Ax 'Em (1992)

 

Director: Michael Mfume

Screenplay: Michael Mfume

Cast: Michael Mfume as Michael; Sandra Pulley as Kea; Joe Clair as Tony; Racquel Price as Kendra; Tracy Wiggs as Rock; Maria Copper as Nikki; Kelci Jeter as Tonya; Greg Jones as Shawn; Kristine Louisa as Erika; Fredrick Montgomery as Kevin; Thomas Hunt as Brian; D-Taylor Murphy as Breakfast

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #212

 

Your mother's so dumb, she studied for a blood test!

Ax 'Em is an infamous film in the slasher genre, in terms of negative reviews. It is, however, for more interesting to talk of in mind to that it is a film made by a young African-American filmmaker. It does feel uncomfortable how this is held as one of the worst films ever made, even if an unfortunate coincidence. And I feel it is worth bringing up as, brutally, the history of genre film making and micro-budget filmmaking is very much a white cis-heterosexual male territory, not spoken with the mind of a political correctness, but the sense that even the lurid world of genre filmmaking would have benefitted if we can find all these films made anyone who picked up a camera.  Ax'Em's history is curious too as, originally called The Weekend It Lives, this was released in 1992 as it is dated but disappeared, reappearing in the 2000s under its better known title¹. And again, a film from an African American filmmaker, his only directorial work as well as being  a lead cast member, with a mostly black cast is distinct for a slasher film from this period, especially multi-ethnic casts in the sub-genre really did not appear in the original eighties boom.

It does modify one of my own thoughts I have always had as a result. It was originally that, yes, we require far more diversity in filmmaking, but that I was originally concerned that the films still had to be good, or the point would be lost if all the films were bad or bland. Let us modify this to that they have to be at least interesting, as whilst ultimately Ax 'Em is a mess, and some readers will never be to appreciate it for all the problems in structure and production it has, it is at least an interesting film for me to sit through, rather than a turgid but ultimately better made production. Yes, I will be the person willing to defend the film, which could stem from a contradictory attitude, maybe as much because my experiences with micro-budget films has made me more sympathetic, even more pleased, with them despite technical faults few would be able to get past. As much of it is that, knowing the bottom of cinema in quality does delve deep into the equator of a cinematic Earth, a Nine Circles of Cinematic Hell for Virgil to guide a film critic through, I have seen worse than this, and my own ambivalent attitude to slashers also plays a bias.

The irony is that, like so many slashers, it was far more rewarding then me when it was not following the genre's plot tropes, everything which has likely contributed the film's negative legacy. It takes 38 minutes of a 70 minute film to become a conventional slasher, but those original 38 minutes are more rewarding. Starting at Morgan State University in Baltimore, where the film was made,, the prologue is completely alien to the film I was expecting. Consisting of footage of dancing groups (including children) over the opening credits, then a comedian on the campus, it is more home movie footage than a film, which in honestly is more interesting for me for that reason than if it had started as an actual genre film. It also includes part of a lesson learnt by his extended skit outside in front of the crowd, and later on with the lead characters, that insulting each others' mothers is a great form of male bonding.

Past the initial set up, of a group of university students going to a relative's cabin in the woods, Ax 'Em is with a lot of tangents and a lot of long scenes of conversation. This film is split in two halves, what was meant to be the slasher film, which is the weakest aspect both in technical quality and content, and material which most viewers will think is padding but I found entertaining. Many long and humoured conversations at the dining table, including of one of the women being annoyed by her boyfriend's wandering eye. That couple also has the most idiosyncratic and odd scene of dialogue in the woods, from taking off earrings because they are heavy, the line "You're so fine, I'd kiss your Daddy's ass", and talk of possums with mumps. For fans of no or micro-budget cinema, most of our pleasures beyond when a film manages to get everything done perfectly, that it attracts even mainstream attention for quality, is their eccentricities like this which are unpredictable and charming, such as having a character in the film, never picked up upon for me until the end credits, called Breakfast.

Production wise, with dissolves from scenes like a TV production, Ax 'Em does show many huge technical hiccups, even in mind that I am aware how hard this film would have been to even make on any budget, and the experience was still a success just to end up with a final product. One, happening twice, I have rarely heard is being able to audibly catch the crew behind the camera, from hearing "cut" after two male drunks, slurring like loons, run off from an unknown killer they were talking about, to the words "camera ready?" for a scene of people fleeing towards the camera in the woods, with someone tripping over in comic effect. As mentioned already but worth repeating, I have long adaptive to these films struggling with limitations, factors which make films like this no longer fazing me, even if this is a huge detriment for many to try to struggle through, used to high production quality even for b-movies with lower budgets. The one thing which caught me off guard, whilst implemented with abruptness, was the score, which is unexpectedly ambitious. Not only is there hip hop, but both choral music and esoteric chanting which is unconventional to say the least.

Truthfully my disinterest in Ax 'Em is when it turns into the slasher film it was expected to be, becoming far less interesting when it becomes what most would have wanted. It struggles and clearly had to improvise, which would not appeal to hardcore slasher fans, but does not appeal to someone like me, who loves films like Halloween (1978) but prefers when slashers get weird or contradict their clichés. It amused me the killer is like Tor Johnson in a flannel shirt and waving a machete, but the only time when this film is interesting as a slasher is when it is almost evoking an Eddie Murphy routine about films like The Amityville Horror (1979), where white people would still live in a haunted house even when ghosts would tell them to get out². In this case, a young black man says his white male friend is insane to wander inside a spooky abandoned house looking for a phone. Considering said friend gets a phone to the face, the idea of white people being dumb enough to get into horror scenarios is proven and turns into one of the best parts of the film.

As a film, Ax 'Em's failure is when it is trying to be what it was meant to, with the combination of being not a great slasher and not being a real fan of the genre at all with exceptions. By accident, the film emphasises what are the reasons I do not fully get on with slashers, when they are focused on the tropes of people being chased and stabbed rather than the tangents and padding to link them up. I realise now the padding, and the attempts at drama, are far more entertaining for me, which may seem odd to say but emphasises as much I have very idiosyncratic tastes.

 

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1) As talked of HERE.

