#24: In Hot Pursuit

Drive In Movie Classics
Disc 7: Side A
1977

Wacky, circus-style music plays over the opening credits of In Hot Pursuit, struggling mightily to establish a tone of pure and unadulterated zaniness that is immediately undercut by the very first scene, in which two pilots mutter disinterestedly to each other as they slowly bring their pot-filled plane in for a landing in a field somewhere in rural Georgia. Waiting for the plane are drug-runners Oosh (Don Watson), his Bad Company t-shirt-sporting brother Boosh (Don’s real-life bro Bobby Watson) and a couple other long-haired, too-tight-jeans-wearing, Doobie Brothers-roadie-looking-types. When the plane lands Oosh and Boosh hand off a sack full of money to the pilots and load the grass into their musty Winnebago. That’s when the fuzz shows up.  

“Jesus Christ!” cries Boosh in his thick Southern drawl. “Here come the damn po-lice!” Cue a protracted backroads chase--In Hot Pursuit’s raison d’etre--involving the Winnebago, half a dozen cop cars, a Cadillac-driving old-timer, and an oblivious, burrito-eating trucker who continues chowing down even after accidentally swerving his eighteen-wheeler across the road and slicing the roof off Oosh and Boosh’s RV. Eventually the boys are apprehended and brought to the local jail, whereupon Mr. King (Paul Weiner), the sweaty, thick-necked head of the drug-smuggling operation, calls in his sweaty, thick-necked associates to devise a prison break. Their brilliantly idiotic plan entails landing a helicopter on the roof of the jail, where the boys just happen to be repairing an air-conditioning unit (who knew maintenance work was such a big part of serving time?) under the watchful eye of the sheriff. As the copter descends, the boys knock the sheriff out, grab onto the copter’s landing struts and are whisked away.      

This, inevitably, leads to more chases; double crosses; an armored car heist; multiple cops bellowing slight variations on the line, “That’s the car we got a lookout on! Let’s get ‘em!”; incongruous musical cues; some extended bed-lounging; a miraculous plane-landing in the middle of the forest; and a belabored comic set-piece consisting of a massive double-wide being transported down the highway atop a flatbed, an out-of-control, dope-filled tractor-trailer, and repeated cuts to a drunken, barefoot yokel inside the double-wide napping on a dirty cot.

Between this sort of desperate humor, the largely incomprehensible dialogue, Mr. King’s wood-paneled office that looks more like one-time director Jim West’s step-mom’s rumpus room than it does the headquarters of a major crime syndicate, and the delightfully low-rent credits (one of the actors is billed simply as Big Jim, another as Mrs. Oxly), In Hot Pursuit has a scuzzy, homemade charm to it not unlike that of fellow southern-fried Fifty Pack classics Twister’s Revenge and Country Blue. Add to it the fact that the movie, also known awesomely as Polk County Pot Plane, is loosely based on one of those strange-but-true news briefs--in August 1975 drug smugglers cleared out a 1000 foot landing strip on Treat Mountain in Georgia and against all odds landed a Douglas DC-4, a plane designed for runways of 3000 feet or longer--and the whole thing seems imbued with a goofy, over-the-top sense of local pride. Then there’s that badass claim at the end of the movie--No stuntmen were used in this film--which makes Oosh and Boosh’s car-crashing and helicopter-dangling antics all the more impressive. In some ways, the movie seems like something your inebriated, hirsute, redneck uncles--you know, the ones that let you play with fireworks when you were a kid and sip from their cans of Bud Light at family BBQs--might’ve cobbled together back when they were still young, a little crazy and their ambitions extended beyond long, hazy afternoons on the couch watching NASCAR.

#23: Don't Open Till Christmas

Drive In Movie Classics
Disc 4: Side B
1984

As far as yuletide horror flicks go, there’s only one bona fide classic: 1974’s Black Christmas. The rest are like an inedible brick of a fruitcake, a lump of coal in the bottom of a stocking, an unwanted pair of socks under the tree, and other assorted overused Christmas-themed metaphors I’ve decided to use up in one go. This undistinguished subgenre ranges from the passable--Christmas Evil--to the sleazy--Silent Night, Deadly Night--to the Hulk Hogan-starring--the-not-technically-horror-but-still-pretty-horrific Santa With Muscles. Add to this sorry ilk the plodding British slasher Don’t Open Till Christmas, which features a plastic Santa Claus catching on fire and melting over the opening credits--just in case you didn’t, you know, get the point.

Next we’re treated to a lame-ass office Xmas party with costumed revelers shimmying halfheartedly to a limp disco beat. Backstage the boss sits in front of a mirror, fretting over his Santa costume. His daughter Kate (Belinda Mane) comes in and slathers some makeup on his face. “I shall look like a gay old queen,” he bemoans before trudging out front to deliver gifts to his weakly-boogying drones. Almost immediately a mysterious masked figure appears and thrusts a sword through the poor homophobic bastard’s skull.

