Comedy

Franky and His Pals (1991)

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Shot on video, the monster-mash monstrosity known as Franky and His Pals feels like the management team of your local Spirit Halloween store got drunk after closing and improvised a movie. In reality, it’s made by Gerald Cormier, producer of such X-rated fare as Hey! There’s Naked Bodies on My TV!

Thanks to an avalanche, the bolt-templed Franky, the vampire Drak, the wolfman Wolfie, the mummy Mummy and the hunchback Humper live captive in a cave, until Franky (Eric Weathersbee) eats so many chili beans that he farts the boulders away to clear a passage. This allows the group to escape and go looking for the rumored gold in town. Emerging from the mummy’s tummy to crack wise is a talking rat. Also, Wolfie (Wilson Smith) is gay, assumedly so Cormier and his pals could make light of a feminine man named Clover (Shawn West), who wears a tutu and walks around asking in a whiny pout, “Have you seen my Wolfie?”

They attend a costume party — conveniently enough, so no one knows their true nature — at a nearby hotel, where they dance, grope women, hop in the sack, judge a bikini contest and participate in one-joke setups that even Rowan and Martin would reject. One running gag has the monsters individually terrified whenever the obese Tammy appears … yet they overwhelmingly vote her the victor in the aforementioned contest — so much for consistency! The night ends when Franky stumbles upon a pot of chili beans in the kitchen, can’t help himself and farts the place into an explosion, which unearths the gold.

Oh, you’ll also be treated to a rap song that recounts the events of the prior 10 minutes, a pair of Stepin Fetchit stereotypes as gravediggers, an aerobics sequence, gratuitous Pepsi-Cola placement, and a scientist with a time machine that doesn’t come into play until the very end, when the monsters are zapped away to … well, who knows? The scientist (Cormier himself) breaks the fourth wall to inform viewers the sequel will reveal the quintet’s destination. Luckily, that follow-up never came, because one Franky is twice the amount anyone needs. It’s so corny, you’ll spot chunks of it in tomorrow’s stool. —Rod Lott

Western

Bacurau (2019)

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The transcendentally violent spirit of Chilean visionary Alejandro Jodorowsky lives on in the bloody Brazilian film Bacurau, a modern-day Western of uncompromised violence and unfiltered vengeance that, if I had seen it last year, would have definitely made the top of my 2019 list.

A few years in the future, the small village of Bacurau is slowly dying, both literally and metaphorically. As an addictive pharmaceutical continues to numb much of the Brazilian populace, the denizens of this town live on, constantly in need of food, water and medicine. Eventually, the town disappears off the map and cellphone service is suddenly disrupted.

As locals are found brutally murdered — including a few children — a group of white Americans and Europeans, led by German-born Michael (Udo Kier), use the town as a form of murder tourism, hunting the people in the street like stray dogs. But the people of Bacurau aren’t ones to run from a fight, unleashing psychedelic hell on the intruders.

A hell of a slow burn, as compact UFOs hover in the sky and dark hallucinations are a fact of life, directors Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles are rightfully distrustful of gringo influences on their way of life; the white hunters’ jingoistic bravado usually turning to xenophobic tears when confronted with their evil is by no means subtle or unearned.

There’s a beautifully caustic artistry to their storytelling, an acidic Western (Southern?) that’s more influenced by the people’s own native-born resiliency and willingness to preserve at any cost than any two-bit John Wayne flick ever could. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Kitchen Sink

LSD: Psychedelic Trailers & Shorts (2020)

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WTFHey, man, at your next happening — people still have those, right? — don’t stick a sugar cube atop a single tongue until you have the proper atmosphere for your guests.

And by that, I mean the two-hour compilation LSD: Psychedelic Trailers & Shorts. Where else can you be terrified one minute by Sal Mineo’s suggestion of being trapped in a refrigerator, then amused the next as grown adults romp amid a groovy bedroom set with “LSD” spelled on the wall in letters insinuating it’s all going down on the shadiest corner of Sesame Street? (And does it help that the second scenario unfolds to a score that sounds like a 3-year-old dicking around with a theremin?)

From the pushers at dvdrparty, the clip comp begins with the infamous animated chicken from the hysteria-stirring docudrama The Weird World of LSD, which isn’t even the strangest sight here for your bloodshot eyes. That honor goes to the Lockheed-funded classroom scare film LSD: A Case Study, in which a young blonde hallucinates that the hot dog she’s about to eat is screaming and has the face of a Troll doll.

Other scenes shove aside the acts of tuning in and dropping out to emphasize turning on. If it’s not dancing with abandon to dancing between frat-house sheets (Stephen C. Apostolof’s College Girls Confidential), it’s outlining your sex partner’s naked body with whipped cream (Neon Maniacs director Joseph Mangine’s Smoke and Flesh).

Elsewhere, a dozen trailers advertise all sorts of cinematic trips, including Roger Corman’s The Trip, Russ Meyer’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, the Lana Turner-starring The Big Cube and even the made-for-TV adaptation of Go Ask Alice. Whether taken in doses or all at once, the no-frills, far-out party disc presents some of the wackiest depictions of lysergic acid diethylamide ever to make their way to the bijou. —Rod Lott

Get it at dvdrparty.

