John Carradine In Americathon
Now Playing: DEADLY TARGET
A very big "thank you" is going out tonight to Steve Johnson. Last week over at Mobius Home Video Forum, I happened to mention in a post that issue #1 of PSYCHOTRONIC VIDEO was the only one I didn't have. Created by the author of the terrific THE PSYCHOTRONIC ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM and THE PSYCHOTRONIC VIDEO GUIDE, Michael Weldon, PSYCHOTRONIC VIDEO (or PV) has changed very little since I began buying it at a book store on the Strip in Carbondale in the late 1980's. Weldon's first book is one of the most important and influential of my life, as it opened my eyes to a brand new world of cinema, filled with biker flicks and Italian horror movies and rock 'n' roll musicals and rape/revenge potboilers and so on. It's not that I never knew these types of films existed, but I certainly didn't realize there were other people out there who watched them and loved them. And most of them were not very easily seen by a high-school kid like me, who grew up in a very small town at a time when home video was in its infancy. I started buying PV very early on, and then managed to pick up the couple of back issues I had missed later on, but #1 has always eluded me, partially because they're very expensive when one pops up at a convention or on eBay. It's now out of print; not even Weldon has one for sale.

When Steve read that I was missing that issue, he kindly fired an email my direction and offered me his copy free of charge, partially as an excuse to clear out the magazines collecting dust in his basement (I know what that's like). I've been a PV subscriber for many years now, and my collection is now complete. Thanks, Steve! I'm eternally grateful.

What have I been reading lately? I recently finished THE ERECTION SET, Mickey Spillane's 1972 novel that is apparently one of his most ambitious and atypical. This was my first Spillane novel, even though I have several others, including some Mike Hammers, stacked up around here. It has more talk than action...more talk than sex even, although the sex talk is surprisingly raunchy, including a few anal sex references that you don't see James Patterson's or Jonathan Kellerman's characters engaging in. I also understand that Spillane married the sexy blonde posing on the cover. Nice. I didn't really think much of THE ERECTION SET, but I'm willing to give Spillane more chances. I'll probably tackle a few Mike Hammer adventures one day soon.

I also read THE WOLFEN by Whitley Strieber. I picked that up at the same garage sale where I got the Spillane book. It's not a very good novel with unnatural dialogue and unbelievable characters. It was turned into a visually arresting but equally disappointing movie a few years later called WOLFEN with Albert Finney. It's been awhile since I saw WOLFEN, and even then it was a pan-and-scan version, so I plan to Netflix the DVD and see if it works better in its original aspect ratio. It was directed by Michael Wadleigh, who made the brilliant WOODSTOCK documentary, which was released in 1970, and 1981's WOLFEN. And that's it. I don't know why he didn't make more films. Even though WOLFEN isn't all that great, it still has some interesting ideas and is worth seeing at least once. In fact, I wish you would watch it, so you can explain the ending to me.

The Elusive Robert Denby
Now Playing: RIDING WITH DEATH
What an up-and-down night it's been. Started off well. My new DSL modem arrived from SBC Yahoo. Yep, after about eight years of free dial-up Internet service, I'm finally moving into the 21st century. The reason I've been so hesitant to get DSL is because I have never in my life paid a single penny for Internet service.

When I was a DJ at WKIO, a local ISP called Sol Tec bought commercial time from us and also helped design our Web site. Part of the deal was that all the station's employees got free Internet. Eventually, the station was sold and the new owners dropped Sol Tec for a different ISP for the station's new site. But Sol Tec never got around to dropping my Internet account. Until they did.

Someone from Sol Tec called me about five years ago and informed me that I was going to have to start paying for my account. I said fine and told them to bill me. I never heard from them. A few months ago, I spoke to someone else from Sol Tec who was stunned to learn that I still had an account with them. I think my records were buried in some underground vault...they didn't even know I existed. Again, she said, "We'll have to start charging you a monthly fee." I said, OK, send me a bill. Nobody ever did. To this day, I've been signing on and off using Sol Tec as my ISP and I have never given them a dime.

I can't believe SBC Yahoo charges people $150 to install a DSL modem. It takes just a few minutes, and if I can do it, then just about anyone can. I'm still having troubles with my email though. Does anyone else use Mozilla Thunderbird as their client email? I'm not able to send or receive email using my new sbcglobal.net email address, although I think the problem lies with SBC and not Thunderbird and should be cleared up by tomorrow.

After that GEMINI MAN post earlier this week, I was reminded of the RIDING WITH DEATH episode of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000. RIDING WITH DEATH was a "movie" formed by editing together two GEMINI MAN episodes that had nothing to do with each other and selling it on home video and into syndication as a two-hour feature. The episodes were bad enough originally, but Universal decided to string them together using some incomprehensible and poorly constructed wraparound material that really has to leave your head shaking. It does make for hilarious viewing, however, and the riffs during RIDING WITH DEATH were terrific, making me laugh out loud more than once. That Ben Murphy is really mellow, man.

I learned tonight that a friend passed away this morning. We don't yet know why, only that she was found at home this morning by her sister when she didn't show up at work. She was very young, in her early 40's, and was in good health as far as anyone knows. It appears to have been a sudden heart attack or an aneuryism, perhaps--something immediate. She and I have known one another since 1986, and I know from the many friends we share with whom I spoke tonight that she is already missed.

He's A Cop, She's An Agent
Now Playing: MURDER AT 1600
Don’t ask me how I’ve managed to miss this loopy thriller up to now, but 1997’s MURDER AT 1600 is one of the most delightfully bad movies I’ve seen in awhile. It has a delicious premise—sexy young woman is found murdered in a White House restroom—and an oddball cast of supporting actors that may have been picked at random from a casting director’s “old white guys” binder. Under the direction of schlockmeister Dwight Little, the action scenes are serviceable and the pacing flows well…so well that you might occasionally forget how ludicrous the plot is.

