The Cinema 4 Pylon: SpOutpost

Rixflix A to Z: Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953)

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Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953)

Director: Charles Lamont // Universal, 1:17, b/w
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

It hardly mattered that the boys never got to Mars. Seen on a Christmas morning in my youth, the planet that A&C actually landed on was not the point. Going into the picture, the rocket ride into space was the point. The promise of slithery, slobbering alien creatures was the point. Abbott and Costello goofing off in poofy-looking spacesuits was the point. That the film's title was a complete lie really never was an issue to me, though it seems to be a sticking point with most movie guides, which almost to an overpriced volume of committee-tossed opinions consider the film a colossal bomb.

Military base handyman Bud and professional orphan Lou bumble their way into stealing a rocketship destined for a Mars landing, but their flight pattern goes wackily awry. Science-ignorant Bud and Lou think they are on Mars, when in fact, they are actually in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, and mistake the multitude of revelers gussied up in costumes and giant head masks to be Martians of the silliest kind. Circumstances will have them take to space for real, but they will land on Venus instead, and this is where my head did a swivel as a young'un. Somewhere amongst the space vixens of the second planet, naturally inhabited not just by women, but by gorgeous women only (and played by Miss Universe entrants), is the voluptuous Anita Ekberg. I know this now, but at that young age (what was I? 10, 11?), I was years away from seeing La Dolce Vita. What I did know was that once the parade of high-heeled hotties began, all of my concerns about seeing monsters in the film dissipated. Like Steve Martin's Navin R. Johnson, had I at last found my special purpose?

Watching the film anew, I am struck by how it is actually taken over by another accidental comedy team, that of Horace McMahon and Jack Kruschen as Mugsy and Harry, two escaped convicts who stowaway on the rocket to Venus, thereby running afoul of A&C as both teams do battle for control of the spaceship. And of the movie, it seems. McMahon and Kruschen actually get the sharper of the dialogue sequences, with McMahon's gangster tough having a bottomless reservoir of scientific and arcane knowledge at his fingertips, knowing and explaining to Harry exactly how the blaster ray works, and understanding with only the barest hint that the Venusian queen has placed some form of a curse on Costello. Kruschen, who would be nominated for an Oscar a handful of years later for The Apartment, is a brick wall of a man in both size and brain, but he punctuates all of McMahon's suggestions and directions with the charmingly assertive, and oft repeated, "I am with you!" (Emphasis on the last word...) As a child, I remember saying this line here and there, though I probably had forgotten its origin when I did. (Seeing the film a few times over the intervening years has kept the line in my repertoire.)

Despite the sci-fi elements, the film comes out as merely average, though I don't place it as low as others would have done. This is not because of Bud and Lou, however, for they seem overly tired in this one and are practically going through the paces. What saves it from the bottom of the heap is some nice production design on the part of Universal (some pieces were reused in This Island Earth the following year) and some nice production design on the part of Nature, where the girls are concerned. And also, what saves it is that accidental comedy team of Mugsy and Harry. I am with them...

Posted Monday, July 30, 2007 6:00 AM by rik_tod | with 1 comments

The Shark Film Office: My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006)

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My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006)

My Super Ex-Girlfriend
Director: Ivan Reitman // 2006 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 5
Shark: Great White Shark
Appearance: CGI, dialogue

Sleeping with Anna Faris should be heavenly, and -- despite my deep and abiding appreciation for toothy marine creatures -- uninterrupted by the sight of a great white shark flying towards one’s head as one sits up in bed after awakening from what was probably the most emotionally and physically fulfilling night of one’s life. Setting my own personal fixation on Ms. Faris aside, this is exactly what happens to Luke Wilson just over an hour deep into the middling special effects comedy, My Super Ex-Girlfriend.

