Tag Archives: Daily Grindhouse

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Bits and Pieces (dir by Leland Thomas)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

You’re sitting down and you’re watching the 1985 slasher film Bits and Pieces on YouTube.

“The Bits and Pieces Murderer has struck again!” a television news reporter solemnly intones after a homeless woman finds a dismembered body in a trash bag.

Meanwhile, in a dark bedroom, a phone rings and wakes up Lt. Carter (Brian Burt), a balding man with a mustache.  He answers it and is told that the murderer has struck again.  “SHIT!” he yells….

A few blocks away, a sweaty man named Arthur (S.E. Zygmont) sits in a filthy basement, surrounded by plastic mannequin heads, half-eaten breakfasts, and flies.  He hears a voice telling him to kill and he says, “Yes, mommy…”

Down the street, in a club that appears to be populated largely by elderly woman, the world’s greasiest male strippers perform while a deathless song plays in the background.  Do you want/want my body/do you like it like that....

The next morning, college student Rosie Talbot (Suzanne Snyder) tells her mother about the strip club.  “I was surprised by the wide variety of the routines,” she says as her mom nods along.  Rosie says she never would have had the courage to go to the club if not for her best friend, Tanya (Sheila Lussier).  However, for some reason, Tanya is not answering her phone….

That night, Arthur has flashbacks to being abused by his mother so he kills again.  When the latest body is found, Lt. Carter receives that call.  “SHIT!” Lt. Carter yells….

The next morning, Rosie looks at the newspaper and sees a drawing of the girl who was found in the trash bag and she immediately screams because it looks just like Tanya!  She meets Lt. Carter who asks her if Tanya had any strange sexual proclivities.  “What type of sexist question is that!?” Rosie shouts….

Later, Rosie walks through a strip mall and runs into her friend Jennifer (Tally Chanel).  Rosie tells Jennifer about Tanya but then mentions that she did meet a really handsome policeman and that’s been the only good thing about her day.  “That sounds promising!” Jennifer says….

Meanwhile, Arthur lurks behind them, unnoticed despite his unwashed hair, his skinny black tie, and the look on his face that practically screams, “I am a psychopathic murderer and I’m stalking you.”  A random man bumps into Arthur and Arthur falls to the ground.  “Watch it, apple ass,” the man snaps….

A few hours later and Lt. Carter calls Rosie at home.  Carter tells her that this is a social call.  Would she like to spend the day at the beach with him?  That seems like a great way to forget about all the dead people who are piling up around the city.  “I’m really looking forward to it!” Rosie says….

Meanwhile, Arthur flashes back to his mother’s boyfriend forcing him to put on lipstick….

And so it goes.

There’s actually a pretty charming little story about this film.  It was told by a student who had just completed a film class.  On the last day of class, the professor announced that he was going to show the class an example of how “not to make a good movie.”  The movie that he showed was Bits and Pieces and the professor was the also the film’s director.  (For the record, the director also appears in the film, as the guy who calls Arthur an apple ass.)

Bits and Pieces may be a bad movie but it’s so amazingly inept that it becomes oddly fascinating.  The night scenes were clearly filmed at night, meaning that it’s often next to impossible to see what anyone’s actually doing for at least 10% of the movie.  In the role of Arthur, S.E. Zygmont gives a performance that’s so over-the-top that it bring to mind the “Egyptian feast” scene in Herschell Gordon Lewis’s Blood Feast.  (“You waaaaaaant to plaaaaaay….” Arthur hisses, at one point.)  As well, I don’t know if there’s many other movies out there that mix scenes of brutal murder with scenes of a middle-aged police detective and a young college student happily frolicking on the beach.  I guess brutal murder and intense emotional pain brings out the romantic side in some people.  The fact that the blood and gore looks real while everything else feels fake gives the film a strangely surreal feel.

Bits and Pieces is currently on YouTube, proving that even inept movies will live forever.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: The Cannibal Man (dir by Eloy de Igelsia)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Once upon a time, when the fascists still controlled Spain, there was a man named Marcos (Vincent Parra) who lived in a tiny house that appeared to be sitting in the middle of trash dump.  Marcos worked at a slaughterhouse and had a loving girlfriend named Paula (Emma Cohen).  Marcos wasn’t a mean person but he did have a temper.  Because he was poor and unedcuated, he was permanently on the outside of Spanish society.

One night, Marcos was out on a date with Paula when he got into an argument with a taxicab driver.  The argument escalated until Marcos finally (and accidentally) killed the man.  Paula thought that they should go to the police.  Marcos disagreed.  Eventually, to cover up his crime, Marcos strangled Paula in his tiny house.

