Repost - The Big Hurt

Once upon a time a person could reasonably expect that whenever they went to see a movie one of the last things they would ever have to watch was the sight of a man’s penis being forcibly removed from his body.

Those times are over.

 
In the past few years a handful of filmmakers have taken it upon themselves to break what could be consider one of the last remaining cinematic taboos and deliver unto their audiences startlingly graphic depictions of castration.  Now that’s not to say they were the first to do this, as the history of exploitation cinema is peppered with titles that were willing to take aim straight at the area responsible for their male audiences’ most common and immediate fears.

For example, there’s the famous scene in Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S., in which the title character (memorably played by the unforgettable Dyanne Thorne) informs her now-former lover that it is her habit to neuter a man once he is no longer able to satisfy her insatiable sexual demands and then goes on to prove it with a very sharp surgical implement (an act that allows for the irony of her eventually being undone by his replacement, a Polish soldier whose priapism leads to her finally meeting her match).  Although the scene is nowhere near as graphic as the ones about to be discussed, it is interesting insofar as it’s the one significant act of violence against a male character in a film whose central theme is literally built upon the presentation of violence against women (Ilsa’s pet theory being that women are naturally capable of absorbing more pain than men, which she attempts to prove by inflicting a series of graphic tortures against every busty soft-core actress who was working in 1975).  One gets the sense that by presenting us with what most would consider the ultimate form of brutality that can be committed against a man, the filmmakers were hoping to offset the blatant misogyny of the rest of the film. 

 

It doesn’t, but at least they made the effort.

 

A much, much, much more extreme historic example of cinematic castration came courtesy of Doris Wishman, the infamous Floridian filmmaker whose oeuvre of soft-core sex flicks rank among the most ostentatiously repellent films ever made.  For her 1978 “documentary” (note: the term documentary generally implies a level of professionalism Wishman was never capable of at any time during her career, thus the use of quotation marks in this instance) Let Me Die A Woman, Wishman went so far as to film an actual sexual reassignment surgery, thus giving the world the most graphic depiction of male genital mutilation ever shown in an actual movie theater.  One can only assume that there was a dramatic drop in popcorn sales wherever the movie was shown.  Suffice it to say, I myself know this film only by its reputation and will happily spend the rest of my life never having seen it.  And lest you think me a lightweight for this admission, I have sat through her 1974 “classic” Double Agent 73--in which the supremely unattractive Chesty Morgan plays a spy with a special camera surgically implanted in one of her enormously floppy breasts--and in so doing suffered more than many of you can possibly imagine.

And, of course, there’s the scene I discussed in Day of the Woman where Camille Keaton gets revenge for her vicious, extended gang-rape by cutting off the junk of the guy who made it happen, as well as several more examples I’m too lazy to mention because if I did I’d have to link to their IMDb pages and that takes more time and effort than you’d ever think it would.  So, yes, there is a precedent of cinematic castration throughout the history of the art, but it’s only in the past few years that filmmakers have been so increasingly happy to take it to the furthest possible cringe-inducing level.

 

 

The most successful of these new castration films, both financially and critically, has to be Robert Rodriguez’s highly stylized adaptation of Frank Miller’s classic noir comic book, Sin City.  In that film, Bruce Willis, playing Hartigan—a cop who has spent years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit—finally gets his revenge against the deformed pedophilic senator’s son whose depraved acts sent him there.  After rescuing the young stripper whose jailhouse letters kept him alive, Hartigan vents his rage against that yellow bastard by grabbing his yellow cock and pulling it right off of his yellow body.  It’s a startling scene, especially since it features such an iconic performer in Willis doing the deed (and, yes, we have reached an age where Willis can justifiably be considered iconic), but this is the only time I’m going to mention it in this post because it doesn’t fit in with the previously unmentioned sub-theme I want to discuss, insofar that it involves a dude ripping off another dude’s dick, while all of the others involve much less craggy and more attractive usurpers of male penile domination.

 

The reality is that my interest in this recent phenomenon has less to do with any natural fascination with castration (I am, after all, a man and I happen to revere my phallus as much as any other Tom, Dick or Harry), but rather with the characters shown to be doing the castrating.  One is a wealthy young woman who is driven to commit her violent act as a desperate means of survival.  Another is a girl whose motives and identity are so clouded in mystery it’s possible to assume she’s not even human, but instead a divine angel of vengeance sent forth to avenge a terrible crime.  And the last is a true innocent whose strange “adaptation” turns her into the living embodiment of one of the world’s oldest and most universal of myths.  All three of them begin their stories as victims, but end them stronger than they were before—proving that the most extreme feminists were right, female empowerment really is just a matter of slicing off some dick's dick.

 

When I say that I am stunned and perplexed by the reaction Eli Roth’s Hostel: Part II received when it was released, I am speaking just as much as the serious cineste who can spend hours talking about the films of the usual gang of European arthouse auteurs as I am the genre enthusiast who’s devoted hours of his life deconstructing the thematic intricacies of Slumber Party Massacre II.  While my low-opinion of mainstream critics allowed me to expect that they would lack the insight to look beyond its premise and controversially graphic torture set pieces, I was shocked when many genre fans equally failed to grasp how successfully it worked as a sophisticated piece of Swiftian style satire.  Rather than acknowledge the interesting themes Roth chose to explore in this second film, both groups focused solely on its scenes of violence and dubbed the film a mere gender-reversed replica of the original.
    
But I would argue that by simply reversing the genders of his protagonists, Roth created what was both an inherently more interesting and thematically insightful film.  Whereas the first film focused on the irony of foreign tourists who use their wealth to exploit people in other countries, only to themselves become much more heinously exploited by far wealthier tourists with much more depraved tastes, the second takes a broader look at the global society in which such an underground industry could actively flourish.  In Hostel it is easy to imagine that had he not been lured into the enterprise as a victim, Jay Hernandez’s character, Paxton, would eventually grow up to become one of its customers, if only because of his stereotypical alpha-male tendencies and willingness to use the misfortune of others as a means to satisfy his own carnal pleasures.  The same cannot be said for Beth (Laura Germain) the second film’s protagonist, who—largely by virtue of her femininity—is infinitely more sympathetic and vulnerable than her predecessor, which makes her final transformation that much more dramatic and interesting.

For those of you who have yet to see either film, both are about a small town in Slovakia whose local economy revolves around luring young tourists into their quaint hostel, where they are subsequently kidnapped and sent to an abandoned Soviet-era concrete monstrosity.  There they are sold to wealthy businessmen who travel from across the world for the opportunity to enjoy the experience of torturing and killing another person without consequence.  While for most viewers the horror in both films lies in their graphic depictions of torture, I personally feel this is strongly superseded by the both the existence of the enterprise that allows this torture to happen and its apparent popularity.  As far as I’m concerned the most chilling sequence of the two films occurs in Part II, just after Beth and her two friends, Lorna and Whitney, have arrived at the titular hostel and—without their knowing it—have become the objects of desire in an international bidding war over the right to maim and kill them.

 

Just as Jonathan Swift satirized the heartless apathy of the ruling class by soberly suggesting that the solution to ending poverty was to eat the children of the poor, so too does Roth take aim at a culture of wealth that has become so bored with its own idle banality that the only way its members can feel something is by killing another human being.  In the second film he pursues this theme far further than in the original by including a B-plot involving the two men who have won the right to kill Beth and Whitney (Lorna having been sold to a Bathory-esque older woman who enjoys bathing in the blood of virgins).  Through them we are given a glimpse into the inner-workings of the business and the rules by which it is operated.

Watching the two friends interact it’s hard not to think of the two similar characters in Neil LaBute’s directorial debut In the Company of Men who decide to avenge their frustrations towards women by deliberately humiliating the most innocent woman they can find.  Todd (Richard Burgi) is the ringleader and alpha-male, while Stuart (Roger Bart) is the follower, who reluctantly goes along on the trip despite his grave moral concerns about what they are doing.  In that way they also resemble the two main protagonists from the first film, Paxton and Josh (Derek Richardson).  The clear subtext in the first Hostel was that Josh allowed himself to be ordered around by his more dominant friend because their manly adventures allowed him to avoid confronting his own closeted homosexuality, while in Part II Stuart follows Todd because their adventures together (all of which the far-wealthier Todd pays for) represent the only times in his life where he is able to escape the stifling bonds of his career and familial obligations.

 

But as their stories continue and the two friends at last find themselves in their leather butcher aprons and alone with the women they are now contractually obligated to murder (the organization’s secrecy is maintained by a kind of mutually assured destruction in which everyone who takes part is as guilty as everyone else) the true nature of their personalities come out.  Todd, the pure hedonist, who has dressed Whitney in the costume of a low-rent prostitute, at first seems to enjoy the experience, teasing his victim with a circular saw.  But when he slips and the weapon connects with her face and does actual damage, the seriousness and horror of the situation finally dawns on him.  Suddenly aware that this is not a game and that he is in a room with a real human being who screams and bleeds when she is injured, he panics and runs out of the room.  Informed that he must finish her off in order to meet his obligation, he refuses and is then mauled to death by a group of dogs kept around for just such occasions.

Stuart’s first instincts, on the other hand, are to attempt to rescue Beth—who he has dressed in the casual business attire worn by the women in his day-to-day life—but as the reality of the situation becomes more apparent to him he realizes he really does want to kill her.  Finally given a true outlet for all of the frustrations and humiliations he has swallowed down over the years, he realizes he actually relishes the chance to take it.  Given the opportunity to finish off Whitney for a reasonable discount, he happily decapitates her with a machete before returning to Beth, who has come to represent in his mind all of the women who have embarrassed and "castrated" him throughout his life.

But Beth is a very resourceful young woman.

More than anything it is her journey that I feel elevates Hostel: Part II to a far greater level than its detractors allow.  A very wealthy young woman following the death of her father, Beth has not only the will but also the resources required to be a kind and generous person.  Far more sensible than her party-girl friend Whitney, but also more cautious than the naïve Lorna, Beth is the most grounded and centered character in the film (her one quirk being her very strong and visceral reaction to anyone who calls her the dreaded c-word).  For this reason she is able to keep her head and figure out a way out of the torture chamber fate has thrown her into.  When Stuart returns to kill her, she is able to reverse their situations and attempts to bargain her way out with the man in charge.  The fate of his manhood (and life) literally in her hands, Stuart is unable to contain his rage and says the one thing guaranteed to ensure his emasculation.

 

  

Beth's transformation from pure victim to tattooed member of the exclusive Hostel club suggests that the truly unequal dynamic in Western culture isn't Male/Female, but instead Rich/Poor.  Paxton's luck and resourcefulness allowed him a small modicum of revenge against his tormentors, but ultimately his relative poverty doomed him to an inevitably violent death (the second film begins with his being decapitated in the one place where he feels safe and, later on in the film, his severed head is shown as the centerpiece in the Chairman's grotesque trophy room), whereas Beth is able to ensure her continued survival thanks to her inherited wealth.  For this reason there is a tremendous amount of sadness in her victory.  Despite her tremendous courage and intelligence, she escapes only because Stuart lacks the financial resources of his dead friend.  In the twisted logic of the world in which they live, she emasculates Stuart before she cuts off his dick simply by having a larger net worth than he does.

 

It is, in fact, this feeling of being less than--which he blames on his wife--that causes Stuart to forget his heroic instincts and embrace the worst impulses of his wounded masculinity.  Thus fate ensures that his symbolic castration becomes a literal one at the hands of a woman who he has subconsciously dressed in the attire of his metaphorical emasculater.

 

If one truly wanted to criticize Roth's film, you could argue that it lacks subtlety and his conclusions are fairly obvious.  I would disagree insofar as I believe that subtle satire is an oxymoron and that those filmmakers who attempt it inevitably create trite works of little to no impact.  And being obvious is usually only considered a fault by those viewers whose own detachment leads them to believe that "truth" is a  fantasy of the bourgeoisie (ie. most professional critics).  The problem is that either through deliberate obtuseness or inadvertent obliviousness many commentators, both mainstream and genre, refuse to acknowledge that the Hostel films exist on any other level than the showcasing of graphic violence--neglecting to criticize their themes not because they disagree with them but because they cannot bring themselves to admit that they exist.  However, even as shallow a deconstruction as the one provided above proves this to be demonstrably not the case.  As far as I'm concerned it's perfectly acceptable to dismiss Roth's work because you find his conclusions shallow or abhorrent, but it's an act of pure intellectual laziness to blithely ignore those conclusions and glibly negate the films by classifying them as "Torture Porn" or "Gorno".  And by "pure intellectual laziness" I, of course, mean utter stupidity.

 

 

Compared to the Hostel films, Hard Candy fared a lot better with critics, but not quite as well with several men I happen to know personally—some of who saw the film purely based on my recommendation of it.  Considering how much it affected me, I found their reticence towards it somewhat surprising.  Whenever I probed them to find out what it was they didn’t like about the film I found they were reluctant to say anything specific, but in each case it eventually became clear that their major problem was with the film’s young, female protagonist.

 

A two-handed character piece, the film is a psychological thriller about the dangers of online sexual predation, but not quite in the way most people would expect.  While Jeff Kohlver (Patrick Wilson) completely matches the profile of one of those idiots regularly caught on camera on Dateline NBC’s now infamous “To Catch a Predator” segments (if only a bit smoother, stylish and less obviously creepy) his young prey, Hayley Stark (Ellen Page), is not what you would call a typical 14 year old girl.  Not only is she the one who suggests that they meet together after flirting online, but it also soon becomes clear that she is nowhere near as innocent or defenseless as Jeff (and us viewers) assume.

It turns out that Hayley believes Jeff is guilty of a terrible crime and is willing to take dramatic action to ensure he is punished and doesn’t do it again.

 

Though they were loath to admit it, the reason my male friends refused to praise the film was because it forced them to make a choice they did not want to make—to either sympathize with a man who at best was a sleazy pedophile and at worst a rapist/murderer or the possibly delusional young woman who wanted to cut his balls off.  As loathsome as they found Jeff to be, they still could not bring themselves to endorse Hayley’s mission, because—as much as they didn’t want to—they identified with his plight and imagined themselves in his situation. 

The more I thought about it, the more it became clear to me that the castration sequence in Hard Candy is the male equivalent of Camille Keaton’s extended rape in Day of the Woman (aka I Spit On Your Grave), not only in terms of length (Jeff spends 34 of the film’s 100 minutes strapped to the table where the “operation” is performed) but also in its ability to shock and divide its audience.  As I noted in my way-too-long discussion of Meir Zarchi’s classic, film critic Roger Ebert denounced Day of the Woman as the worst film ever made because of his belief that the filmmaker had intended the audience to cheer on the brutal rape of its female protagonist, while it is my belief that Zarchi clearly wanted the audience to be disgusted by what they saw.  In much the same way, a person’s appreciation of Hard Candy depends on whether or not they believe that Hayley is acting rationally and that her actions are just.

There is much evidence to suggest that Jeff is guilty of the crime he is accused of, but it is all circumstantial at best.  It also doesn’t help Hayley’s cause that she cruelly toys with him as she makes her surgical preparations.  Justice should not be a game and sometimes it seems as though she is having too much fun playing vigilante.

 

Interestingly, though, one way this sequence differs from Day of the Woman’s rape sequence is that Meir Zarchi leaves nothing to the imagination, while Hard Candy’s David Slade is very careful to obscure what is going on.  Of course it later turns out that this is as much for narrative reasons as anything else, but his reticence does little to dull the impact of the sequence, which is the very definition of cringe inducing.  Due largely to its length and distressing ambivalence (Slade never allows us to assume that he sympathizes with either character) it is easily the hardest of the sequences discussed in this post for a person to sit through.

 

 

That said, I can admit now that unlike my peers who found themselves so troubled by Hayley’s actions they could not enjoy the film, I found myself unwaveringly with her 100% of the time.  Part of this is due to the strength of Ellen Page’s performance, which elevated her in my personal pantheon long before everyone caught up with Juno and part of it is due to my natural instinct to side with fictional female vigilantes, even when they do things I would never advocate a real person (female or otherwise) doing.

Some people find it impossible to separate their personal politics from their enjoyment of a film.  For the most part, these are people I try hard to avoid.  For me part of the fun of a film like this is that it allows me to embrace a dark side of my own personality I prefer to sublimate in my actual life.  Whereas in the world actual I believe there is no room for revenge in the pursuit of justice and therefore abhor capital or physical punishment of any kind (believing that the ultimate form of hypocrisy is for a government to claim that the only way the worst possible crime can be punished is by committing that crime itself), in the cinematic world I am allowed the freedom to embrace my inner redneck and cheer on Hayley as she cuts that pervert’s nuts off.

For this reason I found watching this sequence filled me with both revulsion and exhilaration—I squirmed in sympathy with Jeff, while cheering on Hayley’s act of so-called “preventative maintenance.”  As a result for me the truest moment of ambivalence came at the end of the sequence when Jeff, finally left alone, escapes from his bonds and discovers that Hayley has been fucking with him (and, in turn, Slade and screenwriter Brian Nelson, have been fucking with us).

 

 

Thus one of the most anxiety provoking castration sequences

in cinematic history is one in which no actual castration occurs at all.

 

In the final moments of the film, Hayley is able to get Jeff to finally confess his involvement in the crime she has accused him of.  He insists that all he did was watch and tells her the name of the real murderer, a man named Aaron.  Hayley tells him she's already visited Aaron and that he said the same thing about Jeff.  Confronted by his monstrosity and Hayley's (false) assurances that she will keep the one woman he's always loved from discovering his secret, Jeff commits suicide by hanging himself from his roof--a fate that seems almost anti-climatic following his pseudo-castration.

