You can lobby a lot of criticisms at Jess Franco, and I say that as a fan of his films. Detractors have labeled him a pornographer, a misogynist, a con man, and the devil incarnate. However, when you consider the man behind the work, I can’t help but admire his integrity. Franco could’ve easily coasted his entire career, doing the sort of weirdo Hammer knock-offs that he first made his name with. But he left it all behind, moving to France to escape the censorship of his native Spain, while also foregoing the cushy budgets and box office grosses that he had enjoyed. Yes, he gave this all up to make twisted tales of bondage nuns and lesbian vampires full of gratuitous nudity and S&M, often inspired by his obsession with the works of the Marquis de Sade, which may not strike you as all that noble. But Franco’s dedication to his craft above all else embodies what I love about cult cinema: as I discussed in the Hard Rock Zombies entry, these movies were made by people who stuck to their artistic guns, no matter how noncommercial they were. Above all else, Jess Franco cared about making Jess Franco films. At least for awhile.
Even without knowing the behind the scenes story of today’s film, 1981’s Bloody Moon, you can probably tell just by watching it that this was a money for hire job. Enticed by Wolf Hartwig and Erich Tomek, a pair of German producers with some lofty promises and bucketloads of cash — which were probably very enticing at the time, given the fact that he and his first wife, Nicole Guettard, had just divorced — Franco gave in to the zeitgeist, signing on to craft an American-style teen slasher film for the German marketplace, if you can imagine such a thing. However, it didn’t quite work out that way. To watch Bloody Moon is to watch an idiosyncratic auteur thumb his nose at a genre that he obviously sees as hopelessly formulaic, while also injecting a heaping dose of breathy Eurosleaze into the proceedings, almost as if he can’t help it. In other words, Franco gonna Franco.
We open on, what else, a disco dancing party. Miguel, a Klaus Kinski-looking creepoid with a huge facial scar that resembles fried chicken, is looking at his sister all weird. His sister, Manuela, is like, yo don’t look at me like that, I’m your sister, so yeah, the movie goes THERE immediately. Bummed out over being rejected by his sister, Miguel steals a Mickey Mouse mask and starts to mack on a lady who’s not a blood relative. She invites him back to her bungalow for some horizontal bedroom dancing, but when she takes off his Mickey Mouse mask, she’s, shall we say, less than enthused about Miguel’s fried chicken face. Oh, and she thought that he was her boyfriend, so this is basically how that gag (with like twelve quotation marks around the word gag) from Revenge of the Nerds would turn out in real life. Miguel is also, shall we say, less than enthused by this young lady’s screaming, so he stabs her a bunch of times with a pair of scissors. Glad to see we’ve come so far in terms of dealing with toxic masculinity!
Cut to: five years later. A doctor, played by Jess Franco himself, is like, hey Manuela, your brother is way less murder crazy now, so I’m going to release him into your care, just make sure he’s spared from any sort of excitement, like the constant temptation of having nubile young co-eds around to murder, anyway, byeeeee! Well, oopsies, because as it turns out, Miguel and Manuela live with their invalid billionaire aunt, who leases her land out to an organization called the International Youth Club Boarding School for Languages (you graduate when you’re able to say the name of the school without getting tripped up), which is crawling with gorgeous buh-buh-buh-baaaaaabes who are always dancing sexily and lounging topless around the pool when they’re not learning Spanish for like 5 minutes a day. Great. Things nearly go to hell immediately when, on the train home, Miguel becomes fixated on a young lady named Angela, and when Manuela sees a silk scarf stuck in the window, she somehow thinks that Miguel pushed her out of the train while her back was turned for two seconds. But then Angela gets up, and explains, to these two total strangers, that she had just dropped something on the floor and was bending down to pick it up. This is going somewhere. Cue the next paragraph!
Easily the biggest problem with this movie is the dialogue. This is the rare movie that manages to both show AND tell at the same time, as if we the audience were complete dummies. Characters are constantly talking about their relationships to one another, or narrating events that just happened seconds ago. And the dubbing in this movie…good gravy. Every character talks almost nonstop, no matter what the situation, whether they’re together or alone, in these breathless, dramatically overwrought monologues, delivered at a furious clip, full of the most flowery language. It sounds as though the movie was dubbed by some alien computer technology whose language database consisted of nothing but quotes from John Waters movies.
So as it turns out, Angela is heading to the language school to join her friends in sexy hijinks, but whoops, she has to live in the bungalow where Miguel went all scissor-happy back in the day. And gosh, wouldn’t you know it, but as soon as Miguel makes the scene at this school again, people start turning up dead. Good news, though: this movie delivers on the kills. We get to see the mean old invalid aunt get burned alive in her bed, one of Angela’s friends gets stabbed in the back and the knife pokes out through her nipple, another friend is choked by some sort of like bear trap thing, and then there’s the coup de grace, when yet another friend is beheaded by a giant circular saw. Hell yeah. On the other hand, there’s a really cruel, unnecessary scene in which a snake is beheaded by a pair of garden shears. Leave the critters alone!
For whatever reason, no one believes Angela when she’s like yo all of my friends are being murdered, because she, uh, is reading a murder mystery novel, so it must be all in her imagination? It makes no sense, but then again Angela doesn’t exactly endear herself to us by running around all over creation having a nervous breakdown. I know they can’t all be Ellen Ripley, but cheese and crackers, cut the damsel in distress act, woman! Along the way, we hit all of the major slasher plot moments: the killer POV shots, the jumping cat fakeout scare, the last girl stumbling upon the intricately posed corpses of her friends, etc. You can practically feel Franco smirking each time a scene like this happens. This leads to a final act straight out of a giallo movie, full of crazy twists and double crosses and escalating violence.
And then there is the soundtrack. One lofty promise made by Hartwig & Tomek to Franco was that Pink Floyd were slated to provide the film’s soundtrack. Yes, THAT Pink Floyd. Why Franco would believe that these German snake oil salesmen had corralled the biggest rock band in the world at the time to do a soundtrack for their no-budget horror flick I honestly don’t know. The music was eventually done by an Austrian gentleman named Gerhard Heinz, and Franco has gone on record saying it is his least favorite part of the film. However, I quite enjoy it. There is a great variety of motifs and sounds, from lounge exotica to demonic strings to Stockhausen style bleeps and bloops. And then of course, there is the film’s main theme, which does indeed sound like something that could’ve conceivably been an outtake from the Wish You Were Here sessions.
To wrap up my take on Bloody Moon, I wanna cede the floor to the master himself. Click here to watch an excellent, highly entertaining interview with Franco, shot in his home for Severin’s DVD release of the film from 2007. Beginning in charming fashion with second wife and collaborative muse Lina Romay grabbing her purse and leaving for the afternoon, Franco chain smokes about a thousand cigarettes and regals us with many an entertaining anecdote from behind the scenes of Bloody Moon, including the one promise the producers did keep to him (casting Olivia Pascal as Angela), the true identity of mysterious screenwriter “Rayo Casablanca” (co-producer Erich Tomek), the fact that he indeed did treat the film as more of a tongue-in-cheek venture (much to the producers’ chagrin), and the horrifying and inaccurate title the film was saddled with for its release in Spain (get ready for it…Raped College Girls. Yikes!) It’s sad to watch the interview knowing that Franco would only be with us for another five years. But that’s the thing with artists as prolific and driven as he was: it will take a lifetime to digest the twisted feast that is his body of work. We may have covered an outlier today, but perhaps it’s enough to get you started on exploring the sumptuous, problematic, bizarre, and wonderful world of Jess Franco.
Sometimes, in order to seek out the weirdest discarded slices of celluloid trash that cinema has to offer, one must leave the confines of their crappy apartment, and go to an actual movie theater. This is a column recounting my excursions into the b-movie wilds. This is Scum in the Aisles!
Look, here’s the thing, Scumbags: I would really like to discuss Godfrey Ho’s Ninja Terminator, which I caught on the big screen at the Drafthouse this past Monday evening. I really would. It was tremendous fun, the audience received the film rapturously, and it lit a fire in me to the point where I now want to watch every Godfrey Ho film that I can find. Oh sure, I can wax rhapsodical about the experience. However, I’m not convinced that the English language has evolved to the point where I can properly explain a Godfrey Ho movie. The closest I can come is, imagine you’re watching a six-year-old playing with a bunch of action figures, and you suddenly start to have a stroke. And even then, knowing that description, I guarantee you that you will not be ready for what Ninja Terminator will do to your mind. You really just have to buy the ticket, and take the ride. I did, and I will never be the same, thank gawd.
Before this month’s Video Vortex, I had only seen one other Godfrey Ho film, 1993’s Undefeatable, starring Cynthia Rothrock. While that film has its quirks, most notably the batshit insane death of its lead villain, it is mostly a fairly by the numbers kung-fu revenge movie, featuring some very impressive stunt work. Little did I know the history and filmmaking style of Godfrey Ho, which I will recount here very quickly, because it is important to understand why Ninja Terminator is such a lysergic cinematic experience.
Godfrey Ho got his start as a first assistant director for Hong Kong’s legendary Shaw Brothers productions. Eventually, he realized that there was a thirst for Hong Kong cinema in the international film market, so he decided to take advantage of that in a very, shall we say, idiosyncratic way. After forming IFD Films & Arts with producer Joseph Lai and a mysterious figure named Tomas Tang (who allegedly died in a fire in the mid-90s, but some believe was secretly Godfrey Ho himself), Ho set about flooding the international film market with no-budget action films, most of which included the word “ninja” in the title. In a ten year period, Ho made roughly 115 films, making him perhaps the most prolific director in all of weirdo cinema. How did he do this? Well, he kinda cheated.
Here’s how a typical Godfrey Ho ninja film came together: Ho would shoot a few minutes of footage featuring caucasian actors in ninja outfits, because caucasian actors meant bigger box office. He would then take an entirely different movie that had been bought by IFD Films & Arts, usually of Korean or Filipino origin, and edit in footage from that film to go alongside his caucasian ninjas, overdub all of the dialogue in English, and try to construct a coherent narrative out of all of these disparate parts. The same footage would get reused over and over again in different iterations for different films, an actor could work with Godfrey Ho once, and end up appearing in twenty of his films. Ho also loved to use unlicensed music; in Ninja Terminator, you can hear snippets of tunes from Pink Floyd and the Star Wars soundtrack, amongst others. The effect of this audacious Frankenstein cinema on your brain is like looking at one of those optical illusion paintings from the nineties: you know that there’s an image in there somewhere, but your brain has to adjust to it.
