In Danger and Deep Distress, The Middleway Spells Certain Death (1974)

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National Lampoon's Lost Reality (2004)

 

Ephemeral Waves

Can I keep the Jenna Jameson?

With the following, one of two straight-to-video productions where you have fake unaired reality show pilots for American television deemed unsuitable to show, I was openly throwing myself into the meat grinder expected this to hurt. But let this not be political correctness review of the blog, but something beyond a finger wag and a necessary step into the time capsule of my teenage years. National Lampoon was once significant just in cinema, actually an American humour magazine existing between 1970 to 1998, who I knew only for their name being tied to films like Animal House (1978) held in good regard. Growing up as a teenage in the early 2000s however, their brand had gone to straight-to-video films and productions like this. This specific one is a surprising reminder, in my teens and thus not ancient history to me, a lot has changed and in some cases have not. Whilst less than an hour long or so, it will have to mean bringing back the list structure for a review. And yes, trigger and spoiler warnings ahead. Pointing out something is just wrong is shooting fish in a barrel and just pointless, but we will get into stuff you would not be able to get away with nowadays...

He Said, She Said: One woman, many potential male suitors in a scenario seen in actual reality television. The tone and presentation, in one virtue of Lost Reality, is pitched perfect, from this promo's voice over narrator to the cuts to confessionals to the camera. It is strange to think, at this point, reality television was still seen as a new creature rather than an everyday occurrence and commonplace. What has shown its age is the punch line - that Helen, our female lead, is transgender and specifically pre-op, which is not even necessarily transphobic, as we had not even reached an respectable place for the rights of transgender people into the late 2010s and 2020s, but homophobic as it is entirely about a woman having a penis as the joke. (Likewise, as Helen is Asian, I would not be surprised that is a stereotype too). Throughout Lost Reality will be a reminder how we have not really gotten as far as we may presume in terms of progressiveness, and if anything the unintentional humour, that Helen can drink the suitors under the table and their fragile heterosexuality, softens the blow a little whilst a fair warning this work, for anyone else, will become more harsher to sit through for a 2010s viewer.

Dying Dave: A man with terminal cancer decides on grainy video to do whatever he wants. Spray "Fuck U" with whipped cream on a random car; stealing a woman's spaghetti off her plate at a restaurant; get a piercing, go to a strip club, argue with one's boss; even defecating on his desk, which even leads to filming someone actually defecating on a desk, rectal close-up shot and all. It is crass but actually a compelling idea for a very black comedy, which Lost Reality will have once or twice throughout in-between misguided un-PC shock humour. In this case, the idea of a man pushed to a point of saying "Fuck it" and living even a grotesque form of free will; in this little fragment too, a street poet rapper steals the segment too even thought he is meant to be annoying.

The Amazing Racist: Yes, this segment appears I gritted my teeth, the joke immediately dead as a duck in the 2010s onwards with the increase of alt-right and white supremacy groups. It is neither from the perspective of myself being a PC, brainwashed cuck either, but that ironic jokes bating racism just come off not even as actual humour but very dumb and uncreative. Sadly this is the segment which returns later on and in Lost Reality 2 (2005), inexplicably the main attraction for both productions when it goes for cheap shock value.

Writing what happens will immediately offend some - our titular lead as a white guy dresses as a Ku Klux Klan member and drives by himself into a local black community - but like dosing oneself with petrol and running into a bonfire, I just think of the Darwin Awards, a dark humoured award given to people who kill themselves in very stupid ways, and think anyone trying this in reality, with the same level of racist language used for irony, made a really ill advise choice in life as a result. This definitely has not aged well, but if I kept typing this, I would be here all day; the reactions from the black (all male) bystanders, even a guy in a drycleaners when the lead tries to get him to wash the KKK costume, feel too real or well acted to ever be ironic.

It also returns to the idea of why racism in ironic humour does not work, if forced to have to have a more constructive critique. Laughter can be caused as much as a reaction, say an emotional response to something which shocks someone, even without actually being technically humorous as a result in the emotional, a safety net the body and mind does to adapt to something witnessed or a defence in a moment of anxiousness. Unless you can use this to a greater point, i.e. when dark comedy tackles very uncomfortable subject matter (like Chris Morris' fundamentalist terrorist satire Four Lions (2010)), you are just prodding the defence mechanism for a cheap reaction.

Sadly this comes back a second time, where he is outside a mosque selling materials meant to offend and saying Muslin women have beards. You would not be able to get away with this, with our more cautious relationship and treatment to Muslin culture, including the lead entering a mosque as a non-believer and even barging into the women's conference room. Yet it offers a though that we have not progressed as far in positive treatment of Muslins as we should: the cautiousness we have with how we tackle Islam as a religion and culture in the Western is blurred between actual empathy and respect for ordinary peoples' religious beliefs, Islamophobia as a concept that exists and used to brainwash people in persecuting Muslins, the issue of radical fundamentalists and fatwas and aspects of conservative Islam which have been raised in concern, and the concern of whether many even know what Islam is for someone of the faith in mind of Muslins being a people of regular society with their own individual lives, all deserving their voice as a large community in many countries. This is something we have not even gotten to by the 2010s let alone not long after 9/11 here.

As a result, it makes something like this segment tame if still misguided, still however a reminder that our perspectives of religion and culture are a tangled web we barely treat with thought and complexity in mainstream culture, let alone in a comedic light like this that has survived unscathed due to no one knowing Lost Reality likely existed. As low hanging fruit too, as I would hope a Muslim who encountered this segment would just roll their eyes and think the creators wasted their time on bad humour.