 

At the end of his extremely well-written and perceptive review of the film, online genre critic El Santo, points out that another reason--beyond her mere actions--that some people are put off by Hayley's character is her unnatural precocity and near-superhuman abilities, but the reason I didn't find this troubling was because I believed Slade and Nelson inserted subtle clues into the film that suggested that Hayley is not what she appears but rather something supernatural or possibly divine. 

 

When it comes to "accepting" a film, viewers have two options.  They can either compare it to the everyday reality they themselves know or they can judge what they see based on the world presented in the film.  You can either dismiss Hard Candy out of hand for never explaining how an 80 lb girl can so easily manhandle a man literally twice her size or you can use your imagination and come to your own conclusions on how she is able to do everything she does.

 

I made my decision in the film's final shot.  Though the red hood she wears is an obviously iconic reference to Little Red Riding Hood and her encounter with the Big Bad Wolf (an encounter whose final conclusion differs from telling to telling), I focused more on the look on her face.  She had done this before and would do this again, her focus and determination so ineffable that I couldn't help but assume that she was on a mission directly given to her by a vengeful and angry god.  It definitely helped when I heard the first word of the song that plays as the screen fades to black and goes to the final credits.

 

 

 

When I say that the last film in this post’s trilogy of modern castration classics surprised me, that is something of an understatement.  Not so much for its content—I knew going in what to expect on that end—but by rather how much I enjoyed it.  With all apologies to Christopher Nolan, Teeth remains my pick for best movie I’ve seen this year, although it does seem strange to compare this low-budget combination of horror and comedy to a project as monolithic as The Dark Knight.  

The film’s most immediate cinematic peer is the justly heralded cult classic Ginger Snaps, which remains one of my favourite films from this decade.  Both are horror tales about young female outcasts whose ascent into womanhood turns deadly due to forces within their own bodies they cannot control.  In Ginger Snaps, that force is the lycanthropy that causes young Ginger to embrace her carnal side as she descends into a state of permanent beastliness, while in Teeth it is the virginal Dawn’s discovery that she is the flesh and blood incarnation of one of the Earth’s oldest and most widespread myths.

One of the things I loved most about Mitchell Lichtenstein’s script is the risk he takes in making his protagonist a character most horror movies fans by nature would abhor—an abstinence-preaching goodie-goodie who wears her virginity on her sleeve and hangs out with friends so pious they refuse to see an R-rated movie.  In less deft hands Dawn (Jess Wexler) could have turned out to be as obnoxious a character as Mandy Moore’s in the supremely tiresome A Walk to Remember (not to be confused with her deliberately obnoxious character in the brilliant Saved!), but in one short sequence he gains her our sympathy by showing us that she is just as much an outcast as any black-shirted malcontent.

 

As audacious as Lichtenstein’s choice is, it does make perfect narrative sense, insofar as Dawn’s veneration of her own virtue explains away the story's potential biggest plot hole.  By making her essentially afraid of her own sexuality (as exemplified by her horrified reactions to her intensely erotic dreams) it becomes possible to appreciate how she has been able to avoid any potential physical examination that would expose her strange mutation.

Though the cause of this mutation is most likely linked to the presence of the enormous nuclear cooling tower visible just a few miles from her house (as is the cancer slowing killing her mother) Lichtenstein’s script also suggests that it is a natural evolutionary step—one that is necessary if women are ever to wrest themselves from the physical dominance of brutal, sex-obsessed males.

If ever there was a subject begging to be exploited in a horror movie setting, Vagina dentata has to take first prize.  While it has been used as a subtext (both consciously and accidentally) in many films, Teeth is one of the first to chuck metaphor out the window in favour of a direct representation of man’s biggest unspoken fear.  It’s genius, though, comes in the way it allows us to subvert that fear and compels us to cheer on the young woman who is the unwitting symbol of primal emasculation.  Rather than terrify us with a horrific descent into Dawn’s monstrosity, Lichtenstein chooses to create a story of empowerment in which Dawn’s mutation makes the slow transformation from inexplicable curse to exploitable gift.

 

Like Roth, Lichtenstein’s intentions are clearly satirical, which means its characters have been drawn to serve his thematic purposes rather than serve as three-dimensional representations of people found in our own non-cinematic reality.  That said it does seem only fair that in a film where its female protagonist is partially defined by the devastating power of her vagina, all of the male characters are shown to be incapable of making any decision not immediately linked to the desires of their penises.  In the world of Teeth, every male is a potential sexual predator, especially the nice ones who say all the right things.

This is a completely accurate depiction of the world as it really is.

I don’t mean to propagate the hoary old feminist cliché that every man is a wannabe rapist, but rather that the biological impulse to procreate remains strong enough that few men possess the inner-strength to ever completely disregard it.  In Teeth this is best represented by the character Tobey (Hale Appleman), a fellow “abstainer” whose chaste flirtations with Dawn quickly escalates into violence as a result of his own pent-up sexual frustration (“I haven’t even jerked off since Easter,” he shouts at her in an attempted mitigation of his assault).  During this, her first experience with intercourse, Dawn and Tobey both discover her hidden secret and following his entirely unexpected castration, he falls into the water they had been swimming in and does not come back up to the surface.

With this Dawn is not only forced to contemplate her mutation, but also her own sexuality for the first time in her life.  This leads to her first ever visit to a gynecologist in a scene that best exemplifies the film’s darkly humourous  tone.  Perhaps it says something about my own twisted sense of humour, but I laughed longer and harder the first time I watched this moment than during any other scene I’ve seen this year.

 

With this second incident a clear pattern begins to emerge.  Sensing Dawn’s unusual innocence, the men around her seek to exploit her sexual naiveté only to find out too late that they do so at their peril.  Though she lacks the experience to immediately recognize the inappropriateness of the doctor’s actions (his gloveless probing clearly treading past the line from routine examination into outright molestation), subconsciously she identifies the violation for what it is and her body takes action against it.  As will become clear with her next sexual experience, her strange “adaptation” does not act in opposition to her impulses, but directly with them.  Though she does not know it yet, she is in complete control of her sexuality—it is merely a matter of accepting and embracing it.

Overcome by her role in Tobey’s death, the doctor’s mutilation and her mother’s collapse and subsequent hospitalization, Dawn finds herself drawn to Ryan (Ashley Springer), a boy from school whose crush on her has always been flagrantly apparent.  He does his best to comfort her anxiety (including giving her some pills purloined from his mother), while also exploiting her duress for his benefit.  He decorates his room with candles and gives her wine, having correctly identified the romantic tropes she associates with the abdication of her virginity.  Touched by his gentleness and attention, Dawn engages with him in her first act of consensual intercourse and is shocked to find that when it ends he is none the worse for it.  Afterwards she examines her topless body in the mirror and already a new self-confidence is apparent in her bearing and demeanor.  In that moment she makes the visible transition from being a girl to becoming a woman, which makes what happens next all the more powerful.

About to leave, she is drawn back to Ryan’s bed for one more round of coitus, only to find out—via a phone call from his friend—that he has just successfully won a bet in which he would be the first to claim the pretty virgin’s maidenhood.  In that moment the last vestige of her innocence is extinguished for good and Ryan promptly meets the same painful fate of Tobey and the bad doctor.  Her reaction here is telling.  No longer terrified of what she can do, all she can muster in way of a response is a comic “Oh shit,” as she dismounts Ryan and leaves him screaming in his bed.  “Some hero,” she mutters to herself, having learned the truth behind her girlish romantic fantasies.

 

It’s interesting to note the degree to which the film allows its male "victims" to suffer.  As a full-on rapist, Tobey’s punishment is death.  The doctor, whose assault—while creepy—was not as violent or as obvious as Tobey’s is shown having his fingers reattached, but is also dramatically traumatized by the incident (“Vagina dentata,” he keeps repeating, “it’s real….”).  Ryan’s initial tenderness is “rewarded” in that he survives the encounter and is—like the doctor—shown having his severed organ reattached to his body, although he too will doubtlessly be traumatized for life.  Of them all it is her final “victim”—her stepbrother, Brad—who is punished with the worst of all the possible fates (at least from a decidedly male viewpoint).  

Dawn’s opposite in every way, Brad’s callousness is the direct result of his resentment over the marriage of his father to Dawn’s mother.  Not because of any lingering devotion to his own mother, but rather because of his feelings for Dawn.  By making her his sister, the marriage prevented him from ever being able to act upon his sexual desire for her in a socially acceptable manner.  For this reason when he hears his cancer-ridden stepmother collapse in the hallway, he ignores her cries and leaves her to be found by Dawn, who goes on to blame him for her subsequent death.

With this Dawn comes to realize that her “adaptation” is not a deformity, but rather an aspect of herself with which she can extract karmic justice.  She goes on to visit Brad in his room, dressed for seduction (albeit in a manner that reflects her goodie-goodie instincts) and proceeds to deliberately do to him what she unintentionally did to the others.  His suffering continues when Dawn defiantly drops his severed member onto his floor, only to watch as his pit bull escapes from its cage and proceeds to eat it in a couple of quick bites.  Unlike Tobey, who didn’t live long enough to appreciate what had happened to him, or Ryan, whose mutilation was only temporary, Brad is shown being completely robbed of his manhood without any chance for recovery.

The film then ends with Dawn leaving her small town by hitchhiking out on the highway,  And as much as I enjoyed everything that came before it, it is the film’s last scene that truly won me over.  Trapped in the car with an obnoxious old pervert, Dawn is first annoyed by the situation, but that annoyance visibly dissipates when she realizes that she, not he, is the one who is truly in control of what is going on.  Her smile at this awareness made me doing something I never do when I watch a movie—applaud.  It was the only response I could think of to justify how good it made me feel.

Of all the films, Teeth is the most graphic in its depiction of its castrations.  Though, unlike Hostel: Part II, we never actually see Dawn sever the penises from her “victims” bodies, we are exposed to much longer takes of the various aftermaths.  Yet it remains the least discomfiting of the three films, largely because rather than acts of overt hostility, its castrations are presented either as an unconscious reaction to an assault or emotional betrayal or—in the last case—a just act of revenge committed against an utter douchebag.  This is interesting in that it suggests that the power of onscreen violence has little to do with what we are actually shown onscreen but instead by how what we are being shown makes us feel.  Though some would suggest this serves as a good argument in defense of restraint, one could easily argue with just as much validity that the degree to which graphic violence is acceptable depends on how the filmmaker intends their audience to react when they see it.  In other words, it is foolish to suggest that one approach is better than the other when it all depends on the context in which they are used.

And that folks is my way-too-long look at a recent cinematic phenomenon only a freak like me would ever think to document.  It only took me two months to throw it all together and I'm already fairly certain it wasn't worth the wait....

Repost - Let Me Take You Down, Cuz I'm Going To....

I have a confession to make....

 

I

FUCKING

LOVE

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

 

 

But then who doesn't, right?  It's widely considered to be one of the most revolutionary and important musical works of all time, so professing your love for it is hardly controversial.  Except, of course, I'm NOT talking about the record album.

 

No, I'm talking about

THIS

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band:

 

 

And this DEFINITELY puts me in the minority, as the general consensus seems to be that this 1978 musical is a) a terrible sacrilege to the musical legacy of the men who composed the songs that define its existence, b) a tacky example of the worst show business excesses of its era and c) just an enormous piece of shit altogether.  I'll admit that this response does not strike me as being terribly unreasonable.  This is not a movie for the literal minded or for those who take ANYTHING at all seriously.  In order to appreciate this Robert Stigwood production, one must be possessed of a special, whimsical soul that is capable of being delighted by that which most others will invariably dismiss as "stupid" or "silly".  Now, I'm not saying that the grand majority who lack the ability to enjoy the odd pleasures of this film are cold, gray, soulless automatons who go through life never knowing what the sensation of joy feels like, but I am willing to suggest it.  Does my liking this film make me a better person than those who don't?  Probably, but it does seem a tad arrogant to say so with complete certainty.

 

Chances are many of you reading this have never seen the film and thus do not know on which side of this uneven divide you fall.  Here then is the quickest test to find out for sure, a brief clip of George Burns (as Mr. Kite) singing his own version of Fixing A Hole:

 

Personally, I find this clip to be incredibly sweet and charming--a perfect example of a form of pure showmanship that is largely extinct in today's cultural arena.  So used are we to charmless celebrities whose fame has nothing to do with any discernible talent, but rather their ability to sell tabloids to nosy womenfolk, that we forget there was a time when performers like Mr. Burns were expected to be able to do it all--sing, dance and act.  True, they weren't expected to be good at all three, but in most cases their natural charisma allowed you to ignore the kind of defects that might take down a less affable entertainer.  That said, I suspect that there are many people who will view this clip, roll their eyes and dismiss it as the apotheosis of lameness, largely because it features a performer who was considered old-fashioned before their parents were born.  Now, I'm not saying these snide folks are guilty of the kind of disturbing ageism that some of us had hoped had gone the way of the Dodo, but it is an accusation I find hard to resist.  Does not liking this clip mean that you hate old people?  Probably, but chances are your grandmother knows better than I do.

 

But then the presence of Mr. Burns as the film's narrator (an important role in a film otherwise completely devoid of dialogue--Sgt. Pepper being that most 70s of all projects, a rock opera) is not the major reason so many people seem to dislike it.  No, that burden is placed squarely on three hairy brothers from down under:

 

By the time the movie was made the Brothers Gibb were already well on their way to becoming the Celine Dions of their day.  That is to say, the more popular they became with the masses the more the cultural commentators of this world lamented their existence, essentially insisting that no one who took their music even the slightest bit seriously could enjoy listening to Staying Alive if only because it was so successful there was no way it could be any good.  Hip people hew closely to the principle that a project is only worthy of their attention if no one else in the world has noticed it, which makes them pretentious bastards.  Now, I'm not saying that an inability to appreciate the musical stylings of the Bee-Gees automatically makes you a pretentious bastard.  Does not liking them indicate that you're an elitest snob who clearly deserves a major beating?  Probably, but I'd leave that up to Barry and Robin to decide (Maurice, unfortunately, being far too dead at this point to offer up a relevant opinion).

 

But more than their essential uncoolness, what irked many people about the appearance of the Bee-Gees in the film was the genre of music for which the trio had become most famous.  Despite their being around since the mid-sixties, it was their disco soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever that catapulted them into superstar status and even at the ultimate height of its heyday, many people dismissed disco out of hand as a genre unworthy of their attention.  Though they would claim that it was the essential frivolity of the music that they disdained, the truth was that the major reason so many music fans adamantly insisted that "Disco Suck[ed]!" was because of its popularity with gay men.  The Village People serve as the clearest example of disco as a gay phenomenon, but the rise of divas such as Donna Summer and Gloria Gaynor, as well as the overt glam of such otherwise hetero acts as Earth, Wind & Fire (who also appear in Sgt. Pepper) and the images of clearly homosexual men dancing to the music in popular nightclubs such as "Studio 54", were more than enough to frighten uptight rocker dudes into thinking that approving of anything related to the genre would put an automatic question mark on their masculinity.  Now, I'm not saying that disapproving of the Bee-Gees meant that a person was a rabid homophobe.  Does not liking joyful dance music always indicate that a person is more likely to commit a violent hate crime?  Probably, but I'll leave it to your gay cousin to decide (and if you don't have a gay cousin, then that either means you're someone else's gay cousin or have some serious soul-searching to do sometime in your future).

 

Some of you cleverer folks, however, will have noticed that there is a fourth, non-Gibb member of the group shown in the above clip.  He, of course, is Peter Frampton.  Watch this to get a better look at him:

 

It is entirely acceptable to hate Peter Frampton.  I don't, but in this case at least, I can forgive those who do.

 

Moving on, some people apparently take issue with the performance of Miss Sandy Farina as Strawberry Fields--arguing that since it marked both her first and last significant film role that she clearly did not deserve to be showcased in an effort of this magnitude.  I'll let you decide for yourself by offering up this clip of her performing the song from which her character received her exotic name:

 

I don't see what these folks are talking about.  Miss Farina was clearly a talented singer and an attractive young woman and it wasn't like the film demanded strong thespic skills from her.  No, my guess is that the antipathy she received was the result of Beatles' fans automatic distrust of any women who came close to the music of their idols.  In much the same way many of them took to thinking of Yoko Ono as the devil, while they also demonized Linda McCartney for being in Wings, so too did they curse this lovely young woman for having the nerve to perform music she should know was above her station.  Now, I'm not saying that people who don't like her performance are all evil misogynists.  Does not liking Sandy Farina serve as proof of an unconscious hatred towards the entire female gender?  Probably, but I'll leave it to Gloria Steinem to tell you why.

 

Another reason so many people seem to hate the film is that in order to reach a happy conclusion it resorts to that oldest of all possible theatrical cliches--the deus ex machina:

 

 

Call me overly PC if you want, but I cannot help but worry that the reason so many folks are disturbed by this conclusion is because in this case the "God in the Machine" is a black man (Billy Preston to be exact).  Compound this with the fact that the film was directed by Michael Schultz, whose previous hits Cooley High, Car Wash and Which Way Is Up? had made him the most successful African-American filmmaker to make his mark in Hollywood up to that time and it is hard not to suspect that an undercurrent of bigotry informs many people's dislike of the film.  Now, I'm not saying hating Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band means you're a despicable racist.  Actually, I am.  Deal with it.

