Endless Fall Lives...Again!

I'm still lagging a little trying to get back in the swing of writing again. Endless Fall's been kickin' so I thought I'd post my top 10 for January. Nothing too detailed or special but just a quick summary of my favey movies I saw for the first time last month. I've been catching up on odds and ends I should have seen way before now. You'll notice a lot of classics on this list. There will probably be more next month too.

10. Village of the Giants

It wouldn't be my list without the inclusion of something ridiculous. This one really entertained me early in the month with it's silly plot and campy effects. In the tradition of Bert I. Gordon films, he loves to make things big and small. There are many sequences that are captivating in some strange hypnotic kind of way. Especially due to Jack Nitzsche's amazing score which Tarantino jacked for Death Proof. My favorite scene though is seeing two giant ducks dancing wildly to the Beau Brummels at some 60's mod nightclub. Amazingness.




9. The Creature from the Black Lagoon

I know what you're thinking. How the heck did I go so long without seeing this? Especially considering is was film in the part of Florida I grew up. I got a late start on Universal. I saw Dracula and Frankenstein when I was a kid and neither really spoke to me so I just never made any effort to see any others. It wasn't until just a few years ago when I finally saw Man Made Monster and the Invisible Man that I decided to give myself another chance to enjoy these wonderful films. Creature has a nice otherworldly feeling you don't get from the other Universal monster movies. Although we're looking at a Florida swamp you get the impression this is completely uncharted territory and that our violent merman is the missing link. It feels mysterious, he's so cool looking, what's not to love? I'd also like to add that I think all of those asshole scientists totally deserved to have their asses handed to them for going into this magical place untouched by man and putting out their fucking cigarettes out in the lagoon.





8. Die Monster Die







I didn't expect much from this one. It was a late night pick, all I really knew was that Boris Karloff was in it and it was based on a Lovecraft story. I've been trying to make my way through the massive list of films inspired by Lovecraft, I didn't expect it to be my favorite monster movie of the whole month. It was vivid and mysterious. There are freaks, meteors, mutants and shrouded killers that roam the castle grounds. There's a sense of urgency in the air and that impending doom grows stronger as the movie progresses. A great little horror flick forgotten in a sea of 60's b-movies.




7. Brute Force

It's no secret that Jules Dassin is just fucking amazing. Seriously. So I finally got around to seeing Brute Force. One Dassin's favorite things is to show heists and escapes gone awry. Being set in a prison Brute Force was obviously incredibly influential. My first thought was that the evil warden played by Hume Cronyn reminded me of "Percy Wetmore" from the Green Mile, played by the exceedingly creepy Doug Hutchinson. Brute Force is a little slow to start but by the end of the movie I was completely enraptured by the chaos and anarchy engulfing the prison. The movie also solidified my lady-boner for Burt Lancaster FOREVER!




6. the Decameron

 




The Decameron was really refreshing compared to anything I could have imagined. I've only seen Salo and it's been years so I was a little nervous jumping back into Pasolini. This turned out to be mostly comical, and also an anthology which made it surprisingly light and easy to digest. Some sketches are charming, some romantic, most have a clever sense of humor and all of them are at least mildly if not overtly risque. Tales about shit covered grave robbers, the severed head of a lover in a potted plant, a young man pretending to be deaf and dumb so he can seduce a convent of nuns, and intermittently through the whole movie an artist played by Pasolini creating a masterpiece on a church wall obviously mirroring the film itself. It's a really nice piece of work and I'm glad to have finally been reacquainted with Pasolini!





5. Judgement at Nuremberg






I love me some Stanley Kramer. When it comes to Kramer the bigger his all star casts, the more ambitious the film. This, apparent from the title, tackles two of his favorite genres. Courtroom drama genre and race relations, specifically anti-Semitism. As expected the cast is amazing beyond belief. Spencer Tracy as the Judge, Richard Widmark as the prosecuting attorney, Burt Lancaster as a Nazi Judge with a guilty conscience, a young Maximilian Schell who took home the Academy Award for best actor as the German defense attorney. My personal favorite was Montgomery Clift's extremely unnerving performance as the mentally unhinged German who persecution made him the subject of cruel Nazi procedure. The film is long and heavy handed but raises many questions of ethic, not just for the horrors of Hitler's regime but also in the treatment of Germans post war.




