It's The Dope-A-Palooza Contest Swag-Winning Thing! (2nd Edition)

Feel like winning?

Well, are YOU in luck!  Because it is now time for me to announce TheGreatWhiteDope's Mecha-Blog-Zilla Dope-A-Palooza Contest Swag-Winning Thing (2nd Edition).

You may recall last year how well the contest went when I had people post their intentions on my Death 4 Told  review - and even with all the luck in the world, Alex from Film Forager still won (if "won" can be the right word?) the coveted disc and a diploma declaring her the winner of same-said unholy relic.

This time out, the prizes are bigger and...well maybe not better, but there's a couple of extra little trinkets along with the regular prize to celebrate my sixth year doing this incomprehensible garble of words I call a blog.

You all know me to be a man of few words - unless I'm reviewing a movie - so I will bring this thing around and tell you first of the cheap beads and trinkets I offer you folk for the honor of buying Manhattan Island...or in this case, to celebrate yet another year of this thing.

Ready?  The lucky winner of The Dope-A-Palooza Contest Swag-Winning Thing! (2nd Edition) will receive:

1) AMC Monsterfest Cult Classics Collection 1

Yes kids, this group of cult fave raves is all yours should you win, and even I love these movies, which must give you an idea as to what they're like, should you not be familiar with the titles.

And who WOULDN'T be familiar with titles such as The Atomic Brain, The Brain That Wouldn't Die, Carnival of Souls and Night Tide?  Two discs with two movies each, all in glorious black-and-white and each disc in pristine showroom condition.  Hey, I don't deal in carp here, gang.

Besides which, if you need to build up you movie collection, this is the perfect way to start!

 2) Your Own Pick-Up And Disposal Zombie Toe Tag

From the fine folks at T-Shirt Bordello, in association with 888wuzdead.com, here we have just the thing for the coming screaming zombie apocalypse.

This high-quality toe tag with the little round brown hole protector thing on the end (see that?) and durable cotton blend string all but says to the world, "hey, I got a zombie toe tag; whadda YOU got?"

3) Your Own Original TGWD Artwork

That's right, you can now proudly display your very own personal work of art, suitable for framing (if you have a 3" x 5" frame) from the same arr-teeste who gave the world such works as "The Jason" and "The Samara".  Now gaze in amazement at this latest discovered masterwork from his archives: "The Guyz".

Ahem:

[ART CLASS TEACHER] This whimsical piece gives showcase to three of the horror world's biggest names - Count Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster and The Wolf Man - in a rare moment of levity.

Using Frankenstein's Monster as an anchoring post, Count Dracula flashes the viewer a coy, befanged smile as he gives us the Shaka Sign.

The Wolf Man, on his opposite side, couples the more traditional Peace Sign hand gesture with a pair of sunglasses one would imagine he had collected from a recent victim, probably a sun worshipper themselves or at the very least a tragic hipster who was deserving of an horrific death at the sign of a cursed pentagram-palmed lycanthrope.

And finally, Frankenstein's Monster stands at the center, a more serious look on his face counter-balanced by his hand making the more current urban symbol displaying some love for his Westside homies.  It is understandable since, the Monster being made from various body parts, some of him may indeed be from the Westside, therefore this gesture is thoroughly acceptable.

In conclusion, this unholy trio on creatures, so commonly associated with terrifying imagery in Hollywood part and present, display the more humorous aspects of their psyches in what must almost certainly be one of the lighter moments in their lives of torture, horror and abject death. [/ART CLASS TEACHER]

So there you have it - three classy prizes from yours truly for being such a good, loyal follower of this-here blog.  And all you have to do to qualify for this prize package is follow these easy-to-read rules:

* You have to be a follower of this blog (naturally).

* You must post your intention to be considered for eligibility in this post (this one here, the one you're reading now), along with your name and the name of your blog.

* You must agree to review at least ONE of the movies in the set being offered as a prize here.  Any one of them, doesn't matter.

All entries must be posted here by Saturday, July 23, 2011 at 11:59 PM to be considered for the drawing.

So what are you waiting for?  You feel lucky, punk?  Grab up your two tickets to paradise, get your tiger's blood flowing, sweep the leg, grab the gusto and snap into a Slim Jim: enter The Dope-A-Palooza Contest Swag-Winning Thing! (2nd Edition) and be a winner!

No, not Wiener...WINNER!

Dope out.

- TGWD

Orgy Of The Dead (1965)

You don't want to get me started on Edward D. Wood Jr.; trust me, you do not.  We'd be here forever if I ticked down every reason why I watch his films...and also why I shouldn't.

Incompetence as an art form is only a small part of it.  This is the man who created movies that celebrated Tor Johnson, rambling dialogue, stock footage, transvestism and Bela Lugosi...not necessarily in that order.  Wood had this unusual approach to films, where ADHD is the message, since scenes will flash by onscreen with little or no connection to what came before.

When the only thing that links a series of movies about aliens, zombies and phony psychics is Kelton the Komedy Relief Kop, you know you're in the presence of...something.  Something that may not necessarily be good, but it would at least be memorable.

And for as much as Wood is remembered for his directorial efforts, he was even more prolific as a writer.  Yep, not just scripts but books, dime novels, short stories - a lot of them autobiographical but mostly stories full of action, adventure and ...well, pornography.

Okay, maybe more of some than the others.  But when you've written 26 scripts, 5 books and 9 short stories, then the casual viewer tends to contrast and compare between works to find common threads.

And believe it or not, there were some scripts that came from Wood's pen which he never even bothered to direct.  That's right; some of the stuff Edward D. Wood Jr. scripted ...he outsourced.

Which is what we've got for our example this time out for, you see, Orgy Of The Dead is a story that, apparently, was good enough for Wood to concoct but when the time came to set up the camera, he passed the lensing responsibilities to someone else.  Stephen C. Apostolof, in this case.  Never heard of him before?  No wonder; you're probably not familiar with his other works like Office Love-in White-Collar Style, Lady Godiva Rides, Drop Out Wife and Five Loose Women.  How many of those contained orgies, the dead or any combination thereof?  Who knows?  But at least he was able to work 'em in here, thanks to Eddie.

With a title like this, is a plot really necessary?  It is?  If you insist: Bob (William Bates) and his girlfriend Shirley (Patricia Barrington) go in search of a cemetery in order to inspire Bob for writing his next horror story. After they crash the car, they wander into a nearby graveyard and encounter the dancing (female) dead, a full moon spectacle overseen by the Ruler of the Dark (Criswell) and his beehive-hairdo'd assistant The Black Ghoul (Fawn Silver). Before long the couple is spotted and taken prisoner. Tied to stakes and forced to watch the dancing of various jiggling females, they await their fate....

As you no doubt can tell, this i a story that has Wood's fingerprints, DNA and other undeniable connective evidence all over it.  Topless dancing women!  Cheap sets!  Cut scenes that make no sense!  Lousy costumes!  A vamp lady!  Criswell!  All that's missing is an alien ship on a string and a 300-pound Swedish wrestler stumbling around.

Don't be misled, though; Wood's hand is not on the camera here, which was a detriment to a latter-day film based on an unfinished script of his named I Woke Up Early The Day I Died, which came out in 1998, some 20 years after the day Wood himself died.  Chalk it up to a lost opportunity, much like Orgy, which could only have benefited from Wood's manic desire to film everything, and when he couldn't, at least pad it with filler.  Therefore, you know his absence could only hurt this affair.

Anyway, back to Orgy Of The Dead; all this movie consists of is strippers staring blankly into space as they wiggle about, sans costume tops, their pulchritude on full display.  I hesitate, though, to refer to them as strippers, seeing as how they lose their tops in the first minute or so of their "choreography" and spend the rest of their...routines, let's call them...just wiggling.  Oh, they have costumes they wear - one is dressed as an (American) Indian, one as a skeleton, one like a Hawaiian (which isn't really as Hawaiian as one would think), another like a Mexican, others like zombies, street walkers, slaves, kitty cats - but when it comes to creativity, this is like the first round of eliminations on "America's Got Talent": good for laughs, period.

Criswell, what happened to you since your glory days in 1959?  There was a time when he could effortlessly sit behind a desk or in a coffin and speechify like the grandest of all community theater leads, vying for the year's most overwrought vocal performance.  In Orgy, Cris wears a Dracula cloak (that might just have been Bela Lugosi's but who knows) and sits there in the Styrofoam cemetery, feigning interest and looking more like a lost derelict struggling to stay sober but failing miserably.  Those bleary, squinted eyes suggest that there wasn't a full booze bottle in the immediate vicinity for the duration of shooting.