Wesley Snipes stars as Harlan Regis (!), a Washington, D.C. homicide detective (a part reportedly earmarked for Bruce Willis) who is summoned to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to investigate a murder. A beautiful young blonde is found stabbed to death in the White House, and a janitor is quickly arrested. Of course, he couldn’t be the killer, because he isn’t played by a name actor (and the movie would be over), but Regis’ attempts to look into the victim’s personal life are stonewalled by the Secret Service. Daniel Benzali (MURDER ONE) portrays the head of the Secret Service, and Alan Alda (M*A*S*H) is the President’s National Security Advisor. We know this because there’s actually a scene where the two men say to each other, “I run the Secret Service.” “And I’m the National Security Advisor.” Obviously, the two men know this already, but, as if they realize they’re being watched by an audience, they graciously introduce themselves for us.

Also here is Diane Lane as Nina Chance, apparently the only non-sinister Secret Service agent on staff. Little establishes early on that Nina won an Olympic gold medal in sharpshooting—no prize for guessing whether that skill comes into play later on. The Presidential-looking Ronny Cox (ROBOCOX) plays the wimp Chief Executive, who refuses to send U.S. troops into North Korea to rescue American hostages, against the wishes of his entire staff and Cabinet. The strangest casting choice is Dennis Miller, who spent the mid-1990’s popping up in mainstream movies as the wisecracking best pal/sacrificial lamb that you knew was going to end up dead or maimed by the end of the movie. Here he’s Steve Stengel, Wesley’s partner who spends most of his time sleeping or watching TV while Snipes is out investigating the murder. Miller’s job is to fill in extraneous plot information and to get shot, giving the hero a personal motive to solve the case.

Perhaps the film’s wackiest scene takes place in Snipes’ apartment. It’s established that Wesley is a history buff who has built a huge scale model of 19th-century Washington, D.C. that takes up his entire living room. Again, no prize for guessing that this unusual skill will eventually come into play. He comes home one night and notices a couple of his little figures have fallen to the floor. Hmmm, how could that have happened? Then he finds a bolt on the floor. He looks up to see a heating grid in the ceiling. This ceiling is very high off the floor, and as we see in a later scene, can only be reached by ladder. Wesley figures there must be a prowler in his pad, so he pulls his piece and wanders around. In the bedroom, he sees an open window and wet footprints (it’s raining out) leading away from it. He follows the prints into the bathroom and is ambushed by the burglar, leading to a fight and a chase. The intruder was sent by the Secret Service to bug Wesley’s apartment, but the absurdity of the scene—never mind that the guy could never have reached the vent and that he sure did a terrible job of covering his tracks—lies in the footprints. So what happened? The guy heard Wesley and started to leave via the window? Stepped outside, then changed his mind, came back in, and hid in the bathroom, leaving an easy trail for Snipes to follow?

The writing gets even more howlingly funny, as we find out that the White House is accessible through secret underground passages built by Abraham Lincoln as a potential escape route from invading Confederate troops. The killer turns out to be the one character not an obvious red herring, as they always are in these films. The killer’s motive is completely ridiculous, as the murder is revealed to be just one part of an elaborate Goldbergian scenario that would require an enormous amount of planning—off the top of your head, you can probably think of a dozen easier ways the character could achieve the same ultimate goal. And the climax is revealed to be completely senseless, if you think about it. There’s no reason Snipes and Lane have to risk their lives the way they do; like the killer, there are a dozen ways they could successfully achieve their mission that are safer and easier.

It's not quite in COLOR OF NIGHT territory as far as its badness goes--what could be?--but it's still damn funny.

Talking Robots Kick Ass
Now Playing: GEMINI MAN
My GEMINI MAN reference in my previous post reminded me that I had some episodes of that 1976 TV series around someplace. GEMINI MAN aired only five times on NBC in the fall of ‘76 before it was cancelled. Eleven episodes were shot, which were later aired in syndication and on the Sci-Fi Channel. Several years ago, I taped a mini-marathon of six GEMINI MAN episodes on Sci-Fi, but never watched them. Who knows if this shortlived series will ever see a DVD release (doubtfully) or be telecast on TV again, so I transferred my (cut for more commercials) Sci-Fi episodes to DVD-R.

GEMINI MAN should have been better, considering the talented men who brought it to the screen. It was created for television by Leslie Stevens, who created the magnificent OUTER LIMITS anthology of the early 1960’s; Harve Bennett, who produced many entertaining shows, such as RICH MAN, POOR MAN and THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN; and a young Steven Bochco, who had gotten his start as the story editor on COLUMBO (and contributing one of its finest episodes, “Murder By the Book”, which was directed by an even younger Steven Spielberg). Bochco had also produced THE INVISIBLE MAN, a shortlived series for NBC in 1975 that failed after just a few episodes, but was undoubtedly the inspiration for GEMINI MAN.

THE INVISIBLE MAN starred David McCallum (THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.) as Dr. Daniel Westin, a scientist who discovered an invisibility formula. He tested it on himself, but was unable to make himself visible again. So he created a remarkably lifelike mask, hands and wig that he wore to make himself appear normal, and became an agent for the KLAE Corporation, a government thinktank. At KLAE, he was assisted by a pretty doctor (Melinda Fee) and worked for gruff, middle-aged Walter Carlson (Craig Stevens of PETER GUNN).

