Hotel (2004)

 

Director: Jessica Hausner

Screenplay: Jessica Hausner

Cast: Franziska Weisz as Irene; Birgit Minichmayr as Petra; Marlene Streeruwitz as Frau Maschek; Peter Strauß as Herr Kos; Regina Fritsch as Frau Karin; Rosa Waissnix as Frau Liebig; Alfred Worel as Liebig

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #261

 

I did not expect the opening theme to sound like it is from a giallo, and then you learn it is the elevator music of Hotel Waudhaus which sporadically plays, due to faults, when it plays. Hotel the film, from Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hauser, however is not conventional at all. It is in many ways a film difficult to review because, if you try to explain its minimalist content, you spoil it, and when I say minimalistic, I mean that. It is a horror film, but as stripped back, closer to supernatural drama, with nothing actually seen.

Irene (Franziska Weisz) is a new employee at Hotel Waudhaus, who replaces a woman who has vanished. The film intermingles many subtly suggested plot points without stressing them. The previous employee has vanished, because the police are looking for her, and the film hints at the supernatural through the "Lady of the Woods", a witch in the 16th century who, in 1591, was burned at the stake and is the folk lore figure promoted in the hotel itself. It can be hinted at she may be involved, but you never see anything. The only suspicious detail is whether, in the dark and vast woodlands outside, whether you hear a bird call or a woman screaming when a certain sound is heard. The film was designed by its director-writer to be elusive, to have a continuous sense of foreboding but never show the threat¹.

The film for the most part is the banality of running a hotel, contrasted by the stresses and banal pettiness of people. Irene must put up with co-workers who play music loud and party when she wants to sleep, ostracising her when she does not follow their requests. A crucifix, which becomes important as a literal charm against evil least for my interpretation, becomes connected to this, whether it was stolen by a colleague or something else makes it briefly vanish. The seniors who run Waudhaus follow outdated attitudes alongside their egos, such as banning the female staff from having boyfriend, when Irene is gladly helping at the hotel, placed in a position isolated from the world where the only really sympathetic staff member, an older religious woman, warns her to leave very early on.

The hotel itself is also mysterious, or at least depicted within the same tone as Stanley Kubrick depicted the Overlook Hotel in The Shining (1980), a cold ominous place of countless unending corridors here. Its atmosphere may mean nothing but still paint the eeriness Irene feels within the place the moment she find an extra pair of glasses belonging to the previous employee in her room. A large factor to the film's tone is that it is minimalist in aesthetic. A cold tone, but also because whilst this is not part of the "slow cinema" movement of the era, Hausner decided to still shot this with a static style with little camera movement and still scenes to tell the story. It works, because with a film which tells a lot without having to explain a great deal, it is able to be very simple in what the narrative is but without having to stress it, this minimalistic aesthetic helping greatly.

This is also where trying to write more than a little would undercut Hotel as it is based on mood. Themes can be ascribed - that this reflects the past still entrenched in the modern day - but this simple narrative told by this tone really stands out. It did on the first viewing lead to the film having a muted reaction from me, but upon multiple viewings, I came to appreciate this tone and storytelling and admire it greatly.

 

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1) As referred in this interview on the film HERE.

The Boy from Hell (2004)

 

Director: Mari Asato

Screenplay: Seiji Tanigawa and Naoteru Yamamoto

Based on the work by Hideshi Hino

Cast: Mirai Yamamoto as Setsu/Dr. Emma; Mitsuru Akaboshi as Daio

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #38

 

One more brain transplant will save him!

Hideshi Hino, the manga author behind the source material, does not play the meek author in the opening of The Boy from Hell, an episode of the show Hideshi Hino's Theatre of Horror (2004). Hino is not like Junji Ito who, whilst having depicted himself in his manga as a man close to insanity, in real life is a meek man, as well as writing mind bending tales like Uzumaki (1998-9), who also wrote manga about his cats. Hino depicts himself here entirely on the cusp of the void, wishing his nightmares on a person in voice over, his manga written in a grimy apartment based on his real sins, as a young woman perishes in a doomed fate before the episode proper starts. Only the grotesqueness of his work, and a knowing sense of humour throughout, prevents this turning into Garth Marenghi, even if The Boy from Hell is a fun piece to introduce myself to his work.

The TV episode, nearly feature length, clearly has a sense of humour when said boy, the resurrected son of a female doctor, jumps head first into his own reflection at one point, and smashes his face into it, staring at himself confused afterwards. The set-up does not hide the absurdity of this, even if it becomes a grimly humoured work with gristly content. In a green screened car, the son named Daio reminds one why you never stick your head out of a moving vehicle when, cruising with his mother Dr. Emma (Mirai Yamamoto) and their elder male servant, he gets decapitated by a truck. Mrs Emma is informed by a random old woman at his grave that, if she uses the tusk the old woman has, slicing a boy's throat open onto the grave, Daio will be resurrected. One terminally ill boy in her hospital later, and Daio is resurrected. Unfortunately, he looks like a ghoul once he springs out the grave, with a similar ghoul's taste in human flesh.

Set to an almost Goblin-like score, barring the Theremin like synth, this low budget work is over-the-top, and one of the incentives as well is that this is directed by Mari Asato, one of the few horror films directed by a woman from the 2000s. Here she is playing with an over-the-top farce as, puffy eyed and fanged, Daio keeps escaping and eating the locals at night, as the film skirts between intentional and unintentional humour as a low budget TV production with a lot of gore. Some of this is exceptionally dark, as this has no qualms even off-screen of killing many children, but the humour is clearly there on purpose, with an idyllic scene of mother and son undercut, alongside him being in a wheelchair with his head entirely bandaged, by the shot of a pigeon having landed on his head. Nor the fact that the other main character cannot be ignored as anything else by intentionally farcical, a detective who can smell crime and the actor I noticed near the end has a giant fake nose on. Even his introduction suggests this, involving finding the old woman from earlier dead on Dr. Emma's doorstep, having crawled all the way there, and not questioning Dr. Emma for how the elderly woman got there.  

The film is helped, even in mind to its clear budget limitations, because of these tone, the gristly contrasting with the silly, all heightened knowing it is schlocky and embracing it regardless of the matter-of-factness of the ordinary locations. Hideshi Hino's work, looking at it, is very exaggerated and unrealistic at times just in character designs, which this looks virtually alien to, but he would have been proud of how this compensates for this in tone, such as including the most awkward birthday party ever when the birthday boy is chained up with a Hannibal Lecter mask on. Mari Asato does as much as she can with a limited budget, one of the weirdest moments reflecting its lack of budget by constantly referring to a superimposed nightmare hell, Buddhist Hell as depicted by way of early 2000s low budget computer layering. With a giant version of Daio imposed over actors in black undergarments being beaten, chewed on and crushed, it becomes more bizarre as the detective himself does eventually find the entrance there in a tunnel, when you presumed before it was just a reoccurring dream sequence.