Again, talentless stripp... uh, semi-naked dancers... are the bulk of this 92-minute flick.  There are occasional cutaways to our Brad and Janet writhing in agony as they witness this "orgy", Criswell orating as if he were a drunk King Lear and this Black Ghoul lady standing around acting more like Vampira's unemployable layabout daughter, and these guys dressed up as a mummy and a wolf man, standing off to the side, nudging each other and pantomiming that, gee, they wish they could get in on some of this "orgy" stuff, but that would mean they would have to have either unwrap or shave themselves, and be female.  But soon, when our talentless boy and girl end up alone in the end with a twist ending that isn't really all that much fo a twist, that's it - and not a moment too soon, believe me.

Yes, this is all but touted as an Edward D. Wood Jr. film, with the script and story being his, but in the end, Orgy Of The Dead could have been so much more one of Wood's ruminations of society and horrific transgressions if he had lensed it as well.  Stampeding buffaloes during a striptease?  A two-fisted brawl between Bob and the Ruler of the Dark, Ed himself as one of the dancers, maybe?  Some improv from Tor Johnson?  A token cameo by Kelton The Komedy Relief Kop?  Could only have helped.

So Orgy Of The Dead tries, but it's a near-miss.  Too bad; it had the chops but was missing the soul.

I notice this review is shorter than a lot of my most recent, even for a sordid affair like this one.  But what can I say; I was distracted.  Perhaps I was thinking more of The Bride of Frankenstein getting jiggy with it, and The Creature From The Black Lagoon with a beer in his hand and a $20 bill to stuff in her g-string. 

Ahhh...what could have been.... Poor Eddie.

3 Ninjas (1992)

Alright, I'll be the first to admit that you got me on this one.

I know that ninjas are a huge part of bad movie folklore, not to mention the fact that they've kept the Asian film market (and Godfrey Ho) in business a long time.  They're swift, they're silent, they're deadly and by the time you see a ninja, you're already dead.

And yet with the advent of 3 Ninjas, none of the regular rules of ninjas apply, because this movie was made for kids.

Colorful costumes, most every scene is shot in broad daylight and every adult in this film is a clod.  How could it NOT be for kids?  (okay, those same attributes still hold true for a Godfrey Ho movie, too, but anyway...)

John Hughes could have wrote this, and I'm surprised that he didn't.  But I guess after writing 101 Dalmatians (1996) and Baby's Day Out, even he figured that he'd plateaued.  And if there's any worse indictment I can make against 3 Ninjas, it's in its plot.

So here goes: Every year, young brothers Samuel (Michael Treanor), Jeffrey (Max Elliott Slade) and Michael (Chad Power) visit their Japanese grandfather, Mori Shintaro (Victor Wong), whom the boys affectionately refer to as Grandpa (for some odd reason) for the summer. Mori is skilled in the fields of Martial Arts and Ninjutsu, and has trained the boys in every technique he knows.  He even gives them outstanding ninja names like Rocky, Colt and Tum-Tum, respectively.

The boys' father (Alan McRae) is an FBI officer and, after an organized crime ring headed by Hugo Snyder (Rand Kingsley) proves to be too much for the Bureau, Snyder makes things worse by attempting to kidnap the three boys - by using three bumbling kidnappers/surfers/idiots who are usually getting battered and beaten in various embarrassing ways - until it all culminates in a final battle where ninjas battle young ninjas and armed officers.  Oh, and there's time for a basketball game and a young girlfriend (Kate Sargeant), and more than one Home Alone reference.

See what I mean?  Director Jon Turteltaub, who would become one of Disney Pictures' most reliable directors (good/bad thing) gives us a world in which the safety of humanity not only rests on the shoulders of grade school kids, but grade school kids named after a horse, a boxer and Asian antacid tablets, sounds like.  This looks like a bad episode of a Nickelodeon series where you halfway expect The Wiggles to show up halfway through as hitmen.

Writers Edward Emanuel and Kenny Kim didn't really do much else in their "careers", except for Emanuel producing a video documentary called Pearl Harbor: A Day Of Infamy.  Of course.  Natural progression, you know.

I don't care who you are, how old you are or how much you enjoy ninjas no matter what the movie, there are some instances when a movie just should NOT have the word "ninja" in its title.  Looking at my own personal collection here by my desk, I own The Ninja Squad, Ninja Terminator, Zombie Vs. Ninja and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret Of The Ooze.  So yeah, I have...different tastes.

But even I have my limits when it comes to what I will accept ninjas in.  Yes, I'll even accept movies where the ninjas in question have headbands with "NINJA" written on them.  3 Ninjas, however, would be hard for me to accept even if I was the 8-10 year old demographic this flick was aiming for.

And the worst part: this movie has Victor Wong in it!  Victor Wong!  Egg Shen himself!  A man whose career had some pretty high highs in films like Big Trouble In Little China, The Golden Child, The Last Emperor, Tremors and The Joy Luck Club.  That expressive face, the gravelly voice, the sense that if you crossed him, he could summon a whole horde of Asian demons on you.  Victor deserved better than to have the last film role he would be remembered for was having played the same role as here in 3 Ninjas: High Noon At Mega Mountain (1998).  Not an award-winning prestige film.  Not a Japanese character study.  A movie where lead roles went to Hulk Hogan and Jim Varney.  At least this film gave him a chance to kick butt.

Speaking of butts getting kicked, the three aforementioned bumbling kidnappers/surfers/idiots named Fester (Patrick Labyorteaux), Marcus (Race Nelson) and Hammer (D.J. Harder) have the unfortunate luck to all three channel Daniel Stern after getting hit in the face with four bricks by Kevin McAllister.

All these three dull-witted buffoons do is serve as comedy relief in a movie that's already overloaded with it.  Plenty of "dude"s and "bummer"s and "radical"s are uttered in the course of their appearance, as well as a lot of "ow"s and "ouch"es, seeing as all they do accomplish is share a similar amount of concussions, as served by the three title brats.  When a movie tries to echo the slapstick violence of Home Alone and can't even reach THAT level of shtick, that's a movie which has not learned well, Grasshopper.

As far as the triple threat of mini-martial artists go, we are saddled with three of the most untalented tow-headed punks since the last live-action Walt Disney kids' film went direct-to-video.  These kids' entire personalities are summed up in their nicknames.  Treanor's Rocky likes to be all tough, Slade's Colt acts skittish and Power's Tum Tum...eats.  That's it.  At what time did stuffing your face every time the camera was on you become a character trait in Hollywood?  Long before John Belushi made it an art form in National Lampoon's Animal House, I'm sure.

Other than representing their namesakes, all that these kids do is recite ninja analogies, scream out lame catch phrases ("Let's light this big guy up!") and martial-art any bad guy in their immediate range into submission.  One scene in which Rocky is trying to talk on the phone with a cute girl named Emily and Colt and Tum Tum dance around and chant "Ro-cky LOVES! E-mi-LEE!" was so painful I'm pretty sure I popped more than one Advil the first time I saw it.

The adults, as is par for the course, fare little better.  The only thing evil nasty bad guy Snyder gets to do is sneer, threaten and occasionally hit a guy or two.  Not that I expect Auric Goldfinger in a kiddie film, but this guy would be more threatening dressed in a Chuck E. Cheese costume.  Jerks who double-park their Audis in the handicapped space are more threatening than this clown.

Not even the efforts of the legendary Professor Toru Tanaka provide any entertainment.  Forever cast as the Oddjob-wannabe in more movies than this one, Tanaka doesn't even get to do anything suitably evil; just follow boss Snyder around until unleashed...not that he gets unleashed much as it is.  Come on, though: this is the man who was in movies with Chuck Norris AND Arnold Schwarzenegger!  Who wants to see him get beat up by kids???

I won't mention the boys' parents, only to say that they get involved with their kids' lives to the extent that Charlie Brown's folks get involved with his. Thanks, kiddie flick; that's just the message I wanted to hear - Parents shouldn't get involved with their kids' lives until it becomes a life or death situation.

Understandably, 3 Ninjas was a hit with kids.  NOT understandably, it also became a sleeper hit, earning back $29 million on a $2.5 million budget.  Which only goes to show that people weren't only starved for entertainment back in 1992, they were literally chewing their own legs off to escape the bear trap of such reprehensible films as Unforgiven and Scent Of A Woman, not to mention such detrimental kids' fare as Home Alone II: Lost In New York (co-inky-dink!) and Beethoven.  That's ironic commentary for you.