4. Tabloid






I was way late in seeing this. Mostly because I had no idea what it was. I had read about Joyce McKinney several years ago when she had her dog cloned. I became obsessed with the article and even cut it out and pasted it in my sketch book. I was also fascinated because the article mentioned filmmaker Trent Harris (Beaver Trilogy, Rubin and Ed). I remembered the article saying he had made a documentary on her,but I was never able to find any information on it and that I've seen Tabloid I'm thinking maybe he was just planning too and somehow since then the project ended up going to Errol Morris. At any rate, this story tells itself. Once it starts to unfold it's like and jumbling tower of cluster fuckery exploding in your face and making your brain implode. The tackiness knows no boundaries!





3. Pressure Point







Another Kramer produced race relations film from the 60's. Although you start to get a little tired of seeing Poitier play this role over and over again, this one was especially good, maybe the best I've seen. He plays a prison psychologist who's been given the case of a young Nazi sympathizer played by the incredible Bobby Darin. Of course Darin hates him for being black but eventually opens up to him because he's so plagued with trouble he cant sleep. He goes into his childhood, and artfully staged montage with Kramer's signature all over. Hideously abused by his father, over loved by his weak willed mother, it's pretty clear that this guy has some serious hang ups. He has violent tendencies and gets mixed up with the Bund in the 40's. Despite Poitier's endless patience Bobby Darin's character continues to make disrespectful, bigoted comments to him. Over course it all boils over into an explosive confrontation. Really exciting movie that had been completely engrossed the whole time. Sidney Poitier may play this character but it's just because he does it so well. He's strong, handsome and intimidating to this meek little asshole played by the equally as impressive Bobby Darin.




2. Wages of Fear






A friend had been urging me to see this for a while. All I really knew about it was that it was directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot and it had an exploding truck on the poster. YEAH, I'm sold. So in order to amend a terrible oil explosion in South America, the company hires transient men desperate for money to drive truckloads of liquid nitrogen for days across rocky dangerous terrain. The result is a tense pressure cooker of events where these men have to work together to avoid catastrophe. A genius action, with very little action. More of psychological or even existential action film.




1. Suddenly, Last Summer





I was so sure Wages of Fear was going to make number one this month, then the last movie of the month snuck in there. Suddenly Last Summer is haunting and hazy. You really don't know who to believe through out the whole movie then in grand tradition of Tennessee Williams he fucks your world up right at the end. Elizabeth Taylor gives arguably the best performance of her career and Katherine Hepburn is about as close to a villain as you'll likely see her. The Bat-shit-crazy-ness that unfolds is only best explained through experience and I have a hard time expressing my love for a movie that REALLY moves me so I'll just leave it at that

That's all for now. I'm tired! 

Happy Birthday Peter Lorre! - Stranger on the Third Floor (1940)

Since today would have been Peter Lorre's 107th birthday I decided to celebrate by watching a few of his movies I've had laying around. I'm not sure if I've ever broached this subject on my blog but Mr. Lorre is easily my favorite actor. Not only because I have a huge lady-boner for him , but also for his magnanimous screen presence. He's stolen the show in every movie he appeared in, even if the part was small.  There's a reason Charlie Chaplin referred to him as "the greatest living actor". Sadly many of his best films haven't gotten much attention. Of course we all love M, as we mother-fuckin' should! As a result of him being a "character actor" he was often limited to small roles with minimal dialogue. He's best known for his miniscule part in Casablanca which I'd hardly say challenged his incredible acting range. Then there's Mr. Moto, which is my favorite of the white-person-who-clearly-is-not-asian film series' that were popular at the time. Even when he got old and toady he still did wonderful things of the spooks run wild variety for Roger Corman alongside Vincent Price and Boris Karloff. Any way you dice it, Peter Lorre is an international treasure. His life and work should be celebrated, and his birthday a national holiday! It will be for me anyway...

