All posts by Allan Mott

Comedy

Up the Academy (1980)

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upacademyAfter the unprecedented success of National Lampoon’s Animal House, it seemed only natural that the nation’s other most influential comedy magazine of the period would get into the movie game as well.

Unfortunately for the usual gang of idiots at Mad, the result wasn’t nearly as financially rewarding. In fact, the Mad men were so disappointed with the way Up the Academy turned out, they eventually took the Mad Magazine Presents out of the title and disavowed any association with the film — instantly turning Alfred E. Neuman’s cameo into a strange non sequitur.

In retrospect, though, you have to wonder how they ever thought hiring the iconoclastic filmmaker Robert Downey could have ever resulted in a successful mainstream comedy. Best known (aside from siring the future star of Iron Man) for his cult masterpiece, Putney Swope, Downey Sr. was an auteur whose gifts pretty obviously didn’t extend to the creation of a sophomoric teen comedy (or at least one that could actually be appreciated by its intended audience).

upacademy1Sloppy, deliberately offensive (the film’s casual jokes about race and teen pregnancy seem especially shocking today) and almost angrily broad, the film plays less like an actual movie than a feature-length version of one of Swope’s infamous commercial satires. But then at the same time, it also feels strangely restrained for a film supposedly inspired by the anarchic spirit of Mad (a spirit much better exemplified onscreen that same year in Airplane!).

For this reason, Up the Academy is one of those films I personally find interesting even though it clearly fails on all of the levels by which it should be judged. An experiment gone hopelessly awry, it’s one of those strange projects that should be viewed if only because it somehow manages to exist even though it probably shouldn’t.

And it has an awesome soundtrack. —Allan Mott

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Kitchen Sink

KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park (1978)

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kissphantomWTFThe defining moment of KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park comes when drummer Peter Criss (aka Cat Man) first speaks aloud and the familiar Saturday-morning cartoon voice of male Wonder Twin Zan (Michael Bell) comes out of his mouth. It’s then that you realize this made-for-TV film:
1) was produced by Hanna-Barbara,
2) stars a bunch of people who really had no desire to be involved, and
3) is far more wonderful than we probably deserve.

Starring the world’s greatest terrible rock band of all time, the original members of KISS play themselves — with the fictional license that along with being unapologetic cash whores, they also each possess super powers, which they’ll need in order to stop the titular villain (a slumming Anthony Zerbe) who is turning amusement park customers into robotic slaves. The band is alerted to his evil doings by a pretty young fan named Melissa, (Deborah Ryan) who — in the film’s most fantastic and unrealistic contrivance — Gene Simmons doesn’t try to fuck.

kissphantom1Normally talented genre director Gordon Hessler (The Golden Voyage of Sinbad) couldn’t overcome the nonexistent budget and, as a result, the telefilm has an almost Ed Wood-ian level of unintentionally amusing shoddiness (i.e. Ace Frehley’s stunt double is clearly an overweight black man). Definitely not for the serious-minded, KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park is one of those nostalgia pieces whose glaring imperfections actually makes it far more lovable than a well-made film. —Allan Mott

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Horror

Night of the Lepus (1972)

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nightlepusYes, they really made a horror movie in the 70s about giant man-eating bunny rabbits. And yes, they called it Night of the Lepus, which was just another blatant attempt by Hollywood to use a dead language (lepus means hare in Latin) to make something cute and lovable seem dangerous and scary. How could something so absurd be any good?

The simple answer: It couldn’t. The fun, instead, comes from pondering how the fuck the filmmakers responsible were able to ignore this simple fact and make the movie anyway.

nightlepus1Stuart Whitman and Janet Leigh play a “young” couple of scientific researchers who have been asked to find a way to slow down the breeding cycle of the local rabbit population, which has grown vast enough to devastate much of the county’s farmland. Inevitably, their research fucks up the ecology and allows the rabbits to grow to the size of Volkswagens and much mayhem ensues until the adorable monsters are finally vanquished — at least, for the moment …

Lepus has a decent cast, but its members are hobbled by the script’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge that its plot is more appropriate for a spoof than a serious horror film. The ludicrous effects are achieved by filming regular-sized rabbits on miniature sets and — in some shots — by a guy in a hilariously freeze-frameable Easter Bunny suit. Director William F. Claxton tries to make up for this with some gore, but all that does is remind you how ridiculous the whole concept is in the first place. —Allan Mott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Red Sonja (1985)

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redsonjaThere are many thoughts that leap to mind while returning to Red Sonja decades after you’ve last seen it, but the one I kept focusing on was, “Where the heck did Brigitte Nielsen’s breasts go?”

Admittedly, I have a tendency to overfocus on this sort of thing and I should probably get some help and talk to someone about it, but I’m not wrong in noticing that the international ’80s Amazon’s dimensions here in her cinematic debut are somewhat less Amazonian than those found in her later films (Cobra included), which suggests to me a direct correlation between getting enormous implants and subsequently starring in a series of shittier and shittier movies.

redsonja1I may be alone in expressing this, but I think Nielsen actually showed some (unmet) promise in this, her film debut. Sure, she’s often flatly unintelligible, but so is her co-star, and that didn’t stop him from starring in Batman & Robin or becoming the governor of California. As an action heroine, however, she’s entirely credible and was probably the only actress/model of the period with a build both substantial and sexy enough to take on the role of Robert E. Howard’s most famous female character. She was just missing the breasts, which she must have noticed and decided to correct for her future work (which sadly never included that proposed big-screen adaptation of She-Hulk, for which she was born).

The rest of the movie manages to serve as a solid example of the decade’s sword-and-sorcery silliness. Not as memorable as Luigi Cozzi’s two Hercules films, but still better than Conan the Destroyer and its many low-budget clones (none of which were foolish enough to copy John Milius’ superior original), Red Sonja is a serviceable time-waster lessened only by its distinct lack of a D-cup. —Allan Mott

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Horror

Frogs (1972)

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frogsYou can’t really blame Frogs’ producers for their blatant deception. I mean, there are frogs in Frogs, but they alone aren’t the only animals who turn against the various unlikable characters who inhabit the story. In reality, the film more accurately should have been called Traditionally Harmless Animals Which Suddenly Decide to Attack People Because of Pollution, which I will concede would have been a lot harder to market.

The people in question are a bunch of rich assholes who live under the thumb of patriarch Jason Crockett (Ray Milland, X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes) and who have gathered together on his private island to celebrate his latest birthday. You know Crockett is a bad guy because:
a) he’s rich, and
b) is in a wheelchair, so it’s only natural that he has no problem keeping the bugs away from his estate with a very eco-unfriendly pesticide.

frogs1It’s only a matter of time before the local animal population (which admittedly includes a lot of frogs) calls “Bullshit!” on this and starts attacking everyone, including the studly, tree-hugging photographer played by Sam Elliott (Tombstone), whose lack of a mustache is eerily discomfiting.

Frogs manages to avoid being as ridiculous as that same year’s Night of the Lepus, but that’s not a good thing. While watching giant bunny rabbits stalking Janet Leigh is just stupid enough to hold your attention, the same can’t be said for people being hunted by normal-sized fauna. Despite the goofy promise inherent in its concept and infamous poster, Frogs is just plain dull. —Allan Mott

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