The Icons: Zoë Lund

This essay originally appeared on xoJaneUK, but has since vanished into the Internet ether when it was reabsorbed back into the mother site. I'm posting it here because I'm proud of it and want it to live on.

This is a sad story. A sad story about a beautiful woman whose gifts were so abundant she couldn’t take them seriously. Model, actress, musician, author, screenwriter, she did it all, but none satisfied her as much as her one true passion—the addiction that eventually killed her.

The thing is, though, you don’t have to live long to be an icon. Just ask James Dean or Marilyn Monroe. All it takes is one project that lingers—one that forever sticks in the memories of those who’ve experienced it.

Zoë Lund (nee Tamerlis) was still just a teenager when Abel Ferrara cast her as the title character in Ms. 45—a revenge drama that transcended the limits of its low-budget exploitation roots through the unique combination of Abel’s gritty boho-arthouse sensibility and Zoë’s wordless performance as a young woman who pushes back after being pushed too far.

Thana is a young seamstress, struggling to make a living in New York’s garment district. Her difficulties are compounded by a condition that has left her completely mute—leaving her largely defenseless in a city that often forces its citizens to possess a strong voice. She learns this the hard way one terrible night after work.

Grabbed by a man in a mask, she is unable to scream when he attacks her in an alley. In shock, she makes her way home, only to find a different man waiting for her, armed with a gun. He tries to rob her, but she has nothing to steal. As he assaults her, she is able to knock him down and kill him with an iron. Forced to dispose of his body, she takes his gun and realizes that she has found the voice she never had before.

And with it she tells the men of the city just how angry she really is.

Ms. 45 is a film that takes its Death Wish plot and deliberately turns it into a despairing-yet-triumphant feminist lament. The film makes it clear that Thana’s experience has driven her insane, yet also suggests that’s an entirely appropriate response for the world she lives in. When she takes her newfound gun out onto the streets and uses it on the men who seek to exploit her sexuality for their pleasure, we aren’t asked to recoil in horror. Instead, Abel and screenwriter Nicolas St. John seem to be asking why hasn’t someone done this before?

For this to work, it is imperative that Thana (whose name is a direct allusion to Thanatos, the Greek god of death) is someone we sympathize with and the brilliance of the film—and Zoë’s performance—is that we feel this empathy despite her inability to say a single word.

Iconic is a huge word. Especially for a low-budget film most people haven’t seen. But it’s the only one that fits when describing the impact Zoë has as Thana. Robbed of words, it’s a performance we can only experience through our eyes and what we see is extraordinary to behold.

As Thana, Zoë possessed the kind of sad, ethereal beauty we associate with the likes of Isabelle Adjani and Gene Tierney—burnished by sharp cheekbones and impossibly full lips. As her avenging alter ego, she predicted the dominating anonymity of the Robert Palmer video vixens, with their red lips, slicked back hair and cold, unforgiving eyes. Without words, Zoë makes this transition utterly believable and transfixing. This is best seen in the scenes between her and her boss. Before her transformation, we cringe as she meekly accepts his harassment; after, we smile knowingly when she accepts his invitation to be his date to a Halloween party—she now has all the power, he just doesn’t know it yet.

A true cult film, Ms. 45 was not an immediate success, but rather one whose reputation grew because people who saw it had to talk about it. Three years after it was released in 1981, Zoë got her second chance to star in a movie, this time in a role that required her to play two different parts.

Special Effects was written and directed by Larry Cohen, a cult filmmaker (It Lives, The Stuff, Q: The Winged Serpent) who has a reputation for coming up with inspired ideas that he usually ruined with lazy scripting and poor production. In it he cast Zoë as a wannabe starlet who is murdered on film by a fallen director played by Eric Bogosian, who then finds a lookalike to take her place in the movie he decides to make around the snuff footage. As the starlet, Zoë’s voice was dubbed by another actress (speaking in an unconvincing southern accent), meaning it wasn’t until an hour into her second movie that audiences finally got to hear her distinctly New Yorker inflections.

Unlike Ms. 45, Effects proved to be a forgettable effort and marked her last starring role. She appeared in an episode of Miami Vice and a short-lived TV drama set in an insane asylum, before focusing her sights behind the camera. Reteaming with Abel, she co-wrote what still remains his most famous film—1992’s Bad Lieutenant. She also agreed to appear in the film, playing the woman who helps Harvey Keitel’s title character freebase some heroin. It was a role she’d spent years researching.

It’s hard to see the same woman who once played Thana in the film. A decade older, she’s still beautiful, but gaunt and brittle. The already thin frame she displayed throughout Special Effects now looked sharp and disconcertingly bony, belying the true face of the era’s obsession with “heroin chic”.

Zoë was unapologetic about her addiction. She wrote at length about heroin and advocated and romanticized its effects. She worked on unproduced screenplays about famous junkies such as John Holmes and Gia Carangi, which meant she could harbor no illusions about how her life was probably going to end.

By 1999, she was living in Paris when her heart stopped working. She was 37.  News of her death was eventually reported on various websites. These obits were mostly short and perfunctory. There wasn’t a lot to say.

Watching Ms. 45, you see the debut of an exciting, charismatic and almost impossibly beautiful performer, but that wasn’t who Zoë Lund wanted to be. She had other things on her mind. We can choose to feel robbed for what might have been or grateful for what we got.

My instinct is to opt for the latter.

B-Movie Bullsh*t - Part Twenty "The Anatomy of an Action Star"

B-Movie Bullsh*t

Part 20

In the Blood

(2014)

Synopsis

Ava and Derek are both recovering drug addicts, but their future seems bright now that they have found each other. While he comes from wealth and privilege, she was raised by a psychotic outlaw who taught her how to defend herself and survive at all costs. At their wedding, his father tries to convince him to make her sign a prenuptial agreement, but Derek refuses--saying he'd sooner be disowned first.

At first their honeymoon seems idyllic, but things turn dark at a nightclub when a local pimp takes a liking to Ava and starts a flight where she quickly proves how dangerous she can be when she and someone she loves are threatened.

The next day, the two of them go out zip-lining. Ava hates it and begs off from going any further after her first attempt. Derek continues, only to have his harness break before he makes it all the way across. Ava finds him still alive in the forest and an ambulance is called, but when she tries to get in it, she is told she cannot ride inside for "insurance reasons" and is given the card of the hospital he is being taken to.

Ava gets to the hospital only to find out that a Derek Grant hasn't been admitted to it or any other local hospital. The local police not only seem reluctant to help, but think that she likely killed him for his money. Desperate to find him and to learn the truth, Ava takes the violent skills she learned from her father and proceeds to beat a bloody path of rescue and revenge.

Of all the kinds of movie stars there are in the world, the action hero is the most inherently cinematic. Comedians can be funny onstage or on records; sex symbols can radiate their sensuality in photos; serious actors can seriously emote in plays or anywhere where the ability to recite dialogue and prose is an asset--but an action star truly depends on all that cinema has to offer to become the superhero the genre demands.

They rely on the skills of their directors, cinematographers. editors and--especially--stunt people to achieve their iconography, but that doesn't mean they are merely puppets--just the opposite. You can't MAKE someone a great action star. It's in their bones. You can see it in them. You can always tell when an imposter is thrust upon you.

It has nothing to do with acting. Very few of the truly great action stars have ever been adept at dialogue and those who are usually stumbled into the role, like Bruce Willis or Liam Neeson. In some cases it's purely a matter of physique--Arnold and Sly being the best examples of this--but more often than not the quality that separates the wannabes from the greats is this--the greats know what it's like to get punched in the face.

Charles Bronson was only 5'8", but he looked like a man who would keep getting up no matter how many times you tried to knock him down. When he went after punks in the Death Wish series, he was more silent, relentless and frightening than any terminator from the future. He was a man possessed, filled with darkness and ready to embrace the worst aspects of his humanity for the sake of his mission.

Gina Carano is also only 5'8", but she--unlike Charlie--is also a very beautiful woman. In interviews she comes across as shy and normal, but this is at odds with the fact that she first became famous because she is extraordinarily skilled at hurting people.

