All posts by Rod Lott

Reading Material

Fatal Visions: The Wonder Years 1988-89

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fatalvisionsThis very website serves as an extension for a DIY magazine I produced for a dozen years, beginning in 1993 around the height of zinedom. Titled Hitch: The Journal of Pop Culture Absurdity, the more-or-less quarterly specialized in reviews of films — the more outré, the better — which took up the better part of each issue’s back half.

While I’m glad to be out of the zine scene (it’s a ton of work to put out anything of quality), I hold affection for those times, partly for the movies and subgenres to which I became exposed. I feel like I have found a counterpart of sorts in Australia’s Michael Helms, whose Fatal Visions zine celebrated “sleaze, violence and sexploitation in the cinema” for a decade.

Fatal Visions: The Wonder Years 1988-89 collects the first six issues in paperback, complete except for the excision of reader letters. Each issue among the dirty half-dozen is devoted almost exclusively to reviews of flicks then new to theaters, via VHS rentals or airing on Melbourne TV stations.

A majority of the films are United States productions, so the Down Under viewpoints of Helms and his review crew grant an added level of interest to their rough-and-tumble criticism. While you’ll find all-American blockbusters like Tim Burton’s Batman covered, titles lean heavily on sequels, horror, Troma, Jackie Chan, Roger Corman and assorted trash.

Longer pieces include a Q-and-A with gore king Herschell Gordon Lewis, memoirs of an X-rated paperback novelist, a brief look at Bruceploitation and, better yet, a three-part series that “reviews” the local porn palace theaters, then near-extinct. Only an extended essay on Aussie censors comes off as a little too “had to be there,” yet it’s always nice to see intelligent voices fighting the good fight against those who wish to legislate their own religious beliefs onto the populace.

Much of Fatal Visions‘ nostalgic charm stems from the wealth of clipped newspaper ads — a lost art dearly missed in this online-ticketing era of Fandango and Moviefone. Charming, too, is Helms’ writing style, built more on passion than polish. Readers should be warned that this book hasn’t cleaned up the original errors, which number many, coming from a cut-and-paste zine and all. Those who used to send stamps or a few bills in the mail in return for such homemade publications won’t care. —Rod Lott

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Action

Firewalker (1986)

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firewalkerChuck Norris does his best Harrison Ford (which isn’t good enough) in Firewalker, the Cannon Films answer to the Indiana Jones franchise. Give Chuck credit for trying something different, but it doesn’t work. Call it Texas Ranger and the Temple of Dumb.

Norris is adventurer-for-hire Max Donigan, hired by Flash Gordon‘s Melody Anderson (as the ersatz Kate Capshaw) to guide her to a horde of Aztec gold located in a cave supposedly guarded by a cyclops — so says the ancient treasure map which has come into her possession. Iron Eagle‘s Louis Gossett Jr. is Donigan’s minority sidekick, and stepping into John Rhys-Davies’ Raiders of the Lost Ark role is John Rhys-Davies, because what else does the guy have to do but eat?

firewalker1Finding the cave is simple; getting the gold is another matter. Chuck sums up the plot as best as anyone: “OK, you’ve got gold, human sacrifice, a dagger and the sun.” He and his cohorts get into all sorts of wacky, Central American pickles, from puttering around the jungle in a camo-painted VW Bug to hopping aboard a train disguised as Catholic clergy members.

Firewalker begins in a semisolid state, as old-fashioned serial fun. It ends that way, too, but dumber. The problem is its meandering, near-torturous midsection, made worse by Norris and company’s inability to handle the script’s reliance on comedy. The movie might have worked better in the less-wrinkled hands of a younger, livelier director, whereas J. Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone) was nearing the close of his long career. Besides, didn’t he receive his first Social Security check somewhere between chapters six and seven of Radar Men from the Moon?

Our heroes take so many photographs during their journeys that you’d expect to see the shots during the end credits, but Cannon budgets didn’t allow a line item for Fotomat developing. Also, no one walks on fire. —Rod Lott

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Horror

The Dunwich Horror (1970)

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In Grease, when they sang about Sandra Dee being “lousy with virginity,” I’d like to believe it was a direct reference to The Dunwich Horror, an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation from AIP. In it, Dee plays Nancy Wagner, a college virgin lured to the sleepy, strange town of Dunwich by its least favorite son, the creepy-eyed Wilbur Whateley (Dean Stockwell, Blue Velvet), sporting a porn-star mustache.

Wilbur lives with his freaky-ass grandpa in a big, spooky house. He’s also the son of the devil and has recruited Nancy as his virgin sacrifice for a ceremony that will open the gates of hell. Meanwhile, just what in the hell is that thing in Wilbur’s closet?

This could have been some half-assed, thrown-together horror effort, but surprisingly, it’s pretty classy, like Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe pictures. Although some dialogue is dry, the look and feel of Dunwich is top-notch. Die, Monster, Die!‘s Daniel Haller does a terrific job with the direction, especially in the latter half when things get really weird; the tricks he pulls with quick cuts and color flashes help intensify the film’s jolts.

Dee looks rather puffy-faced in this one, but does turn her image on its head by doing a nude scene. Stockwell pulls his patented weirdo character out of his sleeve, but hey, it works. Everything gels in this one; I find it somewhat of a minor classic. Dig that ending! —Rod Lott

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Thriller

Special Effects (1984)

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specialeffectsLarry Cohen does his best Brian De Palma imitation with Special Effects, which is to say a poor one. Perhaps the only special thing about this minor effort is that, more than any other of the filmmaker’s works, the movie demonstrates he’s better at conceiving ideas than birthing them. This one’s certainly no Q; it’s a Zzzzz.

In her first role post-Ms. 45, Zoe Tamerlis plays Mary Jean, a naive, Oklahoma-to-Manhattan actress who cheats on her hick husband, Keefe (Brad Rijn, Smithereens) with a down-and-out film director she’s just met. He’s Neville (Talk Radio’s Eric Bogosian, speaking out of his mouth’s left side), who feeds her the line, “I think we should do a slow dissolve to the bedroom.” It works, and while writhing in the pink satin sheets, Neville strangles her to death.

specialeffects1Rather than become the prime suspect, Neville cannily deflects suspicion by making a movie about the murder, with the intent to pin the crime on the yokel spouse who agrees to play himself. Essaying the role of Mary Jean is her dead ringer, Elaine (also Tamerlis), a clothes sorter at the Salvation Army.

Sounds absurd, right? It should, for Special Effects is a messy bundle of story threads Cohen doesn’t bother to unravel before attempting to connect. If he had, I suspect the film would remain too ludicrous to swallow; Rijn and Tamerlis’ near-amateurish performances wouldn’t be remedied by even the sharpest script. With touches like Neville choking someone with 35mm film and asking, “Who made your head? Carlo Rambaldi?,” the movie must be intended as some industry-insider statement, but what the statement says is as mysterious as the entire premise is muddled.

Aside from a quick visual joke referencing Tootsie, Special Effects bears precious little of Cohen’s clever sensibilities. —Rod Lott

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