>Disney’s ‘The Black Hole’ ~ Is it Set to ‘Suck’ or ‘Blow’?

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THE BLACK HOLE

(PG ~ 1979)

A research vessel finds a missing ship, commanded by a mysterious scientist, on the edge of a black hole.

Director: 

Gary Nelson

Writers: 

Jeb Rosebrook (story), Bob Barbash (story), and 3 more credits »

Stars:

Maximilian Schell, Anthony Perkins and Robert Forster

This guy Lucas is killing us- nobody wants to watch cute furry cartoon animals when they can watch cute robot ‘droids beep and fart in space. Thought they had an ointment for that. Anyway – we need to catch his ass or we’re cooked. Yeah, yeah anybody – Borgnine, Perkins – sounds good. Just put em in a ship, and blast off – NOW!! (Speculative Disney studio meetings c. 1978).

So we have The Black Hole, Disney’s big studio attempt to catch the Star Wars bandwagon before they were left in its space-dust. While the 1979 film is undeniably a blatant catch-all pastiche of previous space franchises (mainly Star Trek/ Star Wars), it’s also an efficient, entertaining yarn on its own terms – an ‘old dark house’ story of a starship crew being held hostage in space by a mad Earth scientist bent on harnessing the awesomely vague powers of the Black Hole. It also represents one of the last inventive uses of all- traditional special effects (miniatures/matte paintings/optical printing/wires) before Disney jumped headlong into the digital ether with Tron. (This one bombed.)

The skeletal (trekking) crew of the USS Palomino! is made up of gruff captain (Robert Forster), egghead ‘Spock-ish’ science officer (Anthony Perkins), ‘Scotty’ clone (Ernest Borgnine) brash lieutenant (Joseph Bottoms) female scientist named Kate (Yvette Mimieux), and with a hopeful nod to Star Wars, floating cute robot V.I.N.C.E.N.T. (v/o Roddy McDowall) – combining the squat google-eyed appeal of R2D2 with the fey British accent/axioms of his longtime companion C3P0. They come upon a seemingly dead vessel, the USS Cygnus, perched at the edge of the aforementioned hole. As they board the mammoth ship to investigate (hmm- this kinda reminds me of the Death Star), they discover long ago- vanished scientist Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell).

Reinhardt’s wild-eyed, bearded manner disturbs some of the crew- he seems to be hiding something, and his imposing robot henchman Maximilian is not the friendliest. Turns out the Cygnus’ crew have been converted into a subservient half-robot zombie slave-crew (with opaque, hooded mirror faces) to help Reinhardt pursue his mad goals. Vincent partners up with an earlier model seen-better-days hick sanitation robot (Slim Pickens!) to uncover more details. He also takes on a Boba-Fett-like robot in an awesome laser shooting gallery in the robot rec room. (a nice touch not really seen in Lucas’ world). Meanwhile, the weaker members of the crew are weeded out through natural space attrtition. Actually, Perkins’ scientist, who plans to accompany Reinhardt through the Hole, gets an egg-beater-like chest-whisking from Maximilian. And Borgnine, panicking, attempts to take off with the Palomino himself before being blown up. It is up to the remaining motley crew to save the day.

Cue the inspirational space theme and laser battles, as the crew battles off Reinhardt’s robot minions, a rolling meteor and commandeers a probe to escape. Only problem? The probe had been previously programmed by Reinhardt to follow him straight into the Hole. Uh-oh- hope we wrote an ending! Turns out, they didn’t really. So we get some nice ‘psychedelic’ effects as they plunge through the Hole (inner/outer mind dialogue) and then a half-assed (‘2001‘- lite) metaphysical Heaven/Hell ‘resolution.’ See- Reinhardt was evil, so he is condemned to the fate of the Cygnus’ crew- we see his wild eyes beneath the visor of Maximilian, now merged into an unholy man/machine monster in a fiery cliff in purgatory. Meanwhile, a nice white light bathes the Palomino crew and they sail off into the (space) sunset. Aah – Disney.

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>If you’re Chad Lowe, this must be the Highway to Hell.

