Rock's Cheapo Theatre of the Damned

Vinegar Syndrome has a region free Blu ray under their Staff Picks section (releases they like from other labels). It's a bit steep, but if you wait for a sale (like I did) it might be less painful.


https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collecti...n-mondo-vision

__________________

OK, thanks. Amazon's got the VS at $70+ for some reason, so I thought it was out of print or something. I can handle $40 or less.

__________________
Captain's Log
My Collection

I've found VS releases tend to be better priced on their site than elsewhere, and the sales don't hurt either. I try to order from them directly as much as possible For that reason (and because I like what they do and want to contribute to their wallets as directly as possible)

Yeah, same here. Ordering from Amazon is my last resort, but I always go there first to gauge whether something is available or not. I hadn't ventured to the VS site yet.
(Apologies to my wallet for what's about to happen.)

I now declare this the VS, ABBA and Carny thread.

Shame on you! It's actually quite decent, and young Jodie looks awfully cute.

__________________

That's pretty much all he was.

Between the time I picked up a copy of China Girl during one of Vinegar Syndrome's semi-frequent sales (during which I've reliably been spending far more than I should; who needs money when you have movies?) and the time I actually sat down to watch it, I admit I was getting a little nervous. The title implies a level of racially insensitive content, to put it lightly. All I knew about the movie is that it's a genre mashup between porn and spy thriller and that it stars Annette Haven. Now, knowing that Haven was supposed to be the main character and putting that next to the title, I was getting a little worried that Haven was in fact the eponymous China Girl and would be playing the role in yellowface. Look, I understand that movies made in a different time and place can have different cultural sensitivities than my own and that it helps to approach things within their original context, but also, what the ****, I don't need to see that. After seeing the movie, I am pleased to report Haven does not play the China Girl and thankfully dons no racist makeup. The movie does indulge in some orientalist tropes with its depiction of an evil organization led by a pair of sinister Chinese characters, but (not that it's an excuse), it doesn't seem out of line and might be even milder compared to what else I've seen from the genre. It could have been a lot worse in this respect, is what I'm saying.

Now, the plot of the movie concerns experiments conducted by the US government with some kind of chemical that can be used for mind control. Unfortunately for the government, an evil spy organization called Dragon is looking to steal the formula and sell it to a foreign government. We know Dragon means business because they're led by Pamela Yen (who in one scene wears a dress that might inspire acid flashbacks and gets perved on by the foreign agent; I understand she was a children's entertainer at the time) and James Hong (yes, that James Hong, who enters the movie ordering a man in a burlap sack to be drowned for his screwup). The secret to the formula lies with two scientists: some old ass bearded dude, and Annette Haven. Haven, on top of being a brilliant scientist also happens to be an Olympic class skier, bunch of other fancy stuff I didn't write down and a degenerate gambler. Okay, degenerate gambler is unkind, she happens to enjoy playing backgammon. Both are assigned secret agents to protect them. The old guy's bodyguard gets taken out almost immediately by some martial artist goons in a scene that's probably not among the great fight sequences but is captured with a camera that moves fast enough to hide the seams. Haven's bodyguard is played by Tom Douglass, who I see has no other IMDb credits but is reasonably charismatic and strikes up instant chemistry with Haven. Unfortunately, he doesn't prove so hot at his job either and she gets captured during a trip to a Chinese restaurant (replete with footage of the Chinese New Year's Parade in San Francisco's Chinatown).

The rest of the movie consists of Douglass trying to rescue the scientists while they're tortured to give up the formula. Some intrigue comes from Hong and Yen's different ideas about torture. Hong believes in, you know, regular torture. Yen believes in sexually pleasuring them until they give up their secrets, because apparently "As with pain, there is a critical limit for pleasure too". Truly horrifying stuff. So horrifying in fact that the old guy gives up his secrets almost right away. Haven holds out much better, despite the truly horrifying pain of being pleasured by four different women at the same time and then taking on three guys at once. The horror, the horror. Yen enjoys watching all of this, and there ain't nothing wrong with that. Truth be told, I found the scene with the women much hotter...I mean, more horrifying, but the scene with the men is less degrading than these things can be. I understand that Haven had a hand in directing this sequence and was apparently very forthright about what she would and wouldn't do (she was the inspiration for the Melanie Griffith role in Body Double, including the speech about her character's restrictions).

