Awash in Intended Failure...

I have started any number of themed essay series on the Pylon (The Shark Film Office; I Tolerate Short Shorts, etc.), but I am apparently terrible with maintaining them for any length of time. An eager and perhaps overly excited opening post or two, and then I zoom off to the next wicked brainstorm. Looking through the log of posts on my Blogger Dashboard, I see innumerable drafts for entries in what seems a score of these series which I never completed. As a result, like a dictator discovering a pit of bodies he forgot to have his minions cover over, I have decided to spend a little time in cleaning up the bloody mess. Or at least catching up on completing a few, if not all, of these drafts. Well, a dictator would just have those same minions clean up the mess. But I don't have minions. Yet.

There are going to be a handful of entries in my “Yeah, I Sat Through It Again…” series coming up in the next couple of weeks, and before I fill up the Pylon with them, I wanted to respond to a question a friend of mine asked me recently. After reading an ancient post in the series I had written about Lee Majors’ hilariously stumble-footed The Norseman, he inquired, “If it’s that bad, why would you watch a film like that again?”

Yes, “Why?” indeed… I thought The Norseman, which I actually saw in a theatre, was crap even back in my Lee Majors/Six Million Dollar Man-worshipping youth. So, why torture myself anew? The answer is exceedingly simple and obvious. I watched that film last when I was but a teenager – sadly, nearly thirty years ago -- and the Cinema 4 Pylon is a journal about myself now. The reviews and essays are meant to reflect how I see the world, both real and cinematic, today. (And before you ask the next obvious question, which is "How full of yourself are you?," let me state that this site has always been meant as a working notebook. My needs are met first. Your involvement in, enjoyment of, ennui at or fury at my writings are, combined, secondary to my goals, which sometimes include crashing through or outright renovation of my psyche.)

However, part of the processes of self-reflection and introspection involve peeking into one’s past or youth, and understanding how one’s point of view either changes or doesn’t with the onset of supposed maturity. As I have noted before, up until I was about 16 or so, I loved every goddamn movie I saw – it didn’t matter what quality it was as long as I was watching it. That age was the point where the video revolution truly took hold in my personal world, and suddenly I had a wealth of material to explore. The side effect was that I began to develop some crude form of critical sense. Up to that point, I mainly knew about movies like Citizen Kane and Casablanca through books and scripts at the library – forget being given the chance to actually see them. I was a Bogart fan solely through a couple of books on film noir, not from ever watching The Maltese Falcon. With video, I was free to explore, free to delve into any genre I wished. Books stopped being my main source of entertainment, and suddenly I could expand my movie mind as far as the ever-growing crop of new releases would allow me.

I still watched crappy films like The Norseman. In fact, since 90% of what comes out in any form of entertainment is garbage, domestic or foreign, I was seeing more crappy films than ever. But, by churning through more and more garbage, mixed with those slight portions of excellence, I was more able to ascertain their worth than I was before I actively set out on my own cinematic path. At least, I was able to start developing my own critical process. Most of my friends probably would not agree with me on that, but the whole point of developing a critical process of one's own is that it is distinctly yours.

No one sees the world like you do, even if we all look at the same things at the same time. If ten people see the same accident, chances are that if they were taken into separate rooms and interrogated, each one will give a different version of the events that unfolded. Different people will point out different details; some will likely even think a variety of different parties were at fault. These same differences lie in our reactions to film. Those same ten people can see the same film and they will all break slightly or wildly in their answer to a simple question: "Did you like the film?"

Even the older teenaged mind, and especially the residual memories from that youthful time, are not something on which one should rely. Time wounds all heels, as it were. Memories fade even as they may grow rosier. One’s ability to judge can change desperately from an earlier time, hopefully more on the good side than the bad. And my teenaged self can have seen the same films as my fortyish self, but our answers are going to be different. We might even both say we liked the same film, but the viewpoint of the older is going to have more on which he can reflect or at least issue some form of educated response, while the teenager will tend to concentrate more on the immediate and the superficial -- the Wow and Pow Factor. (We both, however, really enjoy nudity and monsters... so some things will never change.)

If the Pylon is supposed to reflect my mindset now, then I cannot simply accept my feelings towards films I saw in my youth as my overall truth for eternity. I have to watch those films again and judge them through today's scope. I have a very dear friend who mocked me once because I had changed my opinion on a film that I had stated sincere affection for just a few years earlier. I had no problem with the mocking -- it's what my friends do with each other, myself included. What I had a problem with was the notion that I was not allowed to change my opinion once I had stated it. The notion was that I was unable to evolve my sense of criticism or my sense of art in general. This notion is to me almost as bad as censorship, and I believe this notion can extend its slimy fingers outward to explain just how societies succumb to intellectual inertia so easily; how we accept ancient, unverifiable myth as gospel truth, and attempt to stymie reason and equality through fear and injustice.

If you are wondering if I have gotten off the track somewhat, perhaps I have. But if I rail against even my dearest and closest over an innocent remark over a stupid film, then you might have some slight idea of the battle I have with myself every day. A mind that is simultaneously locked in the superficiality of the teen, the innocence of childhood, the failure of adulthood, and a need to know ever more about everything, while each distinct rupture of that psyche engage in constant battle with an even more cynical, gnashing creature that grips ever tighter about my skull. It screams at all of them in different voices, but each one equally arrogant and haughty, and all saying the same thing relentlessly: "Why bother? What's the point?"

And that is why I am watching all of those crappy films over again. And writing about them. At least, until I have minions.

Spout Mavens Disc #11: Manda Bala [Send A Bullet] (2007)

Director: Jason Kohn
Kilo/City Lights, 1:25, color, Portuguese/English
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

Just like the once seemingly lost battle I fought for far too many years in the past regarding watching films in widescreen ratios (and because its the generally the same group of people griping about both), subtitles seem to vex a lot of Americans. They don't want to have to read when they go to the theatre, and it appears that most of them would really like to do it even less at home on a much smaller screen. (Hell, I think a lot of them just don't want to read, period.) Nix the subtitles then, my friends, and watch it dubbed. But please don't complain or mock the film when the dubbing doesn't sync properly or makes the film look cheap. You got us into this mess with your phobia of being forced to read off a screen. Or maybe you prefer the dubbing, Americans, so you don't have to hear someone speak a language other than English. Anything, you say, just don't remind us that there are other cultures outside (or even inside) our borders, or that there is anything going on outside of our increasingly sheltered country.

My own knowledge of world cinema is, I hope, better than the average person, and I never shy away from subtitles. In fact, I adore them. But despite this, I must make an admission. The bulk of my foreign film watching is derived from seven places (I am not counting primarily English-speaking lands in this), in order: Japan, China, France, Russia, Germany, Sweden and India. Of late, Korea has been pulling up to the pack. But Brazil? One of the biggest countries in the world? What have I seen from there? I have four fingers on my right hand, and each finger accounts for a single Brazilian film that I have seen up until the point that Manda Bala landed in my mailbox late last week. The four fingers add up to City of God, which I think everyone with even the slightest interest in cinematic excellence should see, and three of Marins' Coffin Joe horror flicks, of which I feel the opposite (though, speaking for sick little me, I dig them). And that is it for Brazilian films for me. Comparatively, I've seen nothing at all.