Apparently Ninja Terminator is one of Ho’s more successful efforts in splicing together what could be called a linear story, which, holy shit, if THIS is an example of a SUCCESSFUL attempt, I can’t wait to see what an abject failure looks like.
So at this point you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been stalling a bit. That’s because, once again, this movie is almost impossible to describe. But I’ll try: there are these three ninjas, two are honkeys, one is “Japanese.” Their master is like, yo, check it out, I’ve got the golden ninja warrior statue, which makes me impervious to harm. The ninjas decide that the statue turns people corrupt and evil, for some reason, so they each escape from the dojo with a piece: each honkey gets an arm, and the “Japanese” guy gets the body, I believe. Some other ninjas try to fight them, but they manage to beat them. Suddenly there’s a two year time jump. The evil ninjas find the “Japanese” ninja and kill him. This leads our head honkey, played by Ho mainstay Richard Harrison, to bring in his right hand man, Jaguar Wong, to protect the dead ninja’s sister, and make sure that the golden ninja warrior doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Of course, Richard Harrison and Jaguar Wong never meet in person, because Jaguar Wong’s scenes were taken from a Korean drama called The Uninvited Guest.
Now is a good time to discuss some of the film’s…peculiarities. Apparently Ho heard that Garfield (yes, the cat) was very popular in America, so he decided to have Richard Harrison’s character, a middle aged man, discuss business on a Garfield telephone. Needless to say, the entire audience cheered in delighted disbelief the first time this phone appeared. Also, for some reason, whenever Richard Harrison and the other honkey are in their ninja outfits, they also have on a bunch of eyeliner, as if it’s 2004 and they’re going to a My Chemical Romance concert. Then there is the main villain of the film, Tiger Shen. There’s really no easy way to put this, so I’ll just say it. For most of the movie, for no discernible reason, this dude wears a woman’s blonde wig. Like a Gidget, beach blanket bingo wig. It’s hypnotically bizarre. And don’t even get me started on the toy robots that deliver ransom notes and hostage video tapes, because then we’d be here all day.
Basically, the entire film from hereon in is fight scenes. There is a new fight scene roughly every minute or so, which is so over the top and ill-advised, but somehow kinda works. Like, a horror movie with a fresh kill every minute would become tedious, but for some reason, Ho’s unapologetically maximalist take on the kung-fu movie is fascinating to me. Jaguar Wong cannot go anywhere in this movie without a bunch of dudes challenging him to a fight for no reason. And surprise surprise, he always wipes the floor with them. The fight scenes also feature a ton of weird stylistic flourishes, including instant repeats and freeze frames. Oh, and if you zoned out during a fight the first time around, don’t worry, odds are it will get repeated later on in the movie.
Along the way, Richard Harrison chops up a watermelon with a katana, we learn that ninjas can teleport…somehow, some crabs attack Richard Harrison’s wife, who works as a fashion designer of some sort and wants to combine swimwear and exercise clothing, there are two surprisingly graphic sex scenes involving a gangster moll who used to be Jaguar Wong’s sweetheart, a Korean pawn shop owner speaks with a Texas accent, and there are more double crosses than the goddamn VOID logo.
Eventually, Jaguar Wong and Tiger Shen have an amazing battle that totally ignores the physics of how sand works, and Richard Harrison gets back all the pieces of the golden ninja warrior. The bad ninja master from the beginning commits seppuku by blowing himself up. Freeze frame. End of movie. End of life as you knew it before you watched Ninja Terminator.
I can’t recommend this film highly enough. You almost HAVE to watch it in order to fully understand it, I did my best, but words fail when confronted with the likes of Ninja Terminator. Mad props to Annie Choi of Bleeding Skull for gifting us with this experience, and it was especially neat to finally meet her and chat for a bit after the show. All I can say is, next month’s Video Vortex looks and sounds amazing. For now, though, I must continue my journey into the wild, weird world of Godfrey Ho. There’s Ninja Thunderbolt, Ninja Destroyer, Ninja Dragon, Full Metal Ninja, Ultimate Ninja, Ninja in the Killing Fields…
Way back in 1966, before he was reduced to a Johnny Depp caricature and the personal hero of that one libertarian douchebag in your college Philosophy 101 class, Hunter S. Thompson burst onto the literary scene with his debut book, Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gang. Expanded from a 1965 article for The Nation, Hell’s Angels introduced America to not only the Doctor’s freewheeling, lysergic brand of prose, but this new underground culture of the motorcycle gang. No longer the leather-bound toughs of The Wild Ones, these bikers were hairier, freakier, and ten times more drugged up. They didn’t even bother to ask what you had for them to rebel against, they let their chains to the talkin’, maaaaaaan.
Hells Angels on Wheels roared into movie theaters the following year, when the Summer of Love had cooled down into the Winter of…I guess still Love? I dunno. I imagine the film must’ve been very shocking in its day and age, but for today’s viewer, Hells Angels on Wheels is notable for other reasons, namely its nascency. It represents ground zero for an entire sub-genre which played a major part in cementing the explosion of creativity that was American cinema in the 1970s, and provided a launching pad for a number of players who would go on to become indispensable cornerstones of that scene. But, before they could do that, they had to shoot a bunch of establishing shots of bikes parking in places.
In the spirit of the Peace movement, why don’t we be generous and describe the narrative structure of Hells Angels on Wheels as…episodic? Yeah, that’s the ticket! Basically every scene in the movie follows this structure: the Hells Angels show up somewhere and park their bikes for like five minutes, go into a place where everyone hates them, get into a fight with the people who hate them, then leave when either they kill someone or the cops show up. That’s it. That’s the whole movie. The audience’s surrogate is a young man named Poet, who quits his job at a gas station when a customer is a total jerk to him. Then his bike gets sideswiped by one of the Angels, who has, shall we say, questionable facial hair. Either this guy’s mustache just grows weird, or they did a terrible makeup job on him, anyway, you be the judge:
So Poet’s headlight is damaged, and he proceeds to start a fight with the Angel with the questionable facial hair. Now, instead of just beating him to death with some wrenches, the lead Angel, Buddy, appreciates Poet’s ability to scrap. They all hang out for awhile. They get into a fight in a bar with a rival biker gang. They get into a fight at a carnival with some sailors. Then they all go back to a swingin’ pad full of groovy wall decor and have a drug orgy for what feels like nine hours. At one point, a painter who looks and talks suspiciously like Hunter S. Thompson — floppy hat, sunglasses, gruff mumble — begins doing body paint on all the women, which takes up roughly six hours of this nine hour scene. But most importantly, Poet falls for Shrill, one of the biker mamas who he can tell is a little too smart to be around this scene, because so is he. Just one problem: Shrill is Buddy’s woman. I’m sure this won’t lead to awkward, poorly choreographed violence at all!
Speaking of, kudos to the filmmakers for going for realism; there’s a lot of handheld camerawork, plenty of Nouvelle Vague-influenced jump cuts, and the film seems to feature quite a few actual Hells Angels. In fact, Sonny Barger, the president of the Angels’ Oakland chapter, gets his own title card in the opening credits, even though he appears on camera for less than two seconds. Surely this title was properly earned, and not the result of any threats against studio people with switchblades. However, we’re talking about an era where filmmakers still hadn’t quite figured out how to properly choreograph a fight scene, so every scuffle still kinda looks like drunken acrobatics. And the death scenes are even worse. Here’s a short list of how people die in this movie: they’re awkwardly knocked down and punched once; their car is run off the road but otherwise totally unharmed; and their bike runs into a two by four, slowly tilts over, and catches on fire for no discernible reason. It’s a shame that the one thing that reads as hokey in a movie dedicated to portraying the reality of this violent lifestyle is, well, the violence.
Eventually Poet is made a “prospect” by Buddy, and the whole gang hits the road. One of the bikers and his woman get married at a Catholic Church in Nevada. There are more fights with people who don’t like them. In once scene a biker drives his bike up a real tall hill for awhile. One biker gets arrested on a murder beef, but the gang busts him loose less than a minute later, because stakes or tension is for squares, I guess. By far the most interesting part of this movie is watching the relationship between Poet and Shrill develop, and how that begins to threaten Buddy. These two are joined together by their discontent: they both want something outside of the ordinary from life, but are paralyzed by their self-destructive tendencies. This is especially true of Shrill, who isn’t happy unless she is causing unhappiness all around her, which leads her to play Poet and Buddy off of one another, until it all blows up in a powerful final confrontation that is unfortunately capped off by a truly stupid coda that never should’ve happened.
Hells Angels on Wheels was directed by a gentleman named Richard Rush. Though he wouldn’t be as prolific after the sixties, and hasn’t directed a feature film since 1994’s Color of Night (speaking of truly stupid codas that never should’ve happened), this film helped propel him to greater artistic heights: 1970’s Getting Straight was a critical darling and called the “best American film of the decade” by none other than Ingmar Bergman; 1974’s Freebie and the Bean was a box office smash and more or less invented the buddy cop movie; and 1980’s The Stunt Man earned him two Oscar nominations. Richard Rush has kinda been forgotten these days, but, I mean, François Truffaut called this guy his favorite American director. Have YOU ever been François Truffaut’s favorite anything? I doubt it, he’s been dead since 1984, genius.
Eagle-eyed viewers may have noticed that the cinematography on Hells Angels on Wheels was credited to one “Leslie Kovacs.” If you’re a hopeless dork like me, you probably whispered to yourself, “I bet that’s Lázló Kovacs.” Well, fellow hopeless dork, we were both right: this was one of Kovacs’s first American feature jobs, after shooting commercials and nature documentaries for much of the early sixties. He continued to collaborate with Rush throughout the seventies, as well as lensing classic films by the likes of Peter Bogdanovich, Bob Rafelson, Martin Scorsese, Dennis Hopper, and Norman Jewison. Shockingly, he never won an Oscar, but odds are if you paint a mental picture of American cinema in the seventies, you’re imagining an image shot by Lázló Kovacs.
That finally brings us to Poet, who was played by a young upstart named Jack Nicholson. Is it even necessary to point out that he’s the best actor in the film? Well, he is. The character is a bit underwritten, but he makes the most out of it. Nicholson can do more with a smile or a glance than other actors in the film attempt with an entire monologue. Best of all, he still hadn’t gone full on bug-eyed, jive talkin’, scenery chewin’, Lakers court side Jaaaaaaaack yet. There’s a vulnerable, wounded quality to his acting here that is incredibly compelling, I would argue that he perfected it in Five Easy Pieces, one of yours truly’s favorite films of all time, before moving on to the more ostentatious work that would net him 3 Oscars and turn him into a tabloid playboy.