THE INVISIBLE MAN was cancelled in January 1976 after 13 weeks, but in March of that year, NBC telecast GEMINI MAN, a 90-minute pilot that starred Ben Murphy (ALIAS SMITH AND JONES) as Sam Casey, another agent for a government thinktank, this time called Intersect. On an underwater mission, Casey was caught in an explosion and rendered invisible through mysterious radiation. Another pretty doctor (Katherine Crawford) came up with a super wristwatch that made him visible again, but only when it was attached to his wrist. By pressing a button on the watch, Sam could make himself invisible again, but only for up to 15 minutes during a 24-hour period. Under the watchful eye of gruff, middle-aged boss Leonard Driscoll (William Sylvester, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY), Sam used his invisibility powers to undertake secret missions for Intersect. As you can see, THE INVISIBLE MAN and GEMINI MAN were exactly the same show, and I wouldn’t even be surprised if unused scripts for INVISIBLE MAN turned up as GEMINI MAN episodes, especially considering both were produced by Universal Television for NBC.

I have a weird attraction for stupid-looking robots, and GEMINI MAN delivers big time in its episode, “Minotaur”, one of the few episodes that were actually seen on NBC. Ross Martin (THE WILD, WILD WEST) guest-stars as Carl Victor, a mad scientist and vengeful ex-employee of Intersect who builds a killer robot and demands $500 million from the U.S. Secretary of Defense or else he’ll use the robot, named “Minotaur”, to zap a skyscraper with its built-in laser and level it. To prove he’s not kidding, Victor lures Sam to an abandoned warehouse and uses Minotaur to blow it up. Following Victor’s daughter (Deborah Winters from BLUE SUNSHINE) to his secret laboratory, which appears to be located at the Department of Water and Power, Sam spends the episode dodging Minotaur’s laser blasts and sensor probes.

“Minotaur”’s story was co-written by Robert Bloch, a noted horror author whose book PSYCHO inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1960 motion picture. Staff producers Frank Telford (THE VIRGINIAN) and Robert F. O’Neill (QUINCY, M.E.) wrote the teleplay, and Alan J. Levi, who later replaced director Richard A. Colla during filming of the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA pilot for Universal, helmed the episode, which closely resembles a segment of THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN in terms of story, structure, look and tone. It’s not really all that great, but it does have a clunky-looking robot that talks and shoots lasers. So what’s not to love?

John Saxon The Pornographer
Now Playing: QUINCY, M.E.

I finished watching Universal’s QUINCY, M.E.: SEASONS 1 & 2 this afternoon, and one of the things I found so entertaining about it was its neat array of ubiquitous 1970’s guest stars. I don’t notice it so much in today’s television landscape--maybe there are more actors or maybe just more uninteresting ones--but you used to always be able to recognize several familiar faces as you spun the television dial. “Hey, look, there’s Monte Markham on GEMINI MAN, he was just on THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO three weeks ago.” I think using recognizable actors is an asset in an episodic television show. For example, with only 44 minutes to play with in today’s commercial-jammed landscape and maybe 50 minutes 30 years ago, the script has to take a few shortcuts in characterization. There’s no time to establish backstories for all the supporting players, but the moment you see Monte Markham’s face, you immediately know what his character is all about, because you’ve already seen him as similar characters in a dozen other shows. So when John Saxon pops up as a pornographer named DeCassa on a QUINCY episode--especially wearing the ghastly (but accurate to the period) wardrobe Universal dug out for him--the audience knows exactly who this DeCassa is and what he’s all about. I’m not saying that characterization, motivation and backstory are not important elements, but in a one-hour mystery series where the plot and the clues and the puzzles are the draw, shortcuts have to be taken.

This weekend, I caught the final two episodes of QUINCY’s second season: “”Valleyview” and “Let Me Light the Way”. “Valleyview” is a cornucopia of ‘70s guest stars: Robert Webber, Jason Evers, Carolyn Jones, Christopher Connelly, Anthony Eisley (and a young Ed Begley, Jr. thrown in at no extra charge). Universal must have blessed QUINCY with a decent budget for guest actors, because usually a show would get one or two of these names, but to get all five… Something else that hit me is that, with the exception of Eisley, all of those actors are deceased. “Valleyview” aired in 1977, which doesn’t seem so long ago, but I suppose it is.

“Let Me Light the Way” is interesting to watch in the light of what we now know about evidence collection and forensics in the wake of the O.J. Simpson murder trial and all the police procedurals now on TV, especially LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT. Quincy (Jack Klugman) is working with a rape counselor (Adrienne Barbeau, just coming off the MAUDE series) to capture a serial rapist (Luke Askew, another familiar face) who has killed his latest victim. Quincy breaks into a rage when he learns that the doctor and the nurse who treated the dead woman in the ER washed off her body and threw her clothing onto the floor, virtually ruining any opportunity to collect evidence. He has been trying to raise money for a seminar that would train medical and legal personnel proper procedures for collecting, bagging and tagging evidence from rape victims. This is pretty common in today’s crime dramas, and it’s fascinating to see how far law enforcement has come in 30 years. It seems hard to believe that, not so long ago, at least according to this episode, rapists were ten times more likely to get away with their crime than be convicted of it, mostly due to poor evidence gathering and courtroom procedures that allowed defense attorneys to cruelly badger the victims. Also in this episode is Kim Cattrall, long before SEX AND THE CITY. Long before PORKY’S, for that matter.

