Busan Midnight Movie: Gappa, the Triphibian Monster (3/13/21)

This week on the Busan Midnight Movie: Gappa, The Triphibian Monster, aka Monster from a Prehistoric Planet! Explorers searching for exotic animals to populate a publishing magnate’s theme park discover Gappa, a heretofore unknown prehistoric beast! Only Gappa is freshly hatched and its parents are not happy to see it taken away.

This is a movie I wrote about briefly almost 13 years ago when I was doing the PD Project, the precursor to the Misery Mill. Back then I noted,

The movie can be pretty shocking though. A female scientist is asked why she isn't at home making babies and the film has Japanese people in blackface. There is some craziness going on here.

What a difference time makes! I’m much less sanguine about the blackface now, so actively uncomfortable that I debated whether to use the movie or not. Honestly, in a few years’ time, I probably would drop it from the schedule even if I had already announced it.

Here’s what I wrote about this movie and then cut from the episode’s script:

Tonight's feature is Gappa, the Triphibian Monster and let's address the pigeon-faced beast in the room: blackface. The immediate defense of it would be "consider the context," and certainly context matters. This is a Japanese film so it does not have the same cultural associations with blackface that people from the United States would have. Still, they chose to use skin tone to differentiate the islanders from the Japanese characters, as though the shirts vs skins dichotomy of the costumes wasn't enough. The filmmakers wanted to use that idea of "blackness" as "other" and that's why the islanders look the way they do. Even if you're okay with that idea, the film has Americans playing Americans instead of Japanese people done up as mimes. That suggests that it's not that the filmmakers couldn't hire black people for the roles, it's that they didn't or wouldn't.

And context works both ways. We should not only consider the context of when the film was made but also the context of when the film is being shown: right now. Even though I'm pointing up the problematic aspects of this film, I'm still choosing to show it, still implicitly saying to my audience, "eh, you can look past this." And there are a couple reasons for that. One is laziness: I wanted to do kaiju movies all month long and, unless I wanted to do Gamera movies every week, this was what was available. I just have to hope that by announcing, "this is here and it's not okay" I'm at least mitigating some of the harm done by choosing to show this, but I have to acknowledge that I still chose to show it.

But the other reason I chose to show it is specifically to have this discussion. In the community of midnight-movie aficionados, part of the pleasure we take from these old films is that "they don't make them like this anymore," but that phrase does a lot of work. Of course it means there is a pleasure in seeing ways of telling stories that we don't use anymore. For instance, part of the appeal of old westerns is the amazing stunt work on horseback. The Western is a good example, though, because when some people say "they don't make them like that anymore," they're talking about the kind of politics that used to be portrayed on screen and lamenting their absence. The racial and gender politics in this movie--and we haven't even said a word about that "shut up, quit your job, make babies" exchange--are what that part of the audience wants. What they miss from these old films IS the overt racism, misogyny, and every other kind of hierarchy and bigotry that used to be not only the norm on screen, but violently enforced off of it. Whenever we showcase these films without highlighting and calling out those elements, we leave a space for that subset to thrive and, even worse, start spreading and normalizing the even worse aspects of their ideology.

There is a lot to recommend this film: the cinematography is fantastic, the landscapes look amazing, and, when the monsters finally arrive in this second half, they look great. Plus all the city-smashy stuff is a lot of fun. But it's no fun if we're telling our friends and neighbors to ignore problematic aspects of a film and certainly no fun for them to have to wonder, whenever things like overt racism pops up in a film and we DON'T say anything about it, if that's not what we're actually tuning in for.

So, with that unexpectedly heavy aside finished, let's return to the second half of Gappa, the Triphibian Monster.

That was cut due to time because the whole thing is as long as the entirety of the content I write for other episodes. However, it was something I wanted to say and to share. One of the things I think about when doing this midnight movie stuff is that you have to engage with the text somehow. I could say that post-MST3k it’s no longer enough to just show the movie, but the reality is these movies are readily available. What makes the experience of watching them with the framing device of a host better than just watching the movie itself? The host has to add something to the experience.

When you have a movie with problematic content like this, that kind of engagement is doubly important. As Stewart Lee notes, you’re cultivating an audience, drawing the boundaries around who is and is not included in the experience. If you let moments of explicit racism, sexism, homophobia, or a whole host of other things go unremarked, you’re telling your audience that people who take issue with those things aren’t welcome, that you don’t want them.

At the end of the day, I want, not just in my audience but in the broader community I’m a part of, to spend time with the people who would stand up and call those things out.

Wrap Up:

The Good: amazing print. The version I watched for the PD Project so long ago was a pan-and-scan 4:3 crop that was dramatically faded. This print is so good you might think you're watching a good movie.

The monster design. The improved print also lets us enjoy the high-quality monster design. The Gappas look like kaiju versions of gargoyles and that’s a twist I hadn’t seen before. Also, when I watched this for the PD Project, I described one of the monsters as something “choking on a starfish,” but in the improved print it’s clear the monster is carrying an octopus to feed its baby. Great detail!

The Bad: really? After all that?

Additionally: Pretty boring. Despite the beautiful cinematography, there’s not much action on screen, not even much activity with the monsters until the second half. On top of that, the characters are whisper-thin. Some reviews on IMDB describe this as a satire of kaiju films, but it feels much more like an unambitious pastiche, like the characters are just there to fill out a checklist rather than provide any story or interest of their own.

Production note: I was so happy to find clips of the Gappa giving the side-eye for the trailer. Being able to juxtapose those shots with the examples of blackface and misogyny in the film was a lot of fun for me.

Gappa, the Triphibian Monster

Zorro’s Black Whip (Episode 2)

The End of the Misery Mill

The first Misery Mill review went up October 9, 2015: Carnival of Crime and Absolution, two movies of no particular note. The purpose of the project was to systematically go through 5 Mill Creek Entertainment box sets to find public domain movies and upload them to the Internet Archive as I’d already done with the Horror and Sci-Fi box sets in the PD Project.

The impetus for that project, and its continuation in the Misery Mill, was the hope, still unrealized, of making a movie riffing show in the tradition of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (which had not yet announced its return). I didn’t want to copy MST3k, but my contention is that post-MST3k horror host shows have to intervene in the text in some way. Just presenting the movie is not enough. Plus, at the time, no one was doing riffing on TV and I felt like it was something worth doing. For many reasons comfortably summed up as “life,” the show never happened. Instead, I wrote up summaries and reviews of 344 movies. So, was it worth it and did it work?

To answer the second question first, at the most basic level the project was a success. I had been wanting to watch all these movies since I made the first PD Project post in February 2008. These DVDs were sitting on my shelf and in the my mind for nearly 11 years and I’ve finally watched them all. I’m proud of that. I set myself a big goal and achieved it.

As to if it was worth it, not all the movies I watched were bad. I’ve liked movies that I never would have thought to look for, specifically the old black and white quickies that felt like adaptations of radio or stage plays. Likewise, among the bad movies were some that were “good-bad” as the Flop House would say. Some of these, like Top Cop and Day of the Panther, I hope to share with future groups of friends on bad movie nights. I also encountered my own personal bugbear, Marimark Productions. Having a hate-on for these pictures was a lot of fun—more fun than watching most of them. Marimark, though, gave me the opportunity to get performatively angry which most of the movies didn’t.

On a basic level, I mostly enjoyed myself and I finished the project so it was both worth it and a success. Also, all those public domain movies are on the Internet Archive. Even though I didn’t make the show I was initially thinking about, those resources are still there if and when I decide to come back to them. I haven’t given up on that completely.

However, speaking of the performative anger highlights how the project failed. I don’t think I ever developed a voice or style writing what I hesitate to call reviews. Dan Olson, I think, offered the criticism of a lot of YouTube reviews like RedLetterMedia and Nostalgia Critic that they don’t actually review the movies. Instead, they give a long-form summary of the movie. The same criticism applies to the vast majority of my posts. One reason is that I was modeling myself after RedLetterMedia and Nostalgia Critic (the former of which I still watch, although with more skepticism. The latter I’ve dropped). Since I thought of them as being “how you talk about bad movies online,” well, that’s how I talked about bad movies online.

