Smut Without Smut: Satanic Horror Nite (2021)

 

Including reviews of Sacrilege (1971), Satan’s Lust (1971) and The Devil Inside Her (1977)

Directors: Ray Dennis Steckler (Sacrilege); Zebedy Colt (The Devil Inside Her)

Cast:

Sacrilege:

Jane Tsentas as Cassandra; Gerard Broulard as Jay; Ruthann Lott as Maria; Charles Smith as Lucifer

 

Satan's Lust:

Judy Angel as Pamela Goodright; Ron Darby as Boris; George 'Buck' Flower as Manheim Jarkoff; James Mathers as Wayne

 

The Devil Inside Her:

Jody Maxwell as Hope Hammond; Terri Hall as Faith Hammond; Dean Tait as Joseph; Zebedy Colt as Ezekiel Hammond; Renee Sanz as Devil's Crony; Chad Lambert as Nicodemus; Nancy Dare as Rebecca 'Becky' Hammond; Annie Sprinkle as Orgy Girl; Rod DuMont as The Devil

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

I’ll buy you a dildo for Christmas.

Smut Without Smut, a concept created by American Genre Film Archive, works around the issue that erotic cinema would be off-putting for some, but have their compelling aspects even if unintentional. This is significant even in a serious way as, with the uncensored versions of three of the films covered as they were included in the AGFA Blu Ray release, these films represent a side of filmmaking for all their amateur and absurd tones which will be deeply problematic for some. It is worth putting ahead of time as, especially as actual hardcore films, some people will not feel comfortable (or want to) sit through work which have openly non-consensual scenes even if all these films are truly ridiculous times to witness, openly too silly (or frankly shambolic) to take seriously baring. They are from a different time, even if sadly pornography has its sleazy edges still to this day, so all these films have to be taken with a pinch of salt even in their cut-down Smut Without Smut versions, which will not be possible for all to stomach. Those who can, like myself, will witness truly strange works.

To be blunt as well, some people will not feel comfortable (or want to) sit through extended scenes of real sex if with the artificiality that it is acted out sequences which are prolonged and in gynecological detail. In mind the tone will end up having to be lowered to review these, but wanting to take into seriousness the content, even thought pornography has still a lot of distasteful content to it in tone, these films have moments for all their goofiness you would prefer not to have in them, as much as some people just do not want to watch a man’s hairy testicles up close for a prolonged five to ten minutes. Satanic Horror Nite is closer to what the point on this concept was as Smut Without Smut’s prequel. That one was before AGFA started releasing their mix-tape works to physical media, instead having a double bill of Things to Come (1976) and The Dirty Dolls (1973), two softcore sex films where the removal of said sex scenes made little sense. That title was only logical for outright porn, tackling the sordid world of hardcore that Something Weird Video accumulated alongside their other exploitation film libraries, in this case centering on the obsession in the seventies with Satan and the Devil throughout a lot of these productions.

The compilation version follows The AGFA Horror Trailer Show (2020), another early mixtape from AGFA in which it is initially set up as an actual cinema showing, starting with trailers including in the intermission, not surprisingly going for the obvious sex innuendo with the food trailers but with legitimately idiosyncratic trailers which come some of the best parts of the production altogether. Americana from a different country to mind, such as one for a Wizard of Oz Head Shop, or the obsession between these mixtapes with finding as many trailers for cinemas made for Toddy, a chocolate drink that could be served cold or hot, are an obsession I am developing through works like this. More popular in the likes of Brazil to Argentina, Toddy chocolate drinks were pushed in the USA in these types of trailers, such as one here which is an animated trailer like  an old sixties cartoon about firemen. There is even a Pac Man parody for another concessions stand food advertisement which is also memorable.

This is not about gluttony however, but the sin of lust, and trailers for other hardcore films even if one or two does at least produce a Count-Erotica film which immediately warns you of some of eye-popping content. Even if everything in the Smut Without Smut cut is softcore, the sight of a man humping into a rabbit hand puppet for what is a Count Dracula parody immediately is memorable whether you want it to be or not. These films, uncut versions as well, are weird for how they can straddle the line between legitimately sleazy, progressive, deeply dated and problematic, but also very quaint or weird, where “Englebert Humpsalot” for a pseudonym on the credits time stamps the films to their era or even earlier into the sixties, like a Carry On joke.