It’s a pretty quiet weekend around here. Taking some of my time is a new toy I acquired, inexpensive software called exPressit which allows me to create labels for my DVDs and their jewel cases. The instructions are pretty useless, so I doubt I’m using it to its full potential, but so far I’ve been able to download images from the Internet or scan in my own, and then use this graphic design program to slap it into a template, print them out, and stick them onto the DVD or into the case. Unfortunately, the software may have some kind of a bug, because it will occasionally freeze or slow down the computer to virtually a dead halt, closing other applications like my Thunderbird email or Firefox window and not letting me do much of anything for 8-9 minutes or so. Still, I have some pretty nice-looking DVDs on the shelf now, but it’ll be a big job doing them all.

The trailer for Michael Bay’s upcoming blockbuster, THE ISLAND, reminded me of a movie I saw ages ago on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000. It’s a low-budget picture with an interesting premise, and now that Mondo Macabro has released it on a Special Edition DVD, I put it on my Netflix queue. PARTS: THE CLONUS HORROR is about Clonus, a Utopian society populated by beautiful, bland white people and a bunch of doctors, technicians and security types who keep an eye on them. All of the young people have spent their entire lives isolated in Clonus and know of no other existence. They all have the same goal: to advance in their physical training enough to be allowed to leave the community and go to “America”. To be chosen to go to America is the ultimate reward. One of the citizens, Richard (played by Tim Donnelly, a regular on EMERGENCY! who also appeared in THE TOOLBOX MURDERS), begins to question authority, something none of them has ever done before. Using his newfound curiosity to snoop around Clonus, he discovers “America” is nothing more than a glorified meat locker where his colleagues are murdered, stripped and kept in cold storage. He escapes to the outside world and eventually discovers that Clonus is a clone farm, where human beings are bred scientifically to use as organ banks for the wealthy. Peter Graves (MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE), Dick Sargent (BEWITCHED) and Keenan Wynn add name value to this independent production, which was made in 1979 in 18 days for $257,000 by a former documentary filmmaker named Robert Fiveson. The story has a few holes in it, but there’s no faulting its ambition, and it was unusual in the immediate post-STAR WARS years to see science fiction films that relied more on ideas than visual effects. It was not a hit--the clunky title and the relative lack of exploitable material in the R-rated feature probably contributed to its anemic box office--but it is an interesting little film.

I bring up PARTS because THE ISLAND, judging from the trailer, appears to be the exact same movie. Young man grows up in an isolated community, falls in love with a beautiful woman, begins to question his surroundings, learns the ugly truth about his world--that he was conceived and nurtured to be used to harvest organs from--and escapes. Knowing Bay, THE ISLAND will probably be bigger, more expensive, louder…and dumber. And it’s unlikely the makers of PARTS: THE CLONUS HORROR will receive any kind of credit--not on-screen, not remunerable, and certainly not from the mainstream critics who will review it. So let me give the proper props at this time, granted that I haven’t yet seen THE ISLAND. THE ISLAND is a ripoff of PARTS: THE CLONUS HORROR.

I feel better now.

Don't Muck Around With An 18-Wheel Trucker
Now Playing: BREAKER! BREAKER!
Undefeated World Middleweight Karate champion Chuck Norris had established a franchise of karate schools and was teaching martial arts to Hollywood personalities like Steve McQueen when he got the bug to try acting. Small roles in drive-in flicks like THE STUDENT TEACHERS and RETURN OF THE DRAGON eventually led to his first project as a leading man: a shaggy AIP cheapie titled BREAKER! BREAKER! that attempted to cash in on the then-current truckin’ craze that erupted with the success of pop songs like C.W. McCall’s “Convoy” and hit films like SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT.

Chuck is appealing but very stiff as J.D. Dawes, a truck driver who enters the tiny burg of Texas City, California in search of his younger brother, who was waylaid by the town’s corrupt police force and held captive. Norris became more appealing as his screen career grew, but, of course, he never has loosened up much. In the inexperienced hands of director Hulette, who also composed the score and the country-western songs on the soundtrack, Norris kinda flounders about, following the story from A to B to C and barely registering against the eye-rolling bluster of George Murdock as Texas City’s venal boss. Not just the cops, but practically the entire town leaps when Murdock yells “Jump”, leading to some appealing scenes of Chuck running around the cheap-looking ghost-town facades masquerading as Texas City and thumping and kicking a succession of rednecks as if he were inhabiting a side-scrolling video game.

BREAKER! BREAKER! suffers from its small budget and uncertain direction, but probably still managed to make some bucks for American International on the Southern drive-in circuit. Norris learned from a steadier hand in his next production, GOOD GUYS WEAR BLACK, which was directed by veteran Ted Post (MAGNUM FORCE) and co-starred name actors like James Franciscus, Dana Andrews and Anne Archer.

On the personal end, I finally got my "new" car back from the shop today, $359 better, I hope. Took the new '94 Altima in for new bearings and a new axle. It's certainly a quieter drive than it was, and I don't have to worry (as much) about the wheel falling off while driving.

I also received my very first cellular phone tonight. I believe people generally need cell phones like they need a hole in their heads, and I don't really see any reason why I needed to jump on the bandwagon. When I'm out driving around or heading to work or hanging out with my friends or going to the movies or sitting in a restaurant, the last thing I'm thinking of is talking on the phone. People will come over to my house to socialize, and then start talking on their phones right in the middle of the living room. I have had groups over to watch movies, where two (!) people were having separate cell phone conversations without even leaving the room. That's inexcusable behavior, I think, and I have no desire to become one of those people. What I find really strange is that these phones all come with voice mail, so why do people feel the need to answer when it rings?