This does a pretty respectable job of straddling its different genres, and I think a lot of the credit goes to the pacing. For the first twenty minutes, not counting the graphic cartoon that plays during the opening credits (which includes kung fu and intercourse), the movie is devoting its attention entirely to setting up its premise and characters, and relegates the majority of the sexual content to the second act, so that it can devote its full attention to the story in the third act. Imagine a more explicit take on The Devil Came From Akasava and The Sidewalks of Bangkok and you'll get a good enough idea of how this movie plays. Now, the story is mostly nonsense, but it's sold by some nicely committed villainous performances by Hong and Yen, two non-porn actors. At this point I must note that Hong does not get to **** and that Yen only has some softcore nuzzling, but the former especially brings more than enough menace to give the movie the necessary tension. I must also note that Haven and Douglass, as the heroes, are both quite charming and have very good chemistry, and the former comes off credibly as a scientist even if the latter is shown to be a pretty lousy secret agent (on top of losing Haven, he spends a good chunk of the movie driving to the villain's lair and gets captured really easily). The miracle of stolen location footage (which includes a trip to San Francisco's Japanese Tea Garden during which Haven wears a cute beret) help make the production values seem higher than they probably were, and the jazzy soundtrack wraps it all up in some pretty pleasing vibes. This isn't a great movie by any means, but despite some unfortunate story elements, it has some pleasures that fall outside the usual offered by the genre.

__________________

I've seen Renee Harmon, the star of Lady Street Fighter, likened to Tommy Wiseau, and there certainly similarities. Both have extremely distinct screen presences and accents (Harmon's is German, Wiseau's is...nobody knows) and obvious delusions about their acting abilities. Yet while Wiseau's The Room has a much larger cultural footprint than anything Harmon was involved in, I can't help but find her a much more likable presence. For one thing, from what I know about the production of The Room, Wiseau doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun to be around, and the movie contorts to his ego in a way that provides for obvious amusement but not a lot of warmth. From the films I've seen Harmon in, she seems like an integral part of their nutty, bad movie fabric but not necessarily the centre of gravity, and while I don't profess to be an expert on her career, I do know that her sometimes collaborator James Bryan spoke pretty well of her in Stephen Thrower's Nightmare USA, which I'm currently going through. And as dumb as it is, the fact that Harmon's default expression is a kindly smile while Wiseau's is...something else, makes her a lot more approachable as a screen presence in my eyes. What biographical details I do know of Harmon help interpret her career as some kind of immigrant...well, success story might be a bit generous, but gumption is admirable and a little moving. Some of these things might seem irrelevant to their output, but when you're comparing bad movie weirdos, a logical rubric doesn't present itself so easily.

Of Harmon's work, I'd previously seen Frozen Scream, a masterpiece of incoherence, and The Executioner Part II, a vigilante actioner and fake sequel with probably the worst acted PTSD freakout I've seen in a movie. In both she played crucial supporting roles, but in Lady Street Fighter (not to be confused with Sister Street Fighter, the rock solid karate flick with Etsuko Shihomi and Sonny Chiba), she's the star, and the effect is less like Wiseau in The Room and more like Steven Seagal in On Deadly Ground, where the movie is ostensibly delivering genre thrills but has those subverted by an unabashedly weird lead performance. Like Seagal in his film, Harmon is given a number of extremely interesting outfits, like an excessively studded leather jacket, a shiny gold jumpsuit and a great big hat. And while Seagal has characters speak often of how fearsome and formidable he is (R. Lee Ermey says at one point that "He's the kind of guy that would drink a gallon of gasoline so he could piss in your campfire!"), in Harmon's movie, they keep talking about how hot she is and making objectifying comments, usually referring to her breasts. And like Wiseau subjects us to ample shots of his ass in his movie, Harmon spends an awful lot of time getting in and out of the shower, and attempts oral sex on a telephone and a piece of celery (the latter of which is a recurring theme in the movie). In another context I might find this off putting, but knowing she was a major creative force behind the movie, it's actually a little endearing.