Sadly the first film in the compilation, Hotter Than Hell (1971), is not among those included in their full cut which is a shame as it presents itself as a sitcom about demons, presided upon by a Satan who is closer to a gregarious Saint Nick/Green Man figure, whose desire to corrupt the folks up above is less eternal damnation but orgies and sex even in the underworld. This feels like a sex romp comedy which just happened to end up with real sex, boing sounds and all, between demons magically appearing for women or being helpful to frustrated female psychologists. There is already though an inherent issue with Smut Without Smut in context too that, yes, splicing out all the hardcore scenes, alongside making some of these barely over fifteen minutes each between five films used, means that so much tonal context let alone story plotting is lost, which becomes a significant issue with appreciating it as a work by itself.

Sacrilege probably is not a film you would gain a lot of from having all the sex back in, but it is the most notorious of the trio as it is directed by Ray Dennis Steckler. Steckler, infamous for the likes of Rat Pfink and Boo Boo (1966), did make some porn films in his career, and starting with a nude woman (barring gloves and a cape) gyrating to drones and string instruments to the camera, we are absolutely in a strange territory even next to the other films involved in this collection. This woman, in the form of a more humble witchcraft enthusiast in more clothing, will temp a man reading a book in the countryside for what is a played satanic sex ritual. There is not a lot else to talk of, baring that he reads books on witchcraft, and that she has a Siamese cat named Lucifer who is the aforementioned Devil and starts a nice trend of cats in these films. There is also the weird decision to have our witch make erotic cat wails, which is probably one of the strangest aspects of any of the films as this happens even in the sex scenes.

The reason Smut Without Smut exists is that Sacrilege, bluntly, will force you to look at the lead’s testicles in close up for a long period of shots, which is not for everyone. The paradox with hardcore, which this mixtape has to work around, is that porn drags because of its hardcore scenes of actual sex but without them, not in terms of wanting to arose the viewer but for their tone, you cannot really cut around them depending on the film used without potentially losing so much of their tone, or feeling as here they abruptly change scene. Again, and with the desire to not repeat this repeatedly, these films do present a taboo nature when our male lead calls a female friend to join over when possessed by sex, the playing to a non-consensual nature to these scenes in all the films mentioned in this review something which is going to offend people, more so because of the uncut versions having real sexual acts transpire even if they are highly choreographed. Sacrilege out of the three full films I saw is the most lacksidasical, but this would still be seen as a taboo for some still even if that  the film in context, the repetitiveness of the sex scenes themselves, undercut the potential grimness with monotony. The film by the ending also possesses a very squeaky table the scene of the Satanic orgy plays out on top of, and jazz drumming on the soundtrack mixed with soundtrack pieces for a silent adventure serial, which is a realm of strangeness in itself, which cannot defend these to someone who feels sexual fantasies like this are indefensible, but do undercut such a film by reveal how absurd it is as a fictional piece, real sex or otherwise. For Ray Dennis Steckler, it definitely becomes an idiosyncratic production to watch if an acquired taste even next to the others in this. Its compilation version would probably suffice for most, but uncut, the repetition and tone becomes its weird aura.

As mentioned, there are films here which were not included as extras in their full feature form, Sexual Awareness (1974) one of these, about a religious sex cult.  A lot of clearly missing from its cut form, a fragment of curiosity that really does not stand out, and again, about a cult that use hypnosis, this does emphasis that with a childlike naivety in a lot of these films’ cases that they touch upon fantasies which many may find completely unacceptable. It emphases sexual fantasies as a complicated and at times difficult thing, notwithstanding the fact that pornography even into the modern day has problematic aspects, especially when it comes to fetishing race, where we do not willingly face these with the complexity they need as much as rightly challenge them. None of the films in this, though a few have some eyebrow raising and sleazy moments, can be seen as anything but utterly ridiculous, entirely artificial and able to dismiss as from another time in look, especially as  Sexual Awareness in the Satanic Horror Nite cut is played for all its awkward pauses in acting and non-sequiturs, alongside in the intermission afterwards subtly playing to the only innuendo in the trailer choices, with a hotdog advert terms which are far more explicit then one would presume.