Anyway, my phone is a hand-me-down from my dad, who received it from my brother's wife. It's a prepaid phone with so many minutes paid for in advance. It's not very attractive and doesn't come with a bunch of bells and whistles. Or instructions--I felt like Bill Katt fiddling around with the menus. It charges in the lighter of your car, which is where I plan to keep it. One very good reason to have a cell phone is in case of an auto accident or breakdown or emergency, which is why I'll keep the phone in the car and maybe take it out with me if I need to stay in touch with somebody, like in a massive, crowded convention hall (Wizard World is coming up fast!).

I don't think I've sold out yet, but I'm closer than I was.

Have You Ever Been Kissed By A Woman Like This?
Now Playing: MESA OF LOST WOMEN

It’s a good thing I wasn’t feeling under the weather when I popped this into my DVD player; otherwise, I might believe I had dreamed the whole thing up in a sweaty, delirious haze. Quite probably one of the worst films I’ve ever seen, MESA OF LOST WOMEN plays like a jittery delight, an ethereal neverland where normal laws of logic and physics don’t apply. A land of midgets and giant spiders, mad scientists and genteel psychopaths, where the women are stacked and the audience is stumped.

According to Bill Warren’s essential KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES, MESA OF LOST WOMEN was produced in 1952, but not released in Los Angeles in 1956, during the period when the infamous Edward D. Wood, Jr. was flooding theaters with his peculiar style of cinematic ineptitude. MESA even feels like something Wood might have concocted on the back of a cocktail napkin in a dive on Sunset; in fact, the maddening musical score composed for the picture by Hoyt Curtin later turned up on the soundtrack of Wood’s JAIL BAIT. Once you’ve heard Curtin’s repetitive Mexican-guitar-and-pounding-piano opus, you aren’t likely to forget, as it drowns the picture in a cacophony of noise that sounds as though it were performed by a pair of monkeys locked in a junior high school band room. An interesting footnote is that Curtin ended up at Hanna-Barbera, composing themes and scores for some of the most famous animated series in television history, including THE FLINTSTONES, THE JETSONS, JONNY QUEST and SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU?

MESA OF LOST WOMEN stars Jackie Coogan (that’s right--Uncle Fester!) as Dr. Aranya (“That’s Spanish for spider!”), a mad scientist living atop Mesa Zarpa, perched 600 feet above the Mexican desert. For some idiotic reason, Aranya is attempting to breed humans with spiders in order to create a master race to do his bidding. For an even more idiotic reason, the experiments transform the men into mute midgets, whereas the women become sexy Amazons with long fingernails. Aranya summons a fellow scientist, Masterson (Harmon Stevens), to his laboratory in order to share his secrets with the scientific community. The results drive Masterson mad, however, and he is sentenced to a mental hospital and lobotomized. Somehow, he escapes, and shows up at a cantina, where Tarantella (steamy Tandra Quinn) is performing a steamy spider dance. Masterson shoots her and kidnaps a millionaire, his golddigging fianc?, his Chinese servant and Masterson‘s male nurse. He takes his captives to their airplane and forces pilot Grant Phillips (Robert Knapp) to fly them to Mesa Zarpa, where, uh, where not much happens, really. The nurse and the millionaire are killed (off-screen) by a giant spider, and the rest of the party ends up in Aranya’s underground lab, where Masterson recovers his sanity long enough to send Phillips and his new squeeze on their way safely, and then blow the lab all to hell, destroying Aranya’s mad dream and himself in the process.

All of this happens in about 68 minutes and is actually more compressed than that. MESA opens with a prologue that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie, showing Tarantella planting a kiss of death on an unassuming male victim, and then a bunch of incomprehensible narration written by co-director Tevos (who doesn’t appear to have made another picture) and delivered by Lyle Talbot (JAIL BAIT), another reminder of the Wonderful World of Ed Wood. Talbot rambles deliciously about “hexapods” and the perils of Muerto Desert--”the desert of Death.”

Although a handful of minor B-movie actors signed on to Tevos and Ormond’s lunacy, including Allan Nixon (PREHISTORIC WOMAN) and Richard Travis (Lou Gehrig in THE BABE RUTH STORY), the only performer you’re likely to recognize is Coogan, who later played the eccentric Uncle Fester on THE ADDAMS FAMILY. A very famous child actor, Coogan had not yet made many waves in his adult career, starring in an obscure syndicated series with the unlikely title of COWBOY G-MEN. He doesn’t appear to be enjoying MESA very much, basically walking through the (probably) two days he spent on the set. Sporting thick eyeglasses, a goatee and a mole, he almost looks as though he’s trying to hide, thankful for the house payment he was able to make that month because of his MESA paycheck. Coogan went on to appear in a couple of Albert Zugsmith productions, including the magnificent HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL as a drug kingpin, and even produced and directed an obscure espionage B-flick under his own Coogan Films banner before hitting it big opposite John Astin and Carolyn Jones on THE ADDAMS FAMILY.

Let The Revenge Fit The Crime
Now Playing: RAPE SQUAD
The late Bob Kelljan was a very good director of low-budget action movies and television shows during the 1970’s, in particular three vampire movies for American-International Pictures: two COUNT YORGA pictures and a BLACULA sequel (perhaps Kelljan became typecast in the genre, as he also helmed a STARSKY & HUTCH episode that guest-starred John Saxon as a killer who thought he was a vampire). Probably his most obscure film is 1974's RAPE SQUAD, an AIP sickie with a politically incorrect title and whiplash-inducing message swings between female empowerment and sexploitation.

