Cheapest by the Dozen: The "12 Movie Action Pack" Pt. 1

Eagle River Rd. coming up on Wal-Mart

Even in my quietest, most reflective moments, I cannot escape the movies.

My recent trip to Eagle River, Alaska was meant as a tonic to my senses, a restorative designed to prompt deeper memories that would aid me both psychologically and in my writing. Such a visit to my secondary hometown (born on Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, but grew up in my prime childhood years in Eagle River) was supposed to allow me to reflect on a period of my life long past. Lunch with a childhood chum was the first order of business, then a stop by his parents' home in my old stomping grounds, and ultimately, a short visit to the then-beloved house we lived in next door prior to my parents' divorce (to which my brothers and I, to this day, always refer as "the green house").

And the trip proved to be exactly as refreshing as I expected. I delighted in seeing my old friend Mike again and catching up on details and rumors of past friends and neighbors, and trying to work out in my head the locations and timeframe of certain events from our past. Following lunch, my erstwhile pal, Robear, and I were indeed intending to make that stop at Mike's parents house (which we did), but on the way there, came the intrusion of something which I had not been planning: Wal-Mart.

The Wal-Mart on Eagle River Road was not built or even conceived before I moved out of the town in my teenage years. But somewhere along the way since, Eagle River's commercial interests expanded, and with it came certain big box stores and chain restaurants, chief amongst them Wal-Mart. I am not saying this as a diatribe against commercialism; I am just merely pointing out that the times changed, and so did the prospects for the shoppers of Eagle River. And it was built less than a mile from my old home. While we had no idea what a "Wal-Mart" was when we were kids, the fact that we had to ride out bikes down from the mountains a couple of miles just to buy baseball cards or comic books from any store in Eagle River should tell you that had such a temple of the free market been erected in our youth, it would have become our Mecca. We would have loved such a place, not all that far from our neighborhood off Eagle River Road, deeply and emotionally.

The shirt that I found at Wal-Mart. The nose
was borrowed. And the mustache was a gift.

The reason for the sidetrip to Wal-Mart was for but a single purpose, which then swiftly evolved into a dual one. Several of my close friends and I were scheduled to march in a parade in Downtown Anchorage in a couple of days for the Fourth of July, and Robear needed to find a couple of medium-sized American flags to go with our banner (for our Invisible Dog Club, a long-standing tradition in our group of friends which had sadly laid dormant for about a decade until the previous year). Since we were already at Wal-Mart, and the company is well-known as being the capital of the Über-Patriot, I decided to take a peek around the store to see if I could find a decent Captain America-style t-shirt to wear for the parade. We found success in both ventures. Robear found his flags, and I found an official Marvel shirt for only $10, which fit my XL belly as well as a shirt with stretchy fabric could, but on my way to finding that shirt, my eye was captured by a rather large bin sitting near the registers. 

In recent years, I have learned to avoid rather large bins that are sitting near registers, since they are only there to trap the impulse buyers among us. Impulse buying is something I have had to resist since moving to California over a decade ago, but especially now that I am without a regular job and have little cash at hand, I have brought such offhand purchasing almost entirely to a standstill. But, sitting there staring at a rather large bin filled over its top edge by a certain product, my past came back to haunt me. Not so much in the DVD years, but when VHS was still the thing, I regularly haunted the rather large bins sitting near registers. In fact, they were rather regular stops for me. I found many of what my stupid brain perceived as incredible videotape bargains in those days, not necessarily at Wal-Mart (where I have rarely shopped) but at various Target, Best Buy, and Fred Meyer stores. A so-so movie that seems unfathomable to purchase at $14.99 seems absolutely perfect and worthwhile at $4.99. (Well, sometimes... it really depends on the movie and/or who the star or director happens to be.) The thought would be, "Well, I have 20 bucks in my pocket. I can bring home four new movies to add to my collection." The quality rarely mattered, as long as it fit into the general scheme of my library, which was heavy with horror and science-fiction titles.

Once DVD hit, however, and finding copies of films that had been released in their proper theatrical aspect ratios became the status quo of collectors, the bargain bins rather went away for me. This is mainly because I started caring about which version of a film I had in my collection, and so many of the DVDs in the bins featured blockbuster films cropped down from their respective widescreen ratios to the standard 4:3 format used on television. There were also rumors about certain retailers (Wal-Mart chief amongst them) editing objectionable content out of some films. Of course, to do so is patently illegal without the consent of the creator of that content, so if there were copies like that in stores, it would have been due to the studio releasing a separate cleaner version, not the store itself. But still, the rumors were out there for many years, and I just decided to not get involved in purchasing items which may have been tampered.

So, there I was, inside a Wal-Mart for the first time in about a year (since I visited Idaho), and I was staring anew into the crammed depths of one of those rather large bins sitting near the registers. Inside its thick cardboard walls, the rather large bin held several hundred DVDs, each selling for the LOW LOW LOW price of only $5.00 apiece! "HOW CAN YOU FUCKING RESIST?," the rather large bin practically shouted at me. Since I had a couple of minutes to kill and I was, for the first time in a great while, at peace with the world -- I was, after all, on my own time, on vacation, in my home town, waiting for my friend -- I decided to flip through some of the titles briefly. I saw covers featuring Pierce Brosnan, Julia Roberts, Brendan Fraser, Will Smith... but nothing that I would really consider owning or, if I had seen the film, worthy of another viewing, even at five bucks. I kept dragging my hand through the bin, hoping to find something that could even halfway pique my interest, but it seemed there was little chance of that.

And then I found the 12 Movie Action Pack.

Now, of the DVDs that I am least prone to purchase in a rather large bin near a register, it is usually the movie multi-pack. I don't mean a box set where each movie is on a separate disc and you can be reasonably assured that a certain amount of care went into the transfer, duplication, and design of the materials. If a true box set of certain filmmakers or genres is available at a great price, you can rest assured that I will eye such a product with great interest. No, I am talking about the cheapie sets where several films are crammed onto a single disc or two, and where the quality is probably not as great as one would wish for a film that is nowadays going to be most likely projected onto at least a 44-inch screen or larger. You really do get what you pay for in these instances, and I will tell you from the outset that such a condition is exactly what I planned to find in a set simply titled 12 Movie Action Pack for only five bucks at Wal-Mart.