Wilson sleeps with Faris, his longtime crush, after breaking up with the voluptuous, but clearly “off her rocker,” superheroine G-Girl, played almost like a mannequin for the most part by Uma Thurman, who really should remain in the employ of a director like Tarantino who clearly worships her and understands her strengths as well as her weaknesses as an actress. (While she is physically perfect for the role, straight comedy is not her forte.) G-Girl, who lives her day-to-day existence in the guise of Jenny Johnson (a name on which, for personal reasons, I shall refrain from further comment), takes this emotional rejection in the manner one expects in a romantic comedy: badly, and with thoughts of revenge on her now “evil” ex-suitor. Only here, since G-Girl is essentially gifted with the powers of Superman (or Supergirl, for that matter), the revenge on a normal human being can get, ahem, potentially deadly for the party receiving the vengeful abuse. Hence, the dream-shattering shark-tossing.

Waking up at last with his true love, Wilson hears the taunting words, “Oooh, honey!” outside of the bedroom window. Such a confrontation would be difficult in a normal romantic comedy, since the apartment is several stories up, but when he looks out the window, there is G-Girl, floating casually in mid-air, holding a thrashing, teeth-gnashing great white by the tail. With a modicum of effort, she tosses the shark through the bedroom window, where it lands full force onto Wilson’s side of the bed, snapping its deadly jaws at Wilson as he tucks in his feet. Luke bolts through the apartment, with the shark making several leaps in his direction, including one that ends with the shark closing its jaws mere inches from Wilson’s crotch, finding the couch cushion with its teeth instead. Wilson runs to the other bedroom window, and the shark makes one last leap at the terrified everyman, crashing through the glass and falling to the street below. We hear the screech of tires, a woman’s astonished scream, and several crashing noises, but that is the last we will see of the shark in the film. I assume the lovable predator meets its sad demise at the end of that fall, but Ivan Reitman, who has already directed the pinnacle of special-effects comedy, Ghostbusters, over 20 years ago, never lets us consider the bloody mess remaining, unless one is speaking of this film itself.

Faris closes the scene by asking, “Why would G-Girl throw a shark at us?” Wilson answers, “I don’t know,” but the real answer regarding the film is, “Why didn’t Ivan Reitman decide to throw more sharks at them?” In the middle of a big city, several stories up in an apartment building, the last thing anyone expects to see is a giant shark flying through their window. Despite the small show of G-Girl’s incredible powers up to this point, which establishes to a lessened degree that we are living within the fantasy of this film’s world, the shark scene is still such a strong visual non-sequitur, and so absurdly incongruous to the more mundane occurrences to which we have borne witness in the film, that the concept actually seems to work. It is quick, and it is sudden, and it is over before one can really consider its ramifications.

It may seem unfair to throw a director’s past classic work in his face, but we simply cannot ignore such an obvious regressive trend in Reitman’s work, and thus we must make comparisons to Ghostbusters here. In that film, the similar point where the audience has to make a wacky leap of visual faith is in the acceptance of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man as a monstrous Godzilla-like screaming terror that will crush the entire city into rubble beneath his Michelin Man-like puffy feet. Reitman tried to play the same gag again in Ghostbusters II, but the Statue of Liberty was far too, eh, ordinary (and expected) -- to play out as wonderfully silly/scary as the Marshmallow Man scenario. Stay-Puft was a perfect choice, both in bringing horror – even the merely comedic variety – out of cuteness, and also for the fact that it, to this day, still plays as a great “What the ***?” moment. But where the Reitman, Aykroyd and Ramis had it right in that film was in writing the scene so that it wasn’t purely this odd thing that came out of nowhere, but was actually the next bizarre link in a chain of increasing goofiness throughout the film. The Ghostbusters had, up to that moment, seen numerous things that one did not see everyday, each one larger and more threatening than the next, but when Stay-Puft arrives, Bill Murray still has enough bemused shock left in his character to say, indeed, “There’s something you don’t see everyday.”