Lady Street Fighter was directed by James Bryan, and like in his best known film, the regional slasher Don't Go in the Woods, the technical sloppiness lends itself to the unintentional avant garde, as when a shootout is staged awkwardly enough to feel like a montage of completely unrelated footage (as Harmon blows away her enemies, Bryan blasts through the 180-rule), or a torture scene keeps cutting to black to hide the fact that the torture is very obviously not making contact with the victim. The plot is...who's to say? Okay, it involves Harmon looking to avenge her sister (the torture victim, played by Harmon while writhing topless with her tongue sticking out), an evil organization called Assassins Inc. and a beardo who very obviously can't be trusted yet Harmon teams up with anyway. There's also a weirdo sex party full of sex weirdos (and a bunch of guys in togas) during which the host allows his daugher, who has the mind of a child, to attend, which seems extremely ill-advised. Most of these are standard action thriller elements (okay, maybe not the weirdo sex party full of sex weirdos), but Bryan's assembly plays like the screenplay was fed through the shredder and taped together with half of the pieces missing, distilling the movie's narrative to a crude abstraction of the real thing. The transfer I watched is of a grainy print where the colours have been desaturated, as if the movie was left out in the sun too long and faded like an ancient manuscript or eroded like a historical artifact, and the fact that the movie was shot in the '70s but only released in 1981 adds to this archaeological quality. (At one point someone wears a Van Halen shirt, so I assume that part was not shot before '78, when they released their debut.) And on the soundtrack hums a moron synth take on Morricone, giving the movie a nice, braindead ambience to solidify its distinct bad movie wavelength.

I see that Rock has removed his spoiler alerts to fool me into reading.

Pictured: Jinnistan

Candleshoe is still Petra Tork's best film.







More Bugsy Malone spoilers please.

What the heck, I think I might actually have seen this.* Remember nothing about it though.*


I think a bunch of these older Disney live action movies are on Disney+. I don't intend to get the service, but wouldn't mind exploring further at some point.

Based on its title, you might suspect that House on Straw Hill (also known as Exposé, which is probably a more apt title for the story, or Trauma, which definitely is not) is a ripoff of Straw Dogs. There are certain superficial similarities (and preemptive apologies if I mischaracterize the Peckinpah, as it's been years since I've seen it). Both movies feature characters staying in secluded rural homes to focus on their work. Both movies also feature rape scenes with...complicated ideas about consent. But there are substantial differences as well. Peckinpah's film is arguably a mixture of home invasion and vigilante thriller. Clarke's movie, while making references to a home invasion type scenario early on as a red herring, ultimately leans more heavily towards mystery. The plot concerns a writer having holed up in a country home to focus on writing a follow-up to his hit novel. Wracked with writer's block and strange violent visions, he decides to send his girlfriend and gets a live-in assistant to help him focus. The only problem is that this assistant, whose belongings the hero rifles through at the first opportunity (he finds a copy of his first book as well a marital aid), might have an agenda of her own, which is eventually revealed in the allegedly shocking ending. I use allegedly because there's one other major difference between the two films. Straw Dogs is good, or at the very least interesting. House on Straw Hill, on the other hand, is bad and boring.