To get the ball rolling I started with Stranger on the Third Floor. A low budget RKO noir thriller about a journalist who witnesses the aftermath of a murder. He walks into a diner to see the owner with his throat slit and a man standing over his body. The man claims that he found him already dead but the journalist, Mike Ward (played by John Maguire) takes for granted that he must be the killer. Despite a very convincing argument, the man is arrested and put on trial for murder. Mike's testimony may put an innocent man on death row. Filled with moral qualms he goes home to see a strange man lurking around his building. When he attempts to ask the man what he's doing, the bugged eye Peter Lorre runs away. Shortly after, Mike realizes that his constantly snoring neighbor is dead silent. He convinces himself that his neighbor has been killed by the intruder and that he will be the prime suspect. We're shown several flashbacks of Mike and his neighbor exchanging words, particularly when the neighbor rats him out for having his girlfriend over and Mike threatens to kill him in front of multiple people. He slips into a state of dementia where he has this Kafka-esque dream of being on trial and no one believing that he didn't do it. No one believes that there was a "stranger" at all. When he awakens, he's completely distraght and decides that he has to know if all of it is in  his head or not. He barges into his neighbors apartment to see his throat slit in same way the owner of the diner. This validates his prior freak-out so he impulsively decides to skip town. He calls his girlfriend Jane to meet him in the park to give him some money. Thankfully, she talks some sense into him. He calms down and decides to do the right thing and call the police immediately. The police and DA have an element of doubt but they still heed his warning and follow up on his description, but it's not until Jane goes out of her way to seek this sad eyed villain that any headway is made in the case.

My first complaint about Stranger on the Third Floor is a major lack of Lorre. He doesn't have his first line until the last 15 minutes of the movie and before that we only see him creeping in the shadows and peaking around corners. Although that's where I'd expect to find a Peter Lorre character I was hoping to see more of him in this film. I found myself losing interest in Mike and Jane's romance. John Maguire's nightmare sequence was pretty interesting, but with this film falling right over the one hour mark and having very minimal Peter Lorre screen time it falls a bit short at time. However, this is known to many film historians as the "first" noir film. On top of that the art direction was done by Van Nest Polgase who would go on to do Citizen Kane the next year.

I'm almost ashamed to say I didn't fall in love with this movie. I did so want to! Perhaps it's that I was so bent on seeing Lorre's lovely creep-face. I personally wouldn't upgrade my VHS copy for the Warner Archive release, but it's by no means an unworthy film. Especially given it's credible background. I would most definitely give it a look if you're a completest or you just happen to cross its path. For those who aren't serious noir fiends or Peter Lorre fan-girls, it's really not a matter of urgency.

The celebration isn't over yet! This was a double feature. I might not get around to posting it tonight but be sure to check back for my review for the extremely out of print Face Behind the Mask in which Mr. Lorre THANKFULLY has a starring role!

Schlocktober Top 10!

To make up for my lack of reviewing in October I thought I'd celebrate getting back to my regularly scheduled programming by honoring my neglected tradition of doing monthly top 10 reviews. Back in 2006 I started writing down every movie I watch. Separated by monthly columns I number them and mark them with an asterisk if it's a first-time-view. Out of those first-times-views, I compose a top 10. I list them as best as I can in order of enjoyment, obviously number 1 would be my favorite. This doesn't necessarily mean it's traditionally "the best". I'm an unconventional critic and opinions are relative. So without further adieu, here is my Top 10 for October 2009.



1. Hausu (1977)




If movies had souls, this movie would be my soul mate. This movie brings a new meaning to the phrase "now I've seen EVERYTHING!". When you watch as much as I do you sometimes wonder if you've reached the epitome of weirdness. This movie convinced me that there will always be something else, something that goes above and beyond. Simply put, this is a haunted house movie, but so so much more! The story revolves around seven girls who go to one of their Aunt's house for vacation. The plot is relatively insignificant, immediately bizarre things start to happen and the girl are killed in more and more insane ways. It was made by experimental Japanese director Nobuhiko Obayashi who got his start directing television commercials (if you want to see a really funny example of this, do a youtube search for "Charles Bronson Mandom"). You can really see the influence as the movie itself is one giant, flashy, quick-edited, commercial for total BEDLAM! I read a review where someone said it's as if Beetlejuice were directed by Dario Argento, only it's SO MUCH BETTER! I would sooner compare it to the bastard child of Holy Mountain and the Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters. This is the kind of movie that makes you wonder why the film industry didn't come to a complete halt because it just doesn't get any better. Describing the movie is nearly impossible, reviewing it is just my tripping over endless compliments. So if you trust me and want to have a visually maddening mind fuck of an experience, find yourself a copy of this life changing movie.



2. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)


I'm ashamed to say how long I went without seeing this. I'm a big fan of both Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. The movie revolves around two sisters who were formerly in show business. One, a crazed washed up child star (Davis), the other handicapped ex-movie star (Crawford) who's tormented and completely at the mercy of her insane sibling. Victor Buono gave a truly outstanding performance as well. I'm only used to him as King Tut from the Batman series from 1966. Robert Aldrich directed it, he later direct Davis and Buono again in Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte.



3. Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933)



Finally, my first encounter with the diabolical Dr. Mabuse. Often cited as the first super villain, Mabuse uses his powers of hypnosis and mind control to wreak havoc and destruction from behind padded walls and even beyond the grave. This Fritz Lang classic was the second out of three, but was later followed by many semi-sequels directed by other people. This is considered the last hurrah from German Expressionism.



4. Frenzy (1972)



I always liked him, but lately I've really been diving into Alfred Hitchcock's vast body of work. I recently got a set of his early movies, I also received the Hitchcock/Truffaut book for my birthday. After having seen Family Plot earlier this year (which I quite enjoyed despite it's reputation), I wasn't sure what to expect from this one. A guy is running around raping and strangling women with neckties in London. The guy being framed is down on his luck having just lost his job, apartment and is in an over-all shitty mood. When his ex-wife becomes one of the victims he becomes the prime suspect. It's filled with Hitchcock's quirky sense of humor. I particularly loved the banter between the inspector and his wife as she's serving him these elaborate meals that he hates. Great stuff!




5. the Unknown (1927)



the world silent film is almost completely untouched by me. I'm slowly trying to work my way through the history of film. Silent pictures have always seemed like a big hurdle for me, mainly because I didn't know where to start. In my research I started to become fascinated with Lon Chaney Senior. He was really an amazing person, both of his parents were deaf so he was a natural at acting in a silent film. The Unknown is about an armless knife thrower at a circus who's in love with his lovely assisstant (a very young Joan Crawford), who is afraid of the touch of a man. Naturally they'd be a perfect couple right? Well, as it turns out he really does have arms, he conceals them in a girdle because he's a wanted man and has a strange deformity , two thumbs on one hand! This horror classic just gets weirder and weirder!


6. the Invisible Man (1933)



Not sure why I put off watch this for so long. I probably didn't take into account how much fun it would be to see an invisible person do all sorts of things. Smoking a cigarette, throwing things, acting like a ghost. Claude Rains really made this role his own, considering you never actually see him act! This has easily earned him the title of my favorite Universal Monster!




7. Tales from the Crypt (1972)/ Vault of Horror (1973)



Ok, so they're two different movies. They're based from basically the same comic, they're both Amicus Anthologies, they were made back to back, and they just go together! Plus, I don't think I could choose between them! Tales from the Crypt stars Joan Collins, Ralph Richardson, Roy Dotrice and Peter Cushing. Five people enter a tomb for seemingly unknown reasons and one by one are told their stories by the Crypt Keeper (Ralph Richardson). In Vault of Horror (aka "Further Tales from the Crypt") five men enter an elevator that takes them to the basement where imbibements are ready for them, they get comfortable, eat , drink and slowly begin to tell of their "nightmares", horrible things they've done, or have been done to them. The Terry Thomas episode was really fun and brought some comic relief in. Buy the double disc! See them both!



8. Sisters (1973)



Brian DePalma's homage to Alfred Hitchcock. After a pair of siamese twins are separated, strange things begin to happen. Before the film's release DePalma was using different themes from different Hitchcock movies. Marnie, Rear Window, etc... Until it was suggested to him that he should just get Bernard Hermann to score the film! So he did and it works beautifully. I was really impressed with William Finley in this movie. After seeing him in the Phantom of the Paradise I almost didn't recognize him. In a lot of ways, he steals the show.


9. This Night I Will Possess your Corpse (1967)



Zé do Caixão is up to his old shenanigans again! Still trying to find a woman to bare his evil spawn. I actually liked this second instalment of the Coffin Joe series even more than the first, At Midnight I'll Steal you Soul. With essentially the same plot it's clear that José Mojica Marins had a bigger budget to work with. I enjoyed watching him scare girls with spiders in their beds and ravish the toughest girl amidst the screams of the other girls being bitten by snakes. I felt like the character had more depth in this movie and showed borderline human emotions. The Jigoku-esque nightmare sequence depicting a colorized version of Hell is worth seeing the movie for alone!



10. You'll Find Out (1940)



I've been highly anticipating the release of this Universal horror comedy of the "Spooks Run Wild" variety. The story revolves around Kay Kyser's band, who are playing at a young heiress' birthday party. Several creeps are out to kill the young lady so they can have her inheritance. The villains are played by Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Peter Lorre. This is one of the funniest movies of this genre that I have yet to see. Kyser was a surprisingly silly and charming leading man. The gags were great, the music was great, and Peter Lorre was on top of his game! What more could you want? How about a SONOVOX?! Yes, this movie is super cool.