Satan’s Lust, which thankfully comes with another cameo by a cat also minding its own business, tries to be a murder mystery with obvious culprits shown in their criminal act from the get-go, a Satanic cult whose murder of a female victim has people sniffing in on them. Those people are Pamela Goodnight and Wayne, who are investigating the strange death of a woman named Carla who was working for Satanic Films, a movie studio in Los Angeles who were not hiding their purpose in being an evil satanic cult. This film, even in mind to The Devil Inside Her really going for eyebrow raising moments, is arguably the skuzziest of the lot as, baring a few romantic sex scenes, which involves their leads shaking their heads in slow mo, this definitely is the one where any concern for trigger warnings is appropriate, Pamela Goodnight probably as put upon as anyone can get in terms of a secret sexual satanic cult. Even in mind that, with legitimate suspicion on my behalf from all the cutaways, that faked fluids were used to be polite about it for scenes, this does become even sleazier the further along it goes, barely over an hour for a film reduced to fifteen minutes or so without the scene. It manages to have a scene that is problematic and twisted in capitals when someone is unconscious for the sex scene, and the perpetrator is thinking of an eleven year old girl, which is gross as that sounds in mind to how slapdash it also is, especially as said scene is also pointless for plot reasons to ever have. The version in Smut Without Smut form is more ridiculous for what it is, emphasis the non-sex scenes as being an ultra low budget genre film with the lack of these off putting edges to deal with, like one’s sex partner to one’s horror turning into a skeleton mid way through. If you could not get the tone, that these films are incompetent for the most part with actors just earnestly going through them, it is completely understandable why those here would still be uncomfortable to experience. This is also in mind that Satan’s Lust does have its own ridiculous moments which could only be laughed at, the most inappropriate use of Yellow Submarine by the Beatles, as an instrumental piece, finding itself here of all places the most obvious example of this.

Out of all the films, whilst with some of the most shocking content, The Devil Inside Her is the most ambitious of the trio as well, trying to be an actual film with a knowing transgressive streak at its heart. Set in 1826, a normal puritan farming family is undercut by the fact that, among the two daughters, one is romantically attracted to a young man, whilst the other is jealous of this. The father neither helps, as even kissing in broad daylight is enough for him to call one of these daughters a “harlot” and punish her with naked whipping, but the pleas of both sisters invokes Satan to appear, as depicted with KISS makeup, spike leather neck and wrist pieces, and the horn. Obviously this is again a film where its attitude to sex has dated extremely, but it is one that feels deliberately transgressive rather than being sordid; even if Satan is depicted nude barring boots, using a backwards talking masturbation ritual to turn into the love interest for both women, there is a clear knowing sense of provocation here not just from the film’s clear low views of this form of Christianity it depicts, even having Satan having the last words with God in the finale that, as long as people are sexually frustrated and he is the first on call, he will always get to the mortals first. Tellingly, its director Zebedy Colt has a compelling history which likely explains this, in that this was someone who clearly was bringing a lot of provocation to the production knowingly; birth name Edward Earle Marsh, he had two parallel careers, a musical and acting career including in several small Broadway roles, with his homosexuality something which he explicitly showed in music about romance and love between men, contrast with his directing and acting roles in hardcore porn, including having of all people a young Spalding Gray, famous for his acting and monologue work among other things, in a role in Farmer's Daughters (1976)¹.

With Satan able to shape shift, this is where the film gets more over the top and memorable. The film certainly has an imagination – where as the jealous sister goes to a witch for a love potion, we bear witness to some vivid dialogue such as the concoction using “the menstrual fluid of a Persian harlot” and Nicodemus the parrot who transforms into a human being, needing to be "milked" to finish the love potion. There is still a lot here which would be considered shocking for people, playing to how Satan disguises himself as members of this family, brining in some shocking concepts such as incest but two really out-there moments, one more acceptable in certain areas of erotica, a golden shower, which takes place at the Satanic orgy in the finale between consenting Satanists, but the other involving consensual use of vegetables which is quite a surprise. This in the Satanic Nite Orgy loses all of this, but also a lot of the tone, where this film which may be still indefensible for its content and tone still possesses a lot more in its tiny budget in terms of tone. It is telling that, even if it goes for the happy ending where the religious win, clearly horny Satanists were the ones we were supposed to be cheering.