Hells Angels on Wheels would help establish the counterculture motorcycle gang as a cinematic force to be reckoned with, at least on the drive-in circuit. More quick and dirty films of that ilk followed in its wake, such as The Wild Angels, Born Losers, and Hells Angels ’69, before one such film broke on through to the other side: an acid-soaked exploration that pitted the battle between the bikers and normal society as the struggle for the very soul of America in the Vietnam age. Oh, and they brought Kovacs and Nicholson along too. Obviously I’m talking about Otto Preminger’s Skidoo.
Nah, just kidding, I’m talking about Easy Rider. Released in 1969, the film proved to be the flashpoint for the most artistically fertile decade in the history of American cinema. And to think, it all may not have happened if it wasn’t for a little movie that’s mostly establishing shots of bikes being parked.
Finally, my dear Scumbags (or, should I say, my dear Jive Turkeys?), it’s time to discuss blaxploitation. Technically it’s not the first time the funkiest of genres has graced this fair internet site: we’ve previously covered Ebony, Ivory & Jade, which has traces of blaxploitation in it, but consists more heavily of a women’s prison film, a shot of a dummy getting kung-fu’d, and a bunch of boring nonsense. But no more half measures! Today, we’re getting knees deep in the dy-no-mite waters of blaxploitation, I’m talking perfectly manicured afros, I’m talking overwrought Shakespearian dialogue delivery, I’m talking a soundtrack full of nothing but stone cold grooves until the break of dawn, woman! And what better way to cruise down blaxploitation lane than to discuss a title that is, shall we say, rather eye-catching. A title that is seemingly designed to give old white conservatives a heart attack. A title that, politically speaking, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but shut yo mouth, cause we’re talkin’ bout 1975’s The Black Gestapo!
Watts. Los Angeles. The ghett-ooooooooo. White mobsters who have names like Vito despite the fact that they all kinda look like Kris Kristofferson are running amok all over town. They’re shaking down businesses! They’re funding pushers and pimps! They’re beating up prostitutes! It’s a whole thing, but luckily some local brothers have started a group called the People’s Army, which we learn was started with a government grant. This is the first sign that this film takes place in a fantasy world, even in a progressive blue state like California, it’s beyond insane to imagine that the government would ever willingly fund a group of black men in military garb in a post-Panthers society. But here’s the thing: the group’s leader, General Ahmed, is a pacifist in his activism. He only cares about providing food and shelter for the homeless, and getting drugs off the street; if he’s gotta work with The Man in order to get that done, so be it! When we meet Ahmed, he’s giving a speech to a very small group of very disinterested Watts residents, who receive his message of picking oneself up by the bootstraps with decidedly muted applause. Meanwhile, Ahmed’s second in command, Colonel Kojah, seems to have other ideas. This is conveyed by a sudden cut to actual news footage of Hitler greeting his troops, which turns deep black before the blaring funk of the soundtrack greets the title card. Holy shit! That’s certainly one way to start your movie!
Ahmed goes to check in on the local medical center, where his on again off again woman, Marsha, works as a nurse. Mere moments later, Marsha is just trying to walk home, when Vito and his lil buddy start harassing her, implying that she’s a prosititute and all sorts of jive turkey behavior. Marsha, because she don’t take no shit, slaps Vito, and a classic blaxploitation kung-fu fight ensues. Yaaaay! Kojah sees this as his opportunity to make moves: he goes to Ahmed and is like, hey man, your woman almost got raped and beaten in broad daylight today, I wanna start a “security force.” Ahmed, who ain’t no dummy, is like, Kojah, dude, I know you, and I know that you’re probably gonna use this so-called “security force” as a convenient excuse to start a race war. Kojah is like, um, no I’m not. To which Ahmed is like, ok fine, I’ll give you six men, don’t make me regret this. Meanwhile, the white mobsters are having a business meeting. I love these types of scenes in genre movies, these scenes that imply that criminal organizations are run like corporate boardrooms. The lead gangster, Vincent, has a little dog and looks so much like Higgins from Magnum Pol.I. that I had to look and make sure that he wasn’t played by John Hillerman (turns out he’s being played by the film’s director, Lee Frost). Vincent is like, hey Vito, this one pimp hasn’t payed up, take your lil buddy and figure it out.
Vito and his lil buddy go and visit this prostitute, who for some reason has a Disneyland pendant on her wall, which is a weird decision on the part of the art director. Anyway, this begins a trend of white women being used as scantily clad sex objects in this film. Every white woman who appears onscreen is only there to show her breasts. In fact, the film doesn’t do much better by Marsha, either: when she’s not being raped or assaulted, she’s pretty much nothing more than an angry black woman stereotype. Given that this is the genre that gave us Pam Fucking Grier, the misogyny herein is disappointing, to say the least. Anyway, Vito and his lil buddy continue searching for the pimp, while Kojah meets with an old military buddy who looks like Bill Withers. Bill Withers is like, man, I think your boss is a jive-ass brother, to which Kojah is like, I agree, he sucks, so we’re gonna start some new shit, and I need you as my right hand man. Meanwhile, Vito and lil buddy are at this bar, when Vito spots Marsha and is like, you know what, we can shake that pimp down later, I’ve got unfinished business with this lady. Cut to a horrific beating and rape scene, which, no thanks, I didn’t ask for that.
Kojah and his six troops show up at Marsha’s house the next day and is like, hey sister, tell me who did this to you. Marsha is like, since it won’t make any difference because they’re mobbed up AF, it was Vito. Kojah is like, ok cool, byeeeeee. Cut to Kojah and his six troops breaking into Vito’s house in the middle of the night. Vito is enjoying a nice relaxing bath, a choice he will soon come to regret. The troops burst in, and all I could think was how impressive it was that they pulled off this scene in such a small bathroom. Anyway, Kojah pulls out a straight razor, CASTRATES VITO, AND FLUSHES HIS JUNK DOWN THE GODDAMN TOILET AND VITO BLEEDS TO DEATH!!! WHOA MOMMA!!! This of course kicks off the race war that Ahmed was afraid of, whoops. Vincent, who is just trying to sleep with his very annoyed, very topless lady friend, is more than happy to retaliate. A bunch of gangsters are killed, but a bunch of Kojah’s men are also killed. This culminates in lil buddy’s death scene, which is wonderful. He’s driving down the freeway when a car full of buh-buh-buh-baaaaabes pull up next to him. He’s like, heeeeey! And then one of them pulls out a single boob, and he literally giggles like a child. Oh whoops, then they side swipe him, and this car goes careening off of a goddamn cliff. It is ruined something fierce! Somehow lil buddy survives, but whoops, there’s Kojah and his men, and they’re packing heat. They shoot at lil buddy a bunch, then they throw a Molotov cocktail at his car. Damn, that’s some cold dinner. Vincent decides to get the hell outta town, lamenting the fact that he should’ve stayed in Harlem in the first place. I’ve gotta agree with him, Harlem is great! My sister lives there! Maison du Harlem is a great restaurant!
So now that they’ve tasted victory, Kojah is like, alright, time to go full on black gestapo up in this piece! Suddenly he’s got this palatial mansion compound where his troops are trained and there’s a swimming pool and all the white women they’d ever want to sock it to. Oh and look, they’ve eschewed the khaki and red fatigues favored by Ahmed in exchange for some black uniforms, complete with…oh, yup, shit, that’s an actual Third Reich officer’s hat that Kojah is now wearing. He works his troops up into a frenzy with his fiery speechifying, which culminates in them all chanting “Revenge! Revenge! Revenge!” Just in case we somehow missed the point in this, the chant then transitions into a recording of a bunch of Nazis chanting “Sieg heil!” Thanks, movie.
Somehow all of these new developments totally elude Ahmed, who decides to go to Marsha and be like, hey woman, this movie’s runtime needs some padding out, wanna make sweet sweet love to me? Marsha is like, sure why not. While these boots are being knocked, the black gestapo is running roughshod all over Watts. They’ve basically replaced the mobsters; now it’s Kojah and his troops that the local businesses are paying for “protection,” it’s Kojah and his troops who are funding the pushers and the pimps, and it’s Kojah and his troops who are beating up that poor prostitute who just wants to go back to Disneyland from the beginning of the movie. This upsets the citizens of Watts, who think that the People’s Army are responsible for Kojah’s bullshit, so they respond by bombing the local medical center. Marsha is, shall we say, less than thrilled about this, so she goes to Ahmed and is like, get your ass out of my bed and go get ya boy! Rightfully so, Marsha.
Ahmed goes to visit Kojah at his compound and is like, what the hell bro, didn’t I warn you about starting a race war, I gave you an inch and you took a mile, the streets are worse than they ever were when the mob was in town, and worst of all Marsha is pissed off at me! Kojah just fucking shrugs his shoulders and is like, whatever man, go feed some homeless people like a weak ass pussy, we ain’t homies no more. Ahmed is like, fine with me, much like Michael Showalter in that one sketch from The State, I’m outta here! At which point Kojah is like, hey Bill Withers, go pick up some drugs from a very cliche looking blaxploitation drug dealer so that I can sell them to the community, I’m sure this won’t backfire on me at all.
So Bill Withers goes and picks up these drugs from Not-Superfly, but oh cripes, a bunch of dudes in People’s Army uniforms steal the drugs! Bill Withers interrupts Kojah mid fuck sesh with a white lady to be like, the drugs got stolen, and you know that Ahmed had something to do with it, let’s kill him. Kojah is like, yeah, fine, kill him. So Bill Withers and co. track Ahmed down, shoot him, and he falls down a hill. However, they make the mistake of being too lazy to actually go down this hill and make sure that he’s dead. Way to half-ass your one job, Bill Withers!
