The Tall Man glaring at Reggie, who insists on wearing a pre-tied bow.
Phantasm (1977) begins bootaciously, with bared bobbing boobs and grunting, gasping graveyard gropes.
Then the demonic dame stabs the prone putz, for no apparent reason, and we cut abruptly to somebody’s funeral, where Jody, who has authentic late 70s helmet hair, is talking with Reggie, who doesn’t.
Usually I like a film that makes no sense, but this turkey acts like it does, and this is confusing. Even CACA has rules.
So the upshot is this: The Tall Man (played by the immortal Angus Scrimm) runs a funeral home which is a front for a supernatural outfit that is taking the recently deceased, turning them into little malevolent dwarves in capes, and shipping them through a portal to be slaves in a world with eternal cold and crushing gravity.
Yes, the doomed are heading off into the America of President Barack Obama.
We have: Car chases; six breasts; yellow blood; flying orb thing that drills through some guy’s head; absolutely no story to interfere with the plot; terrific hair continuity problems; relentlessly horrible theme music that is the same as “Tubular Bells” from The Exorcist except the phrase goes up, not down.
This gets a “Ffffffft” from Fast-Forward Freddy, and a lone coil from me.
The Cinema - Where Have You Gone, Kevin Cronin?
April 30th, 2008
“You can never give/The finger to the blind…” Yeah, but you can annoy them with endless stupid questions.
Circle of Iron is the film that answers the question “Whatever happened to the REO Speedwagon haircut, as practiced by insipid lead singer Kevin Cronin?”
Answer: It bulked up, bought a loincloth and set off into the wilderness to seek the Book of Knowledge.
Cord (Jeff Cooper) is a wandering weirdo. At the opening of the film he is participating in a fighting contest supervised by Roddy McDowell. You could repeat this scenario today and call it Ultimate Wizard Fighting.
Anyhoo, Cord cheats, sort of, and Roddy gets to utter the immortal words: “Morthond wins.” He says this with all the enthusiasm of a fat guy on a diet reaching for another rice cake. So Morthond, who looks like he should be in a low rider in Albuquerque, not roaming the barrens with a sword, sets off to find Zetan, a sort of Scientologist who guards the Book of Knowledge.
And Cord, like the big ol’ lovable puppy dog he is, just follows along after him, so when Morthond runs into the Monkey Man and is mortally wounded Cord’s available to help him commit hari-kiri.
That’s what friends are for.
Moving in and out of all this stunning mise en scene is The Blind Man (David Carradine) who can kung fu an entire gang of thugs without a whole lot of trouble. He also plays the flute. Cord decides Blind Guy shall be his teacher, and he annoys Blind Guy with his constant yakking.
So Cord has to go through all these trials - the Monkey Man, Chang-Sha and what the credits list as “Death” but what really looks like David Carradine dressed as a cat. He has sex with Chang-Sha’s ninth wife, who gets crucified for her trouble, and comes across Eli Wallach, submerged in a big vat of oil in the desert. (The exchange between Cord and the Man in the Oil is worth the NetFlix fee.)
Eli Wallach demonstrates the latest in operant conditioning
Finally Cord gets to the island, meets Zetan (Christopher Lee) and the gang, and finds the Book of Knowledge, which is not what he expected.
Summary: Automatic one coil deduction for no nudity. David Carradine, made up as a monkey, in a loincloth. Roddy McDowell, dressed in a bathrobe and a pointy white hat, saying “Morthond wins.” Extras from “Planet of the Apes” to make Roddy feel at home. Kabuki belly dancers and the world’s worst rhythm section, courtesy of Chang-Sha, desert chieftan (also played by Carradine). Crucifixion of pretty wife. Unpleasant thought about what the fellows on the Island of Peace do for fun, besides tend the roses. Eli Wallach indulging in the world’s most extreme Temptation Removal Procedure (TRP). Gratuitous wooden flute music that doesn’t match the soundtrack.
Circle of Iron, with its ponderous pseudo-Zen platitudes and mock-heroic structure should be just another lame sword ‘n’ sorcery epic, designed for the eighth grade market. It’s just good enough to escape that fate and earn three-coil status in the CACA pantheon.
