From the Shelf: The Ape (1940, William Nigh)
Acquired: Given to me by my mother a number of years ago.
Seen before?: Once - February 15th, 2005.
I didn’t have much to say the first time around, and I don’t have much to add to that not-much. This is a B-movie programmer of the worst kind, the kind that is neither interesting nor incompetent enough to be memorable. It’s literally film as product, cranked out like a sausage and tossed out to an audience that wasn’t there to see it but wanted their money’s worth for the day.
The only one working beyond basic workmanship, as was true for many a film in which he appeared, is the great Boris Karloff, who seems to be doing all he can to invest his stock character (the obsessed mad scientist) with soul and gravitas. Karloff’s character is easily the most noble in the film; though he commits evil deeds, he does them in service of a worthy cause (curing paralysis), and everyone he sins against is pictured as loathsome wastes of breath. I’d think the screenwriter was trying to make a point about the slippery morality of working for the greater good if the whole of the film wasn’t so threadbare; instead, I suspect he was typing pages five minutes prior to their filming.
Up next: The river and death…
From the Shelf: All Men Are Apes! (1965, Joseph P. Mawra)
Acquired: February 2008, from Something Weird Video.
Seen before?: The first 30 minutes or so, but not all the way through.
Or: Eroticism and Its Discontents.
Joseph Mawra, I’m now convinced, is one of the great unsung savants of exploitation cinema. His films are pitched right at the midway point between what the audience expects from the genre and what his crackpot muse tells him to craft, and he seems to be calling into question the very idea of the erotic (within the boundaries of his chosen field, that is). For one example, witness how quickly the Olga series unhinged itself, going from light bondage/whipping to topless women being threatened with acetylene torches; for another, check this daffy bit of cheesecake.
Apes tells a story, familiar to any student of exploitation, about the rise and fall of a lustful young woman. But, true to the misanthropy of the title, Mawra’s modus operandi is a breed apart from either finger-wagging or pecker-raising. All Men Are Apes! is a film about desire, about perversion and everyone’s particular peccadilloes. The signature setpiece here is a long, early bit set at a swinging party where all manner of offbeat sex stuff happens. In particular, there’s a sequence where a underwear-clad woman lays on plastic sheeting while men and women throw fruit at her. Now, is this sexy? The protagonist doesn’t think so (her voiceover sneers, “It was like a wake for the Jolly Green Giant”), but does it matter if we in the audience think so? I submit that it doesn’t - what’s important is that the characters in the film think so.
It’s this very particular and personal nature of a turn-on - any turn-on - that Mawra’s after; in a sense, he’s implicitly admitting that you can’t make fuck flicks for everyone, so why not make them for yourself and those like you, and why not make them fun in a whacked-out kind of way? If all men are apes, the key is to find the ape who fits your tastes, as our anti-heroine does by film’s end. Her transition from trashy Lolita stealing her mom’s pickups to top-end stripper to femme fatale is marked, at all times, by her need to be the controller in her relationships, which is why her dalliance with Syndicate hood Buddy goes so wildly awry. Her needs are not your needs are not my needs, but they sure make for an amusing time at the cinema.
Up next: A society in flux, a director in transition, a guy in a trenchcoat…
Horror Challenge entry #4: Dark Universe (1993, Steve Latshaw)
This film is a fucking awful earthbound ripoff of Alien. And it’s not like they’re even trying to hide it. Seriously, check what the monster looks like:
The fact that the filmmakers (one of whom is the legendary Fred Olen Ray) made a point to stick little praying-mantis arms onto their monster speaks to me about how much of a ripoff they were consciously making and knew they had to change something about the design so they didn’t get their asses sued off.
However, let us not forget that, at least ‘round these parts, fucking awful and fucking unwatchable are two different animals. Dark Universe may be a terrible film, festooned with brutally declamatory acting, loathsome asshole characters, two-buck effects and hysterically clumsy dialogue. But it’s also grandly entertaining, precisely because it never makes the mistake of trying to be anything other than a cheap, amusing ripoff made to kill an evening with the help of tons of beer. Latshaw may not have much in the way of directorial chops, but he does well in keeping the film moving from setpiece to setpiece, and he wisely doesn’t attempt to hide the script’s retardation. (Golden moment: When a character complains about the futility of trying to find a wrecked spaceship in the middle of an enormous swamp, then turns his head and sees said giant wreck five feet to his right.) Most importantly, the film offers hearty helpings of everything a potential viewer would like to see without any of the stuff that they wouldn’t give a crap about. So the film has your daily recommended allowance of gore, slime, goofy monster outfits, bad science, morphing FX and tits. (Yep, tits. In a film set almost entirely in a Florida swamp, with exterior shots comprising 95% of the footage, the filmmakers still found a way to get two of the women in the film to doff their tops.) Wonderful crap.
Oh! There’s also Joe Estevez! He doesn’t have much to do as rocket-building rich guy Rod Kendrick, but he does get to set the film rolling with a beautiful display of low-budget intensity in the prologue.
