All posts by Rod Lott

Reading Material

Zombi Mexicano

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zombimexicanoFans of outré horror cinema are urged to order Zombi Mexicano right freakin’ now — not just because it’s an excellent publication, but because author/designer Keith J. Rainville has printed only 250 of these babies, with no plans for a wider run.

In other words: You snooze, you lose, and the trade paperback represents 20 of my dollars that were as hard-earned as they were well-spent.

¿Comprende?

Zombi Mexicano is not a definitive text on Mexican zombie flicks, nor is it intended to be (although now I’m convinced he should embark on that project immediately). It is an overview on a franchise that Rainville believes has been ignored, and he’s right; even a cult-film enthusiast such as myself hadn’t heard of the “Guanajuato mummies” movies, not to mention their producer, Rogelio Agrasánchez Linaje.

zombimexicano2As Rainville writes, “Ever see a zombie use karate, then try to stomp a baby, all to the tune of a circus pipe organ?” I can’t say that I have, but I can say that I must.

Numbering roughly seven or so films, the series began with 1970’s The Mummies of Guanajuato, starring the “holy trinity of lucha-heroes: Santo, Blue Demon and Mil Mascaras.” Following in quick succession over the next five years were such sequels as Castle of the Mummies of Guanajuato, Mansion of the Seven Mummies and Macabre Legends of the Colonial Era.

I now need to see all of them.

Rainville runs through each with a spirited discussion that’s supplemented with scads and scads of crazy screen grabs, vintage posters and garish lobby cards. It’s laid out like a magazine, professionally and in eye-popping full color (except those instances where the source material was not).

The jam-packed 64-pager also contains an introductory essay that touches upon the movies you likely have heard of (i.e. the Aztec Mummy trilogy) and Mexico’s yesteryear comics featuring zombies and/or mummies.

So you don’t just have to take my near-worthless word for it, you can get a peek at Zombi Mexicano‘s insides here. Now go buy it, funky film fan, before that right is taken from you. I accept your thanks in advance. De nada. —Rod Lott

Buy it at From Parts Unknown.

Contests

Wanna Win Schoolgirl Report: Volume #10?

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schoolgirl10UPDATE: Winner is Eddie Marr!

We’re giving away a copy of Schoolgirl Report: Volume #10 on DVD to one lucky summabitch in these United States of America. How to enter? Easy!

Just leave a relevant comment on any review on this site before next Saturday, Aug. 17. That’s when one lucky commenter will be picked at random to have this movie shipped to his or her door. Winner will be notified via email, so make sure the email address you leave to comment is a valid one.

Buy it at Amazon.

Comedy

Screwballs (1983)

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screwballsAmong all the Porky’s rip-offs and T&A romps of the era, Screwballs strikes me as one of the most repellent. Basically, the “plot” is this: At the world’s most depressing-looking high school, four or five guys — I really can’t remember; they were all overly horny — make a bet at who will be able to see the breasts of popular virgin Purity Busch (Linda Speciale). Yep, that name is as clever as Screwballs gets — sorry, Bootsie Goodhead and Principal Stuckoff — which is to say, not at all.

Oh, what a different movie Screwballs might have been had it stuck to this plot! Instead, it goes off on so many illogical tangents that we have the tragic tale of a boy who gets his penis stuck in a bowling ball, or the ironic spectacle of a slut’s gelatinous chest pressed up against the back window of a van.

screwballs1In the end, our zeroes — skilled they are at staging free breast exams at school — succeed, by blowing Purity’s clothes off with a giant fan at an assembly. With patriotic music blaring in a way the composer certainly never intended, Purity’s not-that-great-to-be-honest bosom is shown in full close-up as the end credits roll.

What, no epilogue to tie up all the nagging loose ends? No jokey “where are they now?” titles? I wish we could measure how far back Screwballs set the women’s movement, but the fact that it was co-written by a woman (Linda Shayne, who played the aforementioned Bootsie) certainly pushes it back even further. —Rod Lott

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Action

Wanted Dead or Alive (1986)

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wanteddoaI’m glad that New World Pictures gave Blade Runner baddie Rutger Hauer a legitimate shot at becoming a Stallone-sized action hero. I only wish he didn’t have to do it in a mullet and purple silk shirts. A better vehicle would have helped, too, for Wanted Dead or Alive is lacking in spark. If not quite DOA, it’s arguably more D than A.

A contemporary rejiggering of the same-named Steve McQueen television series of the late 1950s and early ’60s, the film focuses on Los Angeles bounty hunter Nick Randall (Hauer), the kind of loner who pockets a harmonica at all times and lives on a boat part-time, but uses both possessions to woo a med student (K-9‘s Mel Harris, in her movie debut).

MSDWADE EC015After terrorist Malak Al Rahim (KISS kommander Gene Simmons, first seen disguised as a rabbi) blows up a theater screening Rambo: First Blood Part II, Randall is given one week and $250,000 to bring the guy down. He will, natch, but damned if it doesn’t feel like a real-time viewing. Action arrives in too-brief bursts, and to the tune of one of the worst scores the synth-soaked ’80s offered.

Wanted Dead or Alive often looks like a made-for-TV movie, which is weird when one considers how much grit director Gary Sherman was able to bring to Vice Squad four years earlier. Further holding it back from feeling cinematic is the third-billed presence of TV staple Robert Guillaume, who at least gets to fire off something he’d never be allowed as Benson: “The next time you decide to fuck me, Lipton, kiss me first!”

So inert is the story that I found myself more engrossed in a recurring restaurant location’s sign of “TRY OUR TASTY GRILLED BREAST OF CHICKEN.” I will give Sherman credit for the movie’s great ending, in which Randall blows Rahim’s noggin clean off with a stuffed-in-mouth grenade, then walks a few steps to sit down and play a few bars of “You Are My Sunshine” on the ol’ mouth organ. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Thriller

Airport (1970)

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airportThe grandaddy of all disaster flicks, Airport established the modern-day template that spawned many a towering inferno and Poseidon adventures, not to mention three of its own sequels. While time has granted it a thick layer of kitsch unintended by its makers, the movie still soars high as an all-star hoot.

Based on the 1968 novel by Arthur Hailey — who also wrote Zero Hour!, which Airplane! spoofed as mercilessly as this — the dramatic thriller is as sprawling as its cast. It’s so jam-packed and jumbo-sized that no true lead emerges, but Burt Lancaster (The Osterman Weekend) ostensibly is as Mel Bakersfeld, whose marriage is fraught with as many problems as the Chicago airport he manages. For one, the noise from passing jets rattles nearby homes; for another, the worst storm in six years has him and his co-workers gobsmacked with stress.

airport1The biggest problem is that the Boeing 707 piloted by Capt. Demerest (Dean Martin, hic!) has among its passengers a mad bomber (Van Heflin, Shane) and, perhaps more annoying, a perennial stowaway in a manipulative li’l old lady (Helen Hayes, whose Oscar win for this qualifies as an all-time AMPAS joke). Crowding the running time are George Kennedy, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean Seberg, Maureen Stapleton, Barry Nelson, Gary Collins and seemingly everyone except you and me.

Director George Seaton (Miracle on 34th Street) has so much on his plate that the terrorism angle doesn’t really shift into gear until the second hour, meaning that the first is all setup — perhaps even an info dump, introducing character after character, subplot after subplot, and sometimes even cramming several into the screen at once with multiple splits. That he keeps this soap opera of the skies from crash-landing — until the script calls for it, of course — is quite an admirable feat. Airport should not be as much fun as it is. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.