Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things

"Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things" is a guilty pleasure, pure and simple. While in some ways a terrible film, it is nevertheless fun to watch and enjoyable...provided you are a bit twisted!

Paul and Stanley are lovers and to the outside world they are Aunt Martha and her nephew, Stanley. What?! Well, it seems Paul is a homicidal maniac and is wanted by the police for his many atrocitites. Yes, Paul is an angry guy who has the bad habit of murdering any lady who pays attention to Stanley...because Stanley is his. As for Stanley, he's not homicidal but he is a bit of an idiot. Together, you know that sooner or later the law will catch up to them.

The acting is often cheesy and the production looks like it was made for next to nothing. Yet, inexplicably, it is funny in a strange way...almost like a John Waters film. Worth seeing IF you are an oddball...like me. Otherwise, you'll probably find it all pretty sick and stupid.

By the way, if you want to see it, understand that there is a fair amount of nudity in addition to all the killing...so it's NOT a film I'd recommend to kids or your mother.

The working title was: "Don't Spank Baby".

Wayne Crawford went on to become a successful producer, films like Valley Girl, Night of the Comet and others, even though he wasn't too terrific in this little Gem. And little known Abe Zwick should have gotten tons of work from this film but didn't. Filmed at Moberly Studios in Hollywood Florida, on the same lot the early Tarzan movies were filmed. This film is definitely for those who appreciate the abstract. The movie was originally shot with much more bloody graphic slasher scenes. For reasons only known to Tom Casey the Director, the bloody slasher scenes were given a tab of LSD, and replaced by Flash Editing. Even though this version is worthy of a look for those so inclined, in my opinion the original version would have packed the punch needed to make this a full on Slasher 70's Cult Classic.

Haha, what a great little movie! Wayne Crawford strikes again, or rather this was his first big strike, a deliriously entertaining little ball of manic kitsch energy masquerading as a psycho killer movie. It's actually a **brilliant** satire on post-hippie American culture in flyover country, though the movie was actually filmed independently in Miami. It defies any kind of studio oriented convention or plot device that I can think of: SOMETIMES AUNT MARTHA DOES DREADFUL THINGS may not be a very technically adept movie, but it is a wonderful little slice of Americana, made on the cheap by people who were honest, ambitious, imaginative and had balls made out of steel. It took guts, nerve and guile to make this movie, which amazingly appears to have stood the test of time. This movie is fresh, vital, alive, unforgettable, and charmingly weird enough to recommend to just about anyone with a sense of humor.

I dug up last year during a period of time when I was fascinated by "star" Wayne Crawford (here billed under his pseudonym Scott Lawrence), a maestro of what can only be called regional film-making, usually of the B grade variety. He's a writer, producer, director, and actor all in one, probably best known for the 80s teen apocalyptic favorite NIGHT OF THE COMET. Here he plays Stanley, the pants wearing half of a couple of truly marvelous characters, apparently homosexual spree killers on the lam after knocking off some old lady in Baltimore for her jewelry. Unsung screen legend Abe Zwick is completely convincing as Paul, who poses as Stanley's Aunt Martha, the cross dressing brains of the outfit who has conned Stanley into thinking he's committed murder to ensure his loyalty. Martha looks about as feminine as the sailors from SOUTH PACIFIC's supporting choir in their coconut bikini tops, yet somehow nobody seems to notice -- or care? -- that she is a he, has no visible means of income, seems to spend all day fretting about where Stanley is, and scurries around the neighborhood in her bathrobe carrying a butcher's knife. Only in America ...

As the film opens the two of them have just arrived in Florida and set up residence in what looks like Ward Cleaver's old house, a garishly lit & designed television home that is so cliché as to be surreal. During one memorable scene Martha and an unwelcome house guest sit on the couch, talk problems and drink cans of Budweiser in what is one of the most mesmerizing, subversively ordinary sequences I've ever seen outside of a John Waters movie. Then there's Stanley, always getting into trouble as he is a mop topped hippie with an STP patch on his vest who drives a psychedelic painted van that's about as subtle as the Batmobile, drinks his milk straight from the carton, snorts drugs with blond bombshell bimbos, and hoards donuts in an old cigar box for a quick snack. Opposites attract, I guess.