Another reason I think the project failed is that I was going through two movies a week. Part of my ambition was to write longer essays about what the movies suggested about the culture, what they were doing that was interesting, and what about them opened up larger discussions. Work like that takes both time and context, though. I didn’t have the context of 500 movies that I have now to make those larger claims and cranking out two of these a week while also trying to keep up with the rest of my life prevented me not only from writing those longer pieces but even conceiving of them.

Even now it’s difficult to say anything definitive about all the movies I’ve watched because they were all so different—different genres, different periods, different styles. One thing I can talk about that came up in a lot of the movies is rape culture. Jesus, we wonder why people of a certain age were jumping to defend Brett Kavanaugh—they themselves saying that even if he did it (he did it), it’s not that bad and what do we expect from teenagers?—and then I see movies where women are dragged literally screaming off the street to be driven into a field and fondled. And those were the comedies! Golly, I wonder why people who grew up with that would consider literal rape not that big a deal?

I ranted constantly about Cavegirl in these posts and while it’s not as bad as many of the films I watched, it does highlight an element that popped up far too often: female consent is a problem. If she’s interested or willing to have sex, that’s the least sexy thing there could be. You have to find the girl who doesn’t want to have sex and then keep needling her, coerce her, trick her into giving it up.

The reason I’ve hammered on these ideas when they came up in the movies and once again here is because these movies weren’t made with those (or any!) messages in mind. The rapey elements aren’t there because the producers wanted to say something about sexual assault, they are there because the producers thought the audience would be okay with it. Even phrasing it that way gives the producers too much agency. That’s how they viewed sex. If there was going to be sex in their movie (and there was going to be sex in their movie) that was how sex would be portrayed because that was what sex was to them. If this is how your culture imagines sex and relationships, how can you imagine anything else? What other examples or sources of information do you have? If this is how you always see these situations portrayed in stories, how do you write a story that’s different? Why would you think you should?

You recognize a culture by the stories it tells itself: How does it portray authority? How does it portray love? Who are the heroes and who are the villains? Who suffers and who succeeds? Thinking about questions like these in response to Z-grade films seem counter-intuitive, but these are the movies that answer those questions most effectively. Oscar-bait flicks like Crash or Green Book tell us stories of how we want to imagine our culture: racism is an individual/regional/settled issue and we all agree it’s bad. Just don’t look too closely at the racist jokes in all the other movies that came out that year if the movies aren’t, in fact, all white in front of and behind the camera.

The movies I watched in these sets generally didn’t set out with a message, they just wanted to turn a quick buck. Because of that, they’re both cultural ink blot tests and Freudian slips: they’re not thinking about what they’re saying so they’re saying what they really think. How much have we moved past these ideas? How much are we able to imagine new stories and new ways of relating to each other? These movies were the background noise of a culture, so what kind of movies are the people of that culture creating today?

I don’t have answers to those questions. If I did, I’d be writing academic essays about these flicks citing all sorts of other material—another goal I had for this project that I didn’t achieve! And that seems like a fitting end to a reflection on the Misery Mill. When I started this project October 9, 2015, I basically said, “Oh God, what have I done?” 3+ years later I can say, “a little, but not as much as I’d hoped.” I think that’s the only honest response to any reflection, that and the hope that the next project, my own or someone else's, manages to do a little more.

344. The Guy With the Secret Kung Fu

344. The Guy With the Secret Kung Fu aka Cai yang nu bang zhu (1980)
Director: Chi Lo
Writer: Ji-Shang Lu
From: Cult Cinema (the final film!)
Watch: archive.org

Two fighters take on the vicious Dragon Gang, but find they may be in over their heads as they face off against a sorcerer, a demon, and official betrayal.

Ladies, blokes, and non-binary folks, this is the final movie in the Misery Mill! And we’re ending on a public domain flick that I’ve added to the Internet Archive for others to download and reuse in their own way. It’s what I always wanted: to not be watching these movies anymore.

Terrible foley work, bad wigs, and a soundtrack alternately cribbed from other PD works or composed exclusively on a Casio keyboard—and not a good one. Dubbing is awful even down to dubbed laughing that’s exactly like a parody of a kung fu movie. So you don’t even need a summary: it’s an obvious recommend!

I mean, not quite. This is one of those flicks that I could go into minute detail about because there’s a lot of stuff that happens, but little of it makes sense. Instead, I’ll offer a quick gloss:

Two of the leading members of the revolution are caught by the corrupt ruling party, but released to take out the Dragon Gang. Various action set pieces occur—they infiltrate the gang by pretending to be the female leader’s betrothed, get a special powder to defeat the half-vampire/half-human demon the gang has summoned, and, of course, battle courtyards filled with armed guards—until we get to the final battles. Turns out the corrupt official who released them to fight the Dragon Gang is actually the Dragon Gang’s leader (and is curiously comfortable with so many of his underlings being killed. Bad manager or best manager?). The woman who’d been running the gang in his absence gets defeated by one of the guys and then the pair team up to defeat the big boss, ultimately by knocking him into a coffin and hurling it across the field of battle. THE END

Yeah, the movie gets pretty silly. I mean, a recurring character is the coffin-maker who thanks the pair for drumming up business by killing so many members of the gang. You also have a sorcerer, an imprisoned butcher who’s too fat to escape, and many moments of slapstick. This isn’t, by any means, a good movie. However, it feels like a perfect example of a bad kung fu movie. The character’s movements have sound effects. The fight scenes descend into cacophonies of canned grunts. The sorcerer’s laugh is literally someone reading “ha ha ha ha ha” regardless of what his laughing lines up with.

The movie isn’t good, but it’s great for those looking for something that’s enjoyably bad. This piece is absurd and seems designed for riffing. I’d suggest getting snacks and friends and settling in with this one. As I said above, it’s in the public domain and I’d added my copy to archive.org here. This feels like a fitting piece with which to end the Misery Mill.

Now that I’m done with the Misery Mill, I’m going to move on to watching what I want at the pace that I want and writing or not writing about them as I choose. What would that even be like? Do people even do that? Inconceivable.

343. Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold

343. Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold aka Yellow Hair and the Pecos Kid (1984)
Director: Matt Climber
Writers: John Kershaw and Matt Climber from a story by Matt Climber
From: Cult Cinema (only 1 remains!)

A Western adventure of of Yellow Hair and the Pecos Kids searching for fabled gold mine of a lost tribe.

From the writer/director of Hundra and Single Room Furnished, I initially thought this would be a sequel to Hundra. The title, as a reviewer on IMDB notes, suggests a sword-and-sorcery story and the glace I had at the capsule description made me think it was following up that movie. Instead this is trying to style itself as an homage/pastiche of the old western serials. That seems like an odd choice for a film in 1984, but remember that Star Wars had mad all kinds of money by revamping the Flash Gordon serials as full features and Indiana Jones, based on post-WWII adventure serials, was about to come out with its second feature. Mining the nostalgia for serials looked like a money-making prospect. What the producers failed to recognize was those movies featured, in some combination, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fischer, Steven Spielberg, John Williams, and amazing special effects.

This movie does not, although the action set pieces do feature some nice stunt work. Too bad they weren’t filmed with any panache. Also too bad that the hero (who shouldn’t be the hero) is dressed to look like Han Solo minus the vest.

We see you movie. We know what you’re trying to do. It’s not working.

