The 50 Movie Pack Project

#13: Breakout From Oppression

2012-02-08T11:55:00.000-08:00

Drive In Movie Classics
Disc 4: Side A
1984

Breakout From Oppression, a re-titled edit of the 1984 Taiwanese film Exposed To Danger, opens on Fonda Chiu, hair blowing in the wind as she gazes contemplatively off the bow of a ferry. “Fonda Chiu is found guilty,” we hear a disembodied voice from the past say. “I convict her of murder. She is to be sentenced to twelve years in prison.” As the credits roll, Fonda (played by actress Luk Siu-Fan, but credited here as Fonda Lynn) flashes back to her time in prison: We see her being dragged to her cell by a group of guards, then being threatened and abused by her cellmates. She served eight years of her twelve year sentence and she is free now--or at least the funky, upbeat, early 80s synth score would have us believe.

In reality, Fonda Chiu has a hard time adjusting to life on the outside. A job has been procured for her at a newspaper, but her new coworkers are immediately suspicious of her. A shopkeeper accuses her of shoplifting. A hop in the shower brings on a traumatic memory of the time her cellmates stuck a deadly razor in a bar of soap in hopes of killing of her. And the landlord of her new apartment seems unduly interested in her past.

“Tell me,” he says in the stilted manner of poorly dubbed Asian imports. “Where did you come from? Where did you work before? Who is your family?”

“I have no family,” Fonda replies. She is reluctant--not surprisingly--to share anything about her past. No one, not even obligatory love interest Simon (Alan Tam), knows of her life as a convict. Or--cue ominous music--do they? Strange things begin happening to Fonda: A mysterious figure is seen prowling outside her apartment. The break-line on her bicycle is cut, leading to a painful crash on the nearby beach. A bar of soap--more of that treacherous Irish Spring--comes sliding across the floor out of nowhere and knocks Fonda off a ladder. A monkey jumps into her window and howls at her. Okay, not all of it makes sense. But clearly, someone has it in for Fonda.

Enter Sheena (Lona Chang), one of her coworkers at the paper. “You make me feel bad,” Sheena tells Fonda. She knows about Fonda’s past and--cue ominous music again--her father was murdered eight years ago. Clearly, she’s still on the revenge step of the grieving process. Not only that, but she lives in a big house with a mute, wheelchair bound grandmother she torments at every opportunity and a man chained to a post in the basement.

We see her eyes, filled with fury. Then, when Simon stops by her house, we see the fury melt away. She, too, is in love with Simon and she brings him up to her bedroom, which is cluttered with stuffed animals and pictures of Raggedy Anne and Andy. It’s the room of a little girl--a perfectly preserved artifact of Sheena’s past. Excitedly, she tells Simon she’s been dreaming of the day she would get to show him her room. Understandably freaked-out, Simon makes to go.

“I need you!” Sheena shrieks, clinging to his leg. Later, alone, Sheena is seen rocking in a chair, twisting the head off one of her dolls. “Simon,” she mutters to herself. “Why did you leave?” Later, she lures him back to her house, knocks him over the head and chains him up in the basement. It’s a great, unhinged performance in an otherwise by-the-numbers thriller.

The twists are predictable. We learn that Fonda was having an affair eight years ago with Steven, a married man. An argument ensued one night and Steven stormed out. Fonda went after him and found his body with a knife in it. She was blamed for the murder. Steven, naturally enough, was Sheena’s father. At the end of the film, Sheena and Fonda duke it out on the beach in a climax lifted from Friday the 13th, complete with gruesome beheading. And yet if you get past the genre conventions and the strange, dubbed, vaguely-Australian accent Sheena is saddled with, there‘s still that performance by Lona Chang. It’s bold and unique--a minor revelation by fifty-pack standards.

#12: Black Hooker

2012-01-16T08:01:00.000-08:00

Drive In Movie Classics
Disc 3: Side B
1974

What Would You Do If Your Mama Was A Hooker? So goes the tagline for Black Hooker, also known as Black Mama and Street Sisters. The best taglines--think In Space No One Can Hear You Scream or Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back In the Water--are provocative. They pique your interest without revealing too much about the film itself. Often, they do little beyond establishing a general mood. What Would You Do If Your Mama Was A Hooker? is perhaps too straightforward. It’s less a tagline than it is a writing prompt for the screenwriter. Imagine if Alien had asked, What Would You Do If You Were Trapped On A Spaceship With A Horrible Monster? Now Write A Screenplay About That And Pitch It To A Movie Studio.

But then Black Hooker isn’t a sci-fi blockbuster. It’s a blaxploitation film, right? The luridly-rendered Pam Grier clone on the poster seems to suggest so. She Was Mean, the poster claims. Damn Mean! Sounds promising. Then the movie starts. We see Young Boy (Teddy Quinn), a little floppy-haired white kid running out of a rundown shack with Grandpa (Jeff Burton), an older black man, in hot pursuit. Grandpa catches up to Young Boy and grabs him by the collar.

“Please love me, grandpa!” cries Young Boy. Grandma (Kathryn Jackson) shows up, shoos Grandpa away and gazes fondly into the eyes of Young Boy. Over the credits, we get a montage of Young Boy and Grandma strolling through a field of tall grass with their arms around one another. Any remaining hope that Black Hooker might turn into a funky action flick along the lines of Foxy Brown, Coffy or Cleopatra Jones are dashed the second the words “adapted for the screen from the stage play” appear on the screen.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a dialogue-heavy, largely plot-free family drama with sociopolitical overtones now and then. Theoretically speaking, that is. Unfortunately, Black Hooker botches the execution. Painted Woman (Sandra Alexander), the daughter of Grandma and Grandpa, shows up at the rundown shack to check in on Young Boy, her illegitimate son. She is, we quickly surmise, the black hooker of the title. Her parents, not surprisingly, don’t approve of her career. Grandpa is a preacher and Grandma is highly religious; both of them want their daughter to give up her life on the streets and take care of Young Boy.

“I gave you love,” Grandma tells Painted Woman, “and that’s more than I can say you’ve ever given this poor child.”

