All posts by Rod Lott

Horror

Hi-Fear (2022)

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What are you afraid of, asks the horror anthology Hi-Fear. A comic-book publisher poses the question to Natalie (Kristen Lorenz, 2019’s Bliss), a freelance illustrator hired for same-day-turn work. She’s told to draw whatever scares her most, with each round of real-time hot sketchbook action segueing into one of four tales.

First, a virgin is gifted “the Hope Diamond of pussy” for his birthday by friends. However, the whorehouse is staffed with killer prostitutes. Todd Sheets (Final Caller) quickly turns his ’80-style T&A comedy into extended gore, gleefully practical. Next, the legendary Tim Ritter (Killing Spree) turns his camera on a pastor with a bad toupée — and even worse temper — who kills his “jezebel” of a wife. This occurs after a confusing mélange of snake handling, eyeball puncturing and side-boob drug injecting. At least the pastor’s dialogue is far-right riotous: “This is the attire of a whore!”

Sodomaniac director Anthony Catanese’s segment is the shortest, but also boasts the best camerawork, as a young woman is terrorized by a mentally ill homeless man known on the streets as Krazy Killer Karl. Finally, in the most unconventional story, Camp Blood creator Brad Sykes (also responsible for the Natalie wraparound) depicts the making of an indie movie on a mountain where it’s never night. Maybe that cosmic ball of light has something to do with it?

Capping the trilogy, Hi-Fear follows 2013’s Hi-8 and 2018’s Hi-Death. A perceivable improvement over Hi-Death, it still suffers from a decreased story count set by the original’s octet. Ironically, as the Dogme 95-style shot-on-video rules established for Hi-8 have loosened considerably with each franchise installment, overall levels of quality and fun have decreased. —Rod Lott

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Kitchen Sink

Garbage Day! (1994)

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WTFIn an obsession that’s just plain unhealthy no matter how you slice it, a Brian Bonsall-ian 5-year-old boy worships Gus, his friendly neighborhood garbageman. Said fixation burns at such a white-hot intensity, the tot sets his alarm early for garbage day, starred with serial-killer detail on his bedside calendar. With the pee-your-pants anticipation of Christmas morning, he rouses his father from sleep with “Dad! Dad! Wake up! It’s garbage day!”

I, for one, believe it’s safe to say this is why the straight-to-VHS children’s program bears the title of Garbage Day!, exclamation theirs — and, we can be certain, the misguided youth’s. Let’s call him “Kid” since he’s not given a name. In that spirit, for reasons you’ve already surmised, neither a writer nor a director is credited.

Dad (William Schreiner, who also produced) happily helps his son (Quinn Schreiner) tote their trash receptacles to the curb to await the arrival of their sure-to-stink pal in public service. Kid even has a Thermos of coffee tied around his neck for Gus’ consumption.

“I wish I could see everything on garbage day,” says a starry-eyed Kid, a budding li’l John Hinckley Jr.

“You do?” answers Gus (Steven Diebold), in an overtone decidedly hushed and sinister. “Well, maybe we can work something out.”

We’re spared the fevered negotiations and whatever exchange occurs. Instead, we leap right to Dad and Kid as they follow Gus on his route. Gus fills his truck with water balloons and lets his mentees watch them explode in the trash compactor. Do the taxpayers know Gus engages in such rascality on their dime?

Lest you risk injury, make sure you’re properly seated before the riotous bloopers involving the inability of the truck’s automated arm to lift cans correctly. Scoring this montage is a Yello-styled synth track that swaps hooks for the disturbing coos and giggles of an unseen baby. Sequence complete, the lid on an unsanitary garbage container lifts, revealing Kid. Way to supervise, Dad.

Informing his passengers that milk bottles are recycled to make Frisbees, Gus asks, “Why throw anything away when it can be made into something else?” I know Gus’ line is rhetorical, but does the oily man live in some fantasy land where used condoms, tampons and toilet tissue don’t exist?

To demonstrate how bulldozers crush refuse pancake-flat, Gus smashes a line of perfectly good watermelons instead of, oh, I dunno, actual trash.

As the poignant 20-minute video reaches its end, our trio stands atop a landfill at sunset, looking over the fetid pit of filth as if it were the goddamn Grand Canyon.

To pay Gus back for the field trip, Dad and Kid have a crazy surprise awaiting him the next week: a trash bin filled with colorful balloons! Not only that, but the guys have gone to the trouble of getting them custom-printed with the line, “Have a nice GARBAGE DAY!” While this gesture may have come from the heart, it’s pretty stupid if you ask me. My reasons number three:

1. Because the balloons are helium, they immediately float away. Some gift!
2. Think of all the birds soon to be killed by the string-tied rubber orbs of death. Suffice to say, those avians will not be having a nice garbage day.
3. Even if Gus grabs a couple of balloons, you know he’ll waste no time popping them with his vehicle of doom, grooming Kid for the day they inevitably move to heads. —Rod Lott

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Documentary

Mansfield 66/67 (2017)

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Did Jayne Mansfield really join Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan? Was she its high priestess? Did the two have an affair? The documentary Mansfield 66/67 poses these questions, yet offers no definitive answers. Clever title aside, it skims along the surface level.

