Tammy and the T-Rex (1994)

 

Director: Stewart Raffill

Screenplay: Stewart Raffill and Gary Brockette

Cast: Denise Richards as Tammy; Theo Forsett as Byron Black; George Pilgrim as Billy; Paul Walker as Michael Brock; Ellen Dubin as Helga; Terry Kiser as Dr. Gunther Wachenstein; Buck Flower as Norville; Ken Carpenter as Neville; Sean Whalen as Weasel; J. Jay Saunders as Sheriff Black; John Edmondson as Karl; John Franklin as Bobby

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

 

There is something naturally, perfectly, fitting that this film, from the director of Mac and Me (1988) and Standing Ovation (2010), originates when a man approached director Stewart Raffill with the fact that he had a large scale animatronic T-Rex and wished to make a film with it¹. Knowing as well the fuller context, including Raffill having to write the script in a week and improvising whatever he felt could get a reaction, suddenly I find myself with the British born filmmaker, infamous for a E.T. rip-off by McDonalds, more sympathetic for a man who went from working as an animal trainer for films to a strange career of movies hesitantly put together and in this case, gunning for the weirdness for the sake of weirdness genre but not making something contrived.

What you get was a film lost in time which is strange. As in, already this comes from the baking pot of hastily putting together a film post-Jurassic Park (1993) where Paul Walker, long before his career in the Fast and the Furious films, is romancing a young Denise Richards only to accidentally get the wrong side of her domineering ex. Said ex dumps Walker's Michael in the middle of a big cat park at night, where he is mauled by a lion, and becomes an experiment for Dr. Gunther Wachenstein (Terry Kiser), who transplants his brain into a robot full sized T-Rex. Admittedly, this is not the first strange idea of putting a brain into something else - Boris Karloff was obsessed with transplanting brains between man and dog in House of Frankenstein (1944), and likewise Tammy... was made as a comedy. The narrative gets weirder, in real life as much as the movie's own, when the original film was meant as an R-rated movie. And when I write R-rated, that means that it was originally released cut of its content for a more family friendly form by in its premiere, and that when it was resurrected in the later 2010s by Joe Rubin, co founder of the distributor Vinegar Syndrome, with its fully uncut form, it was revelled to have a jaw dropping level of gore to go along with its bizarre tone.

Yes, Tammy... is a silly film but it does catch one off-guard with ease. It is made in the nineties, yet we open with Denise Richards in the middle of an aerobics scene with other women set to a glam metal score about walking around like a dinosaur. In complete honesty, the film with its cheese and winking tone, alongside some of its adult humour really being tactless, would have in any other context had put me off. I realise that, with a lot of cult eighties horror films especially, their cheesy tones really do not work for me. Here however you have a film where, when it comes to Paul Walker having his brain transplanted into a robot dinosaur, you have in the fully uncut version a full blown splatter moment Herschell Gordon Lewis would have been proud of, with the brain being exposed and eventually being removed. Gore is not something nowadays I take with interest as well, but there is something incredibly jarring and striking in this film, with its early nineties colours and comedic tone, where a tyrannosaurus rex foot crushes a man and it has blood split, or heads being bit off. Whilst it is not a definition of greatness in a film, there is something striking when genre and tone catch one off guard.

This is definitely the case for a film, in truth, which is goofy. In mind to its circumstances, including that the director filmed most of the film not far from his own house¹, there is a charm to the film but it cannot be denied either that it is ridiculous to consider. It is helped considerably by its cast. There is an unfortunate and bittersweet nature to Paul Walker, who tragically died too young when he developed a popular status in the Fast and the Furious franchise, a series about cars and action which moved away from its origins, of the boom in interest for street racing, into a long lasting series that gained more fans unlike other franchises after five films onwards. He is charismatic in the scenes he gets on screen, bearing in mind he is literally replaced with an animatronic dinosaur, thankfully one which does have enough as a great piece of mechanical creation that, even if they have to awkwardly animate scenes in with him afar moving, is an interesting co-star to work with as a machine. Denise Richards is the same here, a charismatic figure who thankfully went on to have a prolific career in television. Whether one film or not can be argued for why her cinema career never went as far, when there was a period in the late nineties when she would be very visible in films like Wild Things (1998), it was probably not helped by the notoriety of casting her as a nuclear physicist named Christmas Jones in a James Bond film, The World is Not Enough (1999), probably the biggest profile film from that time and an albatross around her neck for how her role was not highly looked upon.

A shame as, actually the figure that has to carry the film, she is sincere in this utterly silly film having to act against an animatronic dinosaur. With Theo Forsett, playing her friend Byron Black, having to play the leads in this absurd premise, there is a lot to have to work around in its adult humour and absurdities, such as an entire scene in a morgue, trying to find a new body for her boyfriend, which alongside a T-Rex outside giving thumbs up and downs in response outside in a truck, also has the consideration of whether to have a woman's body instead which some temptation from the dino to go in that direction. If anything, the film willingly going to the edge in terms of stretching itself is where Tammy... gains worth, a movie that knows how ridiculous it is to have an animatronic dinosaur have a scene using a payphone. It does stumble in its willingness to go for an unexpected - some of the jokes have not aged well, and Forsett's broad stereotype of a gay character will cause some to roll their eyes, but it is really the couple of jokes at his expense that are more an issue, whilst by accident character is given to him as the son to the town sheriff whose relationship is awkward as father and son.

Other times however this attitude proved a virtue to the film, where even the gore is a strange and unexpected exclamation which keeps the film, where a young woman's love for her boyfriend even overcomes him sudden brain transfer in a dinosaur, interesting. That it will have, for the scene of Michael being mauled, an actual stunt man or animal trainer play acting being attacked by an actual lion is something which stands out, as is the fact that for all the jokes, the gore and even attempted grave robbing just after a funeral, it is still sincere as a love story is credit for the film in terms of positives. Definitely the experience has softened me to Stewart Raffill as a figure, least who in his career as a filmmaker and then later an author is as eccentric as his output. Unlike a future film like Standing Ovation, a film always meant for kids which did get predictable, this in contrast was not surprisingly a film to screen when it was rediscovered and made available for midnight movie crowds in its original cut. It is, again, ridiculous, but I have to admire the film being weird too.

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1) Which can be read about, along the director's career, HERE.

The Creep Behind the Camera (2014)

 

Director: Pete Schuermann

Screenplay: Pete Schuermann

Cast: Josh Phillips as Art Nelson; Jodi Lynn Thomas as Lois Wiseman; Bill LeVasseur as William Thourlby; Laurel Harris as Helen Whittlesey; Mark Lee as Jon Lackey; Chris Winters as Norman Boone / Barney; Jason Coviello as Scott; Katie Bevard as Shannon O'Neil / Brett; Glenn Thayer as Larry Burell / Narrator

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

 

 I know this is low budget, but you couldn't afford a door?

