All posts by Rod Lott

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Indestructible Man (1956)

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First of all, the Indestructible Man of the title is not indestructible. If that were the case, the movie would go on and on forever. And since he’s played by Lon Chaney Jr., I’m not all that sure he’s a man, either. But that aside, Chaney is “The Butcher,” a two-bit robber thrown in prison and sentenced to death after his accomplices double-cross him.

While attempting to cure cancer, a local scientist uses Chaney’s fried cadaver for research purposes, and accidentally revives him with 287,000 volts! Though the process has given him life and super-strength, it has burned out his vocal chords, thus playing to Lonny’s limitations for the remainder of the film. His acting from then on mostly consists of quivering his eyeballs in menacing close-ups.

The now-bullet-invulnerable Butcher’s order of business is to seek out and kill the men who put him in jail, but Chaney is such a sweaty, disheveled, lumbering ox that he looks like he’s constantly in search of a nice, quiet hole in which to take a grizzly-bear dump. Aiding the cops in their search for Mr. Indestructible is a voluptuous stripper (Marian Carr, Kiss Me Deadly), who toils at a burlesque house introduced with a quasi-disturbing establishing shot of a sign reading “TAQUITOS – CHILI SHOP.”

This nice-girl stripper tells the lead detective, “For the past six months, I’ve only known you as Lt. Chasen. Don’t you have a first name?”

“Uh-huh,” he says, pausing for sexual effect. “Dick.”

She smiles mischievously while rubbing a finger along her lips. Yowsa!

Eventually, The Butcher is turned into a bacon-faced meatball via flame-thrower. This death, like the movie, is fun and efficient — a pulpy crime tale with an outrageous sci-fi bent. Dig the incredibly chauvinist ending! —Rod Lott

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Action

The Choppers (1961)

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It may not be as priceless as Eegah!, but The Choppers is another unintentionally hilarious Arch Hall Jr. vehicle worthy of your time and derision.

The whiny Hall stars as “Cruiser,” a teenage punk with sculpted hair and a chassis fetish. He heads a JD gang known as “The Choppers,” whose other members are Torch, Snooper and Flip; all of them talk such thick lingo they should be carrying green cards. When they’re not hanging out at the Chick-A-Dilly, they’re hunched in a poultry truck, waiting for someone to run out of gas along a short stretch of highway, and then move in to strip — or “chop,” as the kids say — the car clean as the driver leaves to fetch fuel. (Apparently, this is an everyday occurrence.)

The Choppers then sell the parts to a fat salvage-yard owner named Moose, whose assistant is a senile fool named Cowboy, who often shoots toward the camera with his finger. If you hadn’t noticed by now, this is the kind of movie where no characters have real names.

The cops are on their trail, however, so for the big stakeout, they invite a local radio reporter to cover it as a live broadcast! It leads to a chase, a game of chicken and ultimately a junkyard shootout that looks choreographed by 8-year-olds.

If you think this story doesn’t allow time for Hall to bust out one of his ridiculous, self-penned songs on the guitar, you’re wrong! Just before the big climax, lil’ Arch takes some time out to sing “Monkey in My Hatband,” the first five lines of which go, “Come, baby / Come on, baby / Come on, baby / Come on, baby / Come on, baby.”

Yep, he wrote that all by his lonesome! —Rod Lott

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Martial Arts

Shaolin Wooden Men (1976)

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Certainly not the best of Jackie Chan’s string of Lo Wei films early in his career, Shaolin Wooden Men casts him as an orphaned mute and the least popular student at the Shaolin temple, where he can barely perform the most rudimentary tasks, like lugging huge buckets of water on his back up an ungodly amount of stairs.

It isn’t until he secretly befriends the temple’s prisoner that he learns kung fu. The script doesn’t give him many chances to use it, with the notable exception being the film’s best scene, in which Jackie must face a gauntlet of 108 of the titular wooden men, which are like robots with cannonballs for fists.

If you’re surprised to discover the prisoner who schools Jackie in the way of the fist and the foot is the same guy who killed his father many years ago, you need to see more kung-fu movies. But Shaolin Wooden Men is not a recommended starting point. —Rod Lott

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Thriller

Madness (1980)

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No sooner has thieving murderer Joe Breezi (Andy Warhol regular Joe Dallesandro) escaped from prison to sweet freedom than he kills a couple of farmers, stabbing one with the elderly guy’s own pitchfork. At least he has good reason: Joe needs their car to drive to the two-room countryside cottage in which he buried 300 million liras five years prior, underneath the fireplace.

Arriving at the cottage for the weekend are cad Sergio (Gianni Macchia, Inferno), his wife (Patrizia Behn) and her sister (Lorraine De Selle, Cannibal Ferox). Sergio’s cheating on the former with the much-hotter latter, Paola. When he goes out hunting and his wife heads into town to shop, that leaves Paola to sunbathe … and Joe to knock her out so he can start chipping away at the bricks.

Had he just waited a couple of days, Joe could have the place to himself — but then, we wouldn’t have a movie. And it’s an enjoyably sleazy movie. Clad in a wife-beater, blue jeans and white Keds, Joe rapes Paola when she comes to … and then professes to like it. De Selle spends a good half of the movie with nary a stitch; getting nearly as much screen time is John Travolta, via a poster above the couch.

Madness contains three additional sex scenes, with the first being the most explicit — surprisingly not involving gay icon Dallesandro. Let’s just say writer/director Fernando Di Leo (The Italian Connection) familiarizes the audience with Macchia and Behn’s taints. Don’t worry: Di Leo delivers his trademark violence, yet the weird thing is, you may find yourself rooting for Dallesandro and against his captives — not just because the actor has a palpable presence, but because the Italian-language film is written that way. —Rod Lott

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Mystery

In the Devil’s Garden (1971)

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My dad always told me that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. What he failed to mention is that a rapist may be hanging out somewhere around the middle. That’s the case for the pink-skirted schoolgirls who, while on their way home, take a shortcut In the Devil’s Garden.

A young Lesley-Anne Down (The Great Train Robbery) is the first girl to be attacked; she survives, but is rendered virtually catatonic from the shock. After a second girl goes missing, hot art teacher Julie West (Suzy Kendall, Torso) goes hunting for her student. Julie finds the girl — dead, unfortunately, but also gets a glimpse of the likely killer, who she testifies looks “exactly like the devil.”

Well, except he had no horns. Admittedly, that’s a pretty stupid thing to say in such a public forum. Way to go, Teach.

Ms. West makes up for it by hatching a plan to draw out the killer. It involves convincing a journalist to run her drawings of Satan on his newspaper’s front page. Don’t question it — just know it’s crazy. In fact, we’re told, “It’s so crazy, it might work.” Really!

Alternately known under many titles that include Assault, Tower of Terror and Satan’s Playthings, the movie sprouts a big, brassy score that grows so loud, it suggests “THRILLS!” in places where there aren’t any. That’s not to say the film is bad — just very, very British, in that it exudes a different sensibility than an American film would. In our hands, it’d be a pulse-pounding thriller; in those of director Sidney Havers (Circus of Horrors), it’s more a standard, mild-mannered whodunit, painted with just a streak of the perverse. Casting someone as lovely and lively as Kendall makes following the trail more pleasurable than otherwise. —Rod Lott

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