Familiar television guest star Jo Ann Harris toplines as Linda, a lunch-wagon proprietress who becomes the latest victim of the Jingle Bells rapist (Peter Brown), an egotist in a hockey mask and orange jumpsuit who forces women to sing the Christmas carol while he assaults them. The police, represented by detective Long (Ross Elliott), are ineffective, so the victims decide to organize a “rape squad”, a vigilante group with a 24-hour hotline dedicated to capturing rapists, mashers, perverts, pimps and even obscene phone callers. They take karate lessons from diminutive Tiny (Lada Edmund Jr.), who teaches them how to crush a mannequin’s testicles with a baton. Soon, the newly empowered women are running all over L.A. at the drop of a dime, entrapping a sleazy club manager with an eye for Harris’ curves in a see-through dress and beating a street pimp with a habit of smacking around his girls. Naturally, ol’ Jingle Bells discovers the women’s game plan to crush his jewels and plots a return match.

Like many exploitation movies of the era, particularly those from Roger Corman’s New World Pictures that teamed up three stewardesses, nurses, teachers, etc., RAPE SQUAD tries to have it both ways: to offer strong, independent female characters in control of their own lives while still dishing out a healthy amount of nudity and violence against women. Rape scenes were frequently inserted into these films for their titillation value, as an excuse to provide its slobbering audience with a pair of bare boobs. Of course, if the film doesn’t show rape as the horrifying and indefensible crime that it is, it runs the danger of not providing the drama with a strong motivation for the heroines’ revenge. It’s a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario. Since RAPE SQUAD’s screenplay was penned by at least one woman (Betty Conklin and H.R. Christian receive credit), one can assume that the filmmakers were aware of the need to provide its rape victims (and the actresses who portray them) with a certain amount of sensitivity, while still paying strict attention to AIP’s commercial demands for boobs and blood.

Give Kelljan credit for handling the difficult material with aplomb, delivering a suspenseful and occasionally thoughtful thriller that may not have set the drive-ins on fire (RAPE SQUAD was re-released as the less incendiary ACT OF VENGEANCE, the title on the Thorn EMI/HBO videocassette print). Adding much to the film is Brown’s performance as the narcissistic rapist. Appearing in most of his scenes with his face covered by a hockey mask that predates the FRIDAY THE 13TH series, the handsome television star (LAREDO), who also played the heavy in AIP’s FOXY BROWN the same year, is positively sinister and sleazy, cutting off his victims’ clothing, brutalizing their breasts and compelling them to sing aloud (why “Jingle Bells” is never explained) and compliment him on his “lovemaking” skills. Harris, a beautiful brunette who began appearing regularly on TV in 1968, usually as a scheming vamp in episodic guest shots or as the lead in several unsold pilots (including the Jane Fonda role in a CAT BALLOU remake), gives an intelligent, sexy performance as Brown’s nemesis, a smart, self-sufficient small-business owner who risks her life--and, in an unusual twist, the lives of her friends--in her obsession with her attacker’s capture. She’s so good in the role that I was unable to accept her relationship with wiseass boyfriend Tom (Steve Kanaly, later on DALLAS), an insensitive, irresponsible ass not worthy of Linda.

Where RAPE SQUAD has really dated is in its portrayal of the authorities’ investigation. Statements are taken by male policeman who insinuate that the victim may have invited her attacker to rape her, and the medical examination is shown as a cold, sterile, clinically depressing exercise. Thankfully, laws have since been passed that make it easier and less embarrassing for a rape victim to report her crime. It would be interesting to see a contemporary remake; the elements for a commercial thriller are certainly there, especially the notion of five sexy young women kicking the asses of men, who all are depicted in RAPE SQUAD as being sexist thugs. Undoubtedly the Kanaly character would receive a personality transplant in any modern version, which probably wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Tony Young (POLICEWOMEN) appears as a date rapist who receives his just desserts from the “squad”, along with Jennifer Lee, Connie Strickland, Patricia Estrin and Lisa Moore as Harris’ fellow vigilantes. RAPE SQUAD was reportedly heavily cut when it was released in Great Britain as THE VIOLATOR, as are television prints aired on so-called “uncensored” cable networks. Like other unheralded ‘70s drive-in flicks like THE CANDY SNATCHERS and BONNIE’S KIDS--well-made, offbeat thrillers that are difficult to see today--RAPE SQUAD is worthy of a crisp DVD release.

Postscript: Subversive Cinema has scheduled a Special Edition release of THE CANDY SNATCHERS this August, a DVD certain to be one of the year's most anticipated.

24 Hours Of B-Movie Mayhem
Now Playing: 5+2=MISSION HYDRA
Poking around the Internet tonight, I accidentally discovered Ken Begg’s blog, Jabootu's Bad Blogging Dimension. Ken is the host of one of the ‘Net’s more interesting Web sites dedicated to Crappy Movies. Even though he doesn’t update it as often as I wish he would, and even though his politics are much more conservative than mine, I visit Ken’s Jabootu's Bad Movie Dimension site about once a month or so, usually to discover he’s posted a new review of something that either I’m dying to see or I have seen and must read Jabootu’s take on it. That means I have to set some time aside, because Ken likes to write. And write. And write. I’m still working on his THE TRIAL OF BILLY JACK treatise.

Ken also happens to be a nice guy and one of the sponsors of B-Fest, Northwestern University’s annual 24-hour marathon of Crappy Movies. Ken and I have traded several e-mails over the past few years, but have never met. And that’s entirely my fault, as he graciously invites me to stop by his row and say howdy at every year’s fest, yet I’m always too lazy or too hungry or too intimidated to make my way down to the “VIP” section where Ken and other sponsors and Web gurus hang out. He even offered to help me buy tickets for the 2005 event when it looked like B-Fest tickets might sell out in a hurry (and they did). It turned out I didn’t need Ken’s assistance, but I appreciated the offer and still do.