I've never followed MMA and couldn't tell you the difference between a Strikeforcer or an Ultimate Fighter. This is why Carano's career as a breakout ass-kicker was completely unknown to me the first time I ever saw her--when she was billed as "Crush" in the short-lived network attempt to reboot the syndicated 90s American Gladiator phenomenon. Despite this, I instantly saw her as someone special. Even though she wasn't much bigger than the contestants she was pitted against, she stood out as someone unique and exceptional. She had a physical credibility that was louder than anything she could say.

And clearly I wasn't the only person who noticed this. Steven Soderbergh saw it too. He had the screenplay for Haywire written specifically for her after seeing her interviewed on television--in much the same way he made The Girlfriend Experience after becoming intrigued by a young porn star named Sasha Grey.

Despite being heavily influenced by the action films of the 80s, Soderbergh's instincts are far too tasteful and cool to ever resort to out and out pastiche. This explains why Haywire ending up being more a mediation on the nature of such films--one that tailored itself to stand apart as singular even while it attempted to tell a story we'd seen hundreds of times before.

And though its pretensions left some genre fans frustrated, there was no denying how well the film showcased the attributes that brought Carano to Soderbergh's attention. But it did beg the question of how she would fare once she started working with other filmmakers who lacked his skill, taste and attention. People noted the lengths he went to put her in the best possible light--limiting her dialogue, keeping her character stoic and (most significantly) digitally lowering her natural speaking voice in the sound mix.

The general assumption was that she would be set adrift into the same world of dreary low-budget DTV/Netflix films where so many of her male action predecessors now dwell. And--on the surface--it would appear that her second starring feature, In the Blood, is exactly that--except that beneath that surface there's something far more interesting than its current 44% score on RottenTomatoes would suggest.

Directed by former My Science Project star John Stockwell, In the Blood features several of the tropes found in his previous work--the exotic tropical locations of Blue Crush, Dark Tide and Into the Blue, as well as the xenophobic western-distrust of brown foreign people depicted in Turistas.

In terms of plot, the film most immediately conjures up recollections of the Taken franchise (with additional shades of Breakdown and Roman Polanski's Frantic), but switches tradition by placing a male character in the role of the loved one who needs to be saved by the unrelenting, unforgiving badass whose past has made her perfectly suited for this exact situation.

Many might roll their eyes at this gender swap, but I don't consider it insignificant. There is a marked and undeniable difference in how this world regards men who look like Liam Neeson and women who look like Carano, and within the expanse of this disparity there are tensions that make these films as different as they are the same.

I've seen several critics who have been taken aback by the level of Carano's ferocity in the film, arguing that at a certain point her lack of mercy makes her unsympathetic. Many viewers will surely be disturbed by the bloody footprints her sandals leave after she has compelled a crooked cop to cut his own throat with a box cutter rather than have his young sleeping daughter awakened by a gunshot.

Yet her actions don't feel out of place within the context of the plot and--especially--the genre, where mercy is inevitably compromised in the name of the mission. Carano using a shovel to split open another crooked cop's face is no more violent than Ryan Gosling stomping a thug's face to oblivion in Drive, yet it packs a harder, even more visceral punch.

Films haven't regulalrly conditioned us to expect such brutality from a female protagonist and those that have often resort to a degree of visual hyperbole that allows us to dismiss what we're seeing as a fantasy. In Kill Bill, Uma Thurman's Beatrix Kiddo decimates dozens and dozens of sword-wielding gang members in the House of Blue Leaves, but the onslaught of decapitations and arterial sprays is played more for laughs and ultimately feels more akin to Monty Python and the Holy Grail than The Wild Bunch. Compare this to the much briefer bar fight in In the Blood, where Carano throws bottles of beer, smashes a cocktail glass against another woman's face and breaks a man's arm using a fighting hold viewers have actually seen her employ in real life combat. In this case we aren't given the luxury of willful disbelief--instead we get the sense we're viewing something that could actually happen if you pissed Carano off enough.

And I suspect that it's this authenticity that disturbs some viewers. Carano's background makes it harder for us to deny the plausibility of her actions. Unlike Angelina Jolie in Salt or Wanted, Carano's presence has a density that makes us wince every time it's inflicted upon someone--regardless of how much they deserve it or not.

Which is why I feel like the question mark hanging over Carano's acting career can be justifiably erased. While the quality of her films is going to vary, I believe what she brings to the genre is too interesting to be ignored or dismissed. She is literally too powerful a presence to be denied.

And her performance in the film suggests she might end up becoming a much better actor than anyone might expect. Though some of her line readings here are a bit clunkier than one might like, she also excels in quieter moments that require her to show her emotions rather than express them. Her increasing fear and desperation as she travels from hospital to hospital in search of her missing husband is palpable and totally convincing.

More often than not the moments that don't work fail because they've been poorly scripted and staged. An important scene at the restaurant where she and her husband meet the character who will set the entire plot in motion is cringe-worthy in its awkwardness, especially since the film can't disguise the fact that the only reason the character introduces himself to her is because the film can't officially begin until he does. It's so poorly thought out that not even Meryl Streep and Daniel Day-Lewis could make it work.

The film is also betrayed by its use of digital video. While many filmmakers working today have managed to do great things with the technology, In the Blood's early scenes look too much like something you would see in a low-budget cable TV drama than a present-day feature. Gradually this inauthentic gloss fades once the film starts using darker and grittier tones, but those first 20 minutes definitely dig a hole the movie has to spend the rest of its running time climbing out of.

But its biggest failure comes in an ending that hinges on what can only accurately be described as "Danny Trejo ex machina". Not only does it come out of nowhere and feels completely unjustified, but--for the sake of a happy ending--robs Carano of her agency and control over the situation. It's the only moment in the film where she is put in the position of having to be saved and it feels like a betrayal to the character and what she has gone through. Given what we've seen her do, it's impossible not to feel cheated when Machete suddenly appears and allows her to escape back to her comfortable life without consequence.

A better film might have still allowed Ava to get away with what she did, but it would also have required at least some degree of personal sacrifice.

As a low-budget B-movie action film, In the Blood is not without its many flaws, but I found it surprisingly compelling once the action began. As ludicrous as it often was, I never doubted its star, which in an effort like this makes it more the exception than the rule.

And while I expect Gina Carano will appear in much worse films as her career goes on (and hopefully many betters ones as well), I look forward to seeing them all because there is no other action movie star like her working today and--with all apologies to you Cynthia Rothrock fans out there--probably never has been.

Barbarella--An Introduction

A few weeks ago, Erin Fraser and Matt Bowes asked me to co-curate their screening of Barbarella - Queen of the Galaxy, which was to be the 3rd film of the 3rd season of their Graphic Content series, devoted to comic book cinema.

My duties would be two-fold. First, I would have to write an essay about the film, which would appear on the website, and, second, I would have to join them as they introduced the film at the screening.

Because I am not the sort to half-ass these things, I decided not to attempt to pull an extemporaneous intro out of my butt and instead wrote what amounted to a second, shorter, essay. And since I quite like it a lot and it seemed to get the desired response, I thought I would post it here for your entertainment.

There are certain films that are timeless—made with a sophistication that feels as right and relevant today as it did when the work was originally created.

Barbarella is NOT one of those films.

In fact, Barbarella is so much a product of a specific era that there was really only like an 8-month span in the entire 20th Century where it could have ever been created. And it is to our good fortune that the universe aligned in such a way that it did in fact actually happen.

Barbarella is not just dated. It is transcendently dated—to the point that it actually ends up lapping itself and achieves its own special kind of timelessness. It’s like an ancient mosquito frozen in amber, but in such a way that if you tried harvesting DNA from the blood in its belly, you wouldn’t be able to recreate anything, because nature can’t find a way if there was never anything natural to begin with.

This film is a monument to the artificial, in a way that the 1970s auteurist wave tried its best to make sure never happened again. And it mostly succeeded, because even though there are examples of films that have tried to rise up to this level, almost none of them get beyond the point of homage and pastiche. Barbarella, though, is the real deal.