Unfortunately for the black gestapo, this assassination attempt inexplicably turns Ahmed into a Rambo super soldier. The last half hour of the film is essentially him infiltrating the compound and fucking up everyone in sight; it makes no goddamn sense from a character perspective, but oh man is it awesome. Just shootouts and explosions and kung-fu fights galore! So Ahmed basically blows everyone up with booby traps, until only Kojah and Bill Withers are left alive. Ahmed makes Kojah drop his gun into the pool, but then Bill Withers sneaks up behind Ahmed and gets him in a headlock. Kojah pulls out his straight razor, and we know what THAT’S for, but then Ahmed karate kicks Kojah, and Bill Withers gets his throat slit by the straight razor! Whoa! Then Ahmed and Kojah have their final fight…in the pool! Underwater showdown, holy heck! Ahmed gets the rifle from the bottom of the pool and shoots Kojah dead! Again, underwater! So miss me with this nonsense that black people can’t swim! Ahmed stumbles out of the compound. Freeze frame on Kojah’s dead body floating in the pool. Cue the funk!
Aside from all of the unfortunate misogynistic bullshit, The Black Gestapo has everything that you could want from a blaxploitation film. The dialogue and acting is enjoyably over the top, the violence is pulpy and low rent and awesome, and of course the soundtrack kicks fucking ass. And on top of all that, the film manages to capture a pivotal moment in the history of the civil rights movement, when there was a schism in the Black Panthers between those who wanted to provide community service and those who wanted violent revolution. What doesn’t quite track however, is the whole gestapo connection. Aside from it being a big, splashy, attention-grabbing title, it’s hard to imagine a black revolutionary finding any sort of inspiration from the Third Reich, who were, surprise surprise, pretty fucking racist against black people. Then again, this is true of basically all blaxploitation films: the social context is there if you want it, but if you wanna just watch a bunch of honkies get kung-fu kicked to a blaring funk soundtrack, then you do you, my brother. You do you.
SOMETIMES AUNT MARTHA DOES DREADFUL THINGS (1971, d. Thomas Casey)
It’s turkey time, Scumbags! Gobble gobble!
Since Thanksgiving is nearly upon us, we’re going to be discussing movies about weird families this week. Now, I know what you’re thinking: you wanna talk about weird families, just look at the gaggle of miscreants I’m gonna have to sit around the table with in a few days! They all belong in the gosh darn loony bin! Family isn’t a word, it’s a sentence, buster! Well, sure, maybe your grandpa constantly misgenders you despite the fact that you are not transgender, and that one uncle thinks that gay people are a Jewish conspiracy, and your little cousin is always knocking over the gravy boat with his incessant dabbing, but hey, look on the bright side: at least your family doesn’t consist of a burned out hippie man-child and a cross-dressing murderous lunatic on the run from the law, right? On second thought, that sounds slightly better than all that “gay people are a Jewish conspiracy” business, but let’s move on, because holy frijoles, we need to discuss 1971’s Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things.
We open in Miami. Scary already, right?! Two small time crooks, Stanley and Paul, are on the run. Turns out, they’re wanted in Baltimore for robbery and murder, so they’re laying low down south. Problem is, things aren’t going so well. Stanley, as we learn, is driving around town in this absurd van that looks like a cross between Ken Kesey’s bus and the Mystery Machine, he’s always getting loaded, and he’s always bringing “far out chicks” back to the house. He also likes eating mini donuts out of a cigar box. Paul, meanwhile, is disguising himself as the titular Aunt Martha, because apparently two men living together in suburban Florida is much stranger than one man and what is obviously a man in a Halloween fright wig and elderly maid clothes living together. Oh, and Paul is extremely bitchy, prone to angry outbursts, and has a nasty habit of butchering the “far out chicks” that Stanley is always bringing home.
If nothing else, this movie is a harrowing portrayal of a toxic, codependent relationship. It is heavily implied, though never quite said out loud, that Stanley and Paul are lovers, but they act like a contentious couple throughout the entire film. Have you ever been around a couple where one is always flying off the handle at the smallest slights and just mercilessly berating their partner, who is immune to the endless haranguing by now, so they just act up out of spite? I have, and it is super fucking awkward, and this movie captures that dynamic perfectly. Paul is a massive control freak, while Stanley just wants to live the groovy life and let his freak flag fly, maaaaaan. Except when it comes to the aforementioned “far out chicks,” that is: whenever one tries to initiate the nasty with him, Stanley flips out and screams for Paul to come get them away from him. Did we mention that Stanley and Paul even sleep in the same bed?
Most of Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things follows this general pattern: Stanley does something that annoys Paul, Paul makes a big angry scene, which only eggs Stanley on more. Thrown into the mix are their nosy neighbor from across the street, who is pregnant and has a daughter who is training to become a nurse. This nosy neighbor somehow never realizes that Aunt Martha is a man in drag, and Stanley develops a crush on the nurse daughter, probably because she’s the only girl in the movie who isn’t trying to ride the baloney pony. We also occasionally check in with a local pizza parlor, because why not. And then there’s the lowlife junky who has followed them all the way from Baltimore, who wants to steal the diamonds and jewels that they’ve got, or something, this plot point never really quite pans out.
Things escalate to the point where the last half hour or so of the film just descends into insane violence. The nosy neighbor insists on making Stanley a cake for his birthday. While Stanley and Paul are gone, the junky goes rifling through the house, and eventually finds the diamonds and jewels. He gets into a scuffle with Stanley and Paul, and as he’s running out of their house, he knocks over the nosy neighbor, who is on her way to deliver the cake, and somehow this mortally wounds her? Paul goes after the junky, eventually gunning him down on a golf course, because Florida. Meanwhile, Stanley takes the nosy neighbor back to the shack behind their house. She’s somehow dying from being knocked over, and before she dies, she whispers, “save my baby.” That’s when Stanley pulls out Paul’s favorite stabbing knife, and we are treated to the most twisted c-section this side of Prometheus. Got DAMN!!!
Paul decides that it’s time for them to flee, but Stanley is getting tired of running. Nevertheless, Paul bullies Stanley into leaving the stillborn baby on nursing student’s doorstep, ditching the Ken Kesey Mystery Machine, and they hide out at an abandoned movie studio. It is at this point that Stanley is like, seriously, I’ve had enough, I don’t care if I go to jail, I can’t run anymore. Paul is decidedly not enthused by Stanley’s decision, and is like, you fool, you’re going to rat me out if you get caught, and you’re not taking me down with you! To which Stanley is like, c’mon man, I was the one who murdered and robbed that lady, they only want me. Which prompts Paul to go into full on super villain mode and be like, you shithead, I murdered that woman and gaslighted you into thinking that you did, because you’re high as fuck all of the time, it was a perfect crime, so what if I stole it from the ending of Multiple Maniacs! They have a very long, very slow game of cat and mouse (all of the “action” scenes in this movie are very long and very slow, just FYI), and then the police show up. Stanley is like, hey, my pseudo boyfriend is holding me hostage in here, OMG haaaaaaalp! So Paul has no choice but to stab Stanley a whole bunch of times until he’s been thoroughly murderized, but immediately regrets it. How do we know this? Because this pair’s relationship has progressed to the point where Paul cannot even live without Stanley, so as the cops are busting into the abandoned movie studio, Paul shoots himself in the head and dies. Now they can lay next to each other like latent homosexuals all the time, because they’re corpses.
Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things is a wonderful time capsule that gives you a peak back into a very important time in exploitation filmmaking. It will be no surprise to you, given the state’s down and dirty reputation today, that Florida was a hotbed for weirdos with shitty cameras and sick imaginations back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Florida’s underground film industry gave us the likes of Doris Wishman, Dave Friedman, and Herschell Gordon Lewis, for chryssakes! This is a prime example of one of that era’s oddball, crackpot roughies, where the sun looks like it has jaundice, the tacky interiors were clearly shot on a soundstage somewhere, and the music seems like it was lifted straight out of I Dream of Jeannie, making for a hilariously incongruous counterpart to the always dirty, sometimes psychedelic imagery it is meant to accompany.
And then there are the performances. Abe Zwick is an absolute hoot as Paul. He vigorously chews the scenery, giving every bit of spewed invective a Shakespearian verve. I started to write down his most memorable line deliveries (“that…BASTARD!”), but soon realized I would be quoting all of his lines from the film. The best way to sum up his performance here is to say, imagine Dudley Manlove starring in a John Waters movie, but even more demented. Wayne Crawford (who is billed here as “Scott Lawrence” and would go on to produce Valley Girl and Night of the Comet) does an admirable job as Stanley, really nailing the balance between his debauched hippie ways and his childlike insouciance. Simply put, these guys bring real pathos to these cartoonish campy roles, and if they weren’t starring in this thing, it would be pretty much unwatchable. As it is, the film is sluggishly paced, with scenes that run on for far too long, not to mention various scenes that play out in near total darkness. At 95 minutes, it feels twice and long and really would not suffer from being shorter by half. But if you’re a genre fan, you’ve gotta watch this thing at least once. It’s the cinematic equivalent of when your parents catch you smoking cigarettes, so they make you smoke a whole carton in one sitting. Rarely does making yourself sick feel this fun.
I’m gonna let you in on the process, my dear Scumbags. The method behind all of this madness, if you will. This is how I tend to go about picking a movie to write about for this site: I look at the VHS box art. I would like to say that this is because I want to make the experience of reading ANALOG SCUM like scrounging through the grimy back section of a video store of yore, but the reality is that I’m lazy and easily swayed by aesthetics. So you can imagine my elation when I came across the box art for 1985’s Blackout. I mean, look at this puppy! There’s a bondage gimp man brandishing a knife, with a very rock n’ roll title font, what’s not to love?! This is one of those titles that haunted (tee hee) the horror section of my local National Video as a young’n, and I’m sure horror fans around my age or older remember those piercing blue eyes staring at us through that leather mask. Based on this box art, I thought I would be watching a sleazy giallo-inspired slasher, with nudity and gore to spare, maybe even of the SOV variety, which is a-ok in my book. But then…I learned that Blackout was a made-for-TV movie. Oh fudge.
So there’s this lady in a red trench coat, right? She walks up to a house and knocks on the back door. Then she rings the doorbell, and it sounds like a buzzer, which, who has a doorbell on their back door, and that’s not how a doorbell sounds. Fucking CARE MORE, filmmakers. The lady finds a spare key and enters the house. It’s pretty eerie. There’s classical music blaring, and the remnants of a child’s birthday party are still on the dining table. The lady goes into a side office, where the classical music is blaring from, and turns off the record player. But what’s that? The TV is on in another room. So the lady heads downstairs. It’s dark. It’s creepy. And in the TV room, there’s another lady and three kids, and they’re super duper dead! Whoa! Afternoon ruined!