There were some other factors at play here, however, that made it impossible for me to resist buying the 12 Movie Action Pack. First, there was the packaging. On the front cover, the tiny posters for the first six movies in the set appear, and going from left to right, the leads for the films were Nicolas Cage, Dolph Lundgren, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jason Statham, John Cusack, and Sylvester Stallone. On the back, the stars for each of the second six films were Rich Franklin (some UFC guy of whom I have never heard before), Morgan Freeman and Cusack (again), Kiefer Sutherland and Melora Walters, Woody Harrelson, Cage (again) and Nicole Kidman, and Michael Shannon. The four stars that are touted on the DVD cover with just head shots and their last name, however, in a series of larger pictures, front and back, were Statham, Van Damme, Cage, and Lundgren. I was shocked, speaking of action stars, that "A"-lister Sly Stallone was not among the four shown on the cover instead of more "B"-prone Lundgren, which of course made the set catch my notice even more.

Secondly, on first glance while in the store, I thought that of the twelve films in the set, I had never seen any of them. Not a single one. It's not that straight action films are not my thing, it's just that it requires a pretty remarkable trailer -- such as Mad Max: Fury Road, though that, of course, has major sci-fi overtones, carrying it more into my movie wheelhouse -- to get me into a theatre to see a film in that genre these days. There was also a realization that, in my normal course of movie bouncing, that I was not likely to ever see any of the films in this set without some form of unexpected interference, i.e. my purchase of a DVD set such as 12 Movie Action Pack. 

Third, another intriguing aspect was the fact that I had only ever heard of three of the films in the set: the fairly well-received though financially unsuccessful Rampart with Harrelson; War, Inc. with Cusack, of which I remembered the trailer and that it had actually hit theatres at one point; and The Iceman, a biopic of the infamous Mafia hitman played by the quite often terrific Michael Shannon. [More on this title later...] Of the rest, I had no memory of ever having heard of their titles. I chalk this up to general ennui with the bulk of Hollywood filmmaking, to the point where I can now see trailers several times and still completely forget that such films have ever been released. It is likely that I saw the trailers for half of these films and completely erased them from mind. Or it is just as likely that, except for the three that I mentioned, I truly have never heard of them.

I finally ran into Robear again, and as we made our way to leave, I made a second stop at the rather large bin sitting near the registers, and said, "I will not be leaving without THIS!" and grabbed the 12 Movie Action Pack. We made our silly purchases, and then carried on with the rest of our afternoon as planned, seeing my old neighborhood, Mike's parents' house (which had expanded greatly from the old days), and my old house, which was now under new ownership. (Mike had talked to the new owners a couple of days before, and they said they would be happy to show me the place on Saturday, but when we arrived, they were, to my ultimate disappointment but slight, unspoken relief, not home. It would have been a bit odd and out of character for me.)

And the 12 Movie Action Pack? Well, it sat on my parents' coffee table for the remainder of my stay at their home in Anchorage, where I always had the intent of queueing it up in the DVD player but never did. However, on my first full day upon returning back to Southern California, I finally cracked into the DVD to see what potential treasures or horrors I would find...

[To be continued...]

The 46x60 or So Project, Pt. 3: Things Start to Get a Little Wonky...

With my Tower of Film already swaying haphazardly in the skies above me, I was beginning to consider whether it was simply time to concentrate on watching the movies and writing about the experience of doing so.

But, there were still three crucial elements missing...

First, there were my DVDs. The thrust for the notion of adding my own collection from 1964 forward to the list was that, while a certain portion of films already entered into the 46x60 or So Project were also sitting on my shelves, there were a great many discs that I had purchased over the last couple of years of which I had yet to pause for a viewing. Since watching every available film in the project would allow me little time (or much in the way of interest) for watching films outside of it, the solution was to add every single film in my personal catalogue. Not only did this increase each year, on the average, by eight to twelve more films, cushioning the Project a tad more, but it would essentially force me to finally catch up on watching everything I owned.

It also led to the addition of the second crucial, missing element -- horror and science-fiction films -- to the list. Since I tend to purchase most of the films which I adore (or at least halfway like) in those genres, and since horror and science-fiction is largely ignored by the Academy except in the makeup and effects categories, this allowed me to "slum up" the list a little bit. I have to admit, it was looking awfully prestigious in there. I know the original point was to actually watch all of these films of presumed prestige which I had ignored much of my life. But, after the first couple of months of plowing through endless dramas from 1964 through 1966, one after the other, with very few comedies to break up the bluster and whining, adding my own personal faves, no matter the genre, threw a bit of a fun factor into the mix.

And this led to the purpose of the third crucial, missing element: slumming it up even more. Any overview of a cinematic yearbook is not complete without also seeing the nadir of cinematic "achievement" throughout those twelve months. Sure, the Academy is pretty good at allowing some truly egregious films get nominated, but not really as much as you would think (or snarkily wish). That's where the Golden Turkey Awards, and its one-time competitor and now leader in the field of film insult, the Golden Raspberries come into the picture. As much as I despise Michael Medved's politics and cultural whining, and as much as I don't agree with the purposes behind why he and his brother Harry included certain films within the pages of their series of books in the late '70s and early '80s about epically bad movies, I will admit that I return to them time and again to catch up on the wacky antics of directors gone loco. And overall, since they saw fit to have their readers also vote on the worst films in history, this provided a pretty solid base of rottenness on which to build.

Pretty much where the Golden Turkeys and the Medveds left off (they do overlap a few years) is where the Golden Raspberries began embracing movie horridness and took it to an even more thorough finger-pointing level, handing out their annual awards to major time- and brain-wasters to this day. (Myself, I am about one month away from joining their society myself, so I too can vote on the awards, something the Oscars don't allow. Their loss. Oh yeah, and I could attend the ceremony, as well.)