It is an acquired taste, undeniably, but as part of this era, it follows my great taste for obscurer Japanese horror. Whether animated or live action, even something like this has an unique energy, coupled by the fact this still takes itself seriously, even here ending as a tragedy despite the fact this narrative has had an attempted brain transplant to cure Daio, which does not work, or the genre trope of glass jugs of dangerous acid which someone always gets in the face. Mari Asato has thankfully progressed on, making it her filmography to stay in horror cinema, even getting to higher budgeted work like Fatal Frame (2014), which is a good thing. As for Hideshi Hino, and his TV show, The Boy from Hell was defiantly an incentive to explore his work now; even with the absurdness of the initial introduction video, this stands out for depiction his lurid works.

Nightmare Asylum (1992)

 

Director: Todd Sheets

Screenplay: Todd Sheets

Cast: Lori Hassel as Lisa; Matthew Lewis as Spider; J.T. Taube as Jimiah; Mike Hellman as David; Jenny Admire as Melissa; Charles Gooseman as Pops; Jerry Angell as Sonny Boy; Deric Bernier as Shlooby

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #260 / An Abstract Candidate

 

My aching banana!

I have wanted to see Nightmare Asylum for a long time, knowing this would be completely unwatchable for most viewers. For context, Todd Sheets from 1985 onwards has been a prolific micro-budget filmmaker who, baring an absence of 2005 to 2013, has been working into the 2010s onwards. He himself has negated anything before Zombie Rampage (1992) as actually being films, those before an embarrassment for him, so this era does come with mind of his own opinions of it¹.

Yet, the likes of Nightmare Asylum exists, with David DeCoteau of Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama (1988) as its executive producer no less, a film shot entirely in a haunted house, as we begin with a woman named Lisa (Lori Hassel) running in corridors from a masked man. This improvised location is suggests to be an openly surreal nightmare realm, as she encounters a man with his legs trapped in a giant mousetrap, eating raw meat until he is chain sawed, the film improvising its location's existing props. The other immediate aspect is that the sound design is terrible, some of the worse technically you can encounter and what you have to deal with even before the content for the entire hour long film. Dialogue is barely audible; the music is in one channel which significantly louder. The music is constant throughout, be it an attempt at a Goblin score, openly borrowing part of the Fabio Frizzi soundtrack of The Beyond (1981), and a lot of Gustav Holst's Mars, the Bringer of War, the most famous part of his composed the Planets Suite. You will hear Mars, Bringer of War many times, even over a man getting a pike up the rectum, making this at least a perverse audio experience to hear even if most will find this unbearable, let alone digest the actual content of Nightmare Asylum. Certainly, Holst would have not expected this when he composed the Planets Suite.

The plot is also vague and really non-existent, more a series of incidents and gore scenes where the haunted house realm is full of weirdoes, such as the family of Spider (Matthew Lewis), a young man who rescues Lisa from that masked figure and introduces her to his home, lived in by men who are savaging for any food, even severed human feet. On the other side and more dangerous is a group of psychopaths led by Todd Sheets. Sheets is recognisable as a more bulkier David Mustaine, the lead musician of Megadeth, with a giant mane of blonde hair. He shouts a lot, sings a bit of the song from Herschell Gordon Lewis' Two Thousand Maniacs (1964), part of the film's clear genesis from a horror fan, and sometimes talk about his aching fruits and kumquats. His group, as Lisa is pulled around a lot as an innocent bystander to this world, will maim people for the hell of it.

It is an excuse for many low, low budget splatter scenes - nails forced into mouths mimed, a tongue being cut without seeing it clearly - which was a staple of his work at the time like Goblin (1993), but is toned down in places when other films had a heavy emphasis on real organ meat being fondled. To a viewer who may roll their eyes at all this, I can say Todd Sheets worked and worked until he could make a film like Clownado (2018), which is not as ironic as that title suggests but is a solidly made micro-budget film in comparison to this. He would improve into a competent low budget horror filmmaker with a taste for quirks, taking his splatter film mentality onwards and, with a film like Clownado, making a film aware of its limitations but able to be more interesting than films thrice its budget. It is the case, whilst many are harder to find nowadays, his earlier work like Nightmare Asylum did get proper releases, and were always going to be a yard stick to work from when this is clearly of an entire spectrum of filmmaking with its own acquired taste.

Instead, I come to this entirely as an amateur production which has a likable energy in spite of its hellish technical issues, where even the haunted house itself is the work of nerdy horror fans, such as fake gravestones for Stephen King, John Carpenter and Wes Craven in one scene when someone is dragged into graves. There is, if you can partake or absorb this, the chaos of something delightfully gaudy even if I am one of the few people willing to partake in this. It has the mentality where no one bothers to hide the haunted house's "Exit" signs, instead referenced as a one way direction to a worse form of Hell to avoid. The haunted house itself is a thing of lurid beauty, a public environment one could only hope to enter with its elaborate rooms, such as a morgue, alongside props like bloodied mannequins and even a replica of Linda Blair as the possessed version of her character from The Exorcist (1973) which is cut to multiple times. All shot in green and purple darkened lighting, with fog Lucio Fulci would be proud of, the location shines even if the production is haphazard and feels semi if greatly improvised. In fact, imaging this is the equivalent of a live theatrical performance with splatter, transpiring inside a haunted house, is probably the best way to digest the film, even in terms of the home recording of it being far from perfect. Even in terms of a film made within this world that, frankly, is one of the biggest messes I could come across, I was immersed and entertained by access like this.

It is the best and the worse of micro-budget filmmaking, the participatory nature of the film a good thing, even if suffering from barely audible dialogue and music, where there is a knowing absurdity even in the lack of gore in this particular film, improvising with spaghetti seemingly used at one point as improvised human insides. This is a film on a different hand too however where someone did, to their credit, figured out facial bladder effects, even if for someone randomly becoming a she-demon, showing this sense of people trying even if failing. That sense of it being barely stuck together is its greatest flaw but at the same time, it compels me. There is a least of sense of trying and unpredictability even if this was a futile project from the get-go, never boring at least. It is only an hour, and even the twist ending, that this was all a dream only to try to trick the audience, gave a sense of being erratic and trying to get the viewer pulled in. It is to be approached with caution, but I was glad to have seen this.

Abstract Spectrum: Erratic/Psychotronic

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

 

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1) I have probably referred from this interview, from the podcast No-Budget Nightmare, before, but it perfectly sums up Todd Sheets' own views of his earliest work as bluntly as possible.

Genocyber (1994)

 

Director: Koichi Ohata

Screenplay: Emu Arii, Koichi Ohata and Shou Aikawa

Based on the manga by Tony Takezaki

(Voice) Cast: Akiko Hiramatsu as Elaine Reed/Diana Reed; Kaoru Shimamura as Rat; Kazuyuki Sogabe as Grimson Rockwell; Kouji Tsujitani as Ryuu; Kumiko Nishihara as Mel; Masako Katsuki as Myra; Seizo Katou as Kenneth Reed; Shigeru Chiba as Radneck; Toshihiko Seki as Sakomizu

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #37 / A 1000 Anime Crossover

 

Either film or television, straight-to-video anime depending on the title could have multiple episodes, to which the following is one of the most infamous of its era. Sci-fi cyberpunk with a layer of extreme gore and body horror, Genocyber is a mess to be honest, which I get into with all five of its episodes, but for what is a lurid and dark production it nonetheless had a lasting impression I have nothing but admiration for, at least for the first episode. For the full review of mine, following the blog link HERE.