The actual Smut Without Smut cut is a fascinating and fun ride to witness, but honestly, it can be argued to be a failure. There will be films people would prefer to have cut down into non-hardcore films to be able to enjoy their cheesy natures, and these versions will be easier to screen at cinema presentations, and more power to those both, but it really gets into the difficulty with what one does with hardcore adult cinema as a concept. There is still taboo some have with the concept of these films, let alone if they have any artistic merit, contrasted by the dichotomy of how one of their trademarks, emphasis on lengthy explicit depiction of the sexual act, is not something that is meant to be experienced for many as an actual film, rather than for titillation, but also is how their stories are structured around them if they have actual stories, making it insanely difficult to not undercut the tone and mood by splicing out the sex. Softcore cuts of these films are still made, which is telling in terms of the market for them, but Satanic Horror Nite also emphasizes the practical issues here that, wishing to re-edit these films for consumption, what this is just is censored cuts in a compilation, with not anything which could have emphasized the disjointed results on purpose and had for fun, such as more Satanic porn film trailers or jokes based on old advertising for drive-ins. I admire AGFA still releasing this, but it is telling that, not films to just jump into as they could be deeply off-putting for their content, the uncut versions are far more fascinating for what strange and sordid productions they are, one in The Devil Inside Her managing to be compelling for its clearly artistic goals among also being porn.

 

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1) The Many Sides of Zebedy Colt from Queer Music Heritage. This is NSFW for some of the archive materials included in the page about Zebedy Colt's life.

Workbooks Collection (2005)

 

Director: Guy Maddin

Screenplay: Guy Maddin

Canon Fodder

 

Known also as Love-Chaunt in the Chimney, at least in the Zeitgeist DVD release of Cowards Bend the Knees (2003) which have these as an extra, this is among the many of Guy Maddin's career of feature length and short length films, but with the irony that, long before the Seance (2016) project, where he resurrected the lost movies of directors from Mikio Naruse to Ernst Lubitsch, Maddin himself has a lost film these are connected to. Seance, originally set up as a recorded live performance between Paris and Canada, became The Forbidden Room (2015), Maddin's delirious multi-narrative-within-narrative film, whilst the films also called the Workbooks Collection are just shorts from a project which was lost in a fire¹. This is a ghost, fused together and rebuilt from the remnants, including a tie-in to Cowards Bend the Knees.

The films are FuseBoy, Rooster Workbook, Zookeeper Workbook, Chimney Workbook, Audition 01 and Audition 02, blurring the lines between what survives of this project from the late nineties and Audition 02, which connects to Cowards Bend the Knees, a Guy Maddin film which does exist. This lost film started after Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, a 1997 production that for me was a pleasant experience but is not historically the best period for Guy Maddin. A documentary from the time, Guy Maddin: Waiting for Twilight (1997), shows a miserable Guy Maddin, who eventually hated Twilight of the Ice Nymph, which was not seen as a popular work, and a terrible and frustrating experience to the point that the documentary almost has a near-memoriam tone of Maddin imagining his career ending. Made in his garage, some at the Winnipeg Film Group Studio¹, his solution to overcome that experience was a film entirely self produced with improvisation.

How it would have compiled together, an amalgamation of Herman Melville short stories stuck together with assistance from George Toles, is a question for me of interest as, including the two Audition films, the lost film's surviving forms are a curious set of experimental pieces entirely about mood. They precede the fetishishtic nature of Cowards Bend the Knees, the most overtly sexual film of his career, as well as touch a similar nature to old George Kuchar and Jack Smith films as improvised low budget productions literally filmed at points in the director's garage. Rooster Workbook is probably the most explicit, in which a nude woman crawls through homemade crawlspaces, whilst feathers and a rooster populate the visions in rapid fire, repeating scenes in the editing. Fuseboy, starring Guy Maddin regular Louis Negin, is the most implicitly erotic, at least in how Negin, in just tighty whities, plays a man possessed by an erotic memory of three younger men (or one his younger self with two) shirtless erotically mucking about fixing electric fuses.  