Since this movie is trying to ape Star Wars’ serial affectation, it has to invoke the same genre. Star Wars uses the crawl. This has the silhouettes and sounds of a rowdy crowd of kids in a movie theater sitting down to watch the Yellow Hair and the Pecos Kid serial. The main characters are introduced on-screen as we hear the crowd reacting (including uproarious laughter at one of the villains being coded as gay). After watching the movie, this opening added nothing. We don’t have any additional necessary context especially since the character notes in the opening are all personality traits. We can tell what the characters are like by the actors’ performances. Telling us someone’s “charming” doesn’t tell us they’re charming. Seeing them be charming does.

Anyway, I’m descending into a rant which would be at once easy in response to many aspects of this movie as well as unwarranted—the movie isn’t substantial enough to maintain a good rage. In other words, there’s plenty to get mad at, but what’s the point?

We open with some bandits trying to find the lost tribe. The tribe instead finds them, injures the bandit leader, and captures everyone else (doing real injury to horses in the process. Not stunts, actual horses actually getting hurt. Fuck you movie). Two of the men are tortured in pretty grisly ways and then have their heads dipped in molten gold while still alive.

The bandit leader returns to the Mexican base where the evil gay Colonel is holding the Pecos Kid, our hero (cause he’s the white guy). The three of them were in cahoots to steal all the gold, but had locked the Kid up in an act of betrayal.

Back at the Apache camp, Yellow Hair is talking to her mother. Yellow is so named because she’s blonde, born as a result of a white man raping her mother. Or so her mother told her. Later we learn that Yellow is actually the lost princess of the lost tribe, product of the union between the tribe’s princess and a Texan, kidnapped by her Apache mother. I don’t know how the rape figures into it—if it’s just part of her cover story or something that also happened. The movie invoking it and shrugging it off is kind of gross.

Yellow’s mother reveals that the Kid, who she also raised as a son, is in jail. She asks Yellow to save him and Yellow agrees when her mother realizes the Kid stole a deer horn with a map to the tribe and a gold nugget that she needs to pass into the other world upon her death.

To be clear, our hero stole not only a relic from an old woman who raised him as her own but also a religious item that she needs for her funeral ceremony. What a dick.

Yellow saves him while the bandit leader sneaks into the Apache camp and kills Yellow’s mother. The Kid gave the gold to a prostitute at some saloon so the pair head there to retrieve it. Stuff that’s supposed to be exciting but instead is aggravating goes down and Yellow learns that she’s actually the lost tribe’s lost princess and the pair set out to find them. Eventually Yellow gets captured, the Kid finds his way into the temple, and Yellow tells him she’s going to marry the leader. The Kid can take his gold and leave. He does, but then Yellow learns that she’s going to be sacrificed. Just before her heart is cut out, the Kid returns, shoots the gun out of the leader’s hand, and the underground temple starts to cave in.

By the way, all those action set pieces that got kind of aggravating were aggravating because of the Kid. He’s useless and Yellow is a badass. Constantly. So of course the end of the movie has to correct for that by having him save her because she wouldn’t be able to do it otherwise. She’s completely incapable of saving herself up to and including sitting up and getting off the altar before a rock falls and crushes it. This is an example of ideology. There’s nothing wrong with her getting into a situation she didn’t anticipate and him coming to save her. Earlier there’s a sequence where she falls off a stage coach and is balancing herself between some of the horses. The Kid helps her up (and then falls into the same space himself). That’s not ideology, that’s an action scene. Where ideology comes in is that final sequence where she can’t do anything herself. Cause she’s not the hero cause she’s not the guy. Her being threatened by the tribe and him coming back to initiate the escape scene is fine. Again, that’s just an action scene. That she can’t even sit up and then be a party in her own escape is where the ideology becomes plain: women need men to save them.

Remember when I said it’d be easy to rant? I’m leaving out the killing of snakes on screen and the problematic elements of the Western in general. If I were inclined to write a longer piece about this movie, which I’m not, I’d be focusing on how it’s sort of critical of colonialism, but paints white people—the colonizers—as the victims of colonialism, but not in a Kipling-esque White Man’s Burden way. The movie’s a mish-mash of odd concepts that they didn’t intend to have there. You can read this flick as being a series of Freudian slips.

But, yeah, they get away, get cornered by the Colonel and the bandit leader (who’s constantly getting injured and persisting in increased states of disrepair. It’s something that’s obviously supposed to be a joke but never comes off as a joke, which is strange in and of itself. It’s never an issue of the joke failing, it just never seems like it’s supposed to be a joke even though it’s obviously a joke a la the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail). The movie ends on a serial-style cliffhanger showing scenes from the next episode and asking variations of “Will our heroes…?” THE END

Obviously this was not the worst movie I’ve seen. It moved along well enough and the action sequences, as I said, had some good stunt work. The movie just missed the mark in so many ways and in such strange ways. Like the running gag of the bandit leader never being played as a gag. I spent a lot of the movie watching with a tilted head and raised eyebrow—I was just confused.

This wasn’t helped by the Kid who’s supposed to be a roguish poker-playing, gun-slinging, swindler. I have no beef with that kind of character; I like a lovable rogue. However he’s responsible for the plot’s inciting incident: robbing his surrogate mother of part of her funeral rite for the sake of a deal that leads to her murder. And he’s never called out for this. Yellow never jumps down his throat to tell him he stole mom’s crucifix and got her killed! Characters can make morally reprehensible choices and even be heroes after making those choices, but they gotta show remorse and work to make things right. He’s never even told he’s a piece of shit—and then he rides his horse through her funeral!

I’m not recommending this movie because it’s just not that special, but I also need to emphasize that it’s not worth seeing even for shock value. Despite what I’ve written here and how I am gobsmacked by a lot of what I’m thinking about, the movie is not full of WTF moments. This isn’t a case of seeing-is-believing, it’s a competently-made Crown production designed to run as a B-feature in drive-ins and cheap theaters. It’s nothing special. Upon reflection, there’s plenty of “wait, what?” going on, but that doesn’t make for a fun viewing experience, just fun ranting with friends after you’ve finished watching. Don’t take the time, though. See something good instead.

342. Kung Fu Kids Break Away

342. Kung Fu Kids Break Away aka San mao liu lang ji (1980)
Director: Kan Ping Yu
Writer: Kan Ping Yu
From: Cult Cinema (only 2 remain!)

Two homeless boys use cleverness and kung fu to outwit the criminal boss that runs their town and eventually defeat him.

A pretty simple plot. San Mao is an orphan looking for his mother. He had been training at a monastery, but his master was assassinated by traveling soldiers. He’s headed to the city in hopes of finding his mother. Once there, he starts using his (admittedly impressive) acrobatic kung fu skills to make money. He’s seen by Kou Pu, another homeless kid who’s constantly working a scam from pretending to be blind to collect donations to straight-up theft. After a few contentious encounters, the two team up and Kou Pu takes San Mao to his “secret hideout” where he stays with the slightly older Zsa Zsa. These are, then, your titular “Kung Fu Kids” (although they’re never called that in the movie. It’s just convenient to refer to them as such).

The town is run by the evil Mr. Chu whose thugs intimidate and shake down the residents for money constantly. They keep running into the Kung Fu Kids, but Mr. Chu’s son keeps intervening to save them since he’s falling for Zsa Zsa.

About halfway through the movie, Kou Pu gets the idea, basically, of busking while doing kung fu. In other words, it takes half the movie for the characters to figure out they could be making money doing the very thing San Mao was doing for money when Kou Pu met him. Performance goes well, but Mr. Chu’s men break it up because they haven’t paid him a bribe.

Then a representative from the General (no, I don’t know either) arrives and is murdered by Eagle, a Korean kung fu master who is then captured by Mr. Chu’s men. The Kung Fu Kids help him escape and he reveals that the General was going to give control of the entire region to Mr. Chu and that he’s there to stop that from happening. They all set up various traps around their hideout, Mr. Chu’s men come for a final showdown, and it comes down to a fight between Mr. Chu and Eagle. Just as Mr. Chu’s about to deliver the killing blow, his son jumps in and takes the hit himself. Eagle is then able to defeat and kill Mr. Chu. As Zsa Zsa is weeping over the body of Chu’s son, Eagle and the boys walk off laughing. THE END

What?