Games of the Abstract: Love Bites (1995)

 

Publisher: Vivid Interactive

Developer: Vivid Interactive

Single Player

3DO Interactive Multiplayer

 

Rock n roll star is vampire!

I was expecting a little more for my brush with the forgotten fifth generation console known as the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. Love Bites, not to be confused with the Judas Priest song, was obviously going to be one of the American console's titles that are more adult when I learnt of it. The figurehead who pushed the console, founder of Electronic Arts Trip Hawkins, planned this console at its 1993 release to be the future in video games, including moving away from where Nintendo and Sega had more openly cartoonish sprite games, looking towards more mature games. I presumed this would be an erotic Full Motion Video (FMV) game with some interactivity: both in how, working from CDs than cartridges, this allowed for video and live action in their software, and that they got games centred on themes that are more adult. I had presumed however, from Vivid Interactive, that there would be a semblance of a game with Love Bites where in fact, with a vampire fang fetish, this is literally a compilation of six softcore clips you can go through in less than an hour.

A little context is needed. When it was being heavily promoted, the 3DO was a huge deal at the time. Unique in how its business model was - the hardware, baring a basic template, would be licensed to multiple manufacturing companies with the focus by the creators on the software - it is utterly strange how the 3DO has vanished without a trace baring those of us who grew up with this, or as I have in my fascinating specifically with the fifth generation of games consoles, have come to it with interest. I grew up in this time with the Sega Saturn, another loser in the battle of that generation, and the Sony Playstation, which won the era. This was the time of the Nintendo 64, late to the battle but, in spite of effectively a tiny lifespan with its hardware being its own chain to drag around, having a nostalgic longevity due to the handful of games which have last a lasting impression. It was also the era of the Atari Jaguar, where Atari as a legendary games company would perish in the new 64 bit era, or when the Philips CD-I existed, to some barely a gaming console, and perished, and PC gaming would evolve and grow into the 2000s. This strange era of consoles trying to reach new technological heights, with these casualties, was found even in the United Kingdom, as I have seen a boxed Atari Jaguar in my youth in a second hand gaming store, and the 3DO did get a release here. Love Bites got a release here, with a bright red approved 18 age rating, for over at least one hundred pounds now on eBay, which is hilarious knowing how little content you get. This is more the case as a sexy video where, to be blunt about this, all you get are female models topless and very little more explicit.

The 3DO was an innovating console in many ways, as a multimedia system with no region coding, potential for online play even in the early nineties, and striving to push the technology of games. Most of its exclusive games are, however, obscure nowadays, likely never re-released and preserved beyond the original discs in emulation, and some of the best can be released on other consoles at the time. Some may know this as the console of Plumbers Don't Wear Ties (1993) only, an infamous "FMV" game known as the definition, with limited game play, of why the nineties was not as politically correct as you would presume. Vivid Interactive, creators of Love Bites, were a publisher and developer on the 3DO where, when others like the Sega Genesis and the Nintendo SNES would have censored content and avoid certain media, they had access to FMV software and decided as here to distribute softcore titillation videos.

And they are strange in the sense that, whilst a lot of FMV and interactive videos came to this console, you would automatically presume even in 1995 when Love Bites was released just having it as a video tape would make more sense. You select one of six videos, which interconnect with abrupt cuts to end them, from a set of digitally rendered windows, the one you chosen snatched away by a digital graphic bat. The FMV rendering of this era makes all the videos have digitised fuzz to them, and the only point of the control system is to pause, fast forward and reverse the footage back. That is it barring the help button providing the control system. I will say right now, for the lack of value this would have in the day, it is a bizarre little curiosity if you accept that this is a compilation of nude model shots in motion, based around vampire motifs. It is the equivalent of when the tabloid newspaper in British called The Sun, which they actually did even if kids could see them, had topless female models on Page 3, as you do not see anything here baring topless nudity and merely the suggestion of more.

With an original score by "Saint" which is proto-vapourwave, a lot of dissolves and "Edited by Faith", Love Bites, as directed by Philip Christian, is a strange fever dream of softcore with horror imagery without any gore, any true fang biting and just a horror based series of erotic photo shoots. A Philip Christian is the director of Immortal Desire (1993), a hardcore film about witchcraft and spanning three eras in time which was cut down into a 3DO version, which gives an idea of this company's work. Love Bites however is a tamer version of the promotional videos by British video distributor Redemption Video, who for the USA and UK had promo, and their own production, could get more lurid and S&M based; this is more esoteric, with the dialogue and voiceover here bordering on pretentious or just a fever dream.

It evokes Michael Nimm, a hardcore film maker from this era who used early CGI and green screen superimposition, whose work has been cut into softcore forms by Redemption Video themselves like Cashmere (1999), a work based on late fifties and early sixties Americana which I have seen in the cut down version, if here the 3DO game is less ambitious in content but with a similar haze. A little weirder and this could have been trying to steal Rinse Dream's trademarks, another hardcore filmmaker of very weird atmosphere, for the Gothic vampire tropes. This is all, if you came here for a videogame review, a tangent to enter, but with a very tame video production here, Love Bites is an absolutely strange item someone would have had to spend a bit for at the time, and still does more so now second hand, now in its digital obsoletion stranger in its content. And considering the voice over's stream of consciousness tone ("Pain in the neck / Twelve inches underneath"), the comparison to Rinse Dream (a.k.a. Stephen Sayadian) even if a poor man's equivalent is apt.

Vivid Interactive would at least try with some interactive "game", as one called Mind Teazzer (1994) has you construct the pieces of an erotic scene as a jigsaw puzzle, but we are dealing with the curious era before porn was prominent in accessibility, even if you ignore the fact hardcore was more easier to access in the United States on videotape. We are entirely based in the notion of "games" (in air quotes) here designed for a male target audienc,e with no real discussion of multiple gazes like a bisexual or gay female gaze, let alone a feminist one, though the emphasis on tame cheesecake is apt here. Also yes, across other platforms, even the NES in unofficial cartridges, you have erotic games including from Japan so this was one company. (For example, coming up researching for this review, an exclusive for the Japanese 3DO market was Twinkle Knights (1995), a strip card battler with full motion video and live action actresses). It is the strange underbelly of video gaming and the sex industry when the technology was still developing, and it may be off-putting for some, but having expected an interactive and campy softcore vampire game with this review originally, I end up having to discuss how this market even included just videos you had to choose clips with a controller pad for.

