D2D entry #70: Private Duty Nurses (1971, George Armitage)
(Featured in Dusk to Dawn #8.)
Pale, dull retread of The Student Nurses. Offers nothing that wasn’t already done better in the first film, unless the inclusion of a drug-trafficking plot line counts as progress. Hackwork at its laziest - a prime example of trying too hard to strike while the iron was hot. Maybe some auterist can defend this within Armitage’s filmography. They can have it.
D2D entry #69: The Student Nurses (1970, Stephanie Rothman)
(Featured in Dusk to Dawn #8.)
A fascinating mess, mainly for all it tries to do within the framework of its nubile-nurses-in-L.A. setup: Rothman, producer Roger Corman and all others involved are not so much trying to eat their cake and have it too as much as they’re sampling from several different cakes at once and trying to make one cake out of the crumbs left behind. It’s a free-love nudie flick, plus it’s a soapy drama, plus it’s an issues flick, plus it’s a girl-power flick. The social-problem impulses are the most interesting thing the film has to offer, mainly because they’re muddled and conflicting (I’ll elaborate once I find my notes, but I remember there being some push-pull tension between idealism and activism, especially as presented in the plot thread about the Hispanic nurse who falls in with a radical-left revolutionary). Rothman has a sharp eye and puts as much polish on this as she can given the limited resources, and if her actresses aren’t the finest thespians around they still acquit themselves well enough within the framework of their cast-to-type roles. Also, they look damn good out of their clothing.
D2D entry #68: The Centerfold Girls (1974, John Peyser)
(Featured in 42nd Street #1.)
Halfway between an omnibus and an Americanized giallo, this slash-and-jiggle number could have only been made in the ’70s… and maybe that’s a good thing. The thing is split into three parts, each part following a different centerfold girl, with Andrew Prine’s moralistic mad-dog killer as the linking device. The second and third sections offer some low-grade entertainment value, and the climax offers the ever-awesome Prine squaring off against fierce Amazonian blonde Tiffany Bolling, which comes pretty close to redeeming everything before it. But there’s the matter of the opening segment: It follows a young nurse who drives into the woods (for a job, if I remember correctly - it’s been a few months), only to be victimized by both Prine and a group of nasty hippies straight out of a Last House on the Left ripoff. The tone in this segment is ugly (the sequence, as set up, is basically suffer-suffer-suffer-die), but the real problem is that Peyser and co. don’t seem set up to handle this brutality; the remainder of the film, while sleazy, is nowhere near as heartless or vicious as this first bit, and leading off with such material creates a permanent imbalance. Something like Night Train Murders can get away with this level of sadism and horror because its makers demonstrate a basic understanding of the material’s potency and a commanding formal control. Here, it’s just misogynistic window dressing.
D2D entry #67: Commuter Husbands (1973, Derek Ford)
(Featured in Dusk to Dawn #3 and Grindhouse Universe.)
Commuter Husbands is a film caught between two worlds. On one hand, it’s firmly in the tradition of classic English sex-comedy humor, with lots of mishaps, misunderstandings and cheeky double entendres. On the other, it’s a film well aware of changing social mores and the new permissiveness. Derek Ford plants a foot in both camps, and his resulting film is something that, while not entirely successful, gains a surprising amount of interest from the push-pull tension between what was and what will be. It’s structured as an omnibus, with gorgeous narrator Gabrielle Drake relating tales that examine the battle of the sexes. In the battle of the sexes, there is naturally sex, and this being the ’70s, that means a shit-ton of nudity (especially in the second story, which features a plumber stumbling into an orgy when he’s asked to fix the hot tub); yet, the resolution to each story involves a certain level of moralism and punishment for transgression. Ford is undeniably interested in the swinging lifestyle and getting cute birds to strip their kit off (as I understand it, he started splicing hardcore pornography into his later films for foreign markets), but the proper British soul still lurks within him, so the loose and the swinging don’t come out on top - most of the stories end with some measure of humiliation for those with perverse impulses (a peeping tom gets caught and forced to break a long-standing routine, a philandering married couple is forced to confront each other’s infidelities), and all of them result in a return to an idea of a man-woman middle-class status quo. (There’s also a likely soupcon of class commentary in the gist of the film, though Ford only gets overt about it during the plumber’s story.) It’s that space in between desire and social propriety into which Commuter Husbands wedges itself, and on those terms it’s modestly successful. As a film, otherwise, it’s rather spotty, with cornball humor and dry stretches alternating with the occasional flash of wit. But it does have something at least going for it, which puts it ahead of a good many other films.