With documentaries on cult directors and cinema popular, this document on the life of A.J. Nelson, a.k.a. Vic Savage, is probably one fo the most idiosyncratic in terms of trying to document his life. With talking head interviews dispensed throughout in tiny chunks, the production took a different direction for the director notorious for one film, The Creeping Terror (1964), by recreating his life as a biopic at the same time. Thus, The Creeping Terror is repurposed as the ultimate burial of Nelson as much as a document over how this film got made. 

What is a Creeping Terror? The notorious monster film where, when you lose the costume, you acquire what is a carpet from outer space, and is permanently in public domain and on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. The problem, which director/writer Pete Schuermann's film has to wrangle around, is that Nelson's life is split between this farce of a film and a deeply abhorrent man who, depicted here, did horrible things away from the film, and both sides clash. This review, despite this initial tone, requires a trigger warning as a result. The problem immediately rears its head, in the director's cut, in how we have the talking heads (members of the production, and figures like Harry Knowles) lambast the film in a light humoured tone, contrasted by the depiction of Nelson (Josh Phillips), burning his first wife Lois' hand on a gas stove.

If we stay with the light hearted side, we get a fascinating attempt at fleshing out this production. Some figures like Knowles or the Medved brothers, creators of the Golden Turkey Awards, are included but the participants of the real production are more rewarding even if they are slim in their time onscreen. Allan Silliphant, the screenwriter who (in an animated sequence in 3D cel shade) envisioned his sci-fi space monster chewing Las Vegas showgirls in a line on-stage, is fixated on Nelson not setting the crash landing site at Lake Tahoe but a ditch of a river, a fixation which is funny for him returning to it over and over again. William Thourlby, one of the actors and the main investor, laments getting involved, the main figure for money that eventually salvaged what footage Nelson made (acquired from his garage in the recreation), and even had to hire an actor to add voice narration over to make sense of. A high school orchestra teacher got his shot at being a composer in this recreation, which would be awesome but with "Monster Gets Blown Up By A Grenade" as one composition with his student musicians itself a bizarre tangent to the film. The content in the recreation, if all true, is ridiculous.

An entire paragraph does deserve to be had for the titular terror and its creator Jon Lackey, whose creature is lovingly recreated here even if only a female associate and friend, sadly only talked to briefly, is our only real figure to discuss the late man. The original creature, as recreated here, is still a rubbery monster costume, requiring multiple students in the hot weather too boil inside it to move, but it is an imaginary figure, especially when you realise this version is creepily gynaecological in look, including the mouth entrance to gobble up victims and its tall, long "head". When Lackey informed Nelson the monster is absent until it was paid, is when the rug appeared....a bastardisation made on the sly. This film's entire structure is entirely because of a perceived lack of on-set and production archive materials, so there is logic to this absurdity being acted out. Whether with creative recounting or entirely accurate, such as Nelson trying to film a car moving when still clearly no with himself onscreen, it nonetheless works.

In terms of the accuracy, director Pete Schuermann deserves credit for trying. Originally behind projects like Hick Trek: The Moovie (1999), a Star Trek parody, the narrative's setting is pulled off with success. Trying to recreate the sixties on a low budget is insanely difficult and I have to admire Schuermann and those involved here, getting the costumes and vehicles as accurate as possible, helped especially as this is not sixties chic either, but lived-in post fifties as a setting. Being shot on digital does catch a viewer off-guard, but the illusion of the past shown through celluloid does muddy our view of the past and what history is. Besides, even Michael Mann showed this discrepancy with Public Enemy (2009), set in thirties but shot on digital too, and that was high budget. The Creep... to its credit can also be credited with having good performances too, helping considerably, Josh Phillips as Art Nelson compellingly evil as a figure whilst Jodi Lynn Thomas as Lois Wiseman does play the most sympathetic figure with a level of discomfort for her plight to feel for the figure.

The only issue with the farce of The Creeping Terror is both the lack of emphasis on talking heads, and that there are some fragments disconnected to everything which do stand out as bizarre but not stitched in enough. Nelson stalking Mamie Van Doren; that he apparently shot a hole in the hand of - Carl Switzer, who played Alfalfa in the Little Rascals, or that they shot on Spahn Ranch, meaning Charles Manson gets a cameo in the film with the hint his stolen vehicles were used.

The problems with the film though, the really difficult ones, are entirely its violently contrasting sides, entirely to do with trying to create a humorous biography about a man who was also horrifying, and finding the right balance. Both sides separately work, exceptionally well, but the problems are there in putting them together. There is a huge tonal problem between an Ed Wood farce and the domestic abuse content with Lois, which is intense. It is made more uncomfortable, though with care, as the real Lois Wiseman is also interviewed, an elderly woman who is explicit about the hell she went through with Nelson. It is uncomfortably a film stuck with two diametrically opposed side - that Nelson was making a car crash, but he also abused his first wife, who suffered in from a tyrannical religious mother beforehand already, a problem to have to tell the narrative of in its entirely, from a makeshift monster to Lois trying to slice her wrists on a fence, intercutting with the real Lois having to talk of this on camera, with both sides very emotionally different in content.

Confounded by the film skipping back and forth in time, the film even without this major subplot does (for the director's cut) toppled under a challenging tonal shift it cannot meld. In the same film, not long between each other, you have Nelson have a Creeping Terror religious freak-out, in a church with the Terror leering superimposed over a giant church organ and humour of him stealing the collection plate money...contrasted by the scene, whilst carefully done, that Nelson is explicitly making child pornography on the side for money, ultimately why he has to disappear and leaving Thourlby to collect back the film for release¹. When this production works, The Creep Behind the Camera succeeds, but never was there also a violently haphazard production which ultimately scuppers itself.

 

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1) Also a CGI locust storm taking place at this period in the film, which never made sense.

Poochinski (1990)

 

Director: Will Mackenzie

Screenplay: David Kirschner, Brian Levant and Lon Diamond

Cast: Peter Boyle as Stanley Poochinski; George Newbern as Det. Robert McKay; Amy Yasbeck as Frannie Reynolds; Frank McRae as Capt. Ed Martin; Brian Haley as Sgt. Shriver

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

 

That's when you were making collars, not wearing one!