Then, Marcos’s brother came by and discovered what had happened.  So, Marcos killed him too.  Then his brother’s fiancée came by and insisted on knowing what Marcos was hiding in the bedroom so Marcos killed her.  Then his brother’s fiancee’s father showed up at the house and started asking too many questions so Marcos killed him.

And soon, Marcos’s house was full of dead people.

Towering over Marcos’s house was an apartment building.  Living alone on the 13th floor was the handsome Nestor (Eusebio Poncela).  Nestor use to spend his days watching Marcos through a pair of binoculars.  Though he never knew what was happening in the house, Nestor still became fascinated with Marcos and his refusal to move out of his crummy house.

Eventually, Nestor befriended Marcos.  Though Nestor was wealthy, his status as a gay man in 1970s Spain made him as much of an outsider as Marcos.  Both Nestor and Marcos had reason to distrust and fear the police and this created a bond.  With Nestor’s help, Marcos got a hint of the life that he could have been living if 1) he hadn’t been born poor, 2) he didn’t live in the middle of a garbage dump, and 3) if his house wasn’t full of dead bodies….

In the late 60s and early 70s, European art films were often disguised as being exploitation films when they were released in the United States.  That’s certainly the case with this Spanish film from 1972.  The original Spanish title of this film was La semana del asesino.  In English, that translates to The Week of the Killer, an appropriate title since the film follows a week in the life of Marcos.  However, when the film was released in the U.S., it was retitled Cannibal Man, despite the fact that there’s not any cannibalism to be found in the film.

Regardless of what it’s called, the film itself is a surprisingly sensitive and well-done portrait of two outsiders trying to survive and find some sort of happiness under an authoritarian regime.  For all the murders that take place, the film itself is far more concerned with the friendship between Nestor and Marcos.  When Nestor takes Marcos to his health club and they share a dip in the pool, it’s a rare chance for both Nestor and Marcos to escape their problems.  It’s a nicely done scene, one that’s directed in such a way that you understand that this is one of the few times in Marcos’s life when he hasn’t been angry or scared.  Even he’s not sure how to handle it.

Director Eloy de Iglesia combines scenes that have a gritty, documentary feel to them with sequences that seem almost dream-like.  When Marcos kills his brother’s fiancee, the sound of the clock ticking in his house becomes almost deafening.  Vincent Parra plays Marcos as being an inarticulate man who often seems to be in a daze, as if not even he can believe what he’s done and what his life has become.  Eusebio Poncela is equally well-cast as the sympathetic Nestor.

Cannibal Man is a film that definitely deserves to be rediscovered.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Bait (dir by Kimble Rendall)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What happens when you take The Mist and combine it with Jaws?

Well, you’d probably end up with a movie that’s a lot more interesting than 2012’s Bait.

Bait opens in an Australian supermarket and it’s nice to see that supermarkets in other countries are just as bad as supermarkets in America.  Two teenagers make out in the underground parking garage.  A former lifeguard stocks the shelves.  (The lifeguard, incidentally, was previously traumatized when he saw a friend of his eaten by a shark.)  The sister of that friend who got eaten by a shark shops with her new boyfriend.  The store manager gives people orders.  Two masked men try to rob the place, which leads to shoot out with the police.  It’s just a typical day!

Until, of course, the tsunami hits!

Now, on the one hand, the tsunami hit at the perfect time because it kept the masked men from shooting anyone else.  On the other hand, the tsunami hit at absolutely the worst time because apparently, sharks can survive anything.  Not only is the supermarket flooded but now, there is now a giant shark swimming through the aisles!

Our survivors all scramble to the top of the aisles, where they find themselves stranded.  Not only is the water shark-infested but there is also the risk of being electrocuted by broken wires!  The survivors are going to have to set aside their differences and work together if they’re going to escape the deluge of sharks and bad feelings!

Of course, if you know anything about these type of movies, you know that a group of people can never set aside their differences and work together until at least a handful of them have been eaten.  At one point, our survivors attempt to escape by building a makeshift shark cage out of grocery carts.  That actually might not a bad idea but it just looks so silly!

Anyway, the main problem with Bait is that the film, much like the characters, has no place to go.  The idea of a shark invading a supermarket has potential but once everyone’s stranded on top of their aisles, the action slows down to a crawl and we spend way too much time listening to thinly drawn characters shout insults at each other.  The characters are trapped but, unfortunately, so is the audience.

