Now that I’ve finished reviewing the Friday the 13th series, I can finally take the time to make a few comments about a film that I’ve been meaning to review for a while here on the Shattered Lens: Herschell Gordon Lewis’s 1967 film Something Weird.
How to describe Something Weird? Well, I could tell you that it was one of the first films to realize that ESP, witchcraft, and LSD made for a potent combination. I could also point out that everyone’s favorite company — Something Weird Video — took their name from this film. However, I think the best (and maybe only) way to tell you about this film is to simply tell you what happens.
The film starts out brilliantly with ten minutes of vaguely connected and disjointed images. We start out with a close-up of a pair of legs that apparently belong to someone being chased down a city street.
Cut To:
Two guys practicing karate. One of them we will never see again. The other one is a doughy-faced guy named Alex Jordan (William Brooker). The one we will never see again explains to Alex that he’s not actually that talented when it comes to the martial arts. Alex looks annoyed.
Cut to:
Alex is fooling around with a blonde that we’ll never see again and who will never be mentioned again for the rest of the film. “You’re electrifying,” she tells him.
Cut to:
Some random guy is electrocuted by a downed power line. Cronin ”Mitch” Mitchell (Tony McCabe) runs over to help him and gets hit in the face by the same power line. He falls to the ground while a group of random people wander over. “Has anybody called an ambulance yet?” someone calmly asks.
Suddenly, there’s a man in a suit kneeling down by the two bodies and apparently, he’s some sort of medicine man because, while looking at the first man, he says, “I’ll have to call the coroner on this man.”
However, Mitch is still alive so he’s put into the back of a station wagon and driven to the local hospital. As we watch Mitch being pulled out of the back of the car, the camera pans up to the cloudy sky and suddenly, a narrator comes out of nowhere and starts rambling about “the sixth sense, ESP!” The narrator is also nice enough to let us know that Alex — the guy from the Karate lesson — is apparently a government scientist who is in charge of figuring out how to use ESP against America’s enemies.
This all happens in the first 10 minutes of the film and, unfortunately, the remaining 70 minutes of the film struggles to live up to the surrealistic brilliance of this little montage.
Anyway, Mitch is alive but now he’s got both a scar on his face and the ability to see the future. As one of his doctor’s puts it, “He’s a different man since the accident … cynical. Maybe even morbid!” Once he’s released from the hospital, Mitch takes to wearing a black bandana over the lower half of his face and becomes a professional psychic.
He finds a little success but, as we’ve been told, he’s now “cynical…maybe ever morbid!” However, things change for Mitch when he’s approached by a grotesquely ugly woman with a blue face and a cackling laugh. She explains that she’s a witch and she’s willing to restore his face but only if he takes her as his lover. Mitch reluctantly does this and his scars suddenly vanish.
Soon, Mitch is a celebrity, appearing on television. Everywhere he goes, the witch is on his arm. The rest of the world sees her as a beautiful woman named Ellen Parker (Elizabeth Lee) but whenever Mitch looks at her, he sees her in her true blue-faced form.
Meanwhile, there’s a serial killer preying on the woman of Jefferson, Wisconsin and the chief of police (played by Lawrence Wood, the man who gave the infamous “fire sale” monologue in Lewis’s Scum of the Earth) invites Mitch and Ellen to come help with the investigation. The government meanwhile sends Alex (remember him?) to the town to investigate Mitch and perhaps recruit Mitch into the service of his country.
Alex is, at first, skeptical of Mitch but then he sees Mitch exorcising a disgruntled spirit from a local church and he starts to think that Mitch might have some psychic abilities after all. Mitch might just need a little help and Alex is there to provide it.
Meeting with Mitch in the police chief’s office (and with the entire police force looking on), Alex produces two white pills from his pocket and says, “I have a drug here — LSD. Ever hear of it?” Alex proceeds to echo many real-life MK-Ultra conspiracy theories as he explains that LSD will increase Mitch’s psychic abilities to the extent that he’ll be able to catch the killer. Mitch replies, “I’ve never taken the drug before but I’ll be glad to, doctor.”