At 102 minutes it’s also short, which helps.
The Cinema: Equinox! Get Yer Equinox Here!
April 7th, 2008
Acting on a tip from the Lakeville Journal’s Ryan Snider, I obtained the super low-budget Equinox from NetFlix and right away realized where Sam Raimi got a lot of his ideas for The Evil Dead. I mean, look at it: well-meaning professor gets hold of ancient book of the occult and foolishly reads the spells aloud as he translates from the Sumerian. All Hell breaks loose. Well-meaning students blunder into situation, discover all H. breaking loose, and die in unusual ways.
The special effects for Equinox are spectacular, given they had a budget of about $8000 (in 1967). For the giant-menacing-the-smarty-pants scene, the actor playing in the ogre stood on a picnic table; the actor playing the wisenheimer was several yards away, aligned for the camera angle. To get the “ground” right, the right color dirt was placed on a piece of plywood, which was then propped up next to the picnic table.
The Criterion Collection DVD two-fer has the original version and the later theatrical (read: drive-in) release, with extra footage shot a couple of years later and some additional plot to get in the way of the story. The later scenes are noticeable: the longer sideburns on the men are a bit of a giveaway, and the young blonde lady doesn’t fit her Capri pants quite as well.
Fans of WKRP in Cincinnati might recognize Frank Bonner (who played Herb in the TV series). He’s the one with the sideburns.
Summary: Four stupid white people; one berserk scientist; one evil book; one weird park ranger/demon; assorted monsters, including giant house-eating octopus (tentacles only), ogre, flying red devil, minor league King Kong; one disappearing castle; one Zone of Doom; gratuitous shots of girl’s bottom in Capri pants; reporter in porkpie hat; fat shrink in lab coat. Groovy LA teen stuff. Incredibly slow speed limits. Lots of scrambling up hills. Grimace sex.
Three coils.
Grimace sex
Demonic monster or Tennessee Titan? You decide.
Pam Grier, Mostly Nekkid Avenger
March 20th, 2008
In Coffy (1973) the great Pam Grier makes her debut as a star, shooting up large numbers of creeps in the process.
And shooting up is what it’s all about. Coffy is a nurse whose little sister is strung out on heroin. Enraged, she acquires some armaments and proceeds to take out those responsible.
And she does all this while mostly naked.
Her victims, blinded by gazongas, are mostly unaware of the terrible fate that awaits until it’s too late. (Nate.)
Think about it. You’re a drug kingpin, your jacket has enormous lapels and you wear it in public without the slightest bit of self-consciousness, you’re thinking everything is cool and you’re about to horse around with this nice-looking lady and - BOOM!
It would be a particularly nasty way to go.
The plot isn’t as idiotic as it sounds. Coffy’s investigations eventually lead her back to her low-life politician boyfriend, who is in the sleaze up to his neck. She lets him have it in an extra-sensitive area, but hey, he told the bad guys to kill her not two hours earlier. Plus he had another girl upstairs. Fair’s fair.
An even dozen hooters. Cat fight between hookers, with food. Incredibly Jewish actor pretending to be an Italian mobster, with mixed results. Heavy-handed political satire, with mixed results. Intensely cheesy soundtrack, with lots of wah-wah guitar, with poor results.
As good as it gets in the blaxploitation genre. Four coils.
Video clip of hooker catfight.
The Giant Sucking Sound of Jess Franco
February 25th, 2008
Jess Franco’s Killer Barbys vs. Dracula is an unadulterated piece of doo-doo. It fails on every level: inane rock video, puerile vampire spoof, cure for insomnia.
An exploitation film can and should be many things, among them: Disgusting, tasteless, shocking, revolting, shameless, prurient, bestial, idiotic, and poorly lit.
Once in a while a schlocker is actually pretty good; very occasionally close to brilliant.
But an exploitation film cannot be boring.
And this is.
The only item of note is that hanging around with Jess Franco hasn’t done Lina Romay any good, as a look at her in her Transylvanian KGB outfit demonstrates:
Killer Barbys vs. Dracula is the suckiest movie in the entire history of suckinessdom.
Zero coils.
FEH