No, wait, seriously, what?

This is one of those flicks that’s confusing before it even gets confusing. The basic plot should be simple: scrappy down-on-their-luck kids using their wits and skills to get by. Grifter kid sees talented kid and they team up so grifter can take advantage of talented kid’s talent. That would be the kung fu street show. Only it takes them forever to figure that out as an option even though, as I said, they’d already seen it work. Then the plot about overthrowing the town’s leader because he’s evil and part of a larger political plot doesn’t come up until the very end. Yes, Eagle has appeared previously in the film, but it’s not clear until the assassination that he’s going to be part of the plot and there’s no indication that this will be the plot. So you have odd story choices going on even before you get to the cheery ending of the boys laughing while their friend cries over the body of a man who stood up for and saved them multiple times.

What?

I wouldn’t encourage or discourage anyone from watching this. The kung fu is really impressive. Normally I’d find movies like this insufferable. They tend to play out, in the US, as smirking, self-righteous kids pulling pranks on the idiot adults who won’t respect their Kid Power! This could easily have fallen into that, but sidesteps it by having the kids be good at kung fu. You don’t need to suspend your disbelief to think this child who’s clearly very skilled at what they do was able to defeat these adults. And the action sequences are worth seeing. Like I said, wouldn’t say avoid it, I’m just not sold enough to recommend it.

I think the movie is in the public domain, but I haven’t uploaded a copy to the Internet Archive because there is a fleeting shot of child nudity. The boys are bathing in a river and one stands up. The shot isn’t pornographic, is about as short as it can be, but it’s still kiddie bits on screen and I’m going to assume that’s a line that you don’t cross.

Year in Review 2018

Misery Mill Year in Review: 2018

Interesting times, neh? Last year I said I'd be in Korea by August of this year and that has not happened. Not for any dramatic reasons, just purely issues of timing and making the decision to spend a little time with family before going. I did leave higher ed after the Spring 2018 semester and am still planning to teach in Korea. That situation will play out in its own way.

During my final months in Philly, I had the opportunity to host Trash Tuesdays at The Bottle Shop which were a real pleasure, but also a disappointment, which is how things go. Usually it was just my friend and me watching a movie in the back, maybe one or two other mutual friends with us. Some of the movies did catch people's attention and those folks seemed interested in the idea of a regular bad movie night, but they never came back. I did leave Philly at the start of the summer--I thought I would be leaving at the end--so maybe things would have gone differently over the course of those warmer months. I'm grateful to The Bottle Shop for giving me a space to play and to indulge the fantasy of leading a bad movie night, I just wish I'd figured out how to grow it into something bigger.

I have thoughts about coming to the end of the Misery Mill, but those can wait for the complete wrap-up post which will go up two weeks after the final film gets posted. When this post goes live on the site, I will have finished watching all of the movies in the Misery Mill and will be glad to be done with them.

As of this posting, I've watched 341 of the 401 movies, but, because some of the movies are featured on multiple sets, I've actually knocked 398 movies off the list (also, because my list includes the movies from the Sci-Fi and Horror packs that I watched before, the number is actually 498 out of 501). I said when I started this project that it would take me until August 2019 to finish. Last year, I said the final date would be January 18, 2019. The current end point is January 11, 2019.

Fun movies of note from this year:
The Brother From Another Planet
The Headhunter
Messiah of Evil
Voodoo Black Exorcist
Death By Dialogue
Metamorphosis
The Devil's Possessed
Virus
Trapped By Television
The Snake, The Tiger, The Crane
Idaho Transfer
Star Pilot
Unsane

Here, as of December 31, 2018, are the movies currently available through the Internet Archive. Links lead to the Misery Mill posts which have links to streaming copies:
All the Kind Strangers
The Amazing Transparent Man
Anatomy of a Psycho
Atomic Rulers of the World

The Bat
Battle Beyond the Sun
Beast From Haunted Cave
The Big Fight
Black Cobra
Black Fist
The Blancheville Monster
Blood Mania
Bloodlust!
The Bloody Brood
Bloody Pit of Horror
The Brave Lion
A Bucket of Blood

Carnival of Crime
City Ninja
Counterblast
Curse of Bigfoot

The Day the Sky Exploded
Death Machines
Death Rage
Deep Red
The Demon
Devil Times Five
The Devil’s Hand
The Disappearance of Flight 412
Don't Look in the Basement
Doomsday Machine
The Driller Killer
The Dungeon of Harrow

Embryo
End of the World
Eternal Evil
Evil Brain From Outer Space

Fighting Mad
Four Robbers

The Ghost
The Giant of Metropolis
Good Against Evil
Grave of the Vampire
Green Eyes
Guru, the Mad Monk
The Guy From Harlem

Hands of a Stranger
Hands of Death
Haunts
The Headhunter
Horror Express
Horrors of Spider Island

I Bury the Living
I Eat Your Skin
The Image of Bruce Lee
The Impossible Kid
Infernal Street
Invaders From Space
Invasion of the Bee Girls
Iron Angel
It's Alive

Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter

Keep My Grave Open
Kung Fu Arts

Lady Frankenstein
The Lazarus Syndrome
Legacy of Blood
The Legend of Bigfoot
Life Returns

Mama Dracula
Man in the Attic
Manos: The Hands of Fate
The Manster
Mesa of Lost Women
Messiah of Evil
The Mistress of Atlantis
Monstroid
Moon of the Wolf

Nabonga
Night Fright
Night of Bloody Horror
Night of the Blood Beast
Ninja Death
Ninja Heat

Prehistoric Women
Prisoners of the Lost Universe

Radio Ranch
Rattlers
The Real Bruce Lee
The Return of the Kung-Fu Dragon
The Revenges of Doctor X
Rocket Attack U.S.A.

The Sadist
Scared to Death
Scream Bloody Murder
Shadow Ninja
Shadow of Chinatown
Shaolin Deadly Kicks (removed)
Shaolin Temple
Shock
Silent Night, Bloody Night
Sisters of Death
Slashed Dreams
Snake People
The Snake, The Tiger, The Crane
Snowbeast
Star Odyssey

The Tell-Tale Heart
The Thirsty Dead
Throw Out the Anchor!
Tiger Love
TNT Jackson
Track of the Moon Beast
Trapped By Television

Virus

War of the Robots
Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory
The Werewolf of Washington
The Wild Women of Wongo

341. Point of Terror

341. Point of Terror (1971)
Director: Alex Nicol
Writers: Ernest A. Charles and Tony Crechales from a story by Peter Carpenter and Chris Marconi
From: Pure Terror (the last Pure Terror; only 3 remain overall!)

A lounge singer begins an affair with a record executive’s wife, but things spiral out of control into a nightmare of murder.

While laying on the beach one day, Tony is approached by Andrea, the woman who owns that stretch of beach. They flirt a bit and he invites her to see his act at a local nightclub. She shows up that night, goes back to his place, and listens to the record he’d released and seen tank. Andrea is the wife of the owner of the largest record label in the country and says she’s going to sign Tony and make him a star.

They work on the record and start having an affair. Her husband, disabled after a car accident from when he was chasing her in a jealous rage, sees them. He confronts Andrea and, in the ensuing struggle, falls in the pool. Andrea stands by and watches him drown. At his funeral, his daughter from a previous marriage, Helayne shows up and catches Tony’s eye.

Tony asks Andrea to marry him, but she laughs him off. He then threatens to turn her in to the police since he saw her husband’s death. She calls his bluff, though, and tells him she’s in control of what he does and what happens to him. She leaves for a long trip and Tony starts seducing Helayne. Helayne has inherited half of her father’s fortune.