Thus, I took to the task of adding all of the nominated films for both awful movie award programs to my Tower of Film. (Granted, most of the films will be kept in the basement of the Tower, but this is pending further review. After all, I can't criticize a film without seeing it first.) It only took a couple of nights to add every single allegedly terrible movie to my list (after all, I have not seen all of them, just many of them). When completed, unloading a couple barrels of genuine trash balanced out the 46x60 or So Project so nicely, that I was finally ready to allow the contractors building the Tower of Film to go home and see their families after a long four months of construction.

And since I am actually each and every one of those "contractors," it's sad I didn't work out a decent overtime plan.

[To be concluded in Pt. 4 tomorrow...]

Just Inside the Foul Pole: Kill the Umpire! (1950)

Director: Lloyd Bacon
Columbia, 1:17, b/w
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

I am constantly surprised by just how many small, hidden gems there are in the vaults of the major movie studios. They aren’t the films that will have nights devoted to or built around them, nor are many of these films, unless they develop a substantial cult following, likely to appear on DVD in the future. For the most part, they are forgotten except by the hardiest of film historians; for the most part, you will be lucky to run into a showing of one of these films unless you haunt the cable listings, scouring them hour by hour to see what strangeness one can encounter if you are just willing to take a little time and give an unloved, untamed thing a little attention. It also helps to check for these films in the wee, wee hours.

I found Kill the Umpire (which, as it turns out, is on DVD), a William Bendix baseball comedy released by Columbia Pictures in 1950, in just this manner. I’m not a huge Bendix fan, but I’ve found him pleasant comic relief in the right circumstances, and the prospect of seeing a sports film to which I had never been exposed seemed even more necessary once I read that it would only take me 77 minutes to complete the course. One could watch three sitcoms (sans commercials) of any quality (made even better sans commercials) in that time, or you could catch this knucklehead knuckleballer and get a lesson in how light assembly-line comedy used to be done back in the day, around the same era when the sitcom form was initially getting its legs.

I didn’t get far into the credits, adorned with some swell cartoon-style baseball drawings on the title cards, before I saw a name that provided great comfort to me. Frank Tashlin – “Tish-Tash” from the old Warner Bros. cartoon studios – wrote the screenplay for Kill the Umpire, and even if I hadn’t caught the name at first, I would have gotten the feeling while watching it that his hand was somewhere in the making of this film. The efficiency of the jokes in Kill the Umpire can only be described as “economical” – each joke is not only to the point and never belabored, but also serves to move the story ever forward, rolling the thin plot merrily down the first base line atop a wheelbarrow full of corny baseball gags. It’s a style that Tashlin surely honed in his days in cartoons, where short running times and tight schedules ensure that brevity truly reign as the soul of wit.

Fully aware that his script really doesn’t have a lot to say about even the umpire condition, let alone the human one, Tashlin allows the script to load up with cardboard bookies and tough guys, and some increasingly tired hokum involving some dastardly eye-drops. Director Lloyd Bacon plays through these gimmicks by surrendering the concentration to its lumpen leading man, played with a bulldog’s sad-eyed determination by Bendix. His “Two-Call” Johnson is a lifelong schlub whose home life is being threatened by his almost crippling baseball addiction. Absolutely unable to keep a steady job via a series of game-engendered screw-ups, Johnson is finally talked into attending an umpire school by his father-in-law, himself a retired game-caller. A dyed-in-the-wool baseball fanatic, Johnson hates umpires, and would rather die than even come close to becoming one. The potential loss of his wife and family, though, firms his resolve to prove himself behind the plate. It also turns out that he is pretty damn good at something for the first time in his life.

It’s a shocker, but the film actually gets a little frightening when the fans in the Texas League where Two-Call (his nickname is a result of those wayward eye-drops) eventually gets hired nearly take the title threat a little too much to heart. It’s not a shocker that Texas fans would act in this way, it’s just that the film turns a little more violent than I expected considering how frothy things had been until that particular game. (Of course, since Columbia recycles their Three Stooges' Three Blind Mice theme for this film’s opening credits, maybe I should have sensed how things would turn out from the start.) The resolution to all of these violent threats is also stunning and ridiculous -- using felonies to extract oneself from the implied felonies of others -- but for what is basically a live-action cartoon, short and silly at every turn, it simply had to build to a manic, barely controlled finish. This, too, is something at which Tashlin excelled, and which Bacon pulls off, even though nearly every character in the film should end up doing some form of prison time given their actions. Where the film truly succeeds is never letting the action get very far away from Bendix himself, an actor as committed to bringing a smile as his character is to getting the call right.

If you are looking for Pride of the Yankees here, go back to the Bronx. Kill the Umpire is comedy of the lightest variety, even with the dash of criminality in its plot. But it’s goofy quality is infectious, and I would happily put this on the shelf with some of my favorite black-and-white baseball comedies: Rhubarb, Roogie’s Bump, or my personal national pastime film obsession, another Bacon film called It Happens Every Spring. Or I would put it on the shelf with them, if those films ever did actually come out on DVD. This one comes double-packaged on disc with Safe at Home, notable mainly for some humorously stiff acting by that thespian trio of renown: Mickey, Whitey and Roger of the Yanks. A historical document Safe may be, but outside of this interest, it is exceedingly pedestrian.

For those other better baseball comedies films that have yet to join Kill the Umpire on the DVD racks, I guess I will just have to keep haunting the TV listings…

Does Fry's Come with That Flying Turtle?

In the past few months, Raw Meat and I have instituted a semi-regular special holiday at work. It only happens on the last day of the work week, and it usually coincides with a paycheck upon which the immediate rendering of the rent money for that month is not a major issue, i.e. it happens in the middle of the month.

We call these days "Fry's Days," because we take off for a slightly elongated lunchtime and go to Fry's Electronics down the road a piece.

I am going to avoid any controversial issues regarding their business practices, and just say this: if you are unlucky enough to not have a Fry's Electronics in your neck of the woods, I feel sorry for you. Fry's can be best described as a sloppier, less corporate-looking version of Best Buy. The place is not what you would call "well-scrubbed," many of the fixtures need serious repair, and the owners are prone to placing some ridiculously out-of-date promotional materials out on the floor, most likely just because they can. Also, if you are looking for a particular new title or even a regularly stocked one, good luck. Things are placed as haphazardly upon the shelves as possible, and even if they are in the right place at one point, it won't be for long.