Of course, I have seen films which have taken place in Brazil (The Emerald Forest, for example), or involved the country in them for a handful of scenes or referenced in dialogue, often for people fleeing to the country for some nefarious reason. (I suppose that I could add Brazilian erotica into the mix, but then that wouldn't leave the fingers on my other hand free...) And I have seen the occasional television program dealing with the rain forest. But these images are fleeting, and except for City of God, no real sense of the people or the political workings of the country can truly be derived from them.

Until Manda Bala showed up in the mailbox and became the thumb on my right hand. Though it is not actually a Brazilian film by creation -- it is a documentary directed and largely produced by Americans -- it has done just as much to allow me to see the true nature of Brazil in a way that only City of God has done for me. Not only did it open my eyes to concepts that I had heard fleetingly about but had never really considered deeply -- kidnapping as a business -- or concepts I had never considered at all -- the cottage industries, like bulletproof cars and plastic surgeons who specialize in building new ears for kidnap victims from their own rib cartilage, that spring up as a result of kidnapping becoming a business -- but it introduced to my crowded head the concept of frog farms. As in, farms that specialize in breeding frogs for eventual devouring by humans.

Seriously, I knew people ate frogs (or at least, frog legs), but not on my watch. It's just something that has never happened around me. Not that I am against one of my friends eating a frog around me, and even last weekend at the OC Fair, there was an open opportunity for it to occur. It just hasn't happened, and frankly, it's not something which I am going to do myself. I'm at peace with amphibians of all stripes. I like holding them or petting them once in a while, but that's it. As a result, I had never really considered that anyone would make even a halfway decent living raising or shipping them, outside of the pet industry.

Manda Bala not only starts us off at a pretty well-sized frog-farming outfit, and shows us details of the farming along with interviews with the slightly befuddled proprietor of the establishment, but it also uses the frog farm concept as an overall metaphor for the state of the poor in Brazil as a whole. It's a metaphor that you are going to have to sit through the credits to fully ingest, but it's a strong one for sure. I was slightly reminded during the frog butchering scene at a restaurant -- and please beware of it, my weaker-stomached friends, if the idea of seeing living frog throats cut, bodies stripped of skin, and the eventual weirdly composed shot of a trio of decapitated, almost smiling frog heads on a counter makes you feel wiggy -- of the rabbit-skinning scene in another more famous but equally provocative documentary, Michael Moore's Roger and Me.

Though completely different in style, I was reminded of it in more ways than one, because like Moore's film, Manda Bala is also a tale of corruption and the deep and abiding rift between the classes. Here the similarities end, because this film is a far more violent tale in the end, and perhaps more complex. A tale of squandered opportunities and laundered monies. A tale where the rich take advantage of the poor economically, but the poor in turn take their own physically direct (and eventually, mental) advantage of the rich via the violence of kidnapping or outright murder, and where those in between often become the nouveau riche by taking advantage of the entire situation.

To be fair, the film is stacked against one politician in particular, Jáder Barbalho, a lifelong mover and shaker from the state of Pará, who resigned from his role as President of the Senate to avoid impeachment after facing numerous corruption and embezzlement charges from his critics. Nothing major though... just the disappearance of, oh, I don't know, a billion dollars from a federal developmental agency, SUDAM, with which Barbalho had major pull. One of the accusations against him is that he helped influence numerous phony SUDAM projects through which much of the missing money was laundered. And one of these projects -- surprise, surprise -- is a frog farm. (See? I never would have even thought to launder money that way.)

I will go no further, for there is much to discover for those interested in delving into a deeply fascinating, though rather confusing, film. It sometimes does seem like director Jason Kohn has bitten off a little too much, but somehow it all pulls together. There are interviews with victims of the kidnappers, one of the kidnappers himself, and the people who profit from the violence. We see how bulletproof cars are built, the different steps in farming those omnipresent froggies, and get some amazing footage from the ear-replacement surgery. We see some of the harrowing footage sent by the kidnappers to their victims' families (themselves victims in all of this, now that I think of it), including one of the men getting a section of his earlobe lopped off. It might seem quaint with its gentle opening at a frog farm, but this is not a film for the weak of heart. It's is a film suffused with -- if not actually showing it in most cases -- the violence at the core of a culture which has found it necessary to turn deeper towards it for survival. Such is the history of man, I suppose. And Brazil's history, more than ever, is everyone's history.

And all the more reason for those that shun subtitles to quit complaining, brother, and shut up and read. Or learn to read. Or learn to speak Portuguese. Whatever you have to do to be able to see one of the most fascinating if not bizarrely constructed documentaries I have ever seen. (I won't bother to tell you it's in widescreen, too, because I wouldn't want to stack the deck against you seeing it.)

Clarification... or Dead-Horse Beating... You Decide, but I'm Shooting the Horse Before It Turns Zombie on Us...

The other day, I went off quite wildly over my frustration at a would-be zombie comedy in the Western vein, Undead or Alive. My disappointment was couched mainly in terms of the film most likely becoming some form of cult film despite not really being worthy of gathering a regular, loyal audience, either by intent or execution. I appreciate that someone out there cares enough to bring a genuinely wacky idea to the movie-going public. It would just be nice if that someone cared enough to make it genuinely entertaining too, if not at least halfway into that territory known as "good."

It used to be that cult films -- or midnight movies or whatever you prefer to call them -- it used to be they had to earn their stripes. Good or bad, they at least had to bring something truly bizarre, often forbidden, and sometimes surreal to the audience. Many times they would be specific genre entries just barely stylized enough to separate in a minor way but uniquely from their precursors. The best of the lot presented entirely strange, foreign worlds that their mostly fortunate viewers would never forget. Many times these films would overtake the very dreams of their viewers. These were the films that I cherished. The ones that did not let you go. If I seem harsh on the current batch of would-be contenders to the Crown of Cult, it's because I remember what these films used to be like.

Eraserhead, El Topo, Pink Flamingos, even the by-now overseen Rocky Horror Picture Show... good or bad, all of these were so out-of-left-field for their times, and often so bewildering for any time, it is easy to see what brought their devoted bands of outcasts and weirdos to the theatres night after night. The schlock horror flicks that grabbed their loyal factions: the ones I like or at least appreciate, such as Spider Baby, the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the Last House on the Left and the Hammer films, and the ones I don't, like Bloodsucking Freaks or most of Jesus Franco's list (I make special exceptions for his films with the gorgeous Soledad Miranda, Spanish girl of my dreams). The silent cult (of which I claim membership, especially Keaton and Murnau), that continues to dream of when the only words appeared on title cards (an art in itself, it turns out; it's something you will only learn if you learn to read, modern citizenry). Indifferent to them or otherwise, what I don't deny them is that I understand how they gained such loyalty, and I recognize the uniqueness of even the ones that I dislike.

And then there are the filmmaker cults: Hitchcock, Lang, the Archers, Dreyer, Godard... It's hard to truly discern what makes an individual filmmaker invoke such loyalty from an audience. The answers are as disparate as the styles of the filmmakers themselves. What makes me swear devotion to anything Wes Anderson does, even if I, like many others, have begun to sense that he is beginning to unravel before our eyes? Or is his artistic vision meant to convey this sense, even if he really is not unraveling? Maybe we are the ones that are unraveling, and his films have actually remained constant. Whichever way I take it, I doubt I will ever miss one of his films, and I will return to Rushmore especially -- one of the few films of the past two decades truly deserving of a devoted cult following -- for the rest of my life, unraveling or not.