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Highway to Hell

(R ~ 1991)

An eloping bride is taken into Hell, and her fiancée must pursue. (IMDB)

Director: Ate de Jong

Writer: Brian Helgeland

Stars: Patrick Bergin, Kristy Swanson and Chad Lowe

Yes- Chad Lowe here – no no- Rob’s brother. His agent lets me take his call forwarding runoff when’s he’s at the gym. What’s that? A project? A supernatural thriller with Kristy Swanson as my girlfriend? Four-day shoot with full craft tables? I’m in. Such a conversation must have preceded the making of Highway to Hell, a cheap queasy fever-dream of a movie that fumbles its intended quirky/scary ratio so badly that it pulls off a rare trick – it simultaneously sucks and blows. If I told you every member of the Stiller family made cameos, and that Gilbert Gottfried played Hitler, would you watch this shit? Go ahead, but you’ll still need a hot cleansing shower immediately after.

From the opening scene, the audience must suspend disbelief, as nice guy Lowe and Swanson play a naughty couple on their way to Vegas to elope, going at it hot-and-heavy in the back seat along a side a of a dark desert highway. She reveals that she’s still a virgin (yup), saving it for their big night. But soon they wind up in a bad (in fact, evil) stretch of highway guarded by a cop from hell (C.J. Graham as Sgt. Bedlam). They seek refuge at a deserted service station run by old codger Richard Farnsworth (The Straight Story), who coaches them on the only way to beat the demon-cop – racing him through a wormhole into hell or something. (He also wants them to find his Amelia Earhardt-looking sweetheart) They even take his souped-up cherry white antique roadster for luck.

So they follow his advice, punching the car straight into ‘Hell,’ and taking the movie with it. Some of the characters they pointlessly meet there are supposed to be famously ‘bad’ (like Medea, Hitler) while others are randomly stupid and evil. The aforementioned Stiller cameos fly by in a diner scene – Ben Stiller fries an egg on the sidewalk (cause it’s Hell). The couple has some car trouble, so they take it to a mechanic who later turns out to be Satan (bland Patrick Bergin, a poor man’s Kevin Kline) So Swanson gets kidnapped (Satan luvs virgins) and replaced with monster saggy-breasted succubus. 

Lowe must get her back, traveling across the River Styx (guarded by three-headed dog Cerberus). Then the Devil challenges them to one last race back to their dimension. They win somehow.

As I said, in trying to mix quirky Repo Man-esque moments into its Ghoulies-esque scare-story, the movie just comes across a wtf mashup you can’t wash off quicky enough. But if you’re a Stiller completist, you had this coming.

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>Your Daughter is One.

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TIMES SQUARE

(R ~ 1980)

Directed by Allan Moyle
Writing credits: Jacob Brackman writer, story: Allan Moyle & Leanne Unger

Stars:

 Tim Curry, Trini Alvarado and Robin Johnson 

Two ill-matched teenage girls form a punk band and soon have New York by its ears. (IMDB)

Sleez Sisters Unite! Director Allan Moyle’s (Pump Up The Volume) 1980 theatrical flop/cult fave is a lost classic of New York punk romance- an urban Tom and Huck adventure between two teen female runaways seeking love and meaning in the gnarled heart of the city. Filmed on location amid the ruined neon marquees and docks of seedy pre-Giuliani Manhattan, it also foreshadows the struggle that would transform the neighborhood in the next decades to a Disney-fied grotesque mall, its grimy soul melted away with the sleaze. Along with the later Stigwood-produced rock fable Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains (1982), this film provided ground zero exploitation/inspiration for a new bunch of kids lost in a plastic world.

For Johnny LaGuardia (reliable Tim Curry of Clue, Rocky Horror Picture Show etc.), a ‘celebrity’ overnite DJ at rock station WJAD, Times Square serves as his muse, as he spins mellifluous odes to the filthy streets of Gotham as an Oz to be savored. Trini Alvarado is Pamela Pearl, his biggest fan and privileged daughter of the up-and-comer ‘liberal’ mayoral candidate, who rails against the dangers of letting the streets be – fabricating fables about how he can’t take her to a movie safely on 42^nd St. 