Casting Coach: Dick Tallwood shows us the "casting coach" of actresses; by now, I had come to Lost Reality knowing I what I was in for. Again, the 2000s when this was released was when I was a teen, and already this feels prehistoric in the attitude. The actresses, playing actresses, I have sympathy for and hope they were not actually exploited and were paid well, as a lot of this entire production per segment feels realistic with actual bystanders roped in. The thing is, to think beyond this, just within porn the idea of the casting coach has lasted as a concept even if the real thing is seen as a scuzzy concept of misogynistic men, so we have not progressed from Lost Reality's segment as we have thought. This one at least has the absurdity of topless reading of Shakespeare or talking seductively to coconuts, the later actually funny, in spite of this segment's tone and attitude.

Caught Stealing: Two contestants have to steal items like an Italian suit, the reality TV structure working here as well; all of them, low budget, use their structures fully, like hidden cameras here on the contestants trying to steal their meals and the forks out of a restaurant. How much of these segments used paid actors, or crossed a line with exploitation, does feel uncomfortable, as many manage to be insanely realistic in how people react. The realism is so accurate this one does feel morbidly compelling, such as stealing a car from a car wash, blurring lines to the point a lot of the work is more misguided as a result but this had something intriguing to it even if all staged. This also at least has a man trying to hide six porn DVDs and two dildos, one insanely large and with moulded cock veins, down his trousers and walk out of an adult store with them so it has some actual humour to it.

The Whore: Probably the most uncomfortable to watch, even over the Amazing Racist segments, as it is a dating show whose title already raises an eyebrow. All of the segments have black screen text explaining their origins and how they were cancelled, this a one episode pilot, where the audience is fully aware the woman our male contenders date is a sex worker, the "comedy" text onscreen telling her real career, pranking the male with telling him the truth in the midst of sex just after their dates. It is mean spirited, which is shooting fish in a barrel again, but we have a case here of something that, if done as an actual series, could have easily been an incel generator just for it playing to "slut shaming". That and the female sex worker character is so mean and cruel it makes the segment even more egregious to sit through. The more subversive joke would be one guy, who when told the truth, would shrug his shoulders...and at least punch the obnoxious male host too beforehand.

American Porn Star: In which the pilot is to find the next porn star, actually something which has become a real thing, such as the porn site xHamster starting a web series called Sex Factor (2016) where they could have uncensored content. Real porn stars are the panellists such as Ron Jeremy, and he is the reason I have even gotten to Lost Reality; this is tangentially connected to when I covered Sex: The Annabelle Chong Story (1999), a documentary on the adult actress, and found a lot of curious oddities that were available on old British DVDs connected to its cast. This segment is meant as a joke but there are real shows, probably more than one, about this, so it does not come off funny but regular day.

Money: "Everyone has a price for the Million Dollar Man", to borrow a quote from another source, wondering if you would do anything for money. Would men kiss Little Prince, a gay man with dwarfism, or suck his toes for money? He is clearly meant to be a joke but is too charismatic to be dragged down by, especially in his neon green top and blue headband, so this question is complicated. Likely to have been done for real somewhere, and it is a theme in terms of the power of money tackles in fiction, so there is nothing necessarily original with the idea but you do have someone offered $100 to eat dog food from the dog bowl, more money to pee up a tree. One moment I did nearly mishear this segment's segment and think Pink Flamingos (1972) was going to be involved for its infamous ending with real dog poo.

This segment definitely made me wonder how much of the entire production was based on non-actors, unaware of what was happening being involved in the show...but there is however the moment involving one man being paid to drink IPECAC, a real life chemical which is designed to induce vomiting, which does not look faked in the damndest even if he was an actor. Who he is turned out to be Lance Ozanix, lead singer and songwriter of the thrash metal band Skitzo who was infamous for his stage show stunt of puking on command, which did unfortunately lead to him being on an episode of Judge Judy where he had to pay damages to a female audience member unprepared for being vomited during a performance. Whilst it is not recommended to try this at home, at least you had someone in Ozanix who, especially with the delayed reaction, who did this before and made the moment actually memorable now with hindsight.

From here, there is the end credits (with a reggae song of all things), and Lost Reality thankfully ends. A huge contributor to this project was The Jay & Tony Show, a duo of a two man operation of Jay Blumenfield and Tony Marsh who worked on reality television even into the proceeding decades, such as Restaurant Stakeout (2012-), which is likely why the production looked as accurate as it is. In terms of the realism, knowing reality television is mostly faked and staged, they were accomplished at the joke, but alongside everyone else who worked on the production, this is definitely a work which is culturally obsolete even if I had not spent the review criticising it.

There were bonus segments on the version I saw, playing immediately after the credits. Psych Ward, where mental health patients complete games for prizes in rounds like "New Job or Nut Job", definitely has not age well. There is Take That Drug, a creation of three roommates where their friends are challenged to take drugs, from cocaine to unlabelled prescription tablets, and then try challenges like piercing their own ear¹. (I suspect people have done this in real life). There is more of Money, where a man is dared $400 (eventually $800) including a paid meal to defecate his pants during a date at a restaurant, emphasising a running gag of the only show that punishes its host as much. Finally, Old Age Home: Caught on Tape, which sounds exactly how it sounds, with surveillance footage of events in care homes like fights between residents to a disgruntled staff member masturbating into their food; as someone who worked in a care home, this should be offensive, but really is not, especially as considering we have had shows about road rage and car accidents, only confidentiality laws prevents stuff like this actually being a real show.

