All posts by Rod Lott

Kitchen Sink

Banned (1989)

Leave a comment

WTFbannedAll but lost, the unreleased Banned represents the final film of cult New York director Roberta Findlay (Tenement). Beholden to no genre and without an internal logic to call its own, the movie is utterly strange even for her.

Ostensibly, it’s about the ghost of Sid Vicious-esque punk rocker Teddy Homicide (Neville Wells), he of Rotten Filth. While laying tracks at Impulse Studios, he suddenly snaps, mows everyone down with a machine gun, and then drowns himself in the toilet. His soul remains in the commode for 10 years, until the band Banned (get it?) scrounges together enough cash to cut an album there, and jazz guitarist Kent (Dan Erickson from Mrs. Findlay’s Blood Sisters) becomes possessed when sprayed with toilet water. It happens.

banned1Findlay only marginally pursues that angle; it’s secondary to everything else, which can be broken into three major categories:
1. automatic weapons — Guns are handled by many characters throughout. Whether incidentally or in the hands of a Middle Eastern terrorist trio, they’re played for laughs, no matter how many lives are snuffed out. Ditto Banned‘s climax of Kent/Teddy being chased through Central Park with a rocket launcher.
2. groupie sex — Banned’s drummer, Serge (Fred Cabral), balls anything with a cervix. He never finishes, because copulation is interrupted by the ringing of an alarm clock, which he then hurls against the wall. Its broken parts fall into a pile of so many, it’s a wonder Serge doesn’t have the HIV. Among the women who strip nude is D-list scream queen Debbie Rochon (Santa Claws), in only her sixth credit of (at press time) 225.
3. slapstick comedy — Or “attempts at,” to get technical. Characters plunge into open manholes, and if it’s not funny the first time (and it’s not), Findlay hopes it will be the third (nope). Similarly, when Serge lapses into a religious rant, his pals press a surge protector labeled “Serge Suppressor” to his chest; Findlay draws attention to the pun thrice just to make sure you won’t miss it. You won’t, but you’ll groan instead of guffaw.

Depicted twice, the weirdest gag has Broken Records’ owner — an old, short, round Jewish man — snort lines of “beef adrenal tissue,” thereby turning him into a young, tall, muscular African-American hulk à la Kentucky Fried Movie‘s Big Jim Slade.

Almost as an afterthought, Kent is exorcised by a preacher who moonlights as a plumber. Banned is worth about an equal amount of contemplation; while certainly not boring, its intent and execution are perplexing. Erickson bothers to give an actual performance, but everyone else — to borrow a line from the movie — can “go fuck a coconut.” —Rod Lott

Thriller

The Paperboy (1994)

Leave a comment

paperboyAs Johnny McFarley, the psycho preteen of The Paperboy, Marc Marut gives what may be the single worst performance ever by a child actor.

He’s cursed with Alfalfa freckles and the range of a dime-store water pistol, and everything Marut says or does as he obsesses over single-mom neighbor Melissa (Alexandra Paul, Christine) is downright laughable, thus negating any “horror” that Whispers director Douglas Jackson’s film purports to contain.

paperboy1In one scene, Melissa comes home to find Johnny in her kitchen:

Melissa: “What are you doing here, Johnny?”
Johnny: “Apples! I’m peeling apples!”
Melissa: “Get out!
Johnny: “Aw, c’mon, won’t you make me an apple pie?”

Annnnnd scene. Later, Johnny flips his proverbial lid as he spies Melissa getting down ’n’ dirty with her boyfriend (William Katt, 1986’s House), and it’s an absolute riot, cementing Marut’s footnote status in modern North American cinema. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Sex

The Touch of Her Flesh (1967)

1 Comment

touchherfleshI’d like to think that even if writer/director Michael Findlay could have afforded real credits for The Touch of Her Flesh, he still would have chosen to project them on the parts of a naked lady. Yes, Virginia, production value can be God-given.

Findlay also essays the lead role of Richard Jennings, and it’s no mystery why: so he could act out his sexual fantasies. His Richard is an author of a “weapons book” successful enough to send him on a business trip out of town. Seconds after he walks out the door, his wife, Claudia (the unimonikered but double-breasted Angelique, from Joe Sarno’s The Love Rebellion), welcomes her lover through it.

touchherflesh1Having forgotten an item, Richard returns home, only to catch the two in the act. The shock sends him running into the streets, where he is “hit by a car and hurt very badly” (so says the doctor, twice). In fact, Richard’s lost an eye … and gained a thirst for revenge.