2) One recorded example of this routine of Murphy's is found in the TV special Eddie Murphy: Delirious (1983). The irony is not lost that, when it came to his seminal horror film Get Out (2017), Jordan Peele chose the title in direct reference to this routine and what it referred to in meaning.

Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat (2002)

 

Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis

Screenplay: W. Boyd Ford

Cast: J.P. Delahoussaye as Fuad Ramses III; John McConnell as Detective Dave Loomis; Mark McLachlan as Detective Mike Myers; Melissa Morgan as Mrs. Lampley; Toni Wynne as Tiffani Lampley; Chris Mauer as Mr. Lampley; Christy Brown as Bambi Deere; Christina Cuenca as Misti Morning; Michelle Miller as Laci Hundees; Kristi Polit as Trixi Treater

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #211 / An Abstract Film Re-Review

 

Decades after the events of Blood Feast (1963), in which his grandfather slaughtered women to create the titular feast for the goddess Ishtar, grandson Fuad Ramses III (J.P. Delahoussaye) inherits the old catering store he owned, finding the original Ishtar statue in the back, now less a gold painted mannequin but more of a stone idol. Immediately brainwashing him, it commands him towards the desire to recreate the blood feast again for the wedding celebration of Tiffani Lampley (Toni Wynne) and Detective Mike Myers (Mark McLachlan). In real life, Herschell Gordon Lewis did not make another film after 1972 beforehand, fully committing himself to the world of advertising where he made a huge success in his work. In this time, his films started to develop success for cult movie followers. We even got the unofficial sequel, Blood Diner (1987), where two brothers inherited their uncle's goal to create a feast of blood in her name.

There is an irony to be had that Herschell Gordon Lewis, never one to stay modest, confessed his contempt (in light heartedness mind) to the idea of art minded cinema, He nonetheless left a lasting mark on cinema through Blood Feast. Even if they were made just for money, the idiosyncrasies to how he made his films and his sense of humour to making them are one of his best virtues and are part of his DNA. This is more so the case as, when the long awaited sequel to Blood Feast came about, his most well known film, he would afterwards claim that it was never really his own project despite directing it and collaborating with his old producer colleague David F. Friedman. Yet my experience with some of his odder tangents beyond his gore films, the likes of How to Make a Doll (1968), suggest his fingerprints are still here. Symbolically this is perfect, as upon returning to film making, there had been enough time alongside his cult status for this to be put together with an entirely different mentality, drawn from the subterranean fringe culture that embraced his films in the first place.

It is definitely an interesting film for him, less a sequel than a remake set in the same world, one between the psychobilly music by Southern Culture on the Skids, and its jokey (and frankly weird) tone of his later work, which becomes a cultural signpost of alt-culture of the time of psychotronic cinema, rockabilly revival and early 2000s softcore titillation. It also means Blood Feast 2 is a tangent fest, the original film's premise replayed longer and with irony, liable to be off-putting unless you relent and accept those tangents are more interesting than the plot. One however not that different from his late sixties work and, ironically, is more focused than his own original gore films of yore.

And the type of ironic dithering here that came in low budget cinema from the 2000s onwards has grown on me, and especially in this case is far less an issue. I will openly admit here, to draw the curtain back that, I saw this film the first time in 2019, than revisited it only two years later in 2021, and what a difference two years makes. When you uncover the films of Lewis' career or even people working on the film like Joe Castro, the special effects creator on the production who made low budget films in this era from the shadow of the legend's career, it sheds a new light on the production in terms of how to digest it. This film also feels considerably wackier than wanting to come off as so-bad-its-good, which is close to Lewis' own career. This is the kind of film, to keep you on your toes, where one of the police detectives, the older veteran obsessed with food, suddenly breaks out into a weather report in front of a map just for one moment. It is never brought up again and such odd turns are numerous.

The plot is simplistic enough that this can get away with these weird moments of humour, closer to the camp mentality an overt parody from this period like Psycho Beach Party (2000) had, all whilst still between playing the plot straight as possible in spite of this tone. It helps the broad characters, one note, are at least fleshed out in terms of joke characters, and arguably in some cases a lot better in performances than Lewis' original films. Our food obsessed cop, sceptic about Ramses III being the culprit, and his younger partner, obsessed to bag Ramses III for the sudden string of murders taking place, are kept alive by these actors making them stand out as is the joke when they switch sides. That this older cop is quite good at his job, except eating over the corpses, adds to the humour in a positive way, or that their female secretary in the office turns out to be the smartest and most confident person in the room between them. The bride's mother, who is an overt stereotype for mother-in-law jokes, or even legendary film maker John Waters in a cameo as a Catholic priest, a life's goal as a fan of Lewis' work, playing as tasteless a joke in the role he would have been game for and visibly relishes.

And then there is J.P. Delahoussaye as Ramses III, who at first is actually given a great performance in context, at least a better performance over Mal Arnold as the original Ramses from the first Blood Feast, a "special" performance in itself in how arch it was. Normally I do not like including obscurer pop culture references without explaining them, so I apologise in having to draw from this one, but the exact comparison to what Delahoussaye's performance style becomes soon into the film, grandiose and almost nearing an accent, is when in the mid 2010s a veteran of American professional wrestling named Matt Hardy created an idiosyncratic persona from his previous one. An ageless mad entity obsessed with riding lawnmowers and shooting fireworks at his own brother, all to do something fresh, a "broken" character for a company called Impact Wrestling with a Cruella De Vil white streak in his grown out hair, and among the many other deliberately weird things using a manner of speech that can be described as Shakespearian wall chewing, gravitas of the hammiest sort Delahoussaye a decade earlier uses in Blood Feast 2 for humorous bombast.

All of this fits the film, one which saddles itself between this intentional humour and splatter, the raison d'être of Lewis' film. The original Blood Feast, despite its quirky kitsch, is important because it created the splatter genre of horror, back when on a limited budget Lewis had to use a cow's tongue and fake blood for the initial gore sequence. Decades later, and on the cusp of the new century, splatter and gooey special effects became more over the top and available in lowest budgeted productions. This is seen metaphorically here in how the main practical effects designer is Joe Castro, the director of the low budget series of Terror Toons films which started the same year as Blood Feast II, the third one of the last works Lewis did before his death playing himself as the narrator of gristly reinterpretations of fairy tales. The gore in Lewis' older films, even as sleazy as in a later work like The Gore Gore Girls (1972), was crude and deliberately silly even if utterly revolting, especially as he eventually started lingering on real animal offal as it was, for a lack of a better word, being fingered, to relish the exclamation point.