Now given the two films' differing goals, comparing them is probably of limited use, but I do think it highlights the failings of the latter. Peckinpah's movie is coloured by his misanthropy and has an everyman protagonist with a boring job to comment on man's violent nature. Now, I'm not saying Dustin Hoffman isn't a good looking dude, but he's also somebody we can buy as an everyman. Udo Kier plays the hero in House on Straw Hill, and despite being weird looking elsewhere, he's bizarrely matinee idol handsome here, and without good enough writing to flesh him out or even the use of his own voice (a tragic victim of dubbing), he's a little harder to identify with, especially when he's playing such an unlikable *******. (The movie tries to cheat to imply depth by having him wear latex gloves during sex, a reliable shortcut to making a character seem creepy. Why is he wearing gloves? Where are his hands going? We will never know.) He's even hard to buy as a writer, as what we hear of his writing sounds incredibly tortured, although I suppose that's the point, and the part where he compares a woman's body to a Stradivarius is one of the funniest moments in the movie.

It's worth noting that Kier's wardrobe was by Tommy Nutter, an influential Saville Row tailor whose bold, angular suits are most associated with '60s rock musicians (he clothed three out of four Beatles on the cover of Abbey Road). Now, I don't take issue with the pieces themselves (although I'm not in love with the width of Kier's tie here), but this is disappointing even as a Menswear Movie. Kier spends much of his time with a tie but no jacket and his shirt collar unbuttoned. The unbuttoned collar suggests that he finds this uncomfortable, but as he's working at home, it makes no sense that he'd bother keeping the tie on, especially when his jacket is nowhere to be seen. Whatever characterization this is supposed to flesh out falls short. I will assume however that Kier really liked the trousers, enough to keep them on during the sex scenes.

As for the movie's qualities as a thriller, aside from the fact that it doesn't really build, I didn't appreciate that it used an act of self defense during a sexual assault to imply a character's capacity for violence. And given that scene, the relentless sexual content becomes a bit upsetting, although I did chuckle during the scene where Kier drives around frantically while his assistant bonks his girlfriend (elsewhere, although it would have been funnier if it happened in the same car). All that being said, the transfer I watched this on was extremely grainy, rife with print damage and colours that are faded and desaturated, which nicely complement the movie's pastoral textures. There are even moments when the discolouring takes on a psychedelic quality, which might enhance your viewing if you're already, uh, enhancing your viewing with psychedelics (I watched this sober, as I do all things, so this is pure speculation on my part). But otherwise, not a lot to recommend here, I'm afraid.

When I was a kid, I thought Jodie Foster was a boy I hadn't see Freaky Friday yet.

There aren't many worth your time. I like the darker ones, like Bedknobs and Broomsticks or Darby O'Gill & the Little People. Probably steer clear of anything with little Kurt Russell, talking cars or cats from outer space.

I'm gonna guess that George was the holdout?

Yup.

Roger Watkins spent most of his career making pornos, something which he apparently hated, and in American Babylon he turns that hatred directly at the audience. The movie is about two bozos. Losers. Schlubs. One of them, played by Bobby Astyr, spends his days doing little but watching pornography, oblivious to his surroundings and annoyed by interruptions. When his wife steps in front of the projector, he grouses at her to get out of the way. "Evaporate, Joan!" The other, played by Michael Gaunt, is weak-willed, easily goaded into doing or saying anything, whatever is the path of least resistance. Neither Astyr nor Gaunt are what you'd call conventionally attractive, and combined, they are some of the least flattering portraits of masculinity to grace the screen. I read somewhere that the popularity of unattractive men in straight porn is to help the target audience relate more easily to the proceedings. Watkins brings into focus the implied contempt in that trope.