It is the genuine fake article.

And how did this happen? Was it planned or a glorious accident? The answer, of course, is that it was both and that is what truly makes it wonderful—the synthesis of the canny and the campy. You are going to laugh watching this film, because it is very funny, but sometimes you are going to laugh with it and sometimes you are going to laugh at it and often you’re going to find it difficult to determine which you are doing at any given time.

Now, traditionally, we would assume that the director Roger Vadim was responsible for all this, but the problem is that there’s a very good reason why he is best remembered today as a dude who hooked up with some of the most beautiful women in the world and not as an amazing filmmaker and that’s because he was not an amazing filmmaker. In fact, there are signs that he wasn’t even a good filmmaker. His best films are saved by two basic factors—interesting screenplays written mostly by other people and really, really beautiful women.

In the case of Barbarella, that screenplay had as many as 8 people who worked on it, but the most important of these is the only one who is actually credited on-screen with Vadim—Terry Southern. Now, Terry Southern was one of the defining comic voices of that era, best know for his work with Stanley Kubrick on Dr. Strangelove. It’s safe to say that every time you find yourself laughing with Barbarella, he’s the one responsible.

And it is interesting to note that prior to working on Barbarella, Southern once co-wrote a novel called Candy that was a parody of Voltaire’s Candide. It was about a young beautiful innocent who meets a series of strange men, who she proceeds to have lots and lots of sex with. A famously terrible film version of that novel was made the same year as Barbarella and Southern did not write the screenplay for it—Buck Henry did. So it may be a coincidence that Barbarella is also about a young beautiful innocent who meets a series of strange men, who she proceeds to have lots and lots of sex with, but I personally like to think of it as a kind of cinematic FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOU!

In the piece I wrote for the Graphic Content website, I specifically mention the behinds the scenes folks primarily responsible for the aspects of Barbarella that make it a work of both deliberate and accidental genius—but I only have 90 seconds left to talk, so I’m now going to focus on how hot Jane Fonda was in 1968.

Jane Fonda was REALLY HOT IN 1968. She would have been 30 when this movie was filmed and when it was being made no one could have any idea that she would go on to become one of the most culturally significant figures of the past 50 years. More than just a movie star, she has managed to successfully ride in the middle of the zeitgeist throughout every decade of her fame.

And you would think that because of this she might look back with shame at a film as strange and silly as Barbarella, but Jane Fonda is too awesome for that. When she’s asked about it in interviews you can see a special twinkle in her eye. She doesn’t back down or shy away from it. Instead she tells her interlocutor about how many men over the past years have come up to her and said how much of an impact their posters of Barbarella had on them during their adolescence.

Why?

BECAUSE JANE FONDA WAS REALLY HOT IN 1968!

And that hotness has been captured here forever in a silly, wonderful film that will stand the tests of time, because it is so utterly of its time. This movie is a snapshot of a moment that never really existed—a history that never was. There wasn’t a single second in recorded time when this movie wasn’t ridiculous and because of this it is special in a way so few films are.

Allan Drills Daisy -- From the Dusty Archives

Daisy Barringer and I first got to know each other through our work on a popular women's website I shall not name because that way trouble lies (it's a long sad story). It didn't take long for me to note that we shared similar senses of humour and it occurred to me that it might prove amusing to attempt a collaboration. For various reasons it never saw print, but when I took a look at it a few days ago it aroused a chuckle or two from deep within me, so I asked my co-author if she was cool with me posting it here on my site, where it was guaranteed to be read by A LOT less people than we originally intended. Some of the references are a bit dated, since it was written over a year and a half ago, but I still like it.

And if you don't, it's probably Daisy's fault.

Allan Drills Daisy (About Sports)

Allan: Daisy, as my favourite vagina-ed sports expert, I have decided to reach out to you to help me better understand the world of athletics and why it should matter to me—a man who gets winded if he fast-forwards past commercials too quickly. To that end, I’ve devised a few questions that I hope you can answer and bring me closer to my goal of becoming a more well rounded token dude.

Daisy: Allan, thank you so much for reaching out. (I hope all of the typing didn’t exhaust you or get in the way of your typical “special computer time”.) I will speculate that the folks love you as their token dude *because* you don’t know much about sports, but I appreciate your eagerness to learn. It’s endearing! In a completely sexless, none-of-us-are-ever-going-to-think-of-you-that-way way. First lesson: Don’t ever call it the “world of athletics” again. Unless you want me to fly down to whatever cute little Canuck “city” you call home and give you a Megaton Wedgie (that’s the one that doesn’t end until the underwear is literally ripped off your body). But then again, you might be into that sort of thing, in which case: keep at it!

Seriously.

Ohmygawd, how much fun are we having already?!

Now to your questions.

Allan: Aren’t sports stupid? By that I mean, aren’t the people who both watch and participate in them morons who over compensate for their mental deficiencies by growing big muscles and bragging about their bench-pressing abilities? And why were the girls on the senior volleyball team so mean to me in high school?

 Daisy: Yes, yes, and because you’re really short.

But honestly, who cares about those mean girls? Have you ever played volleyball?! (Nevermind, I’ll just assume the answer is no.) It literally makes no sense. According to some hard-hitting research I did on The Internet, 20% of people “hate” volleyball and with good reason. If I’m going to be subjected to getting balls flying at my face for thirty minutes, well… I think we all know where this is going. (Hint: I’m talking about my vagina! It’s a sex reference!)

Allan: Who was the person who decided that a game that involves throwing and catching a ball with your hands should be named football? Were they stupid? Am I the first person who’s ever noticed this?

Daisy: I don’t know. Yes. No.

No, seriously. American football is derived from rugby football and zzzzzzzzzzzz. Sorry. I was still thinking about balls in my face.

Allan: Wouldn’t baseball be more interesting if everyone on the field had a bat? And if it wasn’t baseball, but a Spanish telenovela about Dominican immigrants and their spicy hot Latin wives?

Daisy: I’ve been advised by my legal counsel not to answer this question.

Allan: This summer the Olympics are going to take place in London. The original Olympics featured athletes who competed in the nude. Who was the asshole who started making everyone wear clothes? Was it the same jerk from question #2?

Daisy: Nekkid people freak me out. As does this question. Next.

Allan: You’re a snowboarder. As a Canadian I implicitly understand that snow is the best possible excuse to stay inside and play video games. What’s wrong with you?

Daisy: If you have to ask what’s wrong with me, I feel like you’re not paying attention to the things I tweet to Jared Leto. Shit. Why did I write that? It’s a cry for help, Allan. A CRY FOR HELP!

Allan: People who watch sports appear to drink a lot of beer. Do the frequent trips to the bathroom that result make it seem like the events go by a lot faster and less boringly then they would if you weren’t constantly peeing?

Daisy: Sigh. Yes. Yes it does.

Allan: Doesn’t the fact that basketball players are all so tall and close to the basket make the sport much less fun to watch? Wouldn’t it be more entertaining if they were all 5’4” or shorter and mini-trampolines were scattered randomly around the court to make up the difference?

Daisy: Do they not have the Harlem Globe Trotters in Canada? You just described the Washington Generals. You should try out. You could probably get onto their lineup.

Allan: What’s the difference between being a passionate supporter of your favorite sports team and being a member of one of those cults that forces you to wear robes and get an unflattering haircut?

Daisy: The only difference is that the 49ers allow me to wear my hair however I choose. I accidentally got carried away this year and chose pigtails once. I’m in my 30s. Someone should have stopped me. WHY DIDN’T ANYONE STOP ME? A CRY FOR HELP ALLAN! A CRY FOR HELP!

Allan: Winners of sporting events often thank the deity of their choosing for their victories. If God is in fact affecting outcomes, how is this not considered cheating? Wouldn’t the only fair contests be ones that just involve atheists?

Daisy: I once dated a guy who convinced me that sleeping with other women wasn’t actually cheating, so I don’t think I’m the right person to answer this question.

Allan: If the world’s greatest MMA fighter, the world’s greatest boxer, a ninja, a Japanese sex robot and a honey badger were thrown into the same ring, how many hits would the resulting YouTube clip get? Are we talking Rebecca Black numbers?