The same is the case here where, despite how gruesome it is, there are overtly farcical details like Ramses III using kitchen implements, even using oven gloves to hide his fingerprints, or the infamous scene of someone's face being peeled off, the skull underneath still looking around like a perverse animatronic. The gore is most accomplished here, keeping the sense of ickiness to it even when Delahoussaye is chewing the walls too. Even in mind Castro, to the detriment of some of his own films, can be too grim in some of how realistic his content looks, he was the right person to have when, despite Blood Feast's reputation, most of Lewis' films from the late sixties on became more deliberately grottier whilst being ridiculous

The softcore nature of the film is a distinction from before too as, even whilst Lewis made nudie cuties before he made gore films, and at least one porn film he denied making, Blood Feast II at times feels like it was a 2000s softcore film meshed in DNA with a splatter film which is distinct. Lewis' films do have the issue, which cannot be ignored, that he usually had female victims most of the time, one of the few exceptions Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964), but the softcore nudity is a caveat in itself and comes off instead as more ridiculous. There is an absurdity at points too when you have lead Tiffani and her friends have a lingerie shower party, of putting on and taking off negligee, which comes off as absurd.

The specific type of softcore here is I can pin point to the early 2000s straight-to-DVD film, like Jim Wynorski's Busty Cops (2004), which became common on the lower shelves of even British DVD rental stores and those I admit freely I have seen a few of, like the aforementioned one above¹. Films which are on the verge of porn and are very statically shot even before they get to the nudity; films, from the few I have seen, that the likes of Misty Mundae (real name Erin Brown) starred in, which were low budget and in many cases strange. It is the same here, where nude scenes are paraded in their own separate space, where a woman wanders a house very naked to Devil's Stompin' Ground by Southern Culture..., or when the lingerie party happens and, for two of the people participating, the film is nearly looking to turn into a softcore sex sequence until Ramses III stumbles in.  

Eventually the film's strangeness becomes compelling. One of the strangest running gags compels this opinion from me - in which a minor character dies, the mother-in-law's husband, and his body inexplicably starts popping up in future scenes, even at the wedding reception at the end of the film. There is a sense of the film being self aware of itself and trying to top what it did previously in how genuinely eccentric it can be, even having a character correct the mistake from the original film that Ishtar is a Babylonian goddess, not an Egyptian one. Even one of those nude scenes, for the police secretary, is played as a bizarre dream for a police officer where her breasts become two iced deserts and for her, when he wakes, to chastise him. What in any other case would be a sloppy early 2000s production, a predecessor to Neo-Grindhouse in being too ironic and not taking itself seriously, instead in this case is camper than a boy scout conventional and genuine in its weirdness. My growing admiration for ultra low budget films too, this one with a lot more production value too, helps considerably as is the fact Lewis made a lot of low budget, weird films. Knowing he himself worked on the likes of Something Weird (1967), living up to that title among other grab bags of eccentricity, really argues that this film is more closely linked to the others, in lurid content for the sake of luridness,and weird characters. Characters in his old work, as here, would have not batted an eye either at the catering Ramses does even when having visible human fingers in rolls to snack on.

An outlier in the career of Herschell Gordon Lewis's filmography it may seem, it does not feel that much of one despite the claims of this. Tragically as well, probably for this reason, this film has be made obscurer and even lost when, in context, it was insanely entertaining whilst in very bad taste and ridiculous. One that, due to one of its songs having been played on the trailer for Arrow Video's promo reel in their early days, has grown on me considerably with fondness. Blood Feast II does feel like a feast, a vast contrast to the quick and sudden shocks of luridness of the director's first film of the two, but a long and peculiar thing for me to delight in.

 

Abstract Spectrum: Camp/Eccentric/Grotesque/Psychotronic/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

 

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1) And that particularly example, still irredeemable, did show how bizarre these films could get, with random nude egg breaking in a group shower and a talking lama as a police chief. Those scenes still linger with me despite being a long time ago.

The Wizard of Gore (1970)

 

Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis

Screenplay: Allen Kahn

Cast: Ray Sager as Montag the Magnificent; Judy Cler as Sherry Carson; Wayne Ratay as Jack; Phil Laurenson as Greg; Jim Rau as Steve; Don Alexander as Det. Kramer; John Elliot as Det. Harlan

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) Re-Review

 

You're the one who wants to see pictures of human ravioli for dessert.

The Wizard of Gore is an iconic film from Herschell Gordon Lewis's career, a return to the splatter film after three years from The Gruesome Twosome (1967), which in context to his career was a long time as someone who made more than one film each year many times. It also feels the effects of his sojourn away from the horror subgenre, of odd films like Something Weird (1967), which has left a lasting effect in terms of turning his early Gore trilogy into later stranger films. Also of context is that, in the late sixties, Lewis did attempt to step out into a cinema with live Grand-Guignol performances with a theatre called the Blood Shed in Chicago¹, which did not last long but clearly left its influence here. That the titular figure is Montag the Magnificent (Ray Sager), a magician who stages gruesome scenes of death, using female audience members, under the presumption that the acts are merely illusions. After the shows, however, they are always found after the show mutilated with no one in the vicinity to have carried anything out.

One factor about the film you need to adapt to is that it has a very repetitious structure. A female host of a "Housewives' coffee break" daytime talk show, Sherry Carson (Judy Cler), is trying to get Montag onto her show, she and her sportswriter fiancée Jack (Wayne Ratay) seeing his performances over three or so nights in the chronology as they both slowly realise something is amiss. We see consecutive three nights of Montag's performances, boiled down into the murder scenes with incident and aftermath in-between, modernised versions of tricks like sawing a woman in half known with tools like a chainsaw taking the old props place ("Today, magicians are mechanised too..."). As a result, much of the film is these gore scenes, which are seemingly illusions, full of weird editing to-and-fro in time in the maniacal bloodbaths with lots of real animal guts (and even animal eyes) in scenes both prolonged but also gross, these real pieces of animal in mannequins fingered over minutes in scenes at a time. For some viewers this will be incredibly dull. For other, it will produce a nauseous effect, including crude if completely real gore and lingering over it in such a way to taunt the viewer.