Pamela protests the lies so Dad takes his emotional ‘troubled’ daughter to a hospital psych clinic for study, where she meets her rocker counterpart, Nicky Marotta, (Joan Jett-like Robin Johnson), a streetwise juvie lifer who plays The Ramones’ “I Wanna be Sedated” on her duct-taped boombox in bed. After a few days, Nickie has left her mark on Pamela, inspiring her to write journal poetry and stuff. She persuades Pamela to stay off the meds cause they ‘take your fight away,’ and the two bust loose into the city.

Soon they are shacked up in a waterfront pier warehouse, coining the name The Sleez Sisters. Nicky finds Pamela a dancer job in the Cleopatra Club (“You don’t take yer clothes off – I like that.”) and begins writing her own poetry – rock songs like ‘I’m a Damn Dog Now.” The Sisters exploit and provoke themselves to punk legend status through guerilla ‘street art’ like dropping TVs off tenement roofs and putting bandit masks on Pamela’s bus-side ‘missing’ posters. They even gleefully provoke their paranoid ‘grownup’ pursuers live on the air (to LaGuardia’s mutual benefit) – “Spic, Nigger, Faggot, Bum – Your Daughter is One!” 

Pamela’s father eventually closes in to her whereabouts, locating her smoking onstage at the Cleo as the colored girls sing ‘Walk on The Wild Side.” She’s all grown up, daddy. Nicky (did we mention she’s troubled?) begins to realize that Pamela will return to her path on her terms, where she has nowhere to go but further out. 

She lets LaGuardia have an exclusive ‘scoop’ They will stage an impromptu farewell show atop a marquee that night – their own ‘Let It Be’ moment, an underground spectacular hyped to those ‘in the know.’ We see a montage of chaotic female fans (the Sleez Army) roaming the streets, street vendors selling plastic trash bags as ‘Sleez Bags’ to the tourists. After performing a rousing ‘Damn Dog’ reprise, the cops come to shut them down, and Nicky says her goodbye, falling into the adoring arms of screaming girls as Pamela rejoins ‘civilization.’

Times Square is more than another ‘cult classic’ with an amazing double-LP soundtrack (Roxy Music, Gary Numan, Suzie Quatro etc.) It is a wide-eyed ode to the power of the city, youth, transformation and rock n’ roll – and it all seems like a fairytale now, which is alright by me. Whatever happened to the Teenage Dream?

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>It’s a shitstorm out there.

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Cop 

(R ~ 1988)

Director: James B. Harris
Writers: James Ellroy (novel), James B. Harris (screenplay)
Starring: James Woods, Lesley Ann Warren, Charles Durning, Randi Brooks, Charles Haid etc.


Lloyd Hopkins, a hard-boiled American police detective is on the trail of a mass murderer who is victimizing women in Los Angeles. The pursuit leads him through a world that has become his own natural habitat – a nasty world of crime, drugs, prostitution and male hustlers where “innocence kills” and continued exposure corrupts. Paradoxically, it’s also a world of love, secret admirers, romantic feminist poets and modern chivalry (IMDB).

Uh, yeah. The amount you will enjoy this movie is directly proportional to your appreciation of a James Woods performance in full-on hambone gear. The film is ‘loosely’ based on famed LA crime novelist James Ellroy’s ‘Blood on the Moon.’ Woods plays Lloyd Hopkins, a hard-boiled (see above), ‘unorthodox’ LA cop who has grown sick and tired of scumbags, hot on a the trail of a kinky serial lady-killer. Sounds great, right? 

It starts out promisingly enough, as Hopkins is called to one more Hollywood crime scene, where he finds a young woman strung upside-down and gutted brutally, with ominous poetic lines scrawled in the victim’s blood on the wall. Looking through the apartment, he sees a newspaper with a male hustler’s sex ad circled, and a book removed from the shelf – a feminist manifesto called ‘Rage in the Womb.’ (uh-oh) Hopkins seems to have trouble leaving the job at the office- his ‘bedtime stories’ for his daughter revolve around ‘how I nailed that perp.’ Before going to sleep, she asks “Tell me again how you caught the scumbag, Daddy?” But mom isn’t having it, and confronts him for tarnishing their child’s innocence. Woods launches into a possessed tirade about how every corpse was once a little girl and that “innocence kills!”  