And so enters Detective Grandpa. He’s a grizzled old gumshoe who you just know is going to take this case way too personally and the guy who did it is going to become his white whale, etc. etc. etc. Detective Grandpa learns that the patriarch of this murdered family, one Ed Vincent, has gone missing. So of course that must be the perp who done it! Cut to: a guy hitchhiking by the side of the road. Huh? So he gets picked up by someone driving what looks like a Yugo or a Gremlin or some other terrible late 20th century car. Anyway, this fucking guy immediately starts tailgating a lumber truck for no goddamn reason. Ease off the gas, dicknose! Then he tries to pass the lumber truck on the right hand side, which, c’mon, asshole, and then ANOTHER LUMBER TRUCK comes in the other direction, the car swerves, goes up a hill, comes crashing down, and fucking EXPLODES. Was it worth it, ya tailgating son of a bitch?!
Now the movie turns into The Diving Bell and the Butterfly for a few minutes, and we see things from the perspective of the hitchhiker. Turns out he’s suffered serious facial injuries and will require a series of total reconstructive surgeries, plus he’s got amnesia, so he has no idea who he is, whoops. We meet a bunch of his doctors, who don’t matter, plus his nurse, who is played by Kathleen Quinlan, aka the lady from Apollo 13, plus her cop boyfriend, played by Michael Beck, aka the guy from The Warriors and zero other good movies. She’s a recent divorcee, and he’s extremely pushy about wanting to get married, and gets super annoyed when she tries to assert her personhood, but don’t worry about it. Anyway, our homie gets all of his surgeries, and decides that he wants to look like Keith Carradine, which is fine. It’s a choice. It’s like saying, hey, make me look like a more wholesome Klaus Kinski. But yeah, eventually he and Kathleen Quinlan fall in love, and decide to get married. Michael Beck takes this extremely well, by which I mean he yells at her and then pretends he was only worried about their financial situation. Oh hey, is that a wall on Michael Beck’s bedroom that’s covered in photos of Kathleen Quinlan? I thought I said don’t worry about it!
Cut to: six years later. Keith Carradine is going by the name Allen Devlin. He’s a super successful real estate agent, he and Kathleen Quinlan are happily married, and they have three kids. Detective Grandpa, meanwhile, has been forced into retirement by the powers that be, definitely because of political reasons and not because he’s a degenerate drunk. But then someone anonymously sends him a newspaper clipping with a picture of Allen Devlin, and he’s like, oh fuuuuuuuuck, I’m off to Washington state to harass some innocent people! He accosts Allen on a crowded elevator and is like, Oh hey, Ed Vincent! And of course Allen is like, um, no, you’ve got the wrong guy. And Detective Grandpa is like, oh no, you’re definitely Ed Vincent, remember, you had a wife and three kids and then they were fucking murdered?! Anyhoo, see ya later! And then he just gets off the elevator and Allen is like, what the hell was that about, some old rummy just called me a killer?!
Detective Grandpa then does what he should’ve done in the first place were he not a whisky-soaked dickhead and shows up at Allen Devlin’s office. He shows Allen a bunch of crime scene photos and Allen is horrified and agrees to prove his innocence however he can. THE VERY NEXT SCENE, they go to the doctors and the doctors are like, hey, look, Allen’s dental records don’t match Ed Vincent’s, so this movie should basically be over now. But Detective Grandpa is like, nah, who needs scientific evidence when you’ve got a sleuth’s intuition and blah blah burp. At this point Michael Beck gets pulled back into the movie, and once again rightfully points out that the movie should be over at this point because scientifically speaking Allen can’t be Ed Vincent, and Detective Grandpa responds by calling Michael Beck a “young hot shot computer type.” Ugh. So Allen hires a private investigator to look into his past before the accident, which goes pretty much nowhere. Kathleen Quinlan starts getting threatening phone calls from someone calling themselves Ed, and addressing her by the dead wife’s first name. Oh, and out of the fucking blue, Mr. Bondage Guy from the box art shows up and starts attacking women around town, and Detective Grandpa is like, oh yeah, forgot to mention this, we had similar attacks out in Ohio, creep in a gimp mask going around rapin’ everybody up in here, but they stopped…AFTER THE VINCENT FAMILY MURDER!!! SPOOOOOOOOKY!!! It’s like, c’mon, you’ve GOT to set this up way before the mid-point of the movie! It’s like getting a sandwich with one too many meats: do you want a serial killer hoagie or a bondage rapist grinder? PICK ONE, BLACKOUT!
So the private eye that Allen hired winds up dead, and the police of course suspect Allen. Allen, meanwhile, is starting to think that Detective Grandpa and Michael Beck are conspiring to set him up, because of course he would think that! This sentient bottle of Captain Morgan and the creepy cop who clearly still loves his wife suddenly start lobbing accusations of murder at him? C’mon, what’s he supposed to think? But then one of the kids finds a gimp mask in the garden shed! Oh noooooo! Kathleen Quinlan is like, gaaaaah maybe you are a murderizer! And brandishes a knife at him, and Allen is like, c’mon, baby, you know me better than that, I have no idea how that super sexy mask got in our garden shed! Look, to prove that I’m not a murderer, I’ll have myself committed, so that the cops can’t arrest me (which is not how that works), and then when the crimes continue, I’ll be exonerated for good! So off to the loony bin he goes, and into the garbage bin this movie goes.
Detective Grandpa gets the DNA results back from the lab on the super sexy gimp mask: no traces of Allen anywhere on the thing. And then a guy gets arrested for attempted rape, and they find a different sexy gimp mask on him! All of a sudden, Michael Beck, who has been calling Detective Grandpa crazy this whole time, is like, this could be a copycat crime, I think Allen is the real bad guy here now because the plot needs me to! Detective Grandpa is like, nah, your man confessed, there’s no real evidence to tie Allen to any of this, I was wrong, I’m going back to my elderly bachelor’s apartment in Ohio, but before I do that, can I use your bathroom? Michael Beck is like, sure, no problem, just ignore my wall festooned with pictures of Allen’s wife, if you could. But whoops, he doesn’t, and Detective Grandpa is like, holy shit, you set this whole thing up because you wanna go back to boning Kathleen Quinlan, you sent me that newspaper clipping, didn’t you? And Michael Beck, toilet clown that he is, tries to have it both ways, and is like, ok fine, I sent you the newspaper clipping, but I did it because I really thought he may be the guy you’re after, not because of this obvious romantic vendetta of mine! Psssssssh. So then Detective Grandpa is like, did you make those phone calls and plant the gimp mask too? To which Michael Beck is like, how dare you, I may have sent you a newspaper clipping in the hope of getting my unrequited love’s new husband accused of murder, but I’d NEVER plant evidence! Get off your fucking high horse, Beck, and just admit that you’re a creep, yeeeeaaaaaah.
To his credit, Detective Grandpa stops by to see Kathleen Quinlan, and is like, hey, I fucked up, your husband is definitely innocent, and Michael Beck definitely set this whole thing in motion because he’s still in love with you. Which comes as a huge shock to Kathleen Quinlan, and I hate when movies do this, because women are fucking smarter than this. Men in general, but especially creepy men, are terrible at hiding their unrequited feelings, and women definitely know, they just choose to ignore it. Whatever. So Kathleen Quinlan goes to see Allen and is like, I know you’re innocent now, I just want you back, and he’s like, ok, you’re right, it’s time for me to come back to my family, but oooooh boy am I mad at Detective Grandpa and Michael Beck! Anyway, I should be home just in time for…OUR SON’S BIRTHDAY PARTY!!! SPOOOOOOOOOOKY!!!
Michael Beck, because he’s awesome at ideas, decides to show Kathleen Quinlan that he’s not a creep by accosting her in the Safeway parking lot. Smooth move, Xanadu. He’s like, look, I know that I made a few oopsies, but I still think that your husband is a murderer, and you and your family are in danger. So finally Kathleen Quinlan just unloads on him. She’s like, you’re a manipulative jerk, that’s why I didn’t want to marry you, and that’s why we’re in this situation now, and you need to fucking nut up and get over this childish crush you have on me, and while you’re at it stay away from me and my family, I never want to see you ever again. So Michael Beck totally respects these wishes and…nope, nope, sorry, he parks his car across from the house and goes and stalks them. To make sure they’re “safe.” Fuck offfffffffff, dude.
So the kids are celebrating the youngest’s birthday, they’re decorating the house and blaring the rock n’ roll radio (let’s go!). Kathleen Quinlan asks one of the kids to go close the garage door, but he’s like, nah, I’m on the phone with the radio station so that they’ll give little fuckin’ Mikey or whatever his name is a shoutout on the air! So Kathleen Quinlan goes herself to take care of the garage door, but the lights aren’t working, so she grabs a flashlight, and then, OH CRIPES IT’S MR. BONDAGE GUY!!! She fights him off and manages to knock him out. Meanwhile, Detective Grandpa has stopped for gas, when he hears the birthday dedication to little fuckin’ Mikey or whatever his name is on the radio and he’s like DEAR GOD!!! So then Kathleen Quinlan is like, I must know! So she pulls off the super sexy gimp mask, and whoopdie fuck, it’s Allen. Great. So he wakes up and starts smacking her around and he’s like blargh bloogh I’m crazy now, I’m Ed Vincent and I think you’re my wife, so everybody’s going to hell tonight! The kids don’t hear any of this, of course, because of that blasted rock n’ roll music! She barricades herself in the car, and oh shit, there’s Michael Beck’s dead body! He starts busting out the windows, she crawls out of the driveway, and he’s about to gank her with an axe, when all of a sudden, Detective Grandpa shows up and puts two between the eyes. RIP Allen Devlin. RIP Ed Vincent. And RIP Blackout.
Mostly this movie is just a deeply frustrating viewing experience. The central premise, an amnesiac accused of murder, is a really smart and fascinating one, because there are so many ways you can run with it: is this guy really a secret cold blooded killer? Is this detective just letting his obsession (and all that liquor) cloud his judgement? Or are they both being manipulated by someone else for their own nefarious means? Unfortunately, the filmmakers decided to go with the most predictable and boring answer, while also taking the most needlessly convoluted route to get there. However, the performances are all good, more or less, and there’s some excellent cinematography, courtesy of Tak Fujimoto, who would go on to do incredible work with Jonathan Demme and others, so at least the movie looks good. Still, you can’t help but lament what a lost opportunity this is from a storytelling perspective. This is exactly the types of movies that should be getting remade: films with interesting plots that failed in execution. Just imagine what someone like Nicolas Winding Refn or David Fincher could do with this story, right?!