 

Finally the film ends, some would say infamously, with a lip-syncing chorus of late 70s era c-list celebrities, including: Peter Allen, Keith Allison, George Benson, Elvin Bishop, Stephen Bishop, Jack Bruce, Keith Carradine, Carol Channing, Charlotte Crossley, Sharon Redd, Ula Hedwig, Jim Dandy, Sarah Dash, Rick Derringer, Barbara Dickson, Donovon, Randy Edelman, Yvonne Elliman, Jose Feliciano, Leif Garrett, Geraldine Granger, Adrian Gurvitz, Billy Harper, Eddie Harris, Heart (aka Ann and Nancy Wilson), Nona Hendryx, Barry Humphries, Etta James, Dr. John, Bruce Jonston, D.C. LaRue, Jo Leb, Marcella Detroit, Mark Lindsay, Nils Lofgren, Jackie Lomax, John Mayall, Curtis Mayfield, 'Cousin Brucie' Morrow, Peter Noone, Alan O'Day, Lee Oskar, The Paley Brothers, Robert Palmer, Wilson Pickett, Anita Pointer, Bonnie Raitt, Helen Reddy, Minnie Riperton, Chita Rivera, Johnny Rivers, Monti Rock III, Danielle Rowe, Sha-Na-Na, Del Shannon, Joe Simon, Jim Seals, Dash Croft, Connie Stevens, Al Stewart, John Stewart (presumably a different John Stewart), Tina Turner, Frankie Valli, Gwen Verdon, Diane Vincent, Grover Washington Jr, Hank Williams Jr, Johnny Winter, Wolfman Jack, Bobby Womack, Alan White, Lenny White and Margaret Whiting (note: those in bold indicate people I've actually heard of):

 

This, I am willing to concede, is every bit as terrible as most people think it is, but I would argue that it is the single flaw that otherwise highlights the perfection of everything that has preceded it.

 

Now, I'm sure that those of you who keep up on your recent films are aware that just last year another film, Across the Universe, attempted to turn the Beatles' songbook into a full-fledged musical and I suspect you're assuming this is where I tear that effort apart as a cheap imitator and pathetic also-ran, but I simply cannot do it.  As imagined and directed by Julie Taymor, the film is a flat-out, no-bullshit, jump-for-joy artistic triumph.  As much as I love Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (and I DO love it, even more so every time I see it), Across the Universe is clearly in a different league altogether.  Whereas the first film is a silly little piece of fluff you have to be a serious asshole to hate, the latter film dances on the edge of being something wholly profound, so much so that a person's decision not to embrace it indicates as much a failure of the intellect as well as the soul.  It is a film I will never forget, if only for how it transformed "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" from a simple declaration of love into a moving lament of forbidden longing:

 

Repost - Jason Goes to Hell

 

Having just recently dipped my toes into the murky, deadly waters of Camp Crystal Lake, I thought I’d wait awhile until I indexed another installment in the Friday the 13^th series (which, for reasons I myself cannot decipher, is the only major horror franchise I own in its entirety) but then it occurred to me that having pinpointed A New Beginning’s lack of any genuine Jason Voorhees action as its fatal flaw, it could be enlightening to talk about the film for which that exact same narrative attribute is its chief virtue.  

In truth, many fans would disagree with this assessment, insisting that today’s film is just as misbegotten as A New Beginning, both for its heresies against the Crystal Lake mythology and general crappiness.  One only has to look at their respective IMDb pages to appreciate this—4,745 registered users have given A New Beginning an average rating of 3.6/10, while 4,365 voters have given our present subject an average rating of 3.9/10.  

 

This is fucked up.  A New Beginning deserves a much, much, much lower score than 3.6 and today’s movie definitely deserves better than a measly 3.9, but their .3 difference in public regard serves as ample proof that often people’s expectations blind them to what they are actually seeing.

Fanboys are a fickle, impossible-to-please group of malcontents.  Obsessed with re-experiencing the simple pleasures of their childhoods, they are forever doomed to disappointment as their loss of innocence and ascent into adulthood makes finding those experiences virtually impossible.  In part this because on the one hand they demand that they be surprised and delighted by things they have never seen before, while also insisting that filmmakers do not deviate even one iota from their frequently-ridiculous narrow realm of expectation. 

 

This leads to such amusingly paradoxical situations as people online spending years and years demanding that a studio commit hundreds of millions of dollars to make a live-action version of an adored cartoon from their childhood, only to react with terrible fury when a studio finally takes the bait but—CAN YOU FUCKING BELIEVE IT?—doesn’t make it EXACTLY like they imagined it should be.  I’ve never actually seen the first live-action version of Scooby-Doo, but I did find it hilarious that when it was released so many online commentators were outraged that a movie based on a TV show they had watched as children was <GASP!> turned into a movie actually intended for children!  

This is why today’s film, which is a perfectly enjoyable and adeptly made example of the slasher movie, is held in such low regard—not because of what it actually is—a fun rip-off of The Hidden—but because of what it isn’t—all Jason, all of the time.

Of course, I’m talking about:

 

 

For a time it appeared that Jason Goes to Hell was actually going to be true to its words and in fact be The Final Friday--unlike Part IV, whose status as The Final Chapter didn't even last a year before we saw the nigh-craptaculer A New Beginning.  That this is the case seems especially odd given the history of the film.  Unlike the previous 8 films in the franchise, JGTH wasn't produced by Paramount Studios, which had finally decided after the lacklustre b.o. of Jason Takes Manhattan that they finally had the opporunity to do what they had always wanted and get out of the Friday the 13^th business for good.  But rather than just bury the series, they decided to make a quick buck and sell the rights to it to New Line, the little studio that could, which at that time was best know for its A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, but would later become a far-more major Hollywood player as the studio behind the Lord of the Rings trilogy. 

 

This wouldn't be the first time New Line purchased the rights to an apparently moribund horror movie franchise.  In 1990 the studio had attempted to restart the inert Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise with Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, but the film seemed to be cursed from its conception and failed to make an impact with horror fans, many of whom resented the changes the movie made to the previous film's characters and back story. 

 

Since it's impossible to believe that the studio would buy the rights to the franchise simply to bury it, one has to assume that they dubbed it The Final Friday not because they actually believed they wouldn't continue the series if the film proved to be a hit, but because a) they figured that they might trick sentimental fans who were disappointed by the last few Paramount films into seeing it and b) they were going to rejigger the formula to such a noticeable degree that the next film in the series could reasonable be released as The New Friday.  For proof of this one only has to take a look at a film they released a year after JGTH, 1994's New Nightmare, which attempted to take the apparently-concluded A Nightmare on Elm Street series into an entirely new direction.

 

But unlike A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 6: Freddy’s Dead, which earned enough money to justify the making of New Nightmare, JGTH proved to be as much of a flop as Leatherface had been three years earlier.  Rather than reinvent the franchise, which had been it’s obvious intended purpose, the ninth Friday the 13^th instead did what it had advertised and stopped the series cold, forcing fans to wait 8 years before Jason Voorhees finally returned to the screen in 2001’s Jason X, which—like Jason Lives—solved the continuity problems created by its predecessor simply by ignoring them and taking the series in an entirely new direction.

However the story of JGTH doesn’t end there.  Despite all of the antipathy it earned upon its release, the film was notable for including a final shot that teased a confrontation that fanboys everywhere spent a decade demanding they be able to see, only to vehemently decry the result once it was given to them and wasn’t exactly what they wanted or expected.

 

But enough with the backstory, let's talk about the actual movie.

In attempting to reinvent the franchise, the makers of JGTH, decided to do something at the beginning of the film all of their predecessors insisted on leaving to the end—they killed Jason (in so far as Jason can be killed).  And not only did they kill him—in the words of the exalted critics of SCTV’s fabled “Prairie Film Report”—“They blew him up real good!”

For it’s opening sequence alone the 9^th Friday the 13^th deserves to be held in much higher regard than it’s spiritual peer A New Beginning.  Unlike the fifth film, which is so inept that it plays like a self-parody when it clearly isn’t, JGTH immediately establishes a sly self-mocking tone that it carries with it throughout its entirety. 

 

The film begins with a beautiful young brunette driving to a cabin out at the infamous Crystal Lake.  Although she first appears in the overtly tomboyish clothes of a final girl, she wastes no time stepping out of them and revealing an amazingly toned body as she takes her requisite shower.  But no sooner does she get out of the bathtub and cover herself with a towel then she is attacked by a machete wielding Voorhees.

 

Clad only in the towel (which she apparently stapled onto her body, such is its determination not to come off) she runs from the cabin and is chased by the zombified murderer throughout the forest.  Despite her obvious athleticism (she easily hurdles the hood of her own car) she somehow manages to trip and fall several times before she arrives at a large clearing where Jason catches up to her and goes in for the kill.  But this isn’t no ordinary clearing and no ordinary uber-hottie in a towel.  As he steps towards her, a series of bright spotlights turn on and illuminate the area.  A squadron of soldiers appear from behind camouflage and begin to attack the confused maniac.  True to his nature, Jason is able to absorb hundreds of bullets without any seeming affect, but even he proves no match for the missile that is fired at him from a helicopter up above.  Our favourite anti-hero explodes into a hundred little pieces, including his dark, black heart, which is ordered to be bagged up by the officer in charge, who also takes the time to congratulate the still-towel-clad Agent Marcus.

 

Not Safe For Work!

 

With this, director Adam Marcus (who was only 24 when the movie was made) and his screenwriters manage to both honour, mock and seperate themselves from the cliches and necessary contrivances of the series and the genre it helped to spawn before the film's opening credits have even appeared onscreen, which then allows them to move on to what amounts to an admittedly cheesy, but still entertaining riff on a classic sci-fi/horror movie New Line released 6 years earlier.

 

In Jack Sholder's The Hidden, two police officers--one human, one alien--join forces to track down a psychopathic parasite that is able to fulfill its voracious physical and monetary desires by jumping into different human hosts (including--most memorably --a pre-Babylon 5 Claudia Christian).  In JGTH, the evil spirit of Jason Voorhees remains alive in his evil black heart, which--after his decimation--is taken to the medical examiner who has been tasked to perform the autopsy on Jason's various remains.  Unfortunately for the examiner Jason's evil is too great to be defeated for long and it compells the poor man to eat the pulsating organ, causing his body to be taken over by Voorhees' murderous psyche, which--like the parasite in the earlier movie--is able to jump into another person's body whenever the one it's currently in proves to be no longer desirable.

 

And this time our anti-hero actually has a mission.

 

Did you know that Jason Voorhees had a sister?  Turns out he did and she's a dead ringer for Wilma Deering, which suggests that the genetic material swirling around the Voorhees clan was capable of very high highs and very low lows.  Strangely, no one around her seems to know this except for the mysterious bounty hunter who's offered to catch Jason for the princely sum of $250,000, which is odd since she still lives in the area around Crystal Lake and you'd think it would eventually come up in conversation:

 

Small Town Yokel #1: Hey, there's that Diana Kimble.  She was the prettiest girl in our class.

Small Town Yokel #2: Wasn't there some fuss awhile ago involving her family?

Small Town Yokel #1: Well, there was the time everyone thought her retarded brother drowned at the lake down the road, because some teenagers were too busy fooling around to look out for him.  That bothered her mother some, so she killed a bunch of kids, before she got her head chopped off, which was a shame because it turned out that the boy hadn't died, but had instead raised himself alone in the woods.  He hadn't seen his mother for awhile, but he got mighty annoyed when he heard what had happened to her, so he decided to kill some kids on his own.  They eventually killed him, but he rose out of the grave like one those whatchamacallits--

Small Town Yokel #2: --Zombies--

Small Town Yokel #1: --That's right.  Since then he's been an unstoppable monster leaving nothing but misery and terror in his horrible wake.

Small Town Yokel #2: I guess that's why she changed her name.

Small Town Yokel #1: Actually no.  She just married some fellow named Kimble.  It lasted long enough for them to have a kid, who's all grown up now.  Lately she's been dating the sheriff and working as a waitress at the restaurant that serves hamburgers shaped like the mask her evil zombie brother wears.

Small Town Yokel #2: The sheriff, huh?  What does he think about her family?

Small Town Yokel #1: Y'know, I've never heard him bring it up.

 

But before this becomes too big of a plot-hole, the possessed M.E. arrives at the lake to kill some campers Jason-style, including one unlucky young woman who I think earns the title of goriest death in the series. 

 

Judge for yourself (warning--even censored this probably ain't safe for work): 

 

(Note: Once again use your mouse pointer to create some truly gory misogynistic mayhem) 

 

It turns out that Jason requires the body of a fellow Voorhees to return to his full NHL ready form, which leaves him with just Diana, her grown up daughter Jessica and Jessica's newborn baby as his only options for salvation.  But, luckily for the world at large, these three also have the ability--while wielding a magical dagger--to stop the black sheep of their family once and for all.  Thus the majority of the movie is composed of Jason's spirit jumping around in different people's bodies doing that voodoo he do so well, the frantic attempts by the father of Jessica's baby to prove that he isn't responsible for the murders and save the woman he still loves and Jessica learning about the extreme nature of her family tree. 

 

In short, JGTH actually has a plot, which is probably the major reason so many fans of the series have seen fit to reject it.  In truth, most average viewers will finally little praiseworthy in the film, but I found it just so darn goofy and energetic that I couldn't help but like the lil' fella.  It helps that I took the time to listen to the commentary by director Marcus and co-screenwriter Dean Lorey, which is one of the more honest and entertaining audio track discussions I've had the pleasure of hearing.  Both men were in their mid-twenties when they made the film and are only too happy to admit to its flaws while also pointing out many of its less-noticeable strengths.  They describe how the film released to theaters with an R-rating was admittedly much more confusing than the unrated video version, which may also account for its dire reputation.  They neither defend nor seem ashamed of the film they made, enjoying it purely for what it is, which makes them far more enjoyable to listen to than someone defending the indefensible or apologizing for something they don't need to feel sorry for.

 

And, make no mistake, neither Marcus nor Lorey have anything to feel sorry about.  They made an amusing film on a low-budget that is disliked by many only because it wasn't exactly what they had expected when they purchased their ticket or rented the video.  They would do well to ignore what the film isn't and instead enjoy it for what it is.

  

And, of course, I can't talk about Jason Goes to Hell without mentioning its immortal final shot, which caused so many fanboys to ruin a perfectly good pair of pants.  But since words don't do it justice, I shall allow images to say it for me instead:

 

 

(Note: You really should know what you have to do right now)

 

Slasher Statistics

 

Body Count: 21 (15 male/6 female)

Shower Scenes: 2

Instances of Nakedity: 3 

Obligatory Has Beens: I'm sorry Erin, but it had been a long time since Silver Spoons....

Instruments of Death: Mesh Table, Car Door, Crow Bar, Knife Sharpener, Brute Force, Boiling Oil, Machete, Magical Dagger and Evil Spirit Possession

Creepy (and therefore suspicious ) Old Guys: 0

References to Pot: 1 (some folks talk about smoking pot, but we don't actually see them do it)

Amount of Time Required to Correctly Identify Killer: N/A 

Cheesy References to Other Horror Movies: Beyond the ending's obvious nod to Wes Craven's most famous work, the movie also features an officially approved Sam Raimi shout out in the appearance of The Evil Dead's Necronomicon Ex Mortis, which our hero finds on a shelf in the old Voorhees homestead.

Utterly Pointless Trivia:  John D. Lemay who plays Steven, the film's male lead, also starred in the Paramount produced Friday the 13^th tv series, which--beyond it's title--had nothing to do with the films. 

Final Girl Rating: 6 out of 10

 

Repost: The Strange Tale of the Cute Girl With the Robot Brain

It has been a long while since I last saw a film so insane I felt immediately compelled to document its madness in excruciating detail here at the H of G, but a few nights ago I decided on a whim to pop in a disk I’d been sitting on since I picked it up in a boxed set last December and…well…here we are.

I hope you’re comfortable, because I don’t think this is going to be brief.

I got about halfway through the movie before I started debating with myself over whether what I was watching was a What Were They Thinking Movie (WWTTM) or a Bad Film I Love Anyway (BFILA).  At first I was convinced it was the former, given the film’s wildly disparate tone and combination of seemingly mutually exclusive elements, but as I continued watching it occurred to me that with a better script, the story being told could have made for an admittedly bizarre, but still genuinely good movie, which put it firmly in the latter category.  

More than any other era in filmmaking, the 1980s provided us with the greatest number of what I like to call Conference Room Classics.  These are films that are so overtly contrived to appeal to as many viewers as possible that you can actually hear in your head the boardroom discussion between a group of coked up movie executives that brought them into existence as you watch them.  Today’s subject is an archetypal example of this lamentable and unheralded genre and here is just a small snippet of the conversation I imagined as I watched the movie:

Studio Executive #1: So, Douchebag, I hear you picked up the rights to an interesting new novel.  Tell us about it.

Studio Executive #2: Thanks, Asshole!  It’s a great idea with plenty of potential.  It’s about this kid who’s a super-genius.

Studio Executive #3: I love it!Studio Executive #2: Hold on, Shit-for-brains!  I haven’t even gotten to the good part yet.  So the kid is such a super-genius, his best friend is an adorable artificially intelligent robot he built himself.

Studio Executive #1: Wow.  I think I just came in my pants!  That sounds just like that Steve Guttenberg movie TriStar is making.  They say it’s going to be a big hit!

Studio Executive #4: This sounds great!  We need a good family comedy on our slate.

Studio Executive #2: You didn’t let me finish Dickface!  This isn’t a family comedy!  It’s a horror movie!

Studio Executive #1, 3 & 4: SAY WHAT?