The aesthetic is my thing if ridiculous - vapor funk with "vampire bat" repeated over and over as lyrics at one point greeted me to my delight at one point. The use of public domain horror films is also a curious surprise, superimposed between the new material. Footage from F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922) appears; I do not think Murnau, the legendary German filmmaker, would have expected his film, as a ghost decades after his passing, to be spliced with a topless woman posing seductively. George A. Romero would have not expected Night of the Living Dead (1968), Love Bites splicing a scene of the cast locked up in the house watching TV to another model in black and white. There is no real plot to speak of either, which is different from other Vivid Interactive work which sound they could have been straight-to-video movies of the time. There is no real theme either, baring the tone of vampires, or my belief as expressed early on in this review that someone has a fetish for fake vampire fangs. Once the production has a model as "Elsa the Vampire Slayer", and in an all-female cast, even recreates the end of Murnau's Nosferatu, which is the oddest pastiche for a film which even had Shadow of the Vampire (2000), a film which imagined Murnau (as played by John Malkovich) had actually hired a real vampire for the film played by Willem Dafoe.

That this is not an actual game does make this an obscurity whose worth to resell in the modern day a conundrum. The obvious answer is not, because even if you sold these Vivid Interactive titles as a set, and that company made a lot, they would be kitsch nowadays, more so as most are not actually games in the truest sense from what is discerned. It would be interesting to see them preserved, even if gender politics would be, obviously, a question to raise, and as previously mentioned, this being the era where internet pornography is a concept for good and for bad, which is probably a greater concern than the former. It was not a good way to introduce myself to the 3DO, wishing to experience game play, but imbibing off its FMV notoriety here is at least a pleasure even if an awkward semblance to what I had hoped for. This was a console whose history is lost to time and old second hand copies, not one preserved on Steam. It is a weird history knowing Plumbers Don't Wear Ties, just for infamy, will be one title preserved and re-released from this console, when in hoping to dig into the past, I hope to see it as a time capsule more than this. Love Bites was this even if not the right initial leap.

Killdozer! (1974)

 

Director: Jerry London

Screenplay: Ed MacKillop and Theodore Sturgeon

Based on the novella by Theodore Sturgeon

Cast: Clint Walker as Lloyd Kelly; Carl Betz as Dennis Holvig; Neville Brand as 'Chub' Foster; James Wainwright as Jules 'Dutch' Krasner; James A. Watson Jr. as Al Beltran; Robert Urich as 'Mack' McCarthy

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #259

 

It's too heavy to hang and it's too big to put in the gas chamber.

What is a killdozer? That sounds almost a joke, but this term has three meanings, four if you include the original novella by Theodore Sturgeon that connects to the others. One is, sadly, a real incident named after the short story, where after a series of conflicts with the local government in Granby, Colorado, a man named Marvin Heemeyer on June 4, 2004 went on a rampage. With a modified armour-plated Komatsu D355A bulldozer which even had guns fitted inside to fire, he managed to destroyed multiple buildings, including the town hall, though this thankfully led to no one being harmed baring Heemeyer's own suicide. Thankfully, the other two Killdozers are pleasanter. One, likely getting its name from the TV movie we will cover here, is a Wisconsin noise rock band behind a goofy yet catchy song called Knuckles the Dog (Who Helps People), of the era in the early 90s, thanks to grunge and Nirvana, when very unconventional areas of rock got even mainstream interest in belief they could be sold to the public. The third is the TV movie itself, infamous as a film, readapting the 1944 novella which was originally set in World War II and a Pacific Island, transporting it to the modern day and an island off the coast of the African continent.  

About a bulldozer possessed by an alien life-force, mowing down a group of male construction employees on said island, Killdozer the film is fascinating as, if ever one wanted to point out what American seventies cinema was like, even this ludicrous premise is taken with all the gravitas of the New American cinema wave of the era, as if the script was penned by Paul Schrader with Sam Peckinpath directing this. It is about a group of men, some broken down and one a former alcoholic, all outsiders, isolated and facing their own morality except the fact it is a giant Caterpillar D9 bulldozer which terrorises them, even having ominous shots watching them over them burying a fallen comrade on the beach, looking over on a hill nearby. Jaws (1975) was this, released a year later, with men facing a shark, but no one would bat an eyelid, even if the legendary USS Indianapolis speech by Robert Shaw in a contest with industrial vehicles would be ridiculous. John Carpenter effectively took this film's tone with some of his films, but even Christine (1983), about a sentient car, was not this po-faced. Killdozer because of this tonal schism was compelling for me.

Killdozer is a bleak film in tone, even if this is about a bulldozer being compelled to murder due to contacting with a glowing blue meteorite. This is a film about men isolated where, when one is killed due to the shock of just the bulldozer scoop hitting the meteorite, already forces the tiny group to have to mourn their death, including Dutch (James Wainwright), a member who mourns him the most and who goes through the most compelling journey. Their foreman Kelly (Clint Walker), due to a history of alcoholism, is almost robotic in his coldness, as he tries to get them to keep working until it becomes obvious what is attacking them. Even if Dutch, losing his mind and becoming more childlike as he copes in memories, suggests there has to be a logical explanation for all this, including remote control, they realise quickly this is an inhuman circumstance. The absurdity is not even a killdozer, a giant monstrosity of a machine which can crush and destroy, but how this is depicted includes the logical gap that, whilst able to gain some speed, this cast could easily outrun it on foot.

Barring the sci-fi beeping noises it makes, the grounded production style, matter-of-fact in an era prolific of television movies, fits this film's severity in tone. A brisk film in pace, with no fat at all, this could almost work barring presentation details which helped with its infamy. The film even in a way deals with its absurd premise outright in thought, as the survivors have to contemplate with how, if they live, they explain the casualties and property damage to their superiors, even if they have to accept that telling the truth will brand them insane. There is a line which, knowing of before seeing the film, is absurd when heard of, pointing out that you cannot hang a bulldozer for murder practically, but spoken from Dennis (Carl Betz), the right hand man of Kelly, it does come with a morbid humour from this character, a figure is sardonic, accepting this dumb situation. It does not defend the film's truly haphazard tone, entirely because of what it is about, but it does ask of why a premise like this is ridiculous, helping the film get a cult reputation. Something about cursed objects in horror, certain examples, are more accepted than others but it depends on what they are. These objects like a bulldozer are banal objects, though a Caterpillar D9 is an intimidating machine even used in military service. This is not the same as a film called The Refrigerator (1991), which played to its absurd premise, where the concept of what is possessed sounds inherently ridiculous, though a giant American fridge if hit with would still kill someone. Here, presentation, with its headlights made eyes and its habit of driving around in circles like a lunatic, is where the strangeness lies.

More so as, adding to the serious tone, the cast whilst mostly of television fame are the sort of character actors of this era in American cinema which really emphasises the era this was made in. Clint Walker was the long western television series Cheyenne (1955-1962), whilst the other figure ultimately a protagonist is Carl Betz as Dennis, a prolific television actor who did dabble in cinema too. One actor who definitely cements how even the casting is of its time, and the one actor I recognised and was happy to see, is Neville Brand as 'Chub' Foster, who I know as an immediately recognisable face, of granite, from Tobe Hooper's Eaten Alive (1977), playing the owner of a hotel who keeps a man-eating crocodile in the back waters.