I’ll wrap things up with a strange and macabre addendum. Thanks to Nate Phillips, who runs the fantastic online storefront Media Crypt (I own a few of their shirts, and you should too!), for pointing out to me the fact that Blackout inspired a real-life murder! The film premiered on HBO on July 28, 1985. Less than a week later, on August 3, Ed Sherman of Hartford, CT, murdered his pregnant wife, Ellen. Just like in the film, Ed cranked up the air conditioning to slow down decomposition, and throw off the time of death, in an attempt to establish an alibi. During the trial, witnesses claimed to have discussed watching Blackout with Ed the day after it aired, and the film was even shown to the jury by the prosecutor. In the end, Sherman was sentenced to fifty years in prison, but died of a heart attack only four years into his sentence. The case would eventually be covered on an episode of “Forensic Files.” So that just goes to show ya, Scumbags: crime doesn’t pay! Or maybe it would if you pick a better movie than Blackout to base your crime on. I dunno. I don’t really do crimes.
Rock n’ roll is dead. I’m sorry to have to break the news to you, my dear Scumbags, but it’s true. If I’m being honest, for awhile, I was feeling the same way about ROCKTOBER.
Just look at today’s musical landscape. The youth of now don’t want to listen to killer riffs and epic drum solos. They want to listen to shiny, overproduced country ballads about driving your truck down to the river at night. They want to listen to shiny, overproduced pop songs about how being a woman is awesome and there’s no night like tonight because tonight is the night that we’re all gonna be women. They want to listen to shitty, underproduced hip-hop made by rapists with facial tattoos about how they want to kill themselves because they either have no drugs, or they have too many drugs, I’m honestly not too sure. On a commercial scale, what does that leave us rockers? The Black Keys? Uggggh. Mumford and Sons? Blecccch. Imagine Dragons? Imagine my itchy taint.
Point is, I was feeling about ROCKTOBER the same way we’re all feeling about the state of rock n’ roll today. I wanted to do something fun and weird for my favorite month of the year, but the first two movies I selected, well, they were lacking. They simply didn’t rock enough. But then I realized, you can’t lose the faith. If you wanna find the good stuff, you’ve just gotta keep digging. And just like that, a stiff, demonic wind blew in from the great white north, and saved ROCKTOBER, just when we needed it the most. Thank you, Canada. And thank you, Rock n’ Roll Nightmare.
We open on a quaint little farmhouse. It’s morning. Mom is downstairs making breakfast, Dad is shaving off that stubble, and Junior is getting ready for school. How picturesque this familial scene is! Mom opens the fridge, and there’s a glowing red light and a growl! Oh no, is it Zuul?! Dad hears this growling and his wife screaming, so he saunters downstairs at a leisurely pace. But when he gets to the kitchen, Mom is gone! Hey, what is that in the oven? Dad opens it up, and it’s Mom’s goopy skeleton! Wow! It reaches out and tries to grab Dad! Junior sees this and screams! Then an Evil Dead first person camera demon zooms around the house as the credits roll, because THAT is how you start a goddamn movie!
Now we cut to a van driving down a rural highway. But this is not any ordinary van, this van is a total shaggin’ wagon. It’s white with shiny red stripes, the interior is all red velour, and to top it all off, there’s a pair of handcuffs dangling from the rearview mirror. You can practically smell the vapors of bong water and old genitalia coming off of this thing. The van screams down the highway for about the combined length of the driving scene in “Manos: The Hands of Fate” and the driving scene in “Solaris,” which is to say, for way too long. Would it surprise you to know that they shot this sequence when they realized the film’s runtime was too short?
Anyway, the van pulls up to the quaint little farmhouse from the beginning, and for the first time we meet The Tritonz, the most bitchin’ heavy metal quintet from the United States and definitely not Canada! There’s our banshee vocalist and fearless leader, Jon, played by Jon-Mikl Thor, whose Wikipedia page describes him as a “bodybuilding champion, actor, songwriter, screenwriter, historian, vocalist, and musician.” Now that I’ve seen this movie, I take issue with a few of those descriptors, but anyway. We’ve also got Stiggy, the Australian drummer, Max, the guitarist, Roger, the bassist, and Dee Dee, the keyboardist. Along for the ride are Jon’s girlfriend Randy, Roger’s new wife Mary, Stiggy’s girlfriend Gwen, and Phil, the band’s manager. As Jon explains, they’re going to be staying in this farmhouse for the next month while they work on material for their new album. The barn has even been converted into a 24-track recording studio for them. When someone asks why this farmhouse on the outskirts of Toronto, Jon replies thusly: “Toronto is where it’s happening, man! The music, the entertainment, the arts…” So, in other words, Rock n’ Roll Nightmare is the world’s weirdest tourism commercial. Neat! Gwen immediately starts complaining that they’re in the middle of nowhere, and that they don’t have roadies to carry their luggage for them, because Gwen is the character in the movie who gets angry and annoyed about everything. We then meet the groundskeeper, who looks just like Ken Burns. Phil tries to get the keys from him, but Ken Burns just keeps rattling on about Alice Cooper, and I think this scene was supposed to be funny, but whoops, and then Ken Burns gives Phil the keys and walks out of the movie. Bye, Ken Burns! We get an overhead shot of the house, and an ominous musical stinger…but then everyone just walks into the house and nothing happens. Get used to this, because I really think that they let shots go on about three to five seconds longer than necessary in a desperate attempt to pad the runtime out, and I won’t be convinced otherwise. I’m a Rock n’ Roll Nightmare truther!
So they divvy up the rooms, and Gwen complains that they’re gonna have to eat Phil’s cooking for dinner, and witheringly refers to Mary as a “housewife.” Cool. Jon announces that he’s going to go lock up the van, and then we watch him do just that, in real time. At one point, he sees a shadow behind the curtains in his bedroom, and looks concerned, but then it’s just Randy. She cups her breasts in his direction, as if to say, hey, look, I’ve got tits! And he just kinda smiles in a way you do when you wanna be nice to spare someone’s feelings. Cut to, dinner has just ended. Phil is wearing an old timey paper hat like he’s behind the counter of a soda fountain for no reason, and I’m HERE FOR IT. Jon makes a toast to making their best album yet. Then Gwen pressures Stiggy into giving a toast, thinking he’ll be like, here’s to my girlfriend Gwen who is super awesome and not an asshole at all, but because Stiggy is kind of a dummy, he’s like, ummmm, here’s to Phil for cooking us an awesome meal. Gwen of course gets mad, and then refuses to clean dishes, because, as she puts it, “I’m not a HOUSEWIFE.” I really don’t understand where Gwen is coming from here. Is she jealous of Mary? Does she think Mary is a goody two shoes? Or is she against the institution of marriage in general? Sadly, only lil’ Baby Jesus knows for sure, and he ain’t talkin’. Anyway, Phil and the other two ladies wash dishes while doing a funky little dance and giggling like they’re in a Nancy Meyers movie, before deciding to head over to the barn and watch their menfolk (plus Dee Dee, who is a lady) rock out.
And rock out they do! We’re treated to the first of many Jon-Mikl Thor originals here. This one is entitled “We Live to Rock,” because of course it is. While the Tritonz are melting faces with their wattage (kinda), that gosh darn Evil Dead first person camera demon starts zooming around again. To my surprise, we then get to see said demon, and well, there’s no polite way of saying this, so here goes…it looks like a penis. It just does. It looks like a penis with one googly eye and a big dumb mouth right underneath the tip. I could not even believe it. So then it drools (calm down, everyone) right into Phil’s beverage, and we see him take a sip, and ewwwwwww. As they finish the song, Stiggy breaks one of his drumsticks. His bandmates get on him as if he just ruined the entire song, which, like, drumsticks break all the time, guys, relax. Phil is like, hey, I’ve got a bunch of drumsticks in the basement, I’ll be right back. But when he gets down to the basement, Gwen is waiting for him. She’s like, hey Phil, you look like the host of an early 90s Nickelodeon game show that only lasted one season, let’s fuuuuuuuuuuck. Phil is deeply confused by this, because, let’s face it, he’s Phil, but he goes along with it, at least until Gwen’s face becomes a zombie demon face and bites a chunk of his shoulder off! Oh nooooooo! Everyone upstairs hears Phil yelling, so they run down to the basement, but Phil is nowhere to be seen. Jon decides that, hey, we definitely heard the yelling coming from down here, but maybe Phil is in the attic? Uhh, what? Anyway, then they discover that their shaggin’ wagon is gone, so they’re like, hey, Phil probably went into town to buy some drumsticks, typical old Phil, That’s So Phil, etc. etc. etc.
Night has fallen. Randy desperately wants Jon to slip her his Mikl Thor, but he’s too focused on his songwriting, his art, his craft, maaaaaan. Max and Dee Dee also wanna freak each other nasty, but they’re too shy to admit it. You know how 80s rock stars were notoriously sexually timid, right? Roger and Mary make sweet love and talk about how much they love being married and isn’t it great to be married and we’re so glad that we’re going to be married for a long time and definitely not turned into zombie demons off screen anytime soon, because yay marriage. We catch up with Stiggy just as he’s blasting a load into Gwen, and he seems very satisfied with himself. After he excuses himself to go to the bathroom, Gwen refers to him as “the one minute wonder,” because Gwen gonna Gwen. Stiggy is flexing in the bathroom mirror and doing a terrible Schwarzenegger impression, when all of a sudden a bodacious buh-buh-buh baaaaaaabe that we have never seen before is standing in the doorway. Instead of being like, umm, who the hell are you and how did you get into our house, Stiggy is like, oh, awesome, tits! But then the buh-buh-buh baaaaaaabe turns into a zombie demon creature. It kinda looks like Goosebumps’ The Haunted Mask crossed with Night of the Creeps. It puts it’s hand on Stiggy’s mouth, so now Stiggy is possessed, I guess? He goes back into the bedroom and Gwen is like ugh, what do YOU want? And Stiggy is like, dat ass. And he gets on top of her, and then from outside the room we hear Gwen screaming with orgasmic delight, so I guess demonic possession DOES have its upsides?