The film is not without the charm of other Lewis films though, as he thankfully has not lost his eccentricities. The atmosphere has become far grottier as the gore has become more gross, which is distinct, but even the aesthetic going into the seventies has changed. One where, after his previous dalliances with KFC (even the elderly Colonel Sanders having a cameo in Blast-Off Girls (1967)), you have a scene in a place called Chicken Unlimited, which is clearly a real fast food restaurant inside, and is a franchise. With its mostly white and text only sign, such locations are not the kitsch white suburban sixties kitsch of The Gruesome Twosome but a more working class, ordinary world as Lewis briefly made in the seventies.

Montag is also another virtue. According to Ray Sager himself, originally the older male actor they had originally, only for him to replace, was a former mental patient who started to act erratically. To Herschell's testimony, this actor and the producer of the film got into an argument that led to a quick change of actor¹. What can be confirmed is that, Sager was originally meant to be the assistant editor on this film until the offer for the lead came his way. Having had roles onscreen in Lewis films before from The Gruesome Twosome and after, as well as worked in the productions behind the camera, his involvement as a performer here was a good thing as he is memorable. Hair painted grey and spouting arch performed dialogue as a grotesque psychopath hidden in a showman, Sager by himself is a huge factor into The Wizard of Gore being entertaining.

That, and when in the final act this film gets weird, and that it without mentioning a subplot which is never explained and concluded, that Montag steals the bodies back of his female victims, usually shot in red and including raising a casket from the soil in a graveyard. The film has already had odd aspects, such as the editing of the murders, and hinted at two themes. One about the distinction between real and fictional violence, the film being sly in its comments on itself as part of the splatter genre Lewis created, something a couple of years before causing censors to bite at his ankles, of being merely fictional. The other is what is illusionary, as Montag says to his audiences, which pushes itself further by the end. By the final act, where Montag gets a TV show to control, brainwashing everyone watching in their living rooms with his mesmerism, it is improving after the repetition of before, but for the final scene The Wizard of Gore literally has its reality eat itself, getting instantly peculiar for an ending which, impossible to spoil, is probably a Möbius strip if you think about it hard enough. It does, definitely, help a film which could have easily been weak from the director by gleefully throwing itself in madness for the hell of it.

 

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1) As referred too HERE.

2) The first is documented in the Arrow Video produced interview with Sager. The later is from Arrow Video produced analysis of the film by writer/commentator Stephen Thrower, both on the same release of The Wizard of Gore first created in 2016 and re-released twice by them in single or box set form.

How to Make a Doll (1968)

 

Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis

Screenplay: Herschell Gordon Lewis (as Sheldon Seymour) and Bert Ray

Cast: Robert Wood as Percy Corley; Bobbi West as Agnes Turnbull / Dream Girl; Jim Vance as Dr. Hamilcar West; Elizabeth Davis as Mrs. Corley; Brett Jason Merriman as Mr. Turnbull; Geraldine Young as Mrs. Turnbull; Margie Lester as Dr. West's Dream Girl

An Abstract List Candidate

 

 I never take a hammer in the tub. It rusts you know.

Written by Herschell Gordon Lewis under a pseudonym, as "Sheldon Seymour", (who also did the "Special Computer Sound Effects"), How to Make a Doll is a very obscure film from him and an incredibly weird one to boot. It is a sex comedy from in the late sixties, with no nudity even compared to his early sixties output, and a very peculiar premise that has not aged well. One you could yet imagine Jerry Lewis reimagining at this period, but instead by the director if Blood Feast (1963) with imaginable curious results.

We introduce Professor Percy Corley (Robert Wood), our protagonist, his world one where at a university campus students are necking and heavy petting even in his class, to a rapturous crowd of peers ignoring his teacher writing at the board lecturing. Even he does not notice himself until he trips over the couple on the floor, a very clumsy man with a bad habit of catching his tie in his own front door, not even bothering to re-open the door afterwards but having scissors always on him to cut himself free. Percy is also someone able to succeed in his knowledge about X and Y, but not of "Gs and Bs", and love in general ("Could it be girls are better than text books?"). He is the sole single person on the campus, where he even finds a couple making out in his own three wheeled red pod of a car.

A 32 year old virgin living with his mother, thankfully Percy is more self loathing than an angry white man, instead Herschell doing a film with no gore, post the likes of The Nutty Professor (1963) on a low budget. I was always here for his eccentricities and odd characters, so I am the target viewer for this film even if it was a disaster, but his film of building a supercomputer just to create women is strange, particularly as the humour is odd, with a lot of peculiar dialogue strung together like stream-of-consciousness ("cucumber pie"?), and is a film not of plot, but a lot of prolonged and protracted scenes. Making women with a computer is sexist, and with one unfortunate gay joke, when the first attempt at a higher life form is a man, and one voice from the computer clearly meant to be "Asian", this is a film from an obsolete era. But this predates Weird Science (1985) too, so Herschell was ahead of his time.

What this also shows was that, when presented with little, he will goof about as, from the moment we get to the pop art and multi-colour science laboratory where the computer is found, he both has the theme (decades before) of downloading one's consciousness into machinery, whilst also providing the noises of said computer, including gibbering, laughing and almost sounding like a mule, creating effectively a farce that in not meant to be taken serious. Or that, to simulate sex, screws and plugs (in stop motion) demonstrate it in the most blatant of ways. This, like Something Weird (1967) shows Lewis could be creative but also bizarre.

Unlike Something Weird, How To Make a Doll is a film entirely of padding, tangents and repetition, which makes this arguably one of the most difficult films to recommend from him unless you are a hardcore fan or like true cinematic oddities to watch. By the halfway mark, nothing actually progresses once the computer is introduced. Plot wise, this technically does have an event transpire, that Percy is forced into nearly being sexed to death (or wooed to boredom) on the whims of the computer, wishing to have him be a lady's mind so the experiences can be downloaded into the machine's mind. It repeats for so long however that it enters negative time when this happens, where the film progresses through its neither run time nor feels long, just drifting off into a cinematic fugue that might appeal to some, may not appeal to others.