Even if you are a cult filmmaker, or a filmmaker with a cult following, you still cannot purposefully make a cult picture. The audience has to come to you. They have to either by instinct or accident (do truly bizarre, special films give off pheromones?) discover your film, and then your film has to follow through on the exotic promise they are sensing for a cult film to be born.

The problem today is that too many people -- given the instant pulse that the preponderance of media has borne in us -- are trying too hard to create cult films. My pal The Working Dead mentioned in a comment to the previous post his disappointment in Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter, a film whose title promised at least a wacky good time, but is executed in such a half-assed way that it could almost be a Troma film (another group that specializes in cult immediacy, and which, more often than not, actually fails. Go ahead, get pissed off -- even I love Toxie).

I don't have any idea if the Glasgow Phillips and his production team purposefully set off to make a cult film when they created Undead or Alive. Surely, given that they were making a zombie flick, The Evil Dead's success story had to come into the discussion at some point. I think my final point would be that if you are going to at least dabble in an area which could potentially land you in cult territory, at least make a more than scatterbrained attempt to do it right. Just a few decent scenes could have turned Undead or Alive's fortunes around for me. The same holds true for Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter, a much more low-budget affair which I believe I described a while back as seeming to be shot by the Canadian version of my group of friends in Alaska. Clearly, it was being made on even more of a lark than Phillips' film, and in hit-or-miss ratio, it might actually be better. And probably even more ambitious. I don't like either film, but if the Jesus film actually gained a real cult following, I would groan but I would understand that there is a odd, scrappy charm to it where I wouldn't complain when others drank the Kool-Aid.

But with Undead, I would make the afflicted watch every single better zombie film there is (and that would be a good amount). Then, just to give them a basic Western sense, I would make them watch Rio Bravo, Stagecoach, Once Upon A Time in the West and at least one of Ford's Cavalry trilogy. Then, for Western comedy, I would make them watch Blazing Saddles and Keaton's Go West. And then I would ask them if they understood just how simple it would have been to make this film just halfway entertaining, if the filmmakers weren't so lazy. I don't care if the filmmakers had to steal outright from these films; use a few basic set-ups and then fill in the blanks. Whatever, just make some attempt beyond the obvious. Don't take the easy way out of every scene.

And then, whatever their answer would be to my entreaties, I would kick them in the nuts. And they would appreciate the nut-kicking too, if only because that seems to be more in line with their actual sense of humor.

See how catching it is? No matter how much I fight them, they are bringing me down to their level...

The Woes of Inappropriate Cultiness: Undead and Alive (2007)

Director/Writer: Glasgow Phillips
Odd Lot/Image, 1:32, color
Cinema 4 Rating: 4

Not all cult films are created equal. Some earn their cult status by being sharp, tight little films that push and fight and scrape their way to gathering a dedicated audience of eventual diehard fans. Despite their often miniscule budgets (and let us not discount the rare, occasional larger budget production which gets waylaid by the press and public until they eventually come to their senses and realize what they have missed) and despite some obvious small flaws, these films can often represent what is best about filmmaking: originality, spontaneity, and the raw talent of unproven but eager to impress filmmakers. The best of these films truly deserve the discovery and recognition, and sometimes even the most suspect of these films can still be fun and gritty delights and worthy of their pocket audiences.

Undead or Alive is going to be a cult film, but it will not be of the first variety, nor will it be of the lesser second variety. It will fit into a third, possibly broader category of films whose small perhaps absurd uniqueness will allow them to capture an audience but are in the vast majority of ways wholly undeserving of the attention.

Make no mistake. In this viral Internet-dominated culture, Undead or Alive is going to find an audience by the single ingenious thing its creator brought to the table: zombie cowboys. Sure, sounds great. Even those not given to zombie flicks might think, “Hey, I’ve got to see that!” I am given to zombie flicks, and I said it. Not that zombie cowboys are an original idea -- I will mention another older film from 1988 called Ghost Town, which, yes, has "Ghost" in the title, but its chief antagonist is very much the revived dead* -- but it's high time someone gave it a full-on, decent shot with loads of zombie mayhem crossing paths with the denizens of the Old West. Let us imagine for a few seconds that very someone who might give such an undertaking a decent shot, and the way they might approach some of the chief areas of fan interest in the film:

Male Lead: If it’s a cowboy flick, you’ve got to have a gunslingin’ hero. A little world-weary, a little “seen it all”, and with a hidden heart of gold. Definitely a crack shot with just about any type of firearm, but especially a Colt .45. Doesn’t have to be a proven lead, but maybe a TV actor looking for a goofy role in which he can flex other acting muscles besides banging Teri Hatcher and popping pills. You could do far worse than James Denton in the part. He’s rugged, he’s handsome, he’s got that two-days-unshaven look (even after just a few hours) and he talks a little bit out of the side of his mouth. And he’s from Tennessee, so he can get a decent drawl on if he has to. For a low-budget horror film, this could be a good break, and for him, with a halfway enjoyable effort, a slow rise through the indie hero ranks.

Sidekick: He’s got to be smaller (or if bigger, then fatter) than the hero, he’s bound to be annoying, but he also has to be able to collect a hatful of laughs here and there. I’m not a Chris Kattan fan, though I will admit he was the only thing I even halfway liked in Monkeybone. His Mango and Mr. Peepers on SNL a few years back cracked me up on occasion (esp. with Garth Brooks and Vince Vaughan, respectively). So, if he were available and looking for just above scale to begin making what to some might seem a comeback (but what is actually him still trying to break big to begin with), I’d dish out some cash. Give him some pistols, a horse, and an ill-suited cowboy outfit, and let the antics begin. He can't mess this up if he tried.

Western Hottie Dept.: This movie needs a girl, but true to the modern post-Buffy form, she’s got to be able to kick a little zombie butt herself. She can’t be content to be rescued in the old school way, whether or not this is a western. More than most genre, Westerns stick to formula. Audiences like formula, but they also like ass-kickin’ chicks. So, we might as well make her an Indi—er, Native American. Must remain politically correct, especially if we are paying the proper obeisance to the idea of the ass-kickin’ hottie. It all ties in together. (Hey, we can use that stance in the film! It'll seem edgy... and making her a Native American allows us to add yet another dimension by which we can upend Western myths throughout the flick... even if we manage to not really tie that attitude to anything else in the script.)

Music: You know what would cool? Get a band that sort of sounds like they are doing a bar band knockoff of Bon Jovi in their semi-acoustic fake-Western phase and have them do a spoofing semi-remake of Wanted: Dead or Alive, their theme song from Young Guns. And we can name our film Undead or Alive to boot, and the match-up will be perfect. Done right, this will add even another twist to our crazy zombie comedy. Of course, this all demands on getting a band so bland and that plays so... well, zombie-like, that it kills any wacky zest the music might otherwise add to the film.