Needless to say, his wife and kid take off, so he calls his old partner (dependable Charles Durning) for a good old-fashioned night-time bust, where he kills a Mexican, and screws his hooker date. So the movie seems to be rumbling right along – the sleep-deprived cop digs manically through the old files, convinced that a serial killer is targeting innocent white liberal college-age girls looking for kinky sex. (He turns over old victim photos, racial profiling  while muttering to himself – black, black, whatever – innocent!) Meanwhile, we get Woods in his pock-marked ‘Bad Lieutenant’ mode, railing against the captain and screwing female suspects willy-nilly, including the luscious Randi Brooks (Tightrope), as a kinky past-her-prime actor/swinger party madam).

Then he follows a lead to a feminist bookstore, develops a ‘love interest’ in its ‘suspicious’ proprietor (annoying turtle-necked Warren), and the movie literally turns to shit. The stereotypical chain-smoking man-hater quickly melts and opens up to Hopkins,  recounting how everything changed for her on the traumatic night she was raped in high school bathroom, while other girls left the scene. They go to dinner, he listens to the endless droning story, growing visibly impatient – Best line – “Well I heard about the rape- might as well get the whole enchilada.” Turns out an anonymous secret admirer has been sending her pressed flowers over the 15 years, with encouraging notes about her ordeal. Woods (detective work) finds that these notes have all been sent on the exact dates of the girls’ murders! 

After eliminating (and killing) a creepy beat cop and former jock (Hill Street Blues’ Haid) as the murderer (he was just the rapist, see), Woods pinpoints the murderer as someone who identified with Warren and the feminist plight – wait- in her old high-school yearbook, there it is – a moody loner named Franco, nicknamed – “poet laureate.” OK now just to find him- I know, how about the old high school. He tracks down the perp to the high school gym, where after some confusing acrobatics, he blows him away with a sawed-off. (“I just got suspended – and I don’t give a fuck!”) 

I made this movie sound better than it was, as it goes seriously off the rails – from gritty Spillanity to Sylvia Plathitude. Woods seems to sense it too, so he makes the most of the crap and milks it to the max.  If you only read this and never see it – you’re welcome (in advance).

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>Flash – I love you, but we’ve got 30 seconds to save the Universe!

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Flash Gordon

(PG ~ 1980)

Directed by Mike Hodges

Produced by Dino De Laurentiis

Starring: Sam J. Jones, Melody Anderson, Max Von Sydow etc.

Writers: Lorenzo Semple Jr. (screenplay), Michael Allin (adaptation)

Based on characters created by Alex Raymond

In the long and sordid history of comic film adaptations, this Dino De Laurentiis-produced oddity based on the 1930s action comic serial strips, doesn’t often rise to the top of the pack. But taken on its own, it is a weird achievement. In full disclosure, this was the first film I was allowed to see in the theater without my parents. Therefore the sci-fi S&M atmosphere must have seemed just that much dirtier. (I didn’t know about this yet.) And the marriage of awesomely grandiose Queen soundtrack (later sampled by Public Enemy) with ridiculous visuals like Hawkman gladiators attacking in flight just doesn’t get old. In its wooden acting (aside from Von Sydow’s seminal Ming the Merciless) and fetishistic camp sets/costumes, the movie’s true cousin is the infamous Barbarella. (also Dino’s baby)

Though instead of Fonda cheesecake, here we must watch Sam Jones, blank block of beefcake (dubbed badly) whose only other notable role was in the delightful My Chauffeur. Flash is here a star quarterback for the New York Jets, who along with Dale (Melody Anderson) is marooned in a rocket with mad Jew scientist Hans Zarkov (Topol from Fiddler on the Roof!). They are bound for the planet Mongo, controlled by the evil Emperor Ming himself. Ming plans to scrape their brains clean through an evil found-footage machine (see A Clockwork Orange), and use Zarkov’s vague technology to destroy the Earth and enslave the universe- he’s bored.

Right away, Flash’s football skills come in handy, as he plays keepaway and smear the queer with Ming’s valuable booty. Dale is taken captive into the royal harem, and Flash must resist the ample temptations of Ming’s daughter Princess Aura (sexy Ornella Muti), who hopes to seduce him telepathically to the dark side. She wears amazing skin-tight red satin pantsuits, and straddles him as he tries to operate a stick-shift. (Dale even hears his incriminating telepathic VO: “Oh my god – this girl is really turning me on.”)