Three sequels down the road and a personnel change here and there, this was a franchise that went about its business of getting money for its distributors (Touchstone Pictures) then subsiding to make way for the next big thing in children's entertainment, whatever flavor it would be that week.  The thing with 3 Ninjas is, if the only thing it reinforced was the world view that adults are stupid and all kids should learn deadly ninja skills and fortune cookie philosophy, we as a race might as well wander into the ocean and let the dolphins take over.

One thing I noticed about 3 Ninjas is that it was released to different countries at different times.  United States first, of course, then Spain, Argentina, Denmark, the United Kingdom and so forth.  You want to know who the last country was to get hold of this movie?  Japan.  Three years after its initial release.

I would have LOVED to have been there for that premiere party.  Moreso than Victor Wong would have, I'm sure.

In Other News, Henry Kissinger Is Still Alive.

I realize how that sounds, reading it, but believe me when I say that I have no political slant on this: I'm just usually surprised when I find out that Henry Kissinger is still alive.

It's probably an on-going thing in his life, people being surprised that he's walking around, breathing, making opinions and popping up whenever some news channel needs political commentary on the latest hot-button international / political thing, but I'm sure that by this point in his life, he just takes a deep breath and explains, "Yez, I um steel alife; now deed you vant me to tolk about Armenia's political upheaval or not?"

I can see that scenario happening quite a lot.

It's not 1973 anymore, you know, so a lot more than just me are going to be watching CNN or Nightly News and see him pop up talking about government and their breath will catch, they'll blink and shout into the other room, "Hey!  You owe me fifty bucks; he's still alive!"

Anyways, imagine my surprise when I came across THIS picture:

How'd you have liked to have been a fly on the wall during that highly-charged meeting?

PALIN - So, I hear that you're dead.

KISSINGER - No, I am alife.

PALIN - No, I'm pretty sure you're dead, there.

KISSINGER - Madame, I ussure you I am alife.

PALIN - But you look all bloated and splotchy, like those zombie movies my Bristol rents for her baby to watch.

KISSINGER - Zank you very much, but I am...

PALIN - In fact, do you happen to know Uwe Boll?

KISSINGER - Who?

PALIN - Uwe Boll; he directs some of those zombie movies he casts your kind in.

KISSINGER - My kind...?

PALIN - Yeah, you dead guys who aren't really alive but not quite dead.

KISSINGER - Not only am I not knowing whom dis Hughie Bool is, I am also NOT dead, I am more than....

PALIN - Zombies!

KISSINGER - Vut?

PALIN - That's what you are!  A zombie!

KISSINGER - Madame, I am NOT a zumbee...I am German!

PALIN - I've seen that "Walking Dead" TV show, I know how touchy you zombies can be.  Don't take it personally, Harry.

KISSINGER - Henry.

PALIN - Right.

KISSINGER - Look; feel mein hand - do I feel cold und dead to you?  At all??

PALIN - Ewww, you got your hand all warm.  How'd ya do that?

KISSINGER - Hokay, you know vut, I'm dead.  Fine.  Zere, I am dead.  Are you happy now?

PALIN - So, since we've cleared that up, can we talk about the political climate now?

KISSINGER - (sighs) Fine.

PALIN - Now, as concerns Syria and Somalia....

KISSINGER - Yes?

PALIN - What are your zombie brothers' stand on the living in those parts?

KISSINGER - (under his breath)  Oyyy....

And before I get into any worse political debates tonight, I'll say Dope out.

- TGWD

Night Of A 1000 Cats (1972)

Anyone out there ever hear of phobiasploitation?

Probably not, since I'm pretty sure I'm the first blogger to use that word, but anyway: phobiasploitation is the term for a brand of cinema in which the filmers use the protagonist's (or ANtagonist's, either/or) fear of something as a crux of the plot.  You know like Craig Wasson's character's claustrophobia came into play in Body Double, Jack Nicholson's character's OCD was prominent in As Good As It Gets, Bill Murray's character's fear of...everything was the main point in What About Bob?...there's plenty but I could be here all day.

Anyway, phobiasploitation can be used on the audience, too.  Whatever someone's innermost fear is, chances are pretty good there's a horror movie based on it.  If you don't like mannequins, don't watch Tourist Trap.  If you don't like ventriloquist dummies, don't watch Magic or Devil Doll (actually, don't watch Magic under any circumstances - that's just good advice in genereal).  And if you don't like cats, then don't watch

Pet Sematary, Strays, Sleepwalkers, The Uncanny, "Top Cat", Uninvited, Two Evil Eyes, Black Cat, The Corpse Grinders, Cat People (either version), "Heathcliff", Eye Of The Cat, Cat in the Brain, Cat's Eye, both Garfield movies, Cat in the Hat, "Toonces The Driving Cat"...

...or my review subject for today, Night Of A 1000 Cats.

Yeah, that's what it's called.  Not Night of 1000 Cats or Night of A Thousand Cats.  Night Of A 1000 Cats.  They had those vowels and, by golly, they're usin' them.

You don't believe me?  Look at this:

Now drop it and let's go on, 'kay?

They really played up the anti-cat vibe for this one, lemme tell you.  Director René Cardona Jr. (who is an old hand at doing this kind of thing) and co-writer Mario Zacarias made absolute sure that anyone who watched this film knew cats, especially the ones in this film, were evil.  Wicked.  Vile.  Mean.  Nasty.  They'd probably deal drugs and blow up boatloads of nuns if they had a chance.  At the very least they'd eat you.  Because cats eat people.

What?  You didn't know that?  Oh yeah: why do you think they lick you every so often?  They're tasting you.

Evil things.

Evil cats.

Evil plot:  Millionaire playboy Hugo (Hugo Stiglitz) flies around Acapulco in his private helicopter to pick up sexy young women. He whisks them away to his secluded old castle, where he wines and dines them and...does other things with them, ifyouknowwhatimeanandithinkyoudo.  With the aid of his large bald mute helper Dorgo (Gerardo Zepeda), he kills his dates, keeping their heads in a handy series of clear plastic cubes filled with various flavors of Jello and feeding their chopped up body parts to his 1000-strong army of blood thirty, flesh hungry cats.

There is not one honest-to-God memorable performance in this whole thing.  I just saw it again and cannot remember any memorable acting or actors in it.  Stiglitz may have been a top draw in Mexico for decades but he is so bland, so non-emotive and so completely stick-in-the-mud plain that you gotta wonder what all the fuss was about.  Sure, he was in movies like Nightmare City and Zombie Apocalypse later on, but that's like stepping up from road kill carcass removal to septic tank cleaning.

You really cannot get more b-movie than this.  The main purpose of any woman in Night Of A 1000 Cats is to scream.  The main purpose of any man in Night Of A 1000 Cats is to be an evil cypher.  The main purpose of any cat in Night Of A 1000 Cats is to eat the women and/or men.  And that's this movie's world-view.  If only life were so simple....

And speaking of simple: writers Cardona Jr. and Mario Zacarias do their utmost ding-dang-darndest to make every single person in this movie - even the villain - an idiot.  There is no common sense employed by anyone. 

Hey ladies; is a crazy man buzzing over your head in a helicopter while you're trying to sunbathe?  That means you're destined to be together - time for a hook-up.

Hey men; did someone just beat you at chess?  They're your mortal enemy - KILL 'EM!

Hey felines; has somebody gathered a bunch of you - say, maybe a thousand or so - into a huge cage in the dungeon of a castle and are feeding you nothing but ground-up human?  Sorry, you're a man-and-woman-eating monster now.  Too bad for ya.

In fact anything outside of the script, such as thinking your way out of a situation, carrying on an intelligent discussion based on anything rooted in normal sentence structure or talking sense into someone who is about to kill you and grind up your meat for their cats is absolutely out of the question.

Sorry.  No can do.

Wish I could help you, but that would mean that the writers would have to focus on something other than killing people and finding a new fruit flavor of gelatin to stick their rubbery head in.

In fact the only thing Cardona focuses on more than evil cats is helicopters.  There are so many shots of Hugo's personal helicopter out on the prowl in the skies of beautiful downtown Mexico to pick up chicks for lovers/cat chow that you'd think you were at the air show for a while.  A LONG while, actually, seeing as how when Hugo's not in his dark foreboding castle he's playing Sky Captain And The World Of 1972.  I'd say the chopper footage takes up a good third of the film time, easily.

Which brings up this point: the copy of the movie I have clocks in at 63 minutes total.  About as long as your average Laurel and Hardy movie, to be fair.  And I know there are longer versions of this movie out there...it's just that I have no idea what they could have cut out of this or what I'm missing.  There is more of this, but what is it?

