All posts by Rod Lott

Mystery

Mundo Depravados (1967)

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mundoOn the night of a full moon, poor Arlene is murdered. One of her socks is missing from the scene, proving we live in such a Mundo Depravados — that is, depraved world. Need further proof? Before the crime photographer snaps his pic, Arlene’s dress is lowered to bare a nipple. Say “cheese,” ya hot corpse!

Then our nonsensical, Naked City-wannabe narration kicks in: “Yes, this is your city. It has more than a million eyes. … But tonight, all these eyes are blind. They listen, but they do not hear. They touch, but they do not feel.” Whatever. All viewers need to know is that a killer of lovely ladies is on the loose; all of his victims belong to the Temple of Beauty Health Club; and everyone refers to him as “the sex monster.”

mundo1The good news is that two police detectives (“comedy cops” Johnnie Decker and Larry Reed, reunited from Al Adamson’s Psycho a Go-Go) are on the case. The bad news is that the two police detectives exhibit as much horndoggedness as the film’s multiple Peeping Toms, so of course they’re eager to partner with Tango, a stripper pal of Arlene played by real-life stripper Tempest Storm, whose pendulous breasts keep Mundo Depravados from being completely inert. They cannot distract, however, from her emotionless line readings.

Who would give her such a plum role? Singing cowboy Herb Jeffries, in his one and only attempt at writing and directing. He was married to Storm at the time — but just barely, as their union dissolved the year of Mundo Depravados’ release. Semi-sleazy for its time, the movie plays rather static today, peekaboo nudity and all. —Rod Lott

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Horror

Sorority House Massacre II (1990)

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SHMIIWhereas 1986’s Sorority House Massacre was serious, Sorority House Massacre II takes the self-aware, scream-queen route. That’s bound to happen when you put Jim Wynorski (1988’s Not of This Earth) at the helm.

So will abnormally large breasts, which makes him the perfect director for such an imperfect project. Who else would have the foresight to place all the cops’ expository dialogue in a strip club?

Five sorority girls buy a new-to-them house for their chapter. They’re able to afford it because the abode has been on the market for five years, what with being the site of multiple murders and all. When they’re informed by the creepy neighbor what went on there, Wynorski cedes screen time to clips from a previous movie … but not the previous movie. Instead of footage from the film to which SMHII is ostensibly a sequel, we see a condensed version of 1982’s The Slumber Party Massacre. Slumber, sorority — slutty all the same, right?

SHMII1After the girls take showers (Stacia Zhivago, who kind of looks like Laura Dern with double Ds, soaps herself up to squeak-toy noises on the soundtrack), they don lingerie to play with a Ouija board, which reawakens the evil of the home; ergo, the “massacre” portion of the title can come into play.

None of the actresses can act; they’re here to scream and let the camera leer over their bodies. For example, for a simple shot of three of them ascending a staircase, Wynorski chose a lower-than-low angle for maximum ass-cheek exposure. More than the blood that squirts like a ketchup dispenser being squeezed too hard too fast, skin is the most special effect of all in SHMII, from Melissa Moore (Repossessed) to former porn star Gail Harris. Wynorski didn’t need much more that that, except the same ol’ crashed-lightning stock footage producer Roger Corman has used since his Edgar Allan Poe pictures. —Rod Lott

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Reading Material

Chain Saw Confidential: How We Made the World’s Most Notorious Horror Movie

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chainsawconfidentialNearly 20 years ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Gunnar Hansen, who forever will be known as Leatherface in the 1974 horror classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. While his iconic character is terrifying and evil, Hansen himself is not. He’s a teddy bear, nice and gracious as can be.

Therefore, it’s not a surprise to me that his book on the making on that movie, Chain Saw Confidential, is like its author: well-spoken and informative, yet also politely quiet and respectfully subdued. Those hoping for a Fangoria-style exercise in gore will be disappointed.

I didn’t, so I wasn’t. After all, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre isn’t nearly as violent as its title or reputation suggests. It’s an intense film, no doubt, but so much of its brutality isn’t onscreen — it’s filled in by viewers’ minds. The movie is also not a cult film, because, as the book reminds us, it simply was far too successful to qualify.