Flash’s strategy? Recruit the leaders of the planets currently under Ming’s thumb to rebel and overthrow the tyrant. He finds mustachioed Prince Barin, (Timothy ‘Bond’ Dalton) a simpering Errol Flynn-lite suitor of Aura, on his planet Arboria, and must stick his arm in a bunch of holes to overcome the scary random stump monster (which really terrified me as a kid) in order to gain his loyalty. They also draft Prince Vultan (bearded Brian Blessed) and his Hawkmen, half-man/falcon creatures sort of like the Hell’s Angels (they still ride righteous flying motorcycles even though they can fly.) Together the rebel troops attack, and Flash must defeat Ming’s robot commander Klytus in a duel over metal spikes (oozing eyeballs-check). 

Flash leads the rebels to victory over the fiendish Ming, turning the telepathy machine against him (that’s gotta hurt). The football hero saved us all! (Every single one of us.) As I said, taken on its own terms, this version of the 1930s comic serial works perfectly. Like the old film serials, it creates an absurd, campy universe that believes its own BS, not a clueless, sterile ‘futuristic’ CGI-enhanced empty vessel like we’re all stuck in.

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>True Crime in Prime Time: Tarnished Angel

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Small Sacrifices 

(TV 1989)

Starring: Farrah Fawcett, John Shea, Ryan O’Neal, Emily Perkins etc.

Director: David Greene

Writers: Ann Rule (novel) & Joyce Eliason (teleplay)

On the 19th of May 1983 Diane Downs stops at the McKenzie-Willamette-Hospital and cries for help. She is wounded on her arm and her three children are also wounded seriously. She says that a stranger shot at them but the investigation of detective Welch bring out that Diane is a liar. (IMDB)

What possessed me to tune in for (nearly) the full four hours of the forgone-conclusion 1989 telefilm ‘based on a true story?’ I have to say, Farrah hooked me. America’s favorite 1970s Angel may have already achieved ‘legitimate actor’ status with her abuse victim roles in the more-famous The Burning Bed and Extremities, but as Diane Downs, the troubled Oregon mother and seducer, she really rises to the occasion – stringing the audience along through her continual denials to herself and her accusers that she attacked and killed her own children.

The film follows the DA (familiar John Shea) as he persistently pursues his investigation of that night that Diane claimed a ‘bushy-headed stranger’ attacked her family in her car and killed one of her children. The evidence just doesn’t add up, and Shea must unravel the actual events of that night from scattered clues, Downs’ now shocked-mute witness daughter and from Diane’s own incriminating behavior.

There are a few too many “I think she’s about to talk!” scenes with the daughter (Perkins), but meanwhile we get to see Diane’s past and present exploits. After her marriage to an abusive drunk (check!) falls apart, she falls in love with married mechanic Lew Lewiston (O’Neal, her real-life longtime partner), tattoing his name on her back and forming an obsession that inspires her to madness. See- Lew doesn’t want to have kids, so in her mind she was proving her fidelity to her lifetime love by ridding herself of her ‘baggage.’ Lew helps the investigation, bugging her increasingly crazed calls and talking to the DA. Diane, a postal worker (ha ha), becomes a master manipulator of the media circus surrounding her, playing to the camera and the audience. She forms a new ‘Fatal Attraction’ with a classical professor just to get pregnant – the jury loves that!

The miniseries resolves in a tension-filled courtroom drama in which Shea pushes Diane to the brink, forcing the truth out. It doesn’t start out well for her, as she begins tapping her fingers to Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like The Wolf,” seemingly oblivious to the gravity of the situation. It turns out the song was playing on her car stereo when she methodically stepped out to remove a gun from her trunk and turn it on her kids. Shea elicits the mute child to testify against mom, builds a nifty scale courtroom model of the car interior (complete w/dummies!) to dramatize the events, and the jury is won over.

Farrah, whose tragic death was eclipsed by the King of Pop’s last year, goes beyond the standard ‘pretty victim’ to show us the slide of a master (self) deceiver into madness, the public and her children mere pawns in the game.  Small Sacrifices is a worthy addition to the True Crime in Prime Time canon. Goodnight, sweet Angel.