Tone: Oh, yes. Did I mention zombie comedy? Yeah, there's no way anyone is going to take this seriously for two seconds -- so we might as well go for it! That way we can cut back on creating makeup for the zombies that is too realistic or even plausible (we especially want to replicate that "living human eyes behind a zombie mask" look), and it gives us free reign for copious amounts of ridiculous arterial spray and brain eating. Of course, many a normal zombie film gets by on just these two items, but if we are going to be a comedy, we'll need something extra. Hmm... Jokes, jokes, jokes -- yeah, we are going to need them. Luckily, we've got a ringer in our court: our director worked on the sixth season of South Park as a staff writer. We've got this thing in the bag...

Back to reality... Perhaps sometime in the future, someone will hire James Denton in a similar Western hero role, and perhaps there will be a sidekick for Denton who will bring amusement to the audience with some genuine comedic ability beyond just being clumsy, and perhaps they can even present a combined spoof Western and zombie movie tropes and bring a smile to a vast crowd (and not just the wholly uncritical and easily amused) with their knowing bending of those time-honored and seemingly beloved cliches. I wish, I wish, I wish that I knew Undead or Alive was something akin to a first draft, or maybe a collection of first or second takes that somebody weaved together as an on-set joke that got out to the Internet which someone slapped onto DVD.

There is just so much dead space in this film (no pun intended), and while there are intermittently clever lines, it's not enough to truly capture anyone's interest that isn't just looking for a passable time-filler. I never look for time-fillers, so maybe that is my fault. It also may be my fault to have expected too much from this. Months ago, during the writer's strike, when I saw a feature on TV showing Denton and Kattan filming this movie, it genuinely intrigued me. Enough so that when I saw the title pop up on Netflix, I immediately grabbed it. And I even threatened to make Jen -- of whom it is nearly impossible to convince to watch any form of horror film, even though she loves the Evil Dead films -- watch this if it turned out to be even halfway decent. So, the true test of this film became -- apart from the horror quotient, for which I would be the barometer -- would Jen think it was amusing?

She would probably not wish for me to speak for her in most cases, but I do know that she trusts me enough to know that I am not going to purposefully steer her towards a dull time. I know what she likes, and pretty exactly too, and Undead or Alive would fall directly into the lame horse category for her. She might chuckle a couple of times, but I know the other 95% of the film would have her sighing and checking the timer on the DVD player.

For myself, I will now speak of that which disappointed me directly: everything I set up earlier. Before I do go on a rampage, let me state that sitting through this is not a total wash. There are about a half dozen good lines, Denton is solid in the lead even if his character is not fully thought out on paper (something which can be said of most of the characters in the film), Kattan can be charming for a few seconds at a time, and the hottie is definitely hot-looking. Comedian Brian Posehn is his usually goofy self (albeit as a loving zombie father), and its nice to see Matt Besser from the Upright Citizen’s Brigade again (as the main zombie/sheriff). There are chunks of time where the film starts to feel like it will turn into a cult film that truly deserves an audience. And then that dead space pours back in to drown us in ennui, and to soak the entire thing in a shroud of disappointment.

One other thing that must be touched on: the tenuous South Park connection. The DVD itself is quick to point out how the film is created by one of the writers of South Park, but never making clear he is not one of the creators of South Park, which is a far, far different thing. Of course, we are now possibly entering a period where we will get flooded with “from one of the makers of South Park,” such is the case with the upcoming Hamlet 2 release, where one of the co-writers is Pam Brady, a former producer and writer for the show. The intention, naturally, is to make the fans of South Park believe that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are involved somehow in these productions, because they are justly famous/infamous for smart, innovative and often shocking ribaldry. And because they think the audience (which is true in many cases, it seems) can't read the quickly flashing credits at the end of the ads. Or just can't read in general. These productions might scream that this is not the case, but come on… you know it’s true… It’s the reason films are called “Wes Craven Presents…” even if Mr. Craven merely did a flyby on the project, and had little or no input at all on it, just garnering yet another executive producer’s credit. (And, in most cases, if he had done more than a flyby, maybe they wouldn’t have stunk so badly…) The marketers know that implication is half the game; get a prospective audience believing that a name they trust is somehow involved, and start printing the money.

The DVD is also quick to point out that the creators of South Park are in no way involved with the production of Undead or Alive in some text that appears at the beginning of the “making of” documentary. It is apparent, though, that Mr. Phillips is quite reverential of his old bosses, both in what he says in the doc, and also by some of the gags in the movie. A far too long dialogue bit involving the Colorado River seems inspired by Parker’s Cannibal! The Musical, though the Phillips version comes nowhere close in impact. There are a variety of gross-out gags that would fit right into the South Park mindset, but are so telegraphed as to be ineffective. It’s hard to point what, if anything, he learned from his time on the show from that which is on display in Undead or Alive. (Apart from scripting gross-out gags, which even G-rated films these days seem to be full up on…) And the phrase seems inspired comes into play throughout the film. In fact, I almost get the feeling that this is a zombie comedy where the chief creator of the material seems to have little handle on either the zombie or comedy portions of the film.

I charge the makers of this film with Scripted Laziness, for confronting the audience with a promising premise wherein the screenplay and resultant filming will only allow things to be carried “so far.” This much, and no more… Any joke is fine as long it seems like a joke. No joke will be carried through to its logical (or, preferably, illogical) conclusion. Kattan fumbling his guns and shooting them awkwardly will suffice for slapstick, but don’t dare (or just barely) allow any real payoff in these scenes. There will be a couple of scenes where the characters will speak in a more modern tone, seeming to make politically correct hash of the mores of the Old West period, but none of it really ties in much with the rest of the film, and consistency in either character or tone is anywhere to be found. I am sure there was a lot of fun on the set – hell, I would have loved to be on this set – but it really doesn’t come through in the finished product. Instead of spirited cast interplay, so much of it simply seems like actors waiting for other actors to get through their lines, so they can get to the next shot as quick as possible.

Why? Why criticize that which is meant only to be the lightest of entertainments? I’ve read defenders of this and other similar films, which strive only to be pass-the-time amusing or diverting, and often the pose taken by their defenders is one of “if you feel the need to tear this down, then you need to get a sense of humor.” Or something to that effect. I think the phrase is the fake movie critic's version of "check yourself before you wreck yourself." (Seek out IMDB, or any movie site for that matter, for its prevalence...) I will let their own words speak to the need for these crybabies to seek out their own form of emotional surgical implantation. I would also suggest that from the evidence of this film, then these people may be the reason the creators of Epic Movie, Superhero Movie and Meet the Spartans are able to make a living. Undead or Alive is certainly above that level of mediocrity, but the film itself is still evidence that the standards of its defenders are not all that high.

I would further use the slightly elevated status of Undead or Alive over those one-joke blunders as the very reason why entertainments like this should be criticized: because Undead or Alive actually had potential... as a premise, as an entertainment, in its casting, and yes, in its writing. This one could have been the very deserving cult film that it will surely become... undeservedly.