“What do you know about love?” says Painted Woman in the first of many heated, heavy-handed exchanges. It’s this sort of dialogue that bogs the film down. Perhaps it would play better on stage, where clunky dialogue can sometimes be redeemed by the immediacy of theater. Here, it just falls flat. The long, ponderous scenes of Painted Woman at work slow the film down even more.

“Are you a man of action,” she asks one of her Caucasian clients, “or do you get your pleasure just looking at my black magnificence?”

“Why are you so hostile?” the client asks. When he leaves, Painted Woman’s pimp follows him down a hallway and smacks him around for what seems like hours, rivaling the many interminable slap-heavy scenes of violence in Fifty Movie Pack Project entry #8: Mad Dog. Next, we get a riveting scene of Grandma and Young Boy shopping for a suit. By the end of the film, Young Boy has grown into Older Boy (played by Timothy Bottoms look-alike Durey Mason) and has decided to track down his mother and force her to love him. There’s a sequence filmed entirely in sepia-tone for no apparent reason, some mild hallucinatory imagery, gratuitous slow-motion, and then Older Boy strangles Painted Woman to death. That, apparently, is his way of answering the question, What Would You Do If Your Mama Was A Hooker?

If only, amid his duties as director, writer, set decorator, production designer and art director, one-time auteur Arthur Roberson had found time to instill his film with some narrative drive and a bit of grace. The performances are good and the intention is admirable. A movie that attempts to tackle issues as complex and far-reaching as race, religion, class, family and sex with virtually no budget can‘t be all bad. Black Hooker just needs something else: A little subtlety, perhaps. Or maybe just a better tagline.

#11: Jive Turkey

2012-01-03T13:28:00.000-08:00

Drive In Movie Classics
Disc 3: Side B
1974

The little-seen blaxploitation flick Jive Turkey is also known by the more colorful title Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes and the less politically-correct Get Nigger Rich on Number 666--which, depending on your point of view, is more confusing than it is offensive. “This Is A True Story,” an opening title informs the viewer. “Only the Names, Places, and Events Have Been Changed To Protect the Innocent.” By these loose, ambiguous, noncommittal standards, pretty much any film could be said to be a true story.

No matter. It’s 1956, or so nearly every character in the film would like us to believe. “This is 1956!” they are often heard to say, a claim that goes unsupported by the 70s era cars we see in the background, the slang, the haircuts and the tie-dyed poncho one guy is seen wearing in an early scene. Still, you have to admire this low-budget movie for even attempting a period setting. The story follows Pasha (played with conviction by Paul Harris), an African-American crime boss who controls the numbers racket in an unidentified Ohio city. His rival is Italian mobster Big Tony (Frank DeVoka).

“The narcotics business is in a slump,” explains Big Tony at an uneasy meeting between the two criminals. He wants the numbers game for himself.

“Numbers is my business,” says Pasha with a confident smirk.

Big Tony thinks for a moment. He needs to negotiate. “You can keep prostitution,” he offers. Pasha isn’t having any of it. Big Tony goes on to say that one of Pasha’s men is secretly working for him and that he--Big Tony--knows Pasha’s every move. Not only that, but there’s a contract out for a hit on Pasha from Big Tony’s bosses in Chicago--pretty forthcoming for a deceitful, nefarious mobster, but still Pasha refuses to give up the numbers. Next we see the mayor and his aides discussing their plan to eradicate Pasha's
gang. As in almost every single movie or television show ever made about organized crime, it’s an election year--1956, to be exact--and the mayor is determined to crack down in order to please his constituents, even if it means bending the rules himself.

It’s a story that’s probably inspired--at least in part--by the exploits of infamous Harlem mob boss Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, who was portrayed in the 2007 film American Gangster and provided the inspiration for 1997‘s Hoodlum. In other words, it’s pretty ambitious stuff for a b-movie--too ambitious, in the end. Jive Turkey devolves into a standard action movie, complete with back alley shootouts and car chases, as the cops and the Italian mob close in on Pasha’s numbers racket.

It’s standard, that is, except for the character of Serene, Pasha’s female assassin, who is lusted after by Big Tony’s flunkies and who dispatches them in ever more gruesome ways. In one scene, Serene poisons a guy, climbs on top of him and repeatedly slams the heel of her shoe into his eye, laughing maniacally as the camera lens is drenched with blood. It’s genuinely disturbing, something more fitting of a horror movie than a blaxploitation flick. That Serene is actually a man in drag is obvious to no one within the world of Jive Turkey--not even to Pasha, it seems. Are we, the audience, supposed to recognize that Serene is a man? I began to wonder.

Then, with a group of mobsters trailing her, Serene goes into her house, removes her wig, fake eyelashes and makeup, puts on a pair of glasses, a hat, and a suit and tie, and walks back out, transformed. She goes right up to the car where the mobsters are waiting, pulls out a cigar and asks for a light from the man behind the wheel. None of the mobsters recognize her. As she strolls away, we hear her trademark maniacal laugh. It’s a strange, subversive moment in an otherwise conventional film. What does it mean? Who knows?

#10: I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now?

2011-11-06T05:12:00.000-08:00

Drive In Movie Classics
Disc 3: Side A
1975

The animated title sequence and opening jazz score for I Wonder Who’s Killing Her Now? recalls, rather desperately, the Pink Panther series. No surprise, then, that Pete Sellers was originally cast in the lead role of Jordan Oliver. Unfortunately, Sellers suffered a heart attack before shooting began. The producers were unable to insure the actor and brought in Bob Dishy as a last-minute replacement. So it's a little ironic that a major plot point in the film concerns a life insurance policy. Is that life imitating low-art? Art imitating life insurance? Who knows?

The story opens on Jordan, caught embezzling $250,000 from his father-in-law’s company. That very same day his wife Clarice (Joanna Barnes) announces her plans to divorce him and cut off his allowance. Facing financial ruin, Jordan takes out a life insurance policy on Clarice for one million dollars with himself as the beneficiary. Then he hires local hitman Bobo (Bill Dana) to kill Clarice. The twist comes when it’s revealed the doctor who examined Clarice is a fraud, thereby invalidating the policy. Jordan sets out to stop the murder, but discovers Bobo has subcontracted the hit out to another assassin, who has subcontracted to yet another assassin, and so on. This sprawling cast of hitmen includes a doctor in monster makeup who talks like Bela Lugosi, a man in a nurse’s uniform, and Patlow, a broad Indian caricature played in tan-face by a white actor.