Well, needless to say, the LSD produces the typical cinematic red-tinged, desert-themed trip but it still ends with Mitch figuring out who the killer is. It also allows Mitch to understand that the killer is sane “98% of the time.” However, there’s a problem because now that killer is out to kill Mitch and Alex has fallen in love with Ellen, the blue-faced witch…
To be honest, Something Weird is not one of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s best films. Even by typical Lewis standards, the plot doesn’t make much sense and the acting is incredibly bad. Whereas other Lewis films (like Blood Feast) featured performances that were deliberately over the top, the cast of Something Weird comes across as if they were as confused while making Something Weird as the audience would later be while watching it. (However, it should be noted that Elizabeth Lee at least seems to be having fun in the role of the constantly cackling witch.)
However, I still love Something Weird because, unlike so many other movies, it actually lives up to its name. This is a movie that promises to be weird and that’s exactly what it is. There’s just so much to love in this film. Check out the way that Mitch’s “facial scars” never look the same from scene-to-scene. (At one point, the scars cover his entire face but, in the next scene, they can be easily hidden by a bandana.) Watch in amazement as the same set is used and re-used for almost every scene in the movie, with just the furniture occasionally being rearranged depending on whether the scene is supposed to take place in an office or a hotel room.
Ultimately, my love for this film comes down to the little details. I love how the ambulance at the start of the film is just an old school station wagon (complete with wood paneling) with a siren on top of it. Even better is how the police captain’s office is decorated with a faded pictures of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln that literally appear to have been ripped out of an old history textbook.
In the greatest tradition of the grindhouse, there is no other movie like Something Weird and, for that reason alone, it’s worth watching.
Just when you thought the coast was clear, I’m back with more Herschell Gordon Lewis! Between this little haphazard Lewis retrospective Lisa Marie Bowman and I are indulging in, and her exhaustively thorough, and highly readable, Friday The 13th series of recent days, Through The Shattered Lens is really becoming a gore-hound’s delight these days, isn’t it? Hell, even the music reviews around here lately have a bombastic and violent theme to them — Bathory? Hell, I’m impressed — Quorthon’s “Viking trilogy” is my favorite period in Bathory history, truth be told, and Twilight Of The Gods my favorite Bathory album, even though my all-time favorite song of theirs, Blood, Fire, Death appears on the album — well, Blood, Fire, Death. But it’s waaaaaayyyy too early for me to be getting this hopelessly sidetracked, isn’t ? So let’s get back to our guy Herschell.
Having spent my last visit here examining the alpha of Lewis’ “gore cycle,” namely Blood Feast, I figure now would be as good a time as any to take a look at the omega (not just of his gore flicks but of his filmmaking career in general, at least until Blood Feast 2 came along about 30 years later, but we won’t pay any attention to that — nor should you), namely 1972′s The Gore Gore Girls. Somebody a whole lot wiser than I am (though I’m not sure exactly who — truth be told, it was probably several “somebodies”) once said “if you’re gonna go out, then go out with a bang,” and this movie certainly makes it clear that HGL took that advice to heart.
Even by Lewis “standards,” the plot for this one is pretty threadbare — go-go dancers at a local (in this case “local” being the Chicago area) strip joynt are being murdered in downright awesomely grotesque fashion — faces smashed to pulp in mirrors before their heads are dug into, buttocks beaten and — uhhhmmmm — tenderized with a meat mallet before having salt and pepper added to the impromptu (and quite rare, it must be said) “rump roast” for seasoning, nipples clipped off with scissors to reveal squirting biological fountains of both white and chocolate milk, heads shoved into deep-fat fryers — clearly, Herschell’s pulling out all the stops on his way out. And just as clearly, he’s well past the point of even pretending that he’s taking any of this shit seriously. Not that he ever put much effort into such conceits in the first place, mind you, but in the case of this film it’s especially fortunate that his tongue was so obviously placed firmly in his cheek, because it really does help to take the edge off what, on paper at least, seems like a truly OTT-in-the-misogyny-department series of murders ( a well-placed subplot involving a local feminist group helps to lessen the impact, as well — even though said group’s inclusion amounts to little more than a red herring plot-wise, the surprisingly level-headed portrayal of them by Lewis comes at least somewhat close to an admission on his part that feminist critics of his work were probably right ). Think of this as Herschell doing what he did best — giving gore-lovers more of what they wanted than they could possibly have hoped for, while not-so-tacitly admitting that it was all crap, anyway.