Poochinski is pretty infamous - the TV pilot where character actor Peter Boyle, playing a scruffy ill kempt cop, is killed only for his soul to transmigrate into the body of a smelly bulldog he found and befriended. People have written about this twenty one minute or so television pilot before I have, until the cows come home but I will follow them in adding my two pence. To think this was just once an unsold pilot which produced and co-written by David Kirschner, producer of the Child's Play horror series, nowadays when it has gained its infamy is charmingly weird. It was once an NBC premiere shown just before a re-run of Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story (1987) on the taped copy I saw, a Farah Fawcett starring mini-series (made into a TV movie cut) based on a real debutante and socialite in American history. In the midst of a night's screening, when the version I watched was taped off television, you might have encountered an attempt to cash in a spade of cop with dog partner films by having the dog also talk.

Boyle, with as varied a career as Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1978) to Alex Cox's Death and the Compass (1992), plays a slob of a cop named Stanley Poochinski. He eats hotdogs, is crude and orders pizza in the midst of an important stake out of an ATM machine robber, yet nonetheless has a record of catching notorious criminals which defends him in the eyes of his peers, such as the North Hill Strangler. One person who defends him even for the crime of heavy flatulence to his cop partner includes Frank McRae, famous for playing police chiefs, playing a police chief here and probably not batting an eye to the weirdness on display for all he has gone through. One of the roles he had includes Last Action Hero (1993) where strange cop partner double teams was an extended joke, so Poochinski's existence adds more to that gag in hindsight for me.

Even when Poochinski threatens children with his gun, it is to rescue a stray bulldog from their torment and only after one of the boys, who only looks ten years old or so, threaten him with a flick knife. In the midst of his newfound friendship with said bulldog, Poochinski is killed only to occupy the body of the bulldog in a spiritual cock-up. Where the dog's spirit goes we never learn in this curious example of transmigration, leaving his already frustrated younger partner George Newbern now having to live with him in his apartment as a wacky comedy duo. This is ironic considering a couple of years later Newbern would voice the titular Theodore Rex in the 1996 film of the same name, a sentient dinosaur cop teaming up with Whoopi Goldberg playing the human detective herself.

For me personally, no idea is too stupid or dumb or offensive if done properly - the problem is that most of these ideas are not done well, and thus the three descriptions above are acceptable to use when the tone is misfired. If you are careful and can take the risk, any strange idea can work but it depends on presentation, tone and the quality of the material. I openly admit I have developed a guilty pleasure to Poochinski as a pilot, wishing this managed to get one season at least to see how in the blue hell it would have succeed if ever. As a conventional cop show from the era with one of your main cast members being either acted by real dogs or an animatronic for talking (or singing) scenes, this would have been fascinating to witness, especially as Cop Rock (1990), a musical cop series which was still incredibly serious as a show, managed to get a full season the same year. Probably the safest way to have deal with the material would have been animated, this pilot giving me flashbacks to an obscure Disney animated show I saw as a kid, Bonkers (1993-4), about an anthropomorphic bobcat and former cartoon star now becoming a cop and having a human partner to solve crimes with together. It would have been helped at least because of the self reflective, quirky era of nineties animation, where the animators started making shows as much for adults as for themselves and could have these odd premises.

Or, and this is the huge reason I think Poochinski would have been dreadful as a series, it should have not been a conventional cop show from the era which is more interested in silly jokes than playing to the actual weirdness of this premise, even if it still failed as a show. The film is co-written by Brian Levant, a producer/writer/producer of the likes of Jingle All the Way (1996) and Snow Dogs (2002). I will not bury them or suggest he is the biggest influence on the show, but they are broad family friendly programming which Poochinski is clearly trying for itself, even it is has a bit of sex humour including Poochinksi being a perverted dog, nuzzling into a female staff members chest when being cuddled. Moments show how odd this could have been, especially as people can actually hear Poochinski (convincing a man in an elevator, without seeing him, to push a button), and there is a dark (furry) underbelly, when Poochinski laments about having to accept his new animal form, leaving a girl he once loved and slowly picking up the behaviour of a dog.

This pilot is too short to really get anywhere with the premise, and a large portion of it is a romantic comedy between Newbern and a widow living in his apartment, with her cute kid, he is smitten on. Even if that leads to the joke of his trying to train Poochinski with his gun for wrecking his bedroom, it still suggests most of the show would have been very broad humour rather than really embrace this premise, of being a traditional cop show but with a weird touch, one which would have disrupted the conventions greatly. It was clearly meant to capitalise Turner & Hooch (1989) and K-9 (1989), two films inexplicably released on the year of my birth which partnered cops (Tom Hanks and Jim Belushi) with dogs for cute hijinks, Poochinski playing for innocent laughs despite its few adult winks to the camera. In particular, whilst those two theatrical films had actual trained dogs, Poochinski in reincarnated form is played by an animatronic bulldog for large portions of it which many will find freakish, the kind you would expect from a weirdo series cancelled after one season rather than its soft natured slapstick.

Technically, this is a perfunctory pilot¹, solidly made by the director of A Hobo's Christmas (1987), spending most of its length despite its premise, Poochinski tracking down the ATM robber who killed him once, as a comedy of manners as his younger partner puts up with his furry partner. Arguably, if this had gone with the strangeness of the premise, Poochinski could have worked if just as an even weirder cultural item for us to have dug up decades later. Most of my enjoyment of the pilot as it has grown is more a "what if", accepting that this stands as something with not a lot to go for it in reality. This is likely why this has developed a cult status, because of feeling like a strange premise cooked up after a hangover.

 

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1) The only touch of note is the music by Andy Summers. Yes, the guitarist from The Police, who went on to compose music for films after the band, which adds another surreal touch to this pilot. This is something I only learnt of for this review, just to mention that one of the guitar licks he uses is clearly "borrowed" from Mannish Boy by Muddy Waters and was worth mentioning.      

Turbulence 3: Heavy Metal (2001)

 

Director: Jorge Montessi

Screenplay: Wade Ferely

Cast: John Mann as Slade Craven, Zak Santiago as Gabriel Mendoza (as Zak Santiago Alam), Monika Schnarre as Erica Black, Sharon Alexander as Mandy Morgan, Gabrielle Anwar as FBI Agent Kate Hayden, Rick Burgess as Kyle Martin, Bernie Coulson as 'Shred', Brenda Crichlow as Mary Wilson, Kendall Cross as Karen David, Nathaniel DeVeaux as Jack Fletcher, Mike Dopud as FBI Agent Dave Barrett, Rutger Hauer as Copilot MacIntosh

Obscurities, One-Offs and Oddities

 

This is getting weirder.

Full Plot Spoilers Throughout

Author's Note: When this review was originally written, I was completely unaware of abuse allegations against Brian "Marilyn Manson" Warner which have been in the news since February 2021. Since the main character is clearly a stand-in for him, this was an unfortunate coincidence, but I feel the review and the film itself can be still appreciated even if there is a tangent on Manson himself, and references to the parallels. Only one line was excised as, even in the early days of the allegations and where history will go on this subject, the comments within it were inaccurate because of the allegations against Manson existing in the first place.