The problem in Girlfriend is that the characters, even the normal citizenry, regularly have incredible things happening around them, all because they exist in a world where G-Girl is in constant battle with Professor Bedlam (downplayed well by Eddie Izzard, even if it is a waste of his talents), her spurned teen sweetheart who has grown up into a “don’t call me a super-villain” super-villain. True, there is a difference in the reality of the news reports and what really occurs (example: Wilson’s casual media-fed reaction to Izzard’s infamy), but this is an angle that is barely explored by Reitman, concentrating instead on the romantic angle. Everyone expects G-Girl to save the day, but when she does display her talents, even the filmmakers seem almost bored with the results. There is no real sense of wonder to her world-saving or to the display of her powers, either in the faces of the characters, or in the way they are displayed onscreen. It’s almost as if the superheroics were tacked onto a standard sitting romantic comedy script at the last minute, and little consideration was given to how this would play off the rest of the script. In the end, G-Girl is merely just a celebrity, and Wilson's character might as well be banging Paris Hilton to get basically the same reaction from his friends.

Before the shark scene occurs, there is nothing that can approach it in its inspired wackiness. And after? Nothing but the rote machinations of that “standard sitting romantic comedy script.” When I saw the trailer in the theatre, the only item that even made me halfway wish to see the film was the tossing of the shark, and now, seeing it on DVD, I find that I saved myself some decent coin by not following that slight impulse.

Late in the film, Wilson is asked why he has teamed up with the Professor to strip away G-Girl's powers, and the laid-back Wilson thinks for half a second, and replies, "She threw a shark at me!" Though the line is slightly amusing, it mainly serves to point up the flaw in the character's, and thus the writer's, logic. The reason for his revenge should be because the shark-tossing broke up his reverie in bed with the delightful Ms. Faris. Now that's a form of coitus interruptus that could make me kick Superman's ass. I wouldn't even need the Kryptonite...

Posted Sunday, July 29, 2007 12:32 PM by rik_tod | with 0 comments

Psychotronic Ketchup: Misterios de Ultratumba [The Black Pit of Dr. M] (1959)

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Misterios del Ultratumba (1958)

Misterios de Ultratumba [The Black Pit of Dr. M]
Director: Fernando Méndez // Mexican, 1959 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

Old Mexican horror movies get a bad rap. If you say to your friend, “Hey, I watched this old Mexican horror movie last night,” most likely that friend will first groan, and then expel a small chuckle and reply, “That must have been pretty damn crappy,” or some such declaration of the movie’s inherent badness. Part of this is most likely due to the fact that the bulk of Mexican horror movies seen in America, like Japanese kaiju, were seen dubbed with ridiculous accents by American actors, and were also largely cut up and reedited upon release. It also probably has something to do with the fact that most of them were, inarguably, pretty damn crappy. Possibly fun, but pretty damn crappy.

The problem with assumptions like this that pass into the “common knowledge” spectrum of popular thought is that their acceptance pretty much extends outward to encapsulate all examples of the genre, good or bad. To tread back to the Mexican horror genre, even a halfway decent film will get sucked into the vortex with all the other Paul Naschy, Santo and Aztec Mummy films, immediately thought of by the bulk of the population aware of them as "bad," circling about in this downcast oblivion. And even I, who recognizes openly that even out of such belittled areas great things can grow, spent a small amount of time gnashing the pearlies over the thought of spending time sinking into The Black Pit of Dr. M, also known as Misterios de Ultratumba, and initially released in 1959. Truthfully, I knew little – actually, nothing – about the film before slipping it from its case and inserting it into my player.

And this is what I found: a lost minor foreign classic of mood and design. It’s no great shakes story-wise: some basic horror folderol about Dr. Mazali (the “M” of the title) seeking to discover the secrets of the afterlife, and determined, via the ministrations of his already deceased partner in science, to come back from the dead upon his own demise. Mazali is, essentially, an atheist who nonetheless hungers for a peek into the afterworld. Of course, his plans get slightly altered when the daughter of his dead partner is mysteriously summoned by her father’s ghost (whom she had never met in her life, and thus, did not recognize) to collect her inheritance. What she does not know is her interference in the doctor’s life is just one small dizzying step in her father’s elaborately spiraled and possibly malignant plan to fulfill Dr. M’s odd request. Where this all leads I will allow you to discover, but I will briefly touch on the look and mood of the film itself.