As someone who spent a non-zero amount of time over the last year delving into vintage pornography, this movie hit a little close to home. When Astyr starts critiquing the camera angles in the movie he's watching, I felt personally attacked. Astyr's choice of entertainment here is in the form of plotless reels with titles like Teenage Pigmeat in Heat, a film by Bernard America, and Butt Girls in Bondage, directed by Hank Packard (which sounds like a dig at Henri Pachard's pretentious porn name), and starring Lonnie Lee as the Butt Girl. Astyr appears to be getting off on their dehumanizing quality ("Hey Robert, I just realized something. They don't show anybody's faces in this movie." "Of course not, it's so much better that way, it could be anybody.") The reels are shot in cold, sterile black-and-white, their mise-en-scene (power tools, gym equipment) suggesting a parody of masculinity. (I admit I was a little concerned when the male performer was firing a blowtorch in the direction of the female performer while they engaged in sexual congress.) Watkins had been steadily removing any sense of warmth or eroticism from his sex scenes, but also seems aware of the limitations of this approach (especially when you cast a performer like Taija Rae, sporting a lady mullet, hubba hubba). His critique seems targeted at the genre as a whole, which despite the level of artistry it can contain (and I'm very much on the side of pornographic films being artistically worthwhile), is ultimately in the service of prurient interests, but in retrospect, feels prescient of the kind of gonzo pornography that would become the norm in the decades that followed. There's no need for plot, character, warmth, humanity, just body parts mashing against each other. That Astyr is seen usually in a raincoat and motorcycle helmet drives the point home.

Gaunt's character is depicted just as brutally but with a bit more humour. This is a guy whose most strenuous decision in his marriage (and source of tension with his wife) is whether or not he'll drink his milk. (His wife, seen topless and in panties and heels, in a skewering of genre demands, leaves him an angry note: "P.S. Drink your milk".) Astyr's wife, played by Tish Ambrose, in need of the kind of intimacy she doesn't get from her husband, sees Gaunt as an easy mark and sets up a rendezvous at a country western bar. Their exchange and her attempt at seduction are telling.

Gaunt reveals a talent for physical comedy with his gawking, indecisive face during their tryst, his slapstick-like scramble out of his clothes, his dash with an empty cup as part of his excuse sneak out for another tryst ("I told my wife I was coming over to borrow a cup of sugar"), and his nervous patting of strap-on before he excuses himself out of a threesome. One encounter occurs when watching a porno with Astyr, who seems entirely oblivious to what's going on right beside him but also happy to have them around. ("My best friend and my best wife, finally taking an interest in my one true passion.") Their attempts at bonding seem self-defeating from both directions, as when Astyr tries to initiate a heart-to-heart, it's not clear how truthful Astyr's tale of young love or his recollection of a threesome that sounds suspiciously like one of his movies and the one Gaunt partook in. ("They were sisters, Thomas, sisters! That's what they told me afterwards. They might have been lying of course, It's human nature to lie.") When the visual style switches over to those of his movies, the indictment is complete, but in the final ten minutes, the movie finds something of an emotional core with a montage (Menopausal Males in Bondage) that recontextualizes the proceedings from Ambrose's perspective, while dissolving the boundaries between Astyr, Gaunt, and their porno movies. A beret and checked coat, first sported by Taija Rae, helps provide a visual throughline.

While I won't deny that the kind of masculinity exemplified by the protagonists, while flawed, feels a lot more benign than the kind of toxic masculinity that's been the focus of modern discourse, the laser focus of Watkins' indictment makes the movie work. Where the movie is less cogent but admirably bold is in situating its protagonists and their pathetic suburban existence as some kind of endpoint for American civilization. The opening credits have illustrations of historical images, evangelical radio is heard on and off throughout the movie, and after the aforementioned montage, the film closes with "American the Beautiful". In a brief but forceful sequence, we hear news of Lee Harvey Oswald's murder by Jack Ruby, Walter Mondale's acceptance speech at the 1984 DNC ("Mr. Reagan calls it "tokenism". We call it America.") and the bombing of North Vietnam, while Gaunt's wife (seen again in the nude, to sate the horndogs) fires a shotgun and the screen cuts to black. Watkins produces a passage from "The Harlot's House" by Oscar Wilde to drive home the sense of finality. ("The dead are dancing with the dead, the dust is whirling with the dust.") The protagonists' suburban homes are presented effectively as purgatorial spaces, captured in cold, isolating cinematography by Larry Revene, who had collaborated previously with Watkins on Corruption and Midnight Heat. Like the latter, I watched this in a not very nice video-sourced transfer, although it didn't seem quite as detrimental here (aside from the terrible audio quality, which made Gaunt's whistling sound like nails on a chalkboard). The look of the movie is effectively sterile, with a heavy reliance of moody bluish lighting that comes through even in a less pristine copy. (I understand that this didn't play theatrically, so I'm willing to limit my complaining.) It's also worth noting that while not detrimentally so to the film's overall argument, I did find Astyr's porno movies stylish in their way, and that I was not immune to the charms of Taija Rae, particularly with the beret and lady mullet I alluded to earlier. Folks, I'm not made of stone.