Anyway, back to the story — this was Lewis’ one and only attempt at injecting a bit of mystery into the proceedings, and doing their best to sleuth out the identity of the killer, without murdering each other first, are the truly odd couple of gungo-ho (but hopelessly incompetent) reporter Nancy Weston (Amy Farrell), and fancy-pants private eye Abraham gentry (Frank Kress, who absolutely sinks his teeth into the role of the — ahem! — sexually ambiguous version of Phillip Marlowe and is, in true Lewis fashion, playing the whole thing not just for laughs but for hearty, full-throttle belly laughs from start to finish). Throw in comedy legend Henny Youngman (who must have been broke or something) as the ridiculously fast-talking owner of the strip club the unfortunate victims worked at, and friends, you’ve got a recipe for a winner on your hands.
To be sure, you need a strong (hell, a cast-iron) stomach to make it through some of the death and dismemberment on display here (all of which looks pretty darn good on the Something Weird Video DVD release of this film — they did a very nice job remastering the full-frame picture, the mono sound is good, and extras include, of course, a commentary from Lewis and, doubly of course, the “Gallery of Herschell Gordon Lewis exploitation artwork”), as the effects are, on the whole, somewhat-better-conceived than in the average HGL production, but there’s just no escaping the feeling of “the director’s not taking this whole thing too seriously, so why should I?” that permeates each and every frame of this film. It’s brutally honest in its intentions — “give the audience what they want one more time, rake up a bunch of money, and close the door behind me on the way out” is the best summation of Lewis’ aims here, and his willingness to have a few laughs as he says “thanks for the cash one more time, suckers” is just icing on the cake. Any movie that openly states that it’s proud that it’s over with (see the final screen cap below) is clearly imploring you to do anything other than take it seriously, and with that in mind, I gotta say, while The Gore Gore Girls falls absolutely flat in its attempt to wring anything like dramatic tension out of its poorly-thought-out (to be generous) murder-mystery premise, and while its absolutely appallingly brutal treatment of the female gender should be inexcusably offensive, and while it’s “fourth wall”-busting acting absolutely obliterates any chances the film might have had (not that it really wanted any) of being seen as anything other than a cash-in quickie, the fact is that it’s just about the most fun you can imagine having watching someone’s eyes being pulled out. And tits sliced off. And head deep-fried.
And that’s really the genius of Herschell Gordon Lewis in a nutshell, isn’t it? He could play you for a sucker, openly tell you that was exactly what he was doing, and make you chuckle at what a chump you were as you handed your money over to him anyway. God bless ya, Mr. Lewis — we could sure use more like you today. Thanks for this outrageous parting gift.
If there’s any exploitation director that deserves a critical re-evaluation, it’s Herschell Gordon Lewis. Over the course of two decades, Lewis dabbled in every genre of low-budget filmmaking and even invented one with his 1963 “gore” film Blood Feast. Many film critics tends to dismiss Lewis as being one of the worst directors of all time. I would argue that, far from being the worst, Lewis was a unique filmmaker who, working with low budgets and mainstream support, always managed to create movies that had their own unique cinematic aesthetic. Much like the great French director Jean Rollin, Lewis made dream-like films that — though initially dismissed for their lack of slick production values – have managed to survive the test of time and remain as interesting and oddly watchable now as the day they were first released. That certainly not the accomplishment of “the worst director of all time.”
(Add to that, the worst director of all time is Garry Marshall. Seriously, New Year’s Eve will be forever tainted, thanks to Mr. Marshall.)
Though Lewis is best known for his “gore” films like Blood Feast and the Gruesome Twosome, he dabbled in just about every genre of film. Last night, I watched one of his non-gore films, Scum of the Earth. Filmed in 6 days in 1963, Scum of the Earth was released at the same time as Lewis’s better-known Blood Feast.
“Only an alert society can protect itself from those who prey on the weak — the scum of the earth.” — Closing Narration of Scum of the Earth.
Like many of the classic grindhouse film, Scum of the Earth presents itself as a warning to mainstream society about the evil lurking just underneath the facade of normalcy. In this case, that evil is the “dirty picture” underground and the film starts with a montage of various “teenagers” selling pictures of a topless woman. I like to think that, with this little pre-credits sequence, Herschell Gordon Lewis establishes that Scum of the Earth is nothing less than a black-and-white, low-budget version of The Wire.