Thus Lost Reality is finally out of my life, but I am aware there is Lost Reality 2 (2005). If these reviews have a point, here we have a reminder that irony got away with so much it should have not done, and considering into the 2010s we still had this type of humour, we should not think we got off scot-free from this. Considering as far as 2016, when the controversy of Million Dollar Extreme Presents: World Peace took place, a show bankrolled by Adult Swim, the home of ironic, only for it to have been a production by alt-right followers who managed to get in through the back door and cause an in-house controversy among collaborators, it makes something like Lost Reality not as obscure as you would think. It makes a lengthy review like this one, which some may find off-putting just for the word count, still worth having just to show what we thought we could leave in 2004, and what we actually still kept with us.

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1) It also led to me wondering what a purple hooter was, as it is evoked, only to learn it is a cocktail with vodka and black raspberry liqueur among other ingredients, which sounds delicious.

Down Argentine Way (1940)

 

Director: Irving Cummings

Screenplay: Darrell Ware and Karl Tunberg

Cast: Don Ameche as Ricardo Quintana; Betty Grable as Glenda Crawford; Charlotte Greenwood as Binnie Crawford; J. Carrol Naish as Casiano; Henry Stephenson as Don Diego Quintana; Kay Aldridge as Helen Carson; Leonid Kinskey as Tito Acuna; Chris-Pin Martin as Esteban; Robert Conway as Jimmy Blake; Gregory Gaye as Sebastian; Bobby Stone as Panchito; Charles Judels as Dr. Arturo Padilla

Ephemeral Waves 

Get in...you beautiful brat.

I had hoped this review would lead to something distinct to cover, as shot in Technicolor and made in the cusp of a new decade, this 20th Century Fox production original influenced by World War II. If Europe was no longer a viable place to sell their films to¹, then the studios looked to South America. It also has political notions beyond this, as this is connected to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Good Neighbour Policy" toward Latin America, with the concern of a growing German influence within the region leading to the United States finding ways to bring about a harmonious relationship between them. So we have American actors playing Argentineans (like Don Ameche), and the film a musical which plans to introduce Latin musicians and singers onto the screen.

We follow Ricardo (Don Ameche), a horse trader who, with a father who was once a famous breeder of race horses until he moved of show jumping, is sent to the United States. Selling horses over a pretty face, and five thousand and a Martini together, is a flaw of Ricardo's, leading him to encounter Glenda Crawford (Betty Grable). Glenda, becoming obsessed with him, goes to Argentina under the guise of wanting to acquire a real horse, but it is not helped she is a relative of someone his father hated as far back as college.

There is a promise for at least a light hearted piece of fluff at the get-go, and I will not hide this review stems as much, alongside wanting to see the film, from wishing to see anything from 20th Century Fox before the House of Mouse will probably bury them. It has promise of a romantic comedy, one with some very catty one-liners to add some appropriate use of salt to this cinematic.  

I came to this expecting stereotypes mind as well. No one in this film for the most part is actually Latin American or of Latin heritage, the one real exception being Chris-Pin Martin, who is of Mexican descent, and even in terms of hiring Latin American singers and dancers that could be of suspect as well. To their credit, they at least try in terms of things like lyrics not being in English, but the production is not exactly one with authenticity, so much in fact it was actually banned in Argentina due to its lack of cultural accuracy. Regardless of my final opinion or this fact though, there are many things to admire in terms of the music, finding highlights such as the Nicolas Brothers.  Fayard and Harold Nicholas, real African American brothers who made their name in their dancing, are a standout and it is great to know there is a lot of their work still out there to see, and even with their home movies preserved as historically important; looking almost like identical twins here (despite Fayard being older) their great synchronised dances in their few scenes were a stand-out.

This film's other distinct feature is the first appearance in a Hollywood film for Carmen Miranda, the legendary Brazilian dancer and singer whose cultural image, even over her work, has lasted for a considerable amount of time. Her work here does show something very enticing for me, though it is surprising how small her filmography was, due to how sadly short her life actually was. Contrary to the advertising however, which promotes her on the cover, she is in only one scene so that does dampen the experience a little.

It has its charm as a film. In another film, a character like Tito would be a stereotypical con artist. Here, able to be charming and able to be with clients happy to pay to see all the best music of Argentina, he can be a good con artist with his extensive family contacts, helped because actor Leonid Kinskey can make the character interesting. There is also the aunt of Glenda, played by a singer/dancer too, who says she is young and whose last birthday was "thirty one", or the chauffer who sleeps at the wheel of the car when un-required. There is enough here, in characters like this, to win you over with a playfulness.

What happens however is a film that is slight, suddenly turning into the premise of a nineties family film, which is not bad until it dwindles into a dull narrative rather than be a fun musical, about a horse being taught to race again against the will of Ricardo's father. This is where Down Argentine Way stopped being a promise for an enticing review but something exceptionally bland for me. The historical context is more fascinating. Betty Grable, as the lead, gained as a result of this film in terms of ongoing success as an actress, able to develop legacy with musicals alongside a legendary 1943 pin-up photo.  The fact this was meant to be a way of good neighbourly interaction with South America, ordained by the government, is inherently fascinating, especially as this idea of Hollywood trying to sale their films to other countries has been with us long before their interest with China in the 2010s. That includes all the complications to be found, this particular film completely failing in its goals even if it was included in the National Film Registry and nominated for three Oscars, for Best Cinematography, Best Original Song and for Best Art Direction. As for the film itself, maybe I was hoping for something else, better or deeply kitsch, but even with its revealed problematic ideas of Argentina it could have been something greater. Instead, it is not even vanilla for me, unfair to that ice cream flavour to ever use that metaphor, but eventually really average.