Now there’s a dumb and unnecessary scene where a bunch of teenage girls who are in the “Mississauga Chapter of the Tritonz fan club” or some such nonsense show up at the house and are like, Ohmygawd, it’s 2am, let’s go wake them up and…I guess ask for autographs or something? But who should answer the door? It’s Phil! Ummmm what? And Phil is speaking like an upper crust weirdo because I guess that’s what the movie thinks a possessed person would sound like, and he’s like, ok girls, the band will be down “in twenty minutes” (???), how about you take them titties out! And these girls, one of whom we just heard drop the word “retarded” in a derogatory way, are shocked that a rock band would wanna see some nude breasts. Phil gets angry at the lack of exposed lady nips, the girls leave, the camera pan down…Phil has a zombie demon hand! Cue the Vincent Price laugh, I guess!
Morning comes, and Roger and Mary are like hey its our first time washing dishes as a married couple and we’re totally married and being married is awesome, oh whoops, some zombie demon hands pulled us offscreen and now we seem to have zombie demon hands too! Drat! Over at the barn, Jon is like, hey, where’s Roger, off being married or something? Oh well, guess I’ll strap on this totally tubular headless bass which will never go out of style, so that we can play our next song, “Energy!” Gwen is happily rocking out, because Stiggy’s demon dick turned her frown upside down. When the song is over, everyone is like, wow Stiggy, your drumming sounds great, we’re not even concerned that your Australian accent has inexplicably vanished! Then everyone gets a case of the hornies out of nowhere. Stiggy is like, hey Gwen, let’s go down to the lake so I can give you more of that possession nookie. Max and Dee Dee decide that now’s the time to finally seal the deal vis a vis knockin’ them damn boots. Randy is like, hey Jon, we should probably fuck the color out of each other’s hair, right? And Jon is like…nah, I’d rather work on some lyrics. Sorry, Randy!
Down at the lake, Gwen takes her top off and is like, hey, here are my boobs, let’s do this. Stiggy, in his new, non-Australian accent, is like, OK, and then his stomach rips open and a devil hand pops out! Neat! Gwen screams as the demon hand cops a feel, and Max and Dee Dee hear it, but assume that it’s a scream of ecstasy. Now the movie turns into a softcore porno for like ten or fifteen minutes. Max and Dee Dee have a slow, passionate bonk sesh. Randy stops beating around the bush and is like, hey look, Jon-Mikl Thor, I’m naked, let’s go have a super awkward sex scene in the shower. Jon-Mikl Thor is like, sounds good to me, and they go have a super awkward sex scene in the shower. It’s so unfortunate, you guys. There’s gross tongue kissing and weird acrobatic poses. Like, movies love make it seem like shower sex is totally easy, but no no, I beg to differ! Anyway, Max and Dee Dee finish up their romantic porking and get dressed, when they spy Junior! From the beginning of the movie! What’s that lil’ rugrat doing there?! They chase after him, ending up in the barn, where, to their horror, he turns into what looks like the love child of Bud Cort and a Shar-Pei, and zombie demon murderizes both of them. Which I hear is way worse than being murderized by a human. My uncle told me.
Anyway, Jon-Mikl Thor is super annoyed that everyone has mysteriously vanished, so he goes over to the barn to work on some lyrics, just in time for Randy to encounter Junior herself. Our hero is working on those darn lyrics of his and enjoying a nice crisp refreshing Coca-Cola, when all of a sudden, the penis devil returns! But not only that, there are now a bunch of penis devils! One looks kinda old, one is greenish blue, one is even smoking a cigarette, can you even imagine?! What’s strange is, Jon-Mikl Thor doesn’t seem to notice any of them, even the one that’s sitting literally right next to him. Then Randy enters the barn, and it’s like, ok, she’s obviously possessed. She gets up in Jon-Mikl Thor’s face and is like, face it, all your friends are dead, everyone’s dead! To which Jon-Mikl Thor is like, nope, don’t think so. At which point, Randy is engulfed in a flash of red light…and turns into a giant rubber Satan puppet! Holy shit! Eat your heart out, tiny-ass Satan puppet from Prime Evil! Weirdly enough, Jon-Mikl Thor seems completely nonplussed by ANY of this. Cool as a cucumber with a feathery viking haircut.
Now, my dear Scumbags, we come to perhaps the most batshit guano crazy town banana pants plot twist I have ever seen in a movie. I’m not exaggerating. SPOILER ALERT, FOR CHRISSAKES. SPOILER GODDAMN ALERT.
Satan puppet is like, haha, I turned all of your friends into my zombie demon minions or whatever. Jon-Mikl Thor, still completely unshaken, is like, nah bro, you didn’t. To which a perplexed Satan puppet is like, umm, no dude, I’m pretty sure I did that shit, homes. Then, Jon-Mikl Thor drops a goddamn bombshell:
“You killed no one, Bub. Or is it less familiar to call you Beelzebub? Or do you prefer Abaddon? Or, as the Hindus called you, Shaitan? Or, as you are known to answer to, Ahriman? Belial? Apollyon? Asmodeus? Because, you see… I do know you.”
IN OTHER WORDS, NONE OF THE OTHER CHARACTERS IN THE MOVIE WERE REAL!!!
Wh…wh…wh…
THEY WERE ASTRAL PROJECTIONS, CREATED BY ME, JON-MIKL THOR, TO DRAW YOU, SATAN PUPPET, OUT INTO THE OPEN SO THAT WE CAN DO BATTLE!!!
Wh…wh…wh…
AND I DID THIS BECAUSE I’M NOT REALLY JON-MIKL THOR, LEAD SINGER OF THE TRITONZ, I’M ACTUALLY TRITON, THE ARCHANGEL, THE INTERCESSOR!!!
AND JON-MIKL THOR RIPS OFF HIS CLOTHES TO REVEAL A SHINY CAPE AND A METAL CODPIECE!!!
And so the fight between Jon-Mikl Thor and Satan puppet begins, and oh my word, it is so goddamn charming. It’s like an Ed Wood fever dream. While the epic strains of our last Tritonz number, “We Accept the Challenge” blare triumphantly over the soundtrack, Satan puppet throws some rubber squid monsters at Jon-Mikl Thor, which he holds to his oiled chest while screaming in pain, as if they’re real, but then he rips them off and tears them to shreds! Yaaaay! Then he kinda gets Satan puppet in a chokehold for awhile, but then Satan puppet bitch slaps him and he falls to the ground! Oh noooooo! But then Jon-Mikl Thor gets Satan puppet by the ankles, and somehow gets him in a chokehold again? Ummmmm? Then the song ends, which means it’s time for the scene to end, so Satan puppet is like, you win this time, guess I’m going back to Hell until I find another Canadian family to harass with penis devils! To which Jon-Mikl Thor cooly replies, “I’ll see you again, old scratch.” Old what? Excuse me? What is any of this?
We then cut to a dark graveyard. Dark as in they seem to have forgotten to light this scene. Jon-Mikl Thor wanders up to some tombstones, we don’t know whose because he doesn’t say and again it’s dark, and he’s like, hey, good news, I choked out the Satan puppet, so you guys didn’t die in vain, anyway, byeeeee. Then we cut to a seemingly random shot of what looks like a suburban home, and then the movie ends. WOWZERS MCZOWZERS.
Simply put, Rock n’ Roll Nightmare is fucking awesome. I had an absolute blast watching this ridiculous cheese log of a movie. Having read the review, you may not be shocked to learn that, in addition to starring in the film and providing all of the music, Jon-Mikl Thor also wrote the screenplay and produced the movie himself. One may be tempted to call a film in which you cast yourself as a literal rock god who vanquishes the devil a vanity project, but I’m not sure that I would. I think a big part of a vanity project is a lack of self-awareness. Tommy Wiseau and Neil Green make vanity projects. To me, anyway, it seems like Jon-Mikl Thor is at least somewhat in on the joke here. The guy comes from the metal world, which is all about embracing over the top silliness, so of course he would make a movie that is chock full of over the top silliness. While I was watching it, I couldn’t stop thinking of Panos Cosmatos’s “Mandy,” another film that I recently saw and loved. Despite the fact that Cosmatos is somewhat of a visionary, and Thor and his director, John Fasano, well, aren’t, both films feel like the acid-soaked daydream of a teenage metalhead dude circa the mid 1980s. And I mean that in the best way possible. Sure, the dialogue is borderline alien, the acting is mostly awful, and the editing is beyond subpar, but when you’re dealing with a movie this fun, this weird, and this full of imagination, none of that stuff really matters. Hell, that ineptitude can sometimes even elevate what you’re watching, when there’s heart and soul. Which is all a long winded way of saying, hey hey, my my, rock n’ roll can never die. Thankfully, neither can Rock n’ Roll Nightmare.
You know where you are? You’re in ROCKTOBER, Scumbags! You’re gonna die! And I mean that strictly in a philosophical, Sylvia Plath sort of way! Hopefully most of you live a long, long time! At least long enough to finish reading this review and sharing it amongst your likeminded peers! Rock n’ roll!
Now, it doesn’t take a brain genius to figure out why hard rock and horror schlock make such good bedfellows, at least in theory. In the 1970s, acts like Alice Cooper and KISS were able to disguise the fact that they played totally unremarkable power pop by incorporating ghoulish, Grand Guignol antics into their live shows. It was pure vaudeville from a stagecraft standpoint, the type of stuff you could’ve seen in a theater at the turn of the 20th century, but when combined with rock music, suddenly suburban parents were all concerned that their children would become pot addicted Satan worshipping serial killers, when in reality they were much more likely to just sit in the back of a van and stare at their hands for too long. This is all to say, these acts may look dangerous, but behind the veneer of volume and debauchery, it’s all pretty milquetoast and boring. Speaking of milquetoast and boring, let’s discuss 1980’s Terror on Tour!
We open on what looks like a very dark VFW hall, where tens of people are going nuts for The Clowns. This four piece is rocking out in a very moderate manner, but their stage show is…supposed to be pretty nuts, like in theory, I guess? It mostly consists of ripping limbs off of mannequins and obviously fake stabbings. And then there’s the matching outfits that The Clowns are festooned in: skintight black jumpsuits with red silk bat wings that show off plenty of chest hair (no duh), sort of mime makeup accompanied by these Phantom of the Opera masks, and then as the silly cherry on the dopey sundae, afro wigs. These guys look like Freddie Mercury on Halloween. They look like Doctor Rockso from Metalocalypse going to a funeral. They look like a third funny example that I’m sure I’ll think of later.