Much like The Wire and Traffic, Scum of the Earth goes from showing us how the product is distributed to showing us how and why the product comes into being in the first place. Mr. Lang (Lawrence Wood) is a cheerful man who spends his time sitting in a small office and sending out his henchmen, evil Larry (Mal Arnold) and the moronic Ajax (Craig Maudsplay), to distribute explicit photos of the innocent victims that he lures into his sordid web. (Indeed, they are truly the scum of the earth…) The pictures are taken by disillusioned artist Harmon (Thomas Kerwin) and most of them feature Sandy (played by Sandy Sinclair). It’s quickly revealed that both Sandy and Harmon hate what they’ve become but they’re both being blackmailed by the jovial Mr. Lang.
However, Sandy’s pictures are no longer selling as well so Lang offers her a proposition. Sandy can retire from the business if she recruits a replacement. For the rest of the 72-minute film, we watch as Sandy and Harmon recruit innocent Kim (played all wide-eyed and breathless by Vicki Miles) who desperately needs 500 dollars to be able to pay her college tuition. Oddly enough, that’s the same way I paid my college tuition which, incidentally, was a lot more than 500 dollars.
Anyway, Kim soon finds herself in over head because 1) she’s incredibly stupid and 2) she’s dealing with the scum of the earth. If Kim stop posing for topless pictures, she knows that copies will be sent to her kindly but slow-witted father. (“You’re the best father I ever had!” Kim tells her dad at one point.) Even worse, Ajax and Larry want to take some pictures of their own with her. Whatever is a girl to do!?
As a director Herschell Gordon Lewis has always struck me as being a bit of American Jess Franco. Much like Franco, he made film that can charitably be called terrible. Between performances that ranged from histrionic to living dead and a filming technique that seemed to mostly consist of little more than turning on the camera, it’s easy to dismiss Lewis and his films. It’s only on repeat viewings — after you’ve gotten a previous taste of the Lewis aesthetic — that you start to notice that quirky details and the occasionally inspired visuals that give evidence to the fact that Lewis does not deserve his reputation for being one of the worst directors of all time. Even in an admittedly lesser work like Scum of the Earth, there’s enough intentional strangeness to hold your interest. To cite one example, the villainous Mr. Lang appears to love toys and he gives quite a few of his evil speeches while looking down at two nodding bobble heads. As static as the majority of the film is, the final chase (in which two police officers pursue the portly Mr. Lang through a rather slummy strip mall) is a lot of fun to watch. The best visual in the film comes when Kim is posing topless for the first time and Lewis gives us a shot, from her point of view, of the oppressively bright lamps shining down on her and casting the rest of the studio into total darkness. It’s a scene that is full of genuine menace.
The cast is full of actors who will be recognizable to anyone who has seen any of Lewis’s other films. Out of the cast, William Kerwin comes the closest to giving an actual performance, bringing a real sense of sadness and regret to the role of Harmon the Photographer. Kerwin also appeared in Blood Feast, playing the dedicated cop who pursues the evil Faud Ramses who was played by yet another Scum of the Earth alum, Mal Arnold.
In Scum, Arnold plays Lang’s henchman, Larry. In 1963, Arnold was 30 years old and he looked like he was 40. However, he was cast here as a character who tells everyone that he meets that he’s under 17 and therefore, he doesn’t have to worry about going to prison for distributing dirty pictures. Or, as Arnold puts it, “Not me, Daddy-O! I’m a minor!” What makes this especially amusing is that in Blood Feast (which was, again, released that same year), Arnold is playing a character who is 5,000 years old. What also makes Arnold’s performance as Larry enjoyable to those of us who are familiar with Lewis’s cinematic career is that Arnold essentially gives the same over-the-top performance here that he would later give in Blood Feast. I kept expecting him to ask Kim if she wanted an Egyptian feast.
However, the film truly belongs to Lawrence Wood, who plays Mr. Lang with such an insane joy that it’s impossible not to root for the sleazy old pornographer. Whether he’s giggling as a toy monkey somersaults across his desk or he’s politely explaining why nothing is actually his fault, Wood appears to be having such a good time that it’s just infectious. Wood’s best moment comes when Kim expresses some reluctance about modeling for more pictures and suddenly, Mr. Lang starts to shout at her about how she (and all the other kids) are hypocrites. “You’re damaged merchandise and this is a fire sale!” he shouts as sweat streams down his face and Lewis zooms in for a close up of his mouth, “You’ll do what I tell ya!” Wood screams, “Do you hear!?” It’s a scene of lunatic genius that, in the best tradition of both Herschell Gordon Lewis and the grindhouse in general, comes out of nowhere and is all the more effective because of it.