If we can begin a review with a hypothesised exercise, imagine if you have to continue a franchise, particularly any that have been long going or have a very restriction set of expectations that must always be met. You have options between trying to repeat the same as before but "differently", as can be seen in the Basil Rathbone series of Sherlock Holmes films between 1939 to 1946 which, baring the first two 20th Century Fox produced films being set in his original time period, were all set in the nineteen forties with the advantage of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's source material and a lot of pulp genre tropes. Sometimes you are even more restricted in premises and have no back catalogue to go with. Friday the 13th in the horror genre had to have Jason Voorhees, and thus eventually you get the controversial Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993), where they turned a villain already undead by that point into a figure housing a body swapping hell parasite. If the genre has been repeated over and over again, and clichés have developed over initial ideas, you have to think outside the box. Leprechaun as a franchise sent the Irish folklore legend to Las Vegas, which was actually a clever idea. Than to outer space in the sequel, that made less sense, outside of parody, and even before Voorhees got there himself. Hellraiser also went into space, before they even had to start taking original horror scripts and reinterpreting them as their own sequels.

But horror films are one thing, or pulp narratives based around iconic characters like Sherlock Holmes or even the superhero films, especially those that have higher budgets and have the archives of material to work from. Films of any budget and format need to still come up with new content in a production line. What about a genre like the disaster films, where everyone especially if you include TV movies made so many of them? Let us be even more precise, what about the sub-genre of airplane disaster films where a plane is in danger of crashing? We know, unless you fancy a really bleak ending film, a plane in trouble will be landed, and you are restricted in plotting due to the central location being one of these vessels, so what to do with one? No, putting snakes on an airplane, whilst weird, turned out not to be as weird as this premise could be bent into, a genre that even before 2001 has a long history. Where ever since Airport (1970), so many were made and that the parody of these films Airplane! (1980) just lifted its plot, even about the pilots being poisoned by a fish supper, from Zero Hour! (1957), a film made decades earlier to even Airport.

Shot in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, which surely should mean being a honorary Canuxploitation film, we are on the second sequel to the Turbulance films, the original 1997 film a theatrical release but followed by two straight-to-video sequels. Here, instead of who had fish for dinner, we have effectively Die Hard on a plane, the 1988 Die Hard with Bruce Willis, alongside being a big hit, also spawning the idea of films taking its basic premise, a hijacking of a skyscraper by criminals, and setting the scenes in different locations. Most films would stay with just Die Hard on a plane, but Turbulence 3 also thought they could include a Marilyn Manson stand-in, and the figure who is also our Bruce Willis. I have included spoiler warnings from the get-go as it is impossible to try to talk about this film coyly, and reading this review is not the same experience of seeing how this plays out anyway, so I feel less concern talking about this all in full detail.

The amusing touch to the film personally is that, when Sky in the United Kingdom would have even films like this premiere on pay-per-view, I remember advertising for this production. It more than likely never included this plot detail in the synopsis, which does need a tangent for any reader to explain the significance of, for those who was either living in a cave or are significantly young and oblivious to late nineties pop culture. That of Marilyn Manson, real name Brian Warner, is a musician with his titular band became a mainstream crossover group but also a very controversial one. Some who, alongside music openly influenced by Nine Inch Nails and near nu metal, had a stage act included openly Satanic imagery and even ripping pages out of Bibles onstage. Manson was also a scapegoat for the Columbine High School shootings in 1999, which are tastelessly referenced here, where he was even an interviewee in Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine (2002) because of how much of a target he was. Here, it is obvious the writers are outsiders to heavy metal. Manson's stand in Slade Craven (John Mann) is called a death rock musician whilst a protest sign awaiting him in his introduction calls his music death metal; now, I will not be a gatekeeper and be pedantic, but music naturally tends to separate into genres and sub-genres, and those two are definitely very alien musical genres, the start of the curious genre mixing that transpires.

Craven's own music and look here is also a hodgepodge. Some is Nine Inch Nails, some close to death metal, some Placebo's PVC and Goth obsessed cousin, whilst the score itself is actually drum n bass. Slade Craven and his group are a mishmash themselves - punk, goth, black metal corpse paint, glam rock with a feather boa, and even a cowboy hat. They are also playing a "747 Flying Music Station", his last concert to be streamed online for fans off an airplane in the sky. Strangely relevant two decades later into the 2020s, where streaming concerts online was more commonplace, this however is still back when the internet was still a new thing and films like Halloween: Resurrection (2002) exist, trying to grasp at this new idea with a sense of appealing to a hip new audience. It also leads here with a lot of the film barring its airplane interior scenes being of everyone in separate rooms either watching screens or on receivers communicating to each other, economising as a result. With the airplane eventually hijacked however, with what appears to be Craven going insane originally, leads to a far more sinister concern onboard.

Ultimately this is a disaster film about landing a plane full of Craven's fans, many, rather than crashing and everyone getting killed. The initial structure is a thriller, but it eventually the same that happens in Airplane! will happen, after it is revealed there was an imposter involved, that Craven has to find a way to rescue the plane with outside help. Among those involved are an FBI agent Kate Hayden (Gabrielle Anwar) who was after a hacker Nick Watts (Craig Sheffer), a man of the people in his blue bandanna and shirt combo, arresting him in his apartment as he was hacking into the live feed and deciding to work together when they see what is happening onscreen; the FBI when they get involved; the company streaming the broadcast when things go south; and eventually air traffic control teams. This is an airplane film with a Marilyn Manson stand-in having to save the plane, even with the help of someone with only experience of virtual flight simulators, to land it which is as strange as that sounds.

This is not even when the premise gets bonkers either. Initially it comes off as if this film will demonise this figure of Slade Craven, as a negative personality who has flipped and become destructive. Baring the fact that the live feed increases in viewings when the show goes very wrong, what the real threat is turns to be even more ridiculous. A Satanic cult, with their own easily accessible website, that intend to crash the plane onto a small church in Kansas as they believe it sits on top of a gateway to Hell underneath it. It is a very strange premise, and again spoiling this does not have the same impact as actually watching the film and seeing all these twists be played straight faced. More so because this is a straight-to-video work which has to be economic, and that the one recognisable actor is Rutger Hauer as one of the pilots, with very little screen time but putting in the best acting of the cast as a veteran of many straight-to-video films more normal than this. It is funnier because, like Manson himself being Warner, still a working musician, likewise John Mann as Slade Craven gets to play the regular musician underneath the scary makeup. A musician in the midst of this scenario who has to prove his identity from his income tax, or even praying to God and taking off the occult jewellery to help with having to land the plane himself.