Tony’s girlfriend tells him she’s pregnant, but he tells her to get rid of it. Helayne agrees to marry him, and, the night after the wedding, Andrea comes back. Tony tells her he married Helayne and that he doesn’t need Andrea anymore. Andrea says there was a clause in the will that said Helayne gets nothing if she gets married before she turns 25, ie. Andrea’s still in control. Tony says he doesn’t care, Andrea starts attacking him, and he accidentally (?) throws her over a cliff. Police rule it an accident. As Helayne and Tony are about to leave, Tony gets a phone call from his girlfriend. He goes to see her and she shoots him to death on her front porch. As he’s dying, he wakes up on the beach at the beginning of the movie with Andrea saying hello to him. It was all a dream.

Or was it?

Yes, it was. THE END

Let’s get the “It was all a dream” trope out of the way first. The trope is garbage because it means everything that happened, everything you’d spent time paying attention to, didn’t matter. Yes, it’s all made up anyway, but even in the context of being something made up, it didn’t matter. It’s like the movie is laughing at you for taking it seriously. Also, it’s stupid. It’s a stupid move to try to impose a twist upon your film.

This movie, though, was begging for anything to make it interesting. Fitting that we’d close out the Pure Terror set with Padding: The Motion Picture. I had the damnedest time even figuring out what the movie was supposed to be about while I was watching it.

We spend a lot of time watching Tony sing, see that he’s not very good, and be told by other characters how great a singer he is. A quick glance to the top tells me that, yes, the actor playing Tony was one of the story writers. None of that tells us what the plot is or is supposed to be. There is one flash to a woman being murdered by a home invader and I started to wonder if that was going to be the picture—that Tony was a serial killer, or the disabled husband was faking his disability, or there’s a killer running loose in the town and these people are going to get tied up in that drama. Nope, it was a falshback to Andrea taking out a hit on her husband’s previous wife. That information comes much later. You’d think that would be the plot, then, Andrea threatening the people around her or actively ordering hits on women getting too close to Tony. Naw, she just goes on vacation so Tony can hook up with her step-daughter.

I could not tell you what the point of Point of Terror was (alternate pun: Truly, this was a Disappoint of Terror). It’s neither titillating nor terrifying, just meandering along for 90 minutes until the end where he wakes up and it’s all been bullshit. Skip it.

340. Unsane

340. Unsane aka Tenebre (1982)
Director: Dario Argento
Writer: Dario Argento
From: Drive-In (the last Drive-In; only 4 remain overall!)

An author arrives in Rome just as women start being murdered in ways described in his novel.

A film by Dario Argento. THE END. Highly recommend. See you next time!

Okay, I am going to say more than that, but not much more. The movie has a variety of twists so going through the entire plot would 1: take a bit of time since there are many incidents throughout the film and 2: ruin the end. In terms of content, this is a murder mystery so revealing the end reveals the killer, and that’s no fun. However, in terms of presentation, this is a slasher movie. I think one of the reasons Argento was able to segue into doing horror so easily is that his giallo films, his murder/thrillers, generally have the logic of a slasher pic.

In this movie, an American author is coming to Rome to promote his new novel Tenebre. Before he boards the plane, someone steals his carry-on and destroys all the items inside it. While he’s airborne, a woman who was caught stealing his novel from a store is murdered in her apartment, pages of the novel being shoved in her mouth. The killer leaves a note under the door of the author’s place in Rome.

And things move from there. The killer is harrying the author while continuing to murder in ways that echo the novel, the police are trying to investigate despite things not adding up, and we get visions from the killer of a woman in white wearing red high heel shoes.

In the end, the movie doesn’t make sense, which adds to the slasher tone of it. If you think of Halloween or Friday the 13th, we don’t begrudge the film hand-waving questions of how the killer would have done that, we’re there to see the results of what the killer has done. The same happens here. If you start to think about the events of the movie, holes emerge, questions arise, and you’re left feeling like an explanation was added after the fact, not arrived at logically from the story’s content.

However, I found it difficult to care about those holes. Argento is the writer/director of one of my favorite horror movies, Suspiria (recently remade though I haven’t seen that version), and what’s appealing about that movie is the nightmare logic that infuses everything. Even though this piece is aiming to be more realistic, the same tone is present. A junkyard dog climbs a fence and chases a woman into the killer’s evidence dungeon. In a sense, the movie is positing a nightmarish world of violence surrounding all of us and that tone then decides the logic of the piece.

I enjoyed it and highly recommend it. It’s weird, compelling, and done well. I’m glad this is one of the final films I’m watching for the Misery Mill because it makes me feel like I’m ending on a high note.

339. Weekend With the Babysitter

339. Weekend With the Babysitter (1970)
Director: Don Henderson
Writers: James E. McLarty from a story by George E. Carey and Don Henderson
From: Cult Cinema (only 3 Cult Cinema remain; only 5 overall!)

A man hooks up with his kid's babysitter while his wife gets entangled in a drug-smuggling run.

From the makers of The Babysitter comes the same plot again. The titular babysitter shows up on a night when she hasn’t been called (“night” despite all the establishing shots clearly being in the middle of the day) and the husband suggests to his wife that they take advantage of the mix-up and go out to dinner. Wife immediately gets angry because she has to be unreasonable and shrewish to justify everything the husband’s going to do for the rest of the movie and we can’t blame him for the choices he makes.

Sorry, that’s the practical reason. The narrative reason is that the wife is going to take the kids to spend time with their grandmother and they’ve been planning this for a while. She resents the husband asking her to change everyone’s plans to accommodate his passing whim.

What then transpires is the husband spending the weekend with the babysitter while the wife gets entangled in a drug-smuggling plot because she’s a junkie. Yeah, while the husband is fooling around with a teenager, the wife goes through b-grade Requiem for a Dream crap. She has to take her dealer and his team onto the husband’s boat so he can bring in a drug shipment from Mexico. We’re about 50 minutes into the movie when both of these stories really pick up steam, by the way. Until then we’re watching the husband, a director about to make a movie about youth culture, get introduced to the “real” youth culture, ie. he gets high once and screws a teenager.

The husband finds out the wife took the boat instead of going to see her family and then gets word that the authorities are searching every boat that comes into harbor. He gets into his private plane (fuck this guy and this movie) and finds his boat en route to the harbor. The man piloting the boat decides to dock at an abandoned pier, but the dealer kills him. Then the wife pilots the boat to the abandoned pier. That’s essential for the morality of the ending, which I’ll get to later.

Husband calls up the babysitter’s biker friends and they all head down to the pier where the dealer is getting off. The gang corners the dealer, chains him up, and dumps all his heroin. The husband swims to the boat and sails off with the wife. The babysitter watches from a cliff and says, “Ciao.” THE END

My big complaint with The Babysitter was that it’s was the writer/producer/lead’s sexual fantasy put on screen. In other words, he made us pay to watch his kink and that movie had the expected leering, exploitation tone such a project would have. Weekend With the Babysitter is an attempt to do the same thing but as a legitimate movie. The production is better and it eschews a lot of the exploitation elements. The reason that’s a problem is the movie hasn’t changed its central purpose: old man creeping on young girls. I mean, we get a shower scene where he’s soaping up her ass. You’re not fooling anyone George.

To compensate for the exploitation roots of the picture, the movie tries to include some moralizing and self-awareness. The former is not that surprising. Only a fine line separates exploitation films and morality plays in general—think of scare-mongering propaganda films like Reefer Madness or Sex Madness. The purpose of these movies was to profit from salacious and taboo material but to get around censors and local outrage groups by presenting them as warnings or cautionary tales: you get to see some titty, and that dirty titty gets punished for showing itself therefore you’re absolved. Likewise, I can’t find the quote now, but there’s that old adage that you can have as much sex and violence in your picture as long as its a religious epic. I mean, Passion of the Christ is straight-up torture porn, but it’s about Jesus so take the kids.