Director Steven Hillard Stern clearly intends this story to be incredibly madcap and zany, rather than the convoluted, pointless thing it is. Nearly every joke falls flat. Some stretch on and on only to end on the briefest, most embarrassing of punch lines. In one scene we see Jordan practicing a concerto on a grand piano for a charity ball that evening; soon it’s revealed a little person is playing the concerto on a tiny piano, rather than Jordan. Jordan’s plan is to hide the little person and his toy piano inside a bass drum that night and trick the guests into thinking he’s a master pianist.

“Just come in through the doggy door,” Jordan tells his cohort, “and watch out for the doggy doo.”

That’s about as sophisticated as the film gets. And because it’s a comedy from the mid-seventies, there’s an inevitable, unfunny dig at that passing fad known as psychiatry.

“If I told you I was going to kill my wife you wouldn’t call the police?” Jordan asks his therapist.

“I would not call the police, correct,” says the wild-haired, European-accented therapist. “I would let you kill her and then we would talk about it at the next session.

“And if I were to kill myself?” asks Jordan.

“That would be a different question,” replies the therapist. “You would not be able talk about it at the next session.”

Then a cuckoo clock goes off in the background. Since the movie isn’t nearly as funny or clever as it thinks it is, Jordan’s obsession with killing his wife is a little creepy. With better direction, subtler performances, a smarter screenplay, and a few decent jokes, this could be a decent black comedy--something along the lines of an early Mel Brooks picture. Instead, I Wonder Who’s Killing Her Now? is a long, unpleasant hour and a half spent with an unsympathetic, sociopathic, possibly psychopathic protagonist. Still, you can’t help but admire Bob Dishy’s straight-faced, unwavering commitment to every terrible gag he’s forced to take part in. Whether he truly believes in the character or whether he’s simply unwilling to show any doubt there’s something almost brave about his performance. The Indian characiture in tan-face? Not so much.

Anyone seen this dud? Would the presence of Peter Sellers have improved it? Or is it beyond saving?

#9: Savage Weekend

2011-10-17T01:52:00.000-07:00

Drive In Movie Classics
Disc 3: Side A

1976

Cheapo banjo music is for lovers of b-movies what the distant tinkling of the ice-cream truck is for children or what the shaking of a can of Pounce is for cats: An idiotic calling we are helpless to resist. As those first few notes are strummed, we find ourselves eagerly anticipating the menacing, slack-jawed yokels to come, the thirty-something yuppies traveling into the backwoods, the farm implements used as weapons, the chase through the forest, the ponderous dialogue about the true nature of man.

The opening credits of Savage Weekend, infused as they are with cheapo banjo music, would seem to promise all of these things. And indeed, the set-up is classic pseudo-Deliverance: Marie (Marilyn Hamlin), Shirley (Caitlin O’Heaney), Robert (Jim Doerr), Jay (Devin Goldenberg), and Nicky (Christopher Allport) leave the Big Apple and head to rural, upstate New York to spend the weekend at Robert’s cabin and check up on the progress of Robert’s half-built boat. When they arrive they find a dead bat nailed to the doorframe of the cabin, as if in ominous warning. They also encounter Mac (David Gale), who leers over his thick, 70s-mustache at the women, and Otis, local handyman, weirdo, voyeur and obvious red herring. Otis, Mac tells the gang, was in love with his cousin and brutally attacked her and her lover. By the time the killer, wearing a creepy Halloween mask, shows up, Savage Weekend seems to have moved beyond Deliverance into the territory of Friday the 13th and other slasher flicks.

And yet the film isn’t quite so straightforward. Take the character of Nicky. At first he seems like a stereotypical gay man, a lazy, sashaying punch-line. He walks into one of the local bars, winks and smiles at the burly lumberjacks and mill workers playing pool, and orders a martini.

“What the hell is that?” asks the bartender. Men in trucker hats stare threateningly at him. The viewer expects something terribly homophobic and un-PC to happen. Then suddenly, Nicky grabs a beer bottle, smashes it on the bar and holds the shard up to the neck of one of the men.

“You come one step closer,” he tells the others, “and I’ll make a bloody Mary out of his face. I was brought up in the South Bronx, sweetheart.”

After pummeling some of the mill workers, Nicky leaves, no longer the prancing stereotype he was when he entered the bar. Then there’s Otis, played by the great character actor William Sanderson in one of his earliest screen appearances. He’s impossibly young in Savage Weekend, yet as greasy, twitchy and shifty-eyed as ever. Like Nicky, Otis should be a bad, possibly embarrassing stereotype, yet Sanderson brings a near-Method level of authenticity to his mentally disturbed hick, as well as something else--poignancy, maybe. He transcends the one-dimensional--something Sanderson has done in Newhart, Deadwood and nearly every other role he‘s played. We see Otis, early in the film, crouched over a grave, mumbling to his dead buddy Clarence. Robert’s half-built boat, it turns out, once belonged to Clarence.

“But that son of a bitch don’t care nothing about your boat,” Otis tells Clarence. Otis has been hired by Robert to work on the boat, but he can’t seem to bring himself to finish the project, as if in deference to Clarence’s memory. It’s a surprisingly touching moment in the film--strange, but touching.

Savage Weekend is fascinating for other reasons, as well. There’s the long, slow buildup to the killing, which might recall the suspenseful but relatively subdued first half of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre if didn’t feature so many scenes of characters wandering around and discussing oblique, existential matters. In some ways, it’s like Last Year At Marienbad performed by a community theater--and with more brutal slayings. There’s also the simple fact that Savage Weekend predates the slasher movies it occasionally seems to be knocking off. The film, after all, was originally made in 1976 as The Killer Behind the Mask, a full two years before Halloween and four years before the unlucky camp counselors of Camp Crystal Lake; it was then released on video in 1981 to cash in on the popularity of the genre. There’s also a lengthy seduction scene involving cow udders, though the less said about that the better.