Daisy: WTF is a Japanese sex robot?

Allan: I’ve noticed that at football games, attractive women in very brief outfits dance around like strippers with ribbon-thingies in their hands. This makes me feel funny in my pants. Why is that?

Daisy: Because you know they’d ignore you in real life.

Allan: Tim Tebow?

Daisy: He makes all of us feel a little funny in our pants, Allan. But it’s not something we say out loud.

Allan: Thanks Daisy! That was very enlightening. I feel as though I can now comfortably walk into any local beer hall where waitresses clad in vacuum-sealed hot pants serve chicken wings featuring different varieties of hot sauces. That’ll show those stupid volleyball girls! They laughed at me then, but I’ll be the one laughing now! HA! HAHA! HAHAHAHA!

DAISY: A CRY FOR HELP ALLAN! A CRY FOR HELP!

Shallow Al

Another video review re-post. In this one, I admit that Killer Workout  is a really terrible movie, but for some strange reason I just couldn't look away.....

I Hated Pieces to Pieces

Yesterday I realized all of my videos no longer could be viewed on the blog, so I've begun the process of re-uploading them to Vimeo, which I thought would serve as a good way to reintroduce them to those of you who have not witnessed their glory and majesty. 

First up is my vid for Pieces , a popular Euro-slasher that I happen to think is the rare horror film that is every bit as terrible and unjustifiable as critics of the genre claim all such films are. In the vid I make reference to "the people have spoken," which was my nod to the fact that I had a poll about what movie to review next on the blog at the time and Pieces  won with 3 votes.

I never ever claimed to be popular. 

Anyway, here's me trashing a movie a lot of people inexplicably love. Probably NSFW, unless you're feeling brave.

More Old Lacey

An Excerpt from 1957s Lacey Frill and the Quiz Show Scandal by Stoney M. Badess (as Drake A. Hardman)

The camera closed in on Lacey’s face as beads of sweat began to form on her furrowed brow.

“Augustus Klieman Von Rowendreich?” she finally guessed just before the timeout buzzer went off.

“That’s right!” the show’s enthusiastic host announced to the applause of the studio audience—none of whom knew that the stakes for this particular contestant were so much higher than just losing a significant amount of cash.

As focused as she was on each question, she still could not forget what the show's diabolical producers had told her once she had stepped into the soundbooth.

 "This booth is airtight you nosy little girl and all it would take to replace the oxygen we're pumping into it with cyanide gas is one simple flip of the switch.. To save yourself a gruesome death, all you have to do is correctly answer every single question Howard asks you in the 30 seconds allotted. And if you even attempt to say a single word about your predicament to the television viewing public who are watching live right this very moment, an armed thug named Roosevelt has orders to kill your photographer friend, Cedric, in the most painful way he can image."

“That puts you just one question away from our grand prize of $76,500!” Howard informed her and everyone watching. “As you know, the $76,500 question is always chosen randomly from our barrel of postcards sent in by our viewers. Your fate, Miss Frill, now depends on the kindness of a stranger. Will your question be impossibly obscure or childishly simple?” he paused as he let the audience ponder this question. “Well, let’s find out! Judy, it’s time to roll out the barrel!”

A voluptuous blond in a very tight evening gown appeared on the stage, rolling an actual barrel towards the booth. When she reached Howard, he lifted up a small door on its side and pulled out a postcard of the Empire State Building.

“Mr. Eugene Wolper from New York, New York,” Howard read from the back of the card, “wants you to answer this question for your $76,500 grand prize: Can you recite pi up to the 20th decimal?”

The crowd simultaneously gasped and laughed at this nearly impossible question. There was no way the pretty redhead in the booth—as lucky as she had been before—was smart enough to get this one right.

“3.14—” Lacey began, knowing that she only had 30 seconds to provide the correct answer. But despite the presence of a figurative Sword of Damocles hovering above her head, she allowed herself the indulgence of a brief remembrance of her time spent with Oliver Fry, the brilliant and handsome dean of mathematics at Oxford University. It had been a lazy Sunday morning and the two of them had found it impossible to leave his large comfortable bed and start the day.

“Shall we attempt to go for the record?” she had suggested seductively as he held her in his arms.

“The spirit,” he smiled at her, “is oh-so-very-willing, but alas the flesh is equally weak. I’m afraid I shall have to spend the next week reviving myself with various tonics to provide you with this kind of entertainment again. In the meantime, why don’t I teach you something useful?”

“Like what?”

“How about the first 100 digits of pi?”

“How would that be useful?” 

“You never know,” he shrugged. “Someday it might just save your life....”

“—159…5…..89793…238..4…6,” she finished just before the timeout buzzer sounded. 

“That’s correct!” Howard exclaimed as the audience cheered with shock and approval for what she had just done.

“Can I get out of here now?” she asked Howard. 

“Certainly, Miss Frill,” he smiled at her—the artificial shape of his grin proving to her that he had been fully aware of the danger she had been in the entire time.

Old Prose for the New Site

Here is another not-so-brief excerpt from the recently discovered pseudonymous Badess series, Lacey Frill, Lady Adventurer.

A Brief Excerpt from 1966’s Lacey Frill Dances With Danger by Stoney M. Badess (as Drake A. Hardman)

Lacey could feel the blisters as they began to develop on her feet. That sadistic bastard had deliberately given her a pair of Go-Go boots two sizes too small, but her only option was to ignore the pain and keep on dancing.

Cedric’s life depended on it!

As she fought against the pain, she thought back to the time she spent with Dr. Heinrich Zeifly, the world-famous professor of engineering. During a visit to his private laboratory, he had shown her a machine he had built that—if her guess was correct—operated on the exact same principal as the death trap on which she was currently doing the Frug.

If Agogos’ design was the same as the good doctor’s, then that meant it suffered from the same fatal flaw—the two intersecting duo-flange hyper-relays could only rotate at maximum capacity for three minutes and 23 seconds before the cryoleen gel used to lubricate them would become too hot and cause a spontaneous combustion.

This meant that the only way she could save her favorite photographer was to dance so fast that the trap’s mechanics reached maximum capacity and then keep up that pace for a grueling 203 seconds.

Below her the club’s dancing patrons cheered as they watched her groove faster than anyone ever had before—all of them unaware that a man’s life depended on each blistering step. The band, awed by her movement, sped up their music to match her insanely rapid rhythm and soon everyone was attempting to dance as fast as the beautiful redheaded Go-Go dancer in the cage above their heads. Many of them lasted only a few seconds, but Lacey could not afford to give up so soon. Her lungs began to ache and she found it harder and harder to breathe, while her heart started pounding so fiercely it felt as though it was going to burst out of her chest.

With each step Lacey now took the risk of ending her life along with her sidekick’s—the human body only being capable of so much exertion before it expires. 

The seconds passed like eons.

From his hidden window above the stage, Agogos watched with amusement, believing that his captive had been overcome by a desperate madness—unaware of his trap’s mechanical flaw. 

“She’s going to dance herself to death!” he laughed with delight.

“That’ll teach her to interfere in our business,” smirked Miss Twist. 

But their amusement was cut short when a sudden, seemingly inexplicable blast of fire caused the entire bottom of Lacey’s cage to explode, propelling her down to the club’s dance floor, where she was caught by the head quarterback of the LA Rustlers.

“You sure are one wild chick,” the football player complimented the exhausted beauty in his arms.

“Thanks,” said Lacey. “Now, would you mind carrying me to the office of the jerk who owns this dump? I’m not too happy with him right now.”

Fancy Pants Exploitation: Gate of Flesh

Just because it’s ambitious, well-shot and sometimes in a weird language doesn’t mean it isn’t exploitation!

Nikutai no mon (Gate of Flesh)

(1964)

Synopsis

A young woman named Maya finds herself homeless, starving and alone on the streets of Tokyo after her beloved brother fails to return from Borneo during WWII. She is taken in by a group of street-tough prostitutes and adapts quickly to their profession. The group has two very important rules—protect their territory and never ever have sex with any man for free. They prove how seriously they take these commandments when one of them breaks the later rule and has her hair cut off and is left naked and tied up for everyone to see on a row boat in the harbour.