Studio Executive #2: Y’see the super-genius kid is new in town because he’s such a super-genius he’s already enrolled at the local college, and he falls in love with the cute blond girl who lives next door.

Studio Executive #4: I like cute blond girls.  Cute blond girls are good,

Studio Executive #2: So they become really good friends and everything seems like it’s all going to be happy and stuff, but then the robot gets destroyed by the crazy woman who lives across the street and the girl gets killed by her abusive alcoholic father.

Studio Executive #3: That’s sad.

Studio Executive #2: But the kid is such a super-genius he figures out that he can bring his friend back to life by implanting the same microchip that powered his robot into her brain.

Studio Executive #1: That makes sense!

Studio Executive #2: The problem is that when the girl comes back to life, she’s like a robot and doesn’t have a…whatayacallit…y’know that thing that makes people feel bad about the stuff they do….

Studio Executive #1. 3 & 4: (Long silence)

Lowly Assistant: A conscience?

Studio Executive #2: That’s it, Lowly Assistant!  You’re fired!  Now, she doesn’t have a conscience, so she goes around killing the people who did her and the robot wrong.

Studio Executive #3: That’s so scary!

Studio Executive #1: I just came and shit in my pants at the same time!  Really!  I’ll show you if you’d like!

Studio Executive #4: It’s got everything!  The kids will like the cute robot, the teenagers will like the gore and the adults will like the emphasis on higher education.

Studio Executive #2: So I take it you guys want to make it into a movie?

Studio Executive #1, 3 & 4: FUCK YEAH!

Studio Executive #2: Great.  I think we can get the guy who made Nightmare on Elm Street to direct it.

And they did.

Today’s film not only earns the title of the Second Worst Wes Craven Movie of All Time (with it being just narrowly beaten out by The Hills Have Eyes Part II), but it also earns the award for the Second Worst Horror Movie Script Ever Written By A Future Oscar Winner (with Brian Helgeland’s 976-EVIL taking the top spot in this case).It is, as the above dialogue would suggest, an odd hybrid of a horror movie without a moment of tension or suspense and a fanciful children’s adventure that contains far too much violence and bad language to be in any way appropriate for a younger audience.  

The popular term in Hollywood for this kind of failed combination is a Feathered Fish—named so because the poor creature can neither swim nor fly and merely lies there on the ground, satisfying neither of the potential diners for whose palates it has been bred.  For most folks these poor creatures are best avoided at all costs, but to us gourmands of misbegotten cinema, they are tastier than the finest high-priced Russian caviar and by that standard, today’s subject is easily worth $1000 an ounce.

I am, of course, talking about:

 

Now before I spank Craven too hard for his second biggest filmic fiasco, I should acknowledge some of the background history that mitigates his failure, even if just a little.  By the time he got around to making this, his eighth official feature film (he had also directed four TV movies by then), he had truly been put through the show business wringer.

His first (credited) film The Last House On the Left was an enormously profitable hit, but it was so controversial and alienating that it took him five years before he got his next gig directing The Hills Have Eyes.  It too was a hit, but his follow-ups Deadly Blessing and Swamp Thing (a comic book adaptation seriously marred by budget difficulties) failed to make a mark at the box office.  As a result he was unemployed for two years before he finally got the chance to direct his original screenplay A Nightmare On Elm Street.  The result was one of the most important horror films of the 80s, but his deal with New Line Cinema kept him from financially capitalizing on its success.  To add insult to injury, not only was he denied a piece of the enormous franchise he created, but was left to fend for himself when another screenwriter accused him of plagiarizing Nightmare and took him to court.

Broke and in desperate need of a job, he agreed to make The Hills Have Eyes Part II, but wasn’t given a big enough budget to produce a complete film—a problem he solved by having nearly half the film consist of flashbacks to the original.  With the case against him finally dismissed, he remained in dire financial straits and eagerly accepted the next job that was offered him.  In this case it was his first feature film for a major studio (his previous efforts having all been made by smaller independent companies), which meant that for the first time in his career he had an adequate budget to work with, but also meant that he now had to deal with a level of creative interference he had never experienced before.  Unused to dealing with the petty demands of egotistical, coked-out executives, Craven lost control of the project and did his best to give the suits the movie they all seemed to so desperately want.

And that’s the film for which I am about to rip him a new one.

As for the film’s soon-to-be-heralded screenwriter, I can’t provide a similar defense since I’m not as well versed in the background of Bruce Joel Rubin.  I do know that this was the first produced screenplay for which he got sole attribution (he received a story credit for Natalie Wood’s last film Brainstorm), but I cannot tell you if its incompetence on virtual every technical and creative level was the result of his being a relative neophyte, a lazy hack or his craven desperation to please the clearly misguided folks signing his paychecks.  Whatever the case, his second produced screenplay, Ghost, won him an Oscar, while his third, Jacob’s Ladder, resulted in a genuine cinematic classic, so—if anything—what you are about to see does prove that in Hollywood it’s always possible to bounce back from anything, no matter how dire it may seem at the time. And believe you me, after this movie was released things must have seemed pretty damn dire.

Now let us get on with the petty sarcasm!

 

Staying true to what we are about to watch for the next 90 minutes, Craven and Rubin manage to present us with a logical blunder in the film's very first scene, even before the credits have been allowed to roll.  The film starts with a thief breaking into a car parked in front of grocery store, so he can help himself to the cash found inside the wallet left conveniently on the driver side seat.  But before he can make his getaway, he's stopped by a mechanical hand that appears from the back seat and grabs him firmly by the throat.  When we're given a glimpse of this unseen vigilante's POV, it becomes clear that we are dealing with some sort of mechanical automaton and not a one-armed man with the coolest 80s era prosthetic limb of all time.  The thief escapes from the vehicle without the money, just as our protagonist and his mother--the car's owner--walk out of the store, carrying their purchases.

What, you ask, is so illogical about this?  Lemme answer you by asking a question of my own....

How did Mom pay for the groceries if her wallet was in the car?

Now I suppose a creative person could come up with a dozen answers to this question, but my experience as a hack writer knows that the only one that matters is: Who cares!  We need the wallet to be in the car, so the thief has something to steal!  Now, one could respond to this by asking why the thief couldn't just try and steal the car itself, but once again the hack writer in me already knows the response: The robot we built would never have been able to grab the actor's throat if he was sitting in the front seat, so we had to have him steal something he could pick up in a much more technically convenient position.

One of the misconceptions among non-creative folks is the idea that logical errors happen in movies because no one involved in the production was smart enough to point them out at the time.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I would say that about 90% of the time, the author of a work can successfully name every single logical inconsistency that appears in their finished work--to the point that they are able to point out examples no one else would ever catch.

Why then don't they correct these mistakes?

Mostly it's pure laziness (you have to remember that most folks become writers to avoid ever having to do real work), but in a lot of cases it's a matter of resigned pragmatism.  Often correcting a mistake causes more problems than it actually fixes and it's better to just ignore the blunder and hope no one makes too big a deal out of it.  Unfortunately, we now live in a world filled with millions of assholes like me who take a twisted sort of delight in making exactly that sort of deal out of them. Hell, I've just spent two paragraphs discussing the movie's most minor error in logic!

What am I going to do when the shit really hits the fan?

Back to the movie, after our hero and his mom return to their car, we see them interacting together as they drive to their new home.  It's immediately apparent that Paul Conway (Matthew Laborteaux) is a smart kid who has a loving, close relationship with his foxy mother, Jeannie (Anne Twomey).  When they finally arrive at their destination we get to see just how smart he is when we see the mysterious backseat passenger exit from the vehicle.

A genuine prodigy, Paul has built his best friend, BB, all by himself--an achievement made all the more amazing by the robot's sophisticated artificial intelligence, which stands lightyears away from anything that exists even today, 22 years later.

Hey!  This raises an interesting question!

Where the Hell did Paul get the money to build BB?

By 1986 the home computer movement was in full swing, but the market was still decades away from creating affordable hardware with the processing power needed to create a genuine artificial intelligence.  When you consider that a remote-controlled puppet designed to merely create the illusion of such an achievement would have cost the production at least $100,000 (and probably closer to double that), it wouldn't be unreasonable to suggest that in 1986 dollars, BB would have been a $10,000,000 investment (including both hardware and labour).

Now, I know you're thinking I'm going to far.  "It's called the willful suspension of disbelief, buttmunch!" I hear you mutter to yourselves as the glow from your computer screen slowly gives you a strange new cancer that hasn't been identified yet, but let me defend my nitpickiness by arguing that this is a film that takes all notions of credibility and shoots them in the back of the head so it can go back to their house and sodomize their crippled grandmother.

And it is for that reason that I feel no guilt as I focus on every little nit that I find to pick. More than anything else, the depiction of BB is what is responsible for the film's odd contradictory tone.  All of the scenes featuring the robot attempt to recreate the moments of patronizing faux-hilarity that are familiar to anyone who grew-up watching films like Unidentified Flying Oddball on The Magical World of Walt Disney and they bear no relationship to the nightmarish imagery that follow them.

Witness this typical example:

 

 

 

Now even if the purpose of the first twenty pages of a screenplay is to introduce all of the elements that will be important in the final 70, one does have to assume that there are less obvious ways to go about it than the way Rubin presents here.  I say this because of his decision to introduce the "good" and "bad" characters in what can only be called an assembly-line order.

Let's start with the "good guys"!

The first character we meet is the neighborhood paperboy, Tom "Slime" Toomey (Michael Sharett), who is plum amazed to discover a technical marvel as amazing as BB the yellow robot.  I'm assuming that his odd nickname is a holdover from the novel, since it's an utter non sequitur in the movie. Next up is Dr. Johanson (Russ Marin), the neurosurgeon/professor who helped Paul get his scholarship to the university.  You could be forgiven for assuming that Paul's creation of BB would make him a perfect engineering or computing student (in an age that predated robotics as a field of academic pursuit), but apparently his ability to program BB's A.I. comes from his nearly superhuman understanding of the human brain and not from his mad hacker skillz. And, finally, we have Samantha "Sam" Pringle (Kristy Swanson).  The cute blond girl who lives next door, who has a painful secret (and, as Slimey so eloquently observes when Paul asks him about her, "great tits").

 

 

Now let's look at the "bad guys" (aka the assholes who have to die)!

 

Just seconds after we're introduced to Sam, we get our first glimpse of her father, Harry (Richard Marcus), who even just standing at a distance in his doorway clearly looks like the possessive, abusive alcoholic he quickly proves himself to be.

Equally detestable is Elvira Parker (Anne "Honest To Goodness Oscar Nominee" Ramsey), the crazy old woman whose yard is protected by a six-foot chain link fence that is kept shut via a combination lock and who greets any potential intruders with her trusty shotgun.

And just to up the asshole body count to a more satisfactory number than 2 we have Carl (Andrew Roperto), a neighborhood ruffian whose crotch learns the hard way what happens to folks who mess with BB's creator.

Now that we've been properly introduced to all of the film's principal characters, the plot can start in earnest.  Rubin sets it in motion by having Sam appear in Paul's doorway with a gift of snack cakes.  Despite appearing to be eager to make a new friend, she is visibly anxious the whole time she's there, which makes sense when her psychotic father comes to pick her up.  Of all the stereotypical characters in the film (and they're all stereotypical characters) Sam's dad is easily the most absurdly hackneyed.  Hell, BB is given more shading and complexity than he is.  One wonders if Craven felt he was showing restraint by not having drool dabbed around Marcus' lips before each shot, since he was more than willing to do everything else he could to sell the idea that Harry Pringle is a bad, bad man.

 

 

Speaking of which, that brings us to the first of the film's three dream sequences.  Now, I realize most people who've seen Deadly Friend will insist that there are only two nightmares in the film, but I also count the film's ending as a dream sequence, because that's the only possible way it makes a lick of sense.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

After having been drug away from the Conway's back to her own horrible home, Sam goes to bed and dreams of something we assume has happened more than once in real life--a nocturnal assault courtesy of her father.  But this time in her dream she defends herself by grabbing a flower vase and smashing it against her nightstand and stabbing the glass shard into his chest.  Rather than kill him, it merely makes him laugh as a stream of blood spurts (comically) from the shattered vase and soaks Sam and her blankets.

 

This sequence is significant for two reasons, the first of which I didn't discover until I found the film's wikipedia entry.  It was there that I learned that the version of the movie I own is not the one originally released to theaters or on videotape, but rather the original unrated edition that was held back when the MPAA threatened to give it an X rating.  This surprised me since a) the packaging makes absolutely no mention of this and b) the fact that it almost got an X rating makes the overt-childishness of the BB sequences even that much more absurd. According to the entry, this scene is significantly shorter and less graphic in the R-rated version, which is funny since the unintended effect of the abundant gore in the sequence is hilarity rather than discomfiting terror.

 

The second reason it's significant is because it--as well as the second nightmare sequence--is obviously only in the film because someone was worried there wasn't enough horror in their horror film.  Once again speaking from experience as a genre hack, the only reasons a writer ever includes a dream sequence in their work is either because a) it's the only way to great some crazy shit into an otherwise boring story or b) they need to fill space.  I used to consider dream sequences my word count killer when I was writing the ghost books, since I could usually count on taking another 250-500 words off my total by throwing one into a story whenever I got stuck on what to write next.  I admit there is a chance that sequences likes this do appear in Henstell's novel, but even if that is the case, here in the film they serve no narrative purpose save to add a few more (non-)scares into an otherwise sedate horror tale.

 

 

Having at least tried to scare us, Rubin and Craven now take the time to show us the blissfully happy period that has to occur in order for the following misery to have any emotional effect.  We see Paul share his unique theories on robotics and neurology with his older classmates and "the gang" goof around shooting hoops in his backyard.  Their basketball shenanigans end, however, when they give BB the ball and he shoots it all the way into the yard of crazy Mrs. Parker, who takes the ball from her porch and throws it into her house.  This is not a trivial detail, as this act of petty cruelty will have serious consequences later on in the film.  As "the gang" turns away from the paranoid woman's fence and walks dejectedly back home, BB turns and stops to analyze the situation--his circuitry clearly coming to the conclusion that the bitch gots something coming her way. 

 

 

We next see Paul at work in a lab at school, where he and Dr. Johanson do some experiments on a cadaver.  To his professor's amazement, Paul is able to make the corpse move its limbs by stimulating it's dead brain tissue with electricity.  Craven follows up this close-up look of the inside of a person's head with a shot of Paul's mom scooping out the insides of a jack o'lantern, which he probably thought was really clever at the time.  Jeannie's scooping is interrupted by Sam who comes into their kitchen with a bleeding nose.  She insists that she gets them all the time, but Jeannie isn't fooled and tells the girl that someone should report her father to the authorities, but Sam is reluctant.  Sure, he may be a psychotic, alcoholic abusive bastard, but he's still her dad. 

 

 

As evidenced by the carved pumpkin, it's Halloween and "the gang" run around the neighborhood causing the usual teenage mischief.  After spraying whipped cream on a neighbor's car, Slime decides it would be hilarious if they made it past crazy Mrs. Parker's combination locked fence and rang her doorbell.  Now, since she has a tendency to respond to violations of her privacy with a shotgun, one could question the potential amusement inherent in such an enterprise, but Sam thinks it's a great idea and Paul reluctantly agrees. 

Paul's reluctance is due to the fact that BB is the only member of "the gang" capable of opening the lock and he doesn't want to expose his robotic best friend to any potential harm.  But peer pressure is a bitch and he allows BB to give the lock a go. Paul warns his friends that it could take hours for BB to find the proper combination, but the robot gets the job done in less than two minutes.  With their path no longer impeded, Sam proves to be the only one brave enough to approach the crazy woman's doorway.  What she doesn't expect is that the porch is protected by a security system that activates a loud alarm as soon as she steps on it.  Terrified, she runs from the porch and into the yard's bushes.

Strangely, rather than urge her to run out of the yard and to the safety of their homes, Paul and Slime run into the yard and join her behind the shrubbery.  Fearing that BB might follow them, Paul makes sure to turn him off via his remote control, but the robot has figured out a water to counteract its programming and turn itself back on.  Assuming that "the gang" is in danger, the robot enters the yard and approaches the shotgun wielding proprietoress and is blasted to smithereens for its effort.

 

Paul, naturally, is somewhat devastated by this.

 

(Note: See my earlier discussion of the attempted wallet theft for the best possible explanation regarding "the gang's" inexplicable decisions in this sequence.  Even though it seems obvious that the best reaction to their predicament was to simply get the fuck out of dodge, the three of them had to stay there because BB had to be destroyed by Mrs. Parker because a) Paul will need the robot's brain chip later on in the movie and b) even in this movie stealing a basketball isn't a serious enough crime for the old bag to merit the death penalty.)  

 

 

But life goes on and later that year Sam joins the Conway's for Thanksgiving dinner, while her father nurses his addiction on their couch back home.  When she leaves, Paul bravely kisses her goodbye and it seems clear that young love is about to take flight.

 

Sadly, though, that flight is canceled when Sam's dad goes into full psycho mode and shoves her down the stairs.

 

 

Things don't look good for poor Sam.  In fact, one could say they look pretty damn bad, since her brain is toast and machines are the only thing keeping her alive.  Informed by Dr. Johanson that his almost-girlfriend is going to have her plug-pulled at 10:00 o'clock the next day (which kinda seems random, but then I don't really know how hospitals work) Paul doesn't take the news well. 

 

 

Back at home, Paul sheds copious tears before stumbling on a photograph of himself with his two bestest dead friends in the whole wide world.  Purely by chance the photograph is being held up by the box that contains BB's brain chip--the one responsible for his unique A.I.  Holding the box in his hand, Paul has the kind of idea that could only come from a horny, 15 year-old supergenius.