Far weirder is that the film's main plot ends, only for an extended epilogue to take place of Percy meeting and dating a woman which takes up a considerable chunk of the film. One with an extended joke of him having broken glasses, and a lengthy piece of meeting the parents, all lasting a long time and entirely for a final joke involving a bunny swimming costume, breaking the reality and causing one to wonder what was real originally. The resulting film is beguiling in being a mass of random, disconnected pieces, pieces of Percy being obsessed with bunny rabbits from never having pets as a child to the homemade machine that can materialise anything. That the professor behind the machine, who becomes one with it, has an extended gag of him trying to explain his work, only to go on tangents which lasts a considerable time and has enough strange dialogue within it meant to be funn.y It is fittingly part of Lewis' career, as his career once you dig through it is full of films you would never get in the modern day like this. It is however, even if finding it entertaining, a peculiar creation that, surprisingly, managed to get on the list of the 2016 Arrow Video blu ray restorations of Lewis' work. Bless them for this as this is usually the kind of weirdo production that will baffle people.

Abstract Spectrum: Minimalistic/Psychotronic/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Something Weird (1967)

 

Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis

Screenplay: James F. Hurley

Cast: Tony McCabe as Cronin 'Mitch' Mitchell; Elizabeth Lee as Ellen Parker; William Brooker as Dr. Alex Jordan; Mudite Arums as The Hag; Ted Heil as Det. Maddox; Lawrence J. Aberwood as Chief Vinton; Larry Wellington as Rev. Ammond

An Abstract Candidate

Including a bonus review of A Hot Night at the Go Go Lounge (1966)

 

Levitation may occur.

This is where, reviewing the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis, I rub my hands together with glee. This film, a tangent in a career usually known for the splatter films, is famously where the company Something Weird Video got their name from, founded by the late Mike Vraney who (with his wife and widow Lisa Petruccirunning the company after him) decided to preserve weird American productions like this alongside the rest of Lewis' filmography. This was also one of the only original Something Weird Video release I did own, rather than distributed by a different company, importing the DVD which was worthy to preserve even after Arrow Video released a Blu Ray restoration because of the extras. The company's reputation was as much to make their releases a trick or treat bag of curiosities and delights, making others blush in shame by offering short films and odd content more interesting for someone myself to watch than even behind the scenes documents. Even a clip of Psyched by the 4D Witch (1973) appeared on this film's disc, another of these bizarre American exploitation films from the era which hopped onto the LSD and New Age cultural trends.

Something Weird lives up to the title, its origins coming from a period where Lewis deviated from his gore films in the later sixties. Some of this was the censors snapping at his heels, but I suspect as much of this was that, as an exploitation/independent filmmaker, he hoped onto new trends or wanted to expand his forte. I will use this as an excuse to cram a tiny little review here of a short film supposedly directed by him from the time, A Hot Night at the Go Go Lounge (1966), suiting the film originally talked about by having even its own review go on a tangent.  Starting with dancing, cutting to feet dancing and shimmering women, the short however is mostly about female erotic dancing, two female topless dancers the central focus, one in a red skirt with tassels and black stockings, the other in white jeans. This is a foot back into older exploitation films, the burlesque productions like Varietease (1954) from the late fifties, but this short is worth mentioned in a Something Weird review as you see the eventual transition to weird films of the late sixties. Of the psychedelic era, the proto psychedelic garage rock and the attempt at matching the era, be it red and purple backgrounds to jump cuts to make the dancers appear and disappear. It is a mere curiosity, but you see Lewis, if he directed this, both able to show style and moving along with trends, be they relevant or out of touch. It almost feels apt the last shot is a jukebox, a fifties piece of iconography before Lewis made a film like Something Weird a year later.

Adding to the strange film is knowing that its screenwriter James F. Hurley was obsessed with ESP, writing a film that would pass on his beliefs on the subject only for this film to be created, hating the final result so much he directed his own film called The Psychic (1968) with Lewis himself as the cinematographer. From the get-go the score by Edward J. Petan is trippy for an introduction to the film, jazz with synth and even an xylophone later on, apt for a film where the opening credits has a random murder of a woman by a psychopath, a random scene in a dojo linking to the growing interest in the West of martial arts, and an abrupt cut to a man falling off a roof, electrocuted, and the real lead Mitch (Tony McCabe) getting his face burnt by the severed cable that falls down too trying to help that man. He gains psychic powers as a result of the electrocution, but also a permanently scared face, psychologically distorting him to the point of being initially very unlikable, berating a female nurse in hospital, not helped by what has happened to him psychologically what has transpired. Then a witch enters his life, and the film lives up to the title and tenfold.

Wandering off in pure randomness, there is a point here, completely accurate with his gift and getting by as a veiled psychic, Mitch is offered a tempting deal. That if he becomes her lover, the witch will restore his face; said witch, who is your typical exaggerated crone, does however disguise herself as a beautiful woman when the deal is sealed, which tempts him further. Dialogue heavy, Something Weird is yet a curious beast, one which juggles so many unexpected plot jaunts. There is, as mentioned, someone killing women which evokes Lewis' splatter films, even one murder with a blow torch being used. This plot, which becomes one of the main two, looks like it will turn into a prototype of The Dead Zone, be it the Stephen King novel and the 1983 David Cronenberg film, where in the location of Jefferson in Wisconsin (where the film was also shot for authenticity) Mitch is asked to be involved with using his powers to find the killer. Not before however a random ghost exorcism in a church, a séance with superimposition, and psychosexual tension where the main crime investigator sent to Jefferson falls in love with the Witch in her disguised form, being attacked by his own bed sheets in the process.

Then the LSD is brought in the room, literally from a pocket, at a time when it was still considered a curiosity, and leading to a trip scene entirely in red hue and pushing Lewis in expressing such content in idiosyncratic ways.  As a filmmaker as well, in mind to such examples, Lewis took a step on this film in terms of his more creative side showing itself, another example the electrocution scene, causing Mitch's disfigurement, which is cut to in a quick edit from a scene before of a couple romantically entangled which pitches an ironic piece of dialogue before the accident. Whilst this still follows his habit of calmly paced and long scenes of dialogue, the moments of his having to show unconventionality and flourish to make this film stand out are enticing. This also undercuts the notion that he did not take his work with any interest beyond financial success at all, as he was starting to include these types of flourishes among these films onwards, and did not need have to as many genre and exploitation films before and afterwards in the seventies could far more crudely minimalistic. Here particularly, in its glory living up to the title tenfold, you see this, the film I had grown the fondest of from Lewis, and still gleefully bonkers to witness.