[*Some will quibble over the fact that the film is titled Ghost Town, not Zombie Town, and so the lead creature must be a ghost cowboy, not a zombie cowboy. I own a VHS tape of the film (it is not on DVD as of yet), have watched it a few times, and the creature is clearly more of a zombie than anything. If you doubt me, I turn to Jamie Russell's sublime history of Zombie Cinema, Book of the Dead, where he doesn't take these things lightly at all. He describes it as a "zombie ghost" and further calls the film "just about the only zombie western ever made." So there... nyaahh!]

Dr. Horrible Needs YOU!!!

Pals and Gals (and those Buffy and/or Firefly fans amongst them):

I do this viral stuff NEVER, so have a little faith in me and DO NOT take this lightly for even two seconds!

Do yourself a favor and go here immediately:

http://www.drhorrible.com/

If you care about the following things: Joss Whedon, Neil Patrick Harris; Nathan Fillion; super-villains; musicals; unrequited love in the laundromat -- and these are all things which I do -- then this is something you are going to want to see.

Act I went up on the 15th; Act II this morning; and the final act will go up on the 19th. After the 20th, the whole thing disappears. Be sure to read Joss Whedon's Master Plan page as well.

If we can't have Firefly or Buffy back (onscreen, at least... there are the comics), then we just have to take what we can get. Luckily, this is pretty damn great. Evil IS on the rise!

Your Friendly Neighborhood Boogieman aka Rik Tod

Spout Mavens Disc #10: Summer Palace (2006) or Lou Ye, Lou Ye, Me Gotta Go...

Yihe Yuan [Summer Palace]
Director: Lou Ye
Chinese, 2:20, color
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

I am nothing in this world, and I am too much for this world. How shallow everyone must be to never realize how unfathomable I am. How can they not know that I am unknowable? Is that unreasonable of me? Don’t dare to ask…

I am given a DVD of Summer Palace, but I have already seen The Unbearable Lightness of Being a dozen years ago, and so I don’t see the point. I watch it anyway, and find that I am alternately this and that. Don’t ask me what “this and that” are; they could be one or the other, but each are as much a mystery to me as myself, and therefore, not only would I never understand, but you would never understand either. And now, out of both of our confused states, we will sleep with each other, and then I will cry for some unknown reason in the darkness. And you will still never understand.

Out of an oath of fealty to the art of nudity, I continue watching Summer Palace. This is an easy oath to fulfill, as there seems to be some form of sex scene every 14.2 seconds in Summer Palace. The female lead is most fetching, and that too makes the oath easy to fulfill, and also easy on the eyes. But I can never understand her need to fill her unknowable sadness with increasing amounts of confused, empty sex. And yet, she can never, outside of having empty sex every now and then, be with the man whom she claims is “standing on the same side of the world” with her.” Why? Why ask. You would never understand, she will never understand, and… Damn it! What do you want from her anyway? Can’t you see she’s sad? And naked… again…

All of this starts out before the Tiananmen Square riots, and then once they happen, we are supposed to possibly understand how irrevocably the events of that incredible summer changed the lives of these people, especially the sad, naked girl. Or not. Honestly, I didn’t get the impression that any of them really dwelled upon Tiananmen Square later at all or even at the time. They probably pretty much ran around with sparklers and made out while it was happening (hard to tell with the whirling cinematography), and since no ever talks about it in the film outside of a couple of almost parenthetical references, there is almost a genuine feeling (and mind you, I am certain this is completely off-base but I am merely stating that it is simply a feeling) that the rest of the film was made first and then the director decided that his film just needed a touch more political material, so he shoots an additional Tiananmen scene. Then people can write about how touching it is that these characters have been so changed by this earth-shattering tragedy, and how their worlds are torn apart, and how everyone in her little collegiate group spins about terribly on their respective axises, and the sad, naked girl ends up getting even more sad and even more naked.

I discover between several pauses for bathroom breaks, leg stretching and dog-walking that the problem of Summer Palace is one of constants. All of these characters essentially remain the same. Especially the sad, naked girl, around whom everyone seems to spin. It's hard to tell why, since she is clearly a nutjob from scene... well, maybe two or three, and she hardly veers from that path at all in the course of almost 2 1/2 hours of not particularly deep soul-searching and smoldering looks of frustration. Maybe it has more to do with the nakedness and less with the sadness that people seem to flock to her. Sure, she actually does get nuttier and nuttier throughout the film, at one point curling up in a ball in an empty swimming pool while her voice intones how lost and sad and slutty she is, even while pining for a love she can never fully claim because, damn it, she is just so obsessed with her own inner sadness. But she starts out at such a high level of fucked-upness, and little explanation is given why, that litle sympathy can be engendered. She is clearly one of the most self-obsessed losers in film history.

And if you can point to me the moment in the film where anything that happens at Tiananmen Square actually affects her in any way -- because she is so consumed with her own craziness, that there is no way she was probably even aware it meant anything at all -- then you must be a similarly styled headcase. Better sleep with that guy over there right now, because he could turn out to be the love of your life, and you wouldn't want to deny him the opportunity to hear you spurn for self-absorbed reasons.

Years pass in Summer Palace, and the characters grow up and they go here and there and couple up for various reasons or break apart for various reasons or travel for various reasons, and Tiananmen Square doesn't seem to mean a goddamn thing to any of it. It would be like doing a movie about a group of Colonials who hang around during the Boston Tea Party, and then go build sandcastles for the rest of the film, never once mentioning everything else going on around them. Maybe the impression director Lou Ye (or Ye Lou or whatever...) is trying to impart is the Tiananmen Square actions are so hard to fully understand, and so warped in its political dimensions and all of the various groups involved (there is an interesting moment where the students have to go perform requisite military training that I assume is supposed to be ironic, but then again, I'm not sure anything in this film is meant to be ironic. Or maybe everything is...) Five good minutes of Internet research could probably yield to me just enough information regarding the events that I would then go "Oooohh, that's what he meant..."

But after slogging through Summer Palace, I just wanted a nap. And not even with a sad, naked girl. I've dealt with enough sad-crazy in my life already. I just wanted a nap, so I could power up for a long, epic-seeming film that actually pays off somehow in the end; a film that makes one actually feel like the journey was worth it. Instead, I got a film with numerous well-composed scenes which would get me all caught up for minutes at a time before being hit with yet another sex scene, and then the sad, naked girl's endless explanations as to why she is so sad and so frequently naked. And then, instead of being pleased that a serious drama was so kind to keep my interest by throwing liberal doses of naughty, naughty sex my way (there is considerable passion in many of these scenes), I just get more frustrated because I simply cannot care for her in any fashion whatsoever. And therefore, I don't give a crap what happens to her, or any of her friends.

If the point of Summer Palace is actually "here's a group of people, and here's why you won't give a crap about them"... well, I can find that in about 90 percent of the films I run across. Luckily, in those other films, some evil force or demonic slasher does away with those people, and I can get some small amount of pleasure at seeing the herd thinned. Here, though, the film tries to convince you from the start that it is so much more, and has a lot to say about something. Gosh, that's noble and all, but the film is ruined from the start by giving us a mostly uninteresting lead character who is so obsessed with her own sadness, madness and mortality. I can get the same story by buying a pack of smokes for any girl hanging out at a Hot Topic, buying her fake goth gear, brooding about the exact same thoughts.