With Zookeepers Workbook, Maddin even explicitly references Les Chants de Maldoror, Comte de Lautréamont's transgressive novel which, cosnidering its high art status, is also a work where the God-hating transgressive lead has sex with a female shark, surprisingly more transgressive than even Maddin's own work at times but befitting someone, whilst more whimsically transgressive in his films, to reference. Most of the shorts also, shot in standard definition, feel even if from afterwards like prototypes from The Heart of the World (2000), a short film that, when it was commissioned and debuted at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival, was a huge turning point positively for Maddin with its Soviet rapid fire editing and aesthetical tributes. These shorts are to be absorbed, his obsessions felt like mood tapes with their repeating images, the Audition shorts, the first for Fuseboy, the later with cast from Cowards Bend the Knees, a curious pair to include but yet befitting, suddenly Maddin turning the viewfinder on his productions themselves. They all, whatever they call them, are a fascinating collection.

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1) As talked of briefly in Offscreen for An Interview with Guy Maddin: Dissecting the Branded Brain by David Church for Volume 10, Issue 1 in January 2006

The Bogus Witch Project (2000)

 

Directors: Victor Kargan ("The Bogus Witch Project"); Steve Agee, Sammy Primero and Kelly Aluise ("The Griffith Witch Segment"); Susan Johnson ("The Willie Witch Project"); Alex Mebane ("The Blair Underwood Project"); Mark Mower ("The Bel Air Witch Project"); Alec Tuckman ("The Watts Bitch Project")

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #229

 

This is your brain on ham...and scallops...

From Trimark Picture, The Bogus Witch Project is a reminder that, rather than just jumping to Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000), The Blair Witch Project's legacy immediately after its success also included many parodies. The Simpsons parodied it in a Treehouse of Horrors episode, there was Da Hip Hop Witch (2000), a low budget film starring Eminem in a tiny role, even The Tony Blair Witch Project (2000), an incredibly obscure film which hit the IMDB bottom list. Stamped to a specific time as much as you could get, with its late nineties techno music, this is a compilation of micro budget Blair Witch parodies interspliced with interlinking footage called "The Woods", a first person gliding through the woods as weird things happen, such as past a bounder in the wilderness and a child's crossing.

This for many is going to be one of the worse things they have seen, or an extreme struggle, a poignant reminder of how Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick's film, when it was released in 1999, became such a huge pop cultural item that in such little time its sequel came a year later as well as a whole swath of parodies. Sadly, beginning with The Watts Bitch Project, you realise too how this is from decades ago and from a very different period, immediately sounding dreadful as it follows a group of young white filmmakers go to Watts in southern Los Angeles. It is not as bad as the precise could be, but black stereotypes abound even if there are a lot of African American actors willing to be in this, and the short immediately sets up how many of the parodies are lame. Ultra low budget, that this is among many have to blur out iconography, here part of a Laundromat's sigh, the building one the cast keep returning to lost, these films are based on recognition of the original and there is a morbid fascination which what is replicated. Here it is finding shoes on mass hung everywhere rather than stick bundles, or how it awkwardly tries to replicate the original narrative of an evil witch in a problematic way by parodying it through a primarily African-American community with stereotypes referred for jokes. One or two good jokes appear - bringing a 1993 map of Los Angeles, which is useless after the 1994 earthquake changed the environment, or the reference to the use of 16mm film in the original film being replaced by something brining a film projector - but not enough to get around a lot of this, as the many here, going for cheap jokes, this one baiting race as a joke too.

This template runs throughout - the films obsess over the scene of actress Heather Donahue crying in the film, usually the joke about snot coming from someone's nose or milking it, and there are many jokes of someone farting in the camping tent or the famous final images being merely someone going urinating up a wall. Bogus' biggest aspect, that these are all parodies of one film recreating and lampooning it's narrative bears, does really get into the curious idea of seeing the source (Blair Witch) being dissected down through its replications. As much as the first viewing of this was one I suffered through, it is fascinating seeing the shorts replicating similar jokes in a variety of ways as the facsimiles also stand out in their differences together too. This is effectively pre-YouTube in nature, where once you distributed parodies by alternative methods.