Were there more shots of women's heads in Jello?  Were there more scenes of cats milling about?  More footage of Hugo's chopper humming lazily through the sky?  More lady victims running and screaming?  More of Torgo...uh, I mean Dorgo, sorry...standing around and being fat, bald and menacing?  More of our Chris Mitchum-wannabe Hugo Stiglitz glowering and modeling his Foster Grants?  Maybe we're missing an entire subplot of this whole being masterminded by the dogs of the world in order to give their feline adversaries a bad name.  THAT would be worth seeing.

I'm afraid the truth of it is Night Of A 1000 Cats' missing footage wouldn't be any more interesting than what we've already seen.  And to be fair, this is the kind of movie that should have been more of what we see carnivorous cat movies for.

We need more cat attacks, more corpses, more wild-eyed hissing kitties, more sweaty and screaming victims, more evilly-leering men, and more blood, too.  This thing doesn't really get as bloody as you'd expect and that's surprising - you expect a movie about flesh-eating cats to be a lot messier in terms of what it shows.  Were they afraid of insulting someone's sensibilities?  We can implicate that cats are eating women, sure, but NO BLOOD!  we have standards to uphold!

It doesn't exactly play like an ABC Movie Of The Week, but maybe falls more into the mold of a CBS Late Night Movie.  Either way, it's going to feel like you have to scour the cutting room floor for 'the good stuff'.

But that's the thing - there is no good stuff in Night Of A 1000 Cats: it promises a lot, gives us the atmosphere, but flip-flops at the crucial moment of truth and goes into Implication Territory to show trays of finely-butchered meat and not a drop of blood to be seen.  It's not like other grindhouse beauties of the Seventies skimped on the ever-important topics of blood, gore, nudity and a full frontal assault on good taste.  Night Of A 1000 Cats is practically demure in comparison.

And if there's one thing a killer cat movie doesn't need to be, it's demure.

Still, if you know someone who doesn't like cats and you really want to get back at 'em, this is the movie you want to lock them in a room with.  As far as phobiasploitation goes, Night Of A 1000 Cats does have that going for it.  And heads in Jello.  And helicopters.  And Hugo Stiglitz being all Hugo Stiglitz-y.

But if you're looking for something more horrific with felines in it that's sure to give you nightmares the rest of your life...go rent Catwoman.

CONGRATULATION! A Winner Is Me!

Well, look at what we got here!

You see this? Well, get a good look at it because this is the first DVD I've ever won in a contest!

I had to take a minute and rest here from doing the Snoopy Happy Dance all day to first explain: a while back I entered a contest over at Erick's Wonderful Wonderblog, a blog I've not only visited more than once but one that always fascinates me with its wealth of entertaining posts, subject matter, and the fact that I think he may very well be an even bigger movie fan than yours truly.

And that, kids, is saying something.

The reason for my jubilation, my winning the DVD you see to the left, is two-fold. One: because I'm not usually the kind of individual who goes around winning every contest he enters, which makes this prize all the more outstanding.

And two: it's a Val Lewton!

Don't you dare say "who?" at that name....

Oh, you already did. Heathen.

For those who know no better: Val Lewton was a legendary producer who began as a publicist for MGM Studios, worked his way up as a writer, literary property scout for and censor board liaison for David O Selznick. But his greatest work came when he was hired in the 1940s as a producer for RKO Pictures, where he was given three conditions on the films he would produce: they had to be cheap ($150,000 or less), they had to be short (75 minutes or less) and his bosses got to choose the titles for each.

Yet it was from these conditions that movie-lovers and fans of deep, psychologically complex drama and horror everywhere got such gifts as Cat People, Youth Runs Wild, The Leopard Man, Bedlam, The Ghost Ship, and others.

The DVD I received has two of Lewton's classic endeavors - I Walked With A Zombie and The Body Snatcher. These are two of the most important and most wonderful movies I remember seeing as a young lad and cowering behind my pillow on the couch in a dark living room while watching late on a Saturday night. And now I can relive those moments time and again....

My thanks go out to Erick again, for the chance to win, the chance to watch my favorite movies again and for the opportunity to give a shout-out to a fellow blogger-in-arms when it comes to cinematic tastes. Go visit the Wonderful Wonderblog right now and see what I mean about this guy. Now. Do it. Go.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go wait by my mailbox....

Dope out.

- TGWD

Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman (1958)

I've reviewed a lot of movies in my time here, some of them good, most of them bad. And for every movie (save one or two) I've tried giving them the benefit of the doubt; I did my best to remember what good those involved had done, if the cinematography was good or even if a passing scene caught my fancy.

No one wants to waste their time with a worthless movie. That is, one in which even the passing scenes hold no interest. These kind of movies wear on you and no one will then want to waste any of their too-valuable time even giving it a second glance. The directors know it, the producers know it, the writers know it, even some of the actors know it. Believe me, I know what it's like being in that kind of situation....

There's a thing that happens sometimes with these kinds of movies, though: there are some who watch your celluloid product and see something more than what was created. In that instance, your work achieves a level of competence not even the producer anticipated. It becomes something... different, like when Dorothy and company each saw their own version of The Wizard in that old book from long ago.

What I'm getting at is - what I see isn't necessarily what you may see. hence the art of movie reviewing, so as to relate what one viewer views in a film as opposed to what another might.

Understand?

A lot of producers in the 1950s were hoping Joe Moviegoer would understand. This was a decade in which many science fiction-based films were released with the hopes that the viewer would see something more than what was there. Of course, this was also an excuse for the writers to go whole hog, as it were, and make stories that were... different. And we're talking some classic titles, like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The War of the Worlds (1953), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and the grand-daddy of them all, Forbidden Planet (1956). These are award winners, people, and they made good coin, too.

Something else about 1950s sci-fi is the prevalence of the Atomic Age. The bomb had been dropped, we've had reports on what fallout does to a body, experiments had been conducted and - in spite of that - we got movies where people and/or animals got really big or really small. It's part and parcel with science fiction movies: if there aren't any aliens involved, then there's gonna be a size change.

So it came to be we got Earth Vs The Spider (1958), The Black Scorpion (1957), Attack of the Puppet People (1958), The Giant Gila Monster (1959), The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), War of the Colossal Beast (1958), The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), The Giant Claw (1957)...

And just so we would get some equal opportunity for the ladies we also got Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, the film that proved once and for all that a woman's place is smashing up her tiny balsa wood model home.

Here comes the incredible shrinking plot: Nancy Archer (Allison Hayes) is a wealthy alcoholic dame who is having trouble with her equally alcoholic, verbally and physically abusive cheating husband Harry (William Hudson) who is all but flaunting his affair with local hotsy-totsy party girl Honey Parker (Yvette Vickers). Nancy's troubles increase when she comes across an alien in the back deserts of California. Soon after, Nancy grows to a height of...what was that again, oh yeah - 50 feet!...as a result of radiation exposure from contact with the alien, she is finally in a position to gain revenge on anyone she doesn't like and to get back her wayward hubby and give him a big hug with her nuclear arms.

See how director Nathan Juran and writer Mark Hanna manage to slide in a little of that good old fashioned subversive male superiority into a flick where the lead character is, ostensibly, female? Sure, pre-Amazonian Nancy is a hard-drinking, outspoken advocate for the land and country of Shrewsylvania. But she's also a clingy, needy, desparately man-wanting femmy-femme who simply cannot live without her unfaithful jerk hubby Harry. After all, she's a woman - he's a man...

...and I can't think of a better arrangement (wiggles Groucho eyebrows).

So the bulk of the movie, after Nancy's been outer-space-radiated to the 50 foot mark, is just her stomping all about the desert town (surprising how quiet she is doing all her smashing and crashing in spite of her size - must be that feminine daintiness), tearing down every flimsy model in sight in her search for Harry. Of course, she's not entirely quiet (like our beloved ape from 1976's A*P*E) - no, she bellows out Harry's name every so often, making sure everyone in a nine-county radius knows she's looking for him.

In spite of the fact that this movie's name is, again, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, females are pretty much taken for granted here as throw-away characters. Either as shrews, hotsy-totsy party girls or screaming background characters . and the fact that the two main females in this case are a shrew (later to be a 50 foot shrew) and a hotsy-totsy party girl, that doesn't leave a whole lotta choices, does it?

I'll grant you that lead Allison Hayes had a good career in Hollywood. Of course, most of her output was in the Fifties and films like Francis Joins the WACS, Gunslinger, The Undead, Zombies of Mora Tau, The Unearthly, The Hypnotic Eye and Hong Kong Confidential. And she certainly seems earnest enough - in a wide-eyed alcoholic way - as a woman who just wants to be loved by her abusive, alcoholic hubby. And as the hotsy-totsy, Yvette Vickers had an even more enviable career in films, looking at such impressive titles of hers as Reform School Girl, Short Cut to Hell (directed by no less a man than James Cagney, excuse me!), Attack of the Giant Leeches and the Paul Newman jewel Hud. So, was this a springboard for bigger and better things? Maybe, but don't let it get around.