Angered by their fate, the women share a nihilistic view of life—save Machiko, the only one who still wears a kimono instead of western dress and who is barely tolerated amongst them. Into this small community enters Shintaro, a veteran of the war and a violent thief whose domineering machismo instantly transforms him into the de facto leader they all feel compelled to impress. Reminded of her brother, Maya falls in love with him, but sees what can happen if she acts on her emotions when she and the others violently beat Machiko for not charging her favourite customer.

Things come to a head the night Shintaro brings home a stolen live cow, which he butchers in front of them. They trade the heart for alcohol and get very drunk. Maya gives into her feelings and makes love to Shintaro. Sen, the tattooed pre-Shintaro leader of the group, finds out and viciously whips Maya and convinces a local hoodlum that Shintaro has cheated the local gang on a deal. Shintaro is killed, a fact the badly beaten Maya only learns about when she finds his veteran flag floating in the harbour.

The year before Gate of Flesh was released, one of Hollywood’s greatest filmmakers made his own film about the world’s oldest profession, but Billy Wilder’s Irma la Douce would seem to bear little resemblance to Seijun Suzuki’s much more despairing film. In fact, it serves as a classic example of how ill equipped mainstream American movies were to tackle the controversial subject head-on as the studio system lumbered inexorably towards irrelevance.

Irma la Douce is a farce, starring Jack Lemmon as a French gendarme who loses his job when he messes up the arrangement between the local police and his neighbourhood’s working girls. Having no other options he ironically becomes the pimp for the film’s title character, Shirley Maclaine, with who he has fallen in love. Unable to stand the thought of her sleeping with other men, he creates a fake identity and becomes her only customer. Shenanigans then ensue (with a roadshow worthy running time of 147 minutes).

Made in an era where innuendo was still closely monitored and outright frankness verboten, Wilder’s film is a burlesque sapped of most of the good parts—a cartoon of the sex trade made in a place and time where the word “sex” still had to be whispered in polite company.

It would be years before Hollywood was ready to truly confront the realities of prostitution (even in 1969, as the studio system imploded and the flood of permissiveness started reaching everyone’s knees, Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity—a musical remake of Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabria—changed Charity’s profession from streetwalker to taxi dancer*), which is a major reason why Gate of Flesh has the impact that it does. Though very much of its era, the Japanese film goes to places its contemporary Western counterparts could not.

This is true both spiritually (the film’s existentialist tone is more the stuff of low budget noir than studio melodrama) and graphically (it has boobies in it), yet the film exhibits an innate theatricality and visual style that gives it a patina of artificiality at odds with its implied mission statement. Though it seems to strive to be an unusually realistic depiction of prostitution following Japan’s defeat in WWII, there are times when the colours are just a bit too bright and one cannot help but think of Shirley Maclaine’s famous green stockings.

The question then is this: At what point does a film’s beauty begin to undermine the truth of what it presents?

With its vibrant palate, sweaty sensationalism and plot (charismatic ne’er-do-well tears apart ersatz criminal community) straight out of the studio suitcase, it’s really only the depth with which Gate of Flesh is willing to explore the truths of its characters’ circumstances that keeps it from feeling fraudulent.

Yet that depth is often—literally—skin deep. True to its title, there is a lot of flesh in the film, but—surprisingly—little of it comes from its characters’ business transactions. Instead, the majority of it comes from the extended beatings meted out on Machiko and Maya. It is in these scenes that the film descends into pure, undeniable exploitation. So much so that it feels as though they—and not an honest depiction of a tumultuous period in Japanese history—are the real reason for the film’s existence.

Such is the care with which these scenes are filmed—each emphasizing the physical beauty of the actors with shadow and colour—that they become tributes to the sadism of the moment rather than denunciations of it. Beauty undermines the truth.

But, then again, what are the truths at the heart of Suzuki’s film? That life after WWII was hard in Japan? That the poverty drove women to prostitution? That this life led them to become nihilistic and violent?

All of these are firmly in the “No shit, Sherlock” category.

At times the film risks being redundant—affirming conclusions any reasonable person could make on their own. Rather than create complex characters to enrich this rudimentary framework, it instead literally reduces them to colours. Maya is the one in green, Sen is the one in red, Machiko is the one in black and the other two might as well be interchangeable in their yellow and purple.

Yet the film largely works and succeeds at having an emotional impact despite itself, as there is always something compelling about the collision of ugliness and beauty. Art is always more interesting when compromised by the no-bullshit requirements of exploitation. A truly realistic depiction of this time and place would have been unbearably bleak and of interest only to those who confuse their misery boners with special insights into the human condition.

It’s no coincidence that by far the weakest part of the film is the one that tries the hardest to inject a note of existential horror into the story. In a flashback we see Maya lying violated in a field. Two American MP’s find her and leave her there, declaring to the black priest driving with them that a raped Japanese girl isn’t their problem. He stays with her and later in the film finds her out on the street, plying her new trade. He tries to get her to stop, but fails to convince her. Not long after, feeling betrayed by Shintaro’s going to bed with Machiko, she finds and seduces the priest—which directly leads to his committing suicide.

The largest problem with this subplot is a matter of language. While to western ears it’s much harder to tell the difference between a good and bad performance when given in Japanese, the terrible line readings by Chico Roman as the priest are immediately apparent and impossible to ignore. But ultimately that could be forgiven if the whole episode didn’t stink of laziness.

“Hey, this is really important because God and church and America and rape and sex and all that stuff!” the film seems to be shouting at us—its most obvious moment of pretension and the closest glimpse we get of what the film could have been without its exploitation heart.

Billy Wilder largely failed with Irma la Douce because (not for the first or last time) he replaced exploitation with tastelessness, thinking it made for a more palatable dish. With Gate of Flesh Seijun Suzuki avoids this mistake—understanding that by giving in to the lurid he could create an entertaining depiction of an experience cinema is largely helpless to truly delineate.

Light and darkness must work together. Truth without beauty is unendurable, beauty without truth is disposable. Balancing them is not for the weak, and Gate of Flesh does it well enough to earn 90 minutes of your time.

*See also this. 

Starting At the End: Part Two "Leaving On a Jet Plane"

What better way is there to get into a franchise than through its final film? They must have perfected the series by that point, right? Right?!?!?

The Concorde… Airport ‘79

(1979)

Synopsis

The first North American owned Concorde jet is disembarking on its maiden flight, flying to Moscow with a stopover in Paris. Among the diverse group of passengers is beautiful news anchorwoman, Maggie Whelan (Susan Blakely), who has recently obtained proof that her defense contractor lover, Dr. Kevin Harrison (Robert Wagner), knowingly sold weapons to enemy nations. Harrison tries to shoot down the jet by sabotaging a test of his new smart missile system, but thanks to the deft piloting of Captains Paul Mertrand (Alain Delon) and Joe Patroni (George Kennedy), his plan fails. They also manage to outmaneuver the fighter plane he sends after them, although the attack does force them to undergo a tense emergency landing in Paris. Determined to stop Whelan, Harrison hires a member of the plane’s mechanical crew to insert a timer that will open the storage cabin door and cause the plane to break apart through explosive decompression, but—once again—Mertrand and Patroni save the day and “thread the needle” by landing the Concorde in the middle of the Swiss Alps. At the scene of the emergency landing, Whelan reports on TV that she has important breaking news she’s going to share with the world as soon as she reaches Moscow, causing Harrison to take out a pistol and end his own life.

Pertinent Details

Comes After: Airport (1970), Airport 1975 (1974) and Airport ’77 (1977).

Was Not Followed By: Although the TV movie Starflight: The Plane That Couldn’t Land was released as Airport ’85 in the Philippines (and was directed by ‘77’s Jerry Jameson) it wasn’t actually an official entry in the series, just a really entertaining rip off.