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>Corey Feldman shows off what he learned at the Never Land Ranch

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Rock N Roll High School Forever

1991, PG-13

Written & Directed by Deborah Brock

Those rambunctious kids are back in school and back in trouble in a smash sequel to the 1978 worldwide hit. Corey Feldman leads a rock and roll rally at Ronald Reagan High, but must triumph over the evil plans of the school’s fascist principal, Vadar, who wants to halt the school dance and run their school like a prison.

A sequel to the Ramones’ classic Rock ‘n’ Roll High School!?!? Awesome!! More adventures with the mutant rocker mouse? Will we finally find out what happened to the bastard son of Riff Randal & Dee Dee?? Did Screaming Steve kick his junk habit?

NO!! instead we get this low-budget Corey Feldman vehicle, with a few of the original characters thrown in for “continuity,” such as B-Queen Mary Woronov revising her villainous role, this time as Dr. Vadar and sporting a robot claw hand (huh!?! … I mean freaking sweet)

It is a few years after Riff and the gang blew up the original Vince Lombardi HS and so much has changed. Well- maybe nothing’s changed per se but one thing remains the same, and that’s the unruly kids who have little to no respect for authority, but live only to rock and roll.

This new generation of degenerates is led by ‘bad-ass’ Feldman and his band of multi-cultural cronies (black guy keyboardist, crazy Asian bass guy & hott chick guitarist). The gang terrorizes the school, (now Ronald Reagan High!) especially on “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School Day”, by dancing to rock music, throwing papers out of lockers and generally annoying the squares (preppy kids who like student council activities or something?)

The prom is coming up and Feldman and his band wanna play but Togar … I mean Dr. Vadar … won’t let them cause it’s like the devil’s music or something. So they get some advice from Mojo Nixon as the ‘Spirit of Rock n’ Roll’ and enlist the help of Eaglebauer (another favorite from the first movie, minus Clint Howard) who instructs them to simply change the name of their band (genius!)

At the audition, Feldman and the Multi-Cultural-Ettes play the worst-ever version of Fats Domino’s “I’m Walkin’” while Corey does his lamest Michael Jackson impersonation and – holy shit! the plan works. Sure the preppy kids hate the band (and who wouldn’t) but the “way-too-hott-to-be-teaching” teacher/ Feldman love interest thinks they Rock so they are in! But then in another convoluted shit-show plot twist, the preppy prom committee skanks, Whitney & Margaret, tattle to Vadar so their band Zillion Kisses gets to play the prom.

The whole thing lumbers along to the predictable climax. Will Vadar foil the cool kids’ plans and have a non-rocking prom? Will Zillion Kisses rock the fuck out of said prom or will Corey & the Rainbow Coalition butcher more, lame 50’s rock? More importantly will Feldman lay his super-hott teacher (Sarah Buxton)? Will I ever get my dignity back?

* for more about Woronov & Screamin’ Steve check out the last ish — natch

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>A Cross-Country Road Wreck!

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DEATH RACE 2000 
(1975, Rated ‘R’)

In The Year 2000, Hit And Run Driving Is No Longer A Felony. It’s The National Sport!

Director: Paul Bartel

Writers: Ib Melchior (story), Robert Thom, and Charles Griffith 

Stars: David Carradine, Sylvester Stallone, Simone Griffeth, Mary Woronov etc.

A champion of a brutal cross-country car race of the future where pedestrians are run down for points has a change of heart while being hounded by rivals and a conspiracy seeking to stop the race. (IMDB)

In our end days of brain-dead knee-jerk politics and xenophobic paranoia, has there ever been a better time for futuristic death-sport? I think not. I, for one, would pay top dollar to see Tea Party yokels like Rand Paul, Sarah Palin and fatuous mouthpieces like Olbermann, Beck and Huffington strap themselves into a cross-country death race and feel the ‘G’s! It takes the vision of low-budget maestro producer Roger Corman and director Paul Bartel (Eating Raoul) to put a spin on America’s eternal favorite pastime- watching its citizens destroy each other in blood-thirsty patriotic competition. In this near-future spectacular, gladiator-style drivers race cross-country, scoring points for the most pedestrians flattened along the way. (Why is this not on TV?)