But beyond that, Fry's is gorgeous. It's a geek paradise, especially for geeks who are constantly looking for out-of-the-blue deals on computer and audio/video software and hardware. And the place is constantly busy, almost a mini-city of its own right here in Anaheim. It's no wonder the place has its own deli right smack in the middle of its massive structure, and also no wonder the place is stocked to the brim with about a half-mile of refrigerated soda and energy drinks. And there are so many bags and packages of high-carb snacks, Fry's may actually have to create their own zombies to mine the extra salt. There is also an area with massage chairs, which is usually laden with at least a dozen customers at any given time. If you think the people checking them out are seriously considering purchasing one of those chairs, then there's a refurbished Commodore 64 in Aisle 12 I think you should slap some money down. It's the coming thing...

Me? I come for the video. Not the hardcore porno variety, which they do carry. The amazing thing is that the section is right next to the regular video software, each row shrouded by black cards, but still readily available for perusing. Fry's has a massive amount of videos, possibly tripling Best Buy's output (don't quote me on it; it's just a guess). Raw Meat and I show up, and he takes off for the computer peripherals and perhaps a demo game of Guitar Hero or this and that. Me? I hit the DVD racks.

For several months now, I have been eyeing on the shelves at Fry's, with the view of trying to slowly complete my kaiju collection, the box set of late '90s Gamera films. This set -- containing Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (1995), Gamera: Attack of Legion (1996) and Gamera: Revenge of Iris (1999) -- has constantly been hidden behind a copy of what I call the "fake "Gamera box set. This particular box set is the same case for the full set, but with only a copy of Guardian of the Universe inside, along with a chunk of styrofoam holding the place where the purchaser would eventually place the other two movies once they were bought. I don't know how long Fry's has had this particular "fake" set, since the other two movies came out long, long ago on DVD, but there it is.

Once upon a time -- and here's the twist, and the set-up for what some kaiju fan somewhere might call a miracle -- these two box sets did not sit, one in front of the other. Once, they sat slightly apart from each other, with a couple of public domain copies of other older Gamera films betwixt them. And then one day, a fair-haired former Alaskan blundered into the place and saw the full Gamera box set, and not having the means to purchase it at exactly that moment, hid the full Gamera box set behind the "fake" one. The Alaskan had seen the haphazard manner in which the movies where kept, and realized that, with just a wee bit of luck, he could possibly come back in the near future and still manage to get this item.

That "near future" time was supposed to be two weeks. It turned into three months. Other trips were taken to Fry's in that span, and though the Alaskan checked to make sure the full Gamera box set was still there on each trip, he somehow always managed to have his attention (and his pocket money) diverted by some other cause. Not the hardcore porno videos, but some other cause.

And then the Alaskan checked on Amazon a couple of weeks ago, thinking perhaps he would purchase the full Gamera box set that way, and discovered to his immediate shock that the full Gamera box set was now out-of-print. Even recently, it was still considered a "new" item on Amazon, but there it was, with the usual horde of out-of-print specialists offering up even the cheapest copies at a mere $49.99, where once it sold new at $35. Sensing that soon this price would go up ever higher to a point where it would be Bedlam-worthy ridiculous to pay $200 for a set of three great-to-OK films about a giant flying turtle, the Alaskan knew what he had to do: make one more attempt at a trip to Fry's, and see if the full Gamera box set was still hidden behind the "fake" one.

And thus came last "Fry's Day," where the attempt for what could perhaps be the final ascent was made, and caught between the burning hot sunlight of the day and the tempestuous moods of his fellows, the Alaskan managed to traverse the vast expanses of the Fry's show floor, clawed his way through hordes of incidental shoppers and brain-dead teenagers, and reach the "Science Fiction G" rack in the DVD section. The Alaskan reached out and struggled to move the "fake" Gamera set forward with a strenuous but simple flick of his forefinger. With a mighty crash, the imposter set fell slightly towards him, and there it was -- still shining slightly in the place where it was abandoned formerly, lo those many moons ago -- the full Gamera box set!

And now it is in the Alaskan's pale, sunlight-sensitive hands. He has defied the odds -- that someone would come along in those three months and simply move or buy the DVD set -- and he has at last completed his epic quest. [It is also possible that he vastly overrated the needs of the Anaheim public to purchase cheesy flying turtle videos.]

And now, at last, the Alaskan finally has time to peruse the hardcore porno videos at Fry's. No raincoat required, except possibly the customers surrounding him might be warned to wear theirs. Methinks there's a storm on the horizon...

Psychotronic Ketchup: Blood Creatures or Male Terrors?

Terror is a Man aka Blood Creature (1959)
Dir.: Gerardo de Leon and Eddie Romero

TC4P Rating: 5/9

Sure, a lot of very good work has been done in alerting everyone to the death and destruction that land mines, laid down from the wars of previous or even current generations, cause around the world. But, no one – I repeat, NO ONE – has lifted one finger (at least, one of those fingers that they have left) to rid the world of alternate video titles. 

There you are, clicking innocently on a title on your Netflix queue, happily zipping through your list and adding a title which you believe you have never seen before. Sure, it sounds familiar – exceedingly so – but you click on it anyway. When the DVD arrives, you pop it in your player, and when the opening credits splat up on the screen, you still don't know what you are about to see, because the title matches the one on the case (and the one on the website). And then, once the movie kicks in, the slow, creeping suspicion builds inside your mind that you have seen this shitty film before. And by the time the hot Filipino girl in the simply too tight, flowered sarong gets left behind by her fellow villagers (who have smartly taken to safety across the seas in their canoes, but have not too smartly left behind a hot Filipino girl in a simply too tight, flowered sarong), you realize that, yes, indeed, you have seen this before. Only the film had a completely different title the first time you saw it. And then you hit rewind to watch the hot Filipino in the simply too tight, flowered sarong again.

It's a horrid problem, and one that cannot be fixed without your help... and without the generous help of your cash, check, or money order to this address...