Returning Players: George Kennedy—the only actor to appear in all four Airport films—returns as Joe Patroni. Monica Lewis, the wife of Jennings Lang—who produced the three sequels, but not the original—also appeared in ’77, but as a different character.

Most Surprising Credit: The film was written by Eric Roth, who would go on to win an Oscar for his script for Forrest Gump, and be nominated three other times for his work on The Insider, Munich and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

You know what I miss? Movie posters like the ones up above. The actual images are pretty bland, but I love the rows of pictures on the bottom. Even as a young kid I came to appreciate that this was a marketing technique only ever employed by terrible movies. You especially knew something was up when the lineup of famous faces featured people who weren’t all that famous or whose golden years had long since passed.

Just take a look at the first one and see who you recognize. You’re on this site, so you’re probably an obsessive like me and know most of them (bonus points if you recognized the woman who played the demonic voice of Regan in The Exorcist), but I suspect most folks over the age of 30 could only pick out one or two and even then as the guy from Austin Powers, the other guy from reruns of Green Acres, and the old woman from those 80s Polident commercials.

This marks a noticeable decline from the other films, whose rows of famous faces feature a few true cinematic legends, including Burt Lancaster, Charlton Heston, Jimmy Stewart, Jack Lemmon, and Dean Martin. True, none of them would have considered these films a high point in their careers, but they were all smart enough to stay the fuck away from what would turn out to be the series’ final flight.

Clearly the reason for this lies in Concorde’s low budget. Despite featuring some okay-for-the-era special effects, the majority of the film resembles a bland TV movie and is obviously making due with the best it can afford. That it chose to try and sell itself on its collection of TV stars, foreigners, old folks, Cicely Tyson and two pretty ladies (one of whom was the star of the softcore Emmanuelle franchise), indicates the kind of desperation that makes bad film lovers salivate like Pavlov’s dog.

It’s a promise the film delivers on with enjoyable grace. The Concorde… Airport ’79 is a great bad movie—the kind that never once approaches competent storytelling or filmmaking, but still manages to be rousingly entertaining from start to finish. I credit a lot of this to Roth’s amazingly uneven screenplay, which is filled with some truly epic plot-holes and logical fuck ups, but still manages to be populated with characters who never seem truly real, but are utterly charming nonetheless.

I liked this entire collection of broad stereotypes, including the aging Russian gymnast in love with the handsome American sportscaster, the cartoonish Russian coach with the deaf 6 year-old daughter, the old barn-storming owner of the airline who’s lucky enough to be married to Sybil Danning, and pretty much everyone else--especially Kennedy’s Joe Patroni, who comes across like a genuinely great guy.

It actually helps that they never seem like real people, since that would only highlight how little sense the film’s plot makes when you stop and think about it. This way you can just roll along and accept the stupidity without any tedious verisimilitude ruining the fun.

But now that I mention it, I should talk a little bit about how dumb the film’s story really is. You can tell the plot is going to take a beating right from the start when we see Blakely give a national news report that consists entirely of stories about a) the Concorde’s maiden flight, b) the new missile invented by her boyfriend, and c) the soviet gymnast who’s going to just happen to be on the flight. It’s the kind of shameless exposition dump that immediately places the narrative in a world we know doesn’t exist.

But that’s nothing compared to Wagner’s solution to his dilemma. While being accused of treason is probably the worst thing that could happen to his company, it’s very closely followed by having his multi-billion dollar missile system screw up during a launch test and accidentally kill hundreds of innocent people. In fact, in terms of pure negative publicity, I’m willing to call it a draw.

Less egregious, but still hilarious, is that after the missile fails to work, he gets in his private plane in order to fly to Paris and basically arrives there at the same time the Concorde does. This, despite the fact that he’s chasing after a supersonic fucking jet that had a head start!

We also have to ignore that literally the next day after they are almost blown out of the sky and endure a terrifying landing, none of the passengers have any problem getting in the exact same plane to fly to Moscow the next day. Plus, instead of just killing Blakely when he sees her during the layover, Wagner instead has a mechanic sabotage the jet, because apparently he really does want to kill a planeload of innocent people instead of the one person giving him trouble. What a jerk!

I don’t know enough about science and aeronautics to cast doubts on the action scenes, like the one where Kennedy manages to set one of the fighter jet’s missile off course by firing a flare gun out his window, but I will say that no matter how theoretically plausible they may be, the execution of these scenes do render them appealingly unrealistic.

But none of this matters, since I enjoyed every second of this foolishness. As easy as it is to understand why this effort killed the Airport franchise, I really wish they’d gone on and made a few more.

Chances of my watching other films in the franchise: 100%. I especially can’t wait to see 1975, where cross-eyed stewardess Karen Black has to land the plane all by herself!

Final Franchise Entry Rating: Four George Kennedy’s out of Four

Vanity Fear Vlog Review - "Duh-geons & Dragons"

Because I don't care if you hate my video reviews.

The Soul of the 70s: Part Three "Make It Right"

When it comes to 70s exploitation, always bet on black!

Willie Dynamite

(1974)

Synopsis

Willie Dynamite (Roscoe Orman) is one of New York’s top pimps with a multiracial stable of 7 beautiful women working one of the top hotels in the city. But the law is squeezing in on his trade and his fellow top hustlers want to form a co-operative to make it through this tough time. Willie ain’t a team player, though, so he refuses. His life is further complicated by a former hooker turned activist named Cora (Diana Sands), who has dedicated herself to saving his girl Pashen from the life and finding her respectable work as a model. Thanks to Cora, her district attorney boyfriend (Thalmus Rasulala), and the two cops (George Murdock & Albert Hall) dedicated to bringing him down, Willie’s empire begins to crumble and he’s forced to ask himself if being the flashiest playa in town is worth all of the pain, misery and death it brings.

Pertinent Details

Big Hollywood Producers: While many Blaxploitation movies were made by low budget producers on the fringes of Hollywood culture, Willie Dynamite was actually the second effort by Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown (I wrote about their first film, Sssssss, here) who had previously ran 20^th Century Fox together before moving on to work as independent producers at Universal. Their biggest hit together would come a year later, when they made a film about a killer shark named Jaws and played a major role in revitalizing what was then a dying industry.

An Attempt at Authenticity: Because of Zanuck and Brown’s influence, they were able to make sure that their film about a black pimp actually had a black director calling the shots. Willie Dynamite would end up being the first of Gilbert Moses two feature films, the other being the 1979 Julius Irving basketball oddity, The Fish Who Saved Pittsburgh.

Posthumously Released: Though the film is called Willie Dynamite, the film’s most compelling character (and true protagonist) is Cora, who was played by Diana Sands, an actress who would be much better known today were it not for her death from cancer in 1973, four months before the film was released in January of 1974. She was only 39 years old.

Willie Dynamite is an example of a Blaxploitation film that plays with our expectations of the genre, providing us with all of the gaudy glamour and attitude we would expect from a film that features a male main character who walks around in fur coats and drives a purple Cadillac (I’m guessing—I know less than nothing about cars), while also attempting to be a serious examination of a criminal’s fall from grace and possible redemption. It’s a film that both wants you to laugh at it and take it seriously at the same time and the remarkable thing is that it very nearly gets away with it.

The biggest shock for most viewers is seeing Roscoe Orman in the title role—his movie debut. Though you may not recognize his name, if you grew up enjoying the urban adventures in a special place called Sesame Street, then you know his face, since he played the part of Gordon for 35 years. Thanks to his beard and flashy wardrobe he’s almost unrecognizable, but during those brief moments when his future self does show through, the effect can be chilling.

It’s a strong, if occasionally overwrought performance, affected as much by some over dramatic scripting and bad direction as anything else. The best thing about it is Orman’s refusal to seek out our sympathy. Willie is not a likeable guy and many, if not most, of his actions throughout the movie are deplorable, yet somehow, when he denies ownership of the purple car being towed away from his old apartment, it’s impossible not to feel some hope that this symbolic gesture is an actual sign of his choosing a new path and becoming a new man.

