Impulse (1974)

 

Director: William Grefé

Screenplay: Tony Crechales

Cast: William Shatner as Matt Stone; Ruth Roman as Julia Marstow; Jennifer Bishop as Ann Moy; Kim Nicholas as Tina Moy; James Dobson as Clarence; Harold Sakata as Karate Pete; Marcia Knight as Helen

Canon Fodder

 

People like you should be ground up and made into dog food!

Black and white cinematography introduces us to the past, post World War II American, where an older woman is being romanced in her lounge by William Kerwin of Blood Feast (1963) fame. Beau to her, he shows her the samurai katana he acquired in the war and is about to woo her with until her son stops them. Kerwin shows a rare nasty side in his small scene, as son proceeds to use that katana to stab him.

Said son will become William Shatner, five years past the Canadian actor shooting the last scene of the original Star Trek series. This is a busy period for him until Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), full of television and genre films, where Shatner transitions to playing Matt Stone, a man who seduces older woman and, in his psychosis, kills them even if it was just in a fit of mania. Shatner made The Intruder (1962) with Roger Corman where he played a racist, but it is odd to find him here in a William Grefé genre film, becoming part of the history of Hollywood and television actors finding their way into exploitation films, like one of Rita Haywood's final roles being in Grefé's The Naked Zoo (1970). Ironically Impulse, in Grefé's trait of making films closer to traditional mainstream cinema, comes off as an exploitation film you could imagine either as a TV movie of the time or an old Hollywood b-movie crime flick, a thriller where we learn how wound up like a coil Shatner's character is when, when caught by his older girlfriend with women from a Go-Go club, he has a switch causing him to throttle her to death in her car, acting like a child afterwards when she realises she is dead. This introduction to him adds a cherry on top of the cake when he pushes the car into the river they are near, Grefé's willingness to have flair seen as he has a first person shot, with camera entering the water, from the dashboard as it rolls into the river and starts to sink.

Shatner is the kind of figure, playing Matt Stone, that when he runs over a puppy, implied and cutting to a separate shot of a dog (hopefully) acting dead with fake blood on, he just continues driving and blames dogs being left to run into the road. It is an awkward introduction to Tina (Kim Nicholas), a young girl he randomly picks up in his car at the time, dressed in her red sleeved and white dress like she wandered out of an Alice in Wonderland adaptation, who is also the daughter to a young widow Ann (Jennifer Bishop), owner of a store who he will meet up and start his con romance with for her money.

Impulse is more of a thriller than horror, though it fascinates to see Grefé in an urban environment than the Everglades, of mid seventies fashion and design than sixties novelty rock and striped shirts, nary an airboat in sight, of Sunflower wallpaper, long patterned dresses and bric-a-brac similar to that found in my late grandmother's house on my father's side. It would also work as a film of this era from Hollywood let alone at a lower budget, especially as a large part of the narrative is arguably a melodrama, as Julia is a widowed thirty plus mother who wishes to move on in her life but with a daughter fearing her father is forgotten already, lashing out in ways like breaking a precious china plate. This is a huge leap forwards from Sting of Death (1966) for Grefé, a figure who wished to make films closer to traditional movies than peers like Herschell Gordon Lewis, but with the grit around the edges as an independent production adding more. Everything in Impulse feels a lot more stained and lurid even if Impulse is gunning as much for its drama as it is the thriller content.

Shatner is a huge factor to Impulse's qualities. He is a good actor, one however infamous for his habit for overemphasising mannerisms which coined "Shatner-esque" acting, not a method actor but expressing in emphasis in dialogue, manner of speech, and when infamously trying for a music career, spoken poetry singing for The Transformed Man (1968). Dropped here, he is an unpredictable influence when, even if Impulse has a lot more for its story and dialogue, exploitation films unlike this one could coast on their tropes and exploitation content than unpredictable acting and detailed plot. Shatner commits to wall chewing, but whilst this is seen as a low for some in his career, it does make Impulse more rewarding. Infamously Grefé kept a take in where Shatner, in his many exaggerated moments when provoked or manic, farted for real mid-performance. It is not as over-the-top when it happens as that reads. It also makes complete sense, ultimately seen as a grotesque and violent parasite of masculinity, chasing a little girl around a funeral parlor to silence her, exploitation women for their through their money through the promise of romance, and trying to drown someone in their own fish tank. Able to show charisma to woo women, he is also a giant man-child who can suddenly bark at random people like a mad man¹.

Adding to this territory's weird connective nature, crossing with "respectable cinema", is that Harold Sakata, known for Oddjob from Goldfinger (1964) has a brief role as Karate Pete, a fellow older con artist who knows Matt and demands to have a cut of the money he is acquiring from Ann and her older female friend Julia (Ruth Roman). Arguably, whether his acting is good or not, Impulse has a far more rewarding role for the former pro wrestler and Olympic weightlifter Sakata, and I say this as someone who holds, whilst fun, that Goldfinger's status in the original run of James Bond films is arguably overhyped. Sakata here, getting speaking lines rather than as a mute with a razored bowler hat, gets in his little time in Impulse a lot of fun things to do. Carrying a pipe, and driving around in an RV branded with "Karate Pete", he is a nice shot of tension to the film, a man who can smash a bedside cabinet to pieces, even nearing his fifties, with his bare hands if you piss him off and refuse to pour him a drink. His role is sadly small, but he will return to Grefé's world in Mako: The Jaws of Death (1976), and it does lead to conflict between Sakata and William Shatner at a car wash at night, involving a noose attached on a pulley, jazz rock on the soundtrack, and Sakata being chased through a car wash, turned on, by Shatner in a car. It is the one lurid, grotty exploitation aspect of the film, but by God, it is entertaining to see². On the midway point in Grefé's career, as he would by 1978 close out his career and start making promotional films for Bacardi, with Shatner in the lead role for the first, Impulse is of note as he developed quite a bit over eight years to this film from the initial monster films I first saw. I also found Impulse rewarding to see and memorable as a lurid yet compelling thriller, a film in Grefé's work which does lean the most to the lurid Florida made movies of the era but with his more structurally fleshed out production style helping considerably.