At any rate, I’ve added Ken’s blog to my list of daily Web sites to visit, and if you’re interested in Crappy Movies, you might want to stop by and check it out for yourself.

I posted about the 2005 B-Fest back in January when it happened, but if you’re joining us late, B-Fest is just how I described it above. You sit in a college auditorium for 24 consecutive hours, staring at the screen at some of the worst--and the funniest--movies on Earth. And there isn’t a lot of time to decompress after each one either, since there’s rarely more than one or two minutes between the end of one and the start of the next on the schedule. Plus, you’re not just watching the films; you’re also “riffing” on them MST3K-style, which is both part of the fun and part of the torture of the event. Especially when you’re plagued by the Gymkata Guys. My first B-Fest was in 2002, when my friend Kevin and I were unfortunate enough to find ourselves about two rows in front of some guys who were among the loudest, most obnoxious and downright unfunniest riffers in B-Fest history. One of the films was GYMKATA, which let to constant cries of “Gymkata!” from the GG. Over and over again. Always punctuated with them laughing their asses off. So it was 24 hours of “Gymkata! Ha ha ha! Gymkata! Ha ha!”

Last year, Kevin, Tolemite (a veteran of three B-Fests now, one behind me) and I found ourselves in front of some guys who may or may not have been the GG. They sure as hell sounded like the Gymkata Guys, even though one of them posted here in January and claimed that he wasn’t at this year’s B-Fest. Usually the shouting trails off as the night goes on, culminating in PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE at midnight, which is an annual audience-participation experience along the lines of THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. After that is usually a blaxploitation movie, and the crowd normally settles down during the overnight hours, just sleeping or chilling out or sometimes leaving the auditorium to breathe fresh air in the student union. These guys, who I’ll call the Gymkata Guys, because I’m not convinced they aren’t, hardly ever let up, constantly screaming the stupidest, most inane “jokes” and then laughing their asses off. For instance, a horse would appear on-screen, and one would say, “Why the long face?” OK, not a bad pun. Now imagine hearing it every time that horse appears. Every shot. “Why the long face?”, accompanied by hysterical laughter like it was the first time they had ever heard it. The bright side is that the GG have contributed a few in-jokes to Toler and my viewing of Crappy Movies. I can always get a rise out of Tolemite by saying, “That makes me shudder” or “Just in case you wanted to know how the robot got up the hill” or “Get out of the car.” You all know somebody who is loud and pisses you off because he think he’s funny and he isn’t? Imagine being trapped with that guy all day and all night.

The GG aside, B-Fest is always fun. The organizers do a good job mixing up the genres, so if, for instance, you don’t like ‘50s sci-fi movies, well, a dumb martial-arts film will probably be next. Or a comedy. Or a Hammer horror film. Or something from Troma. The last few years, the students have programmed way too much ‘80s for a well-rounded B-Fest, although it’s hard to argue with the titles they’ve chosen, including DEATH WISH 3, BREAKIN’, BREAKIN’ 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO, NO HOLDS BARRED… Here’s what was on last year’s plate:

EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS (‘50s SF with awesome Ray Harryhausen visual effects)
THE APPLE (a stunningly bad futuristic disco musical by Cannon--one of the most notorious bad movies ever)
THE SWARM (hilarious ‘70s disaster flick about killer bees--”It’s on a completely different sonic level.”)
THE WIZARD OF SPEED AND TIME short (a perennial, this wonderful film is accompanied by the crowd lying on the floor in front of the screen and stomping their feet to the beat--I don’t know why, as WOSAT is beautiful as it is.)
PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (always at midnight and accompanied by flying paper plates and shouts of “Day/Night”, “Wicker/Rattan”, “Bela/Not Bela”, etc.)
BLACK CAESAR (badass Fred “The Hammer” Williamson blaxploitation--too good for B-Fest, really)
SEX KITTENS GO TO COLLEGE (terrible b&w comedy with hot stacked Mamie Van Doren and hot stacked Tuesday Weld that still manages to be one of my most painful B-Fest viewings)
DEATH WISH 3 (Goddamn, this Bronson sequel from Cannon kicks so much ass, it’s so terrible and hilariously funny--”Teeth!”)
PROJECT MOONBASE (I slept only one hour this year, and it was during this staid ‘50s SF movie written by Robert Heinlein!)
3 NINJAS: HIGH NOON AT MEGA MOUNTAIN (Hulk Hogan and Loni Anderson! And 3 kung-fu-kicking kids! Jim Varney! A radio control heli! Awesome!)
ROBOT MONSTER (very funny, cheap ‘50s SF about a robot/monster/ape/alien with a bubble machine in Bronson Canyon…everyone should see this once)
CLASS OF NUKE ‘EM HIGH (not bad for a Troma movie, but not so good for B-Fest in that the crowd can’t mock a film that’s already a mockery)
ADVENTURES OF NEEKA (a compilation of three episodes of the LASSIE TV series)
ICE PIRATES (Robert Urich in a ponytail pretends he’s Burt Reynolds in this smirky, tasteless SF comedy)
IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE (pretty good SF monster movie…it’s the movie that ALIEN ripped off)
BREAKIN’ 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO (yeah, it has a ten-cent title, but I defy you to not have a good time watching it--one dude even went on stage to breakdance during the movie…and he was good too!)

If you’re interested in B-Fest, read my blog entry from earlier this year and get more details of the fun, the exhaustion and the trip to Leona’s.