I think producer Bernard Woolner knew what side his bread was buttered on when it was decided to let most of the scenes here play as comedy. The bespectacled Deputy Charlie (Frank Chase) has some funny lines and has a penchant for drawing guns on gigantic rubber jazz hands or commenting on the situation with sage lines such as "Wowie!" or "I can't shoot a woman"... the soap opera-ish dialogue between Nancy and Harry which verges on hysterics that'd make the gang on "General Hospital" blush... not to mention the fact that every man here regards women - 50 feet or no - as if they are indeed otherworldly and therefore worthy of either scorn or male domination, all give the impression that maybe not everyone is entirely serious about their pro-feminist piece, here.

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is not the socially relevant work Them! was or the psychological powerhouse of The Incredible Shrinking Man, but it serves an altogether different purpose. The sight of a towering giantess clutching a Ken doll or being superimposed as a pale back projection against any given outdoor situation so as to suggest a gargantuan menace will give any well-schooled and seasoned veteran of b-movies the giggles - or at least the smiles.

This is our heritage we're talking about. While Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is not a prestige picture in any sense, it is something that makes us realize why we watch films like this. and it sure isn't for the social relevance.

This is a product of a bygone era, one where people smoked freely, drank like fish, listened to that rock-and-roll junk, talked like Mickey Spillane was just around the corner and special effects were a quaint notion rather than a sci-fi movie necessity.

Surely effects weren't a consideration when you had half-dressed women crushing tiny model houses in the offing. On that description alone your audience is built-in waiting in their seats for the film to start. And it's a given that they are not going to be looking for deep Freudian subtext in their story. If you promise 50 foot women and say that they are indeed going to attack something, if you don't follow through then it's no one else's fault if your core audience walks away disappointed. At least THIS film delivers on its title.

I'm sure Attack of the 50 Foot Woman made a profit. Something so outlandish and so cheap has to make a profit on audacity alone.

And if there's one thing this movie is big on - besides big women - is audacity.

Hell Of The Living Dead (1980)

You know what really gets to me? I mean, something that makes my teeth grind, my head hurt and that muscle in my left shoulder going up to my neck twinge?

A movie that pretends to be something else.

I'll explain: say you're walking through your friendly neighborhood movie rental place (I know they don't exist anymore but just go with me on this) and you spy a copy of The Magnificent Ambersons. You're not feeling in a particularly high-brow mode so you pass on it. A few titles down, you find another DVD with scantily-clad vixens on the cover holding knives and covered in blood and it has the title Super Happy Bloodbath Vixens on Probation. You grab it up at warp speed (naturally, because I know you), rent it, take it home, pop it in your player and it starts...

AND IT'S THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS!

Oh sure, the beginning and end credits have been changed to some PowerPoint-kind of mock-up of the cover, but it's still the same movie you passed on before you got a hold of what promised to be a full-out, blood-drenched, psycho-sexual roller coater. Instead, you're stuck with Joseph Cotten and Dolores Costello marveling at Amberson Mansion and its hot and cold running water.

"Re-Packaging". It happens all the time with movies that no one would rent or watch otherwise. We've all fallen victim to it at least one time or another.

And do you wanna know which country is the biggest culprit of this deceptive practice? No, not the US of A (though we are close)... it's Italy!

Yep. La Italia. Hard to believe, isn't it? And it's not like the Boot Country doesn't make enough movies on its own, but any way they can squeeze a little more dinero out of an old cinematic property is good enough for them. A lot of their directors do it quite often (well, maybe not your Vittorio DeSicas or Federico Fellinis as much) but none moreso than the creators of those grand old standbys of moviedom: the Zombie Flicks.

I mean, how hard can it be to make a zombie movie? Seriously: just get a bunch of friends together, slap some scabs and makeup on 'em, splash around some fake blood, have 'em stagger all over and chase people, eat some calves brains or something - there. Zombie movie.

Of course, leave it to Bruno Mattei (with a little uncredited direction help from Claudio Fragasso) to screw up something as easy as that with the simple act of "committing it to film". You don't believe me? Need I suggest you back that thing up and re-read my past opines on Jaws 5: Cruel Jaws or Terminator 2: Shocking Dark? This man took delight in making unofficial sequels to series that didn't ask for his involvement to begin with. Even in series where any gun can play, so to speak.

He even goes the same route he did in his past films and depends on stock footage from other films to pad out this one (here he uses New Guinea native footage from the 1972 film La vallée). Atta boy, Bruno....

Anyway, as much as it pains me to do so, here we go with the undead plot: after a chemical leak at a factory in Papua, New Guinea turns its staff into flesh-eating zombies, a four-man commando squad led by Mike London (José Gras, aka: Robert O'Neil) are sent to investigate. They run into a TV news crew led by celebrity reporter Lia Rousseau (Margit Evelyn Newton), who are after the same story, but when they discover that the entire country has been overrun by zombies, what are the chances of them getting the message across? Pretty darned slim, seeing as how the dead are ready to chow down on every living thing they come across! Their only hope is to scream loud, run fast, be smarter than the dead guys and shoot 'em all between the eyes (not at the chest or guts, you dummies!!). Will the living people all survive and quash the undead? Yeah, right - that's as much a possibility as Michael Dukakis for President....

Of course when it comes to re-packaging, not only are the Italians past-masters of the craft, Hell of the Living Dead is a textbook example of how it's done. because with Hell of the Living Dead, we also get the same exact thing shoved in another package and handed right back to us as Virus (the original Italian title), Apocalipsis caníbal (Spain), Die Hölle der lebenden Toten (West Germany), Fate tous... zontanous (Greece), Hell of the Living Death (Belgium), Inferno dei morti viventi (Italy...again), L'enfer des morts vivants (France), Night of the Zombies (USA), Virus cannibale (France...again), Zombi 4 (USA...again), Zombi 5: Ultimate Nightmare (Italy...a 3rd time!), Zombi enantion kannivalon (Greece...again), Zombie Creeping Flesh (UK) and the all-purpose title of Zombie Inferno.

See? It's The Magnificent Ambersons all over again - and in some cases, more than once! And is it me or must Italy be really stupid, having the same movie thrown right back at them three times in a row???

Veterans of Mattei flicks should know what to expect with this: no characters of any kind (just victims), variable makeup effects (from bad to worse), lots of zoom shots (to prove the camera guy wasn't asleep most of the time), occasional female nudity (to keep some interest in the proceedings), and badly set-up scenes by the truckload which serve only to lead into clumsy stumbling zombie attacks. It doesn't take a Hitchcock or a Spielberg to make a zombie flick, but it does take someone who knows how to build suspense, compose a shot, arrange his actors and layer the intensity to make a film that earns scares instead of coming up with cheap shocks. Bruno Mattei is NOT that someone.

I think we all agree that it also doesn't take an actor to be in a movie like this: only someone who can convincingly scream and look halfway believable when being chased, chomped and devoured by zombies. We get NONE of that that, but we do get a lot of trademark Mattei Z-grade actors who half-heartedly squeak their way to a grisly end.

It's funny, though: of the actors we're subjected to, we get two types - the aforementioned half-hearted squeakers and the hysterical over-the-top types who are hysterical and over-the-top at such an annoying pace that their zombie-riffic death are a blessing. At least our lead actress Newton gets naked so that we can appreciate the generosity afforded her by Mother Nature. In terms of acting, though, Newton affects the same wide-eyed stare in all instances to suggest Bo Derek's acting expertise in Bolero. Of course, Bo got naked a lot, too. Maybe John Derek was an uncredited on-set tech advisor?

You don't go into a movie name Hell of the Living Dead and expect the latest from Brian DePalma or Steven Soderbergh. In this instance, what you see is not only what you get, it's all you get. But is it a good zombie movie?

Well, hold up a minute there, bucko. Let's look at it like this: at least the zombies aren't an after-thought like they were in The Beyond and Zombie Holocaust. They are quite literally all over the place here, to the point that normal humans seem the shocking rarity.

There is a tad of social commentary at least, which is kind of shocking, but at least Mattei and co-writers José María Cunillés, Rossella Drudi and Claudio Fragasso give us an allegory that if we don't keep the Third World countries under check, they will overrun us. Interesting.

However, for any of you suggesting the deep cutting social weight of 1968's Night of the Living Dead or 1979's Dawn of the Dead, you won't find anything so deep and multi-leveled here.

