All posts by Rod Lott

Thriller

Corruption (1968)

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One of the best film books of this decade is Julian Upton’s Offbeat: British Cinema’s Curiosities, Obscurities and Forgotten Gems, which opened my eyes to, well, some of British cinema’s curiosities, obscurities and forgotten gems. I finished the book with a to-watch list with more titles than life will allow me to get around to. One toward the top, however, was Corruption, a mad, mod variation on France’s wildly influential Eyes Without a Face.

From Black Gunn director Robert Hartford-Davis, Corruption casts Hammer horror icon Peter Cushing as “the famous surgeon” John Rogan, who has quite a lovely fiancée in Lynn (Sue Lloyd, Revenge of the Pink Panther), a model whose camera-beloved face is scarred hideously when a scuffle at a party knocks a photography lamp onto her right cheek. Ridden with guilt, Dr. Rogan experiments furiously until he’s able to restore Lynn’s va-va-voom visage via dead tissue. The procedure is unethical, yet utterly remarkable … until it no longer is and the scarring resurfaces.

The trick, of course, is that in order to make the procedure stick, he must acquire living human tissue. And for that, of course, he must resort to murder.

That’s where Corruption becomes really oddball, because seriously, where else can you see Star Wars’ Grand Moff Tarkin wrestling with a topless prostitute? Although the good doctor becomes quite adept at beheading babes, the film is not quite the festival of sleaze as advertised; in truth, it is not too far removed from Hammer’s level of gore: now near quaint.

With horns blaring and sweat dripping, there’s an urgency and immediacy to the scenes in which Dr. Rogan claims his victims, but for true Corruption, look to Lynn, who increasingly pushes her hubs to kill for the benefit of her beauty. By the second half, the gorgeous gal has gained an ugly heart. Similarly, Hartford-Davis’ film loses its luster in the last half hour, when it trades Georges Franju’s aforementioned Eyes for Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, but with a laser. —Rod Lott

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Reading Material

Reading Material: Short Ends 10/29/18

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When Peter Stanfield publishes a book, it’s a cult cinephile’s cause for celebration. Having examined pop 1950 cinema and pulp fiction in past titles, also for Rutgers University Press, the UK film professor cranes his neck at Hoodlum Movies: Seriality and the Outlaw Biker Film Cycle, 1966-1972. Like so many other types of teenpics in which the likes of Roger Corman and Samuel Z. Arkoff specialized, the biker movie was short-lived and derided by critics; as Stanfield notes, “Repetitious, poorly made, and morally putrescent” was the name of the press’ repeated game. Only a few dozen were made, and fewer are remembered today, but he ticks through them snobbery-free, as if each one were an important piece of a time-capsule whole — and they are (which is rarely to be confused with “good”). Excepting a couple of instances of repetition (like the parentage of Nancy Sinatra, Peter Fonda, et al.), Stanfield revs up another winner. Outside of the woefully out-of-print Big Book of Biker Movies, this is the best work on the subgenre yet.

Die Hard. Predator. The Hunt for Red October. Federal prison. Okay, so you can’t win ’em all. But in the late 1980s, the gifted director John McTiernan was poised to become a Hollywood all-timer by knocking out three well-received smash hits in a row. Then Last Action Hero happened, and no amount of Die Hard sequels could save the rather precipitous slip of legal misfortune that followed. Arkansas-based freelancer Larry Taylor recounts every step in John McTiernan: The Rise and Fall of an Action Movie Icon, and while the McTiernan saga is interesting, Taylor’s book is a missed opportunity. Disappointingly, yet not surprisingly, Taylor was unable to interview McTiernan for the McFarland & Company release, so he relies on others’ previously published articles to build the narrative, sometimes straining for drama when the beats simply are not there. It reads like an extended press-kit bio with the occasional “huh, didn’t know that” kernel of info.

Part of Edinburgh University Press’ ReFocus series of essay collections on film auteurs, ReFocus: The Films of William Castle provides a dozen essays on the man who wanted to “scare the pants off America,” but also wound up in monster kids’ collective hearts. Castle became the Alfred Hitchcock of the B movies, but the book does not ignore his early career anonymously toiling in noir and Western programmers. Of course, once editor Murray Leeder and company turn their critical eye to Castle’s gimmick era — one of such matinee classics as The Tingler, The House on Haunted Hill, 13 Ghosts, etc. — is when it hits peak interest, and the book argues his ballyhoo can still be felt today in upsold-theatrical formats like IMAX. Additional chapters explore Castle’s role “playing” himself, how he played with gender at a time when it was decidedly not in vogue, and the line that can be drawn directly from him to John Waters. Texts on Castle are far from dime-a-dozen, so fans who take the filmmaker seriously owe it to themselves to get this. —Rod Lott

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Horror

Blood Lake (1987)

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By all accounts, Blood Lake appears to be a movie. A camera is present, and people pretending to be someone else do things in front of it. They also say things in front of it, although not always in its general direction. Somebody then assembled those things into a chronological fashion. Another somebody made music for it; yet another slapped credits on both ends. The result was duplicated onto VHS cassettes that members of the public rented for a set period of time and inserted into their VCRs, presumably for purposes of entertainment.