I was actually far more interested in the couple that was stuck in the flooded parking garage.  Those scenes, of the two of them trying to figure out how to escape from their car, had a claustrophobic intensity that the scenes in the supermarket lacked.  Lincoln Lewis and Cariba Heine were fun to watch as they bickered with each other and debated who was more to blame for their predicament.  Perhaps because they were separated from all of the noisy drama in supermarket, Lewis and Heine actually seemed to be having fun with their roles.

Anyway, Bait is one of those films that tends to show up fairly regularly on the SyFy network.  It’s not a particularly good movie but it is a reminder that the cinematic legacy of Jaws will outlast us all.  To be honest, if the sharks ever get together and form some sort of anti-defamation league, the film industry is screwed.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Christina’s House (dir by Gavin Wilding)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

This 2000 straight-to-video film opens with a shocking and effectively violent scene in which an innocent girl scout is yanked into a dilapidated house and bludgeoned to death.  There’s even a slow-motion shot of crushed cookies falling to the floor.  It’s excessive, tasteless, and so ludicrous that it actually makes you think that Christina’s House could actually be, if nothing else, an enjoyably self-aware exploitation film.

Unfortunately, everything pretty much goes downhill after that scene.  The rest of the film deals with Christina (Allison Lange), a teenage girl with an annoying father named James (John Savage), an annoying brother named Bobby (Lorne Stewart), an annoying boyfriend named Eddy (Brendan Fehr), and an annoying admirer named Howie (Brad Rowe).  That may sound like a lot of annoying people for one person to deal with but Christina actually manages to be even more annoying than all of them.  Absolutely no one in this film comes across as being someone with whom you would want to be trapped in a murder house.

Anyway, Christina’s mom has been institutionalized in a Washington mental hospital so James, has rented out a nearby house.  (Naturally, it’s the same house where that girl scout was previously killed.)  James appears to be almost absurdly overprotective of and strict with Christina but it’s also possible that he might just be an asshole in general.  He’s certainly not happy that she’s dating Eddy, who is the local bad boy and who does stuff like hang out on the roof at night.  James would probably be happier if Christina was dating Howie, who has been hired to help fix up the house.  Howie’s so respectful and such a hard worker.  He’s a man who really knows how to handle a hammer.

Christina, however, has other things on her mind.  For one thing, young women are being murdered and the creepy sheriff (Jerry Wasserman) keeps coming by the house and asking strange questions.  Add to that, Christina sometimes thinks that she can hear someone or something in the attic.  Of course, every time that she tries to investigate, her father comes out of his bedroom and yells at her.

(It could just be that James doesn’t want his daughter spending her nights wandering around in her underwear and searching for a vicious killer, in which case James probably has a point.  Still, he’s kind of a jerk about it.)

Who is the murderer?  Is it Eddie, Bobby, or Howie?  Or could it maybe be James?  What if the sheriff’s somehow involved?  Well, don’t worry!  The identity of the murderer is revealed about an hour into this 90-minute film and it’s exactly who you think it’s going to be.

If not for the extremely odd performance of John Savage, this film would be totally forgettable.  Savage was the film’s “prestige” actor, a performer who previously appeared in films like The Deer Hunter, the third Godfather, Do The Right Thing, and The Thin Red Line before finding himself in Christina’s House.  John Savage attacks the role of James with all of the ferocity of an actor who has gone from co-starring with Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken to playing second fiddle to Allison Lange and Brendan Fehr.  Savage yells every line and glares at his co-stars with the fury of a man on a mission of vengeance.  As a result, both the actor and the character that he’s playing come across as if they’re always just one annoyance away from putting his fist through a wall.  James may be written as an overprotective father but Savage plays him as being a borderline sociopath.  It’s such a totally inappropriate and misjudged performance that it becomes oddly fascinating to watch.  It takes a great actor to give as entertainingly bad a performance as the one given by John Savage in Christina’s House.

With the exception of Savage’s over-the-top theatrics and Jerry Wasserman’s memorably creepy turn, the rest of the cast is largely forgettable.   The problem is that, as written, most of the characters are fairly unlikable and you really don’t care whether they die or not.  When the killer eventually trapped Christina and Bobby in their new home, I found myself more worried about the house than either of them.

Christina’s House is available on YouTube and sometimes, it shows up on late night television.  (I saw it on This TV.)  It’s pretty dumb but if you’re  fan of good actors bellowing in rage, you might want to watch it.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Hellmaster (dir by Douglas Schulze)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to the end of the world.

Or something like that.