Cut to Chief Inspector Harris (Edmund Purdom) and Detective Sergeant Powell (Mark Jones) of Scotland Yard, the bickering, unpleasant, somewhat dimwitted duo assigned to the case. “It was the costume he was wearing,” Powell explains to Kate. “He was the victim of another Santa murder.” Cue a ragged-looking Saint Nick in a darkened alley roasting a batch of chestnuts over a grill. Suddenly the killer appears behind him and shoves his face down on the hot coals, after which the ill-fated Claus improbably bursts into flame. This is how the rest of the movie goes: Harris and Powell putz around--“Do you think we might have a psychopath on our hands?” Harris dimly wonders at one point--then another Santa is abruptly dispatched, then Harris and Powell putz some more, then yet another doomed, anonymous Kris Kringle is slain without even the slightest attempt at suspense-building.

Who could be behind these murders? Is it Giles (Alan Lake), the snooping, shifty-eyed loner who falsely claims to be a reporter? Is it Inspector Harris, whom witnesses pointedly remark is the same height as the killer? Or is it Cliff Boyd (Gerry Sundquist), Kate’s slimy, flute-playing, subway-station-busking boyfriend who tries to convince Kate--remember, her father was just skewered before her very eyes--to pose for a couple topless photos at his equally slimy buddy’s studio? Or perhaps the better question is: What idiotic, nonsensical, pseudo-Freudian motive will Don’t Open Till Christmas give its Santa slayer?

Really, there’s only one worthwhile scene in the entire thing. Late in the film, a drunken Santa stumbles out of a pub and hops on a rickety bike, only to be harassed by the least threatening gang of local punks ever. “Pedal power!” one of them calls out. “You’re drunk!” observes another. Santa flips the punks off and the punks give chase. “Stop pedaling, mate,” one of them politely requests. Eventually this Santa, too, will be abruptly and unimaginatively murdered. But as the giggling group of mohawked goofs scramble after him--all that’s missing is a jingle-bell-tinged rendition of “Yakety Sax”--Don’t Open Till Christmas seems like some forgotten, so-bad-it’s-good gem. Considering how dull and dispiriting the rest of the movie is this brief bit of absurdity is like a freakin‘ Christmas miracle.    

#22: Voodoo Black Exorcist

Drive In Movie Classics
Disc 6: Side B
1973

Let‘s get this out of the way now: Voodoo Black Exorcist only delivers on a fraction of its convoluted, haphazardly-constructed title. One third of it, to be precise. The movie opens in the distant past somewhere in the Caribbean, where hulking shaman Gatanebo (Aldo Sambrell) kills some scrawny, balding little guy in order to defend the honor of his beloved Kenya (Tanyeka Stadler). The action then shifts to an exotic ceremony full of sudden zooms and jarring close-ups of chanting, writhing, grass-skirted natives, who behead Kenya, toss around a papier-mâché lump that vaguely resembles Kenya’s head, and then slaughter Gatanebo in apparent retaliation for the murder of their clansman.

All of which is sort of voodoo-y, I guess. So there you go. There’s the voodoo in Voodoo Black Exorcist. At no point in the movie, however, does exorcism come into play. As for the black part of the equation--well, that, too, is up for debate, considering the actors playing Gatanebo, Kenya and even the balding, algebra teacher-looking man from the prologue all seem to be Caucasians in black face.

In other words, a title as ridiculously lurid as Voodoo Black Exorcist can only disappoint. No surprise there: Misleading titles are a b-movie tradition. But can Voodoo Black Exorcist deliver some abrupt, largely incomprehensible narration (another b-movie tradition almost as rich and storied as misleading titles)? Fear not: Just take a gander at this baffling bit of anti-poetry, which plays over a shot of Gatanebo’s sarcophagus and which rivals Plan 9’s speechifying Amazing Criswell for sheer goofiness:

“Happenings in life repeat themselves,” our narrator tells us. “Within a thousand years, two thousand, Gatanebo will seek Kenya. Blood will be spilled. Terrible things will happen again. And everything will start again. Begin again.”

Cut to stock footage of rockets blasting off into space. Cheesy psychedelic rock guitar-noodling is heard on the soundtrack. Apparently, it’s now the present day, circa 1974. Gatanebo’s sarcophagus has been discovered by a collector and is being transported aboard a luxury cruise ship populated almost exclusively by sweaty, cigar-smoking men with receding hairlines and poorly dubbed exotic dancers, one of whom--Sylvia (Eva Leon)--looks a lot like Kenya, sans black face. Naturally, Gatanebo comes back to life. He, too, is sans black face. In fact, the actor’s noggin is now slathered in thick gobs of putty makeup, making him look like a low-rent knock-off of Boris Karloff--a minstrel mummy, if you will. .

The second act consists almost entirely of slow-motion flashbacks of Gatanebo and Kenya frolicking on the beach, interspersed with shots of Gatanebo wandering the ship’s decks and occasionally beheading passengers. One of these passengers resembles Kenya’s killer and Gatanebo sneaks into Sylvia’s cabin to dangle the bastard’s head over her sleeping form. “Your killer is dead,” he intones flatly. “I bring proof of my vengeance oh Kenya, most beloved of women.” He then sets the head down beside Sylvia and slowly backs out of the room.

See, deep down Gatanebo is a romantic, prone to grand, irrational acts of love and spouting nonsensical, pseudo-blank-verse in the style of the film’s infrequent narrator. “The sea is beautiful, isn’t it?” he asks Sylvia at one point. “However, there are many creatures in the center of the earth who have never seen it. Imagine how they’d feel, if put here now. That’s how I felt when I found you again.” Truer words have never been spoken, at least not by a moldering, sentimental voodoo-killer.