And yet, even after lowering expectations to the substandards of shot-on-video, straight-to-tape projects, I’m hesitant to call Blood Lake a movie. The story lacks story beats. Dialogue seems to be improvised; lighting, an afterthought. With one exception, its actors were not and are not actors. But at least it is in focus, question mark?

Although one Tim Boggs is credited as director (and never to be again), the driving creative force is writer, producer and leading man Doug Barry. As the mulleted, muscled Mike, he’s one-half of the dude bros (the other being Mike Kaufman’s Bryan) who have Trans Am’d their respective girlfriends (Angela Darter and The Ripper’s Andrea Adams) to a weekend at Cedar Lake, a real spot in southeast Oklahoma, where this thing was filmed — er, recorded. Also in tow are Mike’s tween brother, Tony (Travis Krasser), and Tony’s girl friend and hopeful “sex partner,” Susan (Christie Willoughby).

They drink beer. They waterski. They drink more beer. They waterski again. They urge little Tony to nail Susan, which sounds incredibly uncomfortable because it totally is. They drink more beer. People are killed by a fat guy in overalls who looks like Billy Jack ate Jenny Craig. (He’s played by the ironically named Tiny Frazier, whose car-sales business is thanked in the closing credits — and that’s only the second strangest thing you’ll read there, thanks to a special-effects shout-out to “An Act of God.”)

My heart should belong to Blood Lake, for three primary reasons:
• SOV ’80s horror is “my jam,” as the kids say.
• Ditto for the era’s slashers shot in my home state of Oklahoma: Blood Cult, Terror at Tenkiller, Offerings, et al.
• Throughout grade school, Krasser and Willoughby were among my brother’s best friends.

And yet, I don’t. Blood Lake not only tried my patience, but actively grated on my nerves. It’s hard not to feel that way when nearly every scene agonizingly unfolds in real time, whether the characters are shootin’ the shit on the dock (three minutes), playing quarters (five minutes) or engaging in the aforementioned waterskiing (10 minutes). What should be the simplest conversations would flummox even Robert Altman’s sound editors; take for example, this exchange of Mike and his lady bidding two lake rats adieu after a night of drinkin’, tokin’ and jokin’:

“Hey, thanks a lot for tonight, it was fun.”
“All right.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Thanks for coming by. Y’all be careful.”
“Okay, buh-bye.”
“Take it easy.”
“Yeah, we’ll see you all tomorrow.”
“Be careful.”
“All right.”
“Thanks.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Bye-bye.”
“See you later.”
“Bye.”

And I’m sure I missed a couple.

The most entertaining made-for-VHS horrors come chock-full of accidentally ridiculous and hilarious lines. Because Krasser’s aggressively rapey act is neither, Blood Lake has one scene that made me laugh aloud. The rest of the movie is like being the fly on the wall of a lake house, and everyone in the kitchen is too lazy to grab a swatter to put you out of your misery.

As detailed in Richard Mogg’s wonderful book, Analog Nightmares: The Shot On Video Horror Films of 1982-1995, the story behind Blood Lake is far more compelling than watching Blood Lake. If Barry thought he was crafting the country’s next hit slasher, he was delusional and yet missed a target so easy to hit that the result is too misguided to deserve the label of “derivative.” Flick Attack contributor Richard York put it best: “Not enough blood. Too much lake.” —Rod Lott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

The Tower (1985)

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Shot on video for Canadian television by the catchpenny production company known as Emmeritus, The Tower has nearly as many establishing shots of the building in question as its home country has provinces. According to those shots, the titular site varies in size between “skyscraper” to “office complex,” with only one thing for certain: It’s a building, eh.

Written and directed by Ghostkeeper’s Jim Makichuk, the movie opens with two men discussing possible problems with the tower’s safety, considering three people have vanished inexplicably from its floors of late. One of the guys declaratively states twice, “There is nothing wrong with the security of the Sandawn Building.” You know what that means: There is totally something wrong with the security of the Sandawn Building! And you, the viewer, stands to benefit.