Honorable Mentions:
the Wolf Man (1941), the Devil Doll (1936), the Raven (1963), Calling Dr. Death (1943), the Dark Backward (1991), the Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) [this would have made the top 10 but I bumped it down since it doesn't really fall into the horror genre, just to keep a theme going]



Lon Chaney Jr. (1906-1973)



Though none of his movies made the top 10, I feel that he deserves a
special acknowledgement for being so charismatic in all eight movies I saw him in this month.

My Mom is Tor Johnson's Mom

I was thinking about "This Night I will Possess Your Corpse" and what an awkward title that is. I mean, it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Not to say that it isn't BRILLIANT. Coffin Joe should have made a movie called "Sometime next week I'm thinking about possibly borrowing your nail clippers".

Ok, I think some mini-reviews are in order!














I've been making my rounds through the various untapped video findings I've collected from local thrifts, and finally decided to watch "And Now the Screaming Starts" an Amicus, period piece haunted house-type horror movie. To be honest, I generally don't care for that formula. Possibly why I put off watching it for so long, but in a moment of desperation, this unsung classic really surprised me with it's coolness.

First of all, it stars a bunch of great house names for Amicus and Hammer, such as (big surprise) Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom, Ian Ogilvy, Stephanie Beachman, but most importantly, Patrick Magee, who was also in Tales from the Crypt and Dementia 13, both movies I just happened to watch in the same week! He's haunting my movie marathons and I like it. the plot is ...well, kinda serious. A vengeful ghost haunts a "virgin bride" (pah!) by showing her it's severed "Thing"-hand, and desecrating her womb. Unfortunately they don't show that part, but there's a baby with a nub for a hand, and that's what really matters.



I finally got around to seeing this hilarious "romp" (I guess would be the word?). I have this thing for horror comedies, well, I'm obsessed with Arsenic and Old Lace and I'm always trying to find more movies like it. There really aren't many other movies like it. I've kind of self-titled this kind of horror comedy "Spooks Run Wild" after the East Side Kids movie, how better to sum up the jester-like antics of these classic monsters/characters?


Aside from the fact that Lou Costello whines a lot (I can only take so much) this is a really funny movie, especially the last couple of scenes when Dracula and Wolfman are duking it out, and the uncredited voice cameo of Vincent Price as the Invisible Man makes his ...uh... "appearance" (?)

Straying further and further from the "horror" on this particular day, I ended up watching the Big Cube, which should have been called "The Big Turd" or even just "the Big Disappointment" would have been more fitting. I thought it would be a suspenseful psychedelic mystery-type of thing, ended up coming across more like a big budget propaganda movie. The DANGER of LSD, blah blah blah. Overly dramatic and attempted to come across sincere. I often read about these 60's psychedelic movies being "out-dated", such as one of my all time favorite cult movies, Otto Preminger's "Skidoo". I find it's unnecessary to even attempt and compare the 60's to the present. There are certainly movies that are timeless, but "psychedelic" movies aren't really made anymore. It was fresh in the 60's and I'm usually thrilled to see this moment in time captured in a way even my own psychedelic experiences couldn't approach. What I'm getting at is that as a general rule I love LSD themed movies! THIS MOVIE seems to be the exception! True, the effects were cool, colorful, sparkly, and fun... and so they should be! But the plot was very "meh", and kind of depressing. A spoiled rich girl's father remarries an aging actress (Lana Turner) who both seem to be very much in love. She of course acts bratty and rebels. Meets a young stud (not really though, George Chakiris, better known to me as Bernardo from West Side Story) who's an ex-med student, expelled for making LSD in the lab and selling it to students. After the rich father dies at sea trying to save Lana, Chakiris cooks up a scheme to drive Lana insane by slipping LSD in her pills and playing a tape with haunting suicidal/homicidal recordings on it; in her bedroom to drive her insane. Once she's out of the picture, he can marry the spoiled dumb ass (Karin Mossberg, who didn't do much else, a few Spanish movies) for her money. Her character is what I dislike about this movie the most. She acts completely mean and vindictive just because some guy she hardly knows convinces her that she needs her father's money NOW rather than waiting until she's 25 like the will states. I just can't sympathize with a character like that, yet it's played as if she's a victim as well. The ending doesn't really make any sense either, Chakiris just has a bad trip and Lana and Karin have themselves some step-bonding. Thee End. Whatever.