Abstract Spectrum: Psychedelic/Psychotronic/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

Piercing Brightness (2012)

 

Director: Shezad Dawood

Screenplay: Kirk Lane

Cast: Houda Echouafni as Mask; Chen Ko as Jiang; Tracy Brabin(as Maggie; Samantha Elizabeth Edwards as Nikki; Paul Leonard as Warner; Jennifer Lim as Shin; Bhasker Patel as Naseer Khan; Derek Siow as Lee

An Abstract List Candidate/Re-Review

In the city of Preston, aliens have for decades lived hidden amongst humans disguised as the Earthling's own. Two of them, disguised as a young Chinese brother and sister (Ko and Lim) appear and meet a veteran who has been on Earth for a long time (Patel), disguised as an older Pakistani man who runs a corner store, who is both incredibly glad to see them and offers a pure white room in his home for them to stay. Thus begins Piercing Brightness, an obscure British production from Shezad Dawood, a multimedia artist who created this feature film science fiction tale set in modern day England, in which these siblings' appearance is timely as the aliens who live in the town are in debate in-between finally revealing themselves to mankind and trying to return back home.

Among those caught up within this are a single mother (Brabin), a UFO enthusiast, who realises that she may not be who she thinks she is, her adult daughter who meets a bald Chinese man around her age and strikes up a bond with, and an alien disguised as an older male counsellor who is the one instigating the idea of revealing their true forms to humanity. As sinister hoodies stalk the aliens, revealed to be their own who transformed their bodies too many times to pose as human beings, the film will culminate in transcendental revelations whilst scored to Acid Mother Temple acid rock. Piercing Brightness is working off a low budget, but to its advantage, science fiction allows one to explore the genre tropes in a variety of ways. The best aspect of this film is the premise, of the alien placed in the ordinary environment of an English city, which is innately different from the American cities and countryside of their sci-fi and adds a huge contrast as a result.

This is the world of corner shops and nightclubs, cups of tea and playing FIFA on a games console (as namedropped in a piece of dialogue), which drastically contrasts the iconography of sci-fi, especially of aliens and UFOs, many of us likely picture as a result of American pop culture. This was why Jonathan Glazer's Glazer's Under The Skin (2013), with Hollywood star Scarlet Johansson stepping out of her comfort zone and becoming an alien, was such an eerie and unique film among of its other aspects, set in Scotland. Piercing Brightness takes advantage of these cafes and nightclubs, soaking in the pleasant, sometimes frankly bland mood of such environments in bright and crisp cinematography, the kind of environments where it is the people within it that really give it some much needed colour, an advantage this has in its cast.

When the aliens are revealed to be of all shapes and sizes, the film is also clearly looking at this subject with an immigration metaphor or at least, from Dawood, taking this genre from the perspective of non-white male characters. One scene, in this idea of people having to adapt to the environment, can be read this way when the brother alien tries asking for cigarettes in a cafe once, alongside the fact that a large portion of this film is that the aliens, merely here on Earth for exploration for decades as part of the "100 Group", are debating whether just to show themselves to the Earthlings as who they really are, which metaphorically can be read into greatly. The cast in general helps with this, and there is one single individual, Bhasker Patel as the alien posing as a corner shop owner, who brings the quality of the film up a bar. Both in how he is both charismatic and in his character, the man more than happy to be amongst the humans, excited like a young man when new aliens like him appear, but melancholic in that he has still been stuck on our planet in many forms, and wishes to return to his home out of nostalgia. His world weariness as a character adds a lot to a film which is more mood driven then narratively in the end.  

The music as well helps greatly with the film, both from the original score by Alexander Tucker and the choice cuts picked from cult Japanese acid rock group Acid Mother's Temple. Known for being able to release up to four albums minimum a year since they started in 1995, side projects with other bands, and their clear love of psychedelic rock of the sixties from the title puns of their songs and albums, Acid Mother's Temple is the kind of band you could imagine aliens being scored to, archive footage of UFOs scored in montages to their druggy guitar riffs and making a perfect union together. Especially when the film starts to improve in structure by its middle half to the end, when the music is of greater importance than visual trickery, it helps reach a good build-up to the climax immensely. A lot of the film in general feels closer to visual montage experiments, with use of iconography of animals especially birds intercut between, from eagles to birds on mass in flight in the sky, and especially dead birds in decade or as skeletons, for me metaphors of these aliens trapped when, like birds, their real forms would be free from their confines.

Shezad Dawood decided to purposely make the film abstract in tone, intercutting shots of birds at unexpected moments between incidents in a single scene, using colour filters and distorted frames, noises mixing with the music. The result for many would require patience, falling into the stereotype of what an experimental movie is whilst still building on atmosphere. There is still a plot which eventually makes sense to contrast this aesthetic, even if this still has to work with limitations. Kudos has to be made for the car chase stunts, including someone being hit off a bicycle by a car during a chase, even if this is also a film where a faceless hoodie molests someone in the least threatening way possible, by merely tugging her top and then leaving her alone. The film drastically shifts when it gets to the middle of its running time, when the whole plot finishes within this timeframe of one night, the score taking over completely with some choice editing of snapshots in creating a tone.

Considering the director's art installation origins, the film based on a script from a cult novelist, this is an idiosyncratic melding of the duo between trippy sci-fi and installation art, which can juggle between two sibling aliens seeing a female alien with computer chip parts stuck to her face on the TV instructing them with esoteric words, contrasted by all the kaleidoscopic imagery, which does stand out with distinction as a combination in the end.