The Griffith Park Project imagines if this follows a Heather stand-in called Kelly Conroy whom would easily be distracted by butterflies at first, taking anything as a clue of a witch, but is also an obnoxious adult brat with a chalkboard screaming voice. Good on Kelly Aluise for being game for this, as a co-director and the female lead, but the short is a failure for me. Throughout, and honestly with bad taste to it, a lot of the jokes are about making parodies of the female main lead of Blair Witch, with this at least softened knowing the main actress is on-board to knowing make this character, as she makes things up in a flight of whimsy at first or is deluded, picking up a random stick in the middle of a park in daytime and believing its symbolic, and becoming obnoxious when she does not get her own way to her two male followers. The Blair Underwood Project, based around the titular L.A. Law. actor, is a second parody based around out-of-work actors, here bumbling around a park in random and pointless scenarios. Meeting two random orange sellers debating films, or learning one of the cameramen has a hairy chest the shape of Texas. Again, and here this is pertinent, it does discomfort the joke has to be the sole female character being obnoxious and hateable, considering Heather Donahue as her namesake in The Blair Witch Project was a sympathetic figure clinging onto her documentary when doomed. Here the Heather stand-in is a swearing egotist in a narrative of trying to find Blair Underwood to give him a script. It is not funny, least because, even repeating the farting in a camping tent joke, there is no comic timing or creativeness here in the improvisation, regardless of the scrappy micro-budget look.

Having had to see The Bogus Witch Project more than once, which in hindsight is idiotic on my part even if there is one rewarding bright spot, the segments were less painful, but this is definitely one of those releases to be lost in time and most would gladly damn to that fate. In between The Griffith Park Project and The Blair Underwood Project you have the one selling point in terms of a star, Pauly Shore's Bogus Witch Project. Pauly Shore never translated over to the United Kingdom, my knowledge of him entirely because the animated series Futurama made an entire episode running gag about how Bio-Dome (1996), the film he became notorious for, became a legacy title in that world's narrative. Shore, if you look into him, is to be sympathised with - he suddenly became a bankable figure from a role in Encino Man (1992), getting leading films in the nineties, but Bio Dome to be a butt of joke and Shore getting the dishonourable award from the Golden Raspberries of Worst New Star of the Decade for the 1990s¹. This segment however does no favours, starting with Shore parodying Heather's crying scene, a really obnoxious barrage of jokes set within a darkened cinema. Some jokes are funny - the concession stand sells twig bungles (from the original film) with butter, and the actress they hire, a traditionally attractive blonde woman, cannot speak because the film cannot afford her speaking lines. Moments like that, throughout this entire compilation, do show some wit, but they are drowned out in obvious and unfunny material screamed out at a tone deaf rate. The target, the original 1999 film, never is really prodded in a really salient way, the obvious jokes hit and many missed. An entire segment on Shore being stuck in a camping tent, causing it to thrash about violently, as in one moment would have been significantly funnier as anti-humour.

The Bel Air Witch Project is not great either, when the one beer I had revisiting this compilation did not work. The wonder of standard digital cameras, as someone fond of no-budget cinema, does not help with another egotistical Heather stand-in, also called Heather, in another vague McGuffin of a Witch figure never really there for anything for the jokes to pad out. Struggling through the Bel Air star map, I find is strange to consider how many of these were shot in Los Angeles, as this one tragically ropes in Brande Roderick, a Playboy Playmate who looks uncomfortable doing the parody. Considering she was a prominent star in Baywatch in this same year, in one of its many seasons, this is a get that is definitely squandered. The problem with a parody is that, as the Bel Air Witch Project says itself, damning itself among many bad spoofs, is that you have to get the reference and/or actually be funny, and the surface level is missed entirely.

It says a lot that, before we get to the last segment dear readers, I need to talk about The Woods, the interconnecting tissue which is its own elaborate, scattershot beast that is not really a Blair Witch parody but a lot of random tangents, including in other horror genres and especially Scream franchise parodies. There are so many of these moments it is saner just to list them in two paragraphs as non sequiturs, barely covering how many there are but those which stood out. Zombie meeting, bigfoot executive. A legitimately funny, in a proto-2010s anti humour sketch, fake advertisement for Ted McKensey, an insurance lawyer who helps people sue for demonic miscarriages, UFO anal probing and werewolf attacks, with the added charm the actor is clearly not giving a great acting performance in the damndest but adding to the segment unintentionally in its weirdness.