At this point I realized that I had inadvertently broken my horror-only vow for this month, so I said, "What the hell, time for some Van Damme"...

I was at my mom's house flipping through the channels. This is the only time I get to enjoy, or not enjoy the luxuries of cable. It's hit or miss with those over priced movie channels. For instance, before this gem came on you would have caught me watching Dutch starring Ed O'neal and Ethan Embry when he was 12 and still had a promising acting career, but I digress...

In my universe good and bad are inexplicably linked. For this reason, this may be the greatest movie ever made. The greatest bad movie that is. It almost magically comes full circle from bad to hilarious to "whoever wrote this is a comic GENIUS!". And let's face it, Van Damme has made some stinkers. Wonderfully tacky with his signature side-split and mullet.

For this to have surpassed Double Impact is truly a remarkable achievement.

Do you know what the best part of this movie is? No, not the one liners, not the ABSURD typical 90's action movie plot, not even the amazing fight sequence in the kitchen with a Penguin Mascot (though that one was DAMN close, VAN DAMME CLOSE [sorry]).

The highlight of this movie was of course Mr. Powers Boothe as my new favorite super villain...

At the end you get to see this handsome asshole wearing a really awkward blonde wig and moustache, and his death (not giving much away, this is a Van Damme movie so obviously the bad guy's gotta die) is the most sensational retarded Hollywood crap I've ever seen! I couldn't even believe it was happening.

I'd like to take this opportunity to express my love for this man. After Emerald Forrest, I was hooked. Hopelessly addicted to yet another brilliant underrated actor. And what a name, POWERS BOOTHE, could you think of a more power-ful name?

That's all for now!

Test Tubeless Babies and Sharkless Gods

I wasn't quite sure what to expect from Test Tube Babies, but I had hoped for perhaps, test tubes, and babies as a result of that. To be honest I guess I expected a sci-fi movie of sorts, and for some reason I mentally associated the term "Test Tube Babies" with "Flipper Babies", only to be disappointed by this slow moving exploitation movie about a young couple whose marriage is on the rocks, so like most naive people, they can only presume that having a child will fix their fucked up relationship. After months of trying they decided to go to a doctor to see what's the hold up, they runs some tests on the wife and find that she is normal, her uterus is perfectly functional, but how could that be? It couldn't be the man who is sterile?? This is the attitude both the husband and wife share. I know that times were different then, and my having an IQ over 90 might have something to do with this, but even as a small child I understood the concept that although different, both women AND men could face a variety of biological complications. Despite the movie itself being quite silly, this idea seems the most absurd to me. The husband goes on to say that his sex life is normal, so how can he be sterile? Should these people really be breeding? Do we really need Mr. and Mrs. Test Tube Baby to spread their seed? Perhaps his being sterile is the universe's way of course correcting itself, but alas, the doctor introduces them to the then-new concept of artificial insemination, which the wife cannot even pronounce! The husband's only worry is that some sperm donor is going to get to have sex with his wife, ha! But aside from that, they're both cool with the idea and the movie ends with them happily being a family with their multiple "test tube babies" expressing endearment towards modern technology. The end. This movie was mind numbing. The couple was just so obnoxious and they're attitude was so nauseating that I think I started to take it a little too seriously, ha! In retrospect, it was fun hating them, and even more fun making fun of them in this review.



Omoo-Omoo the Shark God! I should have known that it sounded too good to be true. I should have known that a low budget movie from 1949 based on a Herman Melville story wouldn't live up to it's title. Indeed, there are no sharks and there are no Gods, just a big lopsided statue and some stock footage of two tigers fighting. I was hoping for something that would resemble a John Huston movie, oh how I set myself up for disappointment. The captain of a ship steals two rare black pearls, the eyes of the shark god statue, falls ill, hides them and leaves. Sets to come back with a ship full of assholes, including his daughter who falls under the same hypnosis of greed for the pearls. In fact, the highlight of this movie is her borderline insane ramblings about how the pearls belong to her. A pretty intense performance from an actress who never really did anything else.To be honest though, this was probably the most disappointing movie from this month's marathon, and the one of the one's I had the highest expectations from! I can tolerate and enjoy many different varieties of "bad", but "BORING" is one element of badness I cannot accept.