Meanwhile, backstage, one of their roadies, Herb, is putting on some clown makeup of his own. You see, Herb is no good at talking to chicks, so he pretends to be a member of the band so that he can dispense with the chit-chat and just make with the bork-bork. Tim, the band’s manager, played by none other than Larry “The Soup Nazi” Thomas (welcome back to the site, Mr. Thomas!) stops by backstage long enough to decline a beer. This really upsets the other roadie, Jeff. Like, I mean, it REALLY upsets him. He sprays the beer all over the dressing room, then yells about Tim being an asshole. Whoa, take a chill, Jeff! Then he demands that Herb give him $50, which Herb does, because he’s a total pushover. By the backstage door, a lady is waiting. Jeff goes and buys drugs from the lady, but she gets mad because they had agreed on $100, but Jeff only has $50. Jeff is like, uhh, gimme the drugs, and I’ll be back in twenty minutes with the rest of your money? And she totally falls for it! Worst! Drug dealer! EVER! Oh well, it doesn’t matter though, because two seconds later a guy dressed as one of The Clowns walks up to her and stabs her. She dead!
Because the cops are stodgy old white guys, and The Clowns’ onstage antics seem really sick and twisted to them, the band immediately become the center of the police investigation. Which we the audience know is ridiculous, because The Clowns are about as hedonistic as The Monkees. One of them leaves immediately after the show because he’s TIRED and wants to GO TO BED. Two others order pizza and play bumper pool. The only one who is even remotely rock n’ roll is the drummer, who is in his bedroom and about to take like, two quaaludes, and then Tim walks in on him, chastises him for his behavior, and he immediately apologizes and promises to clean up his act. Not exactly Hammer of the Gods material here, eh?
Well, the next day, the band have a big party, because everyone knows rockers love to party at 11am, right? There’s drinking and drugs and wacky table dancing. One of the band members yells, “I need a joint!” And someone just hands him one out of nowhere. A blonde bombshell goes up to another band member and says that she thinks The Clowns are better than The Beatles and The Kinks. He’s like, yeah no shit, we rule, and then they start making out. Now, this is more like it! The band has a room set up in the basement strictly for fuckin’, and for no apparent reason it is decorated with bloody handprints and a noose. Oooooh, how spooky! So basically the killer Clown goes through the party stabbing and slashing a bunch of groupies, and you can always tell when one of these babes is about to bite the big one, because the killer Clown talks like Christian Bale Batman, as opposed to the real Clowns, who all have super embarrassing Illinois accents. Speaking of embarrassing, the quote-unquote sexy talk that these groupies are making? You’d think that these women were improvising and had never talked dirty before in their lives, or that their dialogue was guest written by a virgin, or an alien, or a virgin alien. One woman, right before she dies, actually says the line, “that cocaine made me really horny!” Nope. Nope nope nope nope. Sorry, but nope.
Back at their house, or wherever they’re staying, the main cop is talking to The Clowns and their crew, asking about their alibis during the party. Before he leaves, the main cop is like, hey, better make sure the movie gets super boring for the next half hour or so, because that worked so well in Rocktober Blood, right? And everyone is like, right! And then the movie becomes super boring for the next half hour or so. We learn that the band is becoming tired of all this rock n’ roll horror business, and want to go back to the old days, when they were Tim Buckley style balladeers, because money and fame and access to all the free drugs and muff that they want pales in comparison, to being twue awtists, also FAAAAAAAAAAAART NOISE. The film briefly becomes a softcore porno as quaaludes guy goes to the bone zone with his girlfriend, while Herb creepily watches from outside the bedroom window. So maybe Herb is the killer? Well, next scene, Herb is just wandering around the house by himself, and he starts doing through some of Tim’s paperwork, as you would, and finds a letter to Tim from his mother. Since he’s totally alone, Herb reads the letter out loud, again, as you would, and Tim’s mother is talking about his devout religious belief and how she’s proud of him and his love of God, and Herb just cocks his eyebrow, like, geez, look at this weirdo whose mother loves him and stuff! Gross! Then he goes and steals some pills from the bathroom. Oh, Herb!
Now it’s almost time for The Clowns to um, rock isn’t quite the right word, but I digress. The main cop does that thing that cops only do in the movies, where they find a girl who is in trouble for drugs or prostitution or shoplifting, and are like, hey, if you act as bait in this sting operation, I won’t send you to jail. Which, for some reason, these girls always agree to, this girl included. Tim goes up to Jeff and is like, hey, you’re barely a character in this movie, so you’re fired! Jeff of course is furious, and is like, I am TOTALLY a character in this movie, remember, I got way too angry at you for not drinking a beer! And Tim is like, that scene was like three minutes long and at the very beginning of the movie, so vamoose, buster! And Jeff is like, you’ll pay for this! I may look like a pathetic creep who doesn’t back up any of my threats, but you’ll definitely pay for this! So maybe Jeff is the killer?
The blonde bombshell who quaaludes guy was banging earlier is down in the murder fuck room with who we immediately realize is the killer Clown. She does more deeply embarrassing, unconvincing dirty talk, all while trying to sensually fondle the noose above the bed, which, if that does anything for you, then yous a freak. Thankfully, awkward come ons stop when killer Clown slashes her throat open. Bait girl finds the body, and we’re treated to a slow, poorly lit chase scene that pretty much goes nowhere. Meanwhile, The Clowns are onstage, playing their curiously long songs and defiling more mannequins, much to the delight of the crowd. The main cop walks down some stairs and is almost immediately stabbed to death by the killer Clown. Bait girl comes upon the main cop’s body and is like, super sad that he’s dead for some reason? Like, I would step over his corpse and get the fuck outta there as soon as I could if I were her! But for no goddamn reason, she’s like, I will avenge you! And then she turns around and killer Clown is there and stabs her to death too. Welp. As she falls to the ground, she pulls off the afro wig and mask, and we see that the killer Clown…is Larry Thomas? Umm, what?
Herb is in full Clown makeup and regalia, so he goes down to the murder fuck room in the hopes that a groupie is there, and doesn’t question who he is, since the real Clowns are currently onstage, but of course all he finds is the blonde bombshell’s dead body. He runs out into the poorly lit hallway, only to find Larry Thomas, and he puts two and two together. Slowly, yes, but he gets there. Now all that’s left to know is why? Por que, Larry Thomas, por que?! And Larry Thomas is like, all of those women were whores and they were impure and they weren’t fit to bring children into this world? Umm, what? So, you’re so religious that you decided to take on this long con of becoming a successful rock n’ roll manager, so that you could surround yourself with groupies and drug dealers and other assorted women of “loose morals,” and then murder them on the off chance that they might get pregnant from all the fuckin’ they do? Dude, c’mon, you could’ve just picketed outside an abortion clinic. Would’ve saved yourself a lot of time and effort.
So there’s another poorly lit scuffle, and at some point I guess Herb is cut? Because he ends up collapsing onstage just as The Clowns are finishing up their second song of the night, because all of their songs are like ten minutes long for some reason? And he’s got a huge wound across his back, which we didn’t see him get, because god forbid anything exciting happen in this movie. So The Clowns all look at Herb like, oh shit. Then they look at each other like, oh shit. Then Larry Thomas runs onstage and stabs Herb a bunch more times, and yells “Stop! Stop! Stop!” Which, yeah, I couldn’t agree more, Larry. Luckily, the movie listens to him and ends on, yet again, a freeze frame of the killer’s twisted visage.
In the end, Terror on Tour is slightly better than Rocktober Blood. The characters are for the most part likable (or at worst totally forgettable), and even though I made fun of it a lot, the music in this one is definitely more my speed, a weird mix of like, Big Star and Simply Saucer, if you can imagine that. In fact, The Clowns were played by a real life power pop group called The Names, who came from the same Champaign-Urbana, IL rock scene that blessed us with Cheap Trick and Shoes, and the music you hear in the film is all their own original songs. However, this one suffers from the same issue that Rocktober Blood does, namely it is so goddamn boring. Like, you’re making a slasher movie here, so why are you spending so much time showing these mopey band members talking about staying true to their artistic roots, when you could be killing people in gory and interesting ways?! It’s so frustrating, especially when you consider the pedigree behind the camera: Terror on Tour was directed by Don Edmonds, aka the guy who gave the world Ilsa: She-wolf of the SS, which, I cannot believe I’m gonna say this, is a MUCH BETTER movie than this one!
As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one who found Terror on Tour to be a frustrating experience. On that note, I’ll cede the final word to Larry Thomas himself, who posted the following broadside on the movie’s IMDb page. I swear I’m not making any of this up, this is straight from the Soup Nazi himself…
“For anyone who makes the mistake of sitting though this movie: I had just decided to become an actor and I knew very little about it. I was majoring in journalism in Junior college and took a theatre class to get a date with a girl I liked and got interested in acting. I drove a friend to the audition of Terror on Tour (originally called “Clowns”) and the director (Don Edmunds) asked me to read. I told him I wasn’t ready as an actor to do a film and didn’t know anything about acting much less film acting. He cast me and talked me into doing it. I was patently awful. I over acted every word and indicated like crazy. Above that a year after initial filming when I knew a little more about acting they called me back to shoot two pick up scenes (easy to spot as my hair was much shorter–it went from ’79 to ’80 nuff said). I was told to yell my dialog as there would be loud rock music playing in the background. The other guy in the scene was producer Sandy Cobe who wasn’t an actor and couldn’t really handle yelling while imagining loud music. In the end they forgot to add the music so it seemed like I was over acting even more than in the rest of the film. When I saw the film I came very close to quitting trying to be an actor altogether. The only reason I didn’t quit is that I figured if I could spot how awful I was maybe I had a chance to learn to do it right. The band members were a real band and had never acting before so you could forgive them their acting. Of the rest of the cast there was (in my opinion) one good actor. Jeff Morgan. In filming he actually seemed to be in the moment and connecting on an honest level when you were talking to him. When I saw the film I felt I could see it in his performance. I never heard from him again and don’t know what he’s doing now but I do think he escaped the horror of the acting in this horror film. Again I hope whoever has to see me in this film will understand my horror that it still exists.”
Bravo, Larry. Still, that doesn’t explain your involvement in Night Ripper! Also, you probably have nothing to worry about: if you wanna legally watch this thing, you’ve gotta head over to Amazon and fork over almost $200 for the Media Home Entertainment tape. Doesn’t matter if it burns out or fades away, in any case, I don’t see Terror on Tour getting the DVD or blu-ray treatment anytime soon.