And so I left Summer Palace feeling extremely underwhelmed. Or did I? If it so hard to tell anymore, getting all lost in thought like this. Maybe it did its job after all, and maybe I secretly liked the film despite how pissed off it seems to have made me outwardly. Maybe this film is the film I have been looking for all my life -- oh, hold on... someone just got shot down my street... oh, that's too bad... where was I?... oh, yes -- but I am just too caught up in myself to realize that I need this film around. No, I must shun Summer Palace -- I must turn it away! I must break up with it, because I can't live without it! It just couldn't possibly work out -- I am too, too doomed to be sad and lonely...

Oh, I don't know... I guess I just wasn't meant to understand...

Rik-O-Sound: Pianosaurus and Extinction

They Might Be Giants. The Young Fresh Fellows. Robyn Hitchcock, with or without the Egyptians. The Posies.

Compact discs by any or all of these groups may have been in my hands when I reached the Mammoth Music counter on that fateful moment fifteen years ago when a toy guitar, a toy piano and a Fraggle Rock drum kit made my head do a 1080 degree spin above my neck. If there is a moment in a music store in the last fifteen years where one of those groups (or some side project or offshoot of one of those groups) wasn’t in my hands, I’d be hard-pressed to pinpoint it. I don’t actually remember exactly what I was buying on that wintry day, but I do know that it was the combined effect of the type of CDs in my hand that made the counter guy step back and say, “Have you heard Pianosaurus?” When I replied to the negative, he added “Oh, you have got to hear this!”

I don’t usually listen for long when salespeople say ““Oh, you have got to hear this!” or “…see this!” or “…taste this!” (The latter one is the most dangerous…) But I knew this salesperson, hereafter referred to as Terrific Counterguy, to a certain degree, as he was an acquaintance of mine from his days at the local comic shop. I knew his taste in comics, and it mostly jibed with mine. Most of the people who worked with Terrific Counterguy at the comic shop thought he was an ass. Later on, I would find out most of the people who worked at the record shop thought Terrific Counterguy was an ass too, even though they would attend the sporadic shows his band would play. Even further on, he would get involved theatrically, and many people told me horror stories of dealing with Terrific Counterguy. I guess this means they thought he was an ass as well. That’s OK. I’m also an ass, and frankly, whatever other people thought of him, I always thought he was pretty swell. After all, he introduced me to Pianosaurus. This is no small thing.

Terrific Counterguy had only recently started working at the record shop, but this didn’t stop him from cracking open the wrap and seal from a new copy of Pianosaurus’ Groovy Neighborhood CD that he whisked from the rack after very nearly vaulting the counter in front of me. “If you don’t like this, I will buy the albums in your hand for you.” This was a decidedly different approach to salesmanship, but it could have been possible he was intending to purchase most or all of what I was buying for himself anyway, and just hadn’t yet. Regardless, though I never would have taken him up on the offer, it was cool to hear. And it definitely intrigued me. What sort of band could make someone act this way?

How about a band entirely peopled by art students playing toy instruments? This in itself could prove to be a bad thing, unless the right touch of talent and/or genius was in place. Alex Garvin, lead toy guitarist, singer and songwriter for Pianosaurus, was graced by both. The cover of the album doesn’t disguise a thing: a trio of wild-haired geekoids surrounded by a pile of various toy instruments, including the aforementioned Fraggle Rock drum kit. I didn’t even know a Fraggle Rock drum kit existed, and there it was on the cover of Groovy Neighborhood. Of course, even if I did like what I heard, there was still the novelty factor. Novelty music can be great fun, but even the best novelty music can feel like there is a giant empty-caloried hole through it after a short while. Surely, Terrific Counterguy would know this as well, for his enthusiasm for the band seemed so unbridled that I felt there had to something else to this Pianosaurus thing.

There were no John Lee Hooker albums in my hand, so that could not have been the impetus for Terrific Counterguy's next move. As the first track he wanted me to hear, he played Pianosaurus' cover version of Hooker's Dimples... and that was all it took. Despite the high-chiming plinkety-plinks that pervaded the basic and familiar blues riff that carries Dimples along, the song quite simply and utterly rocked, with Alex Garvin ripping into a shattering solo on his miniature guitar. How Terrific Counterguy knew this would be the song to do it, I will never know. Maybe I was just that impressionable, but I've always considered myself something of a hard sell when seeking out music I truly love. Looking back, had Terrific Counterguy played many of the other songs on this album instead as my initial dose of Pianosaurus, despite the excellence of those other songs, my heart would probably not have been captured so instantly as it did when I heard Dimples. Two follow-up covers were played next -- Chuck Berry's sublime Memphis and the Box Tops' The Letter (how did I know Alex Chilton would come into this somehow?) -- and I bought Groovy Neighborhood with the remaining tracks completely unheard at that point.

For all I knew, Groovy Neighborhood was a mere collection of swell cover songs, albeit plinked and plunked out on toy instruments. The music still struck me a pure novelty, but I knew that I had to have it for my own. There was no way I could pretend that I had remained unaffected by the sound, and so I couldn't fake my way into letting Terrific Counterguy buy my albums for me as he suggested. Etiquette wouldn't have allowed to do so anyway, and as I said, my own joy at hearing the Hooker cover was enough for Terrific Counterguy to know that he had won a convert to the side of Pianosaurus.

When the album is played through and one realizes that the other 14 songs on it are pure originals -- even those like Ready to Rock which play off of the established patterns of Berry and others -- one will find it amazing that Terrific Counterguy's focus was solely on only those three cover songs upon it. Perhaps he was afraid that if he did play the opening song, Thriftshoppin', or later songs like Bubble Gum Music, Barbie and (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the) Toystore, that I definitely would hear the sound as mere novelty, seeing as these songs are the ones closest to capturing what one would imagine to be the music played by a band wholly invested in toy instrumentation. Songs about toys, disposable popular music, bargain shopping and Banana Splits references. I doubt he had even considered that prospect, and probably just chose Dimples because it rocked out in a fashion that just outright delighted him. But all one needs to do is hear the closing 45 seconds of Thriftshoppin' that while novelty may have driven the band to perform, there is true musicianship here, and an often reckless spirit as well.

I do wish he had considered playing some of the deeper songs on the album, if only to know what my immediate reaction would have been to them. Years of constant playing has revealed the truth and the sadness behind Pianosaurus. Sun Will Follow almost seems like what the Velvet Underground would have been like if they had just pulled the shades up once in a while and then admitted to the world their hidden Brian Wilson jones. Pianosaurus seems absolutely determined to convince us that bright times are always there to back us up, no matter how the rain falls before us. They may not fully believe it given the pose, but the sweet harmonies that support Alex Garvin's assertions make us think they do. Pianosaurus seems to be fully capable of just about every move in the '60s pop catalogue, with Love is a Two-Way Street, Going Downtown and A Little Love (Never Hurt) displaying particular regard for the various styles of those bygone days. Eleanor Day is so gorgeous in its brevity and directness that it spells up just how tragically short it is at just less than a minute in length. It almost feels like a great lost standard.

