Horror Challenge entry #4: The Video Dead (1987, Robert Scott)
Holy ballsack, is this film ever terrible. That’s all I have to say about it. No, really. It’s fucking awful, I don’t understand the minor cult that’s sprung up around it and I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s move the fuck on. Okay, fine. You want proof? Here. See how long you make it before wanting to punch something in rage:
I know that, lately, I’ve been posting quite a lot about naked women. I don’t mean to turn this into Steve’s House of Breasts, honest. But this has been sitting on my desktop for a while. It’s a dream sequence from the Italian comedy Ubalda, All Naked and Warm, which stars Edwige Fenech and her contractually-obligated nude body. What I like about this sequence is that it sums up the appeal of the film while still, at the end of the clip, illustrating that even Ms. Fenech’s charms can’t save it from being a tiresome piece of shit. (Sorry about the no subtitles. But you aren’t missing anything.)
The 1959 monster movie Terror in the Midnight Sun is notable by almost no standards anyone would care to use. It’s fairly well-shot, given the budget and the timeframe (the B&W is expressive and director Virgil Vogel makes good use of screen space) but it’s criminally low-watt all the way, with dialogue standing in for drama and a monster that doesn’t even show up until minute 50 of this 70-minute feature.
And yet, I’ll remember it until I die, because it has one thing going for it, one thing that I did not expect and never would have thought to expect. It’s… well, just see for yourself.
Tight science.
Why am I posting this? Mainly because I watched it last night for the first time in a long while and also because FUCK YOU NOBODY NEEDS AN EXCUSE TO POST “MR. SHOW,” OKAY?!?!?!
Ahem.Without further ado, here is a two-part shot of awesome:
The opening to KILLER KLOWNS FROM KANSAS ON KRACK, a new contender for worst film in the history of ever. I want you all to watch this, and then I want you to tell me how long you made it into the clip before your eyeballs tried to eat themselves.
If you make it through the whole thing, you have my undying respect. In fact, I fucking dare you to do it.
D2D entry #63: Zombie Holocaust/Dr. Butcher, M.D. (1980, Marino Girolami)
(Featured in Grindhouse Universe.)
The question remains, why do I do this? Why do I feel compelled to wade through the unrespected flotsam of cinematic history? The answer is mainly so I can find things like Simon, King of the Witches. Barring that, it’s so I can find films like this one.
Whether you call it Zombie Holocaust (its Italian title) or Dr. Butcher M.D. (its notorious American title), Girolami’s splattery gutmuncher is little more than a crass, stupid, near-incompetent cash-in on the twin box-office forces of Fulci’s Zombie and Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust… and it’s precisely its crassness, stupidity and incompetence that makes it such a deranged treasure. Girolami (hiding behind the Americanized moniker of “Frank Martin”), apparently not content with a mere Bruno Mattei-style ripoff, decided that if he was going to jack the plot from the Fulci flick and even go so far as to use some of the same sets, he’d also attempt to go toe-to-toe with Lucio in terms of gore and goofiness.
Thing is, though, Fulci for all his faults was an artist and tried to always make the best film he could, while Girolami is a hack through and through, so he ladles on the gore and violence because it’s all he’s got and all he can capture of that Fulci feeling. It’s a case where a guy knows the notes but not how to properly play them, so what comes out is weird and screwy and ugly and thoroughly wrong, yet it magically lands in the rarefied zone where its ineptitude starts to look inspired. There’s an early shot where a guy (who has just been caught trying to eat a heart) throws himself out a window, wherein we cut to a shot of a falling dummy. The beautiful part is that the dummy is poorly constructed and when it hits pavement, its arm clearly goes flying off.
I don’t know if they didn’t have another dummy and couldn’t do a second take or that no one involved gave a damn, but I treasure this sort of fleeting, obvious seamwork. This kind of cheapjack mania is everywhere - whenever the pacing flags, there’s a bit of splattery madness waiting around the corner to bring us back to attention, like when Ian McCullough pulps a paper-mache zombie’s head with an outboard motor simply because it happened to be handy. Furthermore, the dialogue is oft-priceless (i.e. the infamous, “I could easily kill you now, but I’m determined to have your brain!”)
And then there’s this, which is simply one of the funniest things ever put into a film:
Is it a good film? Hardly. Did I love the everlovin’ fuck out of it anyway? Oh yeah, because its crassness is its chief asset - the makers of this are fully aware that you’re just here to see some bodies get torn apart but good and make sure that you get it in spades, with some inexplicable goofiness to hold it all together. Truth be told, I think I prefer Zombie Holocaust to Zombie; while the latter ultimately works out to be a creepy apocalyptic horrorshow, this flick is more consistently entertaining.
She’s all growns up.