Actually, it's not that horrid a problem. I merely slipped a bit and didn't notice the alternate title line in my copy of The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film. The fake title in question is Blood Creature, and the title by which I know it (and one which I find far more poetic) is Terror Is a Man. Generally considered to be the first of the wave of increasingly atrocious horror films from the Philippine Islands through the 1960s and 1970s, though I have yet to seen any other than this film, Terror is a Man and/or Blood Creature is actually not too bad a film. In fact, I've actually seen this a handful of times in the past, and even had a copy recorded off Cinemax from years earlier. Seriously, if there is a problem that equals land mines in the horror movie world, then it is probably the proliferation of mad scientists on remote islands or in remote castles who experiment on animals, methodically switching their species from that of some already dangerous predator, like a tiger or bear, or in the case of this particular Dr. Moreau acolyte, a panther, into an even more dangerous predator: man.

Not just any panther, but a panther that, when wrapped in bandages, has two very cute little ears on top of his head, two adorable little fangs shooting down from his mouth, and, as George Carlin describes the whiskers on a cat, "a lot of crazy-looking shit sticking out of his face!" Aww, he's almost too, too adorable to be devouring people on the island. But he does, and with increasing regularity. Aww, wook at him! He's just so cute! Wook at his widdle eaws! Fuckin' ow! Little shit bit my finger off! 

While the film is no great shakes as entertainment, and is, in fact, quite boring going in, the last half hour is fairly effective, and what the film does well is invoke the memory of earlier, better Universal horrors, and then crossing it, probably unintentionally, with a little Tennessee Williams-like spousal drama. There are a number of well-composed shots, and the climax is particularly memorable. While the "heroine", the wife of the mad scientist, is quite voluptuous and allows the shadows of raindrops to drip over her nose most seductively, the "hero", a lost-at-sea (in more ways than one) muscular schmo, decides to focus on the married white girl instead of on the hot Filipino girl in the simply too tight, flowered sarong who has been left behind on the island. It's all about choices, Mac… you chose wrong. As for the film, while the film won't replace Island of Lost Souls in quality, or even the 1977 version of Island of Dr. Moreau, it is fleetingly effective, and not all that harmful to run into, even under an assumed name.

Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory (1961)

Dir.: Paolo Heusch

TC4P Rating: 3/9

A film that nobody is going to mistake for another more decent film is Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory, an Italian-Austrian co-production from 1961 that actually, looked at by its own merits, much like Terror Is A Man, isn’t all that bad overall. It’s just not good, nor very interesting. Halfway through it, I received a call on my cell from Jen, and I told her, “Just watching what is probably the worst werewolf movie I’ve seen since Underworld”. Which may or may not have been true (I had seen Cursed in this same period), but I should point out two things: 1) invoking Underworld was merely to give Jen an idea of the pain I was going through, since she would be quick to understand, and 2) by “worst,” I meant “most boring”, because at the point in which she called me, I was completing the taste of paint chips as a viable substitute to watching even another frame of this film.

It perked up a bit from that point, but the damage was done. Thing is, in a private school for wayward girls (all of whom seem to be refugees from a typing pool, most likely all chainsmokers and all between the ages of 23 to 28 years old), one would think it would be slightly more erotic than the dunderheaded murder mystery that it is. When I initially described the film to Jen, she thought I had rented myself some titty flick with a rampaging monster in it to disguise it from the porn it was. Then I told her it was from the early ‘60s. And she said “Ah…” and I heard the empathy in her voice. There is a rather fetching girl amongst the “young” ladies, who all sport either way too much makeup or not enough where they need it: the heroine, played by Barbara Lass, but her looks are dashed a smidgen by the fact that her head is weirdly big for her body. (Then again, as I said, I had just seen Cursed, and that had Christina Ricci in it. But then again and again, I love Christina Ricci and her abnormally large head…)

Barbara bobble-heads her way through woods which are not so much filled with killer wolves, but instead with an endless loop of howling that is meant to tell us the killer wolves are simply there. There is so much howling, in fact, that after a while I started to not consider the wolves any sort of threat – I sometimes go to Chivas USA soccer games where the muy loco fans sport long plastic tubes that they blow into as horns. The bull-like bellowing that emits from the far end is intensely annoying through the first half of the game; after a personal refreshment at half-time, the noise becomes like so much traffic: it’s there, it’s polluting your ears, but you have grown accustomed to it. You don’t notice it at all until you get home, and once it’s ringing goes away, you kind of miss it. So, too, went the howling of the wolves; I stopped paying attention to it, and once it was gone from my notice, I started to long for the threat that it once seemed in the film.

Because the film squarely needs any sort of threat, the lame excuse for a werewolf it does offer will not suffice in this instance. Even Teen Wolf was scarier than this ponce. He looks like Kevin McDonald playing Edward Tudor-Pole in a straight-to-video remake of Absolute Beginners. A decent lycanthrope might have turned the tide in the film’s favor. After all the boredom and creepy woman-girls and big-headed Nancy Drews inhabiting the film, a downright frightening wolfman might have still made for a worthwhile payoff. Instead, we only get some halfway decent stabs at atmosphere, a dislocated opening theme song titled A Ghoul In School that would seem kind of fun if it were actually in I Was A Teenage Werewolf instead, and a surprisingly listenable score. But then you feast your eyes on a werewolf that could be outdone by an six-year-old with a fistful of cat hair and a tube of airplane glue, and you shake your head.

I didn’t even mention the German shepherd dog that actually serves as the most interesting character in the film. And despite the assumed presence of wolves, he is clearly supposed to portray a dog.

But he goes by the name of "Wolf" in the film.

I am so confused now.

I don't know if this is an appellation that is only found in the translation, or if the filmmakers meant this, but once your film takes one too many turns in on its own logic like that... well, that's a landmine that you cannot avoid...

RTJ

[This review was edited and updated with new photos on 11/14/2016.]