It does emphasis how tone and circumstance does drastically effect a story as, if made in the 2000s, a made-for-television work like this would be possible taken as serious, but not as severe in tone, likely have more than just male actors in the case, or if with the SyFy channel, possible made like their many monster movies of the era with obvious CGI and a possible ironic edge. Killdozer is, as made-for-TV horror films go, one that is iconic though for me always heard as in a notorious way. It is undeniably silly, but I found myself compelled by it taking itself so serious, and being well made, that it comes off even more compelling as a pop cultural artefact for having virtues too.

Unfriended (2014)

 

Director: Leo Gabriadze

Screenplay: Nelson Greaves

Cast: Shelley Hennig as Blaire Lily; Moses Storm as Mitch Roussel; Renee Olstead as Jess Felton; Will Peltz as Adam Sewell; Jacob Wysocki as Ken Smith; Courtney Halverson as Val Rommel; Heather Sossaman as Laura Barns

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #258

 

I love the tops of toes.

Sometimes you have to watch a film to see what the popular culture is like. Pretentious to write, but as someone who fully immersed himself into the outskirts of the moving pictures medium, I rarely if ever catch up with what is popular. One company I have tried a few times with, Blumhouse, has been for me really disappointing. They on paper have promised so much - their 2018 remake-sequel of Halloween which suggests updating Halloween H20's PTSD themes with Jamie Lee Curtis with David Gordon Green as the director, or their 2020 The Invisible Man being a salient take on domestic abuse themes - only to disappoint me when they barely cover the promising and thoughtful ideas of those particular examples. How ironic now that, with a film that was popular but suggests nothing of the sort profound, Unfriended manages whilst still being an entertaining thrill ride first to live up to more than those two films above I have mentioned. From a Georgian-Russian filmmaker Leo Gabriadze, who in a really curious cross-pollination of cinema had a major role in his teens in the cult Soviet sci-fi film Kin-dza-dza! (1986), this probably stands out more for me from an unexpected source, an influence who, as I will get into, with Gabriadze have taken a really inventive direction with horror cinema. With one of the producers being Timur Bekmambetov, this involves the Russian company he founded the Bazelevs Company and is part of a fascinating little niche of theirs, an attempt at a new genre Bekmambetov has had his company involved in called "Screenlife" films.

For me, Bekmambetov came to attention as for many outside Russian for Night Watch (2004), his ambitious dark fantasy adaptation of a novel series, part of a series, and it is fascinating that the man who attempted to make a very unique, but extensively CGI heavy and glitzy, horror-fantasy work that managed to get a 20th Century Fox release internationally has taken it into his stride to bring modernity into cinema further. They have made a few of these films, including Searching (2018) with John Cho, in this "screenlife" genre and the idea behind them is to tell narratives from the point-of-view of a computer or Smartphone. Without even knowing this originally coming into this film, I wanted to see Unfriended just because it was a modern film, literally because it was one about the internet, something I am in a weird position with as a Millennial still older than most that use YouTube and Skype more than me, and Generation Zs ("zoomers") who are even younger, but with still enough of an upbringing (and fascination) to take real interest in a film like this. Unfriended is very much a modern take on a slasher film crossed with supernatural horror, but the individuals actually behind the film, released by Blumhouse, gave me something really clever and interesting.

I am from the time, in the early 2000s as a young teenager, when the internet was still new but not some alien technology. It was in secondary school (high school) with the school computers when the internet really felt prominent for me, when Wikipedia was a new thing that came to be, and already allowed someone too young to in learning of some of the lurid genre films I would get to, and one day in the late 2000s or even start of the 2010s did I adapt to YouTube. Skype is something that exists as a way to communicate, but despite having once signed up on Twitter, I never used it and barely use Facebook. This is important as, whilst keeping myself (without boasting) up to date with trends over that decade to now, I am still alien to this whilst not lost in the dark, making Unfriended a curious film for me to see in mind to the ideals of "screenlife" films, clearly meant to follow up on the modern trends in culture. Considering horror films still have to negotiate around mobile phones being a factor in screenplays, this feels extremely advance and current as a film where, told on one computer, it belongs here to Blaire Lily (Shelley Hennig). She is an absent friend to Laura Barns (Heather Sossaman), a girl who committed suicide with gunshot after being bullied and humiliated online. One night, when Blaire with friends get together on Skype for an online video call together, there is an unknown additional member of the group call, deciding to punish these friends over Laura's death, all told without leaving the computer and its many functions many of us use part of the storytelling.

Verisimilitude is a huge factor, Timur Bekmambetov having become someone, when he developed this concept of cinema in the Bazelevs Company, who found this concept of using computer's functions for drama and storytelling a meaningful one to investigate, experimenting in multiple genres with collaborators and being accurate with the technology even in post-production and the filmic equipment used¹. This is meaningful, where at the same time this goes out of its way to have real media used, to the point I wonder how many fake Facebook profiles were created for the social media site to make this film possible, it also exposed whatheever the intention, and to the film's benefit, the problematic and unexpected issues with these sites and tech morally with how it relates to use. Unfriended in its own way is the pulpier, brattier cousin to Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse (2001). Pulse was a sombre, superior film where ghosts haunt the new medium of the internet, but Unfriended envisions less an apocalyptic scenario with the older film but a morality tale, where this interest in seeing the drama exposed when someone using their computers, taking calls online even mid-conversation with someone else for example, exposes who they are or, in a way, the masks worn online.  The characters in this film are revealed to not be likable figures, none of them, as this opens with the lead watching a leaked video of Laura committing suicide at school on an obscure site. Obviously, this presents Unfriended as a film where some will cheer on their demises, including by way of self-infliction of a blender to the face, but this follows an old school morality tale of just punishment and tells the flaws of human beings, especially when forced by threat to expose their lies and fatal flaws, in gristly manner.

It is pretty simple, though the reference to the slasher genre is befitting as, structurally, it takes the template of picking people off but boils it down and bolts it to this morality tale, which is pretty poignant in what it is talking of. Films like the 2018 Halloween felt pretentious and barely tackled their themes. Here it is blatant and obvious, but stands out because it does not deviate from the subject even if surface level, still gaining something from pointing out the obvious but tragically significant still. That unfortunately concepts like bullying and hierarchy even among teenagers still existed when this film was released but, as gotten to the point social media sites among other issues were being taken to task even in court hearings in the 2010s, these concepts bled and changed with new technology. The film is not profound in terms of suggesting greater meaning, but sometimes having the obvious told in a gristly morality play like this is enough to praise especially as this tackles the subject in a new way.

For me, the most interesting thing that led to me watching this was the decision to portray the narrative through other online media, and it works. It would have been perversely delightful to have seen this on a cinema screen, the computer screen's fragmentation in distractions and screens-within-screens made more if seen projected on a giant theatrical screen. Screens and windows cover each other, as the film economically tells its simple narrative without feeling contrived or limited by its format restrictions. It presents the moving picture image in a new way, and far from trivialising it, forcing one to look at one's computer (or Smartphone if the other "screenlife" films are as successful) in a meaningful shade by forcing it into the world of the cinematic image.