It’s a feeling of hope that wouldn’t be possible were it not for the performance of Diana Sands. Her Cora is the film’s true hero and easily the most sympathetic character. When her goal is to take Willie down and rescue Pashen, we remain entirely on her side, completely unconflicted as she breaks the law to do what she feels is right. Yet we also understand her ambivalence when she succeeds and Willie’s life stands in ruins. She doesn’t feel any joy or sense of victory. She’s sad for him and invites him into her house for coffee in the film’s most powerful scene:

But lest you think this all too melodramatic, Willie Dynamite never forgets how absurd and gloriously tacky so many of its characters really are. Because the genre demanded it, Willie gets his own catchy theme song, which we hear twice in the movie and is so awesome I would have bought it from iTunes immediately after I heard it if it were available:

This is a movie where we actually see a brotherhood of pimps discussing their business a la Black Dynamite (whose name suggest this effort served as a major inspiration). Their leader, Bell, is played so over the top by Roger Robinson, he actually could have been lifted whole and placed in that satire without changing a single vocal inflection. He’s a parody of a parody, but his presence doesn’t take the whole thing down. Instead he’s an amusing note in an often-serious film that takes pains to show that there are actual consequences for the women ruled over by these men.

Not a perfect movie, the film still manages to deliver the goods we expect, but in a way that allows us to enjoy the spectacle without feeling like we’re supporting it. Willie is less an anti-hero than an asshole with just enough humanity that after we’ve seen him taken down, we’re ready to see him built back up—hopefully as someone less destructive and with much better taste.

Bad Mother--SHUT YOUR MOUTH! Rating: 7 Fur Hats out of 10

B-TV: Part Six "Unsuspended Disbelief"

Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century

(1979)

Synopsis

Nasa astronaut Buck Rogers’ (Gil Gerard) 1987 solo mission in space does not go as planned and through a fluke of the universe he is frozen and left to float alone in the cosmos for 500 years. Found by an alien space station on its way to a mission to Earth, Rogers is defrosted and meets Princess Ardala (Pamela Hensley) and her second in command, Kane (Henry Silva). Before Rogers even has time to comprehend what has happened to him, they put him back on his ship and send him back to Earth, hoping the bug they implanted will informed them how to break through the planet’s defenses. Back at Earth, Rogers is examined and is determined to be honest and reliable by Dr. Theopolis (Howard F. Flynn), a sentient computer carried around by a tiny humanoid robot named Twiki (Felix Silva & Mel Blanc), but that doesn’t stop military commander Colonel Wilma Deering (Erin Gray) from being suspicious of him. Declared a spy by the Earthlings once the bug on his ship is discovered, Rogers is sentenced to death but is spared after an act of heroism during a space pirate raid. Suspecting that Kane and the Princess are secretly behind the pirates, Rogers seduces and drugs Ardala and manages to sabotage their attack force, ensuring their planned invasion of Earth fails before it even has a chance to start. At last, he earns Deering’s respect, as well as a new home in a strange future.

Pertinent Details

B-TV or Not B-TV: Originally conceived as the first of a series of TV movies made to capitalize on the success of Star Wars, this eventually became the pilot for a regular series instead. When the pilot of producer/co-writer Glen A. Larson’s similar sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica found success as a theatrical movie in Europe and some parts of North America, the decision was made to release Buck Rogers to theatres instead of debuting it on television as had originally been planned. There it grossed a very respectable $21 million and was later split into the first two episodes of the series that followed and would go to last for a season and a half.

Too Ballsy For Primetime: Some changes were made between the theatrical and TV versions. The theatrical version featured a memorable (see more below) opening credit sequence set to the song “Suspension” (performed by Kipp Lennon and co-written by Larson) in which Rogers lays around unconscious while Gray, Hensley and several anonymous models pose seductively, while the split TV eps used the show’s standard credits, set to an instrumental version of the song. Beyond this, scenes where Rogers calls Deering “ballsy” and Twiki refers to freezing his “ball bearings” were cut from the TV version. Several new scenes were also added to the TV version, so the resulting two episodes both came in at then-standard broadcast length. These new scenes haven’t been seen in awhile, since the released DVD set only includes the theatrical version.

An Old Established Character: Proving that 21st century executives didn’t invent the habit of going back to the past to follow and capitalize on new trends and viewer nostalgia, Buck Rogers was based on a property that was over 50 years old by the time the movie hit theatre screens. The character first appeared in a pulp fiction magazine in a story written by Phillip Francis Nowlan and subsequently became famous in other stories, a comic strip, a 1939 movie serial starring Buster Crabbe (who would go on to play a role in the first official episode of the 1979 series), and an earlier short-lived TV series that ran from 1950 to 1951.

My parents are often bewildered by my ability to recall certain details of the past that they had long ago obliterated from their memories. I don’t think I necessarily possess a better grasp of my childhood than any other average person, but it probably isn’t a coincidence that many of the most powerful remembrances of my youth are tied directly to film and television. Even at the earliest possible age I found that such entertainments mattered to me more than most.

It’s because of this that the earliest memory I have that I can specifically date (as opposed to those that might have come before but are impossible for me to determine when they actually happened) occurred in the summer of 1978, when I was two years old. In it, I’m sitting/standing (I was small enough that I could comfortable do both) in the back of the Dombroski’s station wagon. It’s parked at the Twin Drive-in and I am watching a movie I would later realize was called Star Wars, which had been re-released to theatres a year after it’s original run because home video hadn’t been properly invented yet. As much as the movie impacted me later on, the film itself is secondary to my memory of the interior of that car and the salty-buttery taste of the popcorn.

That’s the earliest memory I can put a general date on. The second comes several months later, in March of 1979 to be exact. This time I’m not in a car, but a regular old-fashioned movie theatre, where I’m sitting with my parents (who may or may not have been there with the Dombroskis—who I definitely know were around in May of 1980, when I saw The Empire Strikes Back at the age of 4). Predictably, I have very little recall of the film itself. Even though I’ve always known that I saw Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century in a theatre, it wasn’t until I just watched it again 33 years later that I realized the only thing I actually remembered about it was this (embedding has been disabled by the copyright owner, so click on Erin to see the whole glorious video):

So, yes, this proves without a doubt that even at three years old, all I really cared about in movies was the pretty girls, which obviously still stands today, because were it not for the presence of Pamela Hensley and Erin Gray, I would now consider the film to be a total snooze. I actually feel compelled to thank my parents (and possibly the Dombroskis) for sitting through it all those years ago, as this obviously proves that they loved me and would endure all sorts of terrible entertainment for my benefit.

Viewed with the eyes of an old, old man, the film exists in an unhappy limbo where it’s too self-conscious to descend to the cheesy heights of absurdity that transform a film like Luigi Cozzi’s Starcrash from a bold-faced rip-off to an original classic of its own, while also being too inelegantly formulaic and commercial to disguise the disinterested rote-ness of its clinical professionalism.

In other words, it’s too well made to be “so-bad-it’s-good”, which is unfortunate because it also doesn’t have the budget or imagination to transcend the innate absurdity of its concept. This isn’t a problem for television, but for a theatrical movie it’s the touch of death. (Having gotten into the series itself, I can happily report that it itself manages to satisfyingly reach the “so-bad-it’s-good” status required to redeem its existence.)

The only way most sci-fi TV shows can afford to stay on the air is to use costly action and special effects as sparingly as possible—to the point that many such shows fall under the trap Joss Whedon refers to as “radio with pictures”. It’s a trap Buck Rogers cannot avoid, partially because of a lack of resources, but also because its chief creative mind, Glen A. Larson, was a television man through and through (his other more successful efforts included Simon & Simon, Quincy, Magnum P.I., Knight Rider and—my personal favourite—The Fall Guy) and the project’s small screen origins are so inherently a part of its DNA there’s no disguising them.

There’s no question that the movie or series would not exist were it not for the success of Star Wars, but as is typically the case, everyone involved failed to properly analyze the reasons for its success. Instead of determining that kids adored C-3PO and R2-D2 because they were a compelling comic duo who served as our gatekeepers to this strange and special universe (everything that had to be explained to them was actually being explained to us!), Larson and associates figured that kids just liked cute funny robot teams and thus gave us Twiki and Dr. Theopolis.