No discussion of Savage Weekend, however, would be complete without mention of its boom mics. Nearly every scene has at least one mic bopping down into frame over the actors’ heads. At one point we even catch a glimpse of the boom mic operator‘s hairy forearm in the corner of the frame. Later, we see some crew members in the background of one shot, looking over what seems to be a copy of the script. Is it amateurish? Sure. This was, after all, director David Paulsen’s first movie. Should all the obvious gaffes detract from the film? Probably. But somehow it doesn’t. You, the viewer, are actually witnessing the creation of this film as it happens. It’s as if you are there, with the cast and crew, trying desperately to piece together something, anything. Savage Weekend is, in many ways, an unclassifiable movie--tedious, scary, pretentious and low-rent all at once. There’s no real genre for it. The cheapo banjo music sets up certain expectations and the movie itself delivers something else entirely. Is it a work of art? Maybe not. Call it a work in progress, never to be complete.

Anybody else seen Savage Weekend? Am I overselling it? Got any favorite Deliverance knock-offs? Favorite William Sanderson roles?

#8: Mad Dog

2011-09-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

Drive In Movie Classics
Disc 2: Side B
1977

As Mad Dog opens we see Nanni Vitali (Helmut Berger) and three accomplices barreling out the front door of a jail. Not exactly the most elaborate of prison breaks, but it gets the film, also known as The Mad Dog Killer, Ferocious and Beast With A Gun, off to a propulsive start. The prisoners grab a guard as a hostage, steal a nearby car and speed off with the police in pursuit. When Nanni finds out the guard’s gun isn’t actually loaded he slaps the guard around and throws him from the moving car, apparently out of utter contempt. Later, Nanni and his shifty-eyed crew flag down another car being driven by a young couple, slap the guy around, rip open the woman’s shirt, hop in the couple’s car and speed off once again.

“I was afraid they were going to kill us,” the woman tells her boyfriend before looking into the back of the car Nanni left behind and seeing the bloody, battered body of that car’s driver. She screams and the film cuts to Nanni and the crew at a gas station, where they slap the attendant around, slap the attendant’s son around, steal some money from the register and speed off yet again.

At this point I started wondering if the film was going to keep introducing one-dimensional, peripheral characters solely so Nanni could brutalize them. It’s like an endless, repetitive fever dream: A man slaps another man around, gets in a car and speeds off. A man slaps another man around, gets in a car and speeds off. A man slaps another man around, gets in a car and speeds off.

Sure enough, Nanni and the crew find someone else to brutalize. They kidnap the police informer who got Nanni sentenced to twenty-three years in the joint and drive he and his girlfriend out to that staple of low-budget action flicks of the 1970s and 80s: The gravel pit. I’ve never actually been to a gravel pit in person, but through the magic of cinema I feel like I have. The mounds of gravel, the muddy ground, the overcast skies--it’s all so real to me.

Anyway, Nanni slaps the informer around, then drags his girlfriend off to rape her. How does the viewer know this is what he’s doing? Helpfully, the camera lingers on the rape for a long, uncomfortable moment. It’s here that I asked myself, really, what’s the point of Mad Dog? Are we supposed to be so disgusted with Nanni we can’t wait until he gets his comeuppance? Are we supposed to find him somehow compelling? The complete lack of psychological depth to Nanni is almost fearless on the filmmakers' part. And yet the experience of watching the character is wearying, pointless. The Poliziotteschi, the genre of Italian crime films to which Mad Dog belongs, isn’t necessarily known for subtlety or rich characterization, but Mad Dog is particularly crude. Are Nanni’s terrible deeds exploitative or is the film itself exploitative? I fear it’s a fine line. But what I fear most of all is that this film might single handedly end the moviegoer’s love affair with the gravel pit.

Anybody else seen Mad Dog? Have a different opinion of it? Have a better recommendation for Italian crime films? Any gravel pit favorites?

#7: Going Steady

2011-08-28T13:04:00.000-07:00

Drive In Movie Classics
Disc 2: Side B
1979

Going Steady opens on our protagonists--Benji, Huey and Bobby--cruising in their convertible through what looks like the classic-car-infested set of America Graffiti. It is, we presume, the 1950s.

“Hey now, look over there!” cries Huey. “There’s a good-looking girl!”

Soon after, the boys park the car and amble into a diner, where other youngsters are shaking their hips to the rock and roll blasting out of a jukebox. Huey snaps a girl’s bra strap. Uh oh, the viewer thinks. How integral will bra-snapping be to this plot? The viewer’s fears deepen as the boys pick up some girls at the diner, drive them out to the beach, strip naked and jump in the ocean, all the while trying to entice the girls to join them. Suddenly the girls’ boyfriends show up on motorcycles, snatch the boys’ clothes and speed off. Benji (Yftach Katzur), Huey (Zachi Noy) and Bobby (Jonathan Sagall) are forced to go home naked and face their disapproving parents, seeming to confirm the viewer's suspicion that Going Steady is yet another in the long tradition of films about the humiliation of young adulthood and the age old quest to get laid.

And yet it manages to rise above Porky’s and its countless rip-offs and sequels--Porky’s II: The Next Day, Porky’s III: The Day After Tomorrow, Porky’s IV: The Final Chapter, Porky’s V: A New Beginning, Porky’s VI: Jason Takes Angel Beach High School. The film leaves behind the silly gags to focus on Benji’s pursuit of his dream girl Tammy (Yvonne Michaels). He fakes a letter from the principal in order to get Tammy out of class. He holds up a sign asking Tammy if she’ll go out with him. He sits down across from her in a quiet library, pulls out a carrot, celery, bell pepper and other crunchy vegetables, and takes loud bites--much to the irritation of the other patrons. Tammy, however, is impressed, and agrees to go out with him. Yes, it’s still pretty silly, but there’s something charming about Benji and Tammy’s courtship. And as the movie progresses, their relationship deepens, they go through emotional highs and lows of young love, and, like the characters themselves, Going Steady seems to mature a little right before the viewer’s eyes.

But perhaps what distinguishes the film most of all is that, despite its American Graffiti-style milieu, Going Steady is actually set in Tel Aviv. It’s the second in the popular, long-running Lemon Popsicle series from Israel that predates Porky‘s and its ilk by quite a few years. In the Hebrew language version of the film, Benji, Huey and Bobby are Benzi, Yudale and Momo, respectively. Going Steady is simply a poorly-dubbed version of the original, Yotzim Kavua. Somehow, this adds another layer to what, at first glance, seems like your average teen sex-comedy.