 

Needing help, he immediately runs to Slime's house in order to enlist his aid.  Slime has a poster of Pat Benatar on his wall, which makes me love him far more than I normally ever would.  Not surprisingly, Paul isn't above committing emotional blackmail to get his friend on his side: 

 

 

Tom's response at the very end of this scene is probably the best genuine moment in the whole movie, but it also exemplifies the film's biggest miscalculation.  These days a lot of fanboys get upset at the idea of PG-13 horror movies, arguing that the resulting lack of violence, nudity and/or vulgarity invariable wrecks these films.  I personally don't see a well-made film like The Ring (the American remake) would have been any better with a R-rating, but I can appreciate the sentiment.  In the case of a film like this, on the other hand, I think the filmmakers would have been wise to attempt to get a PG rating rather than the R they settled for after nearly getting an X.  The inclusion of  gore, as well as the profanity featured at the end of the above scene do not make the film more edgy or violent, only more absurd--like a fifth grader attempting to be as cool as the kids from the high school down the street.

 

That said, I'm glad they didn't make the sensible decision, because if they had the result would have been merely forgettable rather than worthy of an enterprise as ridiculous as this post.

 

 

With Tom now in on his plan, Paul decides the best way to keep his mother from getting in the way is to drug her coffee, which he does in a sequence whose humour has the post-modern quality of being funny only insofar as it represents a failed attempt at comedy.

 

 

Before the drugs take their full affect, Paul's mom informs the kids that Sam's plug-pulling has been moved up to 9:00 PM, giving them only a half an hour to get to the hospital and rescue her.  Luckily, she succumbs to the mickey just in time and the two of them make haste.  By a fortunate coincidence, Tom's dad happens to work at the hospital, so they have no problem getting in through a back entrance.  Paul tells Tom to shut off the building's power at 9:01 to create the necessary amount of confusion in the hallways to allow him to slip away unnoticed with a cute dead blond girl, comforting him with the knowledge that backup generators will ensure that no one dies as a result of their actions. 

 

 

In Sam's hospital room, Dr. Johanson waits for his wristwatch to indicate it's time, but--adding impatient asshole to his list of deserved epithets--her dad tells him to get on with it and the decision is made to turn off the girl's life support before the scheduled time (which makes you wonder why they bother making a schedule at all, but oh well....).

 

 

After a brief moment of elevator suspense, Paul makes it to Sam's room, only to find her alone and deceased.  Though he would have preferred for her to be alive, he refuses to give up and stuffs her body into a laundry basket and takes her back down to the van waiting below.  Tom's a bit upset about the whole dead girl thing, but Paul passionately convinces him that they can still save her if they try.  

 

 

Back at the lab we saw him in earlier, Paul inserts BB's chip into Sam's brain.  Using BB's remote control he activates it and is successfully able to get Sam's body to move, although it remains very far from being animated.

 

 

The two boys take Sam's body back to Paul's house and place it in his garage.  When they walk back into the house, they find his mother lying in the same position they left her in that previous night.  Tom worries that Paul drugged her too heavily and caused her to have a fatal overdose.  Paul's reaction to the possibility that he killed his mother is oddly less extreme than the ones he had following the destruction of BB and the imminent death of Sam, but he does manage to panic a little, which is enough to wake Jeannie from her stupor.

 

 

Later on in the garage, Sam starts showing signs of life, although based on her movements, it appears as though BB's personality is the one in control of her body.  After successfully teaching her how to move again, Paul returns to the garage to find her staring at her father through a window.  Even though BB controls her body, she clearly has access to all of her old, painful memories. 

 

 

And as a direct result of those memories she returns to her old house, baits her dad with a bottle of bourbon and then snaps his neck and shoves him into the basement's coal furnace.  

 

 

Paul searches for her and is horrified to discover what she has done, but is too overcome with love to inform the authorities and decides instead to hide Mr. Pringle's charred remains.

 

 

Unable to keep her hidden in his garage, he takes her up to her old room and tells her to stay there while he attempts to figure out what to do next.  As she waits, she's spotted across the street by crazy Mrs. Parker, who immediately panics and calls the police.

 

The cops, however, are used to her frequent calls and feel no need to rush over, which sucks for her, since Sam decides to ignore Paul's orders and leaves her room in order to pay the mean old woman a visit.

 

Now remember the scene with the basketball?

 

This is where it gets its callback:

 

 

This death by basketball scene is easily the movie's most famous moment, as it ranked amongst the 3-D eyeball flying towards the camera in Friday the 13^th 3-D and Jeff Goldblum's ear coming off in The Fly as the most discussed horror movie gross-outs amongst my elementary school classmates.  And that was just the original cut version of the scene, which is much less extreme than the one shown above.  One does have to give it credit, even though it is marred by weak special effects, it is pretty damn hard to forget once you've seen it.  

 

 

After killing Mrs. Parker, Sam returns to Paul, who takes her to the attic above his room and orders her to stay there while he attempts to get some sleep. His slumber presents Craven and Rubin with their second chance for a completely unnecessary dream sequence.  This one involving Mr. Pringle emerging Freddy Krueger-like from the middle of Paul's bed. 

 

 

Awakened by his nightmare, Paul hears the sound of a commotion happening outside.  Joined by his mother and Tom, he finds out that the police have discovered both of Sam's victims (presumably the police found Mr. Pringle's body while searching his house following Mrs. Parker's report that she saw Sam there just before she herself died).  Tom, knowing who is behind this madness, panics and rushes back home as he looks back at his friend with fear and concern.

 

When I took a look at the movie Evil Toons a long time back, I noted that a major sign of a filmmaker's indifference to the project they're working on is an unreasonable fidelity to the script even when it is directly contradicted by what we can see for ourselves onscreen.  In the case of that film it was the use of the word "basement" to describe a structure that was clearly an above-ground garage rather than an underground cellar.  A good example of this same phenomenon is evident in this scene when the bathrobe clad neighbor who tells the Conway's and Slime what's going on, refers to the male victim as Old Man Pringle, which is problematic when you consider that the person calling him that is at least 25 years older than the man he's referring to.  Chances are that at some point in the process, the line as written did make sense and people either got so used to it that they didn't question it when it was eventually filmed or--much more likely--they were so innurred by the film's hundred other implausibilites that they simply shrugged when they heard it and moved on.

 

 

The next day, Sam breaks out from the attic and discovers the photograph that inspired Paul to resurrect her in the first place.  Looking at it, it is clear that she is confused.  Is she Sam or is she BB?  Not even looking into the mirror can help her decide.

 

I suppose now would be a good time to discuss Ms. Swanson's performance.

 

It's really hard not to feel sorry for her.  Clearly an appealing young actress, the poor girl is made to look ridiculous thanks to the decision (be it Craven's, Rubin's or the producers') to mimic the movements of the remote-controlled puppet we watched at the beginning of the film.  Despite the hard work of her credited "Mime Coach", Swanson never comes across as a robot stuck in a girl's body, but rather as a girl forced to joylessly practice the same stupid dance move everywhere she goes (my guess is that it would be called The Claw).

To make matters worse, the only attempt made to acknowledge her status as a reanimated corpse is a bit of dark mascara around her eyes, which definitely works against the credibility of her performance.  But then these kind of bad breaks pretty much tend to define her whole career.  Besides being best know as the girl who played Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the movie that sucked rather than the TV show that rocked, her greatest career achievement remains winning the top prize on Celebrities On Ice, but even this accolade was sullied when it was revealed she stole her partner, Lloyd Eisler, away from his wife and was later arrested for assaulting the woman during a domestic dispute (the charges were eventually dropped).         

 

 

And perhaps with thoughts of her tabloid future running in her head, Swanson gets to emote in the scene that follows, as Paul attempts to comfort her in her moment of painful realization.  Could those be real tears in that last image?  I'll be nice and assume they are. 

 

 

Meanwhile, Tom informs Paul that he cannot remain silent about Sam's killing spree any longer.  Paul tries to change his mind by introducing him to their now fully-animated friend, but Tom is more frightened than moved by the reunion.  When he begins to run away from her, Paul chases after him and physically blocks his attempts to leave--going so far as to punch him in the face.

 

 

Interrupted by Paul's mother--who knows that her son hasn't been going to his classes--Tom manages to get out of the Conway house, only to have his escape foiled by Sam, who leaps out at him through the attic window.

 

 

As Sam attacks her former friend, Jeannie comes to his aid, only to get knocked down to the ground.  Finally awakened by the sight of his mother being injured, Paul goes after Sam, who responds by wrapping her hands around his neck, only to stop and run away once she recognizes who she is about to kill.

 

At this point I should mention the most potentially disturbing aspect of the movie that everyone involved does their absolute best to ignore--it's a necrophiliac love story.  Personally I think the film could have been much more successful had the filmmakers focused, rather than denied this part of the story.  Perhaps this says far too much about my own cynicism than the failure of the filmmakers to properly exploit their subject, but it seems obvious to me that the primary motivation behind Paul's actions is just as much sexual desire as it is the bond of friendship.  The last thing he shared with Sam before her accident was a kiss and it only makes sense that he would want to continue their relationship in a natural progression towards complete intimacy.

At its core this is a movie about the extraordinary lengths a teenage boy will go to get laid, so--considering how far the filmmakers were willing to go in terms of violence--it seems like the ultimate cop-out that this theme is never explored in a way that could have added a nude scene to a work that already had an R-rating.  I mean, why else have Slime point out the tremendous quality of Sam's bosom, if you have no intention of showing it?

 

 

Anyhoo, it's been awhile since anyone has died and there is one asshole from the beginning of the movie who has yet to show up so he can get killed in an entertaining fashion.  Hey!  Whaddaya know!  Here's Carl now!  If you watched the clip I posted earlier as a preview to this essay, then you already know what happens to him, but in case you didn't:

 

 

As you can see, Sam at this point has ceased her silent ways and is now speaking with BB's voice (provided by Charles Fleischer, the future voice of Roger Rabbit), which adds a whole new level of hilarity to the movie.

 

 

As a means of illustrating Sam's inner struggle between her human and robot selves, her POV flickers between normal and robot vision, which brings up what is probably the film's largest and most obvious logical hiccup.  At no point in the film do the filmmakers--even with some patently bullshit excuse--attempt to explain how inserting the chip into Sam's head causes her to take on BB's physical characteristics.  Though they play some lip service towards how the chip was able to bring her back to life, they never explain how it also a) causes her to see in robo-vision, b) speak with BB's mechanical voice or c) gives her superhuman strength.

 

I bring this up not so much to criticize this plot development, but rather Rubin and Craven's laziness when it came to justifying it.  Dipping once more into my experience as a genre hack, there are few if any implausible story choices that can't be explained away with a few lines of gibberish here and there.  What's insulting about the decision to never explain Sam's physical metamorphosis isn't that it's impossible, but rather that no one could be bothered to even try. 

 

 

Of course, Sam can only go around killing assholes for so long before the police catch on.  Eventually they corner her in the driveway of Paul's home, just as Sam starts to gain the edge in her battle over the control of her mind.  As you might guess, things do not end well:

 

 

I have no proof to back this up, but I'm 99.9999999% positive that this clip ends on what was the original ending of the film.  That final crane shot is clearly designed to fade to the end credits, but my guess is that a test screening put the kibosh on this tragic conclusion when the producers found out that the audience a) thought Paul was a selfish prick who deserved to die and b) the film needed at least one more major scare.

 

 

Which brings us to the film's actual ending.  In it, Paul goes to the morgue where Sam's body is being held--presumably to once again attempt to resurrect her--only to discover that she has physically transformed into a robot from the inside out when her new razor-toothed BB head bursts out of her skin.  "Paul, come with me...." we hear her whisper as the head moves towards the camera.  We then cut to outside the room where we hear Paul's neck snap, which is then followed--hilarilously--by his murderer saying "BB" in Sam's voice.

 

As I suggested earlier, I am convinced that this ending was originally conceived as a dream sequence, since it only makes sense in that context.  Although one could suggest that this would be the logical conclusion of the metamorphosis I described above, the fact that the cause of this transformation is never even remotely broached suggests only two options.  Either this ending was edited in a way that altered its original intention or Craven and Rubin truly thought they were making a movie for nose-picking idiots.

 

I prefer to assume the former, but some folks have suggested

that I am something of a naive optimist.

 

Okay, so that was my way-too-long look at Deadly Friend, a truly terrible movie I love anyway.  I hope you enjoyed it and forgive the fact that I'm currently too tired and lazy to proofread this sucker or finish throwing in the links to the other movies I discussed along the way.

Repost: Evil Laugh

Make no mistake about it—the Internet Movie Database is one of the most depressing websites you could ever possibly visit.  I’m sure to most people it is simply a handy reference tool capable of ending a nagging bout of unresolved trivia within a few short minutes, but to my eyes it has always served as a catalogue of broken dreams and unmet promises—the single most powerful example of the heartbreak inherent in attempting to live a show business existence.

Don’t believe me?  Well, let’s take a quick look at the IMDb page dedicated to former 70s/80s teen idol Scott Baio.  Like so many IMDb pages, it starts off promisingly with a TV movie directed by the man who would later bring George Lucas’ vision of primal teddy bears to life, continues on with a cult classic all-kids musical co-staring a young Jodie Foster, takes a bit of a detour with a rare Garry Marshall 1970s sitcom failure and some random guest spots, before jumping into the big time with the role that made him a star—Chachi on Happy Days.  During that same period you also can find the awesomeness that is a certain “lost” 1979 roller disco classic, another cult classic starring a slightly less-young Jodie Foster and one of the more memorable “teen message” TV movies from that period.  

Unfortunately it soon goes downhill from there, beginning with the wretched feature film that utterly failed to make him a movie star and the spin off that no one asked for.  Then comes Charles in Charge, a truly terrible sitcom with an opening theme song that was a thousand times more memorable than any one of its episodes (with the possible exception of the one where he dated Samantha Fox).  Around that same time he managed to appear in some movies you’ve never heard of and played a pig in Irwin Allen’s highly unfortunate star-studded two-part adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.

After two years of not appearing in front of a camera, he then returned to television as a co-star on a medically themed Murder She Wrote rip off, but when that joyride ended he managed only to snag the occasional sitcom guest spot and the kind of independent movie role that forced him to play characters named Zack Ramses and co-star with fellow sitcom has been Todd Bridges , while also occasionally directing episodes of the least-watched sitcoms in the history of the format.  Finally, in 2004 we see his career reach its lowest point with a gig playing second banana to a crew of creepy digitally manipulated talking babies.  But all was not without hope, since this was followed the next year by a four-episode arch on a critically acclaimed sitcom that was only too happy to stunt cast him as a successor to his former onscreen mentor.

That said, this brief victory was immediately undone by the two clearest signs that a celebrity’s career has reached its end—a depressingly self-deprecating cameo as himself in a major box office flop and a reality TV series based on exploiting his famous off screen behaviour.  

In just one document we can watch the rise and decline of this man’s professional life—from successful kid actor to teen superstar to TV hack to pop culture punchline—and appreciate the cruelty that fate can play with those who merely want to entertain us.  But this alone does not prove my contention that the IMDb is one of the most depressing websites known to man.  No, what truly makes my thesis incontrovertible is the fact that Baio’s page actually serves as the documentation of a Hollywood success story.

By the standards of his business, Scott Baio had an amazing ride, the likes of which 99% of his professional peers will never experience themselves.  Every day people demean and debase themselves in the hope that someday, with the right kind of luck, they might be blessed with a career that sucked ten times as much as Baio’s did.  For proof of this you only have to look at the IMDb page of Steven Baio, Scott’s brother of indeterminate age.

Now this is what I’m talking about when I refer to the inherent pathos of the Internet Movie Database—a page filled only with a handful of sparsely divided nepotistically-achieved acting, writing and producing credits and the lone accomplishment of a truly terrible 1988 slasher movie that managed to be made during that brief period in the 80s when the demands of the home video market made it possible for anything ever recorded on film to make it to the hands of unwary viewers.

I am, of course, talking about:

 

 

The genesis of this frequently excruciating exercise in incompentent filmmaking came about when Steven Baio, fresh from a couple of guest spots on Happy Days and Joanie Loves Chachi, met Dominick Brascia, who had just set the world aflame with his vivid portrait of a fat, chocolate-eating retard in Friday the 13^th Part V: A New Beginning , in an acting class.

 

Acting classes serve several very important purposes in Los Angeles.  The first is that they keep out of work actors employed through the exploitation of actors even more out of work than they are.  The second is that they allow folks who can't even get an audition, much less a role, the illusion of professional progress.  And the third is that they enable potential soulmates like Baio and Brascia to get together and collaborate on screenplays designed to elevate them to the heights of show business stardom.

 

This is why acting classes are evil and should be outlawed for the sake of our common humanity.

 

 

Having bonded over their mutual homesickness for New York, Baio and Brascia first dreamed of making a comedy in the same vein of the classic Abbott & Costello films of the 40s, which they creatively dubbed Two Guys From Brooklyn.  Unfortunately despite the collective resources that came from being Chachi's homely brother and the guy who played Young Man Buying Ice Cream in the film that completely failed to make Jim Carrey a movie star, the two young filmmakers were only able to raise an infinitesimal fraction of the money they needed to make their dream project a reality. 