 

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1) And even then, it was not an immediate reduction of films being distributed to Nazi Germany but only until a later point, so it was not necessarily for noble reasons for most of the studios when they stopped.

Harper's Island (2009)

 

Creator: Ari Schlossberg

Directors: Sanford Bookstaver, Rick Bota, Steve Boyum, Craig R. Baxley, Guy Norman Bee, Steve Gomer, Seith Mann, Scott Peters, Jon Turteltaub, and James Whitmore Jr.

Screenplay: Ari Schlossberg, Jeffrey Bell, Tyler Bensinger, Robert Levine, Christine Roum, Jill E. Blotevogel, Dan Shotz, Lindsay Sturman,  and Nichelle D. Tramble

Cast: Elaine Cassidy as  Abby Mills, Christopher Gorham as Henry Dunn, Matt Barr as Christopher 'Sully' Sullivan; Gina Holden as  Shea Allen; Katie Cassidy as Trish Wellington, Cassandra Sawtell as Madison Allen, Brandon Jay McLaren as Danny Brooks, C.J. Thomason as  Jimmy Mance, Jim Beaver as Sheriff Charlie Mills, Adam Campbell as  Cal Vandeusen, Cameron Richardson as Chloe Carter, Claudette Mink as Katherine Wellington, Amber Borycki as Beth Barrington, Dean Chekvala as J.D. Dunn, Ali Liebert as Nikki Bolton, Beverley Elliott as Maggie Krell,Chris Gauthier as Malcolm Ross

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #36

 

Predating American Horror Story, a successful horror series which began in 2011 and was an entirely different narrative (tone, subgenre, and time period) per season, Harper's Island was intended to follow on in its own world with its next season a different tale too. Time meant this did not happen, but we got a one season work which, over thirteen episodes, is a fully fleshed out tale in itself with a beginning leading to a conclusion. Television offers the length to elaborate on any narrative, and here there is an enticing one at hand that, with a sprinkle of added soap opera melodrama, how would a slasher film change if you had over ten hours to work with?

I have had an ambivalent attitude to slashers. When I have thought of this, ultimately when they reach their meat-and-potatoes, the kills to the chase sequences, in the final half or so they become less interesting unless they do something very unconventional. The goofy one dimensional characters and scenarios, and the rare cases where they try for something more than this like Halloween H20 (1998) and succeed, are of greater interest for me. Harper's Island can immediately stand out as the vast length it has requires more investment in the characters, dabbling in soap opera of adultery and backstabbing, allowing the premise to be elaborated upon until its ending due to being able to breathe.

Truthfully, I wished Harper's Island had stayed more to the melodrama by the final episodes, as a fascinating potpourri of genres blended together, but this is definitely one of the most distinct and accomplished of the slasher genre than many. In this world, a man named John Wakefield committed a massacre on the titular Harper's Island, becoming a figure of notoriety. Seven years later, a wedding is to take place on the island among its community, bringing locals back to the place including Abby Mills (Elaine Cassidy), who left due as much to her mother being one of Wakefield's victims and leaving her with a permanent trauma as a result. One of the great virtues of Harper's Island is that, even if there is an extremely high body, the cast is all elaborate and interesting even with pure archetypes of the genre. By the halfway point, there are still a lot of interesting characters left surviving, where the key leads stand out and figures who have managed to live still gain the weight, as a rolling stone gathers moss, you cannot practically do in a regular length slasher film, around usually ninety or less minutes, due to their usual pace, least not with a cast this large at least.  

Abby is set up as the "Final Girl", the figure who is there at the end of the slasher narrative to face the killer, but Elaine Cassidy thankfully has a lot to work with so she is not playing a bland lead who survives due to being this archetype. There is as much a mystery at hand through the show, of who is actually killing the cast, and everyone gets time to stand out. If anything, whilst riveting during the viewing, the one potential issue with Harper's Island is the same as I find with mysteries, literary or in other mediums, where I could not care less about guessing games, or going through them again to find the clues, that the personality is a much greater concern in whether they last in memory. Thankfully, Harper's Island has the personality to try; certainly the first half has this in spades, the number of characters allowing for all the sides of the genres uses to flourish. The lead heroine with a tragic past and a distance with her police officer father, who killed John Wakefield but may have lied about that; the soon-to-be-married young couple; frat boys who get in their own darkly humoured subplot when they find money from a previous victim, at another's on a stranded boat, trying to hide it afterwards; a father who hates his soon-to-be son-in-law, of wealth and thinking his daughter married beneath her, hiring her old ex to even woo her; the locals like the female bar keeper or an old flame from Abby's past; the groom's brother who is a red herring factory; the step mother of the bride, a trophy wife, who is in a secret BDSM relationship with her sister's husband; and the sister with her creepy and eccentric kid daughter.