If you're looking for the sharp wit and cynical humor of 1985's Return of the Living Dead or 1973's Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, you won't find any of that here, either.

But if you're looking for clumsiness, ineptitude, cheap-jack production values, uneven-to-lousy acting and some of the worst red-dye-and-corn-syrup effects this side of Weasels Rip My Flesh, you're not only covered, but covered with interest.

This is kind of a back-handed compliment, but throughout his career at least Bruno Mattei stayed admirably consistent. The same level of bad quality and poor direction remained from his first movie (Armida, il dramma di una sposa) to his last (Zombies: The Beginning). and there smack-dab in the middle of his filmography was maybe not the diamond in the rough but just another rough patch in a career filled with them.

Hell of the Living Dead, if it did absolutely nothing else, gave all of us an example of just what a movie had to be like in order to be considered the gem of the Video Nasty List, and not even the brightest jewel, either. That title belongs to Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust.

Poor Bruno: even though he made it onto one of the most notorious banned movie lists ever, he still was like Bob Uecker at a Baseball All-Stars Dinner. No respect.

Not that a film like Hell of the Living Dead deserves any respect. A bite to the jugular, maybe, but that's it.

Then just kick it right out the top window of Amberson Mansion.

Frankenstein Island (1981)

Now here's a cute little number I thought I'd never get my hands on, let alone get a chance to review. Why? Because this is one of those movies which many people have heard of but very few have had a chance to actually possess. Own. Clutch in their hot little hands.

In the annals of obscure films, this one not only takes the cake, but the icing, the nonpareils and the little powdered sugar doily design on top.

To be perfectly honest, I had no idea who in the world Jerry Warren was, let alone the legacy he left the world as a producer, writer and director of such films as Face of the Screaming Werewolf, Teenage Zombies and Creature of the Walking Dead, not to mention MST3K fave rave The Wild World of Batwoman. Looking him up, however, I was intrigued to learn that Jerry was a man who made a name for himself as a producer and director of some of the most incredibly inept films ever.

In concepts of proper blocking, dialogue, content, getting the most from his actors and creating a believable environment where the real and the fantastic hold sway, it is only a fitting description to say that Jerry Warren was ill-equipped. You only have to see one of his films to understand that.

So it was understandable to think, after directing ten films that would kindly be called failures, Warren underwent a filmic hiatus where he would never set foot behind a movie camera again for almost twenty years. Time spent plotting his resurgence on the film world, much like a huge lump of suet bobs to the top of a can of franks and beans after you open it, after all that time of the beans and franks weighing it down. That kind of thing.

And so it came to be in 1981 that Warren came back to what he no doubt loved doing and gave the world Frankenstein Island, not only keeping his running streak of quality alive but using it to create another episode in the Frankenstein film series.

However, in this series, whereas the other films before centered on the monster itself, THIS film centers on the actions of four very thick-headed men and the island they land on.

Things begin up in the air with hot air balloons and men talking in voice-over about how Doc (Robert Clarke) and his men (Robert Christopher, Tain Bodkin, Patrick O'Neil) were lost over the ocean during a bad windstorm during a balloon race or record-breaking event or something. They end up on an island with their dog Melvin (played by himself), and discover not only a race of polyester leopard print bikini-clad Amazons who look bred for light typing and filing, but also paunchy middle-aged-and-older zombies in black turtlenecks and sunglasses, a perpetually drunk and perpetually cackling old salt named Jocko (The Giant Spider Invasion's Steve Brodie), his bearded and be-afro'ed compatriot named Angus (whose greatest asset is that he isn't perpetually drunk and perpetually cackling), a lady of the manor (Katherine Victor - Batwoman herself!) named Sheila Von Frankenstein-Van Helsing...she doesn't like her married name but she does rock that white wig of hers, an imprisoned sailor named Clay Jansen (Supersonic Man's Cameron Mitchell) who appears drugged and/or drunk - and seeing that he's played by Cameron Mitchell that may not be a conscious acting choice but just a by-product of being Cameron Mitchell, a guy made up as the original Frankenstein monster just for verisimilitude and the late great Doctor Frankenstein's ghostly apparition as played by the late great John Carradine.

I'm not going to cut any corners or sugar-coat this: Frankenstein Island may be the worst movie in the history of mankind and celluloid that I've ever loved. Whole-heartedly. Passionately.

So many things happen that make no difference one way or another to this plot (from a screenplay by Warren himself, under the pseudonym Jaques Lecouter), it's like a compilation of images that have nothing to do with one another spliced together in one film. It's like Andy Warhol pointed a camera inside his head. It's like filming your TV as you randomly flip through channels. How else to explain a film that stitches together scenes with rubber skull masks on sticks, tarantulas crawling on rocks, a picture of planets in outer space with a pair of hands wriggling in front of them, a man's eye surrounded by superimposed flames, a pink metal box spinning on its corner, or someone lugging a giant Gatling gun (complete with a full chain of ammo and its tripod connected beneath it) across a room? I don't know if Jerry Warren ever suffered from Adult ADD, but it sure does look like his mind's eye did.

And not one bit of this dialogue makes any sense, in part or whole. There are lines here that not even Shane Black could have doctored into anything usable. You have a couple of scenes wherein a character will mention Kansas City or Chicago and their arm will be racked with pain. Why? Who knows? The group arrives on the island of the title in a nice size inflatable raft and, a few minutes after arriving, they talk seriously about finding materials to build a wood raft to escape the island on. Why? Who knows? Several scenes are devoted to balancing out the biorhythms of the 200 year-old spouse (George Mitchell) of Sheila F. Van H., by combining human blood transfusions with animal transfusions and explaining why that is a bad idea. Why? Who knows...besides the fact that it's a stupid idea in general.

You know what, though? It doesn't really matter. Because unlike other bad movies which possess most of the same qualities as this film, none of them come close to Frankenstein Island in terms of psychedelic badness, mind-bending inanity or stupid scenes so stupid that the word "stupid" doesn't do them justice.

Look at me; I'm practically writing a love letter to a movie where an Amazon island girl learns how to karate kick a guy in less than 10 seconds. Why shouldn't I be, though? It's not every day you see a movie that wears its badness on its sleeve like The Congressional Medal of Honor. And it's kind of endearing that Jerry Warren tried to make Frankenstein Island look like one of those high-end fright flicks of the Fifties that would seem at home on your friendly neighborhood drive-in screen, where jagged scene splices and "MISSING SCENE" cels would be a welcome touch.

And in the end, that's the thing about Frankenstein Island; this is a throwback to the kind of films Warren tried to make way back in his heyday. This one being in color, starring actors who most viewers may actually recognize and containing so many unnecessary spliced-in special effects that Don Dohler would have given his eye teeth for, it sure does look like a movie that is reaching so far over its head that it threatens to throw its own arms out of their sockets.

I love it, though; I really and truly do. Frankenstein Island seems to be making things up on the fly, not a one of the actors intending to be anything onscreen but a parody of whatever character they're trying to portray and the dialogue is only a practice in repeating inane plot points that should never have been brought up to begin with. I mean, why would you want to build a wood raft when you have a perfectly good un-deflated rubber raft? Why would an island make your arm hurt if you mention a major city if the movie isn't even going to give you a good reason why or even do anything with it at all? And what's with the zombies? And the Amazons? And why the hell did we need a Jocko, incidentally?

In fact, I know you're wondering if this even made back its budget. That's a good question: one of these days I'll have to track down one of the 12 theaters it played in back in 1981 and ask them.

Still, for all of it, this is one of the best bad movies ever made. Watching it is akin to reading a comic book where you're not sure if the story it tells is any good but it sure is a lot of fun to watch it unfold.

Make your plans now; find yourself a copy of Frankenstein Island right now and watch it. As soon as you can. I had to find mine online and buy it there, which should give you the idea that this is something that you will NOT readily find at Wally World down the street. You'll have to search long and hard for this one. But it's worth it. Really it is. Most diamonds in the rough usually are.

I raise my glass to you, Jerry Warren. In your life you may not have made the best movies ever, but you certainly did make the most fun ones to watch.

Or maybe you just had me at "Frankenstein".

Prince of Darkness (1987)

How many times have I said this: if you can do something really well, why would you spend the biggest part of your life playing it safe and just giving people what they want instead of what you know you can give them?

Okay...maybe I just said that once, but it still fits in perfectly for my review this time around, because this concerns a man whom I know for a FACT has done and can do great things. Incredible things. And all with a movie camera.

There's no denying that John Carpenter is a good director. I've said this on more than one occasion and in more than one review. Any man who has not only cited Sergio Leone, Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock as influences and tries to emulate their work in horror as well as action films is not without props.