And then there is Cherry Street, the song that I sing to myself often in those quiet moments when the mood seems perfectly suited for an odd but wistful longing for a street of possibly ill reputation. Particularly given that so much of their material seems to be tie-dyed with innocence, Cherry Street's architectural perversity married with the delicate strains of its melody make it an absolute delight. It makes me wonder all the more how I would have felt if this would have been the song I first heard from the group. Would I have loved them instantly if I did? It took me awhile to realize my love for Cherry Street, perhaps in a parallel to the singer's own almost shy admission in the lyrics that he does too, despite the opinions of those around him.

And here's my admission to unabashed love for Pianosaurus, the band that went extinct before its time. Or maybe it was its time when this album came out, maybe its purpose was fulfilled, and maybe it had to go away. There was apparently a second album recorded (or at least recorded for) to be titled Back to School, which was never released in any form. And then Alex Garvin went off, taking his candy-colored vision with him, leaving behind him a trail of unanswered questions as to his utter disappearance from music. Groovy Neighborhood is the only fossil record of Pianosaurus. Maybe this is all they were supposed to leave behind. To listen to their only album is to simultaneously wish they had done so much more, but to also realize just how perfect this album is on its own. The band is dead, but Groovy Neighborhood is still a living, breathing thing; still in print, still waiting to be discovered by each succeeding wave of musical archaeologists.

Hopefully, some of these archaeologists are also Terrific Counterguys, and each one has the verve to get this music into the hands of the people that need it most. Like my Terrific Counterguy did, like I still do, and like I hope others will too. It's not a truly groovy neighborhood unless everyone is having fun together...

Psychotronic Ketchup: Blackout (1978)

Director: Eddy Matalon
New World, 1:28, color
Cast Notables: Robert Carradine; Jim Mitchum; Belinda Montgomery; Ray Milland; June Allyson; Jean-Pierre Aumont
Cinema 4 Rating: 4

I would never have given Blackout the time of day if its title hadn't appeared in the Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film.

One of the few negative things about that volume is that it spends an inordinate amount of time with disaster movies. Sure, disaster movies can be fun (especially in an unintentional way), and they certainly fulfill the special effects aspect with which most films of the psychotronic sort find themselves involved. Certainly a case can also be made that disaster movies are not that far removed from monster flicks, with the earthquake or flood or, in this case, the city-wide blackout (and the reaction of the citizenry to its installation) substituting for the giant monster that would normally kill, maim, stop and generally terrify the people of the film.

But that is really pushing it as far as interest goes. After all the big effects used to bring to life the main star of the film -- the disaster itself -- disaster films most often boil down, at least for me, to simply being rote actioners or dramas. Each one seems to exist on a set number of predictable crises that most in the main cast will fail one by one to get past, a series of often poorly acted (often by overrated veteran actors) character scenes that set up the various reasons why this person should live and why this one should die, and one steadfast hero who will lead the survivors through to the end. There might be a modicum of surprising twists, but usually not much that veers too far away from the standard template. In these ways too, disaster films are much like monster films. Only the monster films are far weirder even in just conception, let alone actions, and deserve simply via that weirdness alone a definite place in a book of outré cinema, even the most average of entries in the monster genre. The problem I have with disaster films being in the Psychotronic Guide is that disasters are happening every single day somewhere in this world, natural or man-made. Disasters are a common reality, and therefore, the films concerning them are much, much too far from the usual head trip that a decent psychotronic movie should portray or invoke in the viewer.

Even so, the Psychotronic Encyclopedia has within it Earthquake, The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure. Rollercoaster is in there, and so are the films in the Airport quartet. Again, because all of these are big-budget, special effects flicks, I can understand the impetus to put them in the book. Other tempting reasons for the author are probably their crazy-quilt, all-star casts, their unintentional humor, and inherent campiness. And I do like some of these films, and not just in an ironic way. I simply don't agree with the decision to put them in the book. I find the movies too stifling banal to go alongside something as goofy as The Hideous Sun Demon. But its not my book, except by purchase, so it was never my decision what to include. The disaster films are in the book all the same, and if I don't really care for them or find them monotonous, well, it's my own fault for coming up with a gimmick like trying to watch every film in the Psychotronic. All I can do is deal with them.

And thus, I run into a plain wanna-be disaster flick called Blackout, from New World Pictures in 1978. And then, once I find Blackout actually is available on DVD (one of the extra steps that is required in seeing these films), per my own rules, I have to rent and watch it.

Blackout has its own version of an all-star cast. It has the son of a real movie star as the dull but earnest hero (Jim Mitchum), it has the brother of two more famous actors as the crazed anarchist villain (Robert Carradine, and he is pretty effective in this), it has two old-timey movie stars in small roles (Ray Milland, one of my favorites and as grumpy as ever, and June Allyson, in her final screen role), and this Canadian production even goes for some international verve with the casting of Gallic film legend Jean-Pierre Aumont in another small, tragic role as a washed-up magician. But that's about it for the phrase "all-star". Unless you count Belinda Montgomery, whom you may not know, but whom I adored as a kid when she played the hottie doctor/love interest of Patrick Duffy on The Man from Atlantis TV series. And unless you count the porky, recognizable guy working in the city electric control center, who chomps his cigar muttering indecipherable epithets and instructions to his crew while all hell breaks loose and the city is plunged into a Stygian darkness.

Blackout is a big-budget disaster action film produced by people who only have about a tenth of the coffers they need to do so. This is fine. I am a tremendous fan of low-budget productions, where tenacity and filmmaking wit can bring about wondrous delight. Not here, though there are a couple of surprisingly tense action scenes (especially the closing battle between Mitchum and Carradine in a parking garage. You can always count on the '70s for some jarringly rough car action.) Needing to portray a citywide blackout without actually having a full city to blackout, the filmmakers place most of the concentration of their film on a single hi-rise tower, where a group of criminals who use the advantage of the blackout to escape from a police van, run amok and torment the mostly helpless people trapped inside the building. Mitchum is the tough cop who practically stumbles onto this rampage, and it is hard to not think of Die Hard when watching this, even if the films are miles apart in execution and design. Or quality, for that matter.

Cop Mitchum will do the following once he enters the building: rescue rape victim Montgomery and enlist her aid, while she is clearly in shock from being ravaged mere moments before; discover people trapped in an elevator; shoot down the rapist; mistakenly take Carradine into his trust; escape from being electrocuted; put out a fire; and also singlehandedly battle the entire gang, including most of the members in solo duels. It seems like a lot for one guy to handle in a single evening -- almost a cop version of After Hours, stuck inside one loony building which almost seems to stand in as a miniaturization of any point in the human universe -- but there is so much more in which he could have been involved. A baby is born amongst all this chaos, the child of the lady trapped in the elevator starts wandering throughout the building, and there is a Greek wedding on a higher floor that decides that the only way to get through all of this is to party, party, party! And people get murdered here and there.

A sharper group of filmmakers could have actually done something with this that didn't feel so by the book at every turn. (I think of how tense and muscular John Carpenter made what could have been a generic Rio Bravo rip in Assault on Precinct 13.) Once you accept just how cynical and unforgiving these criminals are, and once you get their individual tics down, all surprise is erased from the script. You know exactly where everything is going to end up, and you know who is going to live and who is going to die. In their effort to be part of the disaster trend of that era, in replicating the vapidity and predictability of their predecessors, the makers of Blackout probably considered their barely interesting product to be a success. It is certainly so if they indeed made money off this project. There is no art involved here, just commerce. That's not a crime, especially in the movie-making world, and if you are looking for filler when there are so many more entertaining things surrounding us -- well, if you are that type of person, then look no further. Consider your time filled and your standards average.