Yes, this is one of those “everything in the stewpot” type of films. Naturally, because Dr. M is a man of science, we are allowed to step into his laboratory throughout the picture, but we also are given glimpses of the attached insane asylum, and numerous ominous trips into the cemetery to attend funerals of various characters. There are ghosts, séances, mysterious amulets, a disfigured man who slowly evolves into a monstrous killer, hypnotism, knife murders and, eventually, a visit from the living dead. One would think all this busywork would be enough to fill an audience’s interest, but the filmmakers chose to render all this action in relatively grand style, an incredible feat given the obvious low budget of the film. I have noted previously, when watching the popular Mexican “Wrestling Women” films of the ‘60s that it seemed as if the filmmakers had stopped watching horror movies with the demise of the Universal line of horror classics. There were obvious nods there to the great Gothic Universals, and here, in Dr. M’s world, such influence is brought to a mount as seriously close to art as these films are going to get.

Things might be a little too clean, though; that the camera wishes to pan through nearly every gorgeously rendered set in delirious reverence subtly reveals the damning fact that hardly any of these perfect worlds are actually lived in by the characters. There is a certain aspect to a cluttered existence that might seem unromantic, but which can reveal a little bit more soul in the person that lives there, rather than appear as a fussbudget trapped in a completely antiseptic womb. But this is only a momentary distraction, and as the camera does take to its traveling through the lab set and so on, one can only show appreciation for the attention to detail. Even the cobwebs sparkle with perfection.

And dare I say that eventually this leads to an amazing graveyard sequence, where what would have been just a moribund corpse revival had this film actually been the sort of below-average Mexican horror fare that undoubtedly many inexperienced viewers have proclaimed it as, is turned somehow artful to a cunning degree, and also serves as an almost accidental tribute to those great gothic Universals of years past. I will admit that even up to this point, I was still a doubter poking about within this film, enjoying the sights but skeptical of the outcome. And then, with the mere lightning flash-aided crawl to the grave’s surface of the doctor in the guise of the living dead, I was struck by the thought that, at least for this film, the slow, inexorable plot crawl paid off in spades. In fact, it pays off several times in the film’s second half, but none so more thrilling than this moment. (And if you feel that I have given away anything in the way of spoilers, I cringe for your skills as a film detective, because surely by this point in the film, you know where it is going. That’s not why one attends such a film as this.)

Of course, certain people will never be able to see past all of the ghosts and zombies and mad scientists, and will always think “That’s a pretty damn crappy movie.” These are people who divide their movies into immediate sensations, and they are the most susceptible to the impulse to proclaim the cliché, “So bad, it’s good.” And more often than not, nearly all horror and science-fiction films of any sort of vintage fall into this category for them, and they never care one whit that even within the most downgraded of genres, or in much impoverished genre-country of origin combinations, there might be some sort of art to be achieved. Much to the consternation of these type of people, The Black Pit of Dr. M climbs away from its own name and achieves this very level.
Originally posted on:The Cinema 4 Pylon

Posted Wednesday, July 25, 2007 5:00 AM by rik_tod | with 0 comments

That Familiar UV Buzz: No Next Star on the Food Network

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Having dinner with Jen and Frank, our ol' buddy from Alaska, at Storyteller's Cafe last night brought me at last to a realization over which I have lost zero sleep through the last few years: I am a reality show snob. Frank posed the question, "Do you watch Top Chef?," to which my basic reply was, "Uh, no... yeah, I, uh -- I don't know why I haven't watched it, because I watch tons of Food Network, so you think it would be a relatively easy thing to switch over to -- uh, I've heard good things about it -- it's on Bravo, right?" Nothing like getting to the point, Rik. The conversation veered away from -- and then eventually stumbled back into -- Top Chef, and I really couldn't pinpoint in my head exactly why I don't watch it, except for the fact that viewing it on any sort of regular basis would force me to memorize Bravo's channel number, and I really just don't have the room for a 113th number in my skull. But the real reason I don't watch it is because, due to certain operational aspects of the show, I consider it to be a reality show (which it is), and as everyone with whom I work knows full well from my frequent tirades over American Non-Idol, I... don't... like... reality... shows!