Is this entertaining? Absolutely and in context to this area of cinema, whilst complete cheese, it is competently made compared to many films I have seen. Chilean born director Jorge Montesi was a television and film making veteran beforehand, and would continue onwards to be especially in the former. Writer Wade Ferley only wrote this one script, more known in filmmaking as a camera operator/cinematography/director of photography on a couple of productions, clearly wanting to bring this premise he had to life or getting into this position to write a script with such a goofy yet compelling premise. Cinema has had dumb or ill advised ideas, and whilst I can imagine further interpretations of this premise which could have been funnier or more spectacular - imagine KISS, rather than the film we did get, as a four men action team in a Die Hard knockoff - this was a pleasure. More so because this is a curious genre mix, the result of trying to have to come with a new premise for a sequel, as mentioned in the first paragraph, and one which is actually entertaining. Most of these later premises and sequel plots tend to be bad or not really exploited well, merely curiosities or embarrassments for the most part. I am not surprised as, with cinema as a conveyor belt of product as it is an art form with many variables, you do struggle a great deal to come up with ideas whether good, bad or bonkers. This one is forgotten, but for anyone who does track it down, this could easily be a cult film one day because, without any context of the previous films to weigh it down, it manages to succeed in its weird creative choices for once.

Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue (1990)

 

Director: Milton Gray, Marsh Lamore, Robert Shellhorn, Mike Svayko and Karen Peterson

Screenplay: Duane Poole and Tom Swale

Voice Cast: George C. Scott as Smoke; Jason Marsden as Michael; Don Messick as Papa Smurf; Lorenzo Music as Garfield; Laurie O'Brien as Baby Piggy / Mom; Lindsay Parker as Corey; Janice Karman as Theodore (voice); Jim Cummings as Tigger / Winnie the Pooh; Ross Bagdasarian Jr. As Alvin / Simon (voice); Jeff Bergman as Bugs Bunny / Daffy Duck; Townsend Coleman as Michelangelo / Dad; Russi Taylor as Huey / Dewey / Louie / Baby Gonzo; Frank Welker as Slimer / Baby Kermit / Hefty Smurf; Barbara Bush as Self; George Bush as Self; Paul Fusco as Gordon 'ALF' Shumway

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

Now I'm seeing ducks!

Beginning with the Ronald McDonald Children's Charity, with Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue recovered from a VHS rip, we start with an advertising where children of various disabilities and social standings smile to the camera in idyllic commercial depictions of childhood, happy and with a children's chorus evoking the ideals of charity and contributing to those in need. We forget that whatever one's opinion of McDonalds and any corporation in general¹, with this the fast food franchise's charity part of their public face, any business has to account for the world around them. This includes various attempts at charity and "community service" for a lack of a better term depending on whether they sincerely desire to help the public or if for dubious means. This is also important to think of as that charity also helped produce this curious combination of public scares and pop culture, a very odd one where, not since Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) and all the hurdles to get Warner Brothers and Disney to agree to let their characters co-exist on the same screen, this is done for the sake of a fear of children getting into narcotics and done as a public health service.

Likewise, the prelude to this infamous cartoon special about saying no to drugs also includes an address by the then-president George Bush Sr. with his wife Barbara Bush, hoping this work would be advancement on the war on drugs the USA was involved in this period. It is surreal to envision or even see this piece, from a Buena Vista International distributed production; the imagine of Donald Trump, when he was president, sat on a couch with Ivanka Trump, addressing an audience like this feels a foreign and peculiar world on long ago. Baraka and Michelle Obama maybe, but what Cartoon All-Stars... is, if also a vague and misguided attempt at social consciousness, is also a fascinating time capsule that, were it not for all the rights negotiations that may be involved to re-release it, does show a period where children from the USA especially grew up with "say no to drugs" campaigning, this just one of the various ways to promote the message over various pop culture. There is even a reference to Freddy Krueger of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise in dialogue which, alongside how peculiar it was a horror villain known as a child murderer managed to be referenced even in this production, goes to show the era it was made in was a time ago. The reason why this one is known and infamous is that, for this tale of a teenage boy named Michael, an added surrealism of having this writer's name, we have the likes of Garfield interacting with the Muppet Babies to help him kick drugs. Where the evil smoke figure on the opposite should, tempting poor Michael to crack, is voiced by the legendary actor George C. Scott, and where it effectively turns into an animated version of Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend (1945), only with the addict protagonist seeing Donald Duck's nephews rather than bats...who then start to sing.

Now the layman will be aware that the issue of drugs in modern culture has yet to be resolved. Marijuana being legalised in states in America is a huge change - where Simon of the Chipmunks is able to inform everyone what one is but it is still considered the gateway drug to worse narcotics - but instead of mocking Cartoon All-Stars... however, the bigger tragedy is that this was the work of earnestness by conservative/corporate USA, whether the people animating and voicing the film were actually earnest in the goal or not, which was inevitably going to be doomed to squareness about the subject. It actually feels like a perversity in itself, in truth, when you have these characters materialise from the toys and possessions Michael's younger sister has (the likes of the Smurfs to Winnie the Pooh), looking and sounding as we may have grown up with them, only for the harsh reality of them to have to encounter drug addiction. Even if the box hidden under Michael's bed is full of weird alien forms of narcotic tools, it feels wrong for this to have transpired, despite the many parodies which may have existed. Winnie the Pooh's obsession with honey and demeanour should raise suspicions, Garfield was always cynical, and out of all the Mutant Teenage Ninja Turtles to be included, the only one being Michelangelo the party dude feels strange unless he is a teetotaller surfer dude, but with the other characters it feels like a moral transgression if you think of how these characters have been brought into the subject where, for all the dancing around actually talking about real drugs and their effects, "crack" is actually referenced at one point.

For myself, missing this anti-drug campaigning by being too young and British, I did nonetheless grow up with some of these characters. I remember Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Smurfs, the Ninja Turtles and Garfield cartoons. Then there are figures only know in the UK in hushed voices and Simpsons references like Alf: a cat eating alien (who threatens to eat Garfield in the one darkly humorous line) who started as a live action character, got an animated work to qualify here and eventually had a cancelled talk show in 2004.  And in some cases, there are characters being used for this moralising which is actually a transgression against them rather than feeling too innocent to be involved. The rumour, which has never been substantiated and was eventually debunked², was that Jim Davidson, the creator of Garfield, did not get his permission to include Garfield which compromised future screenings. I am, however, thinking of someone like Bugs Bunny, who here with Daffy Duck was the first time someone else ever took on the role after Mel Blanc. God knows anyone who has actually seen at least one of the old Bugs Bunny shorts where Tex Avery/Friz Freleng/Bob Clampett school made him the ultimate libertine of cartoons, who dressed as women constantly and was an utter spiteful misanthrope to suckers, the kind of figure whose morally concerned version here vastly contrasts a character more likely to be on jazz cigarettes himself.