In the rare case when the film isn’t showing curvy dames undressing or writhing in the nude, it’s showing them befall a cruel fate. From a topless go-go dancer to a street hooker, Richard’s vowed to kill them all, whether via a rose with poisoned thorns, a crossbow or his own bare hands. When it’s Claudia’s turn, Richard takes time first to molest her breasts: “Let me see them again and feel them again before they die!”

Shot in black and white with sound recorded after the fact, The Touch of Her Flesh is padded with wall-to-wall lovin’ touchin’ squeezin’. It’s obvious Findlay had a type: naturally busty. So long as his women met that stringent qualification, nothing else mattered — not even Angelique’s armpit hair, not even a script. The project is completely inept, yet I couldn’t look away. Two sequels followed, because boobs. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Comedy

Ooga Booga (2013)

Leave a comment

oogaboogaBecause of Karen Black’s iconic role in the 1975 made-for-TV Trilogy of Terror, there’s an irony to Ooga Booga‘s casting of her opposite a killer doll. Any semblance of cleverness ceases thereafter.

The Full Moon Features production stands as yet another example of director Charles Band’s love for pint-sized puppets and demonic toys, this time in the tasteless African native of the title. Early in the story, the African-American protagonist Devin (earnest first-timer Wade F. Wilson) says to his friend, “Not the bad-ass dolls idea again?” The rhetorical question could be directed at Band himself, and should be.

oogabooga1Devin’s dreams of becoming a doctor are shattered when he’s shot dead by racist cops in a convenience store. But because his corpse is shocked by the slushie machine (his girlfriend requested “one rhubarb squirtie”), Devin’s soul is transferred into Ooga Booga — an action figure made by his pig-nosed pal, Hambo (Chance A. Rearden, Zombies vs. Strippers) — and, therefore, is able to exact revenge on the officers and the epithet-spewing Southern judge (Stacy Keach, The Bourne Legacy) who cleared them.

The spear-chucking, bone-through-the-nose Ooga Booga is just one of a series of offensive figurines Hambo hawks; the others include Joe Cracker, Crack Whore, The Gook and Butt Pirate. Any assumption that Band might be parodying racism is null and void, given that the market-savvy filmmaker sells limited-edition replicas on the Full Moon website at $39.99 each.

But back to the movie, which is a lamebrained, long 75 minutes. Not the motorboating kids’ show host, not the meth head named Boner, and not even the giant breasts of the hooker named Skank (porn star Siri, Gazongas 7) can mitigate the considerable tedium. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Horror

The Killer Snakes (1975)

1 Comment

killersnakesIn the despicable, dirty and even depressing The Killer Snakes (that’s all the recommendation you need, right?), the saddest sad-sack character I may have ever seen in movie history works one dead-end job after another and sleeps in a shack with pornographic pictures taped to the ceiling over his bed.

He gets bullied a lot by just about everyone with whom he comes into contact — skinny, street-corner whores included. The guy is in such dire need of a haircut and a flea dip that I could barely stand to watch him. I’m still unsure as to whether his character is supposed to have a mild mental handicap or if the movie is just that poorly dubbed.

killersnakes1After a hard day of being fired from the place where they serve the innards of snakes’ gall bladders and being caught masturbating by the woman he loves from afar, this miserable little man befriends an injured cobra in his shack. The cobra is sad because his gall bladder has been taken from him without his consent. So our hero zero sews him up and nurses him back to health, affording the same treatment to all the serpent’s equally scaly pals, also robbed of this organ.

Somewhere along the way, he trains the snakes to attack and kill, although we never see this most difficult of training processes. It’s time for revenge. First he goes to the whorehouse where earlier he was the recipient of much kicking and abuse. He does his business with the hooker most resembling circus clown Emmett Kelly (in a scene so entirely disgusting you’ll want to shower) and then lets the cobras go full-fang at her bodyguards, while she faints. He takes the unconscious whore home, ties her up and then lets the slithering creatures have sloppy seconds.

Starring Kurt Lang (Purple Storm), Maggie Lee (Kung Fu: The Punch of Death) and “1001 killer snakes” (per its poster), the Shaw Brothers production is one of the more perverted and sick-minded exploitation offerings I’ve seen. Its X rating is well-deserved. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.