Pegging itself as “a true story based on rumour and hearsay,” the film shares what even those who haven’t seen a Mansfield movie may know: She was addicted to alcohol and attention, not necessarily in that order. Likewise, LaVey was her near-equal in the department of Publicity Whoredom. But only one of them went around wearing a ridiculous horns-and-cape getup, and he’s written off as, hilariously, “more Count Chocula than Charles Manson.”

As padded as Mansfield was bosomy, this film from House of Cardin co-directors (and spouses) P. David Ebersole and Todd Hughes features well-informed commentary from the well-informed likes of Mamie Van Doren, John Waters, Mary Woronov, Kenneth Anger and Tippi Hedren.

On the other hand, the participating academics’ opinions — peppered with phrasings of “sex-positive” and “occupational patriarchy” — feel out of place in a doc that includes a poor-taste cartoon recreation of Jayne’s son Zoltan mauled by a zoo lion, not to mention the interstitial musical numbers and interpretive dances by men and women dressed as the camp sex symbol. While Mansfield 66/67 is pretty painless, it lacks so much insight, your time is better spent watching Mansfield’s movies. —Rod Lott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Destination Inner Space (1966)

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Your basic Saturday-matinee movie of rear projection and rubber suits, Destination Inner Space takes place at an underwater research lab. Inside, scientists express concern over a blooping blip on the ol’ sonar. As the skipper up top (Radar Men from the Moon’s Roy Barcroft) puts it to hero Cmdr. Wayne (Scott Brady, Strange Behavior), “There’s something odd going on down there.”

And how! The blip leads the crew to an alien spaceship on the ocean floor. Automated to push a glowing triangle ice-cube thing from its wall, the craft contains a capsule shaped like a tablet of cold medicine. When they take the mystery container back to base and dare open it, they let loose a finned monster who could be the Creature of the Black Lagoon after years of eating exclusively at Steak ’n Shake. From there, the movie is reminiscent of It! The Terror from Beyond Space, but with establishing shots filmed in someone’s living room aquarium.

Also aboard Destination are Wende Wagner (TV’s The Green Hornet) as Wayne’s love interest, Mike Road (the voice of Race Bannon on TV’s Jonny Quest) as Wayne’s rival, Sheree North (Telefon) as a marine biologist who mostly tends to the men, and the legendary James Hong (Everything Everywhere All at Once) as the world’s preeminent mechanical engineer and deep-sea diver. Just kidding; ’60s sci-fi being the domain of Caucasian squares who all look ready to sip G&Ts by the hi-fi, the Asian Hong plays the SEALAB chef, complete with bird on his shoulder.

Although merely serviceable, Destination Inner Space excels in the department of subaquatic footage. Clearly, director Francis D. Lyon (Cult of the Cobra) is aware, repeating scuba-dooba scenes (like a two-man submarine in action) as often as possible to steer this ship to 83 minutes. —Rod Lott

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Thriller

10 Rillington Place (1971)

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One of Britain’s more notorious serial killers, John Christie claimed at least eight victims in the 1940s and ’50s. Thankfully, given its potency, 10 Rillington Place depicts precious few. The film by The Boston Strangler director Richard Fleischer limits itself to events in 1949, when the down-on-their-luck Evans family rents a room in Christie’s flat.

A thumb of a man in unassuming suspenders and spectacles, Christie (Richard Attenborough) redefines manipulative with his new tenants, illiterate workingman Tim (John Hurt, 2014’s Hercules) and brand-new mother Beryl (Judy Geeson, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush). Christie possesses a roving eye and accompanying urges for Mrs. Evans. When she gets pregnant again — not ideal as they’re barely scraping by — Christie all too eagerly volunteers to perform a scraping of his own.

From there, 10 Rillington Place goes to horrific places. Time has not diluted the film’s ability to shock, not even for watchers desensitized by contemporary true-crime series about Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy and their sick ilk. While staged with professional excellence by Fleischer, the movie’s primary source of impact is Attenborough. His childlike psychopath will forever change subsequent viewings of his happy-go-lucky Dr. Hammond in Jurassic Park. His Christie is unforgettable. In one scene, Attenborough seamless goes from confident to terrified to calm to sexual over the course of a single action. He’s perfect casting.

Ditto for Hurt, whose beleaguered Tim undergoes a transition from boarish to sympathetic in the face of tragedy. Make no mistake, the real-life events within the Notting Hill address were nothing less. While Fleischer dares to “go there,” so to speak, Rillington never feels tacky or crass. After all, it’s just a movie, standing in front of a viewer, asking them to relive it. —Rod Lott

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