The fact all these characters, including their voice actors, were pulled together is spectacular, and the animation is not bad. Even for Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, which I have already referred to, it took Steven Spielberg at the height of his powers (just as a production) to be in the same room so rivals Disney and Warner Brothers would allow Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny onscreen together, and even then there had to be rules set in stone. Here, under the auspices of protecting children from drugs, more influence was found if dooming this special due to the obvious copyright issues now to deal with. In terms of voice acting, whilst there are some legendary if underappreciated voice actors here (like Frank Welker, the living zoological database for animal real or imagined), the one big gleeful discovery for a cineaste is one of the only animated roles for George C. Scott as the evil Smoke, a tempting vapour who promoted those evil nasty drugs on young adolescents. It was probably a pay day, but George C. Scott was one of those character actors who could make any production better just because he was there and he was the best thing in Cartoon All Stars... as to be expected. In fact, the Smoke character, a purple cloud of smoke in a suit, is the one intelligent aspect of the short, Smoke's temptations and threats having a weight to them with the legendary Dr. Strangelove actor voice and that the dialogue does not shy away from him still being a threat even when Michael kicks the drugs.

The message itself is vague and confused, and that is the ultimate reason anyone understandably mocks the short. It does not dare try to explain why drugs are harmful, throwing weed under the bus in the same light as crack, when they are in different categories, and depicting the damage caused by them through nightmare scenarios that feel like they are drug hallucinations themselves rather than the real grim toll they cause. From the deranged theme park of roller coasters through the brain matter and the hall of distorting mirrors, to a musical number where the song is about saying no to drugs in various ways, it never dares scare children with the truth of the harm drugs can cause. Neither does it even admit why anyone would be hooked barring some platitudes of curiosity and stress. What it does instead is just a fantasy scenario - where Bugs Bunny borrows a time machine "from some coyote" to take Michael to the past where he first took weed, all in black and white in one clever touch, before going on to a series of scenes of him suffering hallucinogenic nightmares, including a sewer full of multicoloured sludge or a carnival where a giant Miss Piggy sucks him up in a drink's straw. The many shots of what Michael will look like ravaged by drugs instead looks like a zombie, not factual accuracy to the real toll of narcotics, where animation in its exaggeration betrays the message.

If the finale of the short did not scare you off drugs, there are moments where it does completely contradict itself, not at least a father whose beer drinking is not thrown under the bus too in the one line it is brought up in. The entire scenario is the product of squares pulling their punches and being uncomfortable even trying to talk about drugs, only referencing a few and leaving the others vague which is a dangerous thing in itself, the sense that instead we will put a really ominous synth drone when crack is mentioned and that will be enough, all in a video gaming arcade when this happens to emphasis the clichés of that being a den of debauchery. The only sense of adult thoughtfulness is that aforementioned line of dialogue that Smoke, Scott's villain, promises to return at the end like the nagging potential for relapse, a detail which is an actual struggle for some addicts and the one only honest consideration. The rest is deeply silly and not surprisingly was the sort of thing dope heads could smoke pot and laugh at as was the case for Reefer Madness (1936). In terms of a cultural artefact, I do find it compelling and recommend people find this; in fact, as with any project, I wish it was legally available as, even as an animated project, contextually it is a really unique piece and, in its own perverse existence, is watchable.  The weirdness of the project in itself is enough to recommend anyone look into.

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1) I have softened to McDonalds, both because in Britain fast food stores like it, as American exports, exist in a very different way to the image I have had of them in the United States; in America, you have tomes like Fast Food Nation, where the 2006 Richard Linklater adaptation will always stick in mind for the moment about faecal matter in the burgers, or the 2004 documentary Super Size Me demonising them but in England, especially as a result of a pandemic, their banality as regular people work hard jobs in their kitchens to provide food for regular people working hard jobs has become more significant. Particularly as someone who is working class myself, seeing them as an inherently evil corporate monolith is overly simplistic as, blending in the background next to a supermarket where my closest is, it just seems a gaudy building where people on both sides of the till exist, with their individual existences. Also, whilst I prefer other burgers, I have to admit at some point, after the toil of 2020,  just binging on their menu and giving in to stuffing one's face just once would seem far less like you are selling your soul nowadays as I type this, that and their McFlurries were always good.

2) Mark Evanier, head writer of Garfield and Friends (1988-94), debunked the rumour on the Cartoon Research Facebook page HERE with the following text in October 2013:

"How about if I confirm it? Jim knew all about the special, he okayed Garfield's participation and approved whatever had to be approved.

I believe the original plan, which got all the various copyright holders to agree to let their characters participate called for limited airing."

Abducted by the Daleks (2005)

 

Director: Roman Nowicki

Screenplay: Billy Hartnell and David Stanley 

Cast: Katarzyna Zelnik as Sylvia; Eliza Borecka as Isabella; Sonja Karina as Barbara; Lina Black as Anna; Maria Vaslova as Anna; Lenny Delmore as The Serial Skinner; Terry Barlet as  The Hunter; Connal Rose as Dalek 1; Pedro Robinns as Dalek 2; Andrew Witsend as Dalek 3

Obscurities, One-Offs and Oddities

 

The reason the Daleks are still the most sinister thing in the universe is because they do not make things like porn. They weren’t ever intended to be sexual creatures. It’s simple, Daleks do not do porn. - Tim Hancock, director of the estate of Terry Nation, the creator of the Daleks¹

To be likely lost to time, let us however have the tale of a softcore sci-fi film which, ultra-low budget and obscure, managed to briefly gain controversy and get the ire of the BBC due to their use of an iconic Doctor Who adversary, the Daleks. To give an idea to anyone with no idea of what any of that sentence means, in the United Kingdom in 1963 a series called Doctor Who came to be which, barring at least a period in the nineties where only a failed Americanised feature length film was created, has managed to sustain a legacy to this day, evolving as it went. The most iconic monsters to this day are the Daleks; it would be mean to describe them as moving trolleys with death plungers, but that is in mind, when their creator Terry Nation came up with them in 1963, they are a striking and memorable creation for any science fiction work, iconic even for someone like myself who never grew up with Doctor Who and is an outsider to the long lasting series baring watching a few of the first 2000s reboot episode.