Which means I am the biggest hypocrite in the world, because I actually do watch one particular example of the fetid genre: The Next Food Network Star. I didn't even see the first season, and couldn't even tell you for sure who won it that year, but I can tell you this: I got hooked on it... and fast. So much so, that when the time came for the third season to begin, I was amazed that I was anticipating it so highly. And what did I get for this anticipation? An affirmation as to why I can't stand reality shows in the first place: chiefly, the mind-fugging the producers of these shows are engaging in with their inexplicably loyal audiences. I will not go so far as to accuse the higher-ups behind Next Food with scripting what is supposed to be a real competition, but they are certainly involved with tampering at a high level. Coming down to the penultimate episode last week, it was revealed that Jag, one of the two finalists, was caught fudging the facts of his past, and thus he was forced into "resigning" from the competition. Frankly, I can't see what not actually serving in Afghanistan has to do with being able to prepare a soufflé, but I guess lying about graduation from cooking school does. (Even if some of the best cooks I know never got near such a place.)

Outside of the fact that Jag was the only one on this season who created even halfway delicious-looking dishes, I guess Food Network just doesn't like liars. But that is precisely what they did on nearly every promo and sneak peek of every episode of this season: lie. Lie about outcomes, and mislead through taking quotes out of context to make it seem as if something else was being referenced. And, ultimately, lie by acting shocked at the revelation of Jag's mistruths onscreen, and by surprising the audience with it at the last moment, when this actually happened several months ago. To know this, and then take an audience along for a ride for several weeks in which certain contestants build up followings, and then to pull the rug out from under that audience. If the intent is to make the audience feel the same queasiness of broken trust that the producers are maintaining they went through, they have failed, because all I felt was that surely, at some point in preparing the show, Jag's credentials were probably checked out, and long before they actually put cameras on him. If not, then this show is run by rubes of the most common sort. Because, if they didn't bother to check him out before filming, then why would it matter later? Surely, these people knew this was going to come up at some point, and just had the cameras ready to record the fall.

This whole concluding nightmare is only one thing that is wrong with the show. Most of the food looked inedible, most of the contestants were nightmares of personality, most of them barely seemed aware they were doing this to be on the friggin' camera, and worst of all, the show got incredibly gimmicky with the challenges. Too gimmicky. I preferred the second season where there seemed to be more of a concentration on skills needed for actually filming shows, and where there also seemed to be more focus on the actual food. Perhaps the reason none of this season's dishes really impressed me was because I didn't really get to know the food they were creating, and just got an endless cavalcade of bad facial tics and evil glances from contestant to contestant (though most of them actually were directed at the slyly evil Colombe, with whom I naturally fell into instant love, mainly because she is exactly the sort of Zen-artiste blond chickie with whom I have mistakenly fallen for time and again, always to my regret. This was no different.) In the second season, there were at least four contestants who created dishes that made my mouth water constantly; here, I don't think any of them could have actually graduated from culinary school, let alone Jag.

And do you want tampering? How about bringing the person back whom everyone despised, Colombe, as one of the assistants in a later challenge, clearly giving the advantage to the other contestant by letting them choose the other assistant first. Because why would anyone dare choose Colombe first, even if she is actually fairly competent in the kitchen? (She did win the initial challenge.) Who won the challenge is not important here; it's just the fact that the other person they brought back was probably the most beloved contestant. Don't tell me the producers didn't know in advance what the outcome of pairings would be. And by bringing Amy back, the in-denial-about-her-snobbiness French-married mom, to replace Jag, it immediately explained exactly why there was such concentration on her feelings early in that episode. But she and Rory, the other finalist, are both unremarkable in both presentation and personality, and if I hear one more thing about backyard bistros or gourmets next door (their boring "identities", both much fretted over in the run), this budding home cook is going to puke his next six meals up before even making them.