Rixflix A to Z: The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

Dir.: Robert Fuest

American-International Pictures (AIP), 1:34, color

Cast Notables: Vincent Price, Joseph Cotten, Hugh Griffith, Terry-Thomas, David Hutcheson, Peter Jeffrey, Virginia North, Caroline Munro, Paul Frees (voice)

TC4P Rating: 7/9

"Nine killed you. Nine shall die. Nine times, nine! Nine killed you! Nine shall die! Nine eternities in DOOM!" - Dr. Anton Phibes (Vincent Price)

Poor Dr. Phibes... his wife dies tragically on the operating table after only six minutes in surgery. He gets in a tragic car accident, burnt and disfigured and thought to be dead. And the thought that the chief surgeon, the surgery nurse, and even the seven consulting doctors who presided over his wife's death are still alive fills him with the purest sense of revenge. (His wife's death would drive me mad as well, since Victoria Phibes is played by a young and uncredited Caroline Munro, one of the earliest "loves of my life".) To gain this revenge, he will reconstruct (with slight variations) the Biblical plagues of Egypt, doing in each of the guilty with a different plague (boils, blood, rats, etc.)

It seems simple enough, but this film takes a basic potboiler premise and takes it to an amazing level of sublime and artful horror. Phibes isn't just mad with lust for revenge; he is a genius of high order: a doctor, an inventor, a scientist, and a concert musician. Phibes manages to weave all of his various skills and interests into his revenge, and still takes time out of his murderous rampage for a waltz with his stylish assistant, Vulnavia. A ballroom in his art deco palatial estate is filled with clockwork musicians, and while no one is there to see any of this silliness, the pair seem to stage Broadway-style pageantry with Vulnavia in elaborate costuming, all of which Phibes accompanies on a grand organ, which rises out of the floor and also serves as an elevator to his hidden den. It also lends the film an appropriate nod to the Phantom of the Opera, if not also a reminder of Captain Nemo, himself a creature whose genius is likewise fortified through hatred and revenge against the human race.

And the murders are nothing simple, but sometimes quite involved set pieces of intellectual construct and scheming. Dr. Phibes is always there, lurking about the scene, but as no one believes he is even alive or even that he exists, the police are baffled constantly. It wouldn't do them any good; they wouldn't know him from Adam. Phibes, you see, has no face, and can only talk through a device that he has designed and implanted in the side of his neck. (He has another such device hidden unseen behind his head for drinking and eating, which is used to most humorous effect.) The Vincent Price face that we see throughout the film is merely a mask, and even when we know this for much of the running time, the reveal of his true self is still shocking, even when viewed numerous times.

This film is a delight, a most enjoyable time even for those most hardened against genre filmmaking, because The Abominable Dr. Phibes succeeds outside of this realm as pure, although out of left field, entertainment. It's not surprising that my three favorite films that came out of the same year, 1971, were Harold and Maude, A Clockwork Orange, and this film. While the intent and the subject matter of the three films could hardly be more different, from three wildly diverse filmmakers, there is still an overriding sensibility at play in all three that appeals to the same exact place in my movie-mind. Call it my need for artful subversiveness (even if Orange still comes on as fascistic). Even with the pretentious strains evident in all three (least of all in this one, though), I love them all equally.

RTJ

Sequel: Dr. Phibes Rises Again! (1972)

[This review was edited and updated with new photos on 11/14/2016.]

Rixflix A to Z: Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949)

Director: Charles T. Barton
Universal, 1:24, b/w
Crew Notables: Bud Westmore (makeup)
Cast Notables: Abbott and Costello, Boris Karloff, Lenore Aubert, Gar Moore, Donna Martell, Alan Mowbray
TC4P Rating: 6/9

Perhaps Abbott and Costello meet "a Killer," not "The Killer," would be more appropriate. Screen legend Boris Karloff's "phony" swami, as the police declare him, may have no qualms about hypnotizing Costello's bellhop character into offing himself, but he is only one of many suspects residing in a hotel swarming with police looking for the murderer of an attorney. Karloff is great fun in the swami role, but he also disappears largely from the film after some pretty good early scenes. Costello booby-traps his room to try and catch the real killer, but naturally, because Costello set them up, his traps backfire in numerous places. Of course, many murders occur in the meantime, and also of course, Lou will get the blame for all of them, but that's the fun part, right? 

Watching the pudgy little guy bluster and whistle and sweat his way from bad situation to worse situation, all the while simultaneously aided and blocked, sometimes in the same sentence, by his best pal, Bud. That's what Abbott and Costello are all about, and this one delivers the goods, albeit in a reduced fashion. However, the inclusion of Karloff adds a large dose of fun to the proceedings, and his influence often elevates even the hoariest of material. He certainly does here.

RTJ

[This review was edited and updated with new photos on 11/14/2016.]

Rixflix A to Z: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951)

Director: Charles Lamont

Universal, 1:22, b/w

Crew Notables: Bud Westmore (makeup)

Cast Notables: Abbott and Costello, Nancy Guild, Arthur Franz, Adele Jergens, Sheldon Leonard, William Frawley

TC4P Rating: 6/9

My disappointment in this film stems from one fact: that Vincent Price appears, or rather, that his voice appears, at the end of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. The voice is coolly menacing, as the Invisible Man surprises the pair by lighting up a smoke in the end of their boat, just as they believe they have escaped the clutches of Count Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster. "I was hoping to get in on the fun!" he proclaims, and then after some confusion by the pair, he introduces himself. The film ends, but so began my youthful hope that there was another film in the series where they continued the battle with such a foe, and with Mr. Price playing that very part. I swiftly found out in the library (no home computers in those days!) that there was a film where they indeed “meet the Invisible Man,” but it is a far cry from what I believed it would be at the end of their first monstrous meeting.

Not that this film is bad; it just isn't what I wanted when I first saw it. Subsequent viewings left me liking it more and more, and my initial upset over Arthur Franz not being Vincent Price went away (though I still wish that it had happened the way it did in my fantasy world). Franz' boxer Tommy is blamed for a murder, set up by some mobsters who run the fight game in town, and private dicks Bud and Lou set out to help Franz find the evidence to implicate the mobsters. Of course, Franz hiding out at the very laboratory where Dr. Griffin (Claude Rains in James Whale's original Invisible Man film in 1933) created his formula for invisibility all those years ago is both the most unlikely of story plotlines and coincidentally helpful to Bud and Lou's cause. Even if it drives them crazy trying to keep Tommy out of trouble once he is under the insanity-causing influence of the invisibility formula.