For this scene alone, Scum of the Earth deserves to be seen.
So, last week, our newest contributor here at the Shattered Lens, The Trash Film Guru, posted his wonderful review of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s The Gruesome Twosome. Reading that review got me thinking about the unique cinematic vision of Mr. Lewis. Though I’ll be reviewing Scum of the Earth and Something Weird later on this week, I would like to first share with you one of my favorite scenes from the work of Herschell Gordon Lewis.
Below, in all it’s glory, is the famous Egyptian feast conversation from Lewis’s 1963 epic, Blood Feast. The caterer here is played by Mal Arnold, who appeared in several of Lewis’s films.
Hi there and welcome to another edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation trailers! Today, we bring you 6 trailers specifically made to appeal to audiences made up of hard men and the women who have to put up with them.
1) Phantom Soldiers (1988)
Let’s start things off with this trailer from the Philippines. I never thought I’d see a trailer as violent as the trailer for Massacre Mafia Style but then I came across this one for Phantom Soldiers. “You’re a hard man…but the answer is no.”
2) Megaforce (1982)
This appears to be the family friendly version of Phantom Soldiers. I always love how these trailers for obviously terrible movies always claim to be bringing “the greatest spectacle ever” to audiences. Myself, I want to find and slap whoever thought it was a good idea for the bearded guy to wear a powder blue headband while talking about how the good guys always win “…even in the 80s!”
3) The Junkman (1982)
I guess if families weren’t watching the bearded man in the skin-tight outfit and the blindingly blue headband, they were witnessing the “chase thriller for the 80s…JUNKMAN!”
4) Terror in the Midnight Sun (1959)
I’ve never seen this film nor had I ever heard of it until I came across this trailer on YouTube. But I think that our readers who happen to be creature movie fans will enjoy this one.
5) The One-Armed Executioner (1983)
All this exposure to grindhouse and exploitation films must be getting to me because I kept expecting someone to go, “That’s not my arm, baby,” as I watched this trailer. Agck!
6) She-Devils On Wheels (1968)
After all that, it’s time for some girl power, don’t you think? From director Herschell Gordon Lewis, who also directed the Gruesome Twosome. “This picture is not for children…”
Ask most people what their favorite Herschell Gordon Lewis flick is, and the common answers you’re likely to hear will be either Blood Feast, 2,000 Maniacs, or The Gore-Gore Girls, with the occasional vote for The Wizard Of Gore simply because it was mentioned in Juno, they saw it due to the fact that Diablo Cody gave it her “certified cool” stamp of approval, and they then proceeded to go no further in the “Godfather of Gore”‘s cinematic ouevre than that.
Fair enough. But for this armchair critic’s money, Lewis’ most fun — and most deranged (they usually go hand-in-hand with HGL) — work is 1967′s The Gruesome Twosome. The premise is pure genius, the humor is right up there at the forefront, and it’s as subtle as a hammer-blow to the forehead. What more could you possibly ask for?
Old Mrs. Pringle (Elizabeth Davis) is an eccentric yet hopelessly entrepreneurial senior citizen who runs not one, but two home-based businesses — a wig shop downstairs primarily catering to co-eds from the local college (yes, there was once a day when wigs were considered very hip fashion accessories by the under-65-and-without-cancer set), and a boarding house upstairs that pretty much rents rooms solely to — those same co-eds from the local college. It doesn’t take a seasoned exploitation viewer like myself or unobtainium13 vet Lisa Marie Bowman (who you can either thank, or blame, for getting me to start contributing to this site) to figure out at this point why Mrs. Pringle’s wigs have such fine-quality, completely-realistic-feeling hair, does it?