"This is your brain on ham...", as referred to in the opening quotation, part of the scattershot nature of just parodying an anti-drug advert just because. A reoccurring home shopping network, again one of the funnier gags, of a woman selling a cursed twig doll or at the end a jacket with hood combo made from human flesh. Stephen Hawkins as a slasher killer in a trailer, which is one of the moments this comes from the un-pc era if tame. Then there is Horror Storytellers, another reoccurring gag, of horror villains reminiscing on their pasts; the costumes, due to copyright and budget, look terrible, but Jason Voorhees sounding like an old Southern female belle recounting her murder sprees, or the kid from Children of the Corn as a deranged man-child are suitably strange. There are quite a few, some not really funny ("America's Scariest Home Videos"), a lot reminders that in the late nineties, when horror cinema was in a strange transitional state, Scream (1996) was also a huge cultural touch stone and huge for parody, for all the gags here. It does not make up for how ramshackle this entire project is, but The Woods did help sooth through so much of the misfires the footage was meant to pad the running time through.

But, in the brightest moment, one funny if imperfect parody comes at the end called The Willie Witch Project. Explicitly about three black filmmakers, with an African-American cast, and a female director Susan Johnson, this gets the tone right as, finding out the Blair Witch Project was a success, one entrepreneuring man decides to film a documentary in the woods about the Willie Witch, only for one interviewee to accused them of just wanting to go into the woods to get high, and a religious preacher to try to get them to donate money to their church. It adds another fascinating bow as the Heather stand-in is a man named Eugene. He is a very flamboyant stereotype of a gay man, introduced doing a woman's hair, and one unfortunate use of homophobic dialogue is used later on, but he turns into an absolute magnet of charisma, especially when he points out white people are stupid enough to go in haunted woods and, at the moment things get weird, he rightly wants to get out of there quickly. Aptly too as, in lieu to parodying the Blair Witch characters finding ominous twigs outside their tent, he immediately wants to leave when, unlike all the dumb stand-ins in previous segments with dog turds or food, this gets an inspired joke with white tub socks being left outside theirs giving everyone the heebie-jeebies.

Whilst not perfect, if The Bogus Witch Project has to be preserved for future children, or for anyone one reading this to see, it is for The Willies Witch Project, originally a short film released a year before but included here a year later. It is not a masterpiece, it is not great, but as a micro-budget parody of an already low budget film, even having to blur out a t-shirt insignia, this works. Someone goes at this parody from a different direction, explicitly three black characters, where the project is literally a tower block in the middle of nowhere, where the flamboyant gay character whilst a bit tasteless is actually likable and, barring one line of dialogue, none of the humour is mean. Even the farting in the camping tent joke works better because of the performers' charisma². No one dies, which is not a spoiler, nor that the characters make money whilst one poor bastard is left stuck in the woods lost, because actually watching the segment shows someone finding funnier ways to parody The Blair Witch Project with good jest, even with the characters being clever enough to left a sign telling helping them to not get lost only for it to fail.

So much of The Bogus Witch Project is some of the worst material I have seen, but its power to hurt faded and thankfully, even here there is some success. Fittingly, whilst a few women worked in the project, including a co-director, the one directed entirely by herself by a female filmmaker herself hit the target perfectly, which makes this overlong review of a forgotten film have a great ending at least. As part of the strange pop culture history of The Blair Witch Project, which few probably knew of, even here there is gold to be found in so much misjudged, a reason to sit through and end up with this ridiculously long review from a mangled mass of confusion notes.

 

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1) Perversely, the Golden Raspberries in 1999 nominated The Blair Witch Project among the worst pictures (which was won by Wild Wild West (1999)), and did give Heather Donahue the Worst Actress Award. To be un-civilised about this, rather than agree to disagree, this was frankly a dick move from an awards group who get a lot of opposition for their bandwagon riding and considering The Blair Witch Project became a horror classic in the future years.

2) Thomas Miles, who played Eugene, and John Eddins as the intrepid documentarian John, are also working to the current day prolifically, so that in itself is a good thing too.