Anyway, the moralizing comes through the wife’s story. She’s a junkie forced into withdrawal by her dealer, has to steal the husband’s boat, and, while there, is forced into a three-way with the dealer and his girlfriend. This final moment is contrasted with the husband hooking up with the babysitter. Literally. The two scenes are intercut with the scores for both being different so you really feel the effect: the husband, who is good, gets to have fun fulfilling sex while the wife, who is bad, has to suffer through a lesbian experience for her next fix.

Let’s not unpack lesbianism as punishment trope nor the dealer shouting racial slurs at one of his underlings. Hopefully what’s wrong with all that is obvious.

The morality part climaxes with the dealer murdering the ships pilot. He has to for the ending to carry the proper moral weight. Like I said, the biker gang chains up the dealer and dumps out his stash. What I left out is his underling, who’s a junkie, is there as well and left sitting in all the spilled and spoiled heroin. He’s not physically restrained like the dealer, but he’s metaphorically chained to the junk and just as undone. The man piloting the ship had been a junkie, but is currently clean and, more importantly, kind to the wife. He’s morally tainted, though, by having been a junkie and being involved in the smuggling. We’re getting kind of Old Testament here, but as I’ve said in other reviews, exploitation movies tend to do that. Having sinned, he has to be punished so he’s thrown overboard and killed by the dealer even though, in terms of plot, his death doesn’t mean anything. They still pilot the boat to the place he was planning to take it. All it does is clean up the final punishments. If he were still alive he couldn’t justifiably be punished by the gang, he couldn’t remain on the boat because the husband has to come and save that, and he couldn’t just walk away. So he’s killed because you can’t even flirt with the underground.

So, here’s a shock: I hated it. I did laugh out loud a few times at how ham-fisted and awkward the movie was, like when one of the hippies is explaining weed to the husband. Those moments were too few and far between, though, and what is there is, as I note throughout this review, pretty awful on every level. On top of that, like The Babysitter, this is boring while also trying to be salacious. What it has over that film is a lighter touch, a less leery tone. The Babysitter felt like it could turn into a snuff film at any time; Weekend With the Babysitter feels like corporate remake of that exploitation content. Unfortunately, once you remove the exploitation edge, you lose a lot of the narrative energy. Since the movie’s not willing to push boundaries or break taboos, nothing seems to carry that much weight. I hope I don’t have to say this, but don’t see this movie about an elderly man hooking up with a teenager.

338. Star Knight

338. Star Knight aka El caballero del dragón (1985)
Director: Fernando Colomo
Writers: Fernando Colomo and Andreu Martín from a story by Andreu Martín and Miguel Ángel Nieto
From: Sci-Fi Invastion (the last one!)

An alien spaceship visits a medieval land and is mistaken for a dragon.

The movie stars Klaus Kinski and Harvey Keitel. It’s everything I can do to not write this whole post in a Werner Herzog voice.

Opens with a scroll invoking alchemy and the pursuit of “The Secret of Secrets.” Then we cut to Kinski, the alchemist, calling for an angel to arrive and show him said Secret of Secrets. What luck, an alien spaceship passes overhead right at that moment! Many people see it and the story of its passing evolves into that of a dragon harrying the countryside. The people refuse to pay their taxes unless the count and his knights (led by Keitel) do something about the dragon.

Within the castle, there’s a powerplay being orchestrated by the priest who resents Kinski’s presence and closeness to the Count. Likewise, Keitel is angling to be made a knight and marry the Count’s daughter. The princess is chafing against her father’s overprotectiveness and keeps trying to sneak out to experience the world. Now you have all the background.

The princess sneaks out, is captured by the spaceship, and then returns in a catatonic state. Kinski brings her out of it and gets her story about being inside the vessel and falling in love with the man piloting it. Kinski goes to where the ship is and is given a crystal ball (a computer for all intents and purposes) that has instructions on how to make the elixir of immortality.

The alien comes to the castle, leaves with the princess, and the Count promises her hand and half his land to whoever saves her. Kinski manufactures the elixir, but the priest and Keitel have organized a coup inside the castle and kidnap him. They all go to the ship where Keitel challenges the alien to a duel for the princess’ hand. She wants the alien to accept to prove his love, but he instead lets her leave. The ship flies off and the group head back to the castle.

On the way, the alien arrives with a horse and weapons to face Keitel. They fight, but Keitel removes the alien’s spacesuit by using a code he learned from the crystal. The suit transports onto Keitel’s body and the alien dies. Keitel and the priest return to the ship hoping to seize control of it, but it closes up once they board and flies into space. Kinski gives the little of the elixir that he has to the alien which resurrects him and allows him to breathe Earth air. The three return to the castle, the alien periodically manifests a halo causing him to be seen as a saint, and he’s given the princess’ hand and half the country. Meanwhile, Keitel and the priest are flying through space headed to parts unknown. THE END

So everything in the movie is said in Ye Olde English which gives the piece a strange, goofy tone. This isn’t helped by the fact that, in terms of content, it feels like the movie is trying to be a comedy, like it’s aping Monty Python and the Holy Grail except with one central plot. Even worse, Keitel can’t pull off the accent. He sounds like he’s trying to cover up a Brooklyn accent, like Stallone moonlighting at Medieval Times.

The comic effect is problematic because, in terms of production, the movie feels like it’s trying to be serious, like it wants to be a good, sincere fantasy movie that’s maybe even making a political statement. The priest is mean-spirited and conniving, ranting to Keitel at the end about how difficult it will be to convince a whole new group of people to give up part of their income for no reason whatsoever. I have no beef with religious criticism, but I don’t quite see how it factors into your alien and dragon movie.

Beyond the religious angle, I had the sense that the movie was trying to satirize chivalry and medieval governance, which, so? Golly, you really stuck it to those 14th-century monarchists. Since I could never put my finger on what the movie was trying to do, I never really got engaged by it.

None of this, by the way, was helped by the fact that the alien communicated telepathically so he never speaks. He only gives goggling, fish-eyed stares at everyone. Imagine Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, except mute. It wasn’t fun.

Which is unfortunate. I was excited when I saw the cast list and the basic plot synopsis. I think it’s a neat idea, a particularly good one for a D&D game. People in the region start spreading stories about a dragon and a strange magician menacing their lands, but it turns out to be an alien here for its own inscrutable purposes. Is it exploring, taking samples, planning an invasion? How do the characters find out about it, encounter it, react to it? What are the alien’s powers—does it have its own magic, psychic abilities, high technology? You can do a lot with the idea. This movie, I think, wanted to, but didn’t pull it off. I’d recommend skipping it. There is some fun to be had riffing it, but because it seems to be trying to be funny on its own, you’d be spending a lot of time noting how jokes fall flat.

337. Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory

337. Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory aka Lycanthropus (1961)
Director: Paolo Heusch
Writer: Ernesto Gastaldi
From: Chilling (the last one!)
Watch: archive.org

Girls at a reform school are being brutally murdered. Could it be the philandering professor, the creeping caretaker, or the new doctor with a disturbing past?

WARNING: The title and blurb are more exciting than anything in this dull-as-dirt movie, a movie I’ve watched far too many times for how much I don’t enjoy it. I’ll get to my history with this flick in a moment, first, the plot.

The setting is a girls’ dormitory/reform school. Julian, a new professor has just arrived and is told the girls there (all played by women so check off “elderly teens” on your bad movie trope list) would otherwise be in a reform school, but are being given a second chance. Julian, likewise is getting a second chance. He and the headmaster have a mutual friend so he’s being hired despite having previously been a doctor and stripped of his license for “reasons better left unsaid.”

The reasons, by the way, are that he was fired from his previous job for killing a patient he’d taken as a lover. White guys: can’t be wrong, only fail up. (mark that trope too).

That night, Mary, a student at the school runs off to meet up with a philandering professor. (mark “pedophile”) She wants him to get her out of the school or she’ll reveal their relationship. He wants the letters he’s sent her. One her way back to the dorm, she’s killed by a werewolf.