I'm not sure I will even watch tonight's finale, because 1) I am not interested at this point, and 2) I doubt that I would watch any show these two were on again. (Besides, I accidentally ran into the final result earlier completely by accident, so what's the point?) Then again, they are going to have Colombe on for a cast reunion. Just to watch this immensely tedious bunch of bores have to twist themselves into knots to put on a smile for her just might be the highlight of the show so far.

And for me, for good. This soufflé has burst... I'm going to check out Top Chef...

Posted Sunday, July 22, 2007 9:34 PM by rik_tod | with 0 comments

Psychotronic Ketchup: Motorcycle Mamas Don't Allow No-- Oh, Maybe They Do...

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Under discussion:

Angels' Wild Women (1972)

Angel Unchained (1970)

The Cycle Savages (1969)

So, after watching three 70's biker flicks back-to-back-to-back, I am led to one conclusion: bikers, apparently, love gang rape.

Or at the very least, Hollywood thought the type of people who loved to watch biker flicks loved gang rape, and so they used the sordid subject in film after film. One of the problems with plowing through the wide variety of films in The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film is having to watch genres of which I have little interest in viewing. Outside of Easy Rider and The Wild One, I don't really care much for the genre, and outside of one despicable person in particular, neither do the relative handful of people I know that I consider true "bikers". I don't mean my close friends who have taken to the two-wheeled highway, and who are what I would call "motorcycle enthusiasts". Those that I know who have delved even partially into the true biker lifestyle -- and we are talking only specifically here of about four people -- three of them expressed to me how most of what happened in these movies was bullshit, and the fourth one would tell me how it was even crazier and more dangerous in real life -- and he was the only one who loved these movies!

The strangest thing about watching these films in a row is seeing the variants, not so much on the biker film genre, but on the subject of gang rape, pile up on each other in a -- well, a variant orgy. The Cycle Savages from 1969 probably takes the more traditional approach, by using the premise that in order for a chick to become a member of the gang she has to let the guys in the club line up on her. Thankfully, this is only a minor but creepy threatened point late in the film, and the rest of the film is really intent on tripping over itself and falling into a pit of unintentional comedy. The hero, who is most decidedly not a biker, is an artist who spends his time drawing pictures of the local biker gang as they commit various misdeeds. There is much more going on, including a white-slavery subplot, but what it comes down to is this: the leader of the gang, Keeg, portrayed in great "crazy" fashion by the inimitable Bruce Dern, wants to stop the artist from identifying them not by killing him, like they would nearly anyone else that got in their way, but by, in Dern's words, "hurting his hands." "We're gonna hurt his hands!", Dern blurts out after nearly an hour of deliberation on the puzzle, and the way he finally decides to do it is by using a table vise. Of course, they then have to devise a way to get his hands in that vise, and they also don't count on the fact that the artist is an ex-Marine and expert with a katana sword. Every line that drops out of Dern's mouth is precious -- not because the lines are written well or funny, but because Dern puts an ironic twist on everything, and he is funny -- but it can't override such an overall terrible movie, even if I actually did have accidental fun watching it. (And keep your eyes peeled for none other than DJ Casey Kasem as Keeg's equally evil brother. Kasem, along with Mike Curb, executive produced this film, so if anyone can be take some of the blame for sensationalizing biker-gang rape for the moviegoing public, it's the guy who voiced Shaggy on Scooby-Doo and hosted America's Top 40 and another guy who produced The Osmonds, Debby Boone and Christian-oriented music and was the former Lt. Governor of California.)