It feels fresh even if tropes for old slasher films still exist - the stoner, now a vulgar computer hacker, is here for example - but takes the logical step in mind to what the target audience for such a film would be interested in whilst not feeling like a contrived cash-in, but something more meaningful. It offers director Leo Gabriadze and his production team a lot of interesting challenges and innovations for an obvious plot narrative, so much so this feels fresh even now the film had a sequel and time has passed. And it finds, even if not a scary film for me, suitably creepy ways to make the idea of ghosts not alien to the modern world. It felt, to be brutally honest, Western horror films took a longer time than the East did, even in mind that may be an inaccurate bias I may have even stating that. Japanese horror cinema was tackling these subjects with mobile phones and the VHS tape in the nineties at least, but here with a film trying it with thought, even a music player, which will not stop playing a certain track, is startling, as is the unseen additional member of the Skype call show. Even if obvious, the really creative ways to scare someone here are surprising.

It also presents, in a more accessibly and less bleak way, the darker side of the internet. The sequel is subtitled "The Dark Web", based on the real concept, though already mythologized, of how with certain software like Tor that allowed anonymous communication, there is an alternative world of the internet, for some the liberated and uncensored form, but also unfortunately the place of horrible real activities, let alone ones fabricated through Creepy Pasta scare tales. Unfriended just with the surface level version, baring the suicide video linked to, already presents the horrors of how a blog or twitter page can paint an image of one, how one's skeleton in the closet can easily leak online to expose your corruption, or how it can encourage the potential barbarism in a person. Even the suicide video, a little aspect, reaches an uncomfortable truth of how suicide videos do leek online in reality. Even though this was, for me, a fun horror film that I had low expectations for but appreciated, Unfriended does so subconsciously because these ideas come together alongside this unique way to adapt to the modern world. Even if "screenlife" films become antiquated in a decade or so, they offer if they are like this one a fascinating historical marker for how one should gauge with this online technology, and I have to praise everyone involved with the film for doing this.

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1) An article that talks of this idea of the "screenlife" films can be found HERE.

The Rats Are Coming! the Werewolves Are Here! (1972)

 

Director: Andy Milligan

Screenplay: Andy Milligan

Cast: Hope Stansbury as Monica Mooney; Jackie Skarvellis as Diana; Noel Collins as Mortimer Mooney; Joan Ogden as Phoebe Mooney; Douglas Phair as Pa Mooney; Ian Innes as Gerald; Berwick Kaler as Malcolm Mooney; Chris Shore as Mr. Micawber

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movie) #257

 

Andy Milligan is an acquired taste. That is, undoubtedly, the most redundant of comments, but as Milligan has not been as well known in the United Kingdom, his cinema is one which comes off as a real outsider until his work is more readily available here. Now, context wise, that does not mean he is alien to the United Kingdom or its cinema. Milligan managed to get a film in the Video Nasties list, of films notorious in the early eighties on videotape, with one of the list's oldest called The Ghastly Ones (1968). Also significant is that, with The Rats Are Coming... among them, Milligan did spend a time in Britain making films, to which I can proudly say it was the British Film Institute (and ultra-fan Nicolas Winding Refn) who first made restoring and releasing his films for rediscovery cool again when Refn managed to find Nightbirds (1970), a film presumed lost. But Milligan, whose work here with The Rats Are Coming... is best described as theatre stage melodrama in the trappings of horror tropes, is a figure until recent rediscovery of infamy. His infamy in his homeland, of Something Weird Video, and rediscover is that as a real renegade from North American psychotronic cinema. His film here may begin with a man being set on fire, but conventions of horror cinema are chucked out the window for a Gothic drama.

This is melodrama to be precise, with all the hostility and shouting on display just in the first ten minutes opening one to the very misanthropic world of former off-Broadway theatre creator. A filmmaker with his own tropes, including clear issues with his own mother he evokes here, from the few films I have seen he becomes a true misanthrope with moments of light tenderness and whimsy, someone who watched in the wrong mood would be absolutely repellent to sit through, but when at the right time is compelling for the extraverted attitude to his work. It was pure catnip as a film even without this context, clearly a film made for my own tastes.

Set up as a period drama set in 1899, the patriarch of the Mooney family is ailing, and likely to die. Monica (Hope Stansbury) is a put-upon but psychologically sadistic younger daughter; the eldest sister has taken the role of the absent mother, one of two the father married who died, the first in childbirth and the second poisoned; one of the sons Mortimer (Noel Collins) is frustrated, but affable, whilst the other Malcolm (Berwick Kaler) is kept in chains with rabbits due to being more animal than man. The third and youngest sister Diana (Jackie Skarvellis) returns, in this history able to have studied medicine, despite not in reality being historically accurate to be possible, and arrives home to the disagreement to her father married to a painter from Scotland. The family are clearly not human as other people, as it comes apparent they have been cursed with lycanthropy. This aspect, just to give you an idea of what type of filmmaker Milligan was, is only ever physically depicted in the last few minutes of the film, and it does not feel like a copout either, but part of his attitude to tropes.

This is a film about talking, which is one of the things about Milligan's reputation built up for me over the years which has made him ultra divisive. He is a man, working in other genres but infamous for the horror films, who came not to make traditional horror films, but twist their tropes into his world of theatrical dramatic narratives of family hostilities, angst and moments of twisted humour. This is a cinema of some of the most deliciously bitchy dialogue you can get, not for werewolf attacks. The low budget aesthetic emphasises this, Milligan having to work on the fringe with little in most cases, with the period costumes clearly rented, and the locations having to be carefully chosen from where they could go, helped by shooting in England where these would not be difficult to locate. Fast, nasty theatrical dialogue is shot out by the actors, and the music is so dramatic this becomes soap opera's evil horror cousin.

And it is, what between multiple dead mothers and step siblings, the husband even confessing that he had a sex pervert of a father who was hung for such crimes, forced to live in a hellish religious orphanage as a result, a plot point that never becomes important but is part of Milligan fleshing his characters out with anxieties, traumas and the venom of his pen as the writer. The family themselves even in terms of being horror archetypes, inhuman figures who have lived a l-o-n-g time, are portrayed more for their squabbles and occasional moments of tenderness, as Diane the breadwinner has compromised the intended plan, to help her father with the work that allowed him to live as long as he could, by marrying an outsider. The werewolf curse is less a pulpy horror twist but something to angst over especially when she confesses to Mortimer, she loves greatly, she is expecting child, with the complications likely to happen a concern.