Anybody else pleasantly surprised by Going Steady? Anybody seen the other films in the Lemon Popsicle series? Are they any good? How much bra-snapping is involved? Too little or not enough?

#6: Country Blue

2011-08-11T11:39:00.000-07:00

Drive In Movie Classics
Disc 2: Side A
1973

Country Blue opens with white text on a black screen:

SUNDAY, AUGUST 20th
VALDOSTA, GEORGIA
16 Miles North of Florida State Line
TEMPERATURE-102
HUMIDITY-96%

It’s a distinctive start to a distinctive little movie. I found it funny at first, wondering what the humidity rating would be for other films--The Godfather, Nashville, Star Wars. Then I decided I liked it. It was a nice touch. The time, the place, even the general atmosphere are all established in less than thirty seconds. It’s a storytelling device so efficient, so economical it verges on the postmodern, the self-aware.

The film then cuts to a stock car race on a red-dirt track. Pot-bellied, side-burned men and poofy-haired women watch on from the stands. Everybody’s sweating. What do you expect, what with the humidity? There’s a freeze-frame of an old-timer cheering on the racers and more text flashes on the screen, informing us the old-timer is:

J.J. “Jumpy” BELK
the man who raised. . .

The film cuts to a lanky, red-headed man in his twenties, freezes, and some helpful text explains:

BOBBY LEE DIXON
PAROLED: Sunday
August 19th

It’s a creative, almost playful opening, reminiscent in some ways of something Jean-Luc Godard would’ve done back in the sixties or Quentin Tarantino would do now. It reminds viewers of a time when b-movies often incorporated elements of more respectable, art house cinema--and vice versa. Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations like The Masque of the Red Death share more with the colorful, haunting imagery of, say, Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits, than they do most horror films of the 60s. Jeff Lieberman’s Blue Sunshine from 1978, which is about LSD-induced homicidal maniacs, calls to mind the paranoia-tinged thrillers The Parallax View and The Manchurian Candidate. Easy Rider is only one or two steps removed from The Trip or Psych-Out. B-movies nowadays can still be fun, but are generally artless. Take Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus or the oeuvre of Nicholas Cage.

The plot of Country Blue is pretty straightforward. Bobby Lee (played by the film’s director and writer Jack Conrad) has just been released from jail and wants to make a better life for he and girlfriend Ruthie (Rita George).

As he tells an old friend, “ I think I’m gonna go straight.”

“That’s the hardest job you’ll ever have,” the friend says. And indeed, Bobby Lee’s not back but a few days and he’s already starts hatching a plan to rob a small-town bank with Ruthie so the two can run away to Mexico.

“I’ve been here two days and I’m sick of this place,” Bobby tells Ruthie. There’s a loose, improvisational feel to the early scenes between these two. They argue, make up, then argue some more. The robbery itself is also quite interesting. Bobby Lee picks up Ruthie in his pickup truck. “You wanna get breakfast first,” he asks her. She says no, so they park, go into the store next to the bank and buy some bandanas to cover their faces. In the long, wordless scene that follows they come out of the store, sit on a bench between two elderly men, chat, and try on their bandanas while eyeing the deputy sheriff lounging on a bench across the street. Lazy, twangy guitar music plays on the soundtrack. After a minute or two, the sheriff looks up to see Bobby Lee and Ruthie are gone from the bench. A quick cut shows us they’re in the bank, bandana-clad with pistols raised. It’s almost purposely anti-climactic, as if the filmmakers were deliberately trying to undermine the suspense.

“Sir, you mind getting down?” Bobby Lee asks one of the customers in the bank. Everybody else is already on their hands and knees. The bank president Angus (David Huddleston of Santa Claus: The Movie infamy) tells Bobby Lee the customer is hard of hearing, and Bobby Lee asks Angus to convince the man to get down.

“Maywood, belly down to the floor. I believe this is a hold-up,” Angus tells the man calmly, repeating it once for good measure. It’s a funny scene, and again, almost purposely anti-climatic.

“To tell you the truth,” Angus tells Bobby Lee and Ruthie, “I don’t want you to do no shooting in here. We just had the place painted.”

Bobby Lee and Ruthie collect three thousand dollars and leave. Angus tries to rouse the near-deaf Maywood from the floor, but he’s fallen asleep. Bobby lee and Ruthie get a new car from Jumpy (Dub Taylor in the dirtiest t-shirt in film history) and take it on the lam. From here, Country Blue devotes most of its remaining time to the obligatory car chases between our heroes and sweaty, smirking southern sheriffs. But there are still a few unexpected twists. Bobby Lee finds out from a newspaper article that there was twenty thousand more dollars in the bank they’d robbed and convinces Ruthie to go back with him and get the rest. Angus isn’t too pleased to see them.

Too bad Jack Conrad didn’t direct any more films. He signed on as the original director of The Howling, but dropped out after conflict with the studio, and that was the end of his career. There’s something genuinely stylish and idiosyncratic about Country Blue, and I would like to see what he would’ve done with a better script, a bigger budget, fewer dirty t-shirts. Maybe he would‘ve been really successful. Maybe he would’ve launched some sort of influential, southern-fried new-wave movement. Maybe movie nowadays would all have a pre-credit humidity rating.

Anybody else seen Country Blue? Did I oversell it? Or is it, indeed, a lost semi-classic? More importantly, what t-shirt gets your vote for dirtiest in film history?

#5: Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride

2011-07-31T11:37:00.000-07:00

Drive In Movie Classics
Disc 2: Side A
1974

British horror films of the 60s and 70s tend to fall into two categories: The good and the swinging. Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride was an attempt by Hammer Studios to bring the vampire legend into the modern age. While the modern age for early to mid-70s horror films often consisted entirely of mini-skirts, floppy-haired-heroes and a swinging jazz score, Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride, also known as The Satanic Rites of Dracula, offers a bit more.

The film opens on a satanic ritual being conducted in a sprawling manor in the English countryside, where the hooded participants are preparing to sacrifice a young girl. “Thus, by the 6000 terrors of Hell are you anointed,” the girl is informed--which by some standards is pretty flattering. Most sacrificial virgins are lucky if they’re anointed by two or three thousand terrors; very few ever receive the full six thousand treatment.