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1) [Spoiler] The fart happens in Stone's death scene at the end too, thematically perfect as a death rattle for a pathetic figure of evil. [Spoilers End]

2) The one aspect which, whilst should have not happened, adds more to this sequence even if a morbid touch is knowing Harold Sakata nearly got hanged for real by accident, as documented in the William Grefé documentary They Came from the Swamp: The Films of William Grefé (2016). An incident due to the original noose mechanism being tampered with behind its creator's back, and with Shatner having to save Sakata in the moment, this sequence has gained a greater madness, again with respect for poor Sakata. Especially when the documentary even has footage of when Shatner realises something goes wrong and has to help him.

Voyage of the Rock Aliens (1984)

 

Director: James Fargo

Screenplay: Edward Gold, James Guidotti and Charles Hairston

Cast: Pia Zadora as Dee Dee; Craig Sheffer as Frankie; Tom Nolan as ABCD; Ruth Gordon as Sheriff; Michael Berryman as Chainsaw; Alison La Placa as Diane; Gregory Bond as Jaklem (JKLM); Craig Quiter as Nopquir (NOPQR); Patrick Byrnes as Stovitz (STUVWXYZ) (as Rhema); Marc Jackson as Aeiou; Jeffrey Casey as F-Gee (FGHI); Jimmy Haddox as Duke; Marshall Rohner as Dino; Jeffrey Cranford as Clyde; Troy Mack as Mouth

An Abstract List Candidate

 

Now I sit at home watching New Wave videos!

Sometimes I look at cinema and wonder how and why films exist as they are. Here, I wonder of how Voyage of the Rock Aliens exists. The director early in his career made The Enforcer (1976) and Every Which Way but Loose (1978) with Clint Eastwood. This is one of the last films made by British cinematographer Gilbert Taylor, who most will know because he shot Star Wars (1977) but also shot A Hard Day's Night (1964) and Dr. Strangelove (1964) among others. The composer of the music, Jack White, is German and was the composer of the Luxembourgish entry in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1976. These people got together among others to make this film. Even when you consider the origins of this film, where this was originally as a script by James Guidotli meant as a spoof of b-movies, making sense of how the film is as it stands, what we get instead still dumbfounds.

The opening alone is something you could only get in the eighties, a time before I even existed thrown onscreen in front of me, where everything has to be gaudy and over the top. The title has to explode in glitter. You have to have a guitar shaped spaceship, a hand built model lovingly created for these shots. A robot appears, for a mission to research the universe, to find a place specifically with rock music for the cryogenically sleeping crew. The film production decided, for this, to crowbar in a music video for star Pia Zadora and Jermaine Jackson, a Mad Max rip-off involving an all white wearing New Wave motorbike gang against a backing dancer trope for an RnB megastar led by Jackson. This leads to a Romeo and Juliet narrative with Zadora and Jackson, leading to a mass dance battle, and all for the sake of a tangent which is never returned to. It is fluff, playful and indulgent in wishing to entertain, all whilst coming off as already batshit insane already and feeling, in vast contrast to cocaine being the drug of the eighties, high on sugar and psychedelics instead.

The rock aliens, who are in cryogenic sleep as micro-models stored in the fridge with the beers and made full size again by being slotted through a tub, are a six man crew named after letters in the alphabet (like JLKM). With a robot who has to disguise himself as a moving fire hydrant, they are to research the human species on their time on Earth. Beyond that, this is film not set in a world but all its own imaginary kingdom of humour, as the aliens land in the town of Spielberg.  There will be too much to write down, as I realised as I watched the film. Very much of the era, this is nonetheless a film which looks back the fifties too, of fifties greasers crossing with New Wave punks, the "Local Teenage Hangout" (as the sign says) a fifties diner of rockabilly on a jukebox and soda bar furniture, and yet where the hairspray used by the cast clearly had to have its own budget, and the aliens look like a DEVO cover band.

In the midst of this is Dee Dee (also Pia Zadora), the girlfriend of musician and gang leader Frankie (Craig Sheffer), who is sick of him refusing to let her sing with his band and catching the eye of the head alien ABCD (Tom Nolan), love at first sight when he explodes in the middle of the diner. Frankie is naturally not impressed by their burgeoning chemistry. Really however this is a string of musical numbers, Voyage... a bizarre film with so much to digest, even in mind of its origins as a b-movie parody. It cannot claim the weirdest musical number in a public bathroom - Tsai Ming-liang's The Wayward Cloud (2006), a very different type of film, topped that in 2006 - but Voyage... could claim awards in other areas. The littlest of jokes stand out, like a man literally burying his face on command in the sand, and return later on, to the point running jokes that seem disconnected to the main narrative have a greater significance, like Spielberg's Lake Eerie being so toxic even a surfboard immediately melts when placed on the water. In that case, it is also a host to a giant orange and blue spotted squid that returns later as a huge plot point.