Abstract Spectrum: Avant-Garde/Expressionist

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

Cougar Town Season 1 (2009-2010)

 

Created by Kevin Biegel and Bill Lawrence

Cast: Courteney Cox as Jules Cobb; Christa Miller as Ellie Torres; Busy Philipps as Laurie; Dan Byrd as Travis Cobb; Josh Hopkins as Grayson Ellis; Ian Gomez as Andy Torres; Brian Van Holt as Bobby Cobb

Ephemeral Waves

 

What led to me even watching this show? Pure chance, and since I had the first season at hand, I felt a curiosity to delve into this, the least expected review as this a very mainstream non-abstract production, a sitcom co-created by Bill Lawrence, the creator of Scrubs, starring Friends alumni Courteney Cox as a single mother in her forties struggling with single romantic life. This is, again, alien to what I usually watch even as someone who grew up with Bill Lawrence, but this is a fascinating thing to attempt to review, forcing me into different pastures in terms of entertainment. This show also has, in its main cast, alumni from John from Cincinnati(2007) and Clone High (2002), very unconventional one season shows which emphases how for many stars of strange and abstract work, they are merely part of their regular day jobs alongside shows like this. Think of this review as the mirror reflecting back at their regular day jobs.

Sold, for the British DVD, on the double meaning of "Cougar" - set in Florida, where cougars are found, and the euphemism for very sexually open older women who date younger men - that title did eventually become a joke, to the point it was considered to be changed¹ and was even mocked. After the initial story of Jules, a recently divorced mother of one who decides to throw herself into the life of a bachelorette hard, including to date a man half her age, the show becomes more openly about a group of friends around her, setting up a template of normalcy being kept baring a season long set of character plots.  

Covering a show like this is perversely idiosyncratic for someone who covers unconventional cinema, especially as this is a modern sitcom, structurally where, rather than the live audience (or canned) laughter, this is a regular comedic show set in the fictional town of Gulfhaven, with a few sets focused on². It is still felt to have some budget for more elaborate events, and at least one real alligator wrangled in one scene for a gag of one wandering into Jules' back garden by the pool, but is still restricted in a limited world baring that of the cast themselves. This cast is Jules and those in her orbit.

Her best friend and neighbour Ellie, played by , the wife of co-creator Bill Lawrence and the voice of Cleopatra in Clone High, playing a misanthropic stay-at-home mother who delights in gossip and teasing people, her husband Andy (Ian Gomez)  a lovable and doting figure is the complete opposite to her but means, whilst eccentric, their relationship is clearly with love. Laurie (Busy Philipps), Jules' assistant at her real estate business who is her other friend, a younger woman brazen in her habit of flirting with men, drinking and terrible choices in boyfriends. Jules' ex-husband Bobby, played by Brian Van Holt of John from Cincinnati, a lovable boob of a man who spends the series living in a boat in a parking lot, and their adult son Travis (Dan Byrd), always awkwardly stepping in when his mother or someone is having a frank sex conversation or if she says something weird. And Jules' neighbour Grayson (Josh Hopkins), seemingly the chad as he has women half his age always at his place at night just for sex, but with chemistry with Jules that becomes a huge plot point over the first season.

Taking Season One by itself, over twenty four episodes around twenty minutes each, you see a show (produced for ABC originally) trying to be naughtier knowing they cannot have any real nudity or even cursing as a broadcast show. It stumbles into a few jokes which has not aged well, actually tasteless nowadays, and sometimes you realise when this show was made as they make pop culture references like about the band Vampire Weekend. It does, in spite of its frankness about sex, reach a glass ceiling, and it is oddly naive and awkward when occasionally bringing up certain topics, such as anyone being gay, which is a shame considering this also has, in Andy and Bobby, a pure bromance despite them both being heterosexual, with celebration dances and butt slapping completely comfortable for both.

But for all those times which can be an issue, or how it became conventional or syrupy, as a show set in a well off middle class white community, it suddenly could make me laugh quite a few times per episode. It is not a show set in reality, a broad and exaggerated world when the behaviour is at times random and strange, succeeding and bolstered not because of its huge star Courteney Cox in truth but by the rest of the cast. Whilst she is central, as an executive producer and the star the main narratives hang around, Cox is merely the tent pole for her own show, and the only time it ever refers back to Friends is a one episode guest star in Lisa Kudrow, playing completely against her Friends character as a ball busting older dermatologist. In contrast, more is probably made of musician Sheryl Crow, in more than one episode, as a possible love interest for Grayson, adding another connection to my usual unconventional reviews as she had a very early role, before she was famous, in Cop Rock(1990).

The entirety of Cougar Town for me, in terms of entertainment, was whenever the scripts were openly silly and due to the rest of the main cast. This helps as some of the Jules main stories actually do paint the cast in a negative light. Jules being told to dump her significantly younger boyfriend in the first few episodes, just because, is actually unlikable, and everyone trying to get her back to drinking later on in the season is as bad when you take a step back from that episode too. Better instead is keeping her an absurd character, in the affluence middle class world that can afford a swimming pool in the back garden, which is still likable but also odd, in one episode loving her new bathroom, with a couch, so much she refuses to leave the room. Instead, it is that Ellie is such a misanthropic you strangely like, or Laurie is a bubbly and bright figure, which won me over, or that eventually the group of Andy, Bobby and Grayson become a fun trio of older men. The show to its credit is a case where the female cast are allowed to be diverse and interesting, but the men are also interesting; it is something far more positive, than crass machismo, about a bunch of middle age guys who do stupid things but also have a lot more responsibility on their shoulders, their type of bro behaviour more staying up all night in their boxers and cowboy hats, drinking or dancing to Enya, than anything remotely dubious. Particularly as well as, with that example leading them into Ellie's bedroom, when she is trying to sleep only for her to join in the drinking, no one in the stick in the mud or a butt of jokes, just willing to all hang out, abruptly appear in each others' home or drinking a lot of wine.

It produces a dichotomy, which is for the better in enjoying the show, that in the midst of many conventional stereotypes, there are thankfully many lovably eccentric characters that get to indulge in scenes silly for the sake of it. A man-on-man stare down where the loser, listening to a song meant to make men cry, weeps. A game of "penny can", a game invented by Bobby I am aware is going to be a running gag over seasons, which includes guessing trivia on him to lead the loser to telling him Jules is dating Grayson, including the fact he would flirt with an Ewok if one was put in a dress. A running gag over two episodes over a red balloon, not one from a French children's short film but from a car dealership promotion day which leads to prize money if caught, or the ultimate taboo being if you acquire your cooking meat from a petting zoo. The fact that everyone, even Ellie and Laurie, really like each other even if, in one case between Ellie and Grayson, you put up an entire set of Christmas decorations out of season just to torment the other.