Meanwhile, a badly wounded man who had infiltrated the cult but whose true identity as a secret service agent had been discovered, escapes from the manor. His superiors bring him back to the headquarters, which is full of sophisticated, high-tech equipment like reel-to-reels, slide projectors and the obligatory wall-sized computers with blinking lights. Yet the contrast between the primitive ritual we’ve just witnessed and the then-modern technology is quite striking. It’s almost eerie, in fact, to think the supernatural could creep into the modern world so easily, a motif that will return throughout the film.

“Tell me more about this ritual,” one of the agent’s superiors demands.

“They seem to take strength from their own blasphemy,” the agent mutters. Luckily, he had managed to take photos of four of the cult members, who all turn out to be influential members of British society--a government minister, a peer, a general and a famous scientist. To help them tackle the cult, the secret service brings in floppy-haired Inspector Murray (Michael Coles) from Scotland Yard, who recommends they contact Professor Mortimer Van Helsing, played by the great Peter Cushing.

“He really knows about the occult, the black arts and. . .,” Murrary says of Van Helsing with an ominous ellipses.

“And what?” says one of the agents.

“Other things,” Murray replies cryptically.

As it turns out, Van Helsing knows the famous scientist in the cult, Julian Keeley (Freddie Jones), and decides to pay him a visit. He finds Keeley working on a mysterious formula and babbling to himself. “Evil rules. Evil and violence are the only two things that hold any real power,” he’s saying, completely failing to hide his cult-member status.

From there, the film takes off, as Van Helsing discovers his old nemesis Count Dracula (Christopher Lee) is behind the cult and that the mysterious formula is a new, deadly strain of bubonic plague, with which the Count plans to wipe out the human race.

“With only disease and dead bodies to feed on surely the vampire himself would perish,” Inspector Murray says to Van Helsing.

“Perhaps deep in his subconscious that is what he really wants,” Van Helsing replies. “An end to it all. He is a cursed immortal existing on violence, fear and dread. Suppose he yearns for final peace--then he’d want to bring down the whole universe with him. The ultimate revenge. Thousands dying of the plague, and like the shadow of death itself one figure sliding its way through the terror and anguish: Count Dracula. It is the Biblical prophecy of Armageddon.”

It’s a disturbing, psychoanalytical take on Dracula that fits right in with the dark, paranoia-tinged tone of the film. There's an ever-present feeling of dread in Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride, a distrust of government, and an end-of-the-60s vibe that calls to mind films as disparate as Night of the Living Dead, Easy Rider and The Parallax View. In other words, the movie brings the vampire legend into the modern age--and it does so with minimal mini-skirts and go-go boots.

Any thoughts on this gem? Where does it fit in the Hammer horror canon? Is this one liked by fans? Favorite Dracula? Favorite Blacula?

#4: Day of the Panther

2011-07-16T04:35:00.000-07:00

Drive In Movie Classics
Disc 1: Side B
1988

Day of the Panther opens in China, where we witness our hero Jason Blade (Edward John Stazak) and his partner Linda Anderson (Linda Megeir), undergoing their initiation into the secret Order of the Panther. What is the Order of the Panther? you ask. Linda’s father William (John Stanton), a current Panther member, is on hand to provide some helpful voiceover:

“The ancient and secret order of the Panthers,” he explains, “combine the most vigorous training in the martial arts with a high sense of correct behavior and Zen mastery of the self.”

As it turns out, William, Linda and Blade are also all vaguely-defined secret agents, who are trying to get evidence of an equally vaguely-defined deal between the Triad and an Australian crime syndicate.

“Undercover surveillance is the most dangerous game we play,” the voiceover interjects. “Jason and Linda played the most perfect professional team. Then came the night that would change all our lives.”

We see Linda in a big, puffy, bright orange blouse and Blade in an ugly sweater and whitewashed jeans sneaking into the Triad headquarters. They’re not dressed as discreetly as you might expect from such seasoned agents, but maybe such garish clothing counted as discreet in the late 80s. Whatever the case, they’re the professionals. They must know what they’re doing, right? Well, the way they go about scooting and shuffling through the headquarters, ducking around corners and craning their necks around doorways, you might wonder. Linda crouches behind a couch to take pictures of the deal going down, while Blade peers at the villains through the glass of a terrarium. They’re soon spotted by the Triad, and a martial arts battle ensues.

Blade and Linda escape unscathed, and Linda travels to Perth to present the evidence to the Australian authorities. Unfortunately, she finds herself in that staple of 80s action movies, the abandoned warehouse. She's attacked and killed by a group of the mob boss’s henchmen, who are all, for some reason, wearing animal masks--an odd, little detail that would be creepy were not for the jeans and sweaty tank-tops they’re also all wearing. Not only that, but the suspense in this scene is undermined by repeated and unnecessary cuts back to Blade arriving in Perth by plane. We all know James Bond darts from one exotic locale to another, but we don’t need to see him sitting and looking at his watch impatiently as his plane slowly taxis down the runway and pulls up to the gate. On top of it all, Blade is clearly flying coach, detracting from the aura of glamor most secret agent movies strive for. Lucky for us, though, Blade didn’t check any luggage, so we’re spared a long scene at the baggage claim.

Day of the Panther picks up after this excruciating scene, as Blade infiltrates the crime syndicate and begins to take his revenge for the death of his partner. The majority of the fight scenes are well-choreographed, no surprise since the film was directed by Australian genre vet Brian Trenchard-Smith, who helmed Stunt Rock, Escape 2000, Dead End Drive-In and BMX Bandits, among many, many others. It’s obvious he knows his way around a cheesy action flick. As an added bonus, the DVD of Day of the Panther boasts the crispest presentation of any 50-Pack movie yet. Most movies in these sorts of collection are transferred so poorly and are so badly cropped you can barely make out the actors on screen. This one looked like a real, genuine movie, rather than some strange, murky, forgotten home video only you and the editor have ever seen. And if the countless kung-fu battles bore you, don’t worry, there are a handful of awesomely bad moments.