Especially of note are the best characters, part of the bridesmaids with Chloe Carter (Cameron Richardson) and her English boyfriend Cal Vandeusen (Adam Campbell), brought along by his girlfriend as a pair of comedy characters to cut to even when the show gets more intense mid-way through. He is self conscious about the fact that, Chloe being an immensely attractive and energetic person, he looks to outsiders out-of-place dating her, self esteem weakened when he once fears if she ever met a more attractive guy with a British accent. The pair however are clearly soul mates in their playfulness and his attempts, including a ring going missing, to propose to her. In mind to this being a slasher narrative means that, with many legitimately likeable characters and not wanting to spoil what happens even in the spoiler section of this review, this show gets at the heart strings eventually, which is rareity in this genre and a success.

In terms of being a television show, it does hit its head on the glass ceiling in terms of sexual content, wishing to be saucy but little else. It is surprisingly gory for a show that was not airing on cable but commercial television in the United States. This visceral nature does subconsciously have an intensity as a result, even if some of the comically elaborate traps set up in the woodland proudly remind us of slasher films' broad natures. It is helped that, far from the slasher tropes being the dominant aspect, they easily intermingled with the melodrama, and the mystery angle of the show becomes as much a prerogative as the culprit becomes a slippery, constantly changing entity.

[Major Spoiler Warnings] It does become more and more a traditional slasher, the cast mostly killed off as the soapy melodrama dissipates. Helping considerably though is that these characters, not just the side characters who vanish, have had more time to grow in a television format that, when barely a handful survive by the final episodes, paces itself well. It can take on this fact to an advantage, when suddenly the jock stereotype gains honour before his end by helping others or that the least expected people survive. (It is not a surprise the child character is not killed though for a television production). The actual twist, which I am still going to hide even in the spoilers, is a good realising that slashers are far closer to pulpy melodrama than I had ever thought, what with secret half-siblings and a psychological obsession with trapping someone in their fantasy world of their childhood in a house. Something so overripe it befits the slashers but befits the content beforehand too. It does evoke that, yes, for me the real pleasure from slashers were never the kills but when they were melodramatic potboilers with a larger body count. [Spoilers End]

If my initial enthusiasm had dissipated - from burning through all the episodes over a week or so - that is merely purposely keeping my emotional reaction to a mildness so not to cloud my judgement. It should not ignore how distinct and perfectly executed this was. This is rare case of cancelled one season wonder which no one should complain ever got less than this season, as this story is told in its entirety as if it was a mini-series, down to its melancholic and sad coda of a home video of characters who died before and those who survived. It is, in mind to my preference to one off show entirely, also a fascinating experiment as it managed to take a genre in the slasher and made one, even with some restrictions, that fully took advantage of the virtues television could provide.  

Scared to Death (1947)

 

Director: Christy Cabanne

Screenplay: Walter Abbott

Cast: Bela Lugosi as Prof. Leonide; George Zucco as Dr. Joseph Van Ee; Nat Pendleton as Bill Raymond; Molly Lamont as  Laura Van Ee; Joyce Compton as Jane Cornell; Gladys Blake as Lilybeth; Roland Varno as Ward Van Ee; Douglas Fowley as Terry Lee; Angelo Rossitto as Indigo

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #203

 

Metabolism. That's a good word. I wonder what it means?

You could pad out your writing just on bad horror films, which can cause a lot of grief through the act of forcing yourself to churn through a lot of disappointing work. If your expectations are to just review good ones, that in its self can be as pointless as, with horror cinema a subject covered greatly, everyone else has likely covered said films and it lacks interest for me particularly to repeat what everyone else does. Far more rewarding are the personal favourites, discoveries or those films which, whilst not great, allow you a lot to write about.

So let us be thankful for Scared to Death. It is not a great film, part of the time period, after his success with Dracula (1931), when Bela Lugosi had difficulty finding work but took anything he could get to pay the bills. Thankfully, legacy allows figures like Lugosi to shine, where even this public domain production intrigues as much as his successes. Also bless, this Golden Gate Pictures Inc. Production, from the era of independent low budget genre filmmaking, whilst a convoluted mess, also happens to be a charming one with so much to write about a swell.

For starters, the film is inspired by a real 1933 murder case involving Dr. Alice Wynekoop, a well-known and respected physician, civic leader, and lecturer who was charged for and eventually imprisoned for the murder of her 22 year old daughter-in-law¹. The film barely, frankly, re-tales the subject but merely uses it for a jumping pad for its own bizarre story. We start off in a morgue, moving to the body of Laura (Molly Lamont), which flashes back to when she was alive and tells the story up to that moment there. I have probably referenced old horror radio broadcasts from the United States in the past, but at first, this is literally one filmed in tone and attitude, worth bringing that up again.

In mind to its gristly real life tale, where Wynekoop was a very devoted mother to her son, Laura is a woman with a fragile continence, always watching behind her back for shadows, especially green masked ones, all whilst her relationship with her husband is close to separation and frayed, her father-in-law a psychiatrist possibly wanting to help his son in nefarious means. The film has no real interest in adapting the real case at all, and it can be lost within the film entirely. Instead, when Prof. Leonide (Bela Lugosi) enters their home as a guest as a mysterious figure, the premise gets more complicated and moves closer to a radio show like Suspense even in terms of the music, whilst with more constant orchestra, and using dialogue to convey the narrative rather than using the visuals.

Scared to Death is far more bloated than this comparison suggests though. Lugosi comes in with so much charisma that it is tragic, whilst he helped sell the film in its day in the advertising, he plays a secondary role to an overlarge cast. His assistant, a deaf-mute dwarf, is also Angelo Rossitto, a prolific actor most known for Tod Browing's Freaks (1932), bared used as an actor at all throughout. There is a reporter, a chauvinist and bland one, and his dim-witted if so much more sympathetic beau, a telephone operator who joins him at the house. The other character of note is Bill Raymond, the bowler hated cop wanting to woo the house staff and hoping even for "one slightly murdered body" to get back his job with the police from. A giant lummox of a man, Raymond is at first way too broad a comedy foil, until after a while winning me over.

