All posts by Rod Lott

Horror

The Boogeyman (1980)

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boogeymanRather infamously — or ineptly, to be blunt — Ulli Lommel has directed nearly five dozen films. So barrel-bottomed is his CV that only one of them managed to leak through and achieve any semblance of relevance. That is The Boogeyman, and one could argue it clicked only because the country was still on a horror high from the boogeyman in Halloween two years earlier. Hell, Lommel does everything he can to ape John Carpenter’s indie smash, from the synth-driven score to sequences shot from the POV of a boy holding a butcher knife.

That kitchen utensil comes in handy for young Willy, when he and li’l sis Lacey catch Mom (Gillian Gordon, The Sister-in-Law) fooling around with some dude in pantyhose pulled over his head, presumably for a spirited round of rapist role-playing; Willy stabs the guy in the back over and over, thereby putting a halt to Mom’s erotic mood. Twenty years later, Willy (Nicholas Love, Jennifer Eight) is mute and living with Lacey (co-writer Suzanna Love, then married to Lommel) and her hubby and child in an Amityville-looking farmhouse.

boogeyman1Haunted by memories of That Night triggered by a letter from their estranged mother, Lacey can’t function in daily life, so a psychiatrist (John Carradine, Billy the Kid vs. Dracula) encourages her to revisit her childhood home where the deadly deed took place. She does, but shatters the still-there mirror through which she witnessed the fateful knifing. Naturally, this releases the vengeful spirit of Mom’s lover, and whenever a shard of the glass glows, someone dies, like that horny teen boy in the Triumph T-shirt, who may deserve it just for a poor taste in music.

Maybe this is accidental, but The Boogeyman overcomes the trappings of a low budget and does something interesting. Oh, it’s still rough around the edges, which are as jagged as those pieces of the broken mirror, and it bursts at the seams with terrible performances, yet its mix of the slasher and the supernatural offers viewers an experience that’s not entirely expected. —Rod Lott

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Action

Chinese Zodiac (2012)

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chinesezodiacIn this third Armour of God film, Jackie Chan can’t wait to get his hands around a big ol’ cock. And a snake. And a monkey. And a rabbit. And the remaining eight animals of the Chinese zodiac, rendered as a set of rare bronze heads prized by precious-artifact collectors the world over.

As JC, Chan is tasked with retrieving the heads scattered around the globe; a corporate slimeball (Oliver Platt, 2012) offers him 1 million Euros for each of the national treasures he’s able to obtain and/or steal, so off JC goes! Plot holes extend as wide as canyons, over which Chan gladly leaps. As director and co-writer, he’d likely do without a story entirely if he could get away with it; he almost has.

chinesezodiac1In a cinematic environment that demands its action pictures to be fast, furious and expendable, Chinese Zodiac is out-of-vogue, but either no one told Chan or he didn’t care. He remains true to the same unapologetic mode of the 1986 original and 1991’s Operation Condor, both goofy-smiled variants of Indiana Jones and James Bond, which is to say this overdue leg of an inadvertent trilogy is great fun, loosely bundled.

Right out of the gate, the film goes for broke, with a prologue that sees JC escaping a military base by playing human skateboard. From there, the star and company impatiently zip from one inventive set piece (and country) to the next, constantly vying for oneupmanship of itself. If Chan isn’t being chased by guard dogs while trapped in a garden maze, he’s dodging live ammo and busy beehives in the forest, all building toward a finale that ask the near-sexagenarian to skydive toward a lava-spewing volcano. Hell, why not? —Rod Lott

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Sex

College Girls Confidential (1968)

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collegegirlsOn the basis of College Girls Confidential, I clearly went about my higher education all wrong, as my four-year stint at a university was nothing like this. Then again, I didn’t pledge a fraternity, whereas sexploitation specialist Stephen C. Apostolof (Orgy of the Dead) sets most of the black-and-white tomfoolery within the walls of one: Lambda Sigma Delta, for the record. (For those slow on the draw, that shortens to LSD and passes for cleverness.)