 

Undaunted, the two of them decided to take the money they had managed to raise from other wannabe actors and their parents and use it to make the same kind of  movie that had provided Brascia with his largest role to date.  Both of them worked on the screenplay (although the IMDb incorrectly credits the work solely to Baio) and though Brascia had written a key role with himself in mind, he elected to not appear in front of the camera when it was decided that he would direct the project.

 

Blessed with a generous seven day shooting schedule and a cast filled with other acting class "actors", they worked their asses off and got the script on film.  The result was truly terrible, but it made it to video and would forever remain the crowning achievement of their Hollywood experience.

 

That they were able to do this, when so many other of their fellow acting students didn't, makes Evil Laugh another counter-intuitive success story.   Just not an artistic one.

 

 

But the truth is that it is not the misguided hopes or creative incompetence of Baio and Brascia that makes the watching of Evil Laugh such an unusually melancholic experience.  No, the fault for that lies directly in the lap of the actress who portrays Connie, the film's requisite Final Girl.

 

In 1988 Kim McKamy was a 29 year-old transplant from North Carolina trying to make it as an actress in Los Angeles.  Since arriving in Hollywood she had managed to book some supporting roles in a handful of extremely low budget direct-to-video horror movies and a small bit part in the third film of a franchise based around the adventures of a young former streetwalker.  Evil Laugh would be her fifth film and her largest role to date.

 

Like all serious actresses who dream of future stardom, McKamy had been careful to avoid roles that called for nudity and when Baio and Brascia asked her to get naked in a shower scene at the end of their film, she balked and insisted that they hire a body double.  The woman they hired proved, predictably, to be considerably better endowed than she was, which meant she had to wrap a towel around her shoulders during the scenes she appeared in a chaste swimsuit, lest her true dimensions give the upcoming deception away. 

 

Given a script that allowed her to show off all of her emotive skills, McKamy gave it everything she had in Evil Laugh, but rather than vindicate her years of struggle the results only served to prove that for all of her enthusiasm and desire, she simply wasn't a good actress.  Nearing thirty and with the kinds of parts she had played drying up as the slasher cycle came to its inevitable end, she found herself unemployed and at what most would conclude was the end of her dream.

 

 

But then any student of Hollywood can tell you that it is a business in which ambition is frequently much more important than ability.  Despite her obvious limits as an actress Kim McKamy still very much wanted to perform and be a star, so when the mainstream industry turned its back on her, she decided to go somewhere else where her efforts would be much more greatly appreciated.

 

Two years after she appeared in Evil Laugh, McKamy's face and body started appearing on the shelves of a completely different section of the video store than where her previous films were usually found.  With the change in location also came a change in name.  Billed as Ashlyn Gere, she had made the leap to a genre of film where merely showing her breasts was the least of her concerns.  Now gifted with a pair of custom-made mammaries that must have made her former body double weep with envy, she would never have to wear a towel around her shoulders ever again.

 

The difference couldn't have been more dramatic.  While Kim McKamy struggled to reach even the lowest rungs of the show business ladder, Ashlyn Gere instantly climbed to the top of its less reputable alternative, where she found not only the fame she desired, but also an unheard of degree of respect and recognition.  In "real" movies her performances seemed overly mannered and contrived, but in the world of adult cinema they were considered award worthy.   In 1993 and 1995 she won a total of four acting awards at the pornographic equivalent of the Oscars, and that first year was named the first ever "Female Performer of the Year".

 

 

In the years that followed she became the extremely rare adult film actress who was allowed the opportunity to appear in guest roles on network television, thanks to the efforts of the writing/producing team of Glen Morgan and James Wong.  With their help she enjoyed featured parts on the The X-Files, Millennium and Space: Above and Beyond, as well as roles in their films The One and Willard

And, in a fitting irony, the actress who had insisted on having a body double in Baio and Bruscia's little slasher movie, herself became a body double for Sharon Stone and Demi Moore in Basic Instinct and Indecent Proposal--the two most successful projects she would ever be associated with in a career that finally ended in 2003, when she left Ashlyn Gere behind and moved to Texas to become a real estate agent.

 

Having found a way to achieve the fame and recognition she always wanted, Kim McKamy's IMDb page also represents another Hollywood success story, which--along with the other examples I've provided in this post--begs the question: If Hollywood successes are this pathetic and depressing, then what the holy fuck are actual failures like?

 

 

I suppose that before I end with the usual Slasher Movie Statistics, I might as well spend at least a paragraph discussing the actual film.  It sucks pretty damn hard.  It's not quite as unbearable as Girls Nite Out, but it's close.  Badly shot, directed, written and acted, the film's only real distinction is the inclusion of a character named Barney who manages to survive the initial ordeal entirely through the exploitation of his knowledge of horror movies--a satiric nod to the cliches of the genre that predated Scream by eight years.  That said, the actor who plays the character is extremely irritating and the poor execution of the conceit completely undoes its initial cleverness.  In the end the film definitely serves as a much better example of the terrible realities of life on the low end of the Hollywood food chain than it does as an entertaining slasher movie.

 

Slasher Movie Statistics Body Count: 11 (8 men/3 women

Shower Scenes:1

Instances of Nakedity: 2 (3 if you're willing to count man ass, which you are entirely free to do) 

Instances of Blatant Homoeroticism Played For Laughs of: 2

Instruments of Death: Machete, electric drill, ax, bare hands, microwave, hand gun and scissors

Instances of Unintentional Cannibalism: 1

References to Pot:  0

Amount of Time Required to Correctly Identify Killer: At a certain point midway through the film there is only one character left who could have conceivably been around to commit all of the murders we have seen thus far.  They are the person behind the mask.

Truly Terrible Pop Songs Repeated Throughout The Film Ad Naseam: 2

Cheesy References to Other Horror Movies: Too many to keep track of thanks to the Fangoria reading Barney.

Utterly Pointless Trivia #1: While Kim McKamy turned to porn after Evil Laugh, her blond co-star Jody Gibson went even a step higher (or lower, depending on your point of view) when she filled in the void created by the arrest of Heidi Fleiss to become Los Angeles' number one madam.

Utterly Pointless Trivia #2: Tony Griffin, the actor who spends a great deal of the movie's run time wearing a studded bondage collar, is the son of the recently deceased talk show host, game show impresario and famed crooner of "I've Got A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts", Merv Griffin. 

Final Girl Rating: 1 (out of 10)

Repost: Fumetti Theatre

The House of Glib

is

Proud to Present

 

Fumetti Theater

 

Starring

 

Jessica from DragonQuest VIII

 

 

This is the story of a girl named Zadie

 

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She was very beautiful

 

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But also very sad

 

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She was sad

because she thought her life

was without meaning

 

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So she went to her grandfather

 

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And asked

 

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He answered

 

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Zadie thought about this

 

 

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And she decided to ask someone else

 

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So she went East

and found a friendly ear

 

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Zadie thought about this

 

 

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And she decided to ask someone else

 

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So she went West

and found the Smartest Man in the World

 

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Zadie thought about this

 

 

Click Image to Enlarge

 

And she decided to ask someone else

 

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So she went South

and found a wealthy businessman

 

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Zadie thought about this

 

 

Click Image to Enlarge

 

And she decided to ask someone else

 

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So she went North

and found someone very pale

 

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Zadie thought about this

 

 

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And she decided to ask someone else

 

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So she went back home

and ran into a girl

she used to know from school

 

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And

having nothing to lose

she asked the old acquaintance her question

 

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Zadie thought about this

 

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And she applied for a job

at The Boom-Chicka-Chicka-Wa-Wa Lounge

 

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Moral:

Cleavage is destiny

Repost: The Life After

In a past post I described (at length) the reasons behind my firmly held belief that the IMDb is the most depressing website to be found on the internet, in so far as it serves as a cold and disheartening record of thousands of broken dreams.  But despite this harsh fact, I often find myself lost in its virtual pages, inevitably enjoying some new and exciting discovery in each filmography I come across, no matter how obscure their subject may be.  The sensation is identical to the feeling I had as a kid reading those thick Leonard Maltin Movie Guides from cover to cover as if they were the most absorbing novels ever written.  With each new name and title I find another opportunity to increase my appreciation of the art, which I am grateful for after 20+ years of cinematic study.  Thanks to the IMDb I have unearthed many treasures that might have remained buried had I not first found out about them within its online pages.

But this alone is not the only reason why I cannot stay away from the site for more than a few days (or hours) at a time.  The other reason, though, is directly tied into the aspect of the site that accounts for its melancholy aftertaste.  The more pages you read, the more often you find yourself confronted by the title at the top of each of its subjects’ resumes.  Depending on who that subject is this first title could merely be the most recent of their projects and will soon find itself buried under future endeavors, but more often than not this first entry serves as a monument to the end of a person’s film and television career.  Beside that title is a date and with that date you can measure the length of time that passed since its subject ceased to be an actor/director/writer/producer/whatever and went on to live as a real, ordinary, average, not-at-all-special human being.

It’s this undocumented period of time that fascinates me more than I can describe.  What has this person done in the 20 years that passed since the two-line bit part on Night Court that ended their career?  Have they accomplished anything?  Are they happy?  Filled with regret?  Does anyone in their current lives know or appreciate who they once were?  Do they want them to?

These last two questions are especially intriguing when you look over the pages of people who were involved in the less respectable areas of the industry.  One has to wonder, for example, if anyone involved with The Last Slumber Party is apt to mention their participation in that monstrosity at every available opportunity or if they (much more wisely) live in constant fear that someone they know might stumble upon the film and discover their deep, dark, terrible secret.  In the past, keeping such a skeleton hidden in your closet might not have been difficult, but in the age of Google all of our skeletons are becoming a lot harder to hide.

I write this because I just spent a somewhat ambivalent 90 minutes watching a long-forgotten mid-70s curiosity entitled Chesty Anderson USN.  For fans of such cinema, its significant only as the second—and last—film of beloved Russ Meyer discovery, Shari Eubank, whose dual role in SuperVixens instantly earned her a kind of b-movie immortality that can be considered either a blessing or a curse depending on the feelings of the individual it’s imposed upon.

While Meyer’s best film remains Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (despite what some fans of Faster Pussycat!  Kill!  Kill! may foolishly claim),  a lot of the credit for its success can be given to his screenwriter Roger Ebert (yes, that Roger Ebert) and especially—in my opinion—the film’s composer Stu Phillips (whose songs are likely to remain with you longer than the any of film’s colourful images).  SuperVixens, on the other hand, is pure unfiltered Meyer (its final opening credit reads “Written, Photographed, Edited, Produced and Directed by RUSS MEYER”) and for that reason has always struck me as his most important film—the one for which his reputation as a genuine softcore auteur became wholly deserved.

Driven by a cartoonish energy perfectly matched by the comic book bodies of its heroines, SuperVixens flirts with self-parody but manages to remain true to itself, unlike his subsequent efforts Up!, Beneath the Valley of the UltraVixens and the released-even-though-it-was-obviously-never-finished-and-wouldn’t-have-made-sense-even-if-it-had-been Pandora Peaks (a project whose failure can be excused by the Alzheimer’s that was slowly wrecking Meyer's mind as he very-slowly worked on it) all of which seem desperate and uninspired in comparison.

That said, there’s another reason SuperVixens satisfies more than most of Meyer’s other films.  According to Jimmy McDonough’s biography of the director Meyer was introduced to a 28 year-old dancer named Shari Eubank by his friend and occasional star Haji, who had worked with her at a club called The Classic Cat and later said, “She was a damn good actress and she didn’t even know it.”  Meyer was instantly smitten and for good reason.  Not only did she have the kind of figure that had made his films famous, but unlike his previous and future discoveries such as Tura Satana, Erica Gavin, Raven De La Croix and Kitten Natividad, Eubank exuded a classic wholesomeness almost completely absent from his oeuvre.  For this reason it seems strange that Meyer originally hired her to play the part of SuperAngel—the film’s representation of female power at its worst—and gave the part of Angel’s virtuous opposite, SuperVixen, to his then-wife Edy Williams--quite possibly the least wholesome actress of the era.

But then Williams decided she wanted to be recognized as a serious actress and would no longer appear naked on film (a career choice she would reverse a few years later when it became abundantly evident no one would hire her for any other reason).  Unable to find a suitable replacement, he decided Eubank could play both roles—a choice made out of desperation that accidentally gave the film a bit of unintended thematic depth and which also made the character infinitely more sympathetic.
For a neophyte actress, Eubank proved remarkably adept in both roles.  If her SuperAngel sometimes seems a bit over-the-top, it’s always to the film’s benefit and perfectly in keeping with Meyer’s manic style.  As a character, SuperAngel is a broadly drawn representation of the worst kind of woman—supremely narcissistic, lazy, unsupportive, selfish and jealous—yet Eubank is able to show how she gets away with it with a single innocent look (it doesn’t hurt that the look just happens to be perched on top of that body).

In a weird way, casting Eubank as SuperAngel works against the film in that when she finally pushes a man too far, her violent comeuppance lacks the sense of justice Meyer pretty obviously wanted to convey.  Many commentators have expressed offense over the scene where policeman Harry Sledge (Meyer regular and well-known character actor Charles Napier) is driven to kill her after she cruelly mocks his inability to get an erection in her presence (“Not ready?  With my beautiful body?  You got a lot of nerve buster telling me you’re not ready!”), and while the scene is wildly over the top and does border on the wrong side of misogynistic, I believe this has a lot to do with the fact that even though SuperAngel the character isn’t sympathetic, Shari Eubank the actress is, and it’s painful to see her suffer in such a violent way.  Such is her presence in the film, the thought of her no longer being in it feels like a violation and it was only through happenstance that this potential mistake managed to be corrected.  Had Edy Williams been willing to take her clothes off for her husband, SuperVixens would have ended being a very different (and most likely unsatisfying) film.

Unlike SuperAngel, the role of SuperVixen didn’t require as much effort from the actress.  “Vix” (“As [her] friends call [her]”) is a sweet, hard-working young widow whose gas station/diner is literally an Oasis for Curt Ramsey, the film’s hapless and harried male protagonist.  Though their onscreen courtship isn’t given much screen time and basically consists of the two of them cavorting nakedly in the wild, their relationship is easily the sweetest and most romantic in all of Meyer’s films—a fact due as much to the performers as any effort from the director.

It’s unfair, however, to suggest that Eubank’s success in the film is based entirely on her own charisma.  Meyer’s contribution to her iconic performance is made evident by even a single viewing of the only other film she appeared in, the above-mentioned Chesty Anderson USN, in which she flounders under the weight of a poorly-written role in a badly-directed movie. For those of you who look to titles as a way to judge whether or not a film is right for you let the example of Chesty Anderson USN serve as fair warning of your folly. 

Let’s start with that Chesty part. 

“Now,” you must be thinking, “any movie that goes to the trouble of advertising it’s heroine’s pulchritude in the title must surely be a sexy romp filled to the brim with enticing female nudity.”

WRONG!

Despite its featuring a cast Meyer himself would be proud of [joining Eubank are such shapely actresses as Rosanne Katon, Dorrie Thompson, Dyanne “Ilsa” Thorne, Joyce Gibson (aka Joyce Mandel) and—in a wordless cameo as a gangster moll—fellow SuperVixens alum, Uschi Digard], the amount of actual nudity seen in the film clocks in at around 30 seconds.  The effect is not dissimilar to casting Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Steven Segal, Jean Claude Van Damme, Charles Bronson, Chuck Norris, Jackie Chan, Vin Diesel, Jet Li, Nicholas Cage and Sean Connery in a remake of 12 Angry Men.  As cool as it may seem for the first ten minutes, at a certain point you realize that they’re really just going to talk for the whole movie and a certain galling disappointment quickly begins to set in.

And I suppose you’re now thinking, “Okay, so there ain’t much sex.  At least the USN tells us we’re about to see a fun service comedy in the vein of Buck Privates, Stripes or In the Army Now.”

WRONG!

Though the film’s heroines are portrayed as being WAVES, their service in the military has as much impact on the plot as a butterfly flapping its wings in China does on the overall future of mankind.  Had the filmmakers instead found cheap and easy access to an abandoned hospital and a trunk full of old nurse costumes, the film could have been turned into Chesty Anderson RN with literally ten minutes worth of script revision.

But then if Chesty Anderson USN isn’t a sexy military romp, what the hell is it?

I’m not sure I should answer that question, since doing so would require me to spend more time thinking about its plot than the filmmakers ever did.  Beyond the criminal lack of nudity, the most frustrating aspect of the film is its shocking lack of urgency.  Near the beginning of the film Chesty’s younger sister is kidnapped and killed by the mob to stop her from ruining the career of her old boss, a corrupt, cross-dressing senator, and the subsequent investigation into her disappearance that then dominates the rest of film is given all of the gravitas of a search for a Jackson Five album needed for a sorority party scavenger hunt.

The blame for this rests on the shoulders of director Ed Forsyth who was not only incapable of handling the script’s bizarrely disparate tones, but was also clueless when it came time to direct his cast.  As memorable as Eubank was in her first film, here she comes off as lifeless and flat (emotionally if not physically).  She never seems that worried about what happened to her sister and shows absolutely no signs of anger or grief when she finally uncovers the truth. 

Her male co-stars fare little better.  Recognizable character actor Stanley Brock’s performance (seen here with Dyanne Thorne) as the lecherous doctor who orders the WAVES to strip to their waist (which in this case means taking of their shirts, but not their bras) no matter what their complaint would have been embarrassing on a vaudeville stage in 1926, much less in a movie made half a century later.

Scatman Crothers (billed here as Scat-Man) is a long way away from The Shining, but he only appears in one--unnecessary--scene, while the usually brilliant Fred Willard is saddled with the lame heroic boyfriend role and is given zero opportunity to showcase his tremendous comic talents.