Simple minded, wishing to be a great detective, and with a propensity for very flourished and smarter vocabulary that appears in his speech, which he does not understand the meaning of, Raymond won me over. The actor himself Nat Pendleton is another figure of interest too which helps considerably. Looking like a heavy for a crime film from the era, awkwardly here of all places, Pendleton was originally a wrestler who won the silver medal at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp in Belgium, before transitioning to pro wrestling. He transitioned to acting in the 1920s, one of his most prominent roles in The Great Ziegfeld (1936), the 9th Academy Awards Best Picture winner. By Scared to Death, this would be his penultimate film before the end of his cinematic career and, bless him, he was memorable and helped me love this film legitimately

Examples like Pendleton are why even this production could win me over. It is a production not helped by the fact that it feels like an overstuffed stage play, shot in a way that you could with some modification actually stage it for theatre but with a lot of unnecessary plot baggage. Considering Lugosi is your main get, even in the period before his encounters with Ed Wood. Jr. in the fifties, he is lost here in the shuffle and there is so much put in for a film only an hour and seven minutes long. What you get thankfully is still compelling because of its odd quirks. Production wise, it is very conventionally shot as mentioned. Striking however is the fact this late forties low budget film is shot in "natural colour". Even this is a distinct thing of interest as it was shot in Cinecolor, a two colour process that, even in a public domain version that looks muddy, has a curious history, one of many vying for use before Technicolor took hold and left the likes of this process lost by the wayside. One touch which is just weird is the constant flashes back to Laura's head on the morgue table with her voice stating the next event in the plot whilst an eerie music cue is used. It is constant, they can last a few second, and are deeply silly, a sign of how over baked and charmingly shambolic Scared to Death is.

Particularity because of its vintage, as a forties pulp tale in its own ballpark, it is of its era, such as how much of an arse that reporter is to his girlfriend in his patronising ways, but there are plenty of odd touches to like. Working to actual violence, it has to racket up ghoulishness with a striking looking dummy's head but not a great deal of illicit content or any real threat, which is not an issue at all. In mind to the original Wynekoop case, her daughter-in-law Rheta was said to have died, by her own testimony, whilst treating her with pain with a chloroform anaesthetic, only for her heart to have stopped. [Spoiler Warning] Here, well, that title the film has surely would have given the plot twist away before you watched the whole film. [Spoiler Ends] What you do not expect is the film, partially in horror, to get a morality edge involving betrayal, hypnosis, karmic revenge, and a back-story including someone being betrayed to the Nazis and Parisian nightclub entertainment crammed into this slight length production. It is as if all the pulpy tropes which would vanish from modern horror were blended together into something compelling here. It is goofy, but with an undeniable charm.

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1) The full tale can be read of HERE.

Dracula: The Series (1990)

 

Directors: Allan Eastman, René Bonnière, Allan King, Randy Bradshaw, Allan Kroeker, Jeff Woolnough, Michael Sloan, Joe Dea

Screenplay: Glenn Davis, William Laurin, Philip Bedard, Larry Lalonde, Peter Meech, Stu Woolley, Sean Kelly, Pascal Bonniere, Sharon Corder, Michael K. Ross

Cast: Bernard Behrens as  Gustav Helsing; Geordie Johnson as  Alexander Lucard; Mia Kirshner as Sophie Metternich; Joe Roncetti as Christopher Townsend; Jacob Tierney as Max Townsend; Geraint Wyn Davies as Klaus Helsing

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #35

 

Call it very bad work, but between (on an estimate) a start in March to October 30th transpired to just watch one season of television that only lasted for one season and twenty one episodes. That is pretty lazy and could easily resoundingly prevent a decent review of a show being possible. Except that one of the biggest reasons behind this comically long delay between viewing episodes is what is part of this show's weird paradox, one of the show's biggest weaknesses, and yet a contributor to it generating an odd fondness too over this long time with the production.

Mainly, as a Canadian live action horror show for children, it is entirely episodic baring some references back to previous stories. Baring three episodes that link together, this show which is less than thirty minutes long per episode is so conventional that it is repeating the same plot point in new guises for the most part, that it introduces a crisis, runs through it swiftly, and resolves it with normalcy, even in terms of when major characters get turn into vampires. Because normalcy is swift, and the show is very repetitious, Dracula was not a series to try have binged in rapid succession anyway even if I had attempted it.

Premise wise, it updates the Bram Stoker character by making him a yuppie in charge of a huge European corporation, under the alias of Alexander Lucard, the show following two American boys, teenager Chris (Joe Roncetti) and his younger brother Max (Jacob Tierney), living with their uncle Gustav Hellsing (Bernard Behrens), whilst their mother travels for work, and being pulled into Gustav's world of vampire hunting and facing Dracula, who just lives a few blocks down from them in a castle. Add among them Sophie (Mia Kirshner), the young and smart friend of Uncle Gustav, and the resulting narrative is repetitious as a Saturday morning show I myself might have grown up with would have been, where until the final episode everything remains exactly the same with the variety of vampires and peril at hand. It does admittedly lead to the great aspect that, eventually never to get tingaround to killing each other, Dracula and the heroes will start to soften to each other, but this repetition is a huge factor to consider with the show.