Incest will even take part in this plot, the film throwing itself gladly into the heightened whether good taste or not. For me, probably the amazing thing watching this film is how compelling it was for me, immediately hooking into its logic when, truthfully, other films like Nightbirds or The Body Beneath (1970), the later closest to this, did not feel this intense in the dialogue or the emphasis on what feels like a theatrical production, curdled intentionally with more soured dialogue and prolonged scenes of arguing, on filmic form. An additional wrinkled to this film is that, whilst one of the few he shot in England, it has the curious caveat that he was requested to add more footage to fill the running time. In this case, when other times this leads to redundant content, this filler is compellingly weird, where an animal seller, who loves Charles Dickens and "Mothers' Milk" (i.e. booze), sells man-eating rats to Monica, a psycho who tortures animals and people, with the gristly back-story of having part of his face and a whole arm chewed off by them from drinking too much and falling asleep. (Or admitting he fed the body of an old lady to cause their tastes). Usually in another film, this type of filler would be off-putting or a squandered opportunity, as the footage was shot much later with the rats never playing a part in the main narrative, but here it is befitting this strange, magnificently heightened and hyper-dramatic production.

A film like this, if this has not been stressed already, is an acquired taste. This is a rough production in how it is made, low budget with limited resources, something you could actually stage on theatre with ease even if there are some exterior shots and a couple of moments to work around. To Milligan's credit however, his dialogue and the people who cast are a bar higher than some of his fellow notorious filmmakers from this psychotronic bowl of cinema - Milligan is among them for his intense, over-the-top style contrasted by his very low budgets, but few films have The Rats Are Coming...'s snappy and compelling dialogue. It clearly knows, with maybe even a little tongue in cheek if played seriously, how ridiculous it is when it throws plot twists one after another in one scene, and it has a humour of a very twisted kind which does appear through intentionally.

Even whimsy is found too, as for all their nastiness, these characters can be nice to each other, suggesting more to the filmmaker when he contrasts other scenes with them. Mortimer, the older son, and Diane as siblings have a moment of kind bonding over her secret pregnancy, and even the father softens to her in the end for all the arguments that happen. Surprisingly the sweetest scene has Milligan himself in a role, a man infamous for how confrontation and razor tongued he could be, playing an elderly gun seller, belying his reputation as a misanthropic volcano at times by playing a charming older man wanting friendly banter and someone just to talk to. Yes, he should have twigged that melting a silver crucifix into bullets is clearly not a nice gift for someone's father, but for all the anger, and some gristly murders that transpire in the film, it is a film to reveal in as a work which has more whit to it, and a lot of deliberately off-kilter aspects, such as the final scene being the most intentionally (and amusingly) banal sequence of two people sat around, one knitting, contemplating baby names despite all that transpired beforehand. It is, if you can appreciate the film's attitude, a work which is really unique, and yes, this is the sort of film to win me over to Andy Milligan completely.

Lake Michigan Monster (2018)

 

Director: Ryland Brickson Cole Tews

Screenplay: Ryland Brickson Cole Tews and Mike Cheslik

Cast: Ryland Brickson Cole Tews as Seafield; Erick West as Sean Shaughnessy; Beulah Peters as Nedge Pepsi; Daniel Long as Dick Flynn; Wayne Tews as Ashcroft

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #256

 

Somewhere near Milwaukee...

It could be seen as a very bad sign if one person, here Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, is the star and the director and the co-writer, etcetera etcetera...admittedly that could be seen as cynicism but also there have been too many examples, in various fields let alone cinema, of people with a lot of power using it just for their own hubris. Thankfully, Tews has no interest in this, no qualms with playing the prat onscreen, with the perfect "shout to the back of the theatre" voice acting style to match. This is his first time in the director's chair, and with co-writer Mike Cheslik having directed work too in their collaborations, this feels far more a group that has amassed itself as collaborators, where even one of your lead actors, Beulah Peters, was the camera operator too. This group, a modern day version of regional cinema, filming out of Milwaukee in Wisconsin as well as set there, even got assistance from Joe Castro, the prolific director-special effects creator to create the monster suit, as this film clearly with a small budget wanted to make a monster film with love and laughs. One, even if it shows its budget and that it is a modern digital film with fake grain, which occasionally could have made Guy Maddin somewhere up in Canada smile.

A man named Seafield (Tews) loses his father to a mysterious sea monster in a fishing boat accident, one questioned in whether the boat even left the land at all. Acquiring a group of specialists to find and kill the beast, with unique names like Nedge Pepsi (Peters), Lake Michigan Monster is a comedy first of all when it comes off as a sensible idea to bring a broadsword to kill a nautical monstrosity, or having arguments about friendly fire. This is a very silly film, one with the decency to even shot scenes first person underwater, even if most of the later underwater sequences are composites of a homemade quality, wanting to be ambitious with what resources were available.  It is a series of jokes mostly at the expense of most of the cast, but specifically Seafield, who eventually has to accept his fate to fight the accused creature. Be it the multiple failed plans which are really an excuse for pun names to amuse themselves - such as "Nauty Lady", which presumes the monster is a heterosexual lady beast, so may fancy a nude male stud (with a black blur preserving his dignity) swimming her waters - or that Seafield is increasingly revealed to be a sad sack.

Not even the fact that his wife, a significantly older woman, makes inedible fish sticks can top far more embarrassing truths about him. That he is not actually a sea captain at all, despite his brother (with one eye due to their father's "no puking on board" policy) being closer to one, nor is able to actually pay his mercenaries. Even one joke takes advantage of budgetary limitations, about having to shot in what is a real nautical museum in a lighthouse, one most of us would like to go to, by making it part of Seafield's trait of pathological lying. If you have to make a film with limitations as an independent production, making something bold is to be admired, but also being creative rather than lazy and predictable is also a thing to praise, strangely a rare filmmaking habit if you watch enough movies. Here, this is the case where they thankfully desired to entertain the viewer, though you need to appreciate the humour to get the most out of Lake Michigan Monster.

Low budget or not, this is not even attempting nautical horror like Robert Egger's The Lighthouse (2019) in the damndest. Even if I could imagine Willem Dafoe's character having such a back-story, Eggers' historically accurate and bizarre film never had someone discharged from the navy for sexual misconduct with the woodwind section, or for shooting someone in an unexplained "weird" scenario. Neither do I imagine Robert Pattinson, in his antagonism to the seagulls in that film, having a conversation mid-fight, out of bafflement, talking about why liqueur stores inexplicably close early at night in Milwaukee. The farcical nature of Lake Michigan Monster is worn on its sleeve and what I admired within it, where to present an egg, when a male character is made pregnant by the monster, you get what looks like a giant version of the plastic containers for a Kinder Surprise toy if painted in dots on it too. That and, in mind that The Lighthouse did have sea shanties at one point, this is a monster movie with an unexpected amount of musical numbers which are surprisingly good.

The handmade quality, and being a pastiche to past genres by way of the modern day technology really makes the Guy Maddin comparison more justifiable than presumed. The film is a really elaborate (and more heavily promoted) micro budget film which deserves the praise. A little detail or two, such as an underwater castle which is clearly provided from a fish tank model, raises a smile and the film, to its complete credit, never gets predictable. Unexpected siblings being discovered comes to play, alongside Seafield being haunted by one of the dead mercenaries, buried without permit in a graveyard with his beloved weapons, but chasing Seafield as part of a curse to murder him. Not restricted by budget limitations, a film like this compensates for so much bad use of modern technology like CGI in modern films with higher budgets, even incredibly lazy examples such as using effects in Avengers: Endgame (2019)  for hairstyles rather than hire a hairdresser¹, because it is used to portray very entertaining things with fewer resources.