Touted for its energy efficiency, the place is run by a $30 million computer system named LOLA (disembodily voiced by Monique Verlaan), developed by the blinky-eyed, mumble-mouthed boy genius Watson (Alfred Topes, punchable). What Watson somehow fails to notice is that LOLA has discovered sweet, sweet sentience, acquiring increasingly higher reserves of power via murder. After scanning various workers for potential heat gain, she absorbs them whole when they flip an electrical switch, press an elevator button, fuck against a copier, what have you.

On this particular Friday night, a soap opera’s worth of characters are trapped and in danger of LOLA vaporizing them for their BTUs, including:
• the dorky nightwatchman (George West) and his incredibly sexy girlfriend (Zuzana Struss, sexy) who sexily drops by for a sexy dip in the top floor’s pool;
• a past-his-prime ad man (Ray Paisley, Cold Creek Manor) and the sassy new copywriter (Kenner Ames, Canadian Bacon) working overtime on a Magic Marker posterboard campaign for something called Sparkle;
• the secretary (Jackie Wray) whose single-mom status will not surprise you when you see her hair;
• lovers (Jennifer Cornish and Paul Miklas) who plot to kidnap Old Man Sandawn (George T. Cunningham, Emmeritus’ Shock Chamber), who dips his ink in the company well because he’s married to a frowny crone (Dorothy Clifton, Emmeritus’ The Hijacking of Studio 4).

There’s also a black stripper/video vixen (Charlene Richards, Emmeritus’ Mark of the Beast) who legitimately wants to bed Watson, but we don’t have time to get into that.

Not to be confused with 2012’s Korean Towering Inferno rip-off or the 1993 Paul Reiser vehicle (although that Fox prime-time pic bears a plot similar enough to raise eyebrows) or any of many, many films bearing the same name, The Tower stands tall on its own. What other movie would show you computer graphics continually drawn and re-drawn, as if Makichuk were squeezing every penny out of the license for some AutoCAD shareware knock-off? Would have the balls to lure an elderly woman to her grave with the promise of a feather boa? Would dare present the same shot three times of two ladies climbing down a flight of stairs? Would stop itself to have a character literally look up the definition of “snake” … and then share the results?

As terribly dated as it is terribly acted, this Tower harnesses the power of pure entertainment — often accidental, but thoroughly genial. These days, that’s enough. —Rod Lott

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Action

Death Race: Beyond Anarchy (2018)

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If the Fast and Furious movies are the cool jocks who get good grades and homecoming honors, then the Death Race films, Universal’s other gas-powered cash cow, are the near-invisible stoner kids who spend breaks between classes smoking outside. And this one, Death Race: Beyond Anarchy, tries so little, he flunks woodshop.

In this fourth and fetid entry, the titular competition now takes place within the walls of The Sprawl, an 88,000-acre home to 220,000 hardened criminals. You do the math (because the target audience sure can’t). Metal-masked Frankenstein (Velislav Pavlov, Lake Placid vs. Anaconda) may be the prison sport’s reigning hero, but he’s no longer our main character — hell, he’s no longer the good guy, which seems pretty counterproductive, but whatev. That task falls to a not-up-to-it Zach McGowan (Dracula Untold) as Connor Gibson, a black-ops specialist sent undercover to take down Frankenstein and the race. This requires Connor to earn a contestant’s slot via a preliminary game of Capture the Keys, whose officials do not want “to see some MMA-submission bullshit.”

Fans of the previous Death Race pictures are bound to express disappointment with where director Don Michael Paul (Half Past Dead) and co-writer Tony Giglio (S.W.A.T.: Under Siege) take their first turn at the direct-to-video franchise’s wheel: to something resembling fanfic, built upon the visual equivalent of STDs and self-pleasing dialogue like “Well, ain’t this a rainbow of fuckin’ ugly?” So skeevy and scuzzy is this “effort” that the returning character played by Danny Trejo (L.A. Slasher) appears to want little to do with it, spending most of his runtime literally watching the action from bed!

Early in, someone remarks that it doesn’t matter who’s behind Frankenstein’s mask, because duh, it’s a mask. However, Paul proves that theory untrue — Luke Goss, we hardly knew ye! — and not just because the mask looks positively Predatory this time around. The previous entries may be junk, but they are fun junk; this grimy, slimy one forgets and/or forgoes the fun. In its place? Decapitations, misogyny, face piercings, sub-Slipknot metal, Purge-level beatdowns, talk of taxes, more misogyny, dramatic rain fighting, Danny Glover, motocross, ziplining and some MMA-submission bullshit. —Rod Lott

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