Much of the show is populated by archetypes. Chris is a teenager, interested in girls and rock music; Max is meant to be the enthusiastic surrogate for an audience, becoming the one enticed by vampire hunting, but there are entire episodes that transpire only because Max did something dumb to let their household become terrified, like removing a sacred cross over the doorway designed to shot lightning at vampires. Sophie out of the three young cast members is the most dynamic, including a potential romance with Chris; between work with Atom Egoyan, only four later on Exotica (1994), and The L-Word (2004-9), Mia Kirshner's career went on. Her episode when Sophie is turned evil, which is not a spoiler to ruin frankly, does show one of the many scenes where she gets to stand out considerably.

Bernard Behrens as Gustav is also charismatic, playing a charming character in his own right. His is meant to be "vaguely" German, in this Canadian production shot in Luxembourg, which means he likes polka and especially schnitzel, which in this world in "Europe" can be ordered as a late night takeaway from a company with a slogan with too much innuendo involved ("Hot & Steamy") for a kid's show¹. Thankfully Behrens as Gustav, in one of the show's best aspects, gets to play a character who can wiggle around in this stereotype, both the accomplish vampire hunter and the lovably bumbling figure without that even becoming a joke just to bury the character. In fact, for times the show even allows him to contemplate his fear of aging occasionally; sadly due to the short length of the episodes, usually split into a main and subplot, one of the most intriguing is about him meeting an old friend in a care home, who may have dementia but claims there is a vampire killing the residents, one that is left underused until Bubba Ho Tep (2004) tried for a feature with a mummy and Elvis on the premise.

The actor however, alongside the character, which really holds the show up from its many flaws, including the second-to-last episode being a clip show with some new content, is Geordie Johnson as the titular Dracula/Alexander Lucard. He does do a vague "Bela Lugosi-like" accent, but with Johnson, mainly a steward of television, you thankfully have someone who is in all the episodes and is a huge support to the show as a charismatic villain you secretly love. And it is not to undersell Johnson in how important he is for the show, especially with the sense now that sadly not a lot of his filmography would categorise for the material I usually cover, a shame as it would have been great for him to return as an obscure figure to become a fan of and discover more of. The version of Dracula he plays, whilst underexploited in premise, is also inspired - for those too young to know what a "yuppie" is, they came to be as a term during the economic boom in the United States during the eighties, of powerful and affluent businessmen, the term eventually carrying the idea of being corrupt and hateable. Hence, why it is inspired to imagine Dracula, whilst also still feeding off mortals and increasing his vampire servants, would own a vast economic empire which crushed its competition whilst he existed among mortal humans.

A connoisseur of art and cultured, even meeting Pablo Picasso and getting his portrait done by him, Dracula is a chad and a villain but Johnson makes him charismatic. Eventually the heroes keep invading his castle, almost if not every episode, until the point they all develop a mutual bond with each other. There are plenty of moments where this version of the Stoker character gains personality through this version. Such as talking about Stoker, when he and Gustav seem to be doomed to die in an explosion in a room they are trapped in together, finding it good for his career, but wishing Laurence Oliver played him over Lugosi. Admitting he always wanted a room where the walls crushed people after seeing a film, and having the funds to have it built. That he is obsessed with George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion, about an intellectual transforming a common woman into an elegant lady, and deciding to try it with a woman who he encounters abruptly in his office. That one entire episode, one of the last, is built around him becoming involved due to his horror at another vampire making inferior zombies from his bitten victims.

The paradox with Dracula: The Series is that it was insanely repetitive and banal a lot of the time, very simplistic and a lot of cheese, yet I think of so many silly moments which hit the mark fully. The episode where Chris and Sophie decide to join forces to help his music career, leading to pretentious spoken word poetry and dancing to his guitar playing as the running joke. The character of Klaus (Geraint Wyn Davies), actually Gustav's son who was turned into a vampire by Dracula; at first it plays almost with homoerotic energy, when he is introduced without any back-story yet shown, where he and Dracula live in the castle together trading Shakespeare quotations, eventually becoming even worse a figure than Dracula and biting the scenery with aplomb. That it squanders many great ideas but still wrings something from them. Dracula helping in solving counterfeit art fraud, or the many vampires introduced wishing to take his power from him. Like this world having its own form of Nosferatu too, or in one of the more memorable episodes, a silent film actor living secretly in an old cinema, turned into a vampire in hope to be an immortal actor but instead a tragic figure as he can no longer be caught on film cameras and is averse to blood. One character is introduced in one episode only is a fascinating figure to have in vampire fiction, a vampire doctor, not defined as one himself, who treats a deathly ill Dracula, chastising him for eating mortal food, walking outside in the daytime, not getting enough sleep and biting anyone regardless of "bad blood".

Even something as utterly goofy can have an unexpected joy, such as an episode abruptly opening up with a parody of the ending of Casablanca (1942), of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman on the airplane strip, but imaging Alexander Lucard as a Nazi vampire and still shot in black-and-white. All the bad aspects - its repetition, lack of threat and many lame plots hastily covered - are a huge detriment and why I hesitated to get through the episodes. Yet there was so much to admire, to the point I nonetheless gain a fondness for the show, like a friend who visited occasionally.