I love the movie Halloween. It is scary, it is intense, it is atmospheric and not only contains one of the best music scores of all time but two of the best performances in modern horror films - one by Jamie Lee Curtis as a resilient babysitter and Donald Pleasance as a doggedly determined psychiatrist.

And since that huge hit, he has done his best to try and repeat his past triumph - with varying degrees of success.

As a matter of fact, in the mid-'80s, there were so many "based on characters created by"s and "from the mind of"s with John Carpenter's name on them many wondered if he had another good movie in him. Not just in box office revenue, mind you; good in terms of look, feel and action. A film worthy of having his name before the title.

When Prince of Darkness came out, there was skepticism. His familiar cadre of talent was in place (Pleasance, Victor Wong, Dennis Dun), his influences were apparent (Quartermass, Lovecraft) and the camera angles, darkness and space contrast was there, just like in Halloween -- but was this a full-bodied John Carpenter film, or just another empty exercise?

The plot was simple enough; When the guardian priest of an abandoned church in Los Angeles dies, the remaining father (Pleasance) finds a diary and a key, opens the door of the basement and finds a cylinder with a gruesome green fluid. The priest contacts Professor Howard Birack (Wong) in the local university and he invites a team of students to research the findings and translate manuscripts. The group soon discovers the liquid is the essence of evil, actually Satan's remains, and has been kept locked in the church for centuries.

Their research awakes the son of the Devil and when student Susan Cabot (Anne Marie Howard) gets close to the container, she drinks a jet of the green liquid, transforming into a zombified shell of herself. Susan spreads the liquid among her friends, increasing the army of evil zombies. While the group is attacked inside the church by the zombies, derelicts surround the church trapping them inside, and Satan tries to bring his father into our world. Will evil succeed?

You can see where Carpenter's favorite author, H.P. Lovecraft is quoted in both character and style, where innocent people face overwhelming evil with only the slightest chance of survival, if any. And there are also echoes of writer Nigel Kneale's own famous creation Professor Quartermsss and stories such as Quartermass and the Pit and The Quartermass Conclusion.

There is an intensity and an amazing amount of shadows employed here, all to the credit of director and writer Carpenter, who certainly knows how to paint a beautiful, horrifying picture. Carpenter's strength has always been in his visuals; not only are there your typical sights you're so used to seeing as far back as 1978's Halloween with the sharp frontal composition used to mask the ominous background movements. Some scenes I remember quite vividly are the slow-motion descent of a broken scissor blade, the sudden appearance of breath from a corpse, the flickering visuals of doom from a security camera, the ghostly visage of a homeless man (Alice Cooper) as his hollow eyes gaze skyward. Even such an otherwise innocent shot as an ant hill takes on the most eerie visage; Evelyn Waugh was famous for writing about showing us fear in a handful of dust. Carpenter manages to show us terror in a vat of green goo.

To me, the beauty of this film was the craft which brought it together. Not only Carpenter's sure work behind the camera, but also the realistic effects by Kevin Quibell which demonstrate how subtle nuances of makeup, unexpected changes in appearance, a well-placed ash-faced ghoul all couple with the relation between good vs. evil and how there are no rules by which the universe can be governed.

The actors' winning touches aid immensely. I've already mentioned the always-dependable Pleasance, whose mannered observations help heighten the dread of what's to come - just as his beginning soliloquy on the innate evil of a certain small child in his care back in 1978 helped us understand what we should expect from what would become the embodiment of evil.

Lisa Blount and Jameson Parker, as a couple caught in the horrific surroundings, provide some excellent counter as they try to survive the overpowering evil all about them. It helps that there are no jokey performances here; this is more in the realm of those old Hammer horror films, where everyday conversations hold unbearable fright and dire consequences hide behind every otherwise benign corner.

Prince of Darkness has baffled me for ages as to why it was never more successful. It was critically panned by every living reviewer in the day and, despite its earning $14 million on a $3 million budget, generated little to no good word of mouth. It's a shame, too; this is a John Carpenter movie that even people who don't usually watch a John Carpenter movie will find themselves enjoying immensely. For frights, atmosphere, style and downright creepiness off the scale, Prince of Darkness simply cannot be beat.

I enjoyed this much more than The Fog and The Thing, if only because this time Carpenter (as writer, credited as Martin Quartermass- imagine that!) invested this story with everything he could think of in the name of a good old scary story then Carpenter (as director) imbued that same story with some visuals that are the evil icing on the sinister cake.

Carpenter may not break new ground with Prince of Darkness, but he doesn't take any missteps, either.

Watch it yourself if you haven't already; this is a good, scary movie done by a writer/director in his prime.

But you might want to read some Quartermass first; just to put it all in perspective.

Dolls (1987)

There's going to be some dissension with this review, and I know it. After all, the director AND the subject matter are going to be one of those "take it or leave it" options that leaves no room for discussion. This is either a project you love whole-heartedly or hate vehemently. With that in mind, let us begin, hmm?

When you hit the ground running, sooner or later you're gonna stumble, fall and hurt yourself.

Take Stuart Gordon.

This is a man who really displays some absolutely undeniable talent; not only in his breakthrough film Re-Animator (1985) but also its follow up, From Beyond (1986). These were both loaded with way-over-the-top special FX, appropriate hysteria-level acting and gruesome carnage, with a little H.P. Lovecraft thrown in for good measure. That H.P.; he always pops up when least expected.

But don't you see, that's the problem when you hit it off with great success - or even successes - you're always having to top yourself, the next film HAS to be bigger and better than the last one, give the people what they want. If you don't, sure enough people will say: "Hey, remember the one film that guy did; it was great! His last one sucked. Oh well...let's go watch a Seth Rogan movie to cleanse our palate."

And there goes another talent through the Hollywood shredder, forgotten like yesterday's meatloaf.

So it's kind of surprising that Gordon followed up his roaring dual juggernauts with a movie that really had nothing to do with Lovecraft or medical procedures. No, in 1987, Gordon released a much smaller-scale feature about...killer dolls. That's right, killer dollies...and not ones like in Child's Play or Puppet Master that pull out a full-throttle attack on the unwary.

That kind of stuff would be all too well expected by the jaded viewer.

In Dolls, director Gordon and writer/compatriot Ed Naha brew up a tale of an odd old couple played by Guy Rolfe (whom the wise will remember quite well not only from Mr. Sardonicus but also Snow White and The Three Stooges. Ahh, memories...) and Hilary Mason (Don't Look Now) who, one dark and stormy night, take in some stranded travelers - including a rude couple (Ian Patrick Williams, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon) and their poor little put-upon girl (Carrie Lorraine), a big lovable lug of a guy (Stephen Lee) and some nasty young punks - into their nice big and spacious mansion.

However, one by one, many unexplained accidents occur to the nastiest of the group. It certainly couldn't be the work of this frail old couple, could it? After all, the only others in the mansion are a bunch of...dolls.

And when I say "a bunch of", I mean hundreds, thousands...this is kind of like Night of 1000 Cats, only with dolls, which are much creepier than cats anyway.

Now, Gordon cannot be faulted in direction; it's all effectively creepy and such but the tone, in one Dope's own humble-yet-battle-weary opinion, goes for the old British veddy-proper horror tone of good manners, deep shadows, odd noises and then EH, WOT? - dead people. I guess this is a Hammer-ish way to tackle the proceedings, but does it work, really? In an homage to the old style of scares, I guess it does. It won't do much for the modern blood-and-guts Saw crowd, though.

And the FX are really good, too; the stop-motion dolls by legendary effects maestro Dave Allen are good, even if you can tell in some spots where the matte lines and differences in shadowing are. But hey, who asks for perfection in movies like this?

The actors do well enough, too. Rolfe and Mason play very effete and unassuming, save for a wry cackle here and there. The victims play up the fact of how nasty and cruel they are, practically begging to be offed by murderous dolls. As the little girl, though, Lorraine is a very sympathetic figure who counts on small little plush toys for comfort where she can count on little else. And as the big lovable lug, Lee is just that: big and lovable. It's not much of a spoiler in Dolls to say they are the only survivors, but for awhile it's a pretty close call.

Now I know it sounds like I'm being down on the "mood and shadow" school of horror. I have to protest that fact: some Hammer films are my favorites. And the mood fits Dolls for what it is. Indeed, Dolls was completed BEFORE From Beyond and would have been released first had it not been for the fact that the effects weren't quite finished yet.

But this time out, why didn't Gordon do as he did before and simply turn up the heat and the volume, go for more hysterical screaming, spewing effects and give us something we hadn't seen a million and one times before? I ask you, don't we - the B-movie crowd - deserve that?