Production wise, I have found television can significantly be restricted in pushing its visual and technical side, due to their schedules and their formats, here an example. This is bright and colourful, with many rooms looking like they are from the world of glamorous furniture catalogues, but the one real moment of artistry I can think of in the whole season, when Jules wishes to have a night out boozing, is when the episode stage all the events that transpire in photographs, which is beautifully executed and beautifully mirrored by the men's night out, done the same way, set to Thin Lizzy's The Boys Are Back In Town. This production style, to be honest, is one I except even if I am the type of person who prefers more creative productions regardless of budget. The one exception, since I have brought up music, which I wish would removed in future seasons is the musical choices, as there are a lot of montages of characters pondering their regrets set to post-post-grunge rock I could have lived without.

There is after this the question of where Cougar Town will go. Season One is light-hearted and each episode breezes past quickly with only Jules and Grayson's relationship the main dynamic. One of the factors which has scared me off shows with many seasons is that it is a long commitment to make (Cougar Town having six) and that there is a danger, mid-way through, you could have both a gradual decline, or even a rot set it, when the premise is lost, or you find yourself not really interested in the series at all, where people would sensibly quit after that point. Many series, unless they are cancelled only after one, tend to change and find their personality more onwards, so I could see Cougar Town evolve over the next season. One additional factor, which is inexplicable, is that we never got the fifth and final seasons in the United Kingdom, which is a curious hurdle, but that is for another time. Whilst it may be weird to cover this show when I should be covering avant-garde and psychotronic productions, there is a perverse glee to see this through and at least see what would happen over said seasons.

 

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1) As mentioned in the article HERE

2) The pub Grayson owns and works at is perfect for pondering the reoccurring sets in sitcoms, watching the solitary female extra in their red and white bar staff uniforms walking behind the leads in the background in every scene. Contemplating the staging, even contemplating whether they could afford more elaborate background extras or whether, even with Friends a decade before this, they have to work under a budget.

The Lair of the White Worm (1988)

 

Director: Ken Russell

Screenplay: Ken Russell

Cast: Hugh Grant as Lord James D'Ampton; Amanda Donohoe as Lady Sylvia Marsh; Catherine Oxenberg as Eve Trent; Peter Capaldi as Angus Flint; Sammi Davis as Mary Trent; Stratford Johns as Peters; Paul Brooke as Ernie; Imogen Claire as Dorothy Trent

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #210/An Abstract Film Candidate

 

If we begin with the source of this film, The Lair of the White Worm was Irish author Bram Stoker's last novel. Whilst it has the original template of that novel, based off the legend of the Lambton Worm whose evil (and followers) terrorise the locals in this story, this adaptation alongside modernising it also greatly deviates greatly. Stoker' novel is weird, bearing in mind it was released in a truncated form as well, including significantly more dead mongoose than the sole one you get in the film, and a whole bizarre subplot where a character becomes obsessed with floating a kite outside his house, which is important to the novel's finale. It is also unfortunately racist, entirely because the character Arabella March, the antagonist, has an African manservant named Oolanga who, by characters and the author, is called racist terms for description and is a completely gross caricature of evil from a racial bias. Thankfully, in his modernisation, Russell scrapped that character and effectively made a Hammer horror film is he perverted one.

He is colouring carefully between the lines, under the watchful eye of Vestron Pictures (who would later fund his D.W. Lawrence adaptation The Rainbow (1989)), but he finds ways to get away with material within these confines, his adaptation repurposing the main concept of the Lambton worm. The "worm" (i.e. dragon) is real folklore, involving a worm-like dragon which was eventually slain by a figure named John Lambton, a folk song by C. M. Leumane re-told and played in character by a band in the beginning of the film to set up the context. Here, a young Peter Capaldi is Angus Flint, a budding archaeologist from Scotland who finds a strange skull in the land. A young Hugh Grant early in his career is Lord James D'Ampton, an ancestor of the figure who originally slain the worm.

Of note is that Russell, who felt the source material was a disappointment from Stoker¹, really deviates from the source completely, including how it comes to the female villainess, here now interpreted into Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe). Marsh is the mysterious figure who, with intent on the sisters Eve Trent (Catherine Oxenberg) and Mary Trent (Sammi Davis), who run a bed and breakfast, is very early on established as both the villainess and half-snake, an immortal figure who allows Donohoe to seductively and gleefully chew scenery between seducing boy scouts and spitting poison on crucifixes with hallucinogenic properties. The film is Donohoe's by a country mile, making the idea that they had originally considered a young Tilda Swinton for the role, who declined it, even more surreal in hindsight².

An intrinsic sense of the absurd is found here, and the crude intermingles with it in a full embrace. For the most part, this is a straight forward horror film, one you could easily have had Hammer make in the sixties with Peter Cushing and not a lot of it would have to be changed, even that this revolves around a cult of snake people who can add more to their side through "snake vamperism" and their bites. Russell, the notorious scallywag of films as strange as Lisztomania (1975) when he had carte blanche, had always been absurd or with his serious work being transgressively exaggerated, even here with a wink and a nod with all the snake and phallic symbolism, from hosepipe to Donohoe playing snakes n ladders with a victim.

Even in this film as well, you witness some bizarre moments befitting the director. Wishing to evoke The Devils (1971) and having discovered green screen technology, you get video effect freak outs to tell the back-story of the LambtonWorm in hallucinations, including spiked fake phallus, and a scene of a giant white worm wrapping around Christ as Roman soldiers terrorise and rape nuns in front of video toaster imposed fire and Donohoe cavorting around nude or a snake woman. Or the dream on an airplane as Hugh Grant watches Donohoe and Catherine Oxenberg as stewardesses wrestling each other and a phallic use of a red marker pen.

This is not a film from the mad, ambitious seventies or early eighties of Russell, as in spite of all I have described this is still restrained compared to other work. Not long after this, excluding Whore (1991), he would move on to television but also a lot of ultra obscure projects, on Uri Geller film, an appearance on Celebrity Big Brother and films shot in his own garage. So, in his attempt at a mainstream horror film, you see as much one of his last hurrahs too, taking this template and giving it a nice shot in the arm with his eccentricities.

Abstract Spectrum: Exaggerated/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

 

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1) Bless the people making old copies of Fangoria available until collections are publically available.

2) Based on information from the Trailers from Hell commentary by Vestron executive Dan Ireland.