Action

Karzan, Master of the Jungle (1972)

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Not that you needed it, but for further proof Italy never saw a movie trend it couldn’t rip off, I give you Karzan, Maitre de la Jungle, aka the Tarzan wannabe Karzan, Master of the Jungle, starring “Johnny Kissmuller Jr.” (actually Loaded Guns’ Armando Bottin) as the illiterate lord of the loincloth.

The setup Xeroxes the premise of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ legendary literary hero to a T (or should that be “to a K”?), as the male child of a well-to-do family is orphaned by tragedy and subsequently raised by apes in the African wild, acquiring formidable vine-swinging prowess as the years progress. In Karzan, the pith-helmeted, J&B-fueled members of an expedition go looking for this “fabulous creature.” Among them are the beautiful Jane Monica (Melù Valente, Blindman) and, serving as guide, a towering mute named Crazy (Attilio Severini, Viva! Django).

Much of the film by Coffin Full of Dollars’ Demofilo Fidani is taken up by the expedition traversing the harsh mistress known as nature. With every step, they teeter on the precipice of doom, with expository dialogue constantly reminding the viewer: “We haven’t got a chance,” “One bite means instant death,” et al. Most memorable among the close calls are Crazy’s use of a blow dart to kill the (obvious toy tarantula they call a) black widow atop Monica’s chest, followed by Crazy making good on his nickname by wrestling — and then biting — a poisonous snake. Of presumably less threat is the native tribe whose leader’s foreign-tongued babbling is dubbed to sound like Looney Tunes’ Tasmanian Devil.

When they finally meet Karzan (who looks not unlike the Samurai Cop himself, Mathew Karedas), they find him shacking up with the subservient Sheena-esque Shiran (Simone Blondell, Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks), who’s literally so stupid she can’t even drink from a coconut without its milk judiciously spilling down her bare midriff.

Now is a good time to open the floor so I can answer your burning questions:
• “Does Karzan do the Tarzan yell?” If you consider every third note changed to avoid intellectual-property litigation and delivered with less confidence than Carol Burnett, then yes, you may.
• “What about the animals? I like the animals. Mommy takes me to the zoo for going potty. Can I see lots and lots and lots of animals?” Oh, heavens, yes! Prepare to see such exotic stock-footage sights as the giraffe, zebra, water buffalo, elephant, lion, rhinoceros and crocodile. Or is that an alligator? I get those two confused. You also will meet a chimp named Cika, credited as playing itself.
• “Pray tell, does the climax involve Karzan wrestling a man in a shoddy ape suit?” As a matter of f– wait, how did you know? —Rod Lott

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Horror

Enter the Devil (1972)

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Warns the poster of Enter the Devil, “it’s too late for an exorcism!” But let’s give credit where credit is due, because director/co-writer Frank Q. Dobbs’ regional feature beat The Exorcist to theaters by a year — not that the movies are remotely similar, because this pic lacks possession, but a true exploitation filmmaker knows to use every trick in the book. (One of those tricks is retitling, which accounts for the alternate moniker of Disciples of Death, but don’t confuse this Enter the Devil with the Italian one better known on our public-domain shores as The Eerie Midnight Horror Show.)

After yet another hunter disappears in Brewster County, the sheriff (John Martin, The Tell-Tale Heart) sends Deputy Jase (co-screenwriter Dave Cass, Smokey and the Bandit Part 3) to sniff out some answers, what with it being an election year and all. That task takes Jase to a cabin outpost run by good ol’ Glenn (Joshua Bryant, A Scream in the Streets). It sits near the ol’ iron ore mine from the pre-credit sequence — you know, where the robed religious nutsos sacrifice the most recent missing hunter by tying him down with barbed wire, then flame-roasting him after piercing his heart with a big, black crucifix? Yep, that’s the one!

Shot in and around the Texas town of Lajitas (rhymes with “fajitas”), Enter the Devil has both the misfortune and fortune of making the UK’s “Video Nasties” list, presumably from the title alone — misfortune because the PG picture sheds hardly any blood, fortune because the notoriety helps keep the little film alive, which it deserves. With talk of border walls and acts of sexual assault factoring into the plot, it’s arguably (and accidentally) more relevant now than upon release.

Not to overpraise this venture from Dobbs (Uphill All the Way), but its homegrown Lone Star spirit and flavor grant it character a Hollywood treatment would likely polish beyond recognition. Rattlesnakes and rock formations carry automatic production value, as do members of the local-yokel cast. They speak a dialect too authentic to be fake, helping give the viewer a contact buzz from the cheap canned beers they slurp. You also can practically smell their acrid breath from their constant smoking, and feel the omnipresent dust leaving a grimy coat on your skin as it does theirs. When the robed cult members finally show the skin of their faces, you’ll hardly be surprised, but you’ll be satisfied. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

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