David Carradine (RIP?) is Frankenstein, America’s favorite folk hero and repeat race champion who credits his recovery from scores of near-death accidents to “good old Native-American know-how.” A stoic, mysterious figure clad in black skin-tight zippered S&M pantsuit and death mask, he is built for speed. Simone Griffeth, his newly assigned hot blonde ‘navigator’ (sidekicks paired with each driver) may be a double agent for the ‘treacherous French.’ In the meantime- we meet the range of over-the-top (WWE-style) cartoon drivers mugging for the media, including young Sly Stallone as hot-headed mob man ‘Machine Gun’ Joe Viterbo and Factory girl – turned Corman regular Mary Woronov as Calamity Jane. (Matilda the Hun and Nero the Hero meet their early demise in the race.) Announcers and politicians vie for airtime in a grotesque ‘Wide World of Sports’ pastiche, building hype for the annual event. And they’re off!!

With cars outfitted in fake teeth and death devices, they tear across America in high-velocity POV, as color commentators (including Don ‘Screamin’ Steve’ Steele from Rock ‘n’ Roll High School) fill us in. In this event, it has become a fan’s greatest honor to offer yourself as a ‘kill’ to your fave driver, and like clueless tourists standing behind ‘The Today Show’ set, they crowd the routes, waiting to become a statistic. 

The ominous synth / 70s jam soundtrack and shoe-string magic marker titles aid the atmosphere immensely, as we see the racers becoming as paranoid as the public, always wondering who’s working for who. Soon the field of racers is reduced to two- Frankenstein and Machine Gun Joe. Frankenstein himself is planning to make the most of his presidential handshake at the finish line- he’s planted a grenade in his prosthetic hand. But his navigator uses the weapon early to blow up Joe – (“You’ll have to shift the gears for me now.”)

At the finish line, as the winner (Frankenstein doppelganger) takes the stage, packing a knife to shiv the prez (Sandy McCallum), she takes a bullet from a rebel assassin in the crowd. (the ultimate navigator sacrifice). The real Frank then takes out the figurehead in his accustomed fashion- driving at full ramming speed into the platform. Hooray for President Frankenstein! In an epilogue, we see him speaking to reporters with recovered navigator wife, intending to restore democracy and abolish the barbaric race. But he can’t pass up one more good kill- running over a pesky reporter (Steele) for old time’s sake. It’s good to be the King.

Corman’s exploitation chassis famously provided the frame for many emerging filmmakers (Scorsese, Coppola, Howard, Dante etc.) to hone their vision. In this case – Bartel’s wicked socio-political satire, presaging reality TV, “Freedom Fries” and the NASCAR/Tea Party nexus. It also has fast cars that blow up real good, and flourescent orange blood. Let us all learn as a society by its fine example.

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>All the chicken you can eat!

>

BLAST-OFF GIRLS (1967)

Written and Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis

Starring: Dan Conway, Ray Sager, Tom Tyrell etc.

w/music by ‘The New York Square Library,’ performances by ‘The Faded Blue’ & ‘Charlie’

A sleazy record promoter tries to make it big with a local Chicago garage band and plans to make them famous while keeping the profits for himself. (IMDB)

Fuck Almost Famous. There is a select few films that actually ‘get it’ when it comes to the experience of being in a rock band, and meeting Lester Bangs doesn’t immediately qualify you as a rock muse (though divorcing Nancy Wilson might.)  Low-budget schlock-slinger H.G. Lewis’ 1966 ‘exploitation’ cheapie Blast- Off Girls joins this elite group, along with the untouchable This Is Spinal Tap (natch), that tell it like it is- summarizing the rise and fall of an ‘everyman’ American garage band in the 1960s as they are chewed up and spit out by ‘the biz.’ And yes- the ACTUAL COLONEL SANDERS makes a cameo!

The film follows real-life Chicago garage shlubs The Faded Blue, as they are ‘discovered’ by the slimy ‘Boojie’ Baker (Dan Conway), a slimy sandy-haired Svengali with a cane who’s always on the lookout for the ‘next big thing’ to rip off. In Brian Epstein-fashion, Boojie remolds the band’s image, dressing them in matching suits and rechristening them ‘The Big Blast.’ Boojie’s go-to promotional strategy is (of course) blackmail- in order to secure the recording of The Big Blast’s first single, he snaps photos of a recording engineer being seduced by one of his ‘Blast-Off Girls’ – loose ladies in his employ. The record sails up the charts with a bullet, but the group becomes disgruntled at Boojie not sharing the wealth. After giving the band his blessing to leave, he invites them to a hotel party, where he and his main flunkie (Ray Sager) set up the boys up to be busted for pot and liquor, complete with fake ‘police’ paid off by Boojie. The band must sign on with Boojie again to stay out of the clink.