It is infectious. Also, barring a few jokes, this movie is mostly wholesome in mind to its strange content. Only one plot point dangerously steers towards something problematic, the sexual response stimulator that ABCD tries to use to tempt Dee Dee to him, but thankfully that leads to a one scene joke of it back firing and attracting all the men in the diner, which is never played for any offensive jokes either, just one very newly b-curious male extra we never see again being involved. The film is not attempting anything but a very simplistic plot, more focused on selling Zadora and the music; that in itself is not exactly a catalyst for anything potentially interesting, as that could lead to so many bland music related films, but here the mentality to throw in the kitchen sink was felt significantly without feeling lazy either.

The film, for one later musical sequence for Frankie, will acquire a giant cat to just walk through a high school corridor, and with actor Sheffer briefly, just for a song called Nature of the Beast, which is unimaginable to re-do in the modern day. That is not even taking into consideration an entire subplot, played for laughs, of a chainsaw welding maniac, cult actor Michael Berryman making the perfect entrance in the film by cutting a hole through a wooden fence with a chainsaw. You would presume a film like this would merely focus on Dee Dee, caught between the aliens and Frankie's quiff gang, including a battle of a bands sequence in the high school hall, but Berryman gets to call grenades "pineapples" as he acquires enough firearms to do God knows what with at a gun store with a friend, a fellow escapee on a giant wheel breathing tank. Long before jokes like this would be inappropriate, and never used, we have a shot of him caring them in a shopping trolley in bulk for a frenzy, and he has a lot of scenes throughout as a major side character.  Personally I think it was wonderful to see Berryman get so much fun and weird stuff to do, the thing that won me over with the film, including a fight with a police officer in a school boiler room, egg whisk versus coat hanger, and eventually electric tooth brushing the cop to submission. This even predates the chainsaw as phallic metaphor from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part II (1986), only with a happy ending of targeting a girl who is a car junky and mechanic who can fix the chainsaw, and leading to a bond afterwards.

Naturally, the film leads to Berryman having to fight the giant octopus as a hero, which just emphasises that for all its cheese Voyage... for me became sincerely eccentric and likable as a production in the end. I have not even mentioned the side character of Ruth Gordon as the town's Sherriff, the Harold and Maude (1971) star running the Spielberg police force, spotting the aliens' ship landing whilst spying on a buff shirtless young man and, with arm badges on the uniforms radioactive symbols, believing everything is connected to the aliens and eventually acquiring a steamroller to combat them. Films like this, i.e. weird cult productions, existed before and after, even the same year - Surf II (1984) imagines a beach movie if actor Eddie Deezen wanted to turn punks into zombies with his own chemically mutated Buzz Cola - but we must appreciate the individual titles equally. This one, personally, was fun for all the time I was bemused by it - deeply weird, deeply silly, deeply cheesy, and because of its calibre, actually rewarding whilst also being ridiculous.

Abstract Spectrum: Kitsch/Psychotronic/Silly/Weird

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

Hell's Highway (2002)

 

Director: Jeff Leroy

Screenplay: Scott Leff and Jeff Leroy

Cast: Phoebe Dollar as Lucindia Polonia; Kiren David as Sarah; Hank Horner as Eric; Beverly Lynne as Monique; Jonathan Gray as Chris; Ron Jeremy as Jack

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #218

 

Author Note: This was originally written without prior knowledge, referencing Ron Jeremy, to the sexual assault and rape allegations that he started appearing in court for in mid to late 2020. Whatever direction history goes, the scene mentioned in this film may have taken on an unexpected irony. The review aside from one paragraph has nothing to do with this figure but this warning is in respect to any reader to let them know.

 

Your sense of humour sucks sister!

Today we turn to the American highway. Long before the automobile existed, as is explained in the opening narration, a couple is stuck in the American wilderness in the colonial past. He dies, whilst she has to eat his corpse, still doomed to die and praying to Satan whilst renouncing God. The other story is of the early 2000s micro-budget era - produced by David S. Sterling, who produced countless films into the modern day like Camp Blood (2000), and special effects by Joe Castro, which has a fondness to write about in name nowadays for me in spite of his M.O., as a filmmaker in his own right and as a special effects designer, being nasty gore. This era of cinema is one that is interesting for me to return to with a greater interest with, even if it might be an acquired taste for many. In particular, this is connected to a company called Brain Damage Films. Sadly, they do have one foot in edge lord transgression, as they produced the Traces of Death series, imagining if the notorious Faces of Death films had actual real scenes of death instead of many faked ones. Thankfully, they are the people who distributed and/or produced the likes of Rise of the Animals (2011), Terror Toons (2002) and Suburban Sasquatch (2004) over the years into the modern day. Maybe one day we will look to them in their own way with delight beyond the little community I have become a part of who like this type of micro-budget cinema too.

Our prologue sets up a supernatural side, something to remember, when a priest picks up a female hitchhiker (Phoebe Dollar), kills her and buries the body only for her to return and cave his head in with a shovel. Cut to young adults in a car drinking whilst driving, flashing the camera by pulling their top up to the camera, held by a passenger filming the scene we are seeing through, smoking and saying "rehab is for quitters". I do not know why these films populate themselves with characters that are not likable, the men obnoxious here, but I can only speculate that horror films, especially slashers, made them a trope and thus creators who grew up with these films a decade later or so decided to continue having them as part of the aesthetic beats. The self reflective nature of these later films having been made by people who watched those earlier products is found here, in one of the people in the car saying a horror film is going to start when they pick up Dollar's hitchhiker by the name of Lucindia.