Success was hardly on the minds of any of the cast members, all unknowns just happy to be making a Real Movie, even if they didn’t think anything would become of it. Financed in part by drug money, Tobe Hooper’s Massacre proved tougher to make than it is to watch, thanks to the unbearable summer heat of the Lone Star State and, during the now-famous dinner scene that took 26 hours to shoot, the smell of dead dogs and headcheese.

With remarkable clarity and detail for something that took place four decades ago, Hansen recounts the treacherous, unpredictable shoot, plus the squabbles over profits the creatives never saw when the film hit big. Given the flick’s monster grosses, they thought they would be rich; “Instead,” Hansen writes, “things just got weird.”

The book retreads a lot of the info from documentaries on the various DVD editions over the years, but gives readers much, much more. (Example: learning that Hooper and company wanted and thought they were going to get a PG rating.) Hansen leans on co-stars for quotes and recollections (but not, tellingly, Hooper), yet the story is told from his frontline perspective. It’s a tale uniquely his own. —Rod Lott

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Documentary

Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony (2012)

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broniesDepending upon where you stand on the subject, the documentary Bronies can be viewed either as a celebration of the fandom or a portrait of it presented for your mockery.

A “brony,” for those of you with better things to do with your time, is a male fan of the current cartoon series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, a show aimed at children, and primarily girls at that. The guys featured here don’t just like it — they live it, from collecting figurines and attending conventions to creating their own songs and immortalizing the characters on their car windows. (Perhaps “immortalizing” is too strong a word when the windows get busted by homophobes.)

Bronies1Funded by Kickstarter and featuring Pony voice stars John de Lancie and Tara Strong, Bronies is not without interest to the viewer curious about ways of life that are alien to them. The level of fandom on display is as bewildering to me as suspending oneself by hooks in the nipples or surgically altering your face to resemble a celebrity; while I support one’s freedom to pursue such adventures, I do not get what compels one to take it to such an extreme. Hobbies are good; obsessions are unhealthy.

The kids of Bronies are likely to outgrow the phase as fast as a previous generation did Pokémon, but the adults … I mean, what good can come out of calling yourself Starlight Ironhoof? Something about that strikes me as deeply sad — an emotion with which the film does not intend to leave you. —Rod Lott

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Comedy

Showgirls 2: Penny’s from Heaven (2011)

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showgirls2I get why Showgirls 2 exists. What I don’t get is why it has to run for an utterly unbearable two and a half hours. Full of sequins and glitter and fake tits, the movie is so intentionally camp, prepare to be asked to write your name in your underwear.

An unofficial sequel to Paul Verhoeven’s notorious 1995 flop, Showgirls 2: Penny’s from Heaven focuses on the minor Showgirls character of Penny Slot (get it?), played by Rena Riffel, who also serves as writer, director, producer and editor of this mess. Just because it is in on its own joke doesn’t mean its creative chaos can be overlooked.

showgirls21After a testy exchange will a fellow dancer/stripper (“You stole my customer!” “You stole my G-string!”), Penny flees Vegas for Hollywood to chase her dream of being the gooey center of the Star Dance television show. But first, she has to pour hot sauce on her bare chest, become an escort, learn ballet, have a lesbian relationship, consider taking part in a snuff film, and so on and so on.

I’m guessing that maybe the underfunded but overstuffed movie plays better for those who have turned the original Showgirls into a contemporary cult classic, since I don’t remember Riffel even being in Showgirls. (She wrangled three other actors into reprising their roles; I remember only one.) Nonetheless, when it comes to matching the original’s atrocious dialogue, Riffel strikes the right chord. Example: “I don’t know what’s worse: your dancing or your camel toe.” Another: “You know, there’s an art to a good wiener.”

See, Showgirls 2 doesn’t even try to be a glitzy melodrama as Verhoeven did and failed; instead, Riffel goes straight for the self-aware comedy. In Penny, Riffle has the ditzy-sex-bomb thing down pat, and for the movie’s first several minutes — 15, 20 at the most, maybe? — I laughed along with her as she brushed her teeth with cocaine or tried to think of how she old she is. But even the best joke gets old when you keep telling it, and that’s what Riffel does, ultimately dooming its prospects. Something like this should be 75 minutes, tops, especially for projects with porno production values. —Rod Lott

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