Along their path to fame, we get some amazingly inept (but groovy) pop ‘60s montages, and the infamous promo performance outside a certain chicken chain restaurant, where the Colonel himself! pays them (lunch for a buck each) and the audience with fried chicken from a bucket and frugs with the crowd. (Bitchin’ organ solo!)

In addition to being an amazing coup, this scene captures the shallow rewards of a band on the road, not seeing any fruits of their talent as their rich manager gets richer. It all becomes too much for the boys, (this shit isn’t fun anymore!) as a second recording session breaks down. They decide to get back at Boojie just for the hell of it (see below), and show up soused to a TV promo appearance, where they play a goof song and flip him the bird repeatedly. They walk out on Boojie and rip up their contracts, willing to take their chances on their own, and leaving him to seek out the next bunch of saps in the circle of life.

Sometimes it takes a cheap drive-in flick to summarize the cheap truth – in this case the music business and its rigged roller-coaster of pop success. But I’m sure it’s much different now, with the internet and everything.

Blast-Off Girls is available in a 2-movie ‘Drive-In Double-Feature’ DVD w/Lewis’ awesome teen-delinquent film, Just For The Hell of It from Something Weird Video and our delicious sponsors below.

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>Revenge – a dish best served with a hook.

>

Rolling Thunder 

(1977)

Writing Credits: Paul Schrader (Original Story)

Paul Schrader; Heywood Gould (Screenplay)

Directed by: John Flynn*

Starring: William Devane, Tommy Lee Jones, Linda Haynes, James Best etc.

Major Charles Rane comes back from the war and is given a number of gifts from his hometown because he is a war hero. Some greedy thugs decide that they want to steal a number of silver dollars from him. In the process they also manage to kill his wife and son and destroy his hand. The Major wants revenge so he enlists the help of his war buddy Johnny to meet the thugs in a final showdown. (IMDB)

A sweet, deliberate grind-house revenge movie legendary to worldwide film geeks (crown prince Tarantino named his production company after it), this is also an entertainingly moody and disturbing film, in which returning Vietnam POW Major Charles Rane’s (Devane) story seems eerily similar to good-ole maverick hero John McCain (keep bad-ass aviator shades – add bad-ass hook hand!)

Writers Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, Blue Collar etc.) and Heywood Gould (Cocktail?) spin a tale of a hero USAF aviator and squadron commander returning to his Texas hometown after three years of sub-human captivity in a Vietnam POW camp, leaving him a numb shell of a man whose life has passed him by. His wife informs him nonchalantly on his first night home that she is planning to marry again, taking their son with her. Devane is excellent in showing his acquiescence to his non-life, going through the motions. He attends a ceremony in the small town square, in which a beauty pageant winner (Haynes) presents him with a box of silver dollars for each day he spent prisoner of the enemy, a hollow token paid for a life already spent.

That night, a small gang of local thugs enters the Ranes’ home, led by James Best (best known as deputy Roscoe P. Coltrane from “Dukes of Hazzard”). They want the silver dollars. Ranes won’t give in, so they force his hand into the kitchen sink garbage disposal, then shoot and kill his wife and son in their escape. Ranes is left with nothing but a hook and a need for vengeance, so he recruits the beauty queen waitress to drive him to Mexico. There, using her as bait, he penetrates the underworld to find and punish each thug, eventually pinpointing them to a whorehouse. He enlists his comrade Johnny (Tommy Lee Jones) in El Paso, arms to the teeth and they take bloody retribution. (NSFW – but but viewable here ~ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3doJ3jHQ01o.)

The movie works as a revenge flick, but watch out- (or drink more) because it could just make you think. Schrader’s hollow American hero is in full form here, driven by guilt, loss and regret on his mission to kill the bastards, the only mission left.


*Flynn ~ revenge auteur? (See also Out for Justice review, natch.)


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