But Stanley also has a thing about not liking it when the young ladies he gets stoned with try to remove his pants, and it always seems to be up to Aunt Martha to get him out of the trouble that inevitably results. The bodies pile up, a nosy junkie blackmails them into using their house as a flop, Stanley's birthday cake gets squashed, and everybody meets down at the local pizza shop before heading to the wood shed on the back property for a hookah hash party where the girls dance in their underwear. Things get out of hand when one of the neighbors tries to get a bit too chummy with Martha, who naturally prefers to keep people at an arm's length when they rudely invite themselves over for a nice chat. And this is a woman who carries not just a butcher knife but a loaded .38 in her slip. Eventually the strange duo find themselves stuck with a body, a baby, and no place to go, and end up taking refuge at an abandoned movie studio where no doubt the technical crew borrowed the equipment used to make the film. I just hope they politely asked for permission first and cleaned up after themselves.

A word of course must be said about Stanley and Martha/Paul's relationship, since to dance around the fact that the two are at least suggested to be a homosexual couple would be to miss the primary gist of the plot. We never see the two of them get intimate and indeed even though Stanley mockingly refers to being "balled" in one scene, their relationship is more symbiotic than sexual. It certainly isn't a "gay" movie, with abundant female nudity and an air of 70s misogyny that cannot be denied either. Stanley & Paul never consummating their implied sexuality on screen, even though the movie certainly would have had the guts to do so if it were important. It isn't, the story isn't about their sex, it's about the bond they share, and how weird it is. Not their being gay, but their being the distinct individuals they are, who are two of the strangest movie creations ever to inhabit my TV set.

The film is unique. It was made for only a few thousand dollars on what look like borrowed studio sets, the occasional location work, and an couple of public locations they managed to sneak a camera crew into when nobody was looking. The dialog is completely bizarre, mundane and delightfully esoteric. It's a movie that will take you by surprise, not everyone will like it but for those with a taste for low budget American horror/thrillers like THE NIGHT GOD SCREAMED, HELP ME! I'M POSSESSED, BLOOD & LACE and CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS, you've got yourself a winner here.

8/10: Usually I'd say something like "Deserves a DVD restoration" but somehow I think doing so would ruin the movie's tacky ambiance. And Wayne Crawford, you, sir, rule.

A 70's B-movie about a transvestite from Baltimore, who's on the run from the law??? Sounds good to me. Actually, Aunt Martha (Paul) is only wearing the female garb, as a disguise. It's not like he's really into it, or anything... Alright, fine, maybe a little. Aunt Ma-I mean Paul pretends to be the possessive aunt of his partner-in-crime (Stanley), but when nobody's around, he drops the "aunt" but flat-out refuses to drop possessiveness. So, it's pretty obvious this high-strung fellow has a few problems. Or maybe they're just boyfriends, I'm not sure.maybe Paul just thinks they are, or maybe Stanley just isn't a very good one. Stanley is a bit of a rascal. Always rebelling against his "partner"-in-crime/pseudo-aunt, who's either screaming at him about smoking weed, or chasing him around with scissors, since he refuses to get a hair cut. Seeing Paul get so worked up amuses Stanley to no end, which is what makes this movie so entertaining. Well, that and all the murders. Not exactly an epic, but terribly over-looked, considering this movie is apart of the Florida Exploitation boom of the 60's and early 70's, which gave us such inept gold as Blood Freak and Two Thousand Maniacs. Yet another potential classic still not released on DVD. I would think Something Weird Video would have stepped up long before now. It would just seem right. Perhaps Subversive is interested. Anyone who digs Herschell Gordon Lewis Exploitation from the 60's and John Waters trash from the 70's seriously needs to see this. Not that there's any gore or anything really, really disgusting involved. I guess you'll just have to settle for odd and hilarious, which totally beats boring and dull any day of the week. Anyone itching for some obscure/vintage cult cinema will be more than satisfied with Aunt Martha. And that, B-movie fans, is a guarantee. 8/10

Don't be deceived by the misleading title, because the truth is that Aunt Martha CONSTANTLY does dreadful things. In fact, "Aunt Martha" is one badass brick of a Bea Arthur lookin' transvestite who's on the lam after robbing a bank, and living incognito with Stanley, "her" virile, but dope-addled lover/accomplice. And while she may seem like a charm-schooled and self composed hostess, Aunt Martha's infernal hostilities are easily roused by the winsome young girls who follow Stanley home from time to time. Quick to exterminate these potential threats in a variety of gruesome ways, Aunt Martha proves herself a most formidable adversary when it comes to competing for Stanley's affections.

Delightfully off-hand weirdness, AUNT MARTHA is archetypal of the anything-goes craziness of low-budget 70s cinema...a film so abstractly imagined and impulsively realized, it alights with a desultory otherness so reverently sincere that it steals a place in your heart usually reserved for awkwardly cross-bred puppies. Forgivable of its general inelegance, this is a fine specimen of a most exiguous film species.

7/10.