Well, okay, in case you’re slow on the uptake,the not-so-good Mrs. P.’s demented full-grown son, Rodney (Chris Martell), is taking the girls into the back room of the shop, scalping them, and then killing them — thus ensuring that their “room for rent” sign never has to come down, and that they never run out of wigs. And this is almost always shown in loving, close-up, excruciating, far-less-than-realistic detail. Truth be told, although Lewis had taken something of an extended hiatus from the gore genre he basically started single-handedly before returning to it with this film, he hadn’t been away so long that he forgot we wouldn’t have it any other way and he knew that his job was simply to deliver the goods. Sure, there’s a “plot” here of sorts — college student Kathy Baker (Gretchen Wells), a self-appointed “female James Bond,” starts doing the cops’ job for them and investigating the disappearances of all her classmates when one of her fellow residents of the all-girls’ dormitory doesn’t come home one night, much to the chagrin of her boyfriend, but as with any Lewis film, the payoff here comes primarily in the form of the ingenious set-up and the resultant heavy doses of viscera said set-up inevitably gives rise to — the rest is all filler.
And it’s the quality of that filler that sets The Gruesome Twosome apart. Whether it’s the truly hysterical conversation between two styrofoam wig-form heads at the beginning of the film (a scenario Lewis had to improvise quickly on the fly to pad out the runtime to 70 minutes when the original opening scene was inadvertently destroyed, thus making it a genuine example of necessity being the accidental mother to genius), or the extended slapstick-style sequence where Kathy sics the cops on the poor German- immigrant gardener/handyman who works at the school who just likes to bury bones for his dog in his back yard, or Mrs. Pringle’s constant back-and-forth (in her mind, at any rate) dialogue with her stuffed bobcat, Napoleon, the downright clever nature of the padding in this film marks it as a cut above (pun only somewhat intended) its contemporaries.
As is the case with pretty much every Herschell Gordon Lewis flick, The Gruesome Twosome is available on DVD from Something Weird Video in a “special edition” that features a remastered (and quite nice-looking) full-frame transfer, remastered mono sound, a full-length, and very entertaining, commentary track from Lewis himself, and the ubiquituous-on-these-things “Gallery of Herschell Gordon Lewis exploitation artwork.” Definitely an essential purchase either on its own or as part of the HGL box set that also contains A Taste Of Blood, She-Devils On Wheels, Something Weird, The Wizard Of Gore and The Gore-Gore Girls. If you haven’t got it, get it — and if you’ve got it already, there’s no such thing as a bad time to watch it again. Have fun — and don’t touch my hair.
First off, allow me to again apologize for being late with my weekly trailer post. I had some asthma issues that basically left me fairly useless on both Friday and Saturday. Still, better late than never. In this latest edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Trailers, we acknowledge some films that were NOT nominated for Golden Globes.
1) The Flesh Eaters (1964)
I just recently got this one on DVD but I haven’t watched it yet. Of course, I love any trailer that starts out with a countdown.
2) Beach Girls and the Monster (1965)
The star of the film (which apparently co-stars the Watusi Dancing Girls), John Hall, was briefly a star back in the 1930s. This was his attempt at a comeback film and he ended up committing suicide after it was released.
3) Blast-Off Girls (1967)
This film was directed by the infamous Herschell Gordon Lewis. I want to be a blast-off girl!
4) Monsters Crash The Pajama Party (1969)
I don’t own this one on DVD, mostly because I’m kinda scared that if I watch it, a monster will pop out of the TV screen and try to drag me off to somewhere.
Watching last night’s Broadway-themed episode of South Park got me to thinking about how much I love going to musicals, which naturally also got me to think about one of my favorite musicals: Brigadoon. Brigadoon is about a ghostly Scottish village that only appears for one day every hundred years. It was made into a film starring Cyd Charisse who is one of my favorite dancers of all time and who was also from Texas, just like me. I first saw Brigadoon when I was 10 years old and I immediately fell in love with the film and I’ve devoted a lot of time lobbying for various high schools, college, and community theaters to put on a production of Brigadoon just so I can be in it. Brigadoon is a pretty important film to me and, oddly enough, I have since discovered that it served as the basis for one of the most iconic drive-in films of all time, Herschell Gordon Lewis’ 1964 “gore film” 2,000 Maniacs.