These two movies almost set me off of my propaganda movie appetite! Due to this, I decided to set the "cult classics" asside for a few days. I find it easy to burn out if I over do it on a genre, I dont want that to happen so let's explore some different grist in the mill for a few weeks...

Delinquent Escort Child aka "You Can't Tell Me Anything!"

This week for Propaganda month I watched a few trashy sex "dramas", starting with the JD Classic "Delinquent Daughters". This being one of my personal favorite sub-genre's of exploitation I was excited to see this 1944 low budget pooper. It starts out with a bunch of cops investigating the suicide of a local teenage girl at her high school, there's a "bad girl" (there always has to be one) named Sally (played by Teala Loring, a pretty Rita Hayworth-ish actress who like so many others was doomed to play bit roles in movies like this and "Return of the Ape Man", she was also uncredited as a telephone operator in "Double Indemnity") who convinces her girl friend's to act "casual" by actually seeming overly guilty for some reason. As it turns out, the last place the girl was seen was the local teen hang out, which is really a cover for all kinds of illegal activities, run by a typical movie jerk/villain type named Nick Gordon (played by Jon Dawson who was also in...nothing worth mentioning) who made a career out of getting teenagers to carry out his various crimes. The movie started out pretty interesting, they're hangout spot was neat and I love seeing teenagers in the past, or at least Hollywood's perception of teenagers. The story starts to lose you somewhere around the middle when there's about 20 minutes of exposition filmed outside with literally NO LIGHTING, you're looking at blackness and listening to pointless dialogue. After that you get to see the local judge reprimand all of the teenager's parents for not taking responsibility for their kids. The highlight of the film is when our female protagonist June (who's quite boring unmemorable as a character and an actress) comes home late to find her comically angry/abusive father waiting up for her "what a nice daughter you've turned out to be!" *slaps her in the face* "but daddy let me explain!" "you can't explain", "but daddy let me tell you" "you can't tell me anything" HA! The classic words of a shitty parent in a 1940's juvenile delinquency film. Another interesting piece of trivia is that Teala Loring recently (within the past few years) died in a car accident, which her character did in the movie, OOPS...gave away the ending. Who cares?



The second bill on the triple feature is the long forgotten "Escort Girl". The story of a woman trying to hide the fact that she runs an escort service from her bratty, ungrateful daughter who just happens to be engaged to the undercover lawyer who's investigating the underground bureau. This movie is fairly decent despite it's only big flaw, that being how terribly choppy it is. Not sure if it was a damaged print or if it was cut for time, but the film cuts scenes sometimes right in the middle of crucial dialogue. It can be very frustrating as I was actually interested in the plot! The highlight of the movie is the pointless strip tease in the middle of the film, totally caught me off guard! Seeing the hookers have girl talk in their dressing room seemed more cute than sleazy, but of course, they're actresses, not real prostitutes. I wasn't satisfied with the ending, and thought it was very shitty that the daughter was so insensitive to her hard working mother's situation, but whatever. It's just a movie, a pretty bad one too. With propaganda such as this, good and bad are in as high a contrast as the resolution of the shitty print.




The final film in the triple feature was the sleaziest and most enjoyable. "Child Bride" from 1938 starring... who cares? What makes exploitation movies of this caliber so much fun is that we can usually relate in some way. Maybe not to the later exploitation films of the 70's where actors like Rudy Ray Moore takes on three rednecks then tumbles from a cliff buck naked. These early propaganda movies usually dealing with marijuana, alcohol, sex, teenage rebellion. These things are fairly typical in movies and our own experiences in general, making these films laughable. The thought of applying them to your own life is even more laughable. Child Bride stands apart from this. Both offensive, tacky and bizarre, it's hard to believe there was a time that marrying children was acceptable. Of course it was never women marrying boys, just creepy old honkies lusting after 10, 11, 12 year old girls. The creep in this movie is especially villainous, he kills the girl's father and blackmail's the mother (threatening to frame her for the murder) so he can have her nubile daughter for keeps. Had the movie not been so over the top, it may have actually disturbed me. Not to be so naive as to think this kind of thing didn't go on (well into the 50's and 60's even *ahem* Jerry Lee Lewis), but thinking of it in terms as a serious social issue is what's really disturbing. Which made it all the more entertaining! I give it my utmost recommendation, if you're into that sort of thing. "That sort of thing" being creepy, tasteless, out-dated garbage!