Angel Unchained takes the gang rape onus away from the bikers, because here, for the most part, they are the heroes. Well, some of the bikers are heroes, mainly the one named Angel (played by a not-bad ex-surfer Don Stroud), who tires of his life of homoerotic leathery brotherhood and decides to really hit the open road. He finds a hippie commune who are more than happy to help him out, but they have problems of their own. They are being tormented by the local cowboys, who have also already given our hero a hard time, and so Angel calls in his biker buddies to come in and teach the hippies to defend their commune Seven Samurai-style. But lest you be led into believing that this film is loaded with scenes of horses facing off against motorcycles, let me drop this into the equation: the cowboys drive dune buggies! Oh, yes, dear readers, this one is precious indeed. So, now you get scenes of bikers and hippies banding together to dig traps into which the dune buggies will crash, and yes, things will go bad when drugs, booze and women are brought into the mix. One of these women, and the object of Angel's eye, is played by a young and rather cute Tyne Daly. What's that you say? Tyne Daly! The rather tough, butch one from Cagney and Lacey? Yup, she used to be cute and here she is not-quite disrobing in a biker film. And there is the aforementioned gang rape scene, in which the ironic twist is that it is the townsfolk, and not the bikers, who are responsible for the crime. At the very least, despite the much-borrowed plot device, the film should be given some points for mixing things up that much, even if they still had to include a gang rape scene.

If you want to mix things up even further, you could look to Angels' Wild Women, released a couple years later in 1972. You could look there, but you really don't want to. This is one where we are supposed to be given a break from the largely male-oriented pillaging and partying of other biker films, and let the girls do all the dirty work. The poster itself boasts: "Hot, hard and mean! Too tough for any man! They'll beat 'em, treat 'em, and eat 'em alive!" This is fine -- I'm all for a little genre cross-casting any day, and one thing that the exploitation film racket is good at is doing reverse spins on tired material -- but this film does not back up what it claims. Oh, sure... the gang rape scene has the girls taking an innocent farm-boy's assumed virginity at gunpoint, and the girls talk tough for a while -- but after about 15 minutes, this one is business as usual. The rest of this horribly acted, written and, well, everything epic from the reliably klutzy hands of Al Adamson (who, I should note, I would rather give the Worst Director of All Time title to rather than the overly-abused Ed Wood) gets its focus back to the boys, and the fact turns out to be that, ultimately, these "independent" ladies need their men to straighten things out for them. These ladies not only count on their men to save the day, but, presumably, will allow them to line up and take a shot at each of the honeys when the weapons are laid down and the partying begins. So much for edgy feminist statements, but what can you expect from the director of Naughty Stewardesses?

You can talk about freedom all you want. I'm hittin' the open road, and riding away from biker films for a while. Don't worry, though, because I'm sure when I return to them again, there will be at least one gang rape scene per film through which I will have to squirm. Sadly...

The Cycle Savages
Director: Bill Brame // 1969 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 4

Angel Unchained
Director: Lee Madden // 1970 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 4

Angels' Wild Women
Director: Al Adamson // 1972 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 2

Originally posted on The Cinema 4 Pylon on March 18, 2007

Posted Friday, July 20, 2007 8:00 PM by rik_tod | with 0 comments

Psychotronic Ketchup: Once This Bell Tolled, I Found My Purpose Again

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Under discussion:

A Bell from Hell (1973)

A couple of weekends ago, I developed a true annoyance at the rote giallo entry from Maestro Bava's son Lamberto, Blade in the Dark, which left me practically banging my head against the wall in ennui. I also spent much of its length yelling at its incompetence in the dubbing department, which instead of at least illuminating me to some of the more obscure story elements, left me seething with rage over what could only be described as a hack job for a hack job. Saturday afternoon, the next day, I watched the third Spider-Man film and also watched my enthusiasm for the franchise wane to levels I never expected it to dip, even if I ended up enjoying the film overall.

Not that this would be enough to make even a cinema nut with the weakest of constitutions swear off films for a while, but it could have at least been enough to move my cynicism-meter up a notch or two. (Some who have known me for eons would call this an impossible feat.) However, my frustration after the junior Bava effort did leave me a tad punch-drunk, and it made me fear changing my player to the next disc in line, another foreign thingy of dubious heritage, which I was sure would find me registering for a weapon (completely out of my character, mind you) with which to Elvis-blast my television. My surprise then that I not only found myself intrigued enough at its conclusion to immediately submit to a repeat viewing, but that upon waking in the morning, I dove in once more for a trip through the film-fanatic's commentary that came attached to the Spanish horror thingy from the early 70's. Three straight times with a five-hour nap?