 

And Timothy Carey as the mob hitman seems desperate to reinforce his off-screen reputation as an unstable freak (he’s the guy who was blacklisted for years after he infamously ended what he considered to be a humiliating audition at Columbia Studios by pulling out a gun and firing blanks at Harry Cohn and the executives in attendance).  Some folks may find themselves amused by his shameless overacting, but it struck me more as humiliating and sad.

The only performers who come off well are Katon (who in 1978 would become Playboy’s Miss September and in that capacity would go on to appear in the third episode of a certain variety show), who manages to take on the sassy black mama role without making her character seem like a tired stereotype, and Marcie Barken , whose turn as the trampy, flat-chested redhead earns the film its only real laughs.

Still, as bad as the film may be it is only a footnote in the brief career of its star.  Unlike 99% of the folks whose careers are documented on the IMDb, Shari Eubank earned true cinematic immortality and lives on in the memories of all those who’ve seen her first film.

Which is what makes her ultimate fate so fascinating.

After Chesty Anderson USN was released in 1976, the 30 year-old actress (who others described as sensitive and naïve), gave up on show business and eventually returned to her hometown of Farmer City, Illinois, where she had once been a cheerleader and the homecoming queen.  In the intervening decades it was rumored she’d gotten a degree in Education and taught Drama and English in her hometown’s small school system.  Now, thanks to Google and the increasing necessity for all institutions to be online, rumor has become fact.  All those fans who want to know what SuperAngel/SuperVixen looks like today, merely have to visit the staff section of the webpage devoted to Farmer City’s Blue Ridge Junior High.

And some may be happy to leave it at that, but I suspect many will be driven to distraction by the questions this raises.  Farmer City is a small community, so it’s unlikely her acting career has ever been a secret, but there would have been a period before home video where her appearance in a Russ Meyer film would have only been an unprovable legend among her students: 

“Hey, did you hear Ms. Eubank was in a porn movie?!?!”
“No way!”
“It’s true!  My dad says he saw it.  She was naked and everything!”
“Your dad’s a liar.”
“Is not!  Billy’s dad says he saw it too.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh!”
“What’s it called?”
“I dunno.  Something like Wonder Boobs, I think….”

Fast forward a decade later:

“You’ve got to come over to Billy’s place!”
“Why?”
“He just got back from a trip to his cousin’s in Chicago and he brought something back!”
“What?”
“It’s a copy of that porno Ms. Eubank was in!”
“No way!”
“Yeah, his cousin has all of these movies and Billy recognized the title.”
“Has he watched it?”
“Only like a dozen times!”
“She’s really naked in it?”
“Really, really naked!”

Fast forward to today:

“Let’s Google Ms. Eubank.”
“Okay.  What’s her first name, again?”
“I think it’s Shari.”
“Okay, here we go.”
“Holy shit!  Are those her boobs?”
“I love the internet.”

In all seriousness, it is virtually impossible for anyone with a single wit’s worth of imagination to not wonder how they would have reacted to the knowledge that their junior high school language arts teacher was once the buxom star of one of the best softcore movies ever made.  And those of us blessed with even more imagination than that cannot help but go on to ponder what it must have been like to be that junior high school language arts teacher whose interesting former career is inevitably discovered each year by a new crop of hormone-addled students.

And with this being just one untold story hinted at in the IMDb, you can understand why it’s difficult for me to stay away from its depressing online pages for any length of time.  The sadness  they sometimes make me feel being nothing compared to the wonderful curiosity they inspire.

The House of Glib Vlog Archive

Rather than repost each of my House of Glib Slasher Movie Vlog Reviews in its own seperate file, I've decided to just save myself some time and effort and throw them all together in one handy easy to find (and link to) post.  Scroll down to find your favourites, which are ordered chronologically by date of creation.

1) Posed For Murder

2) Killer Workout

3) Cheerleader Camp

4) Hospital Massacre

5) The Initiation

6) Open House

7) Slumber Party Massacre III

8) Pieces

9) The Last Slumber Party

10) Slaughter High

11) Cutting Class

12) Silent Rage

Day of the Woman

Of all the films I have elected to discuss here at The House of Glib, today’s is BY FAR the most controversial.  Few films in the brief history of the art form have managed the nearly impossible trick of being praised by some as a low-budget masterpiece of feminist cinema, while also being denounced by others as the worst example of misogynistic exploitation trash ever to be devised by a truly sick and twisted mind.  While serving as a perfect case of how much a film’s title and marketing can influence an audience’s reaction, today’s film is important for also forcing the viewer to ask themselves how far is too far when it comes to getting a desired point across.  At what point does a filmmaker cross the line from exposing society’s evils to exploiting them?  And should they be blamed if certain segments of the audience respond to the material in the exact opposite way that they intended?

For those reasons today’s subject is the rare example of a film whose content makes it almost impossible to recommend to others, while also being one that no serious student of the filmmaking arts can justifiably avoid—it’s a film that should be shown in every introductory film class, but never will be because of the protests its inclusion would inevitably engender.

I am, of course, talking about:

Originally released as Day of the Women in 1978, Polish sound editor Meir Zarchi’s directorial debut was inspired by a real life incident in which he and a friend discovered a badly beaten and nude woman who had been raped in a park near his home.  Not only had he been horrified by the barbarity of the woman’s attackers (they had broken her jaw and only allowed her to live after she insisted that there was no way she could identify them since they had smashed her glasses and she could not see their faces), but also by the terrible bureaucratic indifference of the police officer who took her report and seemed far more concerned with getting it finished than calling the ambulance she so obviously needed.  To Zarchi’s eyes the casual cruelty of the apathetic officer was little different than the animal savagery of the rapists and in the years that followed the incident he began to imagine a film in which a woman survives a terrible rape, but instead of going to the police for justice, decides to take the matter into her own hands and forces her attackers to understand how terrifying it is to be a victim of another person’s remorseless brutality.  He wrote the screenplay during the 40-minute subway commutes to and from his New York office and was able to raise enough money (and defer enough payments) to make the film with a cast of unknowns and a crew largely composed of enthusiastic amateurs.

The film begins in New York, but only stays there for the briefest of scenes.  Jennifer Hills (Camille Keaton), a successful young short story writer has decided to leave her apartment in the city in order to enjoy the peace and tranquility of a lake house located in rural Connecticut, where she plans to write her first novel.  On her way there she stops for gas at the town’s antiquated station, where the attendant, Johnny (Eron Tabor) takes notice of her sophisticated beauty, while his two dimwitted friends, Andy (Gunter Kleeman) and Stanley (Anthony Nichols) play a game that involves throwing a switchblade into the grass at their feet.

Upon reaching the lake house, Jennifer is so excited by the quiet, natural beauty of her surroundings that she runs towards the water and takes off her dress and enjoys a naked swim in the water—visibly thrilled to have escaped the noise and squalor of the city.  

We next see her as she unpacks her clothes and discovers a gun left behind by a former tenant in one of the drawers, but before she can do anything more than look at it, she is interrupted by the sound of someone knocking on her door.  It turns out to be Matthew (Richard Pace), the Lenny-esque manchild who works as the delivery boy for the local grocery store.  When he learns that she’s from New York City, he tells her that she “…comes from an evil place!”  She humours his small-town innocence by giving him “…a tip from an evil New Yorker,” which he excitedly tells her is the largest he’s ever received (a whole dollar).   He’s also becomes excited when he learns she’s a real writer and is famous (even though he’s never actually heard of her) and—as he chomps on an apple she gives him—he asks her if she has a boyfriend. 

 

“I have many boyfriends,” she tells him. 

 

“Could I be your friend?” he asks her sweetly. 

 

“Sure,” she smiles at him.  

Thrilled by his encounter with the glamorous woman from the big city, Matthew leaves and finds his friends—the same three men Jennifer encountered at the gas station.  Trying to impress them he tells them that he “…saw her tits!” (referring to the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra underneath her shirt).  It’s obvious that they aren’t a good influence on him, but they’re also the only people around who treat him like an equal—largely because they’re not that much smarter than he is.  Having exhausted all of the other diversionary activities their small town offers, the four of them decide to go fishing.  There they discuss whether or not beautiful women have to defecate (they decide that they do, since all woman “…are full of shit”) and how they have to get Matthew “…a broad…” to rid him of his virginity.  Stanley takes a shot at Matthew’s sexuality by claiming that, “…broads don’t turn him on!” to which Matthew responds by insisting, “Yes they do, but not all broads, only the special ones.”  Johnny humours him by asking, “What’s a special broad, Matthew?”

“Miss Hill,” answers Matthew.  “Miss Hill is special.”

Unaware of the impact she is having amongst the locals, Jennifer continues to commune with nature by going on canoe rides and sitting outside as she writes out chapters of her novel in long hand on a yellow legal pad.  Her peace does not last, however, when Andy and Stanley drive by on their motorboat.  Intent on getting her attention, they obnoxiously loop around the water until finally she has no choice but to go inside in order to escape them.

Later that night, while she is alone in bed, she is disturbed by the sound of clearly manmade animal noises coming from outside the house.  She goes outside to see where they are coming from, but sees only the darkness of the night and decides to go back inside, where she reassures herself with the knowledge that she has the gun she found in the drawer, if she needs it.  It turns out that she soon will, but at a time and place where no one would think to bring it.

During the middle of a hot summer day, Jennifer basks in the rays of the sun as she lies out in her canoe as it floats across the water.  Her calm does not last long, though, as Stanley and Andy return in their motorboat.  This time, however, they intend on doing more than simply show off.  They begin by driving around her canoe, causing it to shake in the waves, and then they grab its rope and begin pulling it behind them.  They take it to the shore, where Jennifer tries to fight them off with her paddle, but they quickly get it away from her and begin chasing her through the woods.

Jennifer soon discovers that this attack was planned when she reaches a clearing and is knocked down by Johnny, who has been waiting for his two friends to deliver her to him.  With Andy and Stanley’s help he tears off her bikini, holds her down and urges Matthew to come out from his hiding spot and take what they had gotten for him.  Matthew, torn between his loyalty to his friends and his affection for Miss Hill, refuses to rape her, but agrees to hold one of her legs as Johnny decides to do what he won’t.  Johnny strips out of his clothes and roughly penetrates Jennifer.

When he finishes, his three friends let her go and they all watch as she crawls away into the woods.  Johnny sends Matthew out to get her back, but he just helps her up and watches as she limps away.  The others taunt him for not taking advantage of the situation, with Johnny telling him, “…You’re gonna die a virgin.”

Naked and barefoot, Jennifer is forced to walk through not only the forest, but also small streams and swamp water in order to get back home.  Sadly, though, her attackers know the area far better than she does and are able to find her again.  This time Stanley rapes her—sodomizing her as Andy and Matthew hold her down on a large rock.  He climaxes as quickly as Johnny did and the four of them leave her stretched out on the rock and return to their boat.  Making their escape they abandon her canoe in the middle of the lake and Johnny throws her bikini into the water.  

Bruised, bloodied and covered in mud, a nearly catatonic Jennifer is finally able to get back to the lake house.  Upon reaching it, she collapses and has to crawl in order to get to a shirt to cover her naked body and to then get to the phone to call the police.  

But her attackers are not done with her.  Just as she finishes dialing, the phone is kicked away from her and Johnny appears at the top of her stairway.  As the others cheer him on, a now-drunk Matthew overcomes his shyness and strips naked and jumps on top of their victim, but isn’t able to finish like the others.  As he dejectedly puts his clothes back on, Andy finds some pages from Jennifer’s unfinished novel and reads them aloud for everyone’s amusement before he tears them up and throws the ripped up pieces on top of her.  

The other three having had their turns, Stanley is the last of the four to take advantage of their captive.  Jennifer—knowing that she can’t stop him and has been badly hurt by the other’s rough penetrations—begs him to allow her to fellate him instead.  “Total submission, that’s what I like in a woman,” he sneers just before he sadistically shoves a bottle into her vagina and orders her to perform oral sex with the command “Suck it, bitch!”  Unhappy with her lack of effort, he gets up and starts kicking her, which—despite their previous barbarity—is too much for even his friends to take.  They pull him outside and start to leave, but then Johnny decides that they can’t leave her alive after what they did to her.  He hands Matthew a switchblade and tells him to go back inside and kill her.  Matthew naturally refuses at first, but Johnny is finally able to convince him to do it.  With the knife in his hand he returns inside the house, where Jennifer is laying unconscious on the floor.  He puts the blade to her chest, but he can’t go through with it, so he instead wipes it across her cheek, covering it in blood, which he shows to his friends in order to prove that he did it.  Assuming that they now have nothing to worry about, the four of them escape away from the house down the water in their motorboat.

Knowing that there is nothing the law can do to get her the justice she deserves for what the four men have done to her, Jennifer does not call the police.  Instead she slowly nurses herself back to health and picks up the pieces of her now-shattered life.  One day she spots her canoe floating in the water outside of her house and is able to retrieve it.  The next she spends patiently taping up the pages from her novel that Stanley tore up in front of her and soon she starts writing new pages to go along with them.  The days pass by and her visible wounds fade, leaving only the ones left on the inside—the ones she’ll have to eventually leave the lake house to cure.

As their victim convalesces, the four rapists grow concerned that she might still be alive since they had not heard any news about her body being discovered by the police.  Johnny attempts to convince Matthew to go to the house to check, but he refuses and it’s left up to Andy and Stanley to find out for sure.  They drive past the house on their motorboat and see their victim sitting at a tree reading a book.  Knowing now that Matthew lied to them, the three others beat him up and make it clear that their friendship is over.  

As the quartet self-destructs, Jennifer is finally ready to open the drawer that holds the gun she found her first day there.  Dressed in black, she drives to the local church and asks God to forgive her for what she is about to do.  She then drives to the gas station where Johnny works, but stops herself from carrying out her plan when she sees him with his wife and children.  She then spots Matthew as he rides past her on his bicycle and decides to begin with him.

She returns home and places an order to the grocery store where he works.  Upon being told of the address of his next delivery, Matthew gets scared and steals a knife from the meat counter to protect himself.  When he arrives at the lake house, he finds Jennifer waiting for him outside, dressed in a white robe that makes her look like an angel.  He follows her into the woods, holding up the knife he brought with him—ready to use it if he has to.  

With the knife in his hand, he finds her standing beside a tree next to the water.  

“I hate you!  I hate you!” he cries at her angrily.  

“What have I done to you Matthew?” she asks with an eerie calmness that almost borders on kindness.  

“I have no friends now because of you!” he tells her.  

“Why, Matthew?” she asks as she begins to untie her robe.  “Why because of me?”

“Because I was chosen to kill you and I didn’t!”

“You will this time Matthew,” she says encouragingly.  “You will.  Just relax.”

“I’m sorry I have to do this,” he apologizes.  “I’m also sorry for what I did to you with them.  It wasn’t my idea.  I have no friends in town.”

“I thought we were friends.  Remember?  You asked me.”

“You’re only here for the summer!  What am I to do the rest of the year?”

“I could have given you a summer to remember—for the rest of your life,” she tells him as she pulls apart the robe and exposes one of her breasts.  

With the knife still raised above his head, she shows him the rest of her naked body and pulls him in for a kiss.  She then kneels down and takes off his pants and pulls him on top of her.  As he has sex with her (doing now what he earlier could not), she reaches behind to a noose hidden in the leaves of the tree and slips it around his neck.  She then starts pulling on the rope the noose is attached to and lifts Matthew up into the air, his body jerking spastically as he slowly suffocates.  She waits until she is sure that he is dead before dumping his body and bicycle into the river.  She then returns to the house and calls the grocery store to inform them that her delivery never arrived.

Having taken care of Matthew, she decides it’s time to return to Johnny.  She finds him by himself at the gas station and is able to wordlessly convince him to get into her car—using nothing more a flirtatious look and a nod of her head.  She drives him to a clearing, where she pulls out her gun on him and orders him to strip.  Johnny does as he’s told, but rather than beg for his life he explains how what happened was really all her fault—insisting that she provoked them with her sexy clothes.  Jennifer allows him to believe that she is swayed by his reasoning and hands her gun over to him and invites him back to her house.  He agrees—not realizing that she is only doing so in order to make him suffer much, much more than he would have if she had just shot him.

Back at her house, she joins Johnny in her bathtub for a bubble bath as he complains about his wife and friends.  He tells her that Matthew is missing, but that he’ll probably turn up sooner or later.  

“He’ll never come back,” Jennifer tells him as she massages and caresses his chest.  

“Why, do you think he committed suicide or something?” asks Johnny.  

“No,” she answers matter-of-factly.  “I killed him.”

Despite her protestations to the contrary, Johnny refuses to accept that she isn’t joking and doesn’t see it coming when Jennifer reaches for a knife she has hidden underneath a towel and uses it to castrate him.  Her rapist is so relaxed in the water he doesn’t even realize it has happened until he sees the water turn red.  Jennifer calmly gets out of the tub, puts on her robe and locks Johnny inside the bathroom as his cursing turns to begging for help and mercy.  She drowns out his cries by playing an aria from Puccini's Manon Lescaut.

This just leaves Andy and Stanley, who—knowing that both Matthew and Johnny are missing—suspect that their own lives are in danger.  Stanley approaches the house on his boat, while Andy comes by land—armed with an ax.  Jennifer, swinging in her hammock in a green bikini, hears Stanley coming and surprises him by swimming to his boat and climbing in.

“Where’s your friend?” she asks him.

“He stayed back in town,” he lies to her.