Not having the license to the characters, even if meant as a parody, Abducted by the Daleks would eventually vanish due to Nation's estate and the BBC intervening after an article from the British newspaper The Sun brought this title up. Its creators, the creators of the likes of the Fantom Kiler franchises specialised in the likes of down-and-dirty erotic fetish films with a dark slant, very much coming from the school of having cranked out films like this for a target audience for titillation of a kinky kind. This is established by a striking start when over credits and outer space photos we get Akira Ifukube's legendary theme for of the Godzilla franchise, a sinister Stephen Hawkins voice over, Theremin, and then the Pink Floyd song Lucifer Sam, copyright not something to consider for the producers of this film which is less than sixty minutes long.

We begin with four blonde women in a car, driving in the countryside in a woodland area. Most of them are clearly European due to their thick accents in their performances, all of them only really having acted in films by the director Roman Nowicki like the Fantom Kiler work. A killer is on the loose, but they accidentally run over a cheap CGI alien in the middle of the driver being perturbed by the graphic details of the notorious Serial Skinner's M.O. It feels, as they wander then in woodland with a broken car left behind, bordering between actual woodland and sets, as a very limited budget production but one were the person who got the copyrighted music becomes the MVP alongside the one who designed the Daleks. An ethereal orchestral piece with a siren's singing stands out within the prolonged scene of the characters wandering the woodland, all in a film where apparently they even used Black Sabbath's War Pigs and music from The Mole People (1956) according to the end credits, decent of them to at least credit their music sources.

When the Daleks appear, they look insanely accurate to the Doctor Who versions - consisting of one in red, one silver and one black - to the point I actually have to praise a film which does frankly skimp on so much production value, very much for a very scuzzy reason to even make the movie in the first place. There is nothing sexy about a Dalek however. Maybe I am not open minded enough, and will admit to this, but I cannot envision a sex scene working especially with their robot voices, which can be grating at times, nor hear them talk about examine someone's human body in an innuendo and creepy minded way without it being off-putting.

There is full nudity, a film designed purely for titillation even in illogical ways. Baring one scene, it is a lewder form of cheesecake but not beyond that, definitely not hiding its purpose as there are thin cocktail dresses for all in the female cast but not wishing to go any further into anything remotely more explicit. There is a lot of scenes just of female characters wandering those woods with only shoes on, prolonged, to which the greater concern, brushing aside the intended erotic content, that these characters at least keep their high heels rather than walk the woods at night in bare feet.

Before anyone asks, Abducted by the Daleks is not a positive work in terms of erotica, but to call it leery and sexist and misguided would be shooting fish in a barrel. It has to find contrivances like many this area to allow many erotic scenes, such as fear inducing sexual desire to the point in the middle of the woods, at night in the cold, what can only be described as curious nudie cuties nude stroking between two female characters transpires. All before the Daleks teleport them to the ship, all whilst the theme tune to One Step Beyond, an American anthology television series from the Sixties, is playing.

Try as we might want to side step this either, the theme of people (usually women) being abducted by aliens for "experiments" has been made into something to arose. Like the inexplicable amount of times Bigfoot has managed to be in erotica, aliens and the unknown clearly follow a kink. Obviously, the issue of UFO abductions when they became a phenomenon plays a part in this, a phenomenon that in itself has led to this tangent. There is the uncomfortable idea of eroticising the capture and bounding of people, especially female characters, in these scenarios but likewise I am going to be careful not to inherently just dismiss this as misogynistic either, as context is important. That of between this, which is clearly the titillation of Daleks molesting the female cast from a male gaze, which is uncomfortable even if it is utterly tame, and a fantasy of a person (male or female) where they themselves are abducted by aliens, which is their own fantasy and one they have the right to have. Likewise a) there may be a couple of consenting adults who might have this fantasy, one the woman and the other dressing up as the Dalek for role-play, and b) in more seriousness, my thoughts on this have been more careful, even as an outside, in knowledge to BDSM and kinks in general which have caused me to think much more carefully on the subject.

BDSM to an outsider could be far more uncomfortable and violent in how it looks, but within its kink community there is a lot of consent, and communication and participation between the person(s) being bond/whipped/gagged/restrained/clothes-pegged/raised aloft on cables and the person(s) doing this to them. BDSM as an outside has made me really be more cautious in saying something is misogynistic, or grotesque or offensive when in reality context is so much more important. Kinks as well, especially online with women as much part of their creation, has this same context which means I will not immediately throw myself into the camp to damn something until the context is understood. Context makes a fantasy of a woman being abducted by aliens more acceptable if there is an active female gaze intrigued or arousal for a woman by it, even if just one, or in the privacy of one's bedroom a woman is attracted to this fetish. The idea of a woman being a victim in these scenarios is problematic, but time has forced me to consider with greater concern, with thought this idea may offend some, that women have a considerably greater spectrum of fetishes and desires then even our liberal Western society has even caught up with and digested yet. Likewise, the gaze in this film is an issue, but it is also a lame, almost comical production, neutering my personal reaction significantly.

This is tame even with the moral quandary, where even sixties American "roughie" films, an exploitation film genre, are far more uncomfortable than this in comparison where they, will less explicit nudity if any, had violence like slapping and threat as something meant to be titillation. Also, the reason I will not spend a review calling this repugnant filth is that I am also considering the actresses themselves. If they were paid and not exploited, I will just think this was a group of actors comfortable in this ridiculous production being naked on grey sci-fi sets with prop Daleks, even if the content deserves to be scrutinised. And whilst I am mentioning BDSM, actual kink practitioners would probably find this film comically woeful, as here there is one actress dressed as a dominatrix waving a whip loosely and awful laser effect threats, not exactly the most intense of sights when actual BDSM, again between consenting adults, can look rougher and nastier, but with the participants fully prepared for what is happening and able to leave it content afterwards.

I think in mind with sympathy with the actresses in general. The fact they are all lithe and blonde is the more perturbing thing for me than then even being lasered to death nude. That this film does not even have a broad mind even to different hair colours let alone women being more than this archetype onscreen is more of an issue, especially as they had to change one of the cast members, Lina Black, to Maria Vaslova as Anna in the final act, likely because of both Black not wanting to do the nudity nor the one moment, which the film warns is "XXX Rated" where, tied up by a hunter after the Serial Skinner, there is intimate groping and touching with a prop gun barrel. Also blonde, casting Vaslova means teleportation changes one physically as much as take your clothes and give you a European accent. The production by this point is also emphasising how much it is obsessed with characters wandering the woods naked, having to write a sci-fi reasoning (via molecular changes) for this and changing actresses, whilst having Vaslova apply lipstick, nude in the same woods at night for no discernible reason baring that one should always look good.