Horror Challenge entry #16: Don't Answer the Phone! (1980, Robert Hammer)
The psychotic ‘Nam veteran was a staple of action and horror cinema for a good number of years, and this film is a prime example of why - it’s an easy way to slam together titties ‘n’ gore into a ready-made framework, and it allows at least one role to go way, way over the top, which is something any semi-pro actor can do. (Subtlety is for nerds and Europeans, man.) Funny thing is, though, Hammer’s flick is really two movies in one; the first, more discomfiting film follows the creepy, sweaty, terrifyingly strong killer around Los Angeles as he kills, lifts weights and taunts a comely radio psychologist (Flo Lawrence) over the phone, while the second is your typical police procedural stuff except the cops (James Westmoreland & Ben Frank) are buffoonish wiseasses prone to random acts of brutality and general assholery. Does that structure sound familiar to you? Surely it’s a formula, but the specifics (rage-a-holic killer whose profession ties into his murders, goofball cops who can’t be taken seriously until they get mean, bifurcated structure) hearken forward to the supremely disturbing Hong Kong serial killer classic The Untold Story. Not that this film is anywhere as effective or impressive as that, and it doesn’t have Anthony Wong’s staggering psycho performance. But the thrust is similar as is the effect - we have, in essence, a world of normality and frivolity rent asunder by a vicious madman (portrayed with believable cruelty and fury by Nicholas Worth), and the only way towards restoration of the balance is to match violence with violence. The Untold Story went further, evolving into a critique of police brutality and human capacity for cruelty in general; this film is not as nuanced, but the primal force remains. Especially potent is the film’s depiction of its killer as a sociopathic type, hateful and murderous but otherwise lucid and reasonable; the lead-in to the climactic action sequence, where a bound & panicked Lawrence attempts to psychoanalyze Worth into submission only to have him mock and debase her attempts to do so, explaining that he just likes to hurt people… well, it’s a jolt. Not quality cinema, but authentically scuzzy.
Horror Challenge entry #12: The Reincarnation of Isabel (1973, Renato Polselli)
Don’t ask me to summarize this film, because I can’t. Nobody could. The Reincarnation of Isabel plays like Polselli (under the pseudonym of “Ralph Brown”) shot two movies, cut both of them into dozens of little chunks, tossed them into the air and then collected the footage and stitched it all together willy-nilly into some feature-length monstrosity. From the very first scene, we’re left adrift in a sea of random nonsense involving a resurrected witch, an old castle, virgin hearts, vampiric doubles, bare breasts and Mickey Hargitay looking as seedy as he can. I know I make that sound like a bad thing, but then so does the similarly-daffy Nude for Satan if you’re just reading about it. It’s all dependent on whether or not you can get on the film’s particular peculiar wavelength, and while it took me a while to warm up to it, eventually the damn thing won me over. I think part of the appeal for this and other Eurohorrors of its ilk is that they aren’t concerned at all with coherence - they’re aiming for something more primal and feverish, and they aren’t afraid to look damned silly while doing it. (There’s a priceless line of dialogue that posits vampires as needing blood uncontaminated by human semen.) But, once you’ve freed yourself of propriety, pretty much anything goes, and I can get into that. Very little in the way of logic, but entertaining as fuck nonetheless. Also featuring: a whole raft of gorgeous women (including the extraordinary Rita Calderoni) who whip their clothes off at the slightest provocation. That always helps maintain attention.
Footnote #1: The original Italian title for this literally translates to Rites, Black Magic and Secret Orgies in the Fourteenth Century. Which is a fucking terrible title.