To be honest, it’s a bit of a struggle to say what exactly the 1992 film Hellmaster was actually about but I think it definitely had something to do with the end of the world.  John Saxon plays Prof. Jones, a sadistic eugenicist who, in the late 60s, developed a drug that he claimed would — I kid you not — “cure homelessness.”  Apparently, the drug would make the homeless so strong that they would be able to build a house or something.  Anyway, a reporter (David Emge, best known as the helicopter pilot in the original Dawn of the Dead) discovered what Jones was doing and that the drugs were actually turning the homeless into mind-controlled zombies.  Jones responded by murdering the reporter’s wife and then vanishing.

Are you following the story so far?

20 years later, the reporter is having nightmares about the homeless so he decides to start hanging out around the Kant Institute for the Gifted.  We’re told that the Kant Institute is a college.  There only appears to be one professor and a handful of students, the majority of whom appear to be in their early 30s.  I’m not really sure what’s being taught at the school.  (The only class we see features two white people debating whether or not Malcolm X hated the homeless.)  One of the students, Shelley (Amy Raasch), is apparently clairvoyant and she keeps having visions of the school’s chapel bursting into flames.

Meanwhile, there are shots of an old church bus driving down various deserted roads.  “Have a nice day” is written across the cross that hangs on the front of the bus.  On top of the bus, someone’s painted a smiley face.  The bus itself is occupied by four deformed followers of Prof. Jones.  Apparently, they’ve spent the last 20 years driving around the country and killing people.  One of them is dressed like a nun and carries several hypodermic needles.  They come across a stalled motorist and promptly kill him.  The man’s daughter (Sarah Barkoff) escapes and flees to the nearby Kant Institute.

It turns out that the bus is also heading to the Kant Institute!  Eventually, Prof. Jones pops up and explains that it took God six days to create the world but Jones believes that it will only take him one night to transform the world into Hell.  Why does Jones want to do this?  That’s not really clear.  Actually, it’s not even clear how showing up at the Kant Institute will even help Jones accomplish that goal.

Anyway, the rest of the movie is basically Shelley and the reporter and a handful of friends attempting to not get transformed into zombies by Prof. Jones.  This is easier said than done because, as we quickly discover, everyone in this movie is an idiot.

Hellmaster is one of those low-budget horror films that shouldn’t work and yet somehow, it does.  Yes, the plot makes absolutely no sense and, with the exception of genre vets Saxon and Emge, the performances are almost all terrible.  But no matter!  At its best, the film — which is full of dark hallways and deserted roads and twisty camera angles — achieves a dream-like intensity.  The zombies, with their hypodermic needles and their joyful savagery, are genuinely creepy and John Saxon is properly menacing as Prof. Jones.  It’s a relentless film, one that leaves you feeling as if anyone can die at any time and, when they do die, it’s often in the most macabre ways possible.  A crippled student is beaten to death with his own crutch.  Another is doused with acid.  And you may be asking yourself, “But why was there a big vat of acid just sitting around?” but oddly, it works within the surreal dream logic of the film.  It makes no sense and yet, it happens.  If anything, the lack of a coherent plot and the low-budget aesthetic help this film create and maintain its nightmarish atmosphere.

For all of its flaws, Hellmaster is a thousand times more effective than you might expect.

The TSL’s Grindhouse: Survival Island (dir by Stewart Raffill)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the beginning, there was a yacht in the Caribbean.

Working on that yacht was a waiter named Manuel (Juan Pablo Di Pace).  Manuel was strong, handsome, and as sexy as a reality show participant.  He knew how to repair things.  He knew how to catch fish.  His job may have required him to serve margaritas to rich assholes from the United States but he always did it with an attitude.  Manuel was the type of arrogant working man who one would typically expect to find Giancarlo Gianinni playing in a Lina Wertmuller film.  Of course, Manuel is more interested in getting laid than leading a worker’s revolution.  In fact, just before setting out on his latest voyage, he broke up with his girlfriend.  She reacted by pointing at him and laughing evilly.  In a movie like this, that can only mean one thing: VOODOO CURSE!

And then there was Jenny (Kelly Brook) and her husband, Jack (Billy Zane).  While Jenny was the trophy wife, Jack was the American businessman who rented out the yacht for a fishing expedition.   Jack was arrogant.  Jack was outspoken.  Jack was convinced that he knew how to survive at sea, even though he didn’t.  He and Manuel took an instant dislike to each other.  It didn’t help Manuel’s cabin was right next to Jenny and Jack’s and that the sound of Jenny’s ecstatic moaning kept Manuel from getting a goodnight’s rest.

(Of course, another reason that Manuel was having trouble getting any sleep was because, at that very moment, his ex-girlfriend was dancing in a candle-filled room and apparently taking part in some sort of Santeria-related ceremony.)

Well, you can guess where this is going, can’t you?  Jack and Manuel have an argument on the boat.  Manuel gets fired and reacts by taking a towel and throwing it on a stove.  Soon, the boat’s on fire.  Jenny and Manuel wash up on the shore of an isolated island.  For two days, Manuel takes care of Jenny.  He catches fish for her.  He encourages her to swim naked in the ocean.  He yells at her, “You have a perfect ass, senora!  It’s shaped like a heart because God didn’t give you a real one!”  (If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that…)  Despite herself, Jenny starts to fall for Manuel.  Suddenly, Jack shows up on the beach!

Jack soon proves himself to be just as obnoxious on dry land as he was on the boat.  Earlier, Jenny and Manuel had buried the body of the boat’s captain.  Jack promptly digs the captain back up so he can get a change of clothes and some cigars.  Jenny is stunned that Jack would do something so gross.  Jack laughs it off as only Billy Zane can.

Soon, Jack is living on one end of the beach while Manuel is on the other.  And Jenny is stuck in the middle.  Meanwhile, Manuel’s ex-girlfriend is still dancing in that candle-filled room…

Survival Island is a movie that manages to both bad and brilliant at the same time.  In the role of Jenny, Kelly Brook gives a performance that hits so many wrong notes that it almost becomes a perfect example of outsider art.  When she should be scared, she seems to be mildly annoyed.  When she should be happy, she again seems to be mildly annoyed.  The script itself can’t decide whether Jenny is meant to be a noirish femme fatale or a repressed trophy wife.  Jenny never really comes to life as anything other than a plot device but I do have to admire the fact that, even after a shipwreck and several days on a desert island, her makeup was always perfect and her hair was always clean.  Still, considering that the film revolves around her, Jenny is a surprisingly insubstantial character.

Fortunately, the fact that Jenny is such a poorly written character almost doesn’t matter.  What does matter is that Billy Zane is in this movie and he’s exactly the type of shameless, over-the-top performer that this story needs.  There’s nothing subtle about Zane’s performance.  Jack talks to himself.  Even before they end up fighting over Jenny, Jack is always glaring at Manuel.  When he manages to catch something to eat, Jack breaks out into a wonderfully self-satisfied grin and when he suspects that Jenny may have cheated on him, he pouts like a child who has just been informed that his favorite toy was donated to the Goodwill while he wasn’t looking.  Jack’s the type of character who has a snarky comment about everything and Billy Zane is one of those actors who definitely knows how to deliver a sarcastic line or two.  Jack may be a jerk but so what?  He’s an American jerk so, as an American film reviewer, I’m required to be on his side.  Once Jack — and Billy Zane — loses it and goes crazy on that island, nothing else matters.  On the basis of Billy Zane’s presence alone, the film is a guaranteed a certain immortality.  Indeed, the main conflict in Survival Island isn’t between Jack and Manuel.  Instead, it’s between a film that takes itself seriously and a star who does not.

That’s really what makes Survival Island into such a slyly (if, perhaps, unintentionally) subversive film.  The movie may think that it has something to say about class, relationships, and sex but Billy Zane is always on hand to announce,, “No, this is all about watching me go batshit crazy on an island!  That’s all that matters!”  Just as how Jenny must choose between Jack and Manuel, the viewer is forced to choose between taking the movie seriously or just enjoying Billy Zane at his zaney best.

I have a feeling that most people will go with the latter.

In the UK, Survival Island was released as Three.

The TSL’s Grindhouse: Clown (dir by Jon Watts)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Clown, a gory horror film, sucks.

I can’t say that I was particularly surprised to discover that it sucked but still, I was hoping that it would be better than it turned out to be.  That’s largely because the film itself has a fairly compelling backstory.  In 2010, director Jon Watts and his co-writer, Christopher D. Ford, uploaded a fake trailer for Clown to YouTube, in which they stated that the film would be produced by Eli Roth.  Roth saw the trailer and was so impressed that he actually did decide to produce the film.

Filming began in 2010 and the film spent a while playing the festival circuit, where it got the type of vaguely respectable reviews that are usually given to low-budget horror films made by amateur filmmakers that no one is ever expecting to hear from again.  In 2012, Dimension Films and FilmNation Entertainment acquired the rights to distribute Clown.  What followed was an agonizing wait as Clown was basically released in almost every other country in the world. except for the USA.  In fact, it wouldn’t be until 2016 that Clown would get an American release.  During that time, Jon Watts received deserved acclaim for directing Cop Car and he was hired by Marvel to direct Spider-Man: Homecoming.

As an admirer of Watts’s subsequent films, I was really interested in seeing Clown.  So, yesterday afternoon, I sat down and I watched Clown on Netflix.

Clown is the story of a stupid guy named Kent McCoy (Andy Powers) who tries to save his son’s birthday party by dressing up like a clown.  What Kent doesn’t know is that the clown makeup is cursed and that, by putting it on, he’s now allowed himself to be possessed by a demon that feeds on children!  What a dumbass!  Kent tries to wash the makeup off his face but it won’t come off.  He tries to take off his rainbow wig, just to discover that it’s now permanently attached to scalp.  His wife uses a screw driver to try to pop off the red nose but, instead, she just rips his real nose to pieces.  (The family dog eats the red nose and promptly becomes possessed.)  Kent keeps telling everyone that he’s been possessed by a demon but no one believes him.  Everyone just thinks that he’s a weirdo in clown makeup.

It sounds more interesting than it is.  For all the promise in the idea of a possessed clown, Clown doesn’t do much with it.  Clown is 90 minutes long but it only has enough plot for 30 minutes.  The remaining hour is basically made up of characters repeating what we already know.  We watch as Kent learns that the clown makeup is cursed.  Then, we have to follow his wife as she does her own research and discovers that the clown makeup is cursed.  Then, Peter Stomare shows up and starts explaining to everyone that the clown makeup is cursed.  By this point, I was yelling at the screen, “I KNOW THIS ALREADY!”

Throughout the film, there are hints of the Jon Watts’s talent but, for the most part, they remain merely that.  There’s an effective scene that takes place in a jungle gym at Chuck-E-Cheese’s and occasionally, there will be a line of dialogue or a movement of the camera that actually lives up to the plot’s subversive potential.  However, especially when compared to Cop Car and Spider-Man, Clown is an abysmally paced film.  It’s also terribly acted with Andy Powers neither sympathetic nor compelling as the possessed man in clown makeup.  Not even a reliable character actor like Peter Stomare can bring much to the material.

The general rule of most horror films is that, no matter what the threat, dogs and children usually survive.  The film not only breaks that rule but it breaks it multiple times.  In fact, there’s so much blood spilled in the film that I actually found myself getting depressed watching it.  Lacking both a satiric edge and any real interest in subverting the horror genre, Clown instead comes across as being unnecessarily mean-spirited.  It’s just not much fun to watch.

When it comes to killer clowns, stick with Pennywise.

Celebrate Roger Corman’s Birthday With These 12 Trailers!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Roger Corman in The Godfather Part II

Today is a very special day!  It’s Roger Corman’s 92nd birthday!

Here at the Shattered Lens, we traditionally celebrate this day with a special edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film Trailers!  Below, you’ll find the trailers for 12 films that were either directed by,  produced by, or distributed by the legendary Roger Corman!

  1. Five Guns West (1955)

This western was the first film that Roger Corman was credited with directing.

2. The Day The World Ended (1955)

Though Corman worked in almost every type of film genre imaginable, he’s probably best remembered for his science fiction and horror films.  This was one of the first of them.

3. Machine Gun Kelly (1958)

Along with westerns and sci-fi films, Corman also directed several gangster classics.  Machine Gun Kelly is remembered as one of his best.

4. The Intruder (1962)

Corman was an exploitation filmmaker with a conscience.  At a time when other films were avoiding social issues, Corman dove right in with challenging films like The Intruder.

5. The Terror (1963)

Corman was famous for his ability to spot new talent.  His 1963 film The Terror starred a then unknown actor named Jack Nicholson.

6. The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

In the 60s, Corman was also well-known for his Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, the majority of which starred Vincent Price.  With these colorful and flamboyant films, Corman showed himself to be a pop artist at heart.

7. Boxcar Bertha (1972)

In the 70s, Corman moved away from directing and focused on producing.  His ability to spot talent undiminished, Corman helped to launch the careers of the some of the important directors of all time.  In 1972, he hired a young director named Martin Scorsese to direct Boxcar Bertha.

8. Cries and Whispers (1973)

While Corman was producing exploitation films, he was also distributing “difficult” foreign-language films that might otherwise have never been seen in an American theater.  In 1973, he distributed this classic Ingmar Bergman film.  Cries and Whispers was nominated for best picture of the year, losing to The Sting.

9. Caged Heat (1974)

Jonathan Demme was another director who got his start directing Corman-produced films like Caged Heat.  Demme would later thank Corman by casting him in several of his films, including the 1991 Best Picture winner, The Silence of the Lambs.

10. Piranha (1978)

Piranha was one of Corman’s biggest hits as a producer.

11. Carnosaur (1993)

With Carnosaur, Corman showed that you didn’t need a lot of money to bring dinosaurs back to life.

12. Dinocroc vs Supergater (2010)

Corman has continued to produce films in the 21st century.  Films like Dinocroc vs Supergator not only won him legions of new fans but they also paved the way for films like Sharkando.

Happy birthday, Roger Corman!

The TSL’s Grindhouse: Gor (dir by Fritz Kiersch)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1987 film Gor opens with a nerdy college professor (played by Urbano Barberini, of Demons and Opera fame) giving perhaps the worst lecture in the history of underwhelming lectures.  The professor explains that there is a counter-earth, a place that he claims is known as Gor.  Gor shares the same orbit as Earth but it’s linearly opposed to Earth, which apparently makes it impossible to see.  However, the professor says that his father gave him a ring which can transport the user to Gor.  The only problem is that the professor has not figured out how to use the ring.

The students all look incredibly bored with the lecture and I don’t blame them.  Not only does the professor seem to be rambling but he doesn’t even offer up any visual aides.  He could have at least utilized a powerpoint presentation or something.  Instead, his only teaching aide is a whiteboard on which he’s written “counter-earth.”  I have to wonder what their final exam is going to look like.  “True or false.  Your professor is a freaking loon.”

(I found myself wondering what university would possibly grant tenure to some guy who thinks he owns a magic ring but then I remembered Evergreen College.)

The professor’s name is Tarl Cabot and I think that’s a good deal of his problem right there.  When you give a child a name like Tarl Cabot, you’re pretty much guaranteeing that he’s going to grow up believing that he has a magic ring that’ll transport him to another planet.

Of course, in Tarl’s case, it turns out that the ring does just that.  After his teaching assistant dumps him so that she can go on a date with another professor, Tarl crashes his car and when he wakes up, he finds himself on Gor.  Apparently, the ring only works if you crash your car or something.

As for Gor itself, it turns out to be kind of a dump.  It’s a huge desert.  Seriously, check out this counter-earth:

If Tarl wanted to see a desert, he could have just driven around Southern California and saved himself a lot of trouble.

Yes, there is trouble in Gor.  No sooner has Tarl arrived then he’s being attacked by a bunch of barbarians on horseback.  The barbarians are led by the evil Sarm (played by Oliver Reed).  Much as with the case of Tarl Cabot, I think that once you name a child Sarm, you’ve pretty much guaranteed the way that his life is going to turn out.  Anyway, Tarl somehow survives being attacked by the barbarians.  He even manages to kill Sarm’s son, which leads to Sarm declaring that he wants Tarl dead.

Fortunately, Tarl is eventually rescued by another group of barbarians.  This group is led by Talena (Rebecca Ferratti) and she wants Tarl to help her rescue her father from Sarm’s fortress.  But how can Tarl help when he’s literally useless?  Don’t worry!  The good barbarians are willing to train Tarl.  One montage later, Tarl is now a master swordsman.  Now, all Tarl has to do is dress like a barbarian and then track down a little person who can serve as a guide to Sarm’s fortress!

And what a fortress it is!  Sarm may be evil but he likes to make sure that both his guests and his slaves have a good time.  Sarm welcomes Tarl to the fortress and even tries to recruit him over to his side.  (So apparently, Sarm’s over that whole “you killed my son” thing.)  Sarm understands that the best way to recruit Tarl is with a dance number!  As Sarm laughs lustfully, the slaves put on a show.  It’s somewhat out-of-place but at least it distracts from the rest of the film.

Anyway, there’s a lot of problems with Gor but the main one is that the place itself just doesn’t seem like it’s worth all the trouble.  After spending years trying to figure out how to get to the planet, Tarl arrives and discovers that it’s basically the same desert that was used in almost every post-apocalyptic film made in the 80s and 90s.  (In fact, judging from John Carter, it’s still being used today.)  What I always wonder about this type of movie is 1) why is the other planet always full of humans who speak perfect English and 2) why do all of these planets feature a society that resembles that ancient Roman Empire?  Apparently, swords and arrows are literally universal weapons because they’re used on every planet in the universe.

When I first saw that this film starred Urbano Barberini, I assumed that it was going to turn out to be an Italian production.  (In the late 80s, there were several Italian films that featured barbarians fighting in post-apocalyptic landscapes.)  However, it turns out that Gor was a South African production, co-produced by the legendary Harry Alan Towers and directed by an American named Firtz Kiersch.  (Kiersch also directed the first film version of Children of the Corn.)  That said, the film itself is so ineptly dubbed and the production values are so low-budget that it would still be easy to mistake Gor for a film directed by Bruno Mattei or Claudio Fragasso.

Because he’s so badly dubbed, it’s difficult to really judge Barberini’s performance as Tarl Cabot.  At the very least, he looks good with a sword in his hand and he’s cute — if never quite believable — when he plays Tarl as a neurotic physicist.  However, Barberini can’t really compete with Oliver Reed, who devours every inch of scenery that he can find.  Reed bellows and laughs and appears to be drunk in almost every scene in which he appears but at least he seems to be having a good time.  Reed is also required to wear a silly helmet in most of his scenes and I sincerely hope that he got to take it home with him.

Oliver Reed isn’t the only familiar face to pop up in Gor.  There’s also Jack Palance.  Palance only shows up for about two minutes and he looks rather confused as he discusses his plan to conquer the world.  (Apparently, Palance returned in Gor‘s sequel.)  For two minutes of screen time, Palance managed to score himself third billing in the opening credits of Gor, above even Oliver Reed!  Way to go, Jack!

Anyway, Gor is a pretty stupid movie.  I appreciated the random dance number but otherwise, it’s fairly dull and only occasionally enlivened by Oliver Reed’s refusal to go gently into that dark night.  I’m going to guess that films like this were popular with filmgoers who saw themselves as real-life Tarl Cabots and who spent their spare time thinking, “Nobody will laugh at me once they see me with a sword!”  I caught the film yesterday on Comet TV, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite channels for watching bad movies.

 

The TSL’s Grindhouse: No Way Back (dir by Fred Williamson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Jesse Crowder’s back!

You may remember Jesse Crowder as the super cool and unflappable private detective from Death Journey.  Jesse was a Los Angeles cop but now he works independently.  There’s literally nothing that Jesse can’t do.  Ride a horse?  Ride a motorcycle?  Slow motion kung fu?  Jesse can do it all and he usually do it without bothering to button up his shirt.  Jesse is such a badass that he can kill more people in the time it takes for him to light a cigar than most people will kill in their entire lifetime.

The 1976 film No Way Back is the second Jesse Crowder film.  Once again, Fred Williamson both directs and stars as Jesse.  Williamson is in almost every scene of the film and when he’s not killing bad guys or having sex or just posing with his shirt off, he’s listening to people talk about what a badass he is.  In short, No Way Back is a vanity project but it’s a vanity project with a sense of humor.  Watching the film, you get the feeling that Williamson knows that No Way Back is kind of silly but, at the same time, he’s having fun and he wants everyone watching to have fun too.

No Way Back‘s plot involves a missing man and a lot of money.  Henry Pickens (Charles Woolf) worked at a bank but, one day, he grabbed a briefcase full of money, jumped in a car driven by his girlfriend (Tracy Reed), and disappeared.  Everyone was shocked but you know who was really shocked?  His wife!  Mildred Pickens (Virginia Gregg) and Henry’s brother both want to know to where Henry has vanished.  They hire Jesse, perhaps finding solace in his catch phrase: “You pay the bill, I’ll deliver it.  Legal, illegal, moral or otherwise.”

Not surprisingly, it doesn’t take long for Jesse to figure out that Perkins is in San Francisco.  Jesse lights his cigar and heads for the Bay City.  However, Jesse isn’t the only one looking for Henry Pickens.  There’s also a gangster named Bernie (Stack Pierce) who is determined to get the money for himself.  Much as in Death Journey, it doesn’t matter where Jesse goes or how he gets there.  As soon as he arrives, he people are trying to kill him.  Unfortunately, for them, no one can kill Jesse Crowder.

It all leads to a savage gun battle in the desert.  Fred Williamson jumps up on a horse, unbuttons his shirt, and rides across the screen.  People are betrayed.  People get shot.  Fortunately, no one can touch Jesse Crowder…

Anyway, No Way Back doesn’t really make any sense.  If you happen to watch this film (and I saw it on YouTube), just try to keep track of why Henry stole all of that money in the first place.  However, the plot isn’t really that important.  This film is all about Fred Williamson beating up gangsters and walking around without a shirt on.  It’s a dumb action movie but it never pretends to be anything different and the film’s total lack of pretension is enjoyable.  That’s always a good thing.