But first, Professor Bryce (Sean O’Hara) has eyes (among other parts) for his female biology students. (We know this because of the “Boing!” sound effect Apostolof employs.) One of those young women is failing the class and, therefore, dooming graduation, so a fellow coed encourages her to use her coochie-coo to sway Bryce into passing her. She does; he accepts; and the following conversation takes place in his office as clothes are shed:

Bryce: “You are a lovely biological specimen.”
Clueless Student: “Oh, professor, what a tiger you are! I didn’t know that advanced lab required so many experiments!”

collegegirls1The rest of Confidential — some prints drop that word from the title like trou — is one big-breast fest that interprets the “big man on campus” label anew. A guy rolls around on a bed with two busty babes, who then go downstairs to put their goodies in the face of LSD’s newest pledge. Apparently, this passes for initiation. (What, no latent elephant walk or circle jerk with a saltine?) A real happenin’ shindig is thrown, with topless girls bouncing around everywhere, and one dude taking a bad enough trip to end up in the hospital where he is admonished by a real tsk-tsk of a doctor.

Only at this tail end does Apostolof seem to condemn the behavior of the student body upon which he has capitalized in the preceding hour; you won’t buy his sudden about-face, but you’ll certainly enjoy it. Go looking for skin, not plot, as the characters have about as much need for identities as they do belts. —Ed Donovan

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

The Visitor (1979)

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visitorWith only five helming credits to his name, Guilio Paradisi — aka the Americanized Michael J. Paradise — had an undistinguished career as a director, mostly of comedies long forgotten, if ever recipients of attention. Luckily for us, in the center of that short list stands The Visitor, a way-out blend of science fiction and horror. While Paradisi displays as artistic a touch in the Italian-made mind-melter as the budget allowed, the true guiding hand appears to belong to producer Ovidio G. Assonitis, whose story credit fits well within the weirdo vibe of his screenplays for Beyond the Door and Piranha Part Two: The Spawning.

In Atlanta (as in Georgia, the titles make clear), a precocious, pigtailed and potty-mouthed girl named Katy Collins (Paige Conner, Fast Food) lives in a spacious, mid-century-modern house complete with a front-projection, big-screen television on which she plays Pong. Katy looks a lot like The Exorcist‘s Regan MacNeil, but behaves more like The Omen‘s Damien Thorn. For starters, she telekinetically causes the basketball to explode in the final second of a pivotal pro game; later, at her own 8th birthday party, she “accidentally” shoots her mother, Barbara (Joanne Nail, Switchblade Sisters), with a gun, paralyzing the utterly lovely woman from the waist down.

visitor1 Barbara’s delicate condition is good news for boyfriend Ray (Lance Henriksen, Alien vs. Predator), the hoops team owner tasked by some super-secret, super-wealthy organization to marry the woman so that he can put a baby in her. See, although Barbara doesn’t know it, her womb is special in that it can “give birth to children with immense powers.” Even kreepy Katy encourages Mom to do some cushion-pushin’ so Ray can dump his seed and give her a little brother.

More insanity is to be plumbed from The Visitor, including vengeful ice skaters, flocks of killer birds and interdimensional warriors who work for Jesus Christ (an unbilled Franco Nero, Django). Legendary director John Huston (The African Queen) plays one of those angels and is just one of many old-age Hollywood personalities taking a lire-converted paycheck, including Glenn Ford (1978’s Superman) as a detective, Mel Ferrer (Nightmare City) and The Wild Bunch director Sam Peckinpah as doctors, and Shelley Winters (Lolita) as a new nanny who, despite being Caucasian and far from indentured, likes to sing “Shortnin’ Bread.”

This interesting casting is right in line with the ambitious (but not always successful) story’s hallucinogenic visuals and narrative hysterics that forever threaten to go into panic mode. So insane it should be committed, The Visitor isn’t worth watching once. It requires multiple viewings. —Rod Lott

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