Priscilla, Mary’s friend, starts investigating the death. Priscilla is in the school for attempted murder because she nearly killed a sailor that was attacking Mary when they lived together. It’s not clear from how it’s told if the sailor was Mary’s lover or a John or if the movie wants us to see Priscilla as a victim of circumstance or as someone who’s not as noble as she acts. I’d chalk that up to the translation (oh yeah, mark “dubbing”). Anyway, Priscilla starts uncovering all the details: Mary’s liason’s, Julian’s past, and even encounters the werewolf. She’s threatened by the philanderer’s wife, but then the wife is murdered.

Yada yada, the woman who died under Julian’s care was a werewolf and she died as he was perfecting her treatment. The philanderer orders the caretaker to find Mary’s letters, but the caretaker is caught in the dorm, flees, and falls from a tower to his death. The headmaster finds the letters on the body, confronts the philanderer, and hands the letters over. Julian and Priscilla visit the philanderer that night as he’s packing to flee the area, confront him with what they know, and he commits suicide.

Meanwhile, we see the headmistress doing experiments on a wolf. The werewolf comes in, she injects him, and he turns into the headmaster. Before she can deliver the second injection and cure him, the wolf she was working on attacks and kills her. The next night, the headmaster turns into a werewolf, tries to attack Priscilla, but Julian shoots him. They get the full story from the headmaster before he dies and Julian and Priscilla leave together. THE END

As I said, I’ve watched this movie a lot, and never on any horror host show. It’s just too boring. The most compelling part is the incongruous opening song, “The Ghoul in School,” which is missing from my print. I think that may be due to some copyright trick/workaround, but the song is a hoot and you should check it out.

I first saw this movie almost twenty years ago on a different cheapo movie box set with some roommates who went on to tell me to kill my dog. They sucked, but it turns out I’m not the guy you cross. We were all riffing it and having a good time when, about twenty minutes before the end, we all passed out. We weren’t drinking, weren’t using any substances, weren’t even flagging in the run-up to passing out, we just all went like someone had thrown a switch. I watched it a few times since then just to see the end and in previous attempts to go through these sets. Most recently, I sat down to write a riff script for the movie as part of a horror host show I was putting together with a friend. I tell ya, if the movie is boring to watch straight through, it’s excruciating to watch in 15-second chunks, constantly pausing to write gags and annotations.

To put it another way, the movie is highly riffable and I recommend it in that context. On its own, it’s really dull and I’m not 100% sure why. Part of the problem is it commits to the white guy as the hero (mark your list). Priscilla is the hero for the first third to half of the movie and then the attention and narrative agency switches to Julian. He’s not the hero, he’s one of the red herrings. When we move away from Priscilla, who’s pretty awesome as a hero, we lose a lot of the investment in solving the mystery. Yes, she wants to reveal the werewolf to protect herself, but she’s also trying to avenge her friend and root out the corruption at the core of this school. When you shift the burden of the investigation to Julian, you lose the personal investment in previous victims as well as the impetus to clean up the organization. In fact, he’s part of the corruption (although he’s actually been hired to share his research on a cure for lycanthropy, but, again, that becomes a new motivation arriving pretty late in the film).

Also, the movie’s called Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory. As Nelson says of Naked Lunch, “I can think of at least two things wrong with that title.” I know I bag on a lot of these movies for gratuitous nudity so I sound like a hypocrite when I ding a flick for not being more salacious, and I’ll try to avoid that here. My complaint is that there’s a level of gleeful absurdity promised by the title that isn’t followed through. Also, the werewolf is never in the dormitory. The werewolf isn’t in the movie much at all. A werewolf movie needs more werewolf attacks, especially if it has one within the first five minutes.

I will say I enjoyed the movie more this time compared to the other times I’d watched it. That may be due to context—I’m grateful that it’s not another Marimark production—or may be due to familiarity—I could watch it with nostalgia. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still boring, but I wouldn’t tell you to stay way. I would say make sure you’re ready to rip into it and have friends with you to keep you awake.

This movie is in the public domain and available from archive.org here.

336. The Thirsty Dead

336. The Thirsty Dead (1974)
Director: Terry Becker
Writers: Charles Dennis from a story by Terry Becker and Lou Whitehill
From: Pure Terror (only 1 remains!)
Watch: archive.org

A death cult uses the blood of kidnapped women as an ingredient in their immortality serum.

A cult is kidnapping women in Manila and yet no one thinks to call Black Cobra to save the day. Consider my suspension of disbelief gone! Although we hear that many women are being taken, we follow a specific group of four. They’re taken into the jungle where they meet a cult whose goals are unclear at first. Eventually, our main character Laura learns that they’ve had visions of her coming. Who she’s supposed to be or why she’s important isn’t clear, but the cult wants her to join them.

The cult is an immortality cult that bleeds its victims and mixes the blood with special herbs to remain eternally young. Laura is going to be inducted, but watches the cultist drain one of her fellow captives which makes her refuse. She gathers the other women she was kidnapped with and escapes, but they’re captured and sent back to the cult. The high priest, though, has had a change of heart and decides to help her and her friends escape. One woman refuses, slightly misunderstanding the situation. She thinks if Laura refuses the offer to live forever, one of them can take it instead. She tries to tell the high priestess that she’ll join the cult, but falls into a pit and dies.

The other three women, with the help of the high priest, escape, but he starts aging rapidly once he crosses the magical barrier surrounding the cult’s land. He stays behind and dies as the women flag down a passing motorist and return to the city. Laura comes back with the authorities, but they can’t find any trace of the cult. The high priestess watches through a telescope as Laura says, “I was there.” THE END

Another movie without much going on. While there are two escape attempts and the horrific revelation of what the cult’s doing as well as what awaits those who refuse to be inducted, the moments all stand apart. It’s not that there’s no connective tissue, it’s that there isn’t much lead-up or foreshadowing of anything. The movie has an ambling tone to it, if that makes sense. We don’t jump from scene to scene nor do we gallop through events, we move at a nice casual pace through each essential plot point, never revealing too much or putting much weight on any revelation. What’s lacking from the movie is any sort of tone—either perilous or strange. The nature of the threat the women are facing isn’t particularly clear to the characters and it’s not made clear to us. Likewise, the surrealism of being offered membership of a cult that dreamed of you before your arrival isn’t played with at all. It’s all just kind of bland.

I feel like I’ve had a string of these lately, the movies that I recommend neither for watching nor avoiding. This ones feels a little slighter than the others, a little more nothing, but not so much as, say your typical Marimark film. I feel like everyone involved in this movie did the work, but only the bare minimum, like it was something they worked on between gigs in commercials.

While I’m not recommending it, I will note that it’s in the public domain. I’ve added a copy to archive.org here. I don’t know that it has much riffing potential, but it might be fun to use a b-roll in an editing project or for a music video.

335. Van Nuys Blvd.

335. Van Nuys Blvd. (1979)
Director: William Sachs
Writer: William Sachs
From: Cult Cinema (only 4 remain!)

A group of people meet each other around Van Nuys Blvd. and form relationships.

The final entry in the “Vansploitation” trilogy that includes The Van and Malibu Beach and, I think, the final Marimark production. I haven’t watched it yet, but I can tell you it sucks and you should skip it.

Now I’ve watched it and I can say… I didn’t hate it. The two previous entries in this sort-of trilogy, frankly, were pretty rapey and encouraged you to root for the creepiest characters in the picture. This one still makes the mistake of rooting for the creep, but sidesteps rape by having *shock* consent!, those ignoring consent being coded as the villains, and the creep being called a creep. If anything holds the movie back, it’s that there’s no plot. We just watch these people hang out for a few days.

Anyway, here’s what happens. Bobby likes drag racing his van, but there’s no competition in his town so he heads out to Van Nuys Blvd. to live it up there. As soon as he arrives, he hooks up with Wanda, a waitress at a drive-in. Moon pulls up next to Bobby in her van and challenges him to a drag race. Unfortunately, they’re stopped by the cops before they can figure out who won. Camille is riding with Moon and also gets arrested.