Take the random and pointless scene where Blade is pumping iron in the gym and a be-spandexed, feather-haired woman walks in, pops a cassette tape into a boom-box and commences to Flashdance.

“That looked great,” Blade compliments her afterwards. “You move very well.”

Anybody else seen Day of the Panther? Any favorite silly moments? Any favorite Brian Trenchard-Smith movies? Mine's gotta be Dead End Drive-In.

#3: The Creeper

2011-07-09T07:33:00.000-07:00

Drive In Movie Classics
Disc 1: Side B
1977

Obviously, the easiest way to enjoy the 50-pack is by lowering your expectations. That way a truly terrible film like Twister’s Revenge! will seem almost like a strange, noble failure, a completely forgettable piece of junk like Devil With Seven Faces will become an adequate time-waster, and half-way decent fare like The Creeper (also know as Rituals) will seem like some sort of little masterpiece. Outside the confines of the 50-Pack a horror movie like this might not warrant a second glance; but here, in this context, it’s pretty interesting.

The plot concerns five doctors on a trek in the Cauldron of the Moon, a remote wilderness area where, we’re told, the Indians believed the moon bumped into the earth. “The Cauldron’s in the middle of nowhere,” says the grizzled pilot who drops them off by hydroplane. Undeterred, the doctors arrange with the pilot to be picked up in seven days, hike a couple miles, and set up camp for the night.

Around the fire they discuss the possibility of starting a practice together, the merits of organic grafts and the morality of assisted suicide. Their doctor-ly banter gets a bit tiring after a while, but you have to appreciate that the filmmakers were trying to create an authentic rapport between these characters, who are all supposed to be old friends and colleagues. Not only that, but it’s refreshing in a horror movie to see people other than your typical libidinous teenagers. And, as the patient viewer will discover, this talk of morality becomes important later on.

In the morning, all the doctors shoes are mysteriously missing, except one pair--those belonging to DJ (Gary Reineke). He decides to go look for help while the others, left with no other choice, stay behind. But that night they discover on the outskirts of their camp a deer’s head impaled on a spike, planted there, it seems, as if part of some strange ritual. Who could’ve done such a thing? The Blair Witch wouldn’t come on the scene for another twenty years, so it’s anybody’s guess. Understandably freaked-out, the four remaining doctors wrap cloth around their bare feet, pack up their bags and set off into the woods, all the while being stalked by someone or--cue the ominous music--something.

This is where the movie gets interesting. At one point during their flight, the doctors stop to pose for a photograph--a decision that leaves them sitting ducks for their pursuer. And yet this foolish choice doesn’t feel like part of the trend in horror movies to have characters explore dark basements, undress at inopportune times or do any number of stupid, unnecessary things when they should be concentrating on getting the hell out of there. Here it feels somehow authentic. It’s part of human nature, even in extreme situations like this one, to take our own safety for granted. Who wouldn’t stop to snap a few quick photos of your exhausting, shoeless journey, if only to prove when you get home that it really did happen? That you might not make it home at all wouldn’t seem possible.

Still later, there’s a very suspenseful scene in which the men have to cross a roaring river, the bottom of which is, unbeknownst to them, lined with bear traps. And as the film progresses, we come to understand that all the campfire talk of surgery, assisted suicide and morality was a way to show us what lengths each character is willing to go to survive. What you expect to be a low rent Canadian Deliverance when you first pop open your 50-pack and put the DVD in your player proves to be quite an effective little thriller. Now if only we could apply the same 50-pack formula of low-expectations to the rest of life we’d never be disappointed.

Anybody else pleasantly surprised by The Creeper? Was it too Canadian or not Canadian enough? Any recommendations for other obscure Deliverance knock-offs?

#2: Devil With Seven Faces

2011-07-08T11:33:00.000-07:00

Drive In Movie Classics

Disc 1: Side A

1971

Next up is The Devil With Seven Faces, which is less a thrill-free Italian thriller from 1971--though it is that--than a cavalacade of bad, early 70s fashions and tastes. We first glimpse our heroine Julie Harrison (Carroll Baker) leaving a party, where the guests are wearing some of the most hideous outfits imaginable, including a patchwork dress that looks to have been hastily stitched together from the remnants of other, equally hideous dresses. The combined power of all this pea-green, mustard-yellow and puke-orange fabric is staggering. Things get even more dated from there, when we realize Julie is being clumsily stalked through the shadows by a man in a loud, ill-fitting tweed-suit. All of which is to say nothing of the oversized, day-glo table lamps and rotary phones on display throughout the film, which you can't help but gaze at in a stupor the way the attention of small infants are automatically drawn to any nearby bright, shiny object.

In some ways I felt bad focusing so much on the garish clothes and hairstyles while watching this movie. After all, it's not really the movie's fault that it was made at a time when restraint and good taste were rare commodities; if anything The Devil With Seven Faces acts a a time capsule, a somewhat accurate depiction of its era. Or is it? These were the sorts of questions I found myself asking as yet another sweaty, unshaven man accosted Julie and accused her of stealing a diamond from his boss, mistakenly believing her to be her twin sister.

"Mary and I are twins," Julie explains to a friend at one point. "I mean identical twins. But just physically. That's as far as the resemblance goes."

Yes, such riveting dialogue is typical of The Devil With Seven Faces, usually delivered as the characters lounge in shag-carpeted living rooms, sip coffee and enjoy long puffs on their smooth, satisfying cigarettes. But the excitement doesn't stop there. We also get quite a bit of footage of people parking cars, getting out, closing the door behind them, walking to the front door of houses and then--spoiler alert--knocking on the door. Stay tuned until the very end, though, for an obligatory, unsurprising plot twist of the sort expected in a movie involving twins and mistaken identity, followed by an endless final shot of a plane taking off into a hazy sky.

And yet, watching The Devil With Seven Faces wasn't quite the miserable, begrudging chore I've made it out to be. Such dull, uninspired movies are a necessary part of the 50-pack experience. Through their sheer incompetence and insipidity they make the few semi-decent movies in the collection seem all the better, even elevating heretofore dire fare like the comedy-less comedy Twister's Revenge! to so-bad-it's-good status. Though I nodded off a few times during the middle of The Devil With Seven Faces, I somehow felt rejuvenated after watching it, optimistic that the next movie will be marginally better. It’s almost cathartic enduring such pain. It’s like the gloomy hopefulness of a bad day at work--there’s no way tomorrow can be any worse.