Immediately I have to say, barring one dumb plot twist, the film is entertaining in terms of how unpredictable this is, part of this wave of early straight-to-DVD micro budget genre films. Unfortunately, I have to say too, as part of that, they really misfired in one scene, following from Dollar doing an impression of the hitchhiker from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), which involves her sexually molesting the female protagonist at gun point in the backseat, never seen but fingers between thighs explicitly evoked. It is tonally inconsistent to the film, and will trigger some, so it is a poor choice in High's Highway when the review will be more positive about the rest of the content.

Particularly for a film where, whilst gruesome, you have a cameo of adult actor Ron Jeremy as a low budget filmmaker picking up Lucindia; a scene which leads to her cutting off his penis before he realises it and, when she gets out of the moving care, he to run into a gas station and thus explode. One poor choice of bad edginess is out of place in a film which is tonally more playful then that and is interested in scenes with Jeremy more brazen and over-the-top. Thankfully, if you like this type of cinema, everything else is weirdly interesting. It will be interesting to see if the 2000s is reassessed as the 80s shot-on-video and low budget era has, the standard digital sheen of oversaturated light and colour which is yet fuzzy in detail its own aesthetic from its own decade. It will be curious to re-examine such a look in a 4k world, as fascinating as with the audio as, composed by Jay Woelfel, Hell's Highway has a score which sometimes turns into fantasy New Age music. We get a sex scene, also involving sharing beers mid-coitus, in blue lighting that washes over everything in a tent set to what sounds like an off-cut to Tangerine Dream's album Zeit (1972). That Jay Woelfel is also prolific in this area of low budget genre cinema, including as an editor/director/writer/actor among other jack-of-all-trade roles, really goes to show what a curious wilderness Hell's Highway belongs to, where everything is likely interconnected by everyone working on everyone's genre film.

It is also a rare production where the randomness is backed by a willingness to push itself for ambition and something memorable. Yes, it is contrived that someone brought a chainsaw in the car with them, even if it is part of their obsession with creating perfect campfire wood, but it is Chekov's and Joe Castro as your special effects man knows how to use it. For every effect that feels dated, such as superimposing a thrown knife aimed at a moving car, it still has to be painstakingly included and is to look back with admiration as even the early 2000s was a time with limited resources to work with even as more people could make films. This is also a film, showing its hard work, where they will have the gruesome gag of dragging half a headless and legless torso off behind the car, after accidentally having intestine being stuck in the car axel. That sort of scene is not for everyone, but requiring hard work to pull off just to even make a prop corpse, something we neglect is a construct requiring hours to create even for a low budget film.

And for none gore content, Hell's Highway has a bit. It dabbles, post The Blair Witch Project (1999), with a found footage section, when the leads locate a camera from their friends, showing an ill advised attempt at a demon summoning séance. There is also the scene which won me over to the film, in a production that also happens to have the female protagonist have a dream in an orange hued and fog covered hellscape with demon costumes and stop motion which could have been a show stealer. It starts as a scene involving a pager, when they were a thing, involving if a male character's brother is still alive by sending a message to it from a phone which is found in the wilderness. This scene then cuts to a telecommunications building, than to an actual satellite (a model superimposed in outer space) including a peek inside (built with the insides of computers etc.), a sequence which the film could have done without but the production team decided to have for artistic flair. It is inspired and shows the best of this cinema, especially as the crew had to put this all together on minuscule resources.

Some of the creative decisions do not work well. The one I mentioned earlier, a grim trigger warning, was not advised and aged badly just for being out of place in the film. The other is that the film takes a strange turn in how the plot resolves, one that is less a concern unless you wanting a cohesive plot. [Spoiler Warning] That for a film which has had an occult edge, where the lead heroine since her traumatic interaction with Lucindia has almost a psychic link afterwards, and has included the Hellscape sequence, decides "Nope, let us us have a plot twist involving Lucindia being cloned". This leads to a finale involving a secret government laboratory and rewriting the film around four Phoebe Dollars existing. [Spoilers End] The film for all its ambition does sway into a plot twist in the science fiction genre that is so out-of-place, and involving rewriting much of what we see, that it will completely knee capped the film badly for most viewers. For me, it was just a dumb plot twist and befittingly drawing the film closer to the bonkers territory, even if it should have not been there at all. Truthfully, Hell's Highway is a great template for these types of films, specifically an era of them from the early 2000s, in both their best aspects and the worst. Ultimately, the virtues, the best, stand out for those of us interested in these films, but the film does have some decisions you have to put up with too.

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.      

Standing Ovation (2010)

 

Director: Stewart Raffill

Screenplay: Stewart Raffill

Cast: Kayla Jackson Cruz as Brittany O'Brien; Alanna Polombo as Alanna Wannabe; Pilar Martin as Blaze; Kayla Raparelli as Cameron; Najee Wilson as Maya; Alexis Biesiada as Tatiana; Joei DeCarlo as Joei Battaluci; Bobby Harper as Mr. Wannabe; Austin Powell as Mark O'Brien; P. Brendan Mulvey as Gramps; William McKenna as Eric Bateman

An Abstract List Candidate

I feel like a sick muppet.

Children's films are an area where so many films are made, excluding animation and focusing on live action, I would not be surprises some strange productions were created and product was churned out like exploitation movies were. Naturally, the reason I am here with Standing Ovation is because of the reputation of its director Stewart Raffill, who helmed The Ice Pirates (1984) but also Mac and Me (1988), an infamous film following the success of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) sponsored by McDonalds and Coca-Cola, and Tammy and the T-Rex (1994), already curious as a film where a young Denise Richard's boyfriend Paul Walker dies but has his brain transplanted into a full sized robotic tyrannosaurus rex, which came back into resurgence in the late 2010s when the original R rated version with gore was relocated.