It’s a crucial miscalculation. Though kids were actually delighted by the comic antics of Twiki (because kids are stupid, see also Ewoks), he feels completely out of place in the context of the other characters. R2-D2 was adorable to be sure, but he not only fit in with all of the other characters, he actually managed to be as fully developed as they were—proving capable of genuine acts of heroism and generating affecting emotion. Twiki, on the other hand, is clearly just there to sell toys and make theoretically comedic comments in a voice straight out of a Loony Tunes cartoon. And Dr. Theopolis, rather than being the neurotic, tight-assed C-3PO, is just a boring clock with a face who spends all of his time telling Buck (and us) what’s going on. He’s so forgettable it wasn’t until I re-watched the movie that I remembered he existed and realized Twiki’s main purpose was to carry him around.

As Rogers Gil Gerard manages to have a few fun moments, especially those that compel him to channel his inner Han Solo, but the script both requires him to accept and deny his situation in frustratingly implausible ways, having him act more often to propel the plot than as a fully developed character.

This is also true for Erin Gray, who your eyes will note was about as gorgeous as any human being was capable of being in the late 70s, but who is poorly served by a script that has her acting like an unreasonable military tight-ass in one scene and a moony-eyed dish-mop the next. The scene were she gets upset watching Buck dance with the equally-gorgeous horndog Princess Ardala is supposed to be funny, but it actually makes no sense in the context of what we’ve seen before. She’s acting that way because in television that’s how the female co-star is supposed to act when the leading man dances with the other pretty lady, not because a human being would actually act that way.

But the biggest problem is the film’s lack of urgency, which is most tellingly illustrated in the scene where Rogers, Deering and crew engage in a dogfight with what they then believe are space pirates, but are actually Princess Ardala’s men in disguise. The pirates pick off the other crewmembers with ease, leaving just our two main characters alive. No sense of weight is given to any of these deaths, and Buck even makes a joke as they turn around and fly back to Earth, apparently indifferent to the human loss. If we can’t be expected to feel anything in a moment like this, then everything else is destined to feel similarly lifeless and flat.

That said, I do love that opening credit sequence I wish I could have embedded above. It’s the closest the film ever comes to feeling at all cinematic. Had the rest of the movie shown that kind of gaudy flair I suspect I would have one more treasured childhood memory, instead of one I can just attach a specific month and a year to.

Que sera sera.

The Other Side of Corman: Part One "Off Brand Models"

Roger Corman produced a lot of classic B-Movies. This is NOT their story.

Cover Girl Models

(1975)

Synopsis

Two experienced models join a newcomer on a trip to Hong Kong and Singapore for a photo shoot. Their photographer, Mark (John Kramer), does his best to get them to take off their clothes whenever he can and can’t decide who he wants to bed more, the hard-to-get blonde Claire (Lindsay Bloom) or the eager neophyte Mandy (Tara Strohmeyer).  Barbara (Pat Anderson) has her attentions stolen by a suave Asian spy named Ray (Tony Ferrer) who rescues her when foreign agents attempt to retrieve the microfilm hidden in her couture gown. Claire gets in trouble trying to land a part in an upcoming movie, eventually getting kidnapped by Singaporean rebels while dressed like the American ambassador’s nymphomaniac daughter. It all comes to a head during a brief shoot-out at a bad guys mansion. Claire is a hit with journalists, but only gets offered the part of a model in the movie, not the lead, Mandy gets offered a $50,000 deal from a rival publisher, and Barbara has a date with her suave secret agent hero. Mark is taken to the police department for questioning, despite his hilarious protests.

Pertinent Details

This Says A Lot: Gremlins director Joe Dante has gone on record that Cover Girl Models was the worst film he ever edited a trailer for during his time working for Corman.

Returning Champion: Cover Girl Models was directed by Cirio H. Santiago, the filmmaker response for the previous Vanity Fear B-Movie Bullsh*t entry, Firecracker.

This Had a Script?: The film was “written” by Corman vet Howard R. Cohen who remains best known as the writer/director of the truly terrible horror spoof Saturday the 14^th and it’s sequel Saturday the 14^th Strikes Back.

Also Starring: Cult queen Mary Woronov (Death Race 2000, Eating Raoul) appears in one scene as the editor of the magazine doing the photo shoot. She’s definitely the best part of the movie. My guess is that this scene was shot in the States and put into the movie after it was finished to pad out the running time a la the nude karate fight in Firecracker (my suspicions about this having been confirmed by the extended special features interview with co-star Darby Hinton on the excellent Machete Maidens Unleashed DVD).

If you read the above synopsis and came to the conclusion that it read less like an actual plot description than a list of random events, welcome to Cover Girl Models—a film so devoid of urgency and momentum you’d might think it was a brilliant European arthouse flick if it had been filmed in Swedish or Italian. Unfortunately, though, it was filmed in English, which means being constantly aware of how terrible it is every single second of its brief (but interminable) running time.

Director Santiago was rather infamous for being so cavalier about his work that sometimes he couldn’t even bother to ensure that shots were in focus or that enough of the script was filmed to make sense or break past the 70 minute running time required to get a movie on most theatre screens. This explains the haziness of some of the film’s moments and why at least one sub-plot—Claire’s attempts to get a major movie role—makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever.

The problems with this scenario begin when she decides to pretend to be a hooker to research the role she covets and impress the producer with her knowledge. Naturally, this leads to her almost being raped by a drunken sailor. She’s saved by a guy who we think is the bar's manager, but rather than help her, he starts chasing her, even as she runs out of the club and hops a ride on a horse-drawn carriage. Instead of letting her go, he then has some friends join him on a bizarre Filipino moped contraption and chase after her—risking everyone’s lives in the process. The moped-thingie eventually overturns (and looks like it really injured the poor bastards in it at the time), and in the next scene we see Claire explain that she didn’t know the guy was a cop, because apparently they take arresting prostitutes REALLY seriously in Singapore (which is probably true—even if you can get a legal handjob in most shopping malls—but still seems absured as presented here).

Still, that pales in comparison to what happens next. After this—for reasons never explained—Claire decides her next best bet is to pretend to be the infamous daughter of the American ambassador by putting on a black wig. As a result of this she gets kidnapped by some sort of liberation army (even though the phrase "Singapore Rebel" is pretty much an oxymoron), and just sits there when confronted by their leader, even though he clearly thinks she’s someone she’s not. It’s only in the next scene, when she’s suddenly and inexplicably in his bedroom, that he comes in angry, having figured out she’s an imposter. He then rips her top off and starts to rape her, but stops for some unknown reason.

The next time we see Claire she’s with the other models, apparently unharmed and without a word to say about her traumatic experience. During the gunfight in the smuggler’s mansion, her kidnapper appears out of nowhere (literally, he’s all of sudden just there beside her in the middle of the action with no explanation) and saves her. Then, when it’s all over, he’s gone and never mentioned again.

And this is the most entertaining and intriguing part of the movie.

That said, for those impressed by the sight of attractive women in no clothing, the film isn’t as easily dismissed. Redheaded beanpole Strohmeyer only appeared in 11 movies in her short career, but managed to make a major naked impression in most of them (especially Hollywood Boulevard, Kentucky Fried Movie and The Student Teachers). Her breasts get the most running time, but not because Bloom and Anderson weren’t trying. Perhaps the most imaginative use of nudity comes in the scene where Barbara is being chased by Taiwanese agents and tries to get a beat cop supervising a local dance contest to help her, only to finally get his attention when she desperately flashes the crowd from the stage.

It says something about my affection for such material that as terrible as Cover Girl Models is, I find it impossible to actually hate it. It’s such a harmless, lightweight nothing of a movie that getting worked up about its incompetence is surely a waste of one’s rage reserves. Will I ever watch it again? Nope, but I also probably won’t forget it. If only for this scene featuring the immortal Vic Diaz:

Crappy Corman Rating: 1 Reel Out of 7

Vanity Fear Vlog Review - "Gonna Need a Bigger Carrot"

Because I don't care if you hate my video reviews.