Anybody else seen this snooze-fest? Did it put you to sleep, too? Thoughts on the 70s decor?

#1: Twister's Revenge!

2011-06-18T17:09:00.000-07:00

Drive In Movie Classics
Disc 1: Side A
1987

Most people don’t have particularly high-standards for movies about talking, computerized monster trucks. Yet no matter how low you set your expectations for the 1987 laugh-free comedy Twister’s Revenge!, it somehow finds a way to startle you with its sheer ineptitude. You sense this as soon as the title flashes on the screen and you see that big, bold, yellow exclamation point. Such punctuation in movie titles is meant to suggest excitement, a boundless comic energy, wacky shenanigans to come. Airplane! remains the high-water mark of the exclamation point school of comedy. Hot Shots! is pretty good, too, while the exclamation point in Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! is sardonic and purposely incongruous. The exclamation point in Twister’s Revenge!, however, only punctuates the film’s desperation. An ellipses trailing off into nothingness would do a better job of establishing the tone.

The title fades, the soundtrack fills with cheesy, fumbling power-chords that sound like they were learned the day of the recording, and we are treated to an extended montage of a dirty, low-rent county fair. If you ever wanted to see sweaty, unshaven men in trucker hats riding the Tilt-a-Whirl and clambering around in the sort of grimy ball-pits typically reserved for children under four feet, then Twister’s Revenge! is the movie for you. For the rest of us, it’s a bit unsettling, especially when we realize the three dimwitted men--Kelly (David Alan Smith), Dutch (Jay Gjernes) and Bear (R. Richardson Luka)--are our protagonists (or maybe antagonists, it’s never quite clear). During a long scene in which we get to watch the trio watch a monster truck show, they suddenly, for no apparent reason become suspicious of the headlining truck, Mr. Twister.

"Go down and check that out," Kelly, the ringleader, orders Dutch.

"Me?" Dutch whines. "I can't."

"Why not?" Kelly wants to know.

"Because I split my pants," Dutch confesses--a comedic high never again reached by Twister's Revenge!. Not only that, but like Ophelia's death in Hamlet this great pants-splitting tragedy happens off-stage--a truly odd choice for a lowbrow comedy. Imagine if a Three Stooges short consisted of Larry, Moe and Curly sitting down and calmly discussing how they had once poked each other in the eyes at a different, unseen location.

Before we can dwell on this any further, we are introduced to Sherry (Meredith Orr), scientist and inventor, who humbly explains to her fiancé Dave (Dean West) how her creation Mr. Twister works.

"All I did," she says, "was integrate the artificial intelligence system with the internal logic unit."

"Enough of that computer talk," Jack replies. "You know it gives this cowboy a headache."

Imagine if Sherry applied that great mind of hers to combating global warming, curing cancer or simply unlocking the mysteries of the universe, rather than to monster truck technology. But alas, as with Stephen Hawking and his robotic jet-ski Sir Tsunami, her talents are wasted. As it is, Kelly, Dutch and Bear decide to kidnap Sherry, apparently in hopes of getting Mr. Twister for ransom, though it's never quite clear what their intentions are. Soon they've surrounded the rusting camper-van where Sherry and Dave, now wedded, are spending their honeymoon, consummating their marriage beneath a pile of musty blankets--which is vaguely unsettling. In movies this low-budget you sometimes get the impression everyone involved in the production is related, so watching these two kiss is like walking in on two of your cousins secretly making-out at a family reunion.

This doesn’t deter Kelly, Dutch and Bear, however, who enact their master plan, which entails shaking the camper van really hard until the back door flies open and the couple inside tumble out. Sherry is captured in the ensuing confusion and hidden in an abandoned mineshaft. Dave and Mr. Twister must then team up to track her down, a quest that consists entirely of Mr. Twister racing across flat, barren, muddy landscapes and occasionally rolling over the rows of conveniently-placed, dilapidated Cadillacs that appear out of nowhere. At one point Bear, running for his life, ducks into an outhouse--helpfully marked Shit House--solely so Mr. Twister can run it over. Not only that, but much of this action is shot in fast-motion, which is to lazy comedy-filmmaking what the exclamation point is in Twister‘s Revenge!: An act of desperation. When in doubt, the old adage goes, get zany.

Unfortunately, bad comedy doesn’t offer the same campy pleasures that bad sci-fi and bad horror movies do. For aficionados of the so-bad-it’s-good style of cinema, the more inept the dialogue, acting and plot, the greater the laughs. For proof, look no further than the other titles in the oeuvre of Twister's Revenge! director Bill Rebane. He’s responsible for Monster-a-Go Go and The Giant Spider Invasion, two ultra low-budget turkeys that provided some of the best riffing-material for the crew of the Satellite of Love in Mystery Science Theater 3000. You can’t help but laugh at the lack of competence in such movies. But how can you laugh at the lack of anything to laugh at in a film like Twister’s Revenge!? What’s funny about the unfunny?

Yet the movie isn’t a complete waste. Midway through there is the sort of odd, disconcerting moment that I search for in films like Twister’s Revenge!, where the terms good and bad become almost meaningless. It’s a musical interlude by Lulu and the Lovebirds, set in a grungy biker bar where three be-spandexed women of varying degrees of doughy-ness gyrate halfheartedly to a weak rock-guitar noodling. It's so embarrassing for everybody involved--even the viewer--you can only stare in disbelief. Is this hilarious? you wonder. Depressing? Hilariously depressing? Or depressingly hilarious?

At this point the filmmakers almost seem to be challenging you not to ridicule them: So what if we're a bunch of unappealing, unfunny people who made a tedious, mind-numbing comedy in the late 80s? Does that give you the right to mock us? Does that make you better than us?

We, the audience, can no longer criticize Twister’s Revenge! as if it were made in a vacuum. Real, live human beings created this ungainly thing. They took a risk and failed so miserably it’s almost noble. Not bad for a movie about a talking, computerized monster truck.

Any thoughts on Twister's Revenge!? Anybody else seen this dud? Did it meet your expectations for a movie about a talking, computerized monster truck? Did it exceed them?