The best gags fall around, as do many people and props alike, everyone's efforts to deal with having an Invisible Man in their midst, and the boxing scenes where Tommy helps the inept pugilist Lou are wonderful. Likewise, a memorable bar scene which is capped with an ill-timed visit by William "Fred Mertz" Frawley. But, the problem with the invisibility scenes is that one has to realize that Tommy is buck-ass naked through all of them. You see, the clothes stay visible when the formula is injected, so the receiver then has to strip down to gain the benefit of being invisible. So, basically, you have Bud and Lou hanging out with an invisible guy with his dick flopping all about the place. (I almost said "joint".) You can innocently watch the film and never think about this (hell, I didn't for years), but I defy you to try and do it now that I have pointed it out to you. Who knows, it might even enhance your viewing...

It's just a good thing it's not one of Bud and Lou's wrestling flicks. That might make things a bit more awkward...

RTJ

[This review was edited and updated with new photos on 11/14/2016.]

Rixflix A to Z: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

Director: Charles T. Barton

Universal, 1:23, b/w 

Crew Notables: Bud Westmore (makeup), Walter Lantz (animation), Eddie Parker (stunts) 

Cast Notables: Abbott and Costello, Lon Chaney Jr. (Lawrence Talbot/The Wolf Man), Bela Lugosi (Count Dracula), Lenore Aubert (Dr. Sandra Mornay), Jane Randolph (Joan Raymond), Glenn Strange (The Monster), Frank Ferguson (Mr. McDougal), Vincent Price (the voice of the Invisible Man), Charles Bradstreet (Prof. Stevens) 

TC4P Rating: 7

Abbott: I know there's no such person as Dracula! You know there's no such person as Dracula!

Costello: But does Dracula know it?

As it was with me, this is the film that the youthful monster enthusiast should perhaps first see before progressing on to the older, darker fantasies that preceded it in the Universal canon. Not that I had any choice in the matter; it was by sheer providence that this was my cinematic introduction to Universal's versions of Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, and the Wolf Man (and to a far lesser degree, the Invisible Man). I certainly knew of the creatures; it's hard for someone in our culture not to know those names, whether interested in the genre of horror or not. But this film provided a major catalyst for me, and it was not long before I was scouring the Eagle River Public Library and the library at my elementary school for more information on these and similar creatures and films.

Two elements of this film with whom I was already fairly well acquainted at the time were Abbott and Costello, having first seen them in a television double feature of Hold That Ghost and Abbott and Costello Go to Mars one Christmas morning the winter before I saw this film. But my first introduction to the pair was on an Old Time Radio cassette which held on one side the complete radio show in which they performed their famous "Who's on First?" routine (a Danny Kaye broadcast was on the other side), and to say that I played the hell out of that tape would be backed up by the fact that I eventually wore the thing out to the point where I purchased another copy of the same cassette tape a couple of years later. My baseball fanaticism of those years had also unwittingly bought me a ticket into the slapstick-and-wordplay world of Abbott and Costello; it was my increasing interest in horror movies that would seal the pact forever. My worlds came together.

That the film is excellent entertainment, even outside of being a fun monster mash, is seemingly a happy accident. This is Bud and Lou at their sharpest, and even the flintiest throwaway gag bounces back, if not with laughter, then an amused smile from the viewer. The opening credits reveal the creatures to us in charming animation produced by Walter Lantz, and even makes sure to include the fourth monster at large in the film: Lenore Aubert, a femme fatale scientist who pretends to be enamored of Costello so that she may steal his brain later in the film. This is not out of respect for his grey matter, but rather for his lack of it. Aubert's employer, Count Dracula, wants to place it in the Frankenstein monster so that he will become more "pliable," to use the Count's term. Larry Talbot, the Wolf Man, played with earnest charm by Lon Chaney, Jr., shows up to convince Bud and Lou to help him stop Dracula. Only Costello believes him, as usual, and mistaken identity monster chaos becomes the order of the day.

Everyone in this film, even Bela Lugosi, seems to be having a great time, and maybe that is why it still plays so well today, much more so than the later Abbott and Costello monster films where the elements sank back into the formula they were meant to subvert. While the monsters don't really get to be themselves fully in this family comedy – only one person dies at the Monster's hands and Wolfie only gets to scratch someone, though Drac does get to make a conversion for two points (those points being on the ends of his fangs, that is...) – the film itself, while a comedy, always takes the situation of their mounting threat to humanity seriously. Surprisingly, the monsters are not belittled in any way, but paid the respect due to the truly terrifying amongst the creatures of the night. It seems more like someone just planted Bud and Lou into the middle of the monsters' normal machinations, instead of taking a formula Abbott and Costello comedy and just adding monsters to it. However they did it, the results are still marvelously entertaining and the film is a must for perennial Halloween viewing. It is in my household anyway.

Most importantly, after this film, I knew for certain that Dracula was a real person, if even Dracula himself might not acknowledge it. But, to my joyous surprise, there was so much more to learn about the Universal Monsters. It would just take a little while for me to "collect 'em all" on my viewing list.

RTJ

[This review was edited and updated with new photos on 11/14/2016.]

Rixflix A to Z: Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion (1950)

Director: Charles Lamont

Universal, 1:20, b/w

Crew Notables: Bud Westmore (makeup)

Cast Notables: Abbott and Costello, Patricia Medina, Walter Slezak, Douglas Dumbrille, Leon Belasco, Tor Johnson, Wee Willie Davis, Marc Lawrence, Henry Corden, Candy Candido (voice of skeleton), Jeff Chandler (narrator)

TC4P Rating: 5/9

Somewhere in my head is a map of the world as drawn by where I think things are... On that map, the Rolling Stones, a band well-known to be from England, live in Chicago, along with Cheap Trick, Warren Beatty, and for some strange reason, Margaret Trudeau (don't ask...). I place things and people where they seem to be according to the news that I hear and sometimes for the strangest reasons imaginable. I could go on forever with the mixed-up inhabitants of this only slightly plausible map, but I won't at this time.