Lily Allen’s Alright, Still… is a pretty terrific pop album. It’s also decidedly one written by a callow youth, all sneers and blown raspberries at stoner brothers, doddering grannies, cheating boyfriends, skeevy barflies and whoever else happens to bounce towards her. Her new joint, It’s Not Me, It’s You, doesn’t represent a big leap forward in terms of artistry — it’s built on big hooks and cheerfully loping synth lines, with the occasional genre-scrambling curlicue to keep things interesting. In terms of maturity, though, Ms. Allen has started moving beyond the teenage dream, something she straight-up admits in the opening track “Everyone’s At It” when she sings, “I don’t like staying up, staying up past the sunrise.” The sarcasm is still there, but it’s aimed at bigger targets now (fame, government, racism, etc.). Surprisingly, there’s also a significant amount of heartfelt sincerity; the track “Who’d Have Known,” a look at a developing relationship, is particularly striking in this regard, and when Allen croons, “The other day, you accidentally called me ‘baby’,” you can almost hear her smile in the studio. And then there’s “Him,” which is like Joan Osbourne’s “God” without the overwhelming suck. The rest of the album could be terrible, and it’d still be worth owning for the couplet, “I don’t think he’s ever felt suicidal / His favorite band is Creedence Clearwater Revival.”
The video for the album’s second single, the C&W-flavored barnburner ‘Not Fair,’ can be found here. You might also want to take a look at this video in which she gets out her third nipple.
D2D entry #56: Simon, King of the Witches (1971, Bruce Kessler)
(Featured in Dusk to Dawn #1 & 42nd Street #4.)
“Don’t touch me - I’m a religious object!”
I often wonder why I spend so much time watching terrible movies. Then I see a film like this and get my answer. Simon, King of the Witches was advertised as a typicial, trippy early-’70s horror film with boobs and death galore, all at the hands of a powerful Manson-esque warlock. (Think The Deathmaster with spells instead of fangs.) Given the hard-sell by its distributor, it bombed and sank without a trace, which is understandable considering it’s not really a horror movie at all - instead, it’s a odd, thoughtful and often quite funny character study/time-capsule snapshot.
One of the things that appeals to me about genre films is their ability to deal with social issues via metaphor. Whether covertly or openly, there are things that gain potency when expressed through the filter of the downmarket (probably the whole idea of getting away with something enhances the message). Simon is rather far on the obvious end of the spectrum - Simon’s magical machinations are clearly linked with the burgeoning gay-pride movement, both metaphorically (Simon professes to be “openly” a witch) and plotwise, as the first half of the film sees him being manipulated by Hercules, a queen with some political pull, into eliminating a politician whose actions are held in disfavor. This striving for greater political power is reflected by Simon’s desire to ascend into the realms of the gods, and the fallout from this (both threads culminate in a murder) holds some currency as a caution about using certain means as tools for advancement. (Note that this film was released only two years after the Stonewall riots.)
Beyond that, though, Simon’s witchcraft is linking explicitly with gay hustling; Simon proclaims about his craft, “I work for money!” and befriends Turk, a quiet blonde kid he meets at the film’s outset while sitting out a night in jail for vagrancy. It’s never stated outright what Turk is in for, but it’s strongly implied that, even though he likes girls and has Simon prepare a love potion to ensnare a particular female he likes, Turk isn’t above using his androgynous good looks to go gay-for-pay, and his moony attachment to Simon screams of an unrequited same-sex crush.
But there’s more than that - Kessler ties together paganism, the gay subculture, the waning hippie movement, free love, hedonism and swinging sexuality into a big nexus of outsiderdom, yet the ties are starting to fray. The drugs, sex and corruption are wearing down the idealism and good intentions behind all of this; essentially, this is a film that charts the entire progress of the consciousness-raising of the ’60s, eventual downward spiral included. Simon makes his first attempt at gathering enough energy (via sex magick) to storm the gates of the heavens yet gets thwarted by his own lust for his partner, a sweet young dropout named Linda. If that’s not a big honkin’ metaphor for human nature getting in the way of loftier intentions, then I’m Abe Lincoln.
Lest I make this sound like a bummer trip, I should also note that all this is done with a fairly light touch, with the tone set by Andrew Prine in what should have been a star-making performance. His portrayal of Simon is unexpectedly low-key, considering that the opportunities for histrionics in this role are myriad. Prine has a charisma and a bemused rakishness that serves the character well - he’s the genuine article and knows it, yet he remains fairly grounded about his station in life (he does, after all, live in a storm drain, and conjuring is just a way to keep food in his stomach while he waits to leave this plane). There are points where he lets his cool facade slip, most entertainingly at a gathering of female witches who seem to regard witchery as an excuse to naked, but his default mode seems to be ironic detachment, slightly weary and slightly snickering. He’s the kind of guy who can make the proclamation, “A platform, properly stationed with regard to the magnetic poles, from which to launch forth my evil missile! With lumber by Wyman Brothers,” sound both appropriately grandiose and unaccountably funny (it’s the sardonic, offhand delivery of the last line that does it). As he goes, so does the film; Simon the spriest and most enjoyable film you’ll ever see about the counterculture eating itself.
Weirdness Dept.: After the relative cultural success of Milk - not to mention the rest of Gus’s gay-friendly oeuvre - it strikes a strangely appropriate note that Hercules’s last name is apparently Van Sant.
The misleading trailer:
