The Iguanodon King
It begins in the egg, as everyone’s story does. But before the egg can hatch, it has as many adventures as Indiana Jones, before finally coming to rest on an island inhabited by an advanced race of monkey-like lemurs. Hatching, the cute little iguanodon is adopted by the tribe, and named Aladar (D.B. Sweeney of Spawn). Continue reading
First of all: yes, this film based on the novel by L. Ron Hubbard is influenced by his famous cult Scientology. It stars, and was propelled into production, by its star, prominent Scientologist John Travolta, who probably wouldn’t have read the book if it wasn’t on the shelf next to Dianetics. It probably never would’ve been made if not for the community of Scientologists in Hollywood. And Steven Spielberg made Schindler’s List because he’s a Jew.
There – bet you’d never think you’d see anyone compare Battlefield Earth to Schindler’s List. Don’t make me pull out my charts and graphs! Continue reading
Rock Ransacks R-kives!Canny Creator Cannibalizes Cache for Current Concoction
When we last left David “The Rock” Nelson, he was throwing a rubber insect at unwilling participants and videotaping the results (see Devil Ant). This time, Nelson revisits his old fiend the Frankenstein Monster, who starred in his early film Frankenstein Meets Saddam Insane. Continue reading
After dissolving his partnership with director Herschell Gordon Lewis, producer Dave Friedman headed out to California. Before long he’d formed a new filmmaking partnership with showman Dan Sonney. Together they produced and distributed a long string of cutting edge (for the time) adult features, such as The Defilers, Space Thing and A Sweet Sickness.
The adult pictures were very successful, but Friedman had always wanted to make a picture with a carnival setting, as that was where he’d started his show business career. Seeing a chance to get a wider release, he crafted this story of sleaze and horror in the sideshow.
The picture opens with Friedman himself as a sideshow talker, hawking the exhibition of a human oddity so horrible that audiences react with screams and shudders. A flashback shows the origin of the unseen horror.
Hard edged and cynical Jade Cochran (Claire Brennan) is fed up with waitressing at a greasy spoon in a dusty little Texas town (despite the fact that it looks the same as Fuad Ramses’ deli in Blood Feast — this scene was actually shot in a real California diner). When the front man for a traveling carnival shows up in the diner, Jade sees her chance to take off for a chance at something better, just like thousands of other small town girls.
The feature has lots of random carny footage, which may slow down the pace somewhat for some viewers, but it provides an excellent time capsule of what traveling carnivals used to be like.
Jade has no trouble getting a job waitressing in the show’s grab joint, where she finds conditions much improved over her last job. She befriends a stripper named Moon (Lynn Courtney) — with whom she becomes roommates, and makes an edgy acquaintance with studly Ferris wheel foreman Blackie Fleming (slumming airline pilot Lee Raymond). The carny life, and its people, agree with Jade — except for the performers in the freak show, for whom she shows only disgust.
But it’s not long before Jade’s ambition flares again, and she sets her sights on landing the show’s most prosperous available resident, handsome Steve St. John (Bill McKinney, later a hillbilly in Deliverance) — owner of the 10-in-one (freak show). Meanwhile, even without her presence, roughies Blackie and Pretty Boy (Bill Bagdad) start fighting over the show’s newest arrival.
By the time the show has finished its run, Jade has St. John wrapped around her little finger. By the time they’ve set up in a new town, she’s started an affair with Blackie as well, even as she’s becoming Mrs. St. John.
Though her husband is the owner of a freak show, Jade still feels only disgust for them. Despite this, she has no problem with taking over the business after maneuvering her two lovers into a fight that leaves Steve dead and Blackie in prison for his murder. Her first move is to fire the midget Shorty (Felix Silla), who’d ratted on her to her late husband.
But Shorty and his friends in the show don’t take kindly to the new owner’s harsh treatment, and that night they exact a terrible vengeance.
Long seen only in washed out prints on video and television, Something Weird Video’s fresh full screen digital master makes Bill Troiano’s cinematography look as sharp and brilliantly hued as any Elvis Presley picture of the same vintage.
Mainly a remake of Tod Browning’s classic Freaks, She Freak is more successful at showing the broad and colorful outdoor aspect of the carnival. The main flaw of She Freak may be the relative lack of real human oddities on display. To quash the wrath of any dissatisfied customers, Friedman prepared a “square-up reel” for the picture (included on the disc) — 8.5 minutes of raw newsreel footage that shows Hubert’s Museum, a typical 10-in-one show from the 1930s, plus footage of the romantic adventures of famous conjoined twins.
On Friedman’s commentrak, hosted by Something Weird’s Mike Vraney, he goes into detail of the film’s production, and talks about how Byron Mabe went from acting in The Defilers to directing, how they arranged for the use of a state fair carnival, and gives information on all the stars, as well as the history of carnivals in America.
Though retired (he says) from the motion picture business, Friedman has returned to his true love, buying an interest in carnivals once again.
After the unsatisfying release of The Wizard of Gore, Herschell Gordon Lewis took some time off from blood. The next couple of years found him dabbling in sex comedy (Miss Nymphet’s Zap-In), more hillbilly shenanigans for the Southern drive-in circuit (This Stuff’ll Kill Ya), and even political satire (Year of the Yahoo). Meanwhile, the world was catching up a little. Blood and Lace featured on-screen murder more brutal than any shown before. Italian director Mario Bava, from whom Lewis had borrowed the familiar giallo trappings (ala Blood and Black Lace) of the black-gloved killer in Something Weird, returned the favor by pushing the gore-meter further for the murders in Bay of Blood. John Waters assured his place in shock history with Pink Flamingos. In The Corpse Grinders, Ted V. Mikels did just that. It was time for Herschell to make his Grand Finale.
“Nothing has Ever Stripped Your Nerves as Screamingly Raw as The Gore Gore Girls!” shouted the poster for H.G. Lewis’ last feature. Though there was a lot of blood being thrown around movie sets in the early ’70s, nobody did it like Lewis. A gentle, intelligent and pleasant man by all accounts, one can’t help but think that there’s a sick little cretin hiding inside Lewis’ mind, waiting to come out and play when the camera rolls. By this time, even slickly produced horror films featured graphic violence, but most would give the audience a few quick shots of red stuff and cut to something else. Lewis had his camera linger on the grue.
The film begins with a very cold opening, in which an unseen killer wearing black gloves and a raincoat smashes a woman’s face into a mirror repeatedly, slashing it to jelly. After the ‘pop art’ titles, we’re introduced to our “hero”, foppish gentleman detective Abraham Gentry (Frank Kress), who is reading about the murder in the newspaper (which shows a photo of the victim too impossibly gruesome for any paper besides a Mexican tabloid). Gentry decides to lend his sleuthing skills to the mystery.
On his quest, he’s trailed everywhere by nosy girl reporter Nancy Weston (Amy Farrell), throwing the plot back to ’30s thrillers like Doctor X. The victim was a dancer who worked at Marz’s Heaven strip club, owned by Marzdone Mobilie (played by burlesque comic Henny Youngman, working for 500 dollars). Gentry goes to the club to investigate, picking up clues despite the attitude of surly waitress Marlene (Hedda Lubin — who wears a different wig in every shot).
Screenwriter Alan Dachman, playing a stoner sitting outside famed Chicago jazz club The Bulls, offers some evidence as well. Each time they visit a club, Gentry gets Weston drunk to keep her out of the way.
That night, another dancer arrives at home and is slugged in the head with a rubber mallet, knocking her unconscious (and filling her gum bubble with blood). The killer then proceeds to slit her throat and chop up her face with a butcher’s knife.
Back at the club, business — and Gentry’s inquiry — is interrupted by a group of Women’s Lib protesters. Gentry “rescues” a stripper and takes her home. Though the lady expects to reward her hero, Gentry leaves — prematurely. The killer strikes again, slitting the woman’s throat, then destroying her backside with a meat tenderizer! The mayhem doesn’t stop there: the killer goes to work on her face next, stabbing with a fork and popping eyeballs.
The police department cooperates fully with Gentry, despite the fact that his involvement makes him a suspect. Not surprising, as we can clearly see that the cops’ badges are only taped on their shirts.
The killer stalks another dancer that night, interrupting her housework. She gets her throat cut as well, her face burned with a hot steam iron, and — in one of Lewis’ most outrageous scenes — her nipples cut, spewing milk (regular and chocolate!) into champagne glasses. When an unlucky roommate walks in, she gets her face fried in a handy pan of boiling oil.
Though Mobilie keeps losing performers, business at Marz’s Heaven is better than ever due to the shocking publicity. Gentry asks Weston to accompany him to the club, this time as his date — but really to manipulate her into taking the stage, making herself bait for the killer.
Blood Orgy, as it was retitled in cities that would not allow the word “gore” in a newspaper ad (or in Southern locales where no one knew what a go-go girl was), is about the only slasher film I can think of in which the murders are a secondary thrill. The main event is the horrible mutilation of the bodies that followed. By mixing black humor with the outrageous gore, along with plenty of hippie-era camp, it’s easy to write off Gore Gore Girls as a comedy. However, despite the fact that it’s obviously fake, the gore-nography is genuinely disturbing, and stays in the memory longer than Henny Youngman’s one-liners. With today’s digital effects, one can make real just about anything on film, including graphic gore in a mainstream hit (see The Mummy). But they’re still trying to catch up with Herschell Gordon Lewis.
The acting is typical of a Lewis cast, with Kress’ stagy projection a high point. Amy Farrell fares a bit better, later showing up in Airport 1975. Henny Youngman went to his death in 1998 denying his appearance here. Like most of the cast, Hedda Lubin, who played the acid-tongued waitress Marlene, never appeared in another movie — but made her mark on stage history by playing “Frenchy” in the first production of Grease while moonlighting on Gore Gore Girls by day. Lewis’ regular crew members also got parts in front of the camera, including Ray Sager (the Wizard of Gore himself), who went on to become a successful TV and movie producer. Burly Andy Ameripoor has a memorable part as a guy who draws faces on melons and then smashes them with his fist.
Like the other Lewis DVDs, there’s an audio commentrak with Herschell Gordon Lewis and Something Weird’s Mike Vraney and Jimmy Maslin. Lewis tells how the film was made, why this was his last film (to date), and all talk about why his films have continued to live on in infamy.
The disc includes the same “Herschell Gordon Lewis Gallery of Exploitation Art” (Vraney is notoriously fond of long titles) that is on the Something Weird DVD — which tends to jam in my Pioneer DVL-909 DVD player at around The Girl, The Body and the Pill, but recovers on stopping and starting the machine. There’s also a hysterical 1m 43s clip from Love Goddess of Blood Island showing a sacrifice to the High Priestess of Gore. Unfortunately, a complete print of this gem has yet to be found. Let’s hope it turns up soon in the Something Weird warehouse.
Though Rhino failed to impress with their initial DVD offering (Galaxina), they’ve come to play ball with their Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVDs. No, it doesn’t have any alternate audio options, deleted footage, or even subtitles – but it does come with a nifty bonus that makes a lot of sense. Since Rhino can only release the MST3K episodes for which they’ve procured the video rights to the original film, someone came up with the bright idea of putting both versions on the DVD. This title has been expected for months on a long-delayed DVD release on the Synapse label, but unless they come up with something special for theirs, the Rhino disc will render the Synapse one superfluous (Don May of Synapse assures me that their version will have superior sound and picture, so keep watching this space for another review).
This was the episode midway through season 5 in which Mike Nelson (Mike Nelson) took over the role of human guinea pig on board the “Satellite of Love”, a curious space station on which Dr. Clayton Forrester (Trace Beaulieu) marooned Gizmonics Institute drone Joel Robinson (Joel Hodgson) since 1988 (or 3000 in dog years). The transition was a bumpy one, especially those fans who were attracted to the show mainly by Hodgson’s inventiveness and quirky sense of humor. This is understandable, since Hodgson always used the show as the perfect outlet for his talents, mixing prop comedy, puppetry and surrealism. The “Invention Exchange”, once a comic highlight of the show, was soon abandoned. Though a very funny writer and performer in his own right, Nelson proved a sharp right turn away from Hodgson’s little world.
While Hodgson always appeared to be secretly relishing his role as a sleep-deprived lab monkey, making us half believe the truth of the matter (that he was actually the puppet-master in charge), Nelson immediately gave the impression of an innocent in way over his head. Even the robots tended to treat him as a kid brother, constantly making him the butt of their pranks, and reacting with oft-annoying passivity. Mike was truly a flavor that one needed to get used to.
The ‘bots prep Nelson with a marathon of past turkeys so that he’ll be in shape for his first experiment. Give the kids at Best Brains kudos – they picked a truly legendary bad film for Mike’s debut. The Brain That Wouldn’t Die is a low-budget, Z-grade horror film of the very best kind. It’s gory and sleazy, with ridiculous plot twists, tin-ear dialogue, a monster in a closet, and sexy pin-up girls – all rolled into one glorious mess.
In fact, it’s such a perfect film for MST3K that it hardly needs any wisecracks from the shadow-vision front seats – though they provide plenty of great commentary. I’d laughed through this favorite with friends enough times before Best Brains got to it that I was convinced they’d already done this one.
Soap star Herb (Jason) Evers plays Dr. Bill Cortner, a twisted surgeon seemingly inspired by Lovecraft’s “Herbert West, Re-Animator.” Despite the wagging finger of his brain surgeon father, Cortner is always playing God in the operating room, saving patients’ lives through untested operating methods – while secretly playing Devil in his basement lab in the family country house on weekends.
Cortner has recently decided to give up being a playboy brain surgeon and settle down with pretty nurse Jan Compton (Virginia Leith), but before he ties the knot, he decides to let Jan tag along on his latest run out to his mad lab.
Fortunately for us, Dr. Bill’s not as handy behind the wheel as he is with a scalpel, and he ends up crashing his convertible. Though he’s thrown clear, Jan’s not so lucky, and Cortner takes advantage of the situation by making her the subject of his latest experiment. After a few hours of feverish work, he has Jan’s head up and running again – despite the lack of a body.
As these events unfold onscreen, a suffering Nelson decides he’s had enough. Burrowing below decks, he tries in vain to take control of the ship, but only finds the “cheese” conduit. Later, he gets more in the spirit of the proceedings and leads the robots in designing hats for the body-less Jan.
One would think that even an evil scientist would be satisfied with any available healthy body on which to graft his fiancé’s head, but our boy Bill proves himself even creepier. He goes “shopping” at strip clubs and beauty pageants! Meanwhile, “Jan in the Pan” decides that enough is enough and the marriage is OFF.
A little research into the fringes of medical science will show that it’s now possible to keep a human head alive – though hardly considered legal or ethical. Yet. But some day, it may come to pass that one of us may find themselves in a similar situation. In which case, you could do worse than to have the nurse prop you in front of this episode of Mystery Science Theater for a while. It’d tickle your ribs – if you had any.
The menus feature helpful instructions on how to turn the disc over. There you’ll find Brain in all its uncut glory, including a few scenes cut from the MST3K version for time. Build your own robots and pretend you’re trapped in space, too!
After the success of his boundary-pushing series “Shameless School” and “Cutie Honey”, Japanese cartoonist Go Nagai created a new manga series that became just as influential. It took the old “boy transforms to hero” idea of Captain Marvel and gave it a horrifying new twist. His new hero was dark and dangerous, a half-demon that fought other monsters invading our dimension, while fighting his own evil and bloodthirsty urges.
While The Exorcist would explore a human possessed by a demon, Devil Man had a demon possessed by a human. Manga Video presents two Devil Man anime adaptations in one package, running about 55 minutes each. The main menu animation plays a limited number of times, then starts the program automatically.
“The Birth” opens with a Fantasia-like prologue, in which nymphs descend from Heaven and are eaten by monsters. Then the nymphs get revenge by ravaging the planet with powerful beams of destruction. I suppose this illustrates how the age of the demons ended. A jillion years later, spelunkers release a monster from an ice cave in Antarctica. The doomed explorers are the parents of our hero, Akira. At the moment, the boy is showing unusual spunk by defending the school’s last rabbit from being slain by the hoods that killed the others. His girlfriend Miki helps clean up his wounds.
Akira’s pal Ryu, from his old school, appears to discuss important business. He reveals how his father went insane and killed himself, but the secret behind the madness is even more shocking. A demon skull mask found in an Aztec cave allows one to see into the ancient demonic world. Unfortunately, the boys’ knowledge of this world makes them a target for demons still roaming the Earth. The only way to possibly protect themselves is to attempt to merge with demons themselves. The ultimate danger is that their human spirit will become completely dominated by that of the demon.
The transformation ritual is to take place in a decadent nightclub, where the pair try to rouse demonic forces. Ryu fails in his attempt, but Akira succeeds in his transformation, able to become a demon-shredding Devil Man when the need arises. Devil Man shows off his prowess by destroying a good dozen demons right away. Ryu ends up in the hospital. In “The Demon Bird”, it’s shown that some of the demon’s personality and abilities have merged with Akira’s human form as well, even when he’s not the Devil Man. A phone message calls him out to battle a soul-snatching demon Jinmen in a haunted sewer. After defeating Jinmen, Akira has nightmares in which the demon’s memories meld with his own. Miki is concerned over the changes that have come over her boyfriend, even more so since he’s moved in with her family. Unfortunately, this makes Miki and her family vulnerable when Gelmar the water demon and Shirnu the bird demon come to call.
Gelmar takes natural advantage of the situation when Miki takes her nightly bath. Fortunately, Akira’s demon senses start tingling, warning him of the danger. Akira’s battle with Gelmar is epic, but the fight between Devil Man and Shirnu is downright apocalyptic, tearing up the city and getting their blood all across the countryside. Either this episode is a later one in the series, or something was lost in the translation.
With the demon’s memory, it’s easy to see why Akira would recognize all these monsters, but it seems like the viewer is supposed to be familiar with them as well. Nagai was ahead of his time, creating a splatter-punk series that broke through sex and gore barriers in a Hellish fantasy setting. Devil Man is like a superhero version of the Evil Dead and Nightmare on Elm Street movies. He would go on to even more success with Mazinger, a giant robot series that would become highly influential around the world. Devil Man is a series whose language is as hard-boiled as its events, but it’ll still tickle some to hear the foul dialogue coming from cartoon mouths because the voice actors fail to sell it. This is more of a problem with the first half than the second, so maybe the actors grew more comfortable in their roles, but I wish Manga had provided Japanese audio/English subtitle options on the disc. However, it’s the action and visuals that dominate the program, and Devil Man is a great cartoon from the Golden Age of Japanese anime.
Manga provides a few extras on the DVD, mostly of a purely promotional nature. There’s a video trailer for Devil Man, plus a music video made up of Manga title clips, a web link to the Manga Video website, and some catalogue information.
In The Castle of Cagliostro, master thief Lupin III and his hard-boiled sidekick Daisuke Jigen pull off a casino robbery, only to find that the booty is all in counterfeit bills. Lupin recognizes the fakes as coming from an operation in the tiny European kingdom of Cagliostro, which he’d tried to infiltrate years ago. This inspires Lupin to plan their next caper. Continue reading
This semi-sequel to Dario Argento’s international hit Suspiria is one of his strangest, most nightmarish features. And, says Argento, one of his most difficult. He had all the enthusiasm he needed to tell the tale of the second Mother, but the pieces of the puzzle fell into place in an odd crazy-quilt pattern of mystery, dread and violence that seemed to have a mind of its own. Continue reading
Carnival of Souls DVD
The Ghosts of Saltair
In 1961, after years of directing and acting in hundreds of educational and industrial films for the Centron Corporation of Lawrence, Kansas, Herk Harvey was itching to do something more creative. While driving back from an assignment in California, he spotted something weird – a cavernous structure jutting from the shores of Great Salt Lake. It was once a resort called Saltair, a thriving vacation spot at the turn of the century, now sitting abandoned and empty, except for the ghosts of its past glory. Harvey knew it would make a perfect location for a horror film. Continue reading →