I had expected something worse, trepidation to actually watch this in the first place, but even with the ending, which get scuzzier, is in a small ball of absurdness cheapness, a soldier hunting the Serial Skinner an actor in a Halloween face mask with the evil Stephen Hawkins voice. Even with the Serial Skinner, you have a man in a creepy mask with a fondness for red track suits; whilst it is problematic an image, of a nude woman bound to a tree whilst a killer marks in lipstick where he intends to cut, there is still the knowledge these are actors within this scene, in foggy woodland, playacting for a production in their tiny little fimographies where their careers were probably in other areas entirely. The image is still an issue but, in a film like this to have a woman inexplicably nude in a police office for the ending, the greater concern was whether Maria Vaslova was freezing under the water poured over her for rain effects.

The film is definitely, absolutely, dumb. Made for a cheap purpose but, with an end credit "Beer & wine ... drunk by the crew", this is a British production made by people with some self awareness of this. Unfortunately, Abducted by the Daleks both fall back on a crass series of dated erotic imagery, without even the budget to do so, and half arsed about it too. Likely to be lost in time, it is the notoriety with Doctor Who fans which people may know this film through, which is the ultimate irony that, wishing to suppress the film or wish it was buried, Terry Nation's estate likely kept this film alive as a result among the morbidly curious like myself, or Doctor Who fans they wished to suppress this film from. You do not even get the Daleks saying "Exterminate" until the final line of the film, which just emphasises the film's lackadaisical nature; no malice to anyone who made the film, just curiosity now dampened by its existence and having watched it.

 

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1) Referred to HERE.

Heil Honey I'm Home! (1990)

 

Director: Juliet May

Screenplay: Geoff Atkinson and Paul Wayne

Cast: Neil McCaul as Adolf Hitler, Denica Fairman as  Eva Braun, Gareth Marks as  Arny Goldenstein, Caroline Gruber as  Rosa Goldenstein; Patrick Cargill as  Neville Chamberlain; Laura Brattan as  Ruth

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

 

I'm a very, very bad Hitler!

Just after Dad's Army (1968-77), a famous British television series in which an aging home guard in the middle of World War II train to protect Britain under the leadership of Lindsay Anderson regular Arthur Lowe, the satellite television station Galaxy followed up with a pilot which that announcer states "And unless Arthur Lowe defeats him, it's the man himself in a few moments in Heil Honey, I'm Home!, as the Galaxy Comedy Weekend continues.". Thus, almost haphazardly, the male voice over narrator for the station perfectly set up the last words for what was to be one of the most infamous TV pilots ever to be created and broadcasted. What never really is documented, at least in materials I learnt of this show as I grew up, was that the show was meant to be subversive, not merely a misguided idea to image Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun as stars of a sitcom, with a canned laughter track and Jewish neighbours the Goldensteins, without meaning to intentionally play this as the dark joke. It was also designed as a found footage project - that, in a fictional content, a producer named Brendan Thalbury had created at least eight episodes, only for it to disappear and be rediscovered on the Burbank back lot. With its all bright and cheery sitcom theme tune, the premise clearly was designed with a purpose.

The issue, and why it misfired so badly, is tone. This, if anything is the perfect example I can now point to for a pet theory of mine - that, with possible exceptions, no idea is too offensive or dumb or weird to work but execution is such an important factor. Premise wise, this is subversive - it is perverse to imagine Hitler having the pet name of "Mr. Sausage" by his wife Eva, the disgruntled housewife continually annoyed he is late to dinner constantly, all whilst the Goldensteins are even more fractured in terms of their married relationship. The men in this world do not come off well - lazy, drunk, ego driven - whilst the housewives, Eva and Rosa Goldenstein bond over Eva letting Rosa know Neville Chamberlain, the current Prime Minister of Britain, is coming over for dinner in a mischievous and improvised game of charades. Again, one of these people is Eva Braun, the other Jewish, which leaves an uncomfortable edge, but in among the wholesome but trite sitcom clichés. Hitler and Eva even have New York accents, despite being a British production, adding that sense, in a perverse alternative world, that this is not that different from when The Flinstones were created as a nuclear family sitcom depicted with animated cavemen. We in this actual world realise this is not the case, and it is uncomfortable, and there is meant to be a point to this.

And Hitler is still a putz here. Also the main plot is that Chamberlain is coming over, hoping over dinner to reprimand Adolf for being a naughty man for invading Czechoslovakia, thus adding a political edge that this pilot is a scathing take on Chamberlain's 1938-9 attempts at peace talks with Nazi Germany which backfired. Neville Chamberlain since his death has had the man whose peace talks were useless, leading to Hitler signing a treaty but still invading countries, and WWII still transpiring. This is still what he is known for nowadays and this pilot buries him and kicks him whilst down for good measure. Chamberlain, as old foolish man Rosa Goldenstein wants to push her dull niece Ruth onto, immediately shows how out of place he is when, asked about tea, he starts singing "I'm a little tea pot..." with the gestures like a child. It is broad, but it is subversive that, using this strange genre choice, the entire "Peace for Our Times" aspect of his career which doomed Chamberlain's reputation after his death is perfectly depicted by Hitler first trying to hide the treat in the fridge and, when Chamberlain finds out, just coxing him with nice words and signing it, as Adolf Hitler effectively did in real life whilst still invading countries.

The problem with Heil Honey is that most of it is not funny. It is a broad, deeply silly piece of characters being too deliberately comical when, for a darker turn, staying fully in the confines of the sitcom with significantly better jokes, whilst still tasteless, would have worked. The writing is not great for most parts of it, which is why so much of it instead comes off as awful on multiple levels. The tinges of darkness, even if depicted as light humoured, are still here like Hitler having to dismiss his own Aryan Nazi soldiers as being a gag by Joseph Goebbels for when Chamberlain first came to the airport, Goebbels off-screen even more incompetent for one of the funnier jokes, hand written sign for Chamberlain and all. I doubt the show could have lasted long, because just showing this pilot after Dad's Army, in a time slot where one is not warned of a subversive piece, was as much an ill advised decision, but as much of the issue, with knowledge that only a few titbits of the rest of the series made available online, that the production missed the delicate target completely.

There was discomfort shooting the production from those involved, and even after that Galaxy screening, which is the version that was recorded on tape and allowed people to see the pilot, you hear the announcer being caught off guard about how political it got, just expressing perfectly how one reacts to the show. It was uncomfortable to watch, even if aspects were difficult not to admit were amusing, but the result is a testament to the fact that, when handling delicate subject, taking risks but also tact is necessary. As much of my experience, only being twenty or so minutes long, was with grimacing as it was bemusement. In fact, I would have not been surprised if a tasteless take on the material, in a different time slot and era, might have been more successful and politically stronger in making the point it had, rather than arguably a more problematic work here that lost many immediately. This pilot, as a result, is never known as a failed experiment as political satire, but the misguided decision in, well, creating a light hearted sitcom about Adolf's home life that rightly offended many.