“I’m glad,” she lies right back to him.  “It’s you I wanted.”

As clueless as Matthew and Johnny, Stanley leans in for the implied kiss, which gives Jennifer the opportunity she needs to push him out of the boat.  As he splashes in the water, she starts the motor and starts terrorizing him with the boat just like he and Andy did to her before.  Andy reveals himself from where he was hiding on the shore and screams at her to leave his friend alone as he climbs into the water.  Using the boat, she manages to steal away his ax and watches as Andy swims towards Stanley in a foolish attempt to rescue him.  The two of them attempt to make it to shore, but Jennifer is able to split them up and kills Andy with his own ax.  

She then stops the boat just a few feet away from Stanley, who swims to her and attempts to lift himself out of the water via the motor.  He begs her not to kill him, insisting that he’s sorry and that it was never his idea in the first place.  Jennifer answers his pleas by repeating his own words back to him—“Suck it, bitch,” she says just before she turns the motor back on and tears him apart with its underwater propeller.

As his body begins to sink into the water, Jennifer drives away.  For the briefest of possible seconds a smile begins to appear on her face, but she does not allow it to grow and replaces it with a cold, blank stare.

 

The credits begin to roll.

I’m sure it’s pretty obvious by now where I stand in the whole misunderstood masterpiece/worst movie ever debate that has helped keep Day of the Woman relevant to this very day, but I should admit right now that I have a more personal reason to side with its creator than natural contrariness.  Like Meir Zachri, I know what it’s like to make a sincere effort to create a work that both honors the strength and fortitude of women and criticizes the clueless brutality of men, only to be accused of misogyny for having created it.  It actually happened to me twice, both cases involving poems I had written for two creative writing classes I had taken during my brief tenure at the University of Alberta.

The first time involved a poem I had written from the point of view of a rapist who rants at his victim for not giving him the experienced he wanted.  Clearly a weak and pathetic figure who committed his crime in a sick attempt to control someone else, his effort fails when his victim refuses to break down into tears and simply stares back at him with hateful contempt.  Despite having been written with the rapist’s voice, it was obvious whose side I was on and that I had intended for the creep to damn himself with his words, rather than present them as an actual defense of what he did.

It proved to be the most controversial poem the class discussed that year (literally, as nearly a 1/4 of that week’s 3 hour class ended up being devoted to it) and it was simultaneously praised by some as my best work to date and trashed by others as a work of terrible misogyny that illustrated a viewpoint that had no right to exist in the printed word.  And lest you think that I’m being a bit overdramatic describing the sentiments of my detractors, I will never forget that at the end of the debate the poem inspired, our professor summed up his feelings by saying “I think this proves that some point of views should not be expressed.”  

To this day it saddens and shocks me that someone who had devoted their entire life to being a writer and a poet would actually say those words out loud.

The most vocal of my detractors was the class’ most fiercely dogmatic feminist, who ignored the poem’s obvious theme of how even when victimized, women are inevitably stronger than men, and instead insisted that by giving a voice to a rapist, I became one.  Never mind that the poem was a work of fiction and no crime actually occurred, as far as she was concerned my having written about a rape from the male perspective made me a (literary) rapist.

You would think that after being accused of such an offense, I would cease from that point on to write about the subject and protect myself from being labeled a disgusting misogynist for the rest of my academic life, but I was just 19 and not ready to be so easily cowed into dogmatic submission.

The next year nearly all of the same students were enrolled in the higher-level class with a different professor and—without even thinking about what had happened the year before—the first poem I submitted was a long and angry screed that took issue with the way woman had been treated by religion (in this case Christianity) over the years.  It told the tale of Christ returning just before The Rapture specifically to rape an underage stripper on Christmas Eve (not a subtle concept to be sure, but I was only 19 when I wrote it).  My professor, when he introduced it, described it as, “The most explicitly feminist poem I’ve ever read,” which—considering the kind of work he must have been exposed to over the years—struck me as a being a very bold statement, but the same woman who had accused me of being a symbolic rapist a year earlier strongly disagreed.  

In this case her outrage came from the fact that I had depicted the rape in the body of the poem and—even though my narrator this time was unambiguously sympathetic to the victim and hostile to her attacker—this again was an act of misogyny on my part.  As she argued her case it become quite obvious that—as far as she was concerned—rape, as a subject, was entirely off limits to any writer with a penis.  The violation of undesired penetration being a subject she believed male writers could never appreciate or even remotely understand.  Naturally this argument can be undone with a single viewing of any one episode of Oz or Deliverance, but I have discovered throughout the years that pointing this out seldom, if ever, inspires those who make it to reconsider their position.

In defense of my accuser, she did eventually praise me for a later poem I wrote about women who are afraid to express themselves out loud that was inspired by our talented, but very shy fellow classmate, whom every male in the class had a serious crush on, which she included in a ‘zine she put together with her roommate.  

And while this explains my natural impulse to defend Zarchi’s film against accusations of the big, nasty m-word, I would gladly stifle it if I for one second believed that he actually hated women and had created the film to titillate his fellow misogynists, but having repeatedly watched the film and listened to his thoughts on the DVD commentary track I can say with 100% certainty that his intentions were pure—unfortunately the marketing plan of the film’s distributor was not.

In 1978 Zarchi had successfully sold Day of the Woman across the world, but had been unable to find a distributor willing to take on the film in North America.  After a very brief and unsuccessful attempt to distribute it himself, it appeared as though his film was destined to be lost to obscurity, until two years later when exploitation film distributor Jerry Gross (Blood Beach, Miss Nude America and The Boogeyman among others) agreed to release it.  Against Zarchi’s wishes Gross changed the title to I Spit On Your Grave and marketed the film with a lurid poster featuring a bruised and bloodied woman’s shapely backside and the (admittedly wonderful) tagline:

 

This woman has just cut, chopped, broken and burned five men beyond recognition...
But no jury in America would ever convict her!

Despite the tagline’s three major inaccuracies (Jennifer only kills four men, doesn’t burn any of them and would most likely still get convicted in Texas), it did the trick and got the film in theaters around the country, including—most significantly—Chicago where a single review branded the film with its infamous reputation and sparked the debate that surrounds it to this day.

Since he saw it in 1980, Roger Ebert has never hesitated in naming I Spit On Your Grave as the worst film he has ever reviewed.  Such was his antipathy for the film, he actually appointed himself the role of public censor and urged people to boycott and protest the theaters that were showing it and on several occasions stood outside those theaters with his fellow famous TV reviewing partner Gene Siskel in order to try and convince people not to see it.  For the moment, he proved successful, as the film quickly disappeared out of theaters, but in the long run his efforts were undone when—thanks largely to its now-infamous reputation—the film became a huge hit following its release into the then-nascent home video market.

The irony being one that every potential crusader should note—in all likelihood your protests will give the subject of your ire more attention than it ever would have received if you had simply allowed it to come and go without comment.

And while Ebert certainly was well within his rights to loathe the film and do everything he could to spare others what he believed was the most horrible of cinematic experiences, his reaction to the film was troubling for several reasons, the first of which was utter hypocrisy.

 

In the decade preceding his review of I Spit on Your Grave, Ebert had occasionally moonlighted as a screenwriter for the infamously breast-obsessed director Russ Meyer (both pictured) and collaborated on the scripts that would eventually become Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Up! and Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens.  And while the three films vary greatly in quality (Beyond is brilliant, Up! is extremely uneven but has its moments and Beneath is a self-indulgent mess) each of them contains moments as discomfiting as any found in Zarchi’s film.  In particular, the deaths of Casey and Roxanne in Beyond (who essentially die for no other reason than their lesbian relationship), the extended and brutal rape of Margo in Up! and the numerous sexual assaults played for laughs in Beneath, all call into question the validity of Ebert’s moral crusade against the film.

Equally distressing is the fact that eight years earlier Ebert (to his credit) had been one of the few critics to defend Wes Craven’s disturbing breakout film, The Last House on the Left--a film one could easily argue is as “…sick, reprehensible and contemptible…” as I Spit on Your Grave, if not more so.  But it is clear when you read his review of I Spit on Your Grave, what has offended him is not so much the film’s content, but rather how the audience he watched it with reacted to it.

Reading his description of the vocal reactions of his fellow audience members cheering on the rapists as they assaulted their victim, it is easy to understand why he left the screening feeling so disturbed, but it is much harder to sympathize with his conclusion that this was the precisely the reaction the filmmakers had intended.  

I remember when Schindler’s List came out there were reports of laughter from callous teenagers on school field trips, who reacted to the senseless deaths of Jewish holocaust victims the exact same way they would later react to the senseless deaths of the underworld characters in Pulp Fiction.  Had Ebert seen Spielberg’s movie in a theater filled with these idiots, would he have concluded that the director was an amoral anti-semite playing the Shoah for laughs?  Of course not, but Spielberg’s film had the benefit of being marketed as the serious work that it was—while Zarchi’s film had had its title changed and was now being sold as a pure exploitation picture.  The question then is if Ebert’s review would have stayed the same if he had seen Day of the Woman instead of I Spit on Your Grave.  My guess is that under its original title, the film wouldn’t have attracted the rough, unenlightened crowd that responded so enthusiastically to the ads for I Spit on Your Grave and Ebert would have simply dismissed the film rather than be inspired to declare the jihad that helped make it so famous.

In retrospect the most troubling part of Ebert’s review is his insistence that, “This is a film without a shred of artistic distinction. It lacks even simple craftsmanship,” since watching the film today clearly proves this not to be the case, but in the critic’s defense it is certainly likely that the film he saw and heard at a local theater in 1980 bears little resemblance to the film now available on DVD in 2007.  In the past few years we have seen a rise in once-dismissed or even actively abhorred films receive the benefit of a critical re-evaluation thanks largely to remastered DVD releases that present them in a new and entirely different light.  It is entirely possible that the film Ebert saw appeared to be poorly made, but the film available right now proves that initial appearances can be deceiving.

There is a reason I took the time and effort to format this post so that its screencaps could be enlarged with a mouse click and that is because many of them possess a deceptively simple beauty that I felt was ill served by presenting them at only 350x190 resolution.  The film possesses a unique look that at once seems dreamlike and verite-esque (is so a word)—as if Zarchi has made a fly-on-the-wall 70s documentary of a horrible nightmare.  Zarchi and his cinematographer Yuri Haviv (who also shot the genuinely artless Doris Wishman curiosity Double Agent 73) take full advantage of the natural settings of Kent, Connecticut, to create an arresting juxtaposition of savage inhumanity and lush green floral beauty.

But even if this were not the case, I believe Ebert is completely mistaken when he argues that, “Because [the film] is made artlessly, it flaunts its motives: There is no reason to see this movie except to be entertained by the sight of sadism and suffering.”  In fact, I would argue that the exact opposite is true—it is the perceived lack of artistry that actually proves that Zarchi’s motives were to invoke horror and empathy for his victim and not to titillate the sadists whose laughter and jokes caused Ebert to so passionately lash out.

The attack on Jennifer (starting from Andy and Stanley abducting her canoe and ending with the four rapists escaping from the lake house via their motor boat) lasts just a bit over 32 minutes, which is almost less than half as long as the “…hour of rape scenes…” Ebert describes, but still long enough to make it one of the most significantly extended rape sequences in film history.  For many it is this extended length that the film’s detractors point to as the clearest sign of Day of the Woman’s perceived misogyny—arguing that the film could have simply suggested the attack if it intentions were to enlighten rather than to arouse—but in reality the opposite is once again true.

 

Strangely, those offended by the sequence’s “artlessness” and extended length complain that it is ugly, unbearably sadistic and nearly impossible for a decent person to sit through, which is an extremely odd criticism when you consider that they are talking about—and please forgive me as I use a profanity to express myself—A FUCKING RAPE SCENE!  By its very definition rape is an ugly, sadistic crime that no decent person would be comfortably able to watch happen in front of them.  The rape scenes in Day of the Woman are disgusting because they were meant to be disgusting.  Zarchi’s intentions are clear, he wants you to feel sick as you watch what happens to Jennifer and if you don’t than that is a damning failure of your own soul, not his as a filmmaker.

Beyond its length, there are several other factors that make the sequence unique amongst its ilk.  The first is the unusual use of male nudity.  In most films involving rape, it is almost always only the victim who is seen naked, but in Day of the Woman, all but one of Jennifer’s four attackers strip down to nothing but their socks.  There is a reason male nudity is still extremely rare in movies, especially when compared to its female counterpart, and that’s because many people—both male and female—are repulsed by it.  In the majority of cinematic rape scenes, the filmmakers only show us genitalia we are hardwired to find arousing, thus making their sequences more potentially titillating than they would want to admit.  Zarchi avoids this trap by showing just as much of Johnny, Andy and Matthew’s bodies as he does as Jennifer’s.  This contributes significantly to the sense of disgust decent audiences feel when they watch the film.

But the aspect of the sequence that most significantly makes it stand out is its use of music—there is none.  With the exception of the scene where Jennifer puts on an opera record to drown out Johnny’s cries for help, there is no music in Day of the Woman.  More than anything else, this lack of a traditional score contributes to the film’s documentary-like feel—the absence of the expected emotional cues tricks us into thinking that what we are seeing is really happening and not a work of imagination.  This more than anything else is why I believe Ebert became convinced that Zarchi’s film was an “…expression of the most diseased and perverted darker human natures.”  Without a musical score to tell him what Zarchi wanted him to feel at that moment, it was easy for him to conclude that the filmmaker was in league with the sick fucks he was unfortunate enough to be sitting with in the theater.

To my eyes, Zarchi did everything he could to make the sequence as hard to watch as possible, with the sole exception of casting an unattractive woman as the victim (but even his decision to cast the beautiful Keaton--pictured here from a horror convention appearance she made at the age of 55--in the role is one that makes sense on both a thematic and narrative level).  And while I believe he did this out of a genuine desire to document the true horrors of sexual assault, the sequence’s brutality also serves the vital purpose of justifying Jennifer’s own remorseless brutality in the last half of the film.

In her brilliant defense of the film in her landmark book Men, Women and Chainsaws (perhaps the most often cited text in the history of this blog), Carol J. Clover points out that Roger Ebert never mentions how the twisted souls who laughed at Jennifer’s suffering reacted when she turned against her attackers in the most violent ways possible.  Did they laugh when she cut off Johnny’s penis or hung the pathetic Matthew?  They might have, but my guess is that they didn’t.

More than anything else, the reason my gut reaction to Day of the Woman is to call it a work of overt feminist propaganda is the fact that the only sequences where I feel Zarchi does take some sadistic delight are the ones where Jennifer kills hers attackers.  Unlike the rape sequence, which he made as ugly as possible, the three sequences where she gets her revenge are far more aesthetically pleasing and—at times—oddly and disturbingly beautiful.

The major criticism of these sequences has always been that Jennifer uses her sexuality in order to commit her murders, suggesting that as a woman she has no other weapons in her arsenal.  My argument against this is that Jennifer is presented as being a smart, worldly young woman and she is canny enough to realize that seducing her victims before killing them allows her to get closer to them and make them suffer that much more than if she merely attacked them from a distance.   And in the case of Matthew, her seduction not only allows her to disarm him and put him in a position where she can slip her waiting noose around his neck, but also justify her unwillingness to spare him despite his unfortunate condition and personal predicament.  By allowing him to do to her what he originally couldn’t, she turns him into a man, which makes him no longer an object of pity, but rather one of deserved scorn. 

 

In other words, she has to fuck him so she can kill him.

In the sequence with Johnny, Jennifer proves her status as the most powerful of the two by first wordlessly convincing him to get into her car and then pretending to be swayed by his ridiculously chauvinistic defense of his crime against her, so she can put him in position to be robbed of the one thing he cares about most.  Without even really trying she is able to expertly exploit his delusional narcissism and get him into that bathtub where a very sharp knife is waiting for her beneath a nearby towel.

Interestingly, in these two sequences Zarchi uses female nudity in the exact opposite way he did male nudity during the rape sequence.  Unlike the scenes featuring her assault, Zarchi wants us to enjoy watching Matthew and Johnny suffer, so he uses Camille Keaton’s body to provide the titillation he previously worked so hard to avoid.  Her beauty distracts us from the ugliness of her actions, which might otherwise cause us to cease to empathize with her.  Thus his apparent exploitation actually serves as an example of his feminist intent.  By emphasizing her beauty in these moments he proves his allegiance to her and makes it obvious that he considers her actions just.

At this point I still have a lot more I could say about Day of the Woman (I haven’t even touched on the secondary theme of the conflict between urban and rural culture or the strange fact that in criticizing the film some feminist academic reviewers express sentiments nearly identical to that of the uber-chauvinist, Johnny) but this entry is now awfully close to being 7000 words long and I think it’s time for me to stop and get this sucker posted.  That I, or anyone else for that matter, could be inspired to write at such length about this film goes a long way to negating the sentiments of those who would dismiss it as just another example of low-budget exploitation filmmaking that happened to become infamous because of one vitriolic review from a nationally-recognized film critic.  In my introduction I suggested that Day of the Woman/I Spit on Your Grave was a film that is impossible to recommend, but having reached the end of this post, I feel duty bound to contradict myself—see this movie.  The most-recent DVD release of the film, which not only contains the best visual and audible example of the film to date, also contains two extremely interesting audio commentary tracks by Meir Zarchi (who gave no interviews about the film for over 20 years following its release) and by genre critic and historian John Bloom (aka Joe Bob Briggs) and is one of those rare special editions that is truly special and is a must have in the collection of any serious cineaste—genre or otherwise.