Here, cheaper uses of CGI (and superimposing) allows us, when Seafield is forced to hire his family's legacy of a ghost army in underground church, the sight of man bridge of them face a tentacle monster as Seafield plays checkers on the beach with one. Lake Michigan Monster got the point of a film that, whether high art or for fun, a film is both an expression of one and also meant to compel. Here everyone who was on the production shows affability, likable, and spent the time providing us the viewers an amusing farce. It is lazy to say this has heart unlike higher budgeted multiplex films, especially if one day a "multiplex" becomes an obscure term, but in this case, it was true. This one is more interesting in that this got the luck of attracting Arrow Video, the cult video distributor who in the late 2010s added additional new licenses to their catalogue alongside classic preservations. This a great choice for them for such amusing pleasures it provided.

 

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1) Reference here.

Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952)

 

Director: William Beaudine

Screenplay: Tim Ryan (with additional dialogue by Leo 'Ukie' Sherin and Edmond Seward)

Cast: Bela Lugosi as Dr. Zabor; Duke Mitchell as Duke Mitchell; Sammy Petrillo as Sammy Petrillo; Charlita as Nona; Muriel Landers as Saloma; Al Kikume as Chief Rakos; Mickey Simpson as Chula; Milton Newberger as Witch Doctor Bongo; Martin Garralaga as Pepe Bordo; Ramona, the Chimp

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #255

 

Don't mind my friend. He has a one-syllable brain.

For what was considered one of the worst films ever made, this requires having to unpack an entirely different era of pop culture few may know of to explain why this even exists. That effectively, with this premise starting Sammy Petrillo and Duke Mitchell, producer Maurice Duke  felt there was an opportunity to cash-in on the craze of films by Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, a popular duo at the time, without having to hire Martin and Lewis. To contrast those figures, you have a young Duke Mitchell, who would go on infamously to self-fund two cult films in the seventies, Massacre Mafia Style (1974) and Gone With the Pope (1976/2010), whilst Sammy Petrillo was known for doing Jerry Lewis impressions and even worked with Lewis at one point. Paramount Pictures producer Hal B. Wallis, who then had Martin and Lewis under contract at the time, even sued the creators of the film, with a compromise likely to be found in burning the negative. Why that did not happen is to speculate, but it led to this film to gain the infamy it has.

The strange thing is that, even with Lugosi in the cast as a star, this is not a horror film. It really is not substantial (nor funny) enough to be a comedy. It is a complete oddity, as Mitchell and Petrillo end up introduced stranded on a Pacific Island "Kola Kola", one where the natives are (mostly) very white actors masquerading as non-white people in tribal dress. Pointing out insensitive cultural appropriation here is like pointing out the practicalities of sculpting a fire guard from chocolate. Instead, knowing the infamy of this film, the obvious point is still the most important thing to point out, that it is an awkward film. Sammy Petrillo in particular has the ignoble job, as a visibly young man in this film, of replicating Jerry Lewis, who act was an acquired taste anyway. Contrasting him, Duke Mitchell calmly coasts through with ease, about to sing very well even when his character is turned into a gorilla by Dr. Zabor, played by Bela Lugosi, for eyeing up his native assistant Nona (Charlita).

This is the type of low budget film where no one bats an eye about a gothic castle in the jungle existing, all because this is aware of what it is. It wants to play to the Jerry Lewis-Dean Martin films of a Lewis figure going for yucks, the Martin figure being suave and crooning songs, whilst playing off the reputation of Bela Lugosi even if at this time he was badly in need of work, even having a meta joke about Lugosi playing someone who looks like Dracula. This is the type of film on paper which sounds compelling to witness, but the film itself watching is surprising in how much even time seems to drag. It is strange, after all the years I have heard of this film, actually watching the film as see how a horror icon, an act meant to cash-in on a huge comedy duo, a jungle set and a barely cohesive narrative are meant to be bolted together.

It is a film where the MVP, even with Bela Lugosi in the cast, is Ramona the chimpanzee, a cute trained simian who plays a comedic foil to Petrillo. Only knowing, even if likely an infant, that this type of animal casting was stopped for a reason undermines the fun of this character, plus knowing that an adult chimpanzee is strong enough to rip appendages off human beings with ease and willing to if provoked. Even Ramona feels abruptly placed in, for a film which never finds a point to itself baring the vaguest of variety shows in filmic form. All of the obvious thoughts that, yes, this film lives up to its reputation as a bad film do not actually explain that this film also is a curious experience, felt with less pain than a strange apathy fascinating. More so as this is effectively a comedy - a comedy where none of the humour worked for me, which made it a perplexing movie.

Large portions are spent with Petrillo prating about. There is a dance sequence. There is a romance with Nona and Duke Mitchell, but he and Petrillo playing themselves, with a very educated daughter of the island's leader. Yet nothing here even turns into a slog but just exists. More so as well that the film does feel unfinished, with no ending to a narrative of one of your leads being turned into a gorilla and an evil scientist baring, to spoil this and the aforementioned film, the conclusion of the 1939 The Wizard of Oz. The director William Beaudine became infamous for films like this in his career, despite being a journeyman who worked in a variety of genres, and honestly, as a simplistically shot movie, he does not take the blame. It looks average, but even the fake stage bound jungle sets have a fascinating artificiality. Bela Lugosi, even at the time with a drug addiction where he would eventually encounter Ed Wood Jr., is charismatic here as a significantly older man, managing to wear white in the jungle without it being stained. Even Duke Mitchell when stuck in a gorilla suit, even if dubbed over, is vaguely amusing to see the weird trope of cheap gorilla suits for comedy. That is the really strange thing, in that having seen the lowest of low even next to this film in my viewing experiences, no one here is really the blame for dropping the ball. Even the cinematographer Charles Van Enger worked with Ernst Lubitsch and The Phantom of the Opera (1925).

It is really the point where you have to sit and ponder its existence. Only Sammy Petrillo really stands out as egregious trying to mimic Jerry Lewis, as a younger man, with a heightened shrillness, but beyond the jokes being dumb, this is innocuous. In fact, most barely register, almost sweet in their lack of impact. The script is to blame but I do not want to really criticise the screenplay either. The rest is perversely anti-entertainment, which could sound gimmicky to say, but in the sense that, whilst a narrative film, it leads nowhere, leads to no humour or subversion for this, and is entirely a conservative film of conservative jokes with problematic cultural appropriation, yet completely innocuous in spite of this. In a way, it is admirable for a film to achieve this state of existence, of a form of nothingness, even if in truth, one would rather prefer a film that tried for this tone but with more on the table. Or a film which, with its history and content - ripping off a famous comedy duo, Bela Lugosi, men being turned into gorillas by cheap suits - was more over-the-top then this, which is just a weird film instead.