Footnote #2: I originally put this in my Netflix queue after seeing Nude for Satan, which also stars the fleshy pulchritudinous charms of Ms. Calderoni and is wacky as fuck-all. I saw Nude for Satan in 2002 - it was, in fact, one of the first films I watched via Netflix. So that means The Reincarnation of Isabel has been in the middle reaches of my queue for seven goddamn years. Eventually, I will get around to everything I want to watch. Eventually.
Horror Challenge entry #7: Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972, Sergio Martino)
I love Edwige Fenech, but her introduction into this Poe-inspired giallo blows apart the focus. Before she shows up, Your Vice is an intriguing portrait of the diseased relationship between alcoholic writer Oliviero and his timid, withdrawn wife Irina, stressed to its breaking point by some mysterious murders of young women with ties to the philandering Oliviero. Then the killer is abruptly caught. Then Fenech arrives and starts humping everything in sight. Fortunately, it does pull itself together for a splendid climax/twist. And it’s certainly well-made - Martino’s sharp, direct style has a crackling punch to it that keeps it fairly lively even in its lumpier moments. Even when the film is nicking from other sources (i.e. the pan following a body tumbling down a staircase bearing a striking similarity to a sequence in Four Flies on Grey Velvet), Martino’s style has a brutality in it far removed from the languid dreaminess of Dario Argento. This lends itself, too, to the emotional brutality in the film that mirrors the physical brutality. Late in the film, Martino even sums up the entirety of the film’s thematic heft in one loaded image:
So it’s minor Martino, but minor Martino is stronger than a lot of people’s top efforts.
(Also, I watched Martino’s The Suspicious Death of a Minor in the same evening. Despite the title, it’s not a giallo but a Eurocrime flick about a dogged, irreverent cop investigating the title event. It’s terrific stuff, propulsive and involving, but what amused me most is that there’s a scene set in a movie theater. Two characters walk into a film, and guess what movie’s finale is playing? Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, of course.)
Horror Challenge entry #5: Prime Evil (1988, Roberta Findlay)
Starts off promising - the first act is wonderfully retarded. Before we’re even ten minutes in, an evil monk has beheaded a guy, a nude woman has been sacrificed so her father can have thirteen years of immortality & prosperity and a woman at a health club has chided her friend’s disinterest in sex by exclaiming, “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to get poked!” And this is all before we get to the awesomely stoopid apartment brawl. It’s a fuckin’ shame, then, that the film has to come down with a serious case of convolutitus, like anyone watching a Roberta Findlay film gives a shit about the plot. We don’t need a REASON to be watching a vaguely connected string of evil Satanic acts - we just want to see demons and blood and tits and shit. What the fuck, Roberta.
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.
Obscene, pornographic.
1959: One decade slams into another. The wall of social morality cracks under the strain of the march of permissiveness. Through that crack, there springs a leak. That leak is The Immoral Mr. Teas, in which Russ Meyer strode up to cinema, kicked its fucking door in and announced that he was gonna hang around the living room making movies about tits until he was good and goddamn ready to leave, and ain’t nobody gonna stop him. The Modern Man cares not for decorum, you see. In fact, Meyer, a Modern Man, has a film about a Modern Man. It’s his first film, a robust and clever celluloid striptease about Modern Man and his impulses. Bill Teas, you see, is not merely Everyman but every man - with his beard and jaunty straw hat, he cuts a slightly ridiculous figure but don’t we all sometimes? (Certainly the man he passes on his way into the psychiatrist’s office has similar issues, as he too wears that straw hat.) He likes boobs. He wants to see boobs. But how does one do that in respectable society? A retreat into fantasy - going from sneaking a peek at heaving cleavage to imaging the women around him as naked nymphets in tune with nature. (A nudist colony film without the colony, thank God.) Teas is Meyer, nascent yet fully formed and with his shit-kicking boots on. From the get-go, he offers us male fantasies whilst simultaneously making sport of the ridiculousness of male fantasies (his own, all about ridiculously proportioned Amazonian bitch-goddesses, included). The walls, friends, were beginning to break. This is one of the biggest wrecking balls. Give the man credit - he made the first nudie-cutie. His was a film that made it safe to see mammaries in movies. He made a movie that invented a fucking genre. What have you done today?
