“Badassery is not born, but often thrust upon you.”
—Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Because tragedy plus time famously equals comedy, we can laugh along with something like FDR: American Badass!, a low-budget film built upon bad taste, but with the skills good enough to pull most of it off. “Who ordered the burnt honky with a side of polio?” is but one example of its anarchic and anachronistic sense of humor.

Appearing to have more fun onscreen than ever before (The Rocky Horror Picture Show included), Barry Bostwick tears into the role of POTUS 32 like the old pro he is, portraying the Depression-era prez as a trash-talkin’, freestylin’ blowhard who’s okay with never walking again as long as his penis still functions. His legs stop working when he contracts polio from the bite of a werewolf, naturally.

As the film posits, the werewolves (whose makeup makes them look like stand-up comedian Richard Lewis) are the doing of Hitler’s Nazi Germany in a bid to rule the world, thus kick-starting World War II. The only thing standing in the pack’s way? FDR and his Einstein-pimped machine-gun wheelchair.

This hysterical historical is an extension of the literary mash-up craze that quickly infiltrated Hollywood with the likes of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. But what that megamillions project forgot is something FDR: American Badass! does not: Don’t let the humor end at your film’s title. This entry may be dirt-cheap, but good jokes cost nothing to deliver. You have nothing to fear but the fact that Ross Anderson’s script bears too many gags relying on oral sex (inching toward either homophobia or latent desire?), but blessedly more that do not. It helps that the entire supporting cast is game and without shame.

Directed by Garrett Brawith (Poolboy: Drowning Out the Fury), FDR is a spirited spoof with enough LOLs to merit multiple terms of office; today, we call them “viewings.” —Rod Lott

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Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello first frolicked together in Beach Party, the start of American International Pictures’ loose, teen-oriented franchise concerned with sun, sand, surf, song and squeaky-clean sex. The pair plays Frankie and, um, Dolores, young lovebirds who venture toward the SoCal waves for a vacation.

Ironically, neither is the film’s real star. That honor belongs to Bob Cummings (Dial M for Murder) as Professor Robert Sutwell, a woefully unhip, but amiable academic with a presidential beard and the entire shoreline under surveillance. It’s strictly for research, as he’s studying the mating habits of the American teenager. The virginal Dolores feigns interest in this square in order to make Frankie jealous, since he’s been drooling over a milk-jugged Hungarian sexpot (Eva Six, 4 for Texas) who waitresses at the local hangout run by the goateed Cappy (comedian Morey Amsterdam).

That’s about all the story the movie needs, as TV sitcom director William Asher (Bewitched) is basically filling space between all the ass-shakin’ dance sequences, many to the tune of surf-guitar king Dick Dale (sporting an earring the size of a bracelet) and the Del-Tones. Providing comic relief in a flick packed with it is Harvey Lembeck (Stalag 17) as Eric Von Zipper, a dopey motorcycle gang leader who comes with not only his own catchphrase (“You stupid!”), but his own sound effects.

A real time capsule of a motion picture, Beach Party is fluff, yet vibrant, inoffensive, smile-inducing fluff that generates as many genuine laughs as it does inadvertent ones, i.e. “What is with Annette’s pumpkin hairdo?” It’s hard to hate a movie that ends with a pie fight and a Vincent Price cameo that serves solely to advertise AIP’s The Haunted Palace, and I don’t. Quite the opposite. —Rod Lott

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Do you find shit funny? What about farts? Vomit? Disintegrating bloody corpses? If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, Monsturd is right up your alley, because it’s about a walking, talking, murdering turd-man. He comes up through your toilet, kills you while you’re pooping and then writes clever one-liners with smeared fecal material on your walls. Don’t get caught with your pants down, indeed!

Monsturd opens with an escaped murderer on the loose (Brad Dosland, Retardead). He comes into contact with some toxic wasted that has been dumped by some evil scientists. The toxic waste cause his DNA to be fused with the feces in the sewer and thus is born … Monsturd! Since Monsturd does his murderous business while people are taking a crap, his killing spree threatens to shut down the town’s beloved Chili Festival. Something must be done!

For the most part, this horror spoof is played completely straight with lots of great deadpan dialogue. A lot of the humor does revolve around the deuce — and one excessively great vomit sequence — but also great writing. Creators Dan West and Rick Popko steal scene after scene in their roles as bumbling sheriff’s deputies.

West and Popko have done an excellent job of creating a high-quality and highly watchable flick on a shoestring budget. Don’t let the fact that it’s shot on video scare you away, because the production values are high all-around. There is also some gore that is plenty gruesome, but at the same time, cartoony enough to be fun.

If Monsturd has a flaw, it’s that there is almost too much going on. The movie never really slows down to give you time to associate with a central character. It opens with lots of people running around with great urgency and they pretty much keep running for the movie’s 80-minute running time.

There is nothing that is all that original about it, either. You’ve seen the toxic monster, the mad scientists, the bumbling deputies and the H.G. Lewis-style gore in plenty of other movies. But the film has a goofy enthusiasm and manic energy that helps to pack all these traditional elements into a fresh loaf. —Ed Donovan

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The deservedly obscure broad ’n’ bawdy comedy Toga Party begins not at a toga party, but on a farm, where Purvis, an easygoing guy with a ‘fro, spends his days strumming the guitar, boning Betty Jo in the barn and dreaming of becoming a singer. One day, he up and decides to go to New York in search of stardom, so he does.

Upon arrival, he roams the streets, not in search of a toga party, but a club that’ll let him play. No one will. On a chance meeting, he is discovered by a sleazy, two-bit agent named Suzy Starmonger. She books him not at a toga party, but at an obnoxious bar where a pie fight is liable to break out at the drop of someone’s pants.

Now redubbed “Pelvis” because of his vocal likening to the King and because of his large penis, Purvis becomes a minor star singing hits like “Nazi Girl,” “I Know a Man Who Screwed a Chicken,” “Suck My Way to the Top” and “Maria, My Little Wetback.” He also gets mixed up in hard drugs and loose woman, but nary a toga party.

Other than a spoof of the infamous crying-Native American litter PSA, there’s nothing really funny about Toga Party, but it’s fairly painless. In case you hadn’t figured it out by now, at no time does anyone go to (or even talk about) a toga party. —Rod Lott

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This goofy-as-hell cannibal comedy leads with a lamb to slaughter — namely, comely Sally Lamb — an innocent blonde murdered by the titular undertaker and his two pals, while the expression on her boyfriend’s nearby photo changes from smiling to horrified.

It’s just the latest in a string of senseless murders carried out by Shady Rest Funeral Parlor head Mr. Mort, who specializes in the $144.98 funeral, complete with Green Stamps, and shares half of each corpse with his friends who run the Greasy Spoon Café, where the day’s special is fresh from the kill — like, for instance, the “leg of Lamb.”

Looking for subtlety? It’s hiding somewhere with cleverness. So when clean-cut playboy detective Harry Glass stops by for a bite with curvy secretary Ms. Poultry … well, you just know tomorrow’s special will be breast of chicken.

And, of course, it is. The Undertaker and His Pals is very much an imitation of Herschell Gordon Lewis, and while it’s no work of art, neither is Lewis’ stuff. Nope, like the work of that Godfather of Gore, this even-lower-budget effort is just a fun mix of a little blood, a lot of bosomy dames and painful slapstick. At 63 minutes, it simply doesn’t have time to be dull. —Rod Lott

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