[Major Spoiler] After many episodic episodes, Dracula does at least have an ending. It includes an odd science fiction aspect, which using a gap in the space-time continuum, there is such a thing as "Dracula's space hole" (stealing that joke fully from the Cancelled Too Soon podcast, about cancelled one season shows where I first learnt of this series²). There is a major shift as, with their mother planning to take them back to the United States and Sophie joining them, there would have been a drastic location shift for a second season alongside Gustav entering the space hole, a blue void, with Dracula and Klaus. [Spoilers End]

It is a show which worked on a low budget, though to its credit it was shot in Europe, with the decency to use actual European Gothic locations. Its sense of its industry in found not even just found in figures like Kirshner having a long career as a Canadian actress, but how some episodes are directed by Allan King, a filmmaker of documentaries like Warrendale (1967) who has a following for some, even gracing the Criterion label of film releases to show his reputation, but here working as a journeyman on this Canadian family friendly production among other shows he worked on much later in his career. Again, this is not a great show ultimately, but it has a charm. Whether that is just because of how long it took to watch the series, digging into my thoughts, or with actual virtues is fifty-fifty in the end. Those pleasures were there whilst the experience lasted though.

 

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1) And contrary to all these years believing a schnitzel was a type of sausage, out of ignorance, it is actually cutlets of meat usually breaded and fried, the equivalent which makes every German stereotype of them liking schnitzel also even more out of place and weird let alone offensive. I mean, yes, I am sure you could put a cutlets in a bun, but now knowing what a schnitzel is thanks to this show really makes the particular stereotype of Germans weirder, that someone choose a dish of theirs more practical to eat on a dish with sauces as a way to label Germans as one note.

2) HERE.

Hack-O-Lantern (1988)

 

Director: Jag Mundhra

Screenplay: Dave Eisenstark and Carla Robinson

Cast: Hy Pyke as Grandpa; Gregory Scott Cummins as Tommy; Katina Garner as Amanda; Carla B. As Vera; Jeff Brown as Roger; Michael Potts as Bill; Patricia Christie as Beth; Larry Coven as Brian

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #202

 

But Mom, I like the taste of blood.

Sunny and idyllic Americana introduces Hack-O-Lantern; the film, restored, does look good. Of note is that the director, Jag Mundhra, was born in India, making a career in American genre films in the late eighties and nineties before returning made to his homeland to make films there before his passing in 2011, which makes him inherently fascinating for me now learning of him. Here with Hack-O-Lantern, he has a very eccentric horror film, lost in the shuffle of so many that came out in the eighties, an era of very eccentric horror films, setting in the idyllic prologue a melodrama where a daughter wants her children to have nothing to do with her father.

Said Grandfather (Hy Pyke) also happens to be a Satanist, so she has a reason to be concerned, driving around in his pick-up full of pumpkins in the back with evil intent, grooming one of his grandsons Tommy to follow his lead to join his Satanic cult. A gravel voiced man, he also sired said son with his own daughter, and killed her husband, so he is not a very nice man.

Yet Hack-O-Lantern is a broad film in tone. One which leans on the slasher genre by the end more but is also one which meanders with charm at its own pace, a intersected by very gory death scenes, including a lot of garden tools to the head, and some titillation through nudity. It is also a film that not only shows someone is evil, when Tommy grows up, because he lays about listening to heavy metal, but that this leads to one of Hack-O-Lantern's main traits, abrupt tangents like when we are led into a music-video-with-a-dream for a song called "Devil's Slut". One with a female vocalist and a female figure in stereotypical tribal dress with eye lasers, her aesthetic in mind to the director's upbringing as she does briefly posses multiple limbs like a Hindu deity at one point. In what you could show on MTV baring the gore¹, it opens up the goofiness of the production, these tangents after this first major one here opening the film up considerably.

This is not a problem, and in fact, it becomes an interesting balance between a more lurid film from the era, splicing the gore and nudity between the plot, and its lengthy tangents to a plot that drifts along languidly. You can perfectly mark this contest with a scene of Tommy's sister in the bath, her female friend playing a prank with a plastic spider, as you realise it is not a sponge when you grab something to wash yourself. A film like this is as much a pleasure as a time piece, spotting a poster for Dead-End Drive-In (1986) and seeing a George Killian's Irish Red ad, wondering what it is, whether it is alcoholic, and whether you could still acquire one to try. It has one huge virtue as a film at least - that character actor Hy Pyke as Satanic Grandpa is compelling, in manner but even just in a voice of a man who gargled gravel as a habit since his youth.  

Beyond that, it is charming in its unexpected aspects. Some may find an extending stripping scene pointless or crass, in the midst of the Halloween part for the finale when a viewer might be expecting escalation, but considering the amount of films which prove plot is not necessarily going to achieve good quality, nor my greatest interest in cinema, stuff like this (and the likelihood the actress was an actual exotic dancer doing her actual day job) adds a sense of whimsy. Others part of the narrative are things which are unexpected but further Hack-O-Lantern's charm, such as when a blossoming romance transpires between main characters, Mrs. Mary Norton's grave of all places in the cemetery is when a couple decide to have hanky panky behind.

It even has a sense of actual drama by its conclusion. The one aspect of Hack-O-Lantern which is remotely consistent is not the horror but this being a tragedy about a mother destroyed by her own father, with her children effected or corrupted by his influence by the end, becoming the real drive for a horror film that secretly is a ripe melodrama of interest. Even if the film is not one of the best of even this era, it was rewarding for this reason amongst other details.   

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1) Though if your fantasy ends with your severed head being held aloft, creating the image for your film's VHS cover, you have issues you need to get help for.