Invasion Earth: The Aliens are Here (1988)

From http://pics.filmaffinity.com/Invasion_Earth_
The_Aliens_Are_Here-374156208-large.jpg

Director: Robert Skotak

Screenplay: Miller Drake

Cast: Janice Fabian (as Joanie); Christian Lee (as Billy); Larry Bagby (as Tim); Dana Young (as Mike); David Dunham (as Charlie); Charles Wycoff (as Willie)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #69

At a cinema in middle USA, insectoid aliens led by the father of the green pigs from the Angry Birds videogames take over the management and intend to use the patrons as the first building blocks of a full scale invasion, using the vast array of fifties and sixties sci-film reels in the projection booth to numb the patrons' mind so they can use their technology to harness the human psyche. Only a white bread young couple can stop them, whilst most of the running time is the film raiding the vast catalogue of pre-existing films from decades before, from the terror of The Mole People (1956) to even big studio works like the 1953 War of the Worlds, in compilation film form. The story itself is merely perfunctory. A comedy in spirit, its mainly broad caricatures the film occasionally cuts to between film clips acting in exaggerated ways whilst the aliens take them over one by one - of two chubby hillbillies who don't change drastically even after Body Snatcher pods have turned them radioactive glowing green, a pair of the type of punk rocker that only existed in these types of genre movies for some inexplicable reason, a white trash family whose daughter is so loud someone in the audience knocks her out with a thrown wrench, two Japanese men who have cameras - broad but inoffensive stereotypes who are merely mild in terms of the humour.

The sci-fi narrative is a pastiche of said films, the leads bland white suburbanites whilst the aliens, well done in terms of a low budget film, have more charisma in spite of the lack of moving mouths, a pig-like blob which grunts managing to have more comic timing than the human cast. (One of his henchmen even gets to make out with a human woman who stars off nerdy before, in another broad stereotype, takes off her glasses and undoes her hair revealing herself to be a hot blonde). It does the pastiche with some charm, even managing to pull off a giant prosthetic monster at the end for an exclamation mark, but it's merely okay as a stand-by film, one that stands oddly with its subject as its both a tribute to this type of sci-fi cinema but constantly has characters mentioning these films as mind numbing and using them as a soma for the humans they're trying to control. It's an interesting meta-textual commentary, even by accident, about the aliens taking over the human race with films which warn people against such invasions, but its ambiguous in terms of whether it's meant to pay affection to these films or glibly taking advantage of them to make a new movie.

From http://livedoor.blogimg.jp/thejunkmovie/imgs/0/5/0507f3c6.jpg

The real interest is all the films used in clip form. Films I want to see - even if many of them will probably suffer from their stilted writing, bland leads and accidental archness, the snippets of them in Invasion Earth, even if they emphasise said stiffness, would convince anyone they are utterly surreal and artistically eye-popping hallucinations even if they had pie dish flying saucers in them. Fresh faced Lee Van Cleef attacking a giant combination of a squid and dog chew toy with a blow torch, a rear-projection assisted giant man, countless family members of the monster at the end of Luigi Cozzi's Contamination (1980), disembodied brains and faces floating in ether, and an entire deeply troubled psyche of destruction and humanity being controlled for unknown forces. Buildings being graphically destroyed by giant monsters, people being taken over or, in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), replaced by copies, and a surprising amount of aliens wanting to take Earth women for sexual favours or (explicably in one of the trailers used) breeding stock for Martians, suggesting some deeply disturbing subtext from the creators depending on what the aliens are meant to represent, or a type of exceptionally kinky sexual fetish spilling out, all of which especially when the film becomes a constant montage of various different clips bouncing off each other having a potent effect in seeing all the destruction and chaos all at once. If anything alongside the legitimately weird and freakish imagery involved - the stop motion tendril brains from Fiend Without a Face (1958) are actually disturbing in terms of body horror here especially when they shrivel up and die after being shot - the deep well of fears and public concerns filtered out into these apparently mainstream b-flicks make them compelling enough to search out alongside the classics also shown.

Altogether you can't call Invasion Earth good, the best praise possible to give it that it has the virtue of any compilation of enticing viewers to track down the films used within. The film as a piece of entertainment thought is a peculiar oddity from the late eighties that's inexplicable in why it would be made and, whether for the cinema or (likely) video, who the exact target was for it. With no gore or swearing, it's suitable for kids with its light sense of humour, but even then I have to scratch my head encountering this peculiar one-off, and not necessary a positive reaction. It's encouraged me to track down the clips used in it, which I have to commend it for, but I can't proclaim it a great cult flick with pays tribute to an older era of cinema, more so as Popcorn (1991) exists, a slasher film which goes out of its way with success as a tribute to this gimmick filled era of filmmaking, understandably more well known compared to Invasion Earth.

From http://www.horreur.net/sites/default/files/
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