I may be too hard on Dolls, though. I guess it just stands as a case of a let-down; looking again at Re-Animator and then Dolls, wouldn't you expect something more from a story like this? More...I don't know what, but something. Then again, expecting more than what you get is a common thing for those who expect greatness from titles like Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus or The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. Of course, some of us get the greatness we expect from these projects. We are fickle in our likes, we B-movie lovers are.

Suffice it to say, this is one of the lesser-known works in Stuart Gordon's repertoire. He still works and is fluent in his productivity, with varying degrees of success and acclaim. On one hand, Dagon. On the other hand, "Honey, I Shrunk The Kids: The TV Series". On another hand, King of the Ants. On yet another hand, Robot Jox. And still another hand has Space Truckers and Stuck. And you can see in the ever-present other hand The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and Fortress.

So you see, with all of those hands to account for, Gordon's brilliance comes and goes in ebbs and tides.

Maybe someday we will see yet another fiery punch to the gut like Re-Animator; something that will get us going on another Lovecraft-ian mind trip to the black pit of the soul - a real roller coaster ride.

Until then, these Dolls will be all we have to play with. Until better toys come along.

Jaws 5: Cruel Jaws (1995)

Wait a minute, hold on... Steven Spielberg... Jeannot Szwarc... Joe Alves... Joseph Sargent.... Nope, no mention of Bruno Mattei in any of their respective biographies. We're good.

I've alluded to this one before, in my numerous tirades against why foreign countries should never be allowed to watch our movies (Why? Because they usually end up copying them!), and also because it was made by bad boy Bruno.

Oh, Bruno. Bruno Bruno Bruno. Anyone who knows Bruno Mattei's body of work knows what to expect: ripoff story line, bad effects, spliced-in footage from other movies and bad acting. REALLY bad acting.

I knew what to expect. I sallied forth regardless.

It's bad enough that you make a ripoff movie, but a ripoff that purports to be a sequel in a series of already-established films? That takes guts, if not brains, and I'll say this much for Mattei: his guts are on display here in full.

This is the man who's made lots of zombie movies, many gladiator movies, a good hunk of sexploitation movies and even had the time to zip off a little sequel to The Terminator that was more about aliens underneath Venice, Italy than it was about robots.

Even though Bruno passed on in 2007, he left behind a legacy of over 50 films, none of which had one original idea in them. And as we're about to see with Jaws 5: Cruel Jaws, not only were these films not original, they weren't good, either.

You know what really makes me mad about this one? This is probably the laziest movie about shark attacks, shark hunting, shark catching and shark destruction I have ever seen in my life, and at no time did I ever believe this was anything more than what it was: a cheap ripoff that gives cheap ripoffs a bad name.

Of course, what can you expect from a man who has to splice clips from other directors' product into his own to be able to call it "complete"? If the man is Bruno Mattei, you shouldn't expect any less.

Now, about Jaws 5: I don't know why I insist on calling it that, seeing as this is about as much a sequel to any Jaws film as Re-Animator is a sequel to Porky's.

Get a load of this plot rundown: A tiger shark bred by the Navy as a killing machine is wrecking havoc in the sleepy tourist town of Hampton Bay. In the meantime, the Mafia is involved with sleazy real estate investments, and send their thugs to keep a lid on the fact the residents are (as Crazy Ralph from Friday the 13th would say) all doomed. However, the residents of Hampton Bay and the local dolphins come to the rescue to save the hamlet from both the mob and military covert operatives.

First of all, I say "tiger shark" but it really just depends on what stock footage you go by. Sometimes it is, as I said, a tiger shark. Other times it's a great white like we'd be used to in this situation. Then there are other times in the proceedings that we're afraid the papier-mâché is going to deteriorate if left in the water too long.

Now as far as the plot goes..."a tiger shark bred by the Navy as a killing machine"? "Mafia"? "Sleazy real estate investments"? "Military covert operatives"??? The IMDb dares to sully the name of Peter Benchley by claiming this screenplay is based on his own classic novel.

Of course, that's like saying David Lynch's Dune is based on Manos: The Hands of Fate, what with all the hand references....

And speaking of hands, this is a screenplay that not only Mattei had a hand in but was also touched by co-writers Robert Feen and Linda Morrison, two writers whose previous credits have been...well, nothing. But who, since Jaws 5, have gone on to write...well, nothing again.

As is par for the course in a Bruno Mattei movie, all of the actors were recruited from the entry kiosk for "America Ain't Got Talent", since not a one of these individuals could act their way out of a wet paper shark. In fact, for most of them, this was their one and only shot at a big movie...and this went straight to Italian TV!

I'll take that back; one of these actors, Larry Zience, went on to an illustrious career...as a second unit director. Oh yeah; films like 2 Fast 2 Furious, Bad Boys II and Wild Things: Foursome benefited immeasurably because of Larry's involvement. Good for him, you know?

You want Matt Hooper/Richard Dreyfuss? Sorry, you're stuck with Bill Morrison (Gregg Hood), who's supposed to be a marine life expert but whose expertise is in equating a shark to a "locomotive with a mouth full of butcher's knives". Just in case you didn't know what to compare sharks to. And he kind of looks like the "Oh My GAHHHHHHD" kid in Troll 2, which does NOT help me take him any more seriously.

You want Sheriff Brody/Roy Scheider? Sorry, you're stuck with Sheriff Francis Berger (David Luther), whose main purpose is to show us what Sheriff Brody would have been like if the part had been cast with beefy gung-ho guy who's good with a machine gun and a helicopter. Yes, those get utilized in Jaws 5, too. The Sheriff? Not so much.

You want Sam Quint/Robert Shaw? Sorry, you're stuck with Dag Snerensen (Richard Dew) who may look like Hulk Hogan but has the onscreen presence of a hoagie, even when talking about the accident (What accident? Don't ask...) that claimed the life of his wife (What's her name? Don't ask...) and crippled his little buck-toothed daughter Suzy (Kirsten Urso), who may actually have the cruelest-looking jaws in the whole movie.

This of course coincides with the threatening of Dag's Sea World-ish park and its three dolphins from the mayor who wants to foreclose on it and build something-or-other, I don't really remember and it isn't important. The only reason the mayor even gets any screen time is to foist bad Mafia stereotypes, get insulted by people or get pushed into the water. Twice. He doesn't get eaten by a shark, though, which is a bet I think they always missed with Jaws' mayor (Murray Hamilton).

Something else I have to comment on is how they film the shark attacks, or at least 90% - 98% of any scenes involving a shark. Mattei keeps up the standard everyone is used to in his movies by getting out his scissors, sneaking into the film lab and making off with gigantic chunks of other films to splice into his own.

Clips from movies like Speilberg's Jaws, Szwarc's Jaws 2, Joe D'Amato's Deep Blood and Enzo G. Castellari's The Great White (the one with James Franciscus and Vic Morrow... remember?) are all on display here and...this is the worst part...are really indiscernible from any of the rest of Mattei's Cruel work herein. I guess that means that no matter what kind of a shark movie you make, it's all pretty much the same. Doesn't matter.

My biggest gripe with Jaws 5: Cruel Jaws is the same gripe I had with Alien 2: On Earth - why do film-makers from other countries feel it necessary to make all of these unofficial sequels to films that come from our shores anyway? My basic knee-jerk cynicism say it's for the almighty dollar (or almighty Euro) and nothing else, but something else comes into play here as well. An absolute lack of any creativity. I mean look at it this way; for every original, thought-provoking foreign film like The Bicycle Thief, La Dolce Vita, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, That Obscure Object of Desire or even, God help me, Last Year at Marienbad (hey, at least it was original!), there is something that makes the viewer think they are looking at the latest production from Mad Magazine cross-bred with Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. It just doesn't mesh. It makes your eyes water. It makes your soul die. It just plain makes you want to boycott Europe.

Then again, America's no prize either when it comes to wannabe sequels and ripoffs and outright unwarranted copies of our own films. So maybe I'm the pot calling the kettle black. I'll admit it; just don't ask me to like it.

I know there can be fun to be had in a bad ripoff of a film. I know that and I have seen examples of such, I swear I have. But Jaws 5: Cruel Jaws is NOT that film. It is stupid, lunk-headed, lame-brained, tries too hard in some parts and not hard enough in most others.

So if you want to watch this after all the warnings I just gave to you, then you are a sick, diseased, twisted individual whom there is no hope for. And I'll let you watch my copy with me.

I'm surprised they didn't add in any footage from Jaws 3. Could only have helped. My guess is that Mattei figured he owed Dennis Quaid a favor or something.

Because Mattei sure didn't do anyone else any favors....