In the jail cell, they meet Chooch, an older guy who drives his hot rod up and down the strip. He’s been arrested by the primary asshole cop, Zass, who he grew up with. Also arrested is Greg, the creep. He saw Camille earlier and told her he’d dreamt of her. This leads to a fight between him and the guy she’s with that ends with them destroying each other’s cars. Greg continues to be a creep in the jail cell, suggesting they all go to the amusement park the next day once they get out since that was part of his dream too.

To be fair, Greg is not as much of a creep as some of the other guys in these Marimark productions. It’s just that his inciting incident of having dreamed of Camille and feeling entitled to tell her this and expect that she’ll throw over the guy she’s with to be with him feels like a not-great variation on the “nice guy” trope. “He dreamed of her so he doesn’t have to do the work of actually appealing to or attracting her.”

The five of them do go to the amusement park the next day, though, and generally start pairing off—Greg with Camille, Bobby with Moon. Greg keeps giving Chooch grief because he’s not a fan of roller coasters and that leads to Camille and Moon calling him a creep.

Meanwhile, Officer Zass has picked up Wanda, driven her to an isolated stretch of beach, and is trying to rape her in the back of the cop car. She suddenly starts being into it and I was about to say, “Fuck this movie,” but it’s a ploy to screw over Zass. She ends up handcuffing him to his car wearing just his boxer shorts and abandons him. He’s there for the rest of the movie begin tormented by various passers-by.

Wanda is picked up by Chooch and they fall in love. When he introduces her to the other four, there’s a hint that there may be trouble since Bobby hooked up with her, but everyone keeps their mouths shut and just giggles about it to themselves. At the end of the movie, Chooch and Wanda announce they’re going to get married and move to his dad’s ranch in Tennessee.

Greg and Camille hook up, but there are “hilarious” shenanigans in the process. He’s supposed to sneak in through her bedroom window, but goes into her parents’ instead and starts making out with her mom. Later, Camille smuggles him in dressed in drag claiming he’s one of her friends. The dad gets excited and sneaks into the guest room while Greg and Camille are both there, and starts molesting Greg. The characters are acting like they think it’s hilarious even though the idea is that Camille’s dad would try to molest one of her friends.

Finally, Bobby and Moon hook up, but still need to resolve the drag race from earlier. They race, Bobby wins, but Moon is mad that he took the race seriously, that, implicitly, he cares about his van more than her. So he pushes it off a cliff. Everyone leaves together and we close with a montage of Van Nuys Blvd. that we saw earlier in the movie, except Zass has bought Chooch’s hot rod and is now being pulled over by the cops. THE END.

So, yeah, not terrible, but not much of a point to any of it either. The movie was written and directed by the guy behind Galaxina which likewise felt like it had some promising ideas but just didn’t do anything. Also, like Galaxina, this had lots of pointless nudity right from the start. In a way it was nice because it’s the movie giving you its raison d'être. Why does this movie exist? Titties. If you’re going, “Titties and…?” this is not the movie for you.

And I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. While it was better than I expected, I expected something really awful. To put it in perspective, when I sat down to watch this, I planned to see the re-release of Schindler’s List immediately afterwards to wash the horror of this movie out of my head. In other words, I expected this to be so bad that I’d need a Holocaust film as a pick-me-up. I was wrong (although it was nice to see Schindler’s List again, a movie that’s legitimately good and done well). Van Nuys Blvd. isn’t good, but it’s neither terrible nor particularly offensive either. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone but, unlike a lot of Marimark productions, it didn’t make me angry. That’s the highest note I’m going to end on for those bastards.

Oh Fuck You!

334. Las Vegas Lady

334. Las Vegas Lady (1975)
Director: Noel Nosseck
Writer: Walter Dallenbach
From: Cult Cinema (only 5 remain!)

A trio of women plan a heist in the Circus Circus Casino.

Three women plan to rob Eversull, the manager of the Circus Circus Casino, who’s running guns and girls through the place (girls that he apparently assaults). The women are Lucky-the ringleader in a relationship with one of the guards; Carol-the magician’s assistant who owes $15,000 to bookies; Lisa-the trapeze artist who’s going to be sneaked into the office. The whole enterprise is being organized by a shadowy figure.

Not quite enough happens in the run-up to the heist. Carol is attacked by her bookie who then breaks into her place and finds the floorplan for the office they’re going to rob. You’d expect that to result in him betraying Carol to the guy she’s going to rob, but he instead threatens her on the night of the heist by accusing her of planning to skip town. Lisa is there, though, and incapacitates him.

The heist itself is relatively simple: during a special high-rollers’ night on the upper floor of the casino, Lucky will lower a rope from the bathroom window that will allow Lisa to scale the casino and climb into Eversull’s office. Eversull has just received a down payment on some automatic weapons, money that’s hidden in a secret drawer in his office. Once Lisa has the money, she’ll climb into a modified buffet cart being pushed by Carol who’s picked up the shift from one of her friends in the kitchen.

The plan generally works. Lisa slips a bit climbing the rope, but doesn’t fall. A sniper on a billboard across from the casino shoots out a car’s tire causing an accident and then a fight in front of the place to serve as a distraction. Carol, though, gets groped by one of the high-rollers. When she tells him “no,” he accuses her of stealing from him and she gets grabbed by security. Lucky has to run to the office and get the cart out which she manages to do just before Eversull arrives with her boyfriend.

Eversull realizes he’s been robbed and guesses Carol was part of it. While Lucky and Lisa go to the rendezvous point, an Old West amusement park, Eversull beats the details out of Carol. He has her take him to the park where he ambushes the other two, but he gets ambushed by the boyfriend—the mastermind of the heist. A minor shoot-out ensues that ends when Eversull takes Lucky hostage. The boyfriend says to shoot her, but, if Eversull does, there’s nothing to protect him from the boyfriend. Lucky goes free and they let Eversull go even though he’ll have to answer to all the crime syndicates that are being ripped off right now. Lucky and her boyfriend embrace and leave together for Montana. THE END

The movie’s not bad, it’s just a bit thin. We start with Lucky being told she has two days to pull off the heist and then gradually meet the rest of her team and learn about their situations and motivations. Only her team is two people and their situations and motivations are pretty straightforward: Carol is a gambler who owes a lot of money to violent bookies and Lisa is a trapeze artist who’s becoming afraid of heights. If anyone’s role and motivation is unclear, it’s Lucky’s, but we never get much about her. Her job is to be the good-luck girl for high-rollers at the casino--essentially a professional gambler who gambles with other people’s money. I think. I don’t know much about Vegas or gambling. That’s what it looked like from the movie.

I wanted more character, more incident. The modern touchstones for heist movies is the Oceans franchise, and with those you not only have teams of 8, 11, 12, and 13, respectively, you also have the failure of the heist getting flipped into having been part of the plan all along. In other words, the movies have twists. This movie is just a straight line.

Also, the movie had the opportunity to be bigger, to do more. As I noted in the description, Eversull is hiring sex workers and then assaulting them. This happens off-screen (thank you movie), but is a moment that isn’t followed up on. I guess it’s supposed to establish him as violent toward women so we aren’t surprised when he beats Carol at the end, but I wanted some payoff from the sex workers themselves—that they’re part of the plot, or their madame organizes some sort of revenge for him, something. Instead, the role of the sex worker in the plot is her same role within the world of the movie: to be an object that communicates another character’s identity, not a character herself.

I’m just saying, if this guy is victimizing people, have the victims be part of the plot to ruin him. That’s a really satisfying thing to have in stories.

Anyway, the movie’s all right, neither great nor terrible. I wouldn’t recommend seeking it out, but if you stumble across it somehow, I wouldn’t recommend turning it off either.