Standing Ovation from the start did make me worry, about tween female singing groups competing in a competition where they have to create a music video, that his would send the wrong messages by accident seeing young girls in full makeup and dresses onscreen. Thankfully, baring a young belly dancer, this is just a peculiar children's music film. One, oddly, I did not get the reaction to I was hoping for, as this is a film which was a complete failure in its small theatrical release in the USA, getting a small cult of morbid adult cineastes who view this film as bonkers and became obsessed with this over the passing years online. I think because, from the get-go, I hold children's films as being more likely to be strange, cheesy and capable of scraping the bottom of a barrel, so the film alongside its pop aesthetic and music softened the construction of the production.

Boiled to its basis, the two teams are the 5 Ovations, including the lead Brittany O'Brien (Kayla Jackson Cruz), who have to face the Wiggies, a very sinister name for a legitimately mean group, daughters of a wig maker who, with his wealth, can fund them for an unfair disadvantage as well as their own tendency to cheat, such as bribing a stagehand to put pepper in the headset microphones. It is a simple tale of young teen girls aspiring to musical success, but this has some eyebrow raising content, likely to have a greater effect on some viewers not immune to this film's tone like I clearly was. Living with an older brother who is, to her horror, dating one of the Wiggies and writing their lyrics, the only adult in Brittany's is her grandfather, who also has the broadest Irish accent I have heard in a while. He also has a gambling addiction problem, spending the rent continually, which leads to a dramatic scene early on in a bookies watching horse racing on a screen, which you normally do not see in children's media.

Mostly Standing Ovation is very conventional in the narrative, even in terms of a character like Alanna Wannabe (Alanna Polombo), a younger girl who keeps invading everyone's groups and performances trying to crowbar her way to success, eventually with her father just creating her own music video with firemen as improvised back-up dancers. Far more idiosyncratic is Joei (Joei DeCarlo), the new child manager for the 5 Ovations and the daughter of a mob boss. She becomes the best character for me and part of the one legitimately strange aspect of this film, her entire subplot of regaining lost money stolen from her father which sticks out like a sore thumb in a film about singing competitions tonally. I like the character, a tough hearted asthmatic girl, including the bizarre detail she carried around with her exotic and dangerous animals with her, played by real ones (barring stand-ins) whilst still being as safe with them as possible on a production. They are even used to interrogate adults in his journey for the money, threatening one arcade owner and former criminal by trapping him in one of his own claw machines with a cobra. In close up with the actor, it is fake, but they got a real cobra for the job which is surreal to witness in a film from the 2010s, not an old seventies exploitation film for adults.

Aside from this however, Standing Ovation is sickly sweet and merely average. A lot of the reputation is that, whilst Stewart Raffill and the producers still had a bit of budget to work with, this is a low budget film in the then-new 2010s, and the infamous nature of the film comes from its production value and curious touches, like the amount of hats the young male cast wear, that feel unlikely to sell to the tweenager audience of this new era. None of this really added anything as the production values I have witnessed in other work were lower than this, alongside the knowledge so many children's films are made, which means I am not surprised there are very low budget ones in existence. Even the abrupt appearance of adult punks antagonising the child cast had no effect as I have a bias of children's films, or films for families, inexplicably putting material like this in their films which is antiquated in the modern day.

The tone is also the issue, where one film can perplex me and another like Standing Ovation does not. This is a very conventionally pace narrative, one whose style is the more eccentric even in mind of its genre allowing liberties like this but is not fully committing to this even by accident to win me over. In a more eccentric film, Mr. Wiggs (Sal Dupree), the father of the Wiggies and their funder, would be such a stranger figure in a different context, an exaggerated larger figured man who wears a variety of wigs and has a stand in his own home, with a jukebox onstage, to allow his charges to sing classic American bubblegum pop to guests. Neither will I bat an eyelid at something like Joei sneaking frogs into the Wiggies' soup in a restaurant, as that sort of prank is commonplace in this cinema to get payback.

As much of the review is influenced by being the person who does not want to cruelly dismiss the child casts' acting and singing ability, but at the same time nothing in the film was incredibly bad in my own tastes nor spectacular at all to point out.  Only an ending with finding Brittany's dad, skirting the idea money can heal old wounds, can count as a questionable production choice but it also feels rushed. If I have to call Standing Ovation anything, it does slowly reach a 21st century form of kitsch, still sincere but self reflecting of the past and the new technology of when it was made. It does play straight, with humour to a small child trying to get firemen to be sufficient dancers, marching in front of the line as a tiny girl as if she was Bob Fosse, and all the humour playful than thankfully anything remotely mean or cruel. An attempt at trying to sabotage the 5 Ovations's music video by the Wiggies turns into the kind of onscreen crude effects from the time whilst also evoking Nickelodeon I watched as a child. And there is a scene, where the 5 Ovations have to perform in a retirement home for extra cash, which includes old time jitterbugging, again something I highly doubt the target audience would be interested in. Again, this was a film which was not a success, critically panned and a curiosity for people who were not the target audience to latch onto by the end of the 2010s. It is an ironic ending for the film, to have an audience but not the one it was expecting, and the really mean critique if I have any is that this film, from the get-go, would have been a failure regardless of quality due to being a production entirely out-of-time and current culture in terms of the audience it wanted.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric

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

Cool World (1992)

 

Director: Ralph Bakshi

Screenplay: Michael Grais and Mark Victor

Cast: Brad Pitt as Detective Frank Harris; Kim Basinger as Holli Would; Gabriel Byrne as Jack Deebs; Charlie Adler as Nails; Candi Milo as Lonette; Deirdre O'Connell as Isabelle Malley

Obsurities, Oddities and One-Offs

 

I'm allergic to clouds!

In Les Vegas 1945, Frank Harris (Brad Pitt) returns from World War II service only for a tragedy to transpire, losing his mother when on a ride on his new motorcycle they are knocked off the road. In the aftermath of this trauma, he is accidentally sucked into the strange realm of Cool World, where cartoons lives. For decades, he lives there as a detective, appointed to stop "Noids" (humans) from having sexual relations with "Doodles" (cartoons). A current problem is with the ambitious doodle Holli Would (Kim Basinger), who has machinations to seduce Noid comic book writer Jack Deebs (Gabriel Byrne), a former convict with mental health issues who will help her escape Cool World and experience the real world. Thus is the strange and curious premise to a film that was meant to be a major Paramount produced box office smash, a follow on from the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988).

The entire production of Cool World, as a major release with video game tie-ins to a giant standee of Holli Would being placed on the Hollywood sign, causing protests from the local community¹, makes even less sense if you stop and think about this film's very adult premise and who the director was. He was Ralph Bakski, a veteran starting in a small position at Terrytoons and eventually turning into a figure who made very adult, independent animated productions through the seventies like Heavy Traffic (1973). Paramount, because of Roger Rabbit, taking a chance on Bakski when, desiring to get back into work, he came up with a premise of a human comic book writer being terrorised by his illegitimate half human, half cartoon daughter. Bakski, never conventional yet somehow able in the seventies and eighties to have a long filmography, clearly had in mind a smaller horror hybrid of animation and live action which would have been tantalising to see in a mirror universe.

Where the production loses any sense of logic is that the deputy head of Paramount at the time Frank Mancuso, Jr., son of Paramount president Frank Mancuso, Sr., replaced the original narrative with one by Michael Grais and Mark Victor, a PG-13 release the result. Bakski was angry, still recounting how he punched Mancuso, Jr.in the face decades later even if this scene has been debated in whether it actually happened or not². In lieu to Mancuso, Jr's decision, we know in hindsight the final result, but bear in mind all I have mentioned, including the video game tie-in, or that this even has David Bowie perform the song Real Cool World for the soundtrack. The first song post-Tin Machine and even pre-Black Tie White Noise (1993) he recorded in a significant moment of his career, on a soundtrack that included Ministry, a favourite band of mine, inexplicably together to promote this film. All for a film, regardless how chastely it dances around the subject, about humans having sex with cartoons.

The result was and still is a hot mess. Bakski's Cool World, stuck helming the film in a form of purgatory, still had creative control in terms of the animation where he effectively told his staff they had carte blanche to be strange. The plot of Cool World is not as bad as it could have been for half its length. The film for that half is not actually that bad in terms of escalation. Pitt, young and like James Dean, adapts himself to Cool World, a nightmare in flesh where, with incredible background illustration, the forties man naturally becomes a detective, with the subplot that, as humans are banned from sexual relations with "doodles", his romance with his cartoon girlfriend Lonette (Candi Milo) as is an angst ridden one despite their chemistry. It is a shame, frankly, the layering of live action actors with animation is visibly sloppy, the actors not clearly acting to stand-ins, alien to a production which for the most part is actually exceptional. The strange hellscape of violent nonsense, cardboard two dimensional props and back screens have a distinct weirdness, the animations (probably too much at times) layering scenes with violent cartoon mayhem even in exposition sequences. Including the exceptional background art, where buildings are spiralling toothed monstrosities, and where even objects held by characters or driven in can turn two dimensional cardboard cut-outs is a compelling aesthetic, but one that is awkwardly met with.

Cool World itself sadly does become secondary to a plot that, by its ending, suffers the issue of so many Hollywood films of the third act devolving into events without any sense to them. Everything in Cool World itself is compelling, effectively if Toon Town from Who Framed Roger Rabbit had its own Pottersville from It's A Wonderful Life (1946), where everyone is drinking and partying or trying to kill each other. It works with a visible dankness, a mashing of the likes of classic American animation like Tex Avery to a deliberate perverseness to contrast the age rating, underscored by Pitt's sincere love for Lonette and Nails (Charlie Adler), his spider partner who comes off as one of the most charming characters for being just a lovable clutz. Even if this could no longer have been an R-rated horror film, cartoon noir openly borrowing from Who Framed Roger Rabbit would have sufficed.

The problems begin with finishing the actual main plot, a contrived and plot hole laden narrative to work with which at first works but never reaches anything interesting. Gabriel Byrne, who always deserves better in many films, has a lot he could have done as a comic book author Jack Deebs, who believes Cool World is his creation when it is Holli Would, a spoilt Marilyn Monroe pastiche, manipulating him, taking advantage of his mental state. It is never brought up, after the initial reference like a loose plot thread, he had been in jail for murdering his wife and her lover, and the entire potential edge for his character is taken away despite being something else that could have been lent on.

The premise that, together, his and Would's coitus could disrupt and blur the lines between Cool World and the real world never makes sense and is weird, in a bad way. The conclusion, in real Las Vegas, loses any of the memorable perversity of the Cool World, and it feels like a contrived failure, a great example of a major Hollywood production that feels rushed, put together for profit and only kept interesting by Bakski and the animators indulging in the finale. The result is both compelling but a frustrating experience, time leaving the animation more admirable than the film's plot. It does overload in distraction, cartoons mucking about in every Cool World sequence, but the clear sabotage done by this is the memorable detail.

An additional irony is that Basinger, as the human version of Holli Would, really does not stand out despite being the huge star being sold, practically (awkwardly) brattish when, originally, Bakshi wanting Drew Barrymore³.  The sense of trying to make Would a Jessica Rabbit figure is felt, alongside the overt sense of reference famous Hollywood blondes, Marilyn Monroe's image projected in one background scene, without the executives likely releasing the Holli Would character is a parody of such figures too. Basinger in voice acting as Would does work, with an interesting idea of a femme fatale, a doodle wanting to be human, finding whatever she can to achieve this. That the film ends with her awkwardly role-playing this character in the flesh, crow barring in a McGuffin plonked on top a Las Vegas casino weather vane, kills this though.

Cool World marked, sadly, Ralph Bakski's last theatrical film, a strange cut off point baring the cancelled one-season animated series Spicy City (1997) and the likes of the Kickstarter funded short Last Days of Coney Island (2015). What is more miserable is that, despite his reputation, his work is as not readily available outside the United States as it should be, Cool World for many beyond Fritz the Cat (1972) or The Lords of the Rings (1978) one of the first people like myself to have likely seen. That in itself is a perverse thing to consider. This final theatrical film is not as bad as its reptuation suggests but it is a not a lost classic in the slightest.

 

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1) As documented HERE

2) As documented HERE

3) As documented HERE

Two William Grefé Monster Films: Sting of Death/Death Curse of Tartu (1966)

 

Director: William Grefé

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #216-217

 

Sting of Death

Screenplay: William Kerwin

Cast: Joe Morrison as Dr. John Hoyt; Valerie Hawkins as Karen Richardson; John Vella as Egon; Jack Nagle as Dr. Richardson

 

Do the Jella...Jellafish...

Sting of Death was my introduction to William Grefé. As Herschell Gordon Lewis was making exploitation films in Florida, so was Grefé, prolific through the sixties to the eighties. Ironically, the two films being covered feel like they were transported from the fifties and just happen to have eye popping (Arrow restored) colour aesthetic. And if anyone wants to cross the two directors' timelines together, I do think it is that William Kerwin of Blood Feast (1963) that wrote the script, especially as he has an onscreen role, briefly, in the future production Impulse (1974).

Sting of Death is definitely out of time, of a jellyfish man monster, though one smarter then his peers as, unseen, his first scene is going for a screwdriver to kill the radio on the island home of a marine biologist, killing and dragging off a female victim in one of the many arguably impressive underwater sequences. Grefé has to put with a lot of stress making this film, shot in the middle of the Florida countryside on the water¹, so I am softer to Sting of Death in spite of what is a very cheesy film undercut by its pacing issues. The set up is simple, where a group of people come on the island - the marine biologist himself, a doctor, some relatives and friends including the biologist's daughter, and a group of biology students wishing to party. And then there is Egon, the facially disfigured assistant who is attracted to the biologist's daughter but is shunned for his appearance.

Restored, this is a striking film even if a low budget one. Grefé is different from Herschell Gordon Lewis, which can be argued even in terms of some auteurist theory, because whilst Gordon really rested upon very heightened and absurd humour, alongside his garish colours and stark floodlight, Grefé's aesthetic is found in itself in the down-and-dirty nature of the films being shot quickly and in the environments he used, even a film closer inland like Impulse (1974) with William Shatner not embracing camp in spite of Shatner's costumes. Only the fashions, including striped shirts and jumpers, feel closer to the multicolour of his compatriot, and even then, I suspect that dissipates when he moves away from this type of monster film.  The two horror films being covered today were also shot in the Florida Everglades, which has a distinct aesthetic in itself of the naturally countryside and isolation.

This still feels part of the early years of the decade, or the fifties, where even the first corpse found, stung by what appears to be a giant Portuguese Man-o-War, has practical effects on it that whilst gristly could have been gotten away with back then. That is not a dismissal of the film but does stand out when, at this time, sexploitation existed and Lewis was gory until the censors started biting at his ankles. Then there is the tangent, if brief, into a little sub-genre of rock 'n' roll beach movies, which also started sneaking in haunted house and horror tropes, even old horror icons like Boris Karloff, among the hijinks. It is a weird culturally distinct world, one I have touched upon with this film, one which even brought Elvis a success with Tickle Me (1965), a film with a haunted house as a plot point, the beach and naturally songs in what sounds like a bizarre psychotronic brew. It is an odd tangent here, shimming to a new dance called the Jellyfish, which feels so alien to a world two years later which would embrace the psychedelic movement which Grefé himself would hitch his tent to, the irony not lost that these films were made year by year as cultural shifts, especially the sixties, would change one half of the decade to the other half. This scene also leads to poor Egon being tormented by the biology students, talking as if they are pirates as they ostracize him for some reason. This will come into play not long afterwards for the plot.

The monster itself is definitely from a decade before, beyond not seeing its head until later visibly wearing a scuba costume below the waist, though that is more logical then that sounds in the narrative. He is a rare b-movie monster too, as mentioned, with intelligence and an ability to weld tools like an axe, but he still wanders towards victims slowly which few ever take advantage of. It is admittedly a creature, when we see its head, with the actor's visible through what can only be described as a giant plastic bag on top of his shoulders. It is ridiculous yet weirdly compelling.