No Prison Ever Broke This Man
Now Playing: I ESCAPED FROM DEVIL'S ISLAND
PAPILLON was the obvious inspiration for this old-fashioned potboiler produced by The Corman Company, run by brothers Roger and Gene Corman. Everyone knows who Roger Corman is, I suppose--one of the most prolific and important independent filmmakers ever, a writer, producer and director of dozens of profitable exploitation movies during the 1950’s and ‘60s who started his own studio in the early ‘70’s, New World Pictures, which churned out hundreds of drive-in favorites until he sold the company in the mid-‘80s. But brother Gene was also a film producer of note with exploitation pictures like SKI PARTY and BEACH BALL and the mainstream adventure TOBRUK. The two brothers occasionally teamed up to make pictures, including this R-rated drive-in number with a great exploitative title.

I ESCAPED FROM DEVIL’S ISLAND was also one of the last features directed by William Witney, who made Republic’s best serials in the 1930’s and ‘40s, like SPY SMASHER and THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MARVEL. Witney began as a film editor, a background that was very useful when he turned to directing and staging some of cinema’s coolest and most energetic fight scenes in his serials. This Mexico-lensed adventure has similar pacing, introducing the lead characters to a wild succession of obstacles in their flight from the titular island, including sharks, lepers, sex-crazed natives and corrupt policemen.

Set in French Guiana in 1918, former football star Jim Brown (THE DIRTY DOZEN) is top-billed as Le Bras, an individualistic black prisoner forced to endure intense manual labor and daily beatings by the brutal guards that are sanctioned by the one-armed warden (Paul Richards). Teaming up with a pair of gay lovers, played by THE YOUNG REBELS star Rick Ely and veteran TV heavy James Luisi, Le Bras escapes into the surf on a raft sewn together from animal skins. Also along is Devert (Christopher George), a pacifist who believes the prison’s harsh conditions can be tamed through words. The casting of two-fisted George is an interesting idea that never really comes across; the RAT PATROL star is just too energetic and would have been really good as Richard Prather's pulp P.I. Shell Scott.

Backed by a pompous Les Baxter score, lots of violence and a touch of full-frontal nudity, courtesy of a randy Indian widow who wants Brown to take the place of her late husband (whom Brown killed), this fast-paced actioner is decent late-night viewing if you’re lucky enough to see it. It has never received a domestic home video release, VHS or DVD. I originally saw a cut, pan-and-scan print on Turner Classic Movie in the late 1990’s, but a nice uncut, widescreen version has recently aired on the VOOM satellite service. Brown’s career as a leading man was waning, but George continued to play tough-guy roles in television and exploitation movies (including real cruddy stuff like GRADUATION DAY and the amazing PIECES) right up to his 1983 death. This was originally a United Artists release, which probably means that Warners owns it now, which definitely means you can forget ever seeing it on DVD.

I've gone to the theater twice this weekend, which I haven't done in quite awhile. I used to go to the movies so much more often than I do now, sometimes two or three a week, but lackadaisical theater presentation, high prices, rude audiences, and a lack of interesting new movies mostly keep me away these days. Anything that catches my eye I will sometimes watch on DVD, like BE COOL (which isn't very good) and HOSTAGE, which is sitting in its Netflix envelope waiting to be watched.

This weekend, I caught LAND OF THE DEAD and BATMAN BEGINS and liked them both. LAND is, of course, the fourth in George A. Romero's DEAD series which started in 1968 with the landmark NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, a black-and-white horror film so powerful that it's one of just a handful of honored films locked away in the Library of Congress vault for preservation purposes. LAND is much different from Romero's earlier zombie flicks, likely the result of having studio backing, a mandated R rating (the earlier films went out unrated), shooting in Canada (Romero prefers his hometown of Pittsburgh) and a cast of name actors like Asia Argento and Dennis Hopper. Despite that, Romero managed to release what is probably the goriest R-rated film I've seen in a theater (either Universal greased some palms or the MPAA is just high) and an entertaining one. Plus, you'll see Tom Savini reprising his role from 1979's DAWN OF THE DEAD as the Machete Biker Zombie.

BATMAN BEGINS is a strong superhero film, although I like individual pieces better than the total sum. Christopher Nolan directs action scenes effectively like I can play shortstop for the Cincinnati Reds, but he and David S. Goyer turned in a surprisingly rich script, and no previous Batman film has attracted such a strong cast, starting with Christian Bale (SHAFT) as Bruce Wayne/Batman and including Michael Caine as butler Alfred, Gary Oldman as future commissioner Gordon, Morgan Freeman, Rutger Hauer, Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe, Tom Wilkenson and Liam Neeson as the main heavy. The only wrong note is Katie Holmes as the love interest, a Gotham City district attorney whom I didn't believe had ever held a law book, much less read one. I'm not really a fan of origin stories--I know Batman's backstory better than the filmmakers do anyway, and I don't really care where the Batmobile came from or who created his costume--and the fact that Batman doesn't show up until more than an hour into the film is a major flaw. However, it's certainly one of the best Batman films ever made, and is especially successful in its visual effects, wisely using CGI to enhance the action and not overwhelm it. I thought the relationships between Bale and Caine and Bale and Oldman were wonderful, and I hope they're able to grow in future films.

It's the action sequences that disappoint though, as Nolan films everything much too tight and cuts too quickly. Maybe that's what you get when you cast actors who can't fight, but it's hard to be impressed by Batman's stature as the world's preeminent martial artist when you can't see what he's doing or follow his moves. I'm not sure the film wouldn't have been served better by casting an actor who could fight and a director who's a better craftsman than Nolan. Personally, I'd like to see Mark Dacascos of DRIVE and BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF as Batman and someone who specializes in action pictures to direct him, perhaps John Glen, who made several James Bond pictures, or Isaac Florentine, who has made some whiz-bang direct-to-video action films that nobody has seen.