sponsor of his little league team. At the very same time, Mom is trying desperately to land a job at Mr. Hodgkin’s bank, an application he would be happy to consider with her at his mansion over a glass of wine…
!!But there’s Jack, blasting in on all 300cc’s of his manhood to save the wiener stand and his first love’s purity from the slimy grasp of one totally unmasculine slob. In fact, Jack goes so far as to publicly humiliate Mr. Hodgkins and make him dress up in a giant hotdog costume. Alas, just at their moment of triumph, the magic suddenly fades from Jack’s Bike.

“No! Don’t go, this is what we’ve worked for!” Jack exclaims, but the bike is suddenly lifeless, the glow gone from its headlights.
“Jack honey, what’s wrong?” says Janet, climbing the sand dune toward her son.
“It’s my bike mom, all the magic’s gone.”
“Well Jack I know this bike is really special to you.”


“It sure is. But y’know mom, I was just thinkin’, maybe the magic is gone because I have my own magic that’s working for me now.”
“Your father used to say, we all have a little magic hidden inside us, sometimes it just takes someone special to bring it out.”
“That’s what my bike did for me right?”
“And that’s what you do for me.”

Bam! Jack has his own magic, reserving his mother and their home for his sole male dominance. Mike's wiener hut is intact and bigger than ever (and his girlfriend is suddenly pregnant!), and finally the obese, cowardly and child-hating Mr. Hodgkins, thoroughly desexualized, is thus defanged and relegated to the status of walking joke. Jack has discovered his penis.
Thank you.
I rest my case.

Moments after Jack abandons the bike, another small child climbs onto it and proclaims his desire to possess such a magnificent machine. Then suddenly that same strange old man from the beginning of the film steps from behind a column and says “This is a very special bike you know…. well, provided it has the right rider…”
That's exactly who you want to teach you about your penis.

Starcrash

Starcrash
1978 – Italy

Director – Luigi Cozzi (as Lewis Coates)

VCI Entertainment, 2007, DVD

Starcrash is an homage, a science-fiction movie nerd film. If I had been able to make a seriously budgeted sci-fi film at 15, I would have done the exact same thing. Luigi Cozzi is not a man of subtlety. He knows what he likes, and he seeks to recreate it. He openly admits to stealing the Aliens concept to make 1980’s Contamination. What better way to extend the ecstasy of the original experience than to do your best to mimic it. Cozzi’s films are, for lack of a better term, cinematic masturbation.

Starcrash may very well be the pinnacle of that form, an amalgam of great moments from the best sci-fi nerd films very poorly redone . Lets begin with an egregious Star Wars rip-off opening. Within the first scene, we meet Marjoe Gortner’s character (the reason I picked this up) and soon, a plethora of other B-list actors and brutally dollar store special effects. First is his sidekick, Stella Star (Caroline Munroe). The two are on the run from the space cops and enter hyperspace to escape, but when they stop to check out an abandoned ship, they are busted and sentenced to hard labor by a goofy brain creature (which screams “directly stolen from another movie”, but I can’t place it). While doing penance in a balloon mine, Stella uses a guards laser gun to escape the barbarian movie set and “board” a model ship where badguys inform her of her clandestine mission with Marjoe…

Somehow, dirty drunk Italians, Stella and her dumb-redneck sidekick Robot-L end up landing a ship on a beach and blundering into a Jason and the Argonauts ripoff with a giant metal-boobed robot titan. Yes, this fucking open theft is such garbage!


Yes, there’s some snowy planet Empire Strikes ripoff, but wait! That movie hasn’t been made yet! Another search of another shipwreck results in Stella and the damned huckster-robot being captured by cave-dwelling dwarves. (insert 2001 rip) Suddenly they are almost rescued by a hideous monster guy in tights who shoots lasers from his makeup caked eyes, David Hasselhoff! What? Hoff screws up and Marjoe must perform the final heroics with his awesome laser-sword thing, damn what a genius concept.

Luckily our heroes have tripped and fallen into the right planet, the Evil Counts HQ basey thing, where he keeps his stop-motion robot-golems. Yes! Finally, a giant incredibly prolonged laser battle, with a few mercifully brief breaks, takes place between the good guys, who make some benevolent plans, and the Count, who does some evil-planning betwixt spaceship launchings. The Count, Zarth Arn, played to the absolute hilt by Joe fucking Spinell cackles a lot, and his evil space base, which is shaped like a giant evil claw, literally curls into a fist and shoots lasers at stuff, and goes down in sparkly space-flames as Zarth Arn and I both chortled our way into glorious idiotic hell.

Watch the Starcrash trailer at CultTrailers.
See some rad promotional art at Satan's Hope Chest.


The John Solie poster that became the video cassette cover.


The publicity shot that became the DVD cover of a different title.

Thai or Indonesian poster I got from somewhere.