Reading Material

Reading Material: 4 Books with Which You Can Declare Your Independence from the Heat

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majorleagueCaseen Gaines’ We Don’t Need Roads isn’t the only current behind-the-scenes book on a hit comedy trilogy born in the 1980s. Jonathan Knight weighs in with The Making of Major League, and you can definitely tell it’s penned by a sportswriter. True to its subtitle of A Juuuust a Bit Inside Look at the Classic Baseball Comedy, the Gray & Company paperback is too “inside baseball,” giving it a, um, “Sheen” of inaccessibility to the average film fanatic. Knight earns points aplenty by interviewing every living important cast member — including Wesley Snipes, Tom Berenger, Rene Russo and, yes, even Charlie Sheen, who also pitched in the foreword — but I’d knock some off for constant overstating of the movie’s status of a cult classic (he contends it has achieved Rocky Horror levels) and for exaggerating drama that suggests the 1989 hit was some sort of industry game-changer. A minor-league Major League aficionado myself, I did learn a lot from the breezy read, including its original “twist” ending, the cutting-room fate of Jeremy Piven and the flick’s curious connection to, of all pics, Clive Barker’s Nightbreed.

blumhouseWith such low-budget/high-return smashes as Insidious, Sinister and Paranormal Activity, producer Jason Blum is Hollywood’s current king of horror. Can he do the same for that slim section of your local bookstore? Judging from the Vintage fiction collection he has edited, The Blumhouse Book of Nightmares: The Haunted City, the Ouija planchette points to “YES.” It sure helps that for the 17 stories selected, he called upon such friends and collaborators as Ethan Hawke, Eli Roth, Scott Stewart and Mark Neveldine, the latter two being the respective directors of Dark Skies and those crazy-ass Crank movies. Although most of these guys are not known for printed fiction, they more than rise to the challenge, jumping mediums without losing the menace. Blum could strike gold by turning some of these tales into an anthology film. (Like that idea, Jason? Just credit me as an executive producer, thanks.)

splatpackThe aforementioned Roth is one of the primary filmmakers at the (stabbed and bleeding) heart of Mark Bernard’s Selling the Splat Pack: The DVD Revolution and the American Horror Film. In the Edinburgh University Press release, the author examines the business behind pushing the likes of Rob Zombie and the Saw franchise onto audiences of the multiplex and then, more tellingly, to home-video consumers who salivate over discs branded with lurid promises of “UNRATED” cuts and extra content. (Guilty as charged!) Charting the coinage and spread of the “Splat Pack” term across continents, Bernard also discusses how today’s digital platforms have helped lift public opinion of the horror genre from execrable trash to insightful social commentary. While rehashing the histories of fright films and the format wars is unnecessary, Selling the Splat Pack emerges as a smart study in the economics of horror — not to be confused with the horror of economics.

menwomenchainsawsReferenced seemingly everywhere since its original publication in 1992, Carol J. Clover’s Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film is now available in an affordable paperback edition as part of the Princeton Classics line. While the reprint sports a snazzy new cover, the interior layout has been ported, resulting in the photos appearing cruddy and muddy. It’s easy to see why this book is considered such a landmark in film analysis, and in her new, five-page preface to this edition, Clover boils the appeals of horror down to a sentence: “The point is fear and pain — hers and, by proxy, ours.” She’s referring to the concept of the slasher’s Final Girl — a now-widespread term she birthed. As her chapter within the also recently reprinted The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film shows, she performs skillful and credible dissections on mass-market horror shows like Alien and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but it’s her essay on rape-revengers — and defense of 1978’s notorious I Spit on Your Grave in particular — that she most excels. —Rod Lott

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Documentary

Kung Fu Elliot (2014)

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kungfuelliotAt the start of Kung Fu Elliot, the outstanding and crazy-entertaining documentary that bears his name, Elliot “White Lightning” Scott expresses his life’s purpose: to “make Canadians go, ‘Wow, we can have an action hero.’” He wants to be Halifax’s answer to Jackie Chan.

Not so fast, Elliot. You’re not even Halifax’s answer to Jackée Harry.

As co-directors Matthew Bauckman and Jaret Belliveau inform us, their subject’s first and second steps toward that lofty goal are the homemade feature films They Killed My Cat and Stalker and the Hero. Both exist to showcase the martial-arts skills of their — how you say? — unconventional (and unemployed) leading man. Both were directed by his longtime, live-in girlfriend, Linda Lum, who appears to be operating the digital point-and-shoot camera under emotional duress and with a saint’s patience. Both are hocked to unimpressed shoppers on the sidewalk outside CD Heaven. (You know CD Heaven, right? Dude, it’s right next door to The Curling Store!)

kungfuelliot1In theory, Bauckman and Belliveau were tagging along to document the making of Elliot’s latest no-budget bid toward superstardom, Blood Fight. However, shooting of the schlump’s would-be epic is erratic at best. He spends more time trying to convince strangers of his MOD DVD greatness and bragging to them about his championship trophies in kickboxing, sport of the future. If he can trick the more gullible into an autograph and/or a photograph they didn’t ask for, all the better for his unjustifiably enormous ego!

With Kung Fu Elliot, the obvious point of comparison is Chris Smith’s perfect American Movie, also following a regular guy with big-screen aspirations and little talent to back them up. Whereas the delusional underdog Mark Borchardt was someone you wanted to root for — and did — Elliot Scott is merely delusional, and that takes the documentary into dark territory viewers will not expect. Don’t let anyone tell you what that is; be highly unsettled for yourself. —Rod Lott

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Comedy

Jekyll and Hyde … Together Again (1982)

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jekyllhydeTAWhile watching, I had planned to write that Jekyll and Hyde … