See What's Become Of Me
Now Playing: THE YESTERDAY MACHINE
After more than a week on vacation, I've had the opportunity to watch some batshit-crazy movies. Part of the thrill of watching Crappy Movies is knowing that, every once in awhile, I'm going to come across something so obscure and bizarre that it almost turns me off contemporary films for good. Certainly there's nothing being made today, be it independently or at the major Hollywood studios, that could duplicate the strangeness of 1963's THE YESTERDAY MACHINE.

It, not surprisingly, wasn't made in Hollywood anyway, but rather Texas, which also was the home of notorious schlockmeister Larry Buchanan, who gave us so-called classics like MARS NEEDS WOMEN and ATTACK OF THE THE EYE CREATURES (sic). Buchanan was quite likely an associate, a partner or even a mentor to Russ Marker, who wrote, produced, directed and composed songs for THE YESTERDAY MACHINE, a very talky and slow-moving science fiction movie that isn't completely uninteresting.

Howard, a male college cheerleader, and his baton-twirling girlfriend Margie (she shakes her hips and twirls to some groovy rock-and-roll while Howie works on his car) break down on a country road and cut through the woods to find help. They're astonished to run into two men dressed in Civil War gear who shoot at them. Howie takes a slug in the back and collapses back on the road, but Margie completely disappears.

Jim Crandall (James Britton), an obnoxious, wisecracking newspaper reporter anxious to get away on his first vacation in three years, is convinced by his boss to poke around the scene of the shooting and find a story. Lieutenant Partane (former B-movie cowboy star Tim Holt) isn't much help, so Jim fetches Margie's sister Sandra (Ann Pellegrino), a nightclub singer, to explore the woods with him. While fleeing an attacker, the two pass through some sort of warp that deposits them in the 18th century, where they encounter a horseman who confuses Jim's lighter for witchcraft.

Another "poof" and Crandall and Sandy appear in the workshop of Professor Ernst von Hauser (Jack Herman), a Nazi who escaped the fall of the Third Reich and is continuing his experiments more than twenty years later in the basement of an abandoned old house in Texas! Astonishingly, Crandall isn't surprised to see von Hauser, since Partane had miraculously just told him a story of invading a concentration camp at the end of World War II and seeing the results of von Hauser's time experiments. What a coincidence.

Prof. von Hauser sends his two Nazi lackeys and his Egyptian female slave to lock Sandy up with Margie, while he delivers what is simultaneously the movie's highlight and lowlight. Actor Herman's acting is way out of control as he goes on for what seems like hours, plowing his way through pages and pages of technical dialogue that is supposed to sound scientific, but is really just gibberish. Considering himself to be more brilliant than Einstein, von Hauser even scribbles his formulas on the blackboard while Jim scratches his head and the audience fights sleep. I don't know what Marker was thinking in piling all this deadly exposition into one clump that must consist of at least ten minutes of screen time. Maybe he thought we'd be fascinated by his scientific acumen, as if we'd really believe he might have something to this time machine thing.

The time machine itself consists of a bank of cheap metal computer equipment on the wall, a regular wooden chair, and four glowing light poles around it. Besides the brief appearance of the Rebel soldiers and that quick spin to 1787, Marker never uses the time machine. Instead of creating some creative romps through time, Marker merely writes an easy escape for Jim and the women from their cells and has Jim blast their way out of the lab, which opens to a trapdoor located in the house's backyard cemetary.

Shot in black-and-white with an original music score that popped up a few years later in Buchanan's classic ZONTAR, THE THING FROM VENUS, THE YESTERDAY MACHINE gets points for ambition, but loses some for its inert middle act and Marker's failure to provide any dramatic punch, even on his miniscule budget. It's still no worse and maybe even a little better than the more famous Buchanan's handiwork--a backhanded compliment, to be sure.

A Hate Story
I haven't found confirmation online yet, but a poster on the DVD Maniacs forum has announced the death of filmmaker William Allen Castleman, who directed three exploitation movies during the 1970's and produced and scored several more. I've seen two of his three films as a director: THE EROTIC ADVENTURES OF ZORRO, which is an overlong but fun softcore sex adventure, and JOHNNY FIRECLOUD (he also made BUMMER!, which is paired with FIRECLOUD on the Something Weird DVD).

JOHNNY FIRECLOUD is a good movie, co-produced by exploitation legend David F. Friedman, shot at 2.35:1, and released by 20th Century Fox (the only Friedman film to get a major studio release?). Native American 'Nam vet Johnny Firecloud (Puerto Rican actor Victor Mohica) returns to the small desert town where he grew up, only to find that his people are being ridiculed and beaten by the bigoted white thugs on the payroll of town boss Colby (Ralph Meeker). Firecloud is particularly a sore subject with Colby, since the Indian was dating his daughter June (Christina Hart) prior to joining the Army. In fact, he went so far as to intercept the letters the young lovers sent to each other, causing June, now an alcoholic, to believe Johnny had dumped her and vice versa. After Colby takes his hazing too far, the film switches from ripping off BILLY JACK to cribbing DEATH WISH, and Johnny begins meting out his own brand of vigilante justice, much to the chagrin of weak sheriff Jesse (David Canary), a basically good man who feels disgraced by a personal secret known only to Colby, who uses it to keep the law under his thumb.

What was a very obscure action movie that played briefly in drive-ins in the mid-1970s and has hardly been seen since is revealed by Something Weird Video's DVD to be a thoughtful, absorbing drama with action overtures. Directing a screenplay by Wilton Denmark, whose credits range from the sleazy low-budget western CAIN'S CUTTHROATS to teleplays for THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, Castleman crafts a surprisingly mature morality play that goes bounds beyond what was surely called for. Sure, the exploitative elements are there, such as gory revenge, nudity, and rape, like you'd expect in a Friedman film, but in between are some heady characterization and fine performances. Canary in particular is marvelous as the complex sheriff, torn between doing what he believes is right and following Colby's orders in order to protect his secret. He was a recognizable TV actor at the time, due to his supporting role as Candy on BONANZA, and has since played twins on ALL MY CHILDREN to great acclaim. His performance in JOHNNY FIRECLOUD is very strong and provides the somewhat talky finale with some power.

Hart, a familiar TV face who started her career disrobing in drive-in flicks like THE STEWARDESSES and THE MAD BOMBER, is the cast's only misfire, playing her drunk role too far over the top, but she does appear topless, as does Sacheen Littlefeather (best known for accepting Brando's 1973 GODFATHER Oscar), the recipient of obvious breast augmentation.

Crisply lensed in Southern California by co-producer Peter B. Goode, JOHNNY FIRECLOUD slightly transcends its drive-in origins, adding social commentary and solid performances while still delivering the bloody goods. It's too bad Castleman didn't make another film after this, because he worked wonders with the $225,000 he had to work with here.

Castleman apparently died at the age of 83.

More Groovy Tunes
Now Playing: THE STRANGER AND THE GUNFIGHTER
Last day of vacation. Getting up for work tomorrow is going to be a chore, since I don't think I've awakened earlier than 11:00am in over a week.

I've had time to relax and watch a lot of trashy movies this week. I'll write more about them later.

Recently on iTunes:
"Sunny Girlfriend"--The Monkees
"I Saw the Light"--The Raspberries
"Shadows on the Wall" from THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN
"Annie's Song"--John Denver
"Love Song"--Anne Murray
"Queen of Hearts"--Juice Newton
"Nitrous Burn Out"--Man or Astro-Man?
QUARK--Perry Botkin, Jr.
"Fortune Teller"--Bobby Curtola
THE BIG VALLEY--George Duning
"Little Baby"--Rolling Stones
NIGHT OF THE GHOULS trailer
"Emotional Rescue"--Rolling Stones
"Shag-A-Delic Austin Powers Score Medley"--George S. Clinton from AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY
"Live and Let Die"--Paul McCartney & Wings
"Evil"--Cactus
"I Love You For All Seasons"--Fuzz
"End Titles"--Lalo Schifrin from RUSH HOUR
LOGAN'S RUN--Jerrold Immel
"Kiss an Angel Good Morning"--Charley Pride
"A New Mate"--Jerry Goldsmith from PLANET OF THE APES

That Darn Jew
Now Playing: LOOKING FOR COMEDY IN THE MUSLIM WORLD
Maybe you have to be an Albert Brooks fan to appreciate his films. There's no question that Brooks' films--as a writer and director, not necessarily as an actor for hire--are acquired tastes. With the exception of DEFENDING YOUR LIFE, which never played in the town I was living in at the time, I've seen all of Brooks' films theatrically. I believe the arrival of a new Albert Brooks comedy is a special occasion; after all, it occurs only about every five or six years.

So I was excited to learn that his latest, LOOKING FOR COMEDY IN THE MUSLIM WORLD, was playing here in Champaign. Surprisingly, since it's only on about 120 screens right now. I never saw any TV advertising for the movie, and the Champaign theaters do no newspaper ads, so I'm not shocked that I was the only one in the theater for a Wednesday afternoon matinee. While LOOKING FOR COMEDY will probably do the least box office of Brooks' career (not that you'd notice--he never does more than about $15 million gross), it's a clever and funny movie that made me chuckle a lot.

If you're curious about its alleged controversial content, let me assure you that the buzz is ridiculous. Sony refused to release it, due partially to its title, and Warner Independent picked it up. There is nothing in Brooks' movie that could be considered controversial or politically incorrect, unless you believe that portraying people of India as full-fledged, well-rounded human beings is a sensitive act.

Brooks, who wrote the original screenplay and directed, stars as Albert Brooks, who leaves a humiliating interview with director Penny Marshall for the lead in a remake of HARVEY (!) and returns home to find a registered letter from the U.S. government waiting for him. Turns out Fred Dalton Thompson (as himself) is heading a government commission dedicated to learning more about the Muslim people by discovering what makes them laugh, and he wants Albert to take a month in India and Pakistan, find out, and put it all in a 500-page report (it's gotta be 500 pages to justify the expense, but, don't worry, nobody reads the reports anyway, they just weigh them).

Albert is accompanied in New Delhi by two State Department men (Jon Tenney and John Carroll Lynch) and his Indian assistant Maya (the wonderful Sheetal Sheth). After a day of man-on-the-street interviews ("What makes you laugh?") turns out to be fruitless, Brooks has the idea to stage a standup concert in a country that has no standup comedy. The film's major setpiece is Brooks' routine, performed before an auditorium filled with Indians unfamiliar with Brooks or his material. The routine bombs, as it should have. The joke is that Brooks' routine is actually a deconstruction of American standup comedy, riffing on ventriloquist acts and supposed "improvisation". It likely would have bombed in an American comedy club too, which doesn't mean that it isn't wildly funny.

The second half is padded, with help from Michael Giacchino's witty score, with a dose of international intrigue, as Albert's covert late-night meeting with a group of stoned budding Pakistani comics. Bombed on hash, they, of course, laugh their asses off at Albert's routine, and the narcissistic Brooks thinks he killed. There's also a neat bit with Albert being offered the lead in an Al Jazeera sitcom titled THAT DARN JEW.

Filming on location in New Delhi, Brooks uses the local population and scenery to good advantage, including one killer gag--a subtle one, but brilliantly executed--staged at the Taj Mahal. I didn't come away from LOOKING FOR COMEDY IN THE MUSLIM WORLD with a better idea of what makes Muslims laugh (except Polish jokes--they kill everywhere), but I know that it made me laugh.

In Lieu Of A Real Post...
Sorry. I'm on vacation this week, and I haven't felt much like posting. However, I know I have to give you something, so here's what I've been listening to on iTunes.

"Heavies"--The Rotations
"Let the Good Times In"--The Hung Jury covering The Partridge Family (!)
"Cisco Kid"--War
"Love Or Let Me Be Lonely"--Friends of Distinction
"Boys and Girls Together"--Mamas and the Papas
"The Big Gundown"--Ennio Morricone
"Everybody's Doin' It"--Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen (the "truckin' and fuckin'" song from HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD)
"Bottled"--Alexander Courage from STAR TREK's "The Cage"
"Freedom Train"--Ancient Grease
"Can You Travel in the Dark Alone"--Gandalf
"Dr. Crippin's Waiting Room"--Orange Machine
"I Get Around" (backing track only)--Beach Boys
"5-4-3-2-1"--Manfred Mann
A James Bernard suite from HORROR OF DRACULA
Theme from HUNTER--Mike Post & Pete Carpenter
"Behind Closed Doors"--Charlie Rich

That reminds me of an awesome Charlie Rich story. Known as the Silver Fox because of his full head of gray hair, the late Rich wrote and recorded a bunch of great country-western hits, including a few that crossed over onto the pop charts. You might remember--or you should remember--"Mohair Sam", "Behind Closed Doors", "The Most Beautiful Girl", which I think was a #1.

He was also quite a drinker, not unusual for a country singer, but it caused him to engage in a lot of self-destructive behavior. Perhaps his most notorious moment occurred on live network television. He was presenting the trophy for Entertainer of the Year at the 1975 Country Music Association awards. He opened the envelope and announced the winner: "my good buddy John Denver". He then proceeded to whip out a lighter and set the card and envelope on fire, an act that was judged by most who saw it as disrespectful. Rich's son has claimed in recent years that it was merely a joke egged on by too many gin & tonics and that Rich really did like Denver. That's not what it looked like to millions of country music fans in 1975.

Shit. I guess I ended up posting something anyway. Aren't you lucky?

B-Fest 2006
Now Playing: 15 Power-Packed Features
Another year over, and a new one just begun. You might use January 1 to demarcate one year from the next. I use B-Fest, Northwestern University’s annual 24-hour marathon of “B-movies.” This weekend marked my fifth consecutive year of staying up 39 consecutive hours with little more than Coca-Cola, Hostess products and lunchmeat sandwiches for sustenance. This year, Tolemite, Kevin and I introduced five new B-Festers to the event: Chicken, Stiner, Grady, Liz and Lara. All (except Lara, who had a Saturday appointment) survived to the end, as brutal as the journey may have been, and deserve much applause for their patience, stamina and sportsmanship.

Like last year, I arrived at B-Fest two hours early, which I highly recommend. It gives you an opportunity to stake out comfortable seating, survey the crowd for crazies to stay away from and hotties to scope, and relax a bit before diving right in. Change into some lounging clothes, arrange your munchies for easy, quiet access. There isn’t much time allotted between features to stretch with the lights on, so it’s good to get comfortable while you can.

If you don’t know, B-Fest is a communal experience where you don’t just watch movies, but shout at the screen MST3K-style. Some of these movies can only be endured in this manner, although the image and audio are good enough that you can follow the films if you’re not familiar with them. Screaming at something like SUPERBABIES: BABY GENIUSES 2 is very cathartic, believe me. The downside is that you’ll be surrounded by people who are not nearly as funny as you are, and sometimes their jokes are worse than the movie you’re all screaming at. Most of the movies are 16mm prints, although an occasional 35mm print is shown. B-Fest has traditionally been all-celluloid, but there is discussion of adding DVD projection next year. I see the pros and cons of this, and if it happens, I’ll approach it with an open mind.

At 6:00pm Friday, B-Fest 2006 got off to a strong start with SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR SPACE, a good B-Fest movie, since it has a lot of action, familiar actors, a stupid premise, and much to mock. Christopher Reeve returned to play Superman only on the condition that the producers use his anti-nuke story, so the clumsy slapstick humor held over from SUPERMAN III and the cheapo special effects and lack of attention to detail common to producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus mix awkwardly with a mawkish plot about Superman tossing all the world’s nuclear weapons into outer space and then fighting a nuclear-powered supervillain created by escaped con Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman). Yes, this is a Cannon movie. There’s also Jon Cryer as Luthor’s annoying Valley dude nephew Lenny Luthor (!), Mariel Hemingway as a debutante who falls for Clark Kent, and John Williams’ music rearranged and conducted by Alexander Courage. It’s bad, but enjoyable schlock. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be better than the upcoming SUPERMAN RETURNS.

CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON was a controversial choice, if only because it’s too good for B-Fest. In all, this year’s lineup was the weakest of my five B-Fests with many movies being too good and others being too bad (as in, not entertainingly bad, just boring). There’s also a continuing trend of adding too many selections from the ‘80s and ‘90s. At least CREATURE was shown in 3D. We even got free glasses. I don’t think the 3D really worked all that well (it was the red/blue kind), although Julie Adams in a swimsuit in 3D should be experienced by all. You should know the story by now: an expedition exploring the Amazon runs across a unique half-man/half-fish in an extraordinary costume designed by the Universal special effects department. Adams is in love with Richard Carlson, but hotheaded Richard Denning has the hots for her too. For that matter, so does the creature, who stalks her in a lovingly filmed underwater sequence. Great movie given not-so-great treatment.

GODZILLA, the horrid 1998 American version starring Matthew Broderick, is a good example of a movie that doesn’t work at B-Fest. It’s too long, too dull, not fun, and an insult to B-Fest’s audience, who are there precisely because they love movies like the Toho Godzilla series. This movie was like a kidney punch to monster fans when it came out. Nobody wants to see this version of GODZILLA anyway--do you know anyone who has it in their collection?--but B-Festers certainly don’t. Broderick is a Greek (?) biologist who is recruited by the army to stop a giant lizard from destroying New York City. The military fires him (?) after his old flame, a dizzy wannabe TV journalist played by the supremely untalented Maria Pitillo, steals some top-secret info from him (I swear, it was a VHS tape with TOP SECRET written in big letters on the label) and airs it. Broderick is then kidnapped by the French Secret Service (!), in the personage of Jean Reno, and invade Madison Square Garden, which is overrun with dozens of baby ‘Zillas hatched from eggs. Directed by Roland Emmerich and produced by Dean Devlin, each of whom was the recipient of copious booing when their credits flashed on-screen.

THE WIZARD OF SPEED AND TIME is a short made by a California-based visual effects whiz named Mike Jittlov. He also made a feature version, but this is the original short, a delightful FX-filled fantasy. In B-Fest tradition (I don’t know why), the short plays while much of the audience lies on the stage and stomps their collective feet in time to the music. Then the short is run backwards and upside down with more stomping. Doesn’t make sense to me. WOSAT is good enough to stand on its own.

Midnight always brings about PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, which is a ROCKY HORROR-like experience filled with props and preprogrammed audience responses to the film. Even if you’ve seen it a zillion times, you should still experience it with a barrage of paper plates flying through the air whenever one of director Ed Wood's cheap pie-plate flying saucers whizzes across the screen. You haven't lived until you've seen hundreds of paper plates whipping past your head. After the film, the auditorium floor will be littered with thousands of paper plates, many inscribed with messages ranging from philosophical one-liners, bits of PLAN 9 dialogue and jokes. To Johnson‘s appearances are met with shouts of “Tor!” Scenes with Bela Lugosi and his body double are met with “Bela!” and “Not Bela!” The strangest battle is between audience members who argue whether Gregory Walcott‘s patio furniture is made from wicker or rattan. “Because people of Earth are idiots!”

The post PLAN 9 slot is usually blaxploitation. Unfortunately, they ran COFFY again, which ran here three years ago. I have no argument against COFFY, which is great for B-Fest: wild dialogue, action, nudity, crazy fashions, funky music and the sexy Pam Grier. Shouting was at a minimum, I think because the crowd was really into it. However, there’s enough blaxploitation out there that they could have gotten something else.

I must admit, I saw very little of GAS! OR IT BECAME NECESSARY TO DESTROY THE WORLD IN ORDER TO SAVE IT. This was in the HIERONYMOUS MERKIN/BEAUTY AND THE ROBOT/ALICE IN WONDERLAND slot, which is usually filled with something obscure, unusual and often unbearable. GAS!, one of Roger Corman’s last movies as a director, appears to be an aimless, pretentious youth allegory about an American Southwest devoid of human beings over the age of 25 (they were killed by a strange gas). It’s on DVD, so maybe I’ll give it another shot in a proper context someday, but it took the opportunity to wander around the facility and spend some time cooling off in the lobby while it ran.

The deep hurting continued with TROMEO AND JULIET, which is, IMO, too extreme and rough for B-Fest. Being a Troma production, you know immediately what you’re getting into: gore, profanity, sex, cannibalism, incest, bodily fluids, close-ups of nipples being pierced. I only watched it with one eye open, since I thought this would be a good time to grab a nap. It didn’t really work, as the audience’s groans whenever something gross occurred had me glancing at the screen out of curiosity. I was usually sorry.

I hate Prince. So you can imagine what I thought of GRAFFITI BRIDGE, an extremely self-indulgent musical that Prince wrote, directed and starred in. A good drinking game would be to drink whenever Prince the director awards Prince the actor with a closeup. It feels like a remake of PURPLE RAIN with Morris Day back talking shit to Prince and Prince’s girlfriend (Ingrid Chavez) getting killed. I hated PURPLE RAIN too.

GRAFFITI BRIDGE is too boring and superficial for B-Fest. EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY is just too uninteresting. In fact, it’s a pleasant little comedy that provides a bit of fun, but it isn’t remarkable or memorable in any sense, except for the many scenes with Geena Davis wearing a tiny bikini. It also stars Jim Carrey and Damon Wayans at a period in their careers when nobody knew who they were (IN LIVING COLOR was still a couple of years away). Carrey, Wayans and Jeff Goldblum are colorful, furry aliens who crash their spaceship in Geena’s swimming pool and become fish-out-of-water as she battles cheating boyfriend Charles Rocket and hangs with horny pal “Just Say” Julie Brown, who also co-wrote the screenplay.

Now RHINESTON seems like it was tailor-made for B-Fest. Two big stars, one absurd premise, plenty to mock. Country singer Dolly Parton bets her sleazebag manager (a typically OTT Ron Leibman) that she can transform a loutish taxi driver (Sylvester Stallone) into a country-western star in two weeks. Yep, Sly Stallone plays a country singer. Awesome! Apparently you all have to do to become an expert at it is spend two weeks on a farm, where romantic rival Tim Thomerson (yeah!) teaches him to walk like a country singer by pretending you have jock itch. The beauty of RHINESTONE is that it forces you to believe that, when Stallone sings at the climax to thunderous applause from an appreciative audience, he’s a much better singer that he was earlier before Dolly went all Henry Higgins on him. Of course, he still sucks as a singer, and you know damn well this movie only exists because Stallone, a huge star then, decided he wanted to sing in a movie, and no Hollywood sycophant had the balls to tell him what a terrible idea that was. RHINESTONE, directed by Bob Clark, is also notable for Sly’s bizarre T-shirt collection, which had us in stitches.

COBRA WOMAN was disappointing in that it was filmed in Technicolor, but we received a black-and-white TV print. It’s kinda talky for B-Fest purposes, but I’d like to check it out again something under optimal conditions. Jon Hall and sidekick Sabu journey to a South Seas island to retrieve Hall’s fiance Maria Montez. Turns out she was nabbed by Maria’s evil twin (!), who plans to sacrifice her to her people’s cobra god and then steal Hall for herself. A lot of swinging on ropes and rubber snakes in this one, plus Lon Chaney as a heavy.

Dear God. BABY GENIUSES may well be the worst Hollywood film to ever receive a sequel, and SUPERBABIES: BABY GENIUSES 2 might be the worst sequel. I don’t even know for what audience it was made. Jon Voight (!), of all people, plays an evil German (who talks like Werner Klemperer) who plans to brainwash the world’s babies with subliminal messages in a TV commercial. He’s opposed by an 8-year-old secret agent who recruits for diaper-clad babies to be his sidekicks and imbues them with superpowers and costumes. I understand why Scott Baio and Vanessa Angel would be hard-up enough to star in this, but I don’t know why Voight is here, except I see from the Internet Movie Database than the blond teen hottie who plays the babysitter is Voight’s goddaughter. Giving her a help up perhaps? Talking babies always suck, but talking babies that fly helicopters and know kung fu achieve new levels of suck.

Only one more movie to go, and it was a controversial choice. Much too good for B-Fest, it still worked out well, because it played in the traditional “monster movie” slot and served as a bit of a cleanser after 22 ? hours of crap. 1933’s KING KONG is a remarkable film. The 16mm print is terribly washed out; I was spoiled by watching Warner’s pristine, detail-filled DVD a few weeks ago. It was still fun to see with an appreciative audience.

B-Fest is also punctuated by a number of obscure short films that fill time between features. Most of these are disposable at best, but two of them were really interesting. One was Alan Arkin’s 1969 Oscar-nominated PEOPLE SOUP, which stars his sons Adam and Matthew as brothers who mix together incompatible kitchen items to create a soup that transforms them into animals. It’s a sweet, funny fantasy. Also of note was TOMB ITMAY CONCERN, a kitschy piece starring the very short Little Jack Little. It was unfortunately cut off well before the end, which was a shame. It was silly but watchable, an odd piece of Hollywood history, plus I understand there was an Egyptian princess in the tomb who does a striptease, but we never got to see it. Drat.

KING KONG finished around 5:45pm Saturday, and it was off to Leona’s on Sheridan for our customary post-fest bloating in the form of heavy Italian food. I always get more or less the same thing, which is a giant bowl of pasta covered in tomato sauce, sausage and meatballs. It's so big I can't even finish it, but that's okay, so long as it pushes the Ding Dongs and corn chips out of my system. The drive home on I-57 is rainy, but Chicken and I make it in good time, inside, unloaded and unpacked well before 11pm. Time to sleep and, more importantly, brush my teeth and shower.

Only 364 more days to B-Fest 2007.

Off To B-Fest
24 hours of Crappy Movies. Tell you all about it when I get back.

Barbi, Don't Get Hooked On Me
Now Playing: HOSPITAL MASSACRE

Sitcom actress, recording artist and Playmate Barbi Benton went all the way to Israel to receive her first above-the-title billing in an American film. Unfortunately, it was to star in a Cannon slasher movie. A Golan/Globus production. Made by the director of THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN. Poor Barbi.

Benton was relatively popular during the late 1970's, mostly due to her longtime intimate relationship with Hugh Hefner. A few PLAYBOY spreads and Hef's love landed her a country-western record deal, which led to a television acting career guest-starring on ABC shows like THE LOVE BOAT and FANTASY ISLAND. After she and Hefner broke up, Barbi landed a regular gig on the ABC sitcom SUGAR TIME!, which was cancelled after a few weeks.

Her mainstream Hollywood film debut (she had appeared with Hefner in a West German sex comedy when she was about 19) came out in 1981 as HOSPITAL MASSACRE. No star, not even one of Benton's stature, would make a film called HOSPITAL MASSACRE, but Golan and Globus shot it as X-RAY and pulled the switch later. I believe it actually did play theatrically, at least overseas, as X-RAY, but it's better known in the U.S. as HOSPITAL MASSACRE. Which is at least an accurate title.

The film's major problem is that it relies on every character to act in a completely idiotic manner at all times to keep the story moving. If you have half a brain, you'll figure out who the masked killer is within the first half-hour, which doesn't prevent director Boaz Davidson from stacking up red herrings like cordwood. Besides Benton, every major character fails to behave like a normal human being. Doctors are oblique and rude. Her fiance (Jon Van Ness) is ineffectual. People wander into rooms where they have no business. An entire hospital floor is filled with fumigation fumes (to provide a spooky, foggy atmosphere, doncha know), as well as mannequins (?) and one convenient can of red paint!

Following a prologue (set at "Susan's House 1961") in which a young girl's suitor is found mangled with his head caught in a coat rack, HOSPITAL MASSACRE is almost entirely set inside a poorly-lit, sparsely-populated big-city hospital in which Susan Jeremy (Benton) drops to pick up the results from a recent physical examination. A quick errand turns into an extended bout of terror, as creepy doctors, creepy patients and even creepy janitors jerk around Susan while a surgical-masked killer bumps off hospital personnel left and right. Plenty of red herrings are introduced, including the seemingly sinister Dr. Saxon (John Warner Williams), amiable intern Harry (Chip Lucia), Susan's ex-husband and even a perverted drunken patient who constantly wanders the hospital's hallways for no good reason.

This is a stupid movie, but the body count is quite high and the murders appropriately gory. Also, Benton provides a juicy nude scene, which is perhaps the movie's most idiotic moment. Creepy Dr. Saxon orders Barbi to not only submit to a physical exam in a large, dark room, but he also has her strip to her panties so he can take her blood pressure and listen to her heartbeat. I don't know, her clothes didn't appear to be that thick. In painstaking closeup, Barbi lies topless on the examination table while Dr. Sleazeball slowly fondles her foot, leg and calf muscles, thumps her tight tummy with his fingers, and listens to her heartbeat by placing his stethoscope on her boob. Sheeyahhh, nice gig if you can get it.

HOSPITAL MASSACRE isn't very scary, but it does move, and the preposterousness of the screenplay by Marc Behm adds plenty of unintentional NAKED GUN-style laughs--the hospital appears to be nearly deserted, although Susan is forced to share a room with three cranky old ladies, while nearly every character is shown playing with knives or acting unbelievably nutty, so they can be set up as possibly being the killer.

Benton is definitely no thespian, but she looks great, and is at least believable as a confused and freaked-out victim. Not so much, though, as a smoker. Most contemporary actors are terrible pretend-smokers, but very few are as unconvincing as Barbi. She went on to do a Roger Corman sword-and-sorcery cheapie in Argentina called DEATHSTALKER, which is even more hilarious than HOSPITAL MASSACRE, but hardly more dignified. That was pretty much the end of her screen career and her singing career.

And, cool, Netflix sent Disc 1 of THE NEW AVENGERS today. Seven years after THE AVENGERS wrapped up production in England, star Patrick Macnee returned as British secret agent John Steed with two new young co-stars: Gareth Hunt as studly Mike Gambit and Joanna Lumley (ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS) as sexy Purdey. I'd never see it before. It aired in the U.S. in the late 1970's as part of THE CBS LATE MOVIE, which, as David Letterman used to remind his LATE NIGHT audience, wasn't really a movie at all, but reruns like KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER and MANNIX and occasionally new imports like THE NEW AVENGERS. WCIA did not air CBS programming in late-night, instead running their own syndicated fare like IRONSIDE, THE ROOKIES, HAWAII FIVE-0 and THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO.

THE NEW AVENGERS started with a slambang episode, guest-starring the great Peter Cushing (who played Grand Moff Tarkin in STAR WARS around this time) as a German expert in suspended animation who is kidnapped by a band of Nazis disguised as monks taking residence in a Scottish castle. There they've been keeping the comatose body of Adolf Hitler and need Cushing to wake him up and resuscitate the Third Reich. Accompanied by funky wah-wah guitar, the Avengers foil the Nazi plot using some well-placed karate kicks, old-fashioned ingenuity and witty bon mots. Macnee is so smooth, it's as if he never stopped playing Steed. And in fact he really hadn't, having appeared with one of his AVENGERS co-stars, Linda Thorson, in a champagne commercial.

Judging just from the first show (they did 26 over two seasons), THE NEW AVENGERS was pretty good, though not up to the standard set by the Macnee/Diana Rigg episodes in the late 1960's. The final scene, with Steed, Purdey and Gambit skipping away from a job well done and whistling Colonel Bogey's theme from THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI, is very much like the end of THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI (and, by extension, the end of THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU).