I have a soft spot for first wave slashers. With their minimalism, modest ambitions and limited production values, they carry a certain ambience that can be hard to achieve with bigger budgets. In horror, slicker isn't always better, and there's a good chance I'll take a lo-fi movie with lots of texture over a well oiled machine. (Did I switch metaphors mid-sentence? Sure, why not.) That being said, putting aside the ones that are obviously good movies, like Halloween, these movies are best graded on a curve. You see enough of these and you start to home in on their relative strengths and what each one does to distinguish itself, however small the gesture may be. With that in mind, I must report that Gary Graver's Trick or Treats comes up on the lower end of the curve. I didn't mind it exactly, but those not predisposed to enjoying those intangible qualities of the genre may struggle with it, and those who view the genre in terms of hard numbers (kill counts, nude scenes, etc) will find it comes up short.

In terms of those hard numbers, this is an hour-and-a-half long. Within that runtime, there are two, maybe three murders, and it takes more than one hour to get to the first one. None of these are terribly gruesome, and one is edited especially awkwardly so you don't even see the impact of the knife. Graver, who I first became aware of thanks to his involvement in Orson Welles' The Other Side of the Wind, divided his time between acting as a cinematographer and directing both B-movies and pornography. Having seen a handful of his pornos, I think one advantage they have over this movie is that because of genre demands, they're forced to have half decent pacing. When you have to deliver a sex scene every few minutes, the movie has to keep moving. (That's not to say they were poorly executed otherwise. I'll recommend Amanda by Night and 3 A.M., the former of which boasts very good performances from Veronica Hart and Robert Kerman, and the latter of which has Georgina Spelvin, a lot of moody lighting and a sex scene edited by Welles.)

How this movie kills (sorry) time is by siccing the absolutely most obnoxious kid in movie history on the audience. The kid is played by Graver's son Chris. I'm sure Graver loved his son very much. The sentiment is not shared by the audience. One, this kid looks like Ned Beatty. Look, I take no pride in making fun of a kid. But this kid, given that he was a child in the early '80s, would be almost two decades older than me, so I will gladly make fun of his dumb boomer kid Ned-Beatty-looking ass. Two, the kid spends the entire time playing pranks on the heroine, some poor woman hired to babysit him, who also has to put up with creepy phone calls from the kid's father, who broke out of an insane asylum after being put there in the slapstick-tinged opening scene. (Lucky for her, she eventually finds the booze.) This does introduce an element of tension you get with annoying movie kids in horror movies, in that you start rooting for the killer to take out the kid. This movie did not bring out the best in me, but I did feel for the heroine.

This does reek of something Graver must have made to pay the rent, and he makes no attempt to hide it. He lays the mercenary nature of the enterprise bare when he has two characters in an editing room discuss the glut of slasher movies, which they expect will never end. That sequence is probably the only time Graver seems to have fun, as it contains a film-within-a-film sequence featuring a mad scientist in a Dracula cape reanimating a body while forgetting to put in the brain. In the editing room you can also spot posters for Dracula vs. Frankenstein, on which Graver served as cinematographer, and Bugs Bunny: Superstar, which was narrated by Welles. There's also some fun from cameos by David Carradine, as the lover of the villain's wife, Paul Bartel as a hobo whose clothes the villain steals, and Catherine E. Coulson (the log lady from Twin Peaks) as a nurse who seems not entirely displeased to have been jumped by the villain during his escape. Is this good? No, but I've sat through plenty worse and, surprisingly given the kid, more painful.