Why? What is so remarkable about A Bell From Hell, a film that I had barely heard of before I clicked to add it to my rental queue a month ago? Everything, that's what. Only you don't realize this going in. From the DVD cover photo, one should feel right in expecting a film where a series of women are tortured in a creepy and overly gratuitous fashion. It seems like this film is nothing more than an early-day version of the currently popular "torture porn" genre. And this would be a seriously incorrect assumption. What is unique about the film is how it gets to the point in the film that appears on that misleading cover, and where it goes after that illuminating point. Chiefly, the film does nothing or goes nowhere that you expect it to in the course of its 100 minutes – not even end the way you expect. And it doesn't go down easily when it does end. It's like the film itself is expending anxiety over the way things occur, and refuses to accept its own conclusion.

Waltzing into A Bell from Hell, unaware of the ragged rocks ahead as I was munching on a Trader Joe's pizza, and truly believing that I was in for more of the same as in the previous film, a trail of tiny weirdnesses caught my eye: little creeping things which served to mount up in my brain as the film took its casual stroll across my screen. I wanted to believe I was watching just another revenge epic, but there was something different about it. The fellow doing the rather stiff commentary points out again and again the director (who died at the end of filming, either jumping or falling from the film's tower which holds the titular bell) uses the film to make political jabs at the petit-bourgeoisie (a phrase he slathers far too generously onto nearly every other comment, like Tom Sawyer finding a twentieth kid to whitewash Aunt Polly's fence) and certainly I picked up on this as I was watching it, but not to the extent that he swears it does.

There is undoubtedly class jealousy and hatred at play here, both between the protagonist and the townspeople, and between the protagonist and his aunt and cousins, who consider themselves above him (even though all three of his gorgeous cousins are either in love or lust with him to some extent). His aunt, played to shockingly chilly effect by Viveca Lindfors, controls his estate, and the fact that she has helped spur on his removal from society and his rightful inheritance to an asylum in order to rein him in, in no small way inspires him to not only exact some sort of penance from the woman, but also to punish all who conspired with her, including his cousins.

There is a frankly shocking scene where he gets a job at a slaughterhouse -– be warned: the scenes of cattle slaughter, even those involving the main actor, are not staged; they are real and, if you are an off-again and on again vegetarian such as myself, painful to watch –- and the scene, apart from acting as a foreshadowing of the impending violence (we believe), serves as solid punctuation to the fact that there is no limit to what this individual will do to inflict the pain he seeks to cause. He will also use the affections of his cousins against themselves and each other; he will not hesitate to make himself seem foolish (especially in a strange public bathroom sequence) if it will make his enemies uncomfortable; and he will employ a wide variety theatrical devices, technological props, and a surprising cast of operatives to exact his revenge. If this sounds like the hero/villain, for he actually seems at times as both, is along the lines of The Abominable Dr. Phibes, don't be fooled. This is an earthier, more painful form of vengeance; unlike Robert Fuest's classic, outrageous Avengers-style camp affair, A Bell from Hell is a dark-toned mood piece, with incest and rape and murder and revenge, both personal and political on its mind.

And yes, for those of you who, like the fellow on the commentary track, can't get enough of the fact that the film sports a reminder of the uneasiness between the classes in Spain in the early 70's, I will say this: I wish that they had hired Chevy Chase to do the commentary. He would not only prove to be a far livelier host, but he could also nudge the viewer with an old-school Saturday Night Live fact from just a couple years after this movie was released: that Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

La Campana del Infierno (A Bell from Hell)
Dir: Claudio Guerín [& Juan Antonio Bardem, uncredited, post-production] // Spanish, 1973
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

Posted Thursday, July 19, 2007 10:31 PM by rik_tod | with 0 comments