In Two Thousand Maniacs, 6 people from up north (that’s a polite way of saying that they’re a bunch of obnoxious Yankees) end up getting stranded in the small Southern town of Pleasant Valley. The overly friendly and accommodating townspeople explain that this is the Centennial Celebration of the day that the original Pleasant Valley was destroyed by the Union Army during the Civil War. The Yankees are invited to take part in the celebrations and since they’re a bunch of condescending toadsuckers from the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon Line, they agree. Hilarity ensues as the citizens of Pleasant Valley proceed to celebrate with traditions like sack races, bluegrass music, and finding different ways to dismember Yankee visitors who aren’t smart enough to leave town. Since this is a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie, we not only get to see the dismemberments in full color detail but we also don’t actually care enough about the people being killed to be too upset at the notion.
I know that a lot of my fellow grindhouse film fans absolutely love Herschell Gordon Lewis and his own unique brand of exploitation cinema. Though I’ve enjoyed some of his films (Scum of the Earth and Something Weird come to mind) , I find Mr. Lewis to be more interesting as a character than as a director and I fear I might be too jaded to ever truly understand how “shocking” his gore-themed films apparently were. (Of course, I should also admit to the fact that Lewis was a very prolific director and I’ve only seen a handful of his many films.) That said, I think 2,000 Maniacs is probably Lewis’s best film and certainly the closest he ever came to making a film that actually felt like a real movie (as opposed to a gruesome home movie). The story has a nice sort of rural legend feel to it, the murderous town’s people are well-cast, and a few of the film’s death scenes are genuinely disturbing. (The barrel full of nails still makes me shudder and go “agck!”) All in all, this is a very effective, fast-paced little horror movie and an obvious precursor for all future menacing redneck films. Without 2,000 Maniacs, there would be no Straw Dogs but we won’t hold that against it. (Well, maybe just a little…)
Ultimately, 2,000 Maniacs is a film for everyone. Northerners will enjoy seeing the worst fears and prejudices of the South confirmed. Meanwhile, Southerners (like me) will get the pleasure of seeing a bunch of smug Yankees get chopped up into little pieces. It’s a win-win.
I just had to start out with this because it represents everything that I love about these old school exploitation trailers. It’s just so shameless and cheerful about it all. This film is from Herschell Gordon Lewis and it features ESP, a really kinda scary witch, and a random LSD trip. The title of this film also inspired the name of one of my favorite companies, Something Weird Video. (I make it a point to buy something from Something Weird every chance I get. My most recent Something Weird video is a film from the 60s called Sinderella and the Golden Bra. Haven’t gotten a chance to watch it yet but with a title like that, how could it be bad?)
This is actually a really, really bad movie and I think the trailer goes on for a bit too long but it does have a few vaguely effective moments – i.e., when Dennis Christopher stares at the camera with half of his face painted. Plus, you can catch a young Mickey Rourke acting a lot like Michael Madsen.
3) Monster Shark (1984)
Now you may think that since this Italian film was directed by Lamberto Bava (credited here as John Old, Jr. because his father, Mario, was occasionally credited as John Old, Sr.) and has the word “shark” in the title that it’s yet another rip-off of Jaws. Well, joke’s on you because, as they state repeatedly in the trailer, “It’s not a shark!” Even if you didn’t know this was an Italian film before watching the trailer, it wouldn’t be hard to guess. First off, there’s the dubbing. Then there’s the scene of the film’s main character wandering around aimlessly. (Most Italian horror trailers feature at least one scene of someone just walking around.) And finally, there’s the fact that this is yet another trailer that uses a sped-up version of Goblin’s Beyond The Darkness soundtrack for its background music. While I haven’t seen this film yet, I plan to just to find out who Bob is.
Originally, I was planning on including the trailer for a Ted V. Mikels’ film called The Worm Eaters right here but I reconsidered because, quite frankly, The Worm Eaters is one of the most disgusting, stomach-churning things I’ve ever seen. I’m going to wait until I find five other equally disgusting trailers to feature it with and then I’m going to put them all up under the heading: 6 Trailers To Inspire Vomit. Until then, enjoy a far more pleasant trailer — Van Nuys Blvd. This trailer rhymes! I’m tempted to say that I could have written it but then again, I only write free verse poetry. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Van Nuys Blvd.
However, there was a darker side to Van Nuys Blvd. and here it is: Vice Squad, starring Wings Hauser. Eventually, I’ll review this film but until I do, check out our new friend Trash Film Guru’s review.
6) Crosstalk (1982)
We’ll conclude with the only thing scarier than Wings Hauser in Vice Squad – a computer that has not only witnessed a murder but enjoyed it!