He's Got The Biggest Balls Of Them All
Now Playing: DEATH RAGE
I've been curious about DEATH RAGE ever since I used to have the one-sheet hanging on my kitchen wall. All I knew about it was that it was an Italian crime drama starring Yul Brynner as a pissed-off dude out for revenge. Hey, that's good enough for me. Hard to screw that up.

I picked it up on DVD awhile back as part of Mill Creek's CHILLING CLASSICS collection. You've seen these--50 movies for under $20. At that price, you can imagine about what you're getting--ugly, tacky-looking prints taken from inferior sources (often just ripped from an old VHS release) and likely unauthorized. DEATH RAGE runs 96 minutes, according to Leonard Maltin, but the Mill Creek print is only 84. No wonder I couldn't figure out what was going on much of the time. It's not an edited TV print either, no way, not with Barbara Bouchet's naked body prancing into frame every 15 minutes or so.

DEATH RAGE was one of Brynner’s last films; both this and FUTUREWORLD, the sequel to WESTWORLD, were released in 1976. Yul famously died of lung cancer in 1985, and made sure he filmed a series of anti-smoking PSAs before he did. I don't know whether a dead Yul Brynner lecturing on the hazards of lighting up ever prevented a kid from smoking, but the message was certainly a persuasive one.

The bald-pated star plays Frank Marciani, an American hitman recruited by the Mafia to perform one last job--the touch of the Italian gangster who murdered Frank’s brother. Frank was present at his brother’s death, which left him with psychosomatic eye pain whenever he witnesses a violent act (director Antonio Margheriti demonstrates this by “painting” the lens with red animation). In Naples, Frank shows the hitman ropes to an eager young man--shades of THE MECHANIC--and fools around with a frequently nude stripper (Bouchet). A couple of car chases and shootouts, Yul’s steady performance (draped in a black turtleneck and blazer) and Barbara’s luscious body make this one an adequate timewaster.

On iTunes tonight:
Theme from GET SMART!
"For Your Eyes Only"--Sheena Easton
"There He Is Again"--Hues Corporation (from BLACULA)
"It Must Be Him"--Vikki Carr
"Colt in Agguato"--Bruno Nicolai from $100,000 FOR RINGO
"Commotion"--Creedence Clearwater Revival
"Captain Groovy and His Bubblegum Army"--Captain Groovy and His Bubblegum Army
"Say What I Mean"--The Shandells, Inc.
"Backstage"-Gene Pitney
"Tomorrow Never Knows"--The Beatles
"I Think I'll Just Go & Find Me A Flower"--Moorpark Intersection
"Cool, Calm & Collected"--The Druids
"The British Menace"--Lalo Schifrin from RUSH HOUR
"Michael, Row The Boat Ashore"--The Highwaymen

Five-Year Plans And New Deals
Now Playing: LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT
My iTunes library now has 5354 songs in it. Here's what I've been listening to for the last hour:

"Hot Love"--T. Rex
"You Don't Have to Say You Love Me"--Dusty Springfield
"I Live in the Springtime"--The Lemon Drops
"What Am I Going to Do?"--The Dovers
"Weightless at Zero Return"--Man Or Astro-Man?
"Who'll Stop the Rain"--John Fogerty live from the Capital Center in 1987
"Shining"--The Bumps
"It's A Sunshine Day"--The Brady Bunch (!)
"The Idols of Your Mind"--The Hinge
"Tape Machine"--Lalo Schifrin from the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE episode "Underground"
"Amos Moses"--Jerry Reed
"Daniel"--Elton John
"End Credits (March)"--Lalo Schifrin from THE EAGLE HAS LANDED
"Between the Lines"--McDonald's Farm
Theme from HARDCASTLE & MCCORMICK by Mike Post & Pete Carpenter
"Don't Worry Baby"--Beach Boys
"In the Idol's Temple"--John Williams from RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK
"Body Surf"--Aki Aleong & the Nobles
"Take A Giant Step"--The Monkees
"Chick-A-Boom"--Daddy Dewdrop
"Delirium"--Herschel Burke Gilbert from THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN
"Believe It Or Not"--Joey Scarbury

An interesting appearance by Brad Renfro on tonight's LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT. I don't believe Renfro has ever done episodic television before, but maybe his career options are becoming scarcer following his heroin arrest last month. He's battled drug and alcohol addictions for several years now, although you wouldn't know it from his performance tonight. He was quite effective as one-half of a serial-killing team and surely didn't look like a junkie. His partner was played by Ethan Embry, who has bulked up since his familiar roles in CAN'T HARDLY WAIT and the recent Dick Wolf series DRAGNET. Not "buff" bulked up, but "beefy" bulked up. He'll never score with Amanda Beckett at this rate.