But this film is in no way "psychotronic." Perhaps I will just use some Liquid Paper to excise it and its boring ilk from the book once I am finished "accidentally" seeing films that shouldn't be in there. No one said I can't decide which films should be in the book after I've bought it...

Psychotronic Ketchup: Madman (1981)

Director/Writer: Joe Giannone
Jensen Farley Pictures, 1:28, color
Cinema 4 Rating: 4

Oh, Betsy! Do leave us...

Sure, one of the kids that populates the "retreat for gifted children" in this micro-budgeted New York slasher flick from 1981 begs for Betsy not to leave them as she heads out to search for the bodies of her missing fellow camp counselors. But you won't miss her. With her straight blonde locks and her eyes popping out of her flat face, Betsy sometimes seems like the twisted offspring from a threesome rutting between Veronica Lake, Buster Keaton and Don Knotts... but that's not why I want to see her leave.

You see, Betsy represents that which I despise: the worrywart who worries so much "about the children" that she ruins everyone's good time. If she makes it through Madman alive -- and I am betting she doesn't -- surely Betsy will become one of those mothers that slaps stickers on record albums, puts helmets on bicyclists and kneepads on skateboarders, and starts counting acts of violence in prime-time television shows. She will picket for censorship as long as it doesn't shut her up too, and she will demand warning labels on every toy for even the slightest reason. She will try to do away with grades which place children at different levels of achievement, and she will eventually make sure every child is rewarded equally, whether they deserve the praise, ribbon or trophy or not.

She will eventually evolve into one of those Worry Moms who will call the FBI every time that someone of non-Caucasian descent wanders into the neighborhood or just dares to whisper to someone else of their own race. Betsy, you have to go. Your America might seem safer to you thanks to your efforts, while my America -- the one that is about personal freedom and the one that is supposed to give every one of any background or origin a fair shake at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- my America has been smothered by your type.

In Madman, Betsy complains when the owner of the camp, a William Daniels-type named Max, decides to tell scary stories about a local killer around the campfire. I don't know who short-sheeted you and where or when, Betsy, but that is exactly what campfires in the woods are for: to scare the shit out of little kids and the weak of heart. The set-up for the story is that next door to the camp there is, in Max's words, "a dilapidated home" where many, many years earlier, a monstrous farmer kills his family with an axe. When he goes to the local tavern with the bloody axe in hand, after some investigation, he is hung by the outraged townspeople. But his body disappears from the tree where he was hanging, and even worse, no one can locate the bodies of his family. Max holds back on telling the name of this killer until the end, when an immensely annoying kid named Richie demands to know it. Max says that if you say the farmer's name, Madman Marz, above a whisper, then Marz will return to kill you and everyone around you. Naturally, Richie yells his name as a dare, and to seal the deal, he throws a rock through the window of the dilapidated house. And then the fun begins.

Michael Weldon, in the Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, mentions that this film is unique in that "all the sympathetic characters get wiped out. Only the wiseguy who started all the trouble remains intact at the conclusion of the film." This would be a significant thing, and hope for class clowns and wiseacres everywhere (such as myself), if the film didn't waste this opportunity. Because the film starts at the campfire, we are given no buildup to show Richie as a wiseass -- we only gather this assumption from his moment where he yells the Madman's name. From that point on, he is as dopey and inconsequential as everyone else in the film. So, he makes it through? Big deal! He is brain-addled and crazy by the end too, so what does that count as? Survival? I don't think so... only when a true prankster and wiseacre makes it all the way through a slasher film intact and coherent, ready to pester nonstop and fart anew with his armpit, will I be pleased. This one gave me hope, but Richie is a big, blithering idiot nothing from moment one.

And those supposedly sympathetic characters that get killed off? Screw 'em... not a single one of them elicits even the slightest bit of sympathy in me, and they are merely fodder for the slasher killer in the same way as the even more truly despicable characters from other more famous films. And at least those counselors and teenagers, generally an attractive lot, tend to get naked before biting it, adding a little extra scenery to those films. A local New York production, Madman is simply crawling with enough unattractive women to make one wonder if the camp is actually Our Lady of the Homely Spinsters Summer Retreat. Of course, these girls, including Betsy (who should only die I tell you), all behave somewhat like the more attractive girls in those other films. We get a handful of whoopee-making scenes, including what has to be the least seductive hot tub scene in a horror film ever.

After a slow strip process, wherein we are given not one, but two frightening closeups of the guy's outie belly button as he undoes his belt, Betsy and her beau climb naked into the tub. Over some horrible synthesizer-drowned romantic music, the lovers proceed to circle each other around and around and around and around and around the tub, before finally falling together in a supposedly erotic clinch that I still maintain is half her trying to consume him bodily by sucking his juices out via her mouth and half him trying to keep a goddamn gorgon at bay. Of course, the film, despite its gore (which is only halfway decent, though there are a couple of clever kill scenes, however preposterous), is too genteel to really give us much in the way except simple teasing in its sex scenes, and the camera thankfully cuts away before we are given a third shot at his outie belly button and her popping eyes engaged in full, icky love-making.

Speaking of horrible creatures, what about the Madman himself? The lasting impression after several scenes in which we see just a little too much of Madman Marz is that -- well, if you have ever seen Shriek of the Mutilated (and damn it, why haven't you?), then just imagine one of those white Yeti costumes in a set of farmer's overalls. It's not an exact match, but it's the image I have resonating within my skull a couple of days later. Well, that and the horrid hot tub scene.

And so, outside of the actor in the Madman Marz get-up, the only one I feel sorry for at all in the film is Max, and that's because Betsy whines to him about scaring the widdle childwen. This man knows how to run a summer camp, and damn it, scary stories at the campfire go with the territory as much as putting someone's hand in warm water while they doze. Look, I'm not one for spoilers, and there's no real big surprise in store in this film anyway. Betsy gets it, and she gets it good. She dies in exactly the way you hope she does once she reprimands Max for doing his duty as the owner of a summer camp. And on the way to that glorious death at the hands of Madman Marz, Betsy will do a couple of really stupid things that make you clamor for her execution all the more.

Besides, if she survived, we would have just one more fear-mongering, fun-quashing, passive-aggressively racist Worry Mom on our hands, some of the true terrorists of our age.

Hell, maybe we need Madman Marz more than ever. Richie, you're still alive. Why don't you open your big mouth again, and get the ball rolling once more?

[Editor's note: Betsy is played by Gaylen Ross, hiding under the alias Alexis Dubin for some reason I don't feel like researching, because I don't care. All of my comments are about the character of Betsy, not Ms. Ross, whom I don't know a single thing except that she -- surprise! -- has two other film credits on her resume... and they are doozies! She played the annoying adulterous wife whom Leslie Nielsen kills in Creepshow's "Something to Tide You Over" segment, and in another Romero effort, she plays the even-more-annoying-than-Betsy character of Francine in the original Dawn of the Dead. It seems playing characters that you want to see dead from moment one is a specialty of hers...]