The bigger problem than the look of the creature is that, in the connective tissue between the middle of the narrative to the finale, you have a tedious stretch of padding which mars the film. This is unfortunately a common issue with many films, and this is no exception, and Sting of Death sadly does feel its length and predictability, a bane of so many of these type of films but one I have found especially in the older lot of them. It is a film that could have been trimmed, as your pleasures will come from its pulpy silliness than a compelling story. One scene has won me over with this in mind, when a boat is capsized and the people in the water are being terrorised by a mass of jellyfish...all visibly played by plastic bags with strings attached to them floating on the water. It is ridiculous yet, again, charming and also cute even when actors have to pretend being stung by them.

Most of the pleasure of Sting of Death for me was its silly nature, little details which delighted more than the plot itself. An obsession with airboats which will appear in other films; the oddly funny image of a jellyfish person's feet on bath mats of multiple colours in close-up; that the underwater cave the film ends in is full to prop bones, including a plastic skull on  a stalagmite, and pink and green lighting like a special nautical themed Halloween horror house. It is a film in spite of itself, charming for these little quirks, and this is to bear in mind for the next film made this year by Grefé....

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Death Curse of Tartu

Screenplay: William Grefé

Cast: Fred Pinero as Ed Tison; Babette Sherrill as Julie Tison; Bill Marcus as Billy; Mayra Gómez Kemp as Cindy; Sherman Hayes as Johnny; Gary Holtz as Tommy; Maurice Stewart as Joann; Doug Hobart as Tartu; Frank Weed as Sam Gunter

...sharks don't live in fresh water...

This is why I prefer Death Curse of Tartu, which Grefé openly admits was a script he wrote within twenty four hours by himself originally². A film which still has the flair, to induce a chef's kiss hand gesture, to have the opening credits on a scroll taken from a victim, page after page turned, but very much made from such a swift and hastily produced work schedule. The film does stray into a territory, let alone feeling a film from an older decade, back when we exotisied cultures in problematic ways, about a cursed Native American burial ground of a witch doctor who could turn into an alligator and other animals. This is worth bringing up from the get-go as, even if this is definitely the audience rewriting the script the author created, how I got into the film was the unintentional humours of an alternative take on the subject matter.

The film follows the trope that there is a Native American guide, named Billy, we briefly meet not stupid enough like the white people who are the leads, leaving as soon as possible after he has brought them to the burial ground of Tartu on an island to stay. Many old stories, even in turn of the century pulp literature, have a lot about the sceptic facing things beyond their comprehension, after dismissing belief in ghosts and goblins³, a holdover of faith which even finds its way here as a well worn genre plot, one of the many old shoes which still fit for a b-movie premise. The other aspect, barring that he sabotages the boat to leave the island and openly terrorises the survivors in the ending, is that you could watch this with Tartu as the anti-hero. It may be weird to transcribe a mobile phone text to a family member in the middle of a review, but this encapsulates what I thought the actual plot was:

Death Curse of [Tartu]. Someone is being eaten by a shark currently as people have disturbed a witch doctor on his burial ground by playing rock n roll music whilst he was sleeping.

Whilst it feels like another film more likely to be shot in the fifties and even forties in content, barring the stop for a bikini rock n roll dance sequence, Tartu just wants to sleep in his burial ground in peace, not have bland white adults prat about nearby and blast out music on high volume in the middle of the Everglade. Sadly, it still turns into a film which vilifies non-suburban white culture whilst championing truly white bread leads, something Grefé never likely thought about, but it helps that one that is considerably better paced and more entertaining than Sting of Death, both in terms of entertainment but also this accidentally shade to it. Alongside curious details like quicksand apparently existing in Florida, unintentionally this comes off as the Something Weird Video approved take of ignorance of white suburbanites or people from the metropolis wandering outside their territories, without commonsense and listening to the locals. Billy for one, even if superstitious, had childhood memories of bodies of tribesmen being brought back from the island as evidence, something which even a materialist atheist would be wary of, the film gleefully embracing its premise of what happens when said leads do take this warning and land on the island regardless.

Namely, that Tartu picks them off as various animals. Whilst this leads to a plastic snake for close-ups in one scene, it also includes an actor play wrestling a real giant snake worthy of Bela Lugosi against the fake squid from Bride of the Monster (1955). We can only hope there was no animal cruelty on set, but that the special effects are real snakes and alligators wrangled by a trainer adds a great deal. As much an accidental nature documentary transpires as a result, as we see a big alligator mind its own business as an actress has to act being fearful for her life, or a giant snake navigates around camp props and jostle past a metal kettle. If the shark is just a fake fin in the water, well they were not cruel to realistically have a shark swimming out of its natural habitat in fresh water like the magical one here does. Probably the only thing which might make people uncomfortable is the real alligator skulls, contrasting the plastic human ones, but considering Florida has a lot of alligators, and gator farms, those might be easy to come by.

The film does have a dull extended chase scene at the end, emphasising my belief that trying to have extended scenes of action is just padding in any film, but with complete understanding of this film's origins, this was a fun piece which, most importantly, showed that a lot of potential was to be found in delving into William Grefé's filmography. Poignantly, beyond this production you would have him move with the times, to the psychedelic era and even Jawsploitation to capitalise on Jaws (1975), making his a fascinating career up the eighties, when his filmography slows down, to investigate. These as a throwback to an older era, before Grefé would go on to darker subject matter, offer a nice moment of cheesy light heartedness beforehand. As they are also not that long into his career either, after just two films before, this is very early in a career gathering moss on its rolling boulder, leaving a lot to progress as he did.

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1) As documented in his brief, but rewarding, introduction to the film for the 2020 Arrow Video release.

2) Also from the Arrow Blu Ray film introductions.

3) Why always goblins?