But there is one thing that is clear: the French Foreign Legion, who operate all about the world, but most famously out of Algeria, don't on my map. They operate out of France. This is actually partially true nowadays, but I don't mean their headquarters is stationed there, or that they bivouac there. On my map, they fight their battles there... in the deserts of France. Yes, even in a film where I am told flat-out that they are fighting in a desert in the middle of Africa, somewhere in my head, I believe that they are actually about an hour outside of Paris (which actually is placed in France on my map.) So, in Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion, even when the title says "Algiers" once the desert action starts, my head tells me that the Legionnaires are back in France.

Average Abbott and Costello, but even average Bud and Lou can still yield some good laughs. Lou's verbal battle with the French word "oui" is amusing, and numerous sight gags pay off well, including an extended mirage sequence (bad backdrops and all) which concludes when they encounter a spitting fish that has stolen a set of false teeth from one of the desert tribesmen. (Once again, don't ask...) There is also a bit where Bud believes that Lou has been blown to smithereens, and the pathos that Abbott wrings out of the by-the-book lines is actually quite touching. At least, until he discovers that Lou is still alive -- boy, does he turn on a dime. But, for a moment, even to someone who has always sided with the pushed-about Costello, I really felt the friendship that had to be at the base of their long partnership, no matter how tired they may have been of each other. It's a feeling that you get from Laurel and Hardy in droves, but that comes rarely in the Abbott and Costello series, and usually from Lou, at that; but there it is, fleetingly, for the taking.

You also have some wrasslin' action with the bear-like Wee Willie Davis and that monstrous icon of Woodsian (Ed, that is) ineptitude, Tor Johnson. Seeing this sequence a day removed from viewing Borat and its nude hotel wrestling shock-a-thon, I couldn't help but flash on the newer film when these two de-shirt and throw down with Bud and Lou (who play fight managers who are trying to locate Davis' Abdullah, cousin to the sheikh that is out to kill them). For those not obsessed with homoerotic affairs of the mat, there is the lovely assemblage of harem girls who become the focus of Lou's attention through much of the film.

My attention? Sorry, it was squarely drawn towards France, and just where the hell they are hiding all those deserts there...

RTJ

[This review was edited and updated with new photos on 11/14/2016. This piece was written before I learned about Le Grande Dune du Pilat.]

Rixflix A to Z: Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953)

Director: Charles Lamont

Universal, 1:17, b/w

Crew Notables: Henry Mancini (music, uncredited)

Cast Notables: Abbott and Costello, Robert Paige, Martha Hyer, Mari Blanchard, Horace McMahon, Jack Kruschen, Joe Kirk, Anita Ekberg, Harry Shearer (boy at orphanage)

TC4P Rating: 5/9

It hardly mattered that the boys never got to Mars. Seen first on a Christmas morning in my youth, the planet that Abbott and Costello actually landed on was not the point. Sitting down to watch Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, and basing my reactions off that title alone, a rocket ride into space was a point. The promise of slithery, slobbering alien creatures was a point. Abbott and Costello goofing off in what were sure to be ridiculous-looking, poofy spacesuits was yet another point. That the film's title turned out to be a complete lie really never was an issue to me, though it seems to be the main sticking point with most movie guides, where certain of these overpriced volumes of committee-tossed opinions consider the film a colossal bomb. "But they never even get to Mars...!" etc., etc. Ugh...

Military base handyman Bud and professional orphan Lou bumble their way into stealing a rocketship destined for a Mars landing, but their flight pattern goes wackily awry. Science-ignorant Bud and Lou think they are on Mars, when in fact, they are actually in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, where they mistake the multitude of revelers gussied up in costumes and giant head masks to be Martians of the silliest kind. Circumstances will have them eventually and quite accidentally take to space for real, but they will land on Venus instead, and this is where my head did a swivel as a young'un. Somewhere amongst the space vixens of the second planet, naturally inhabited not just by women, but by gorgeous women only (and all played by Miss Universe entrants), is the voluptuous Anita Ekberg. I know this now, but at that young age (what was I? 10, 11?), I was years away from seeing Fellini's La Dolce Vita. (It didn't matter anyway: Mari Blanchard, who plays Queen Allura, was more my type at the time.) What I did know was that once the parade of high-heeled hotties began, all of my concerns about seeing monsters in the film dissipated. Had I at last found my special purpose?

Watching the film anew, I am struck by how it is actually taken over by another accidental comedy team, that of Horace McMahon and Jack Kruschen as Mugsy and Harry, two escaped convicts who stow away on the rocket to Venus, thereby running afoul of Bud and Lou as both teams do battle for control of the spaceship. And of the movie, it seems. McMahon and Kruschen actually get the sharper of the dialogue sequences, with McMahon's gangster tough having a bottomless reservoir of scientific and arcane knowledge at his fingertips, knowing and explaining to Harry exactly how the blaster ray works, and understanding with only the barest hint that the Venusian queen has placed some form of a curse on Costello. Kruschen, who would be nominated for an Oscar a handful of years later for Billy Wilder's The Apartment, and his character of Harry is a brick wall of a man in both size and brain, but he punctuates all of McMahon's suggestions and directions with the charmingly assertive, and oft repeated, "I am with you!" As a child, I remember saying this line here and there, though I probably had forgotten its origin when I did. (Seeing the film a few times over the intervening years has kept the line in my repertoire.)

Despite the sci-fi elements, the film comes out as merely average, though I don't place it as low as others would have done. This is not because of Bud and Lou, however, for they seem overly tired in this one and are practically going through the paces. What saves it from the bottom of the heap is some nice production design on the part of Universal (some pieces were reused in This Island Earth the following year) and some nice production design on the part of Mother Nature, where the girls are concerned. And also, what saves it is that accidental comedy team of Mugsy and Harry. I am usually with Bud and Lou, but for this time only, I am with them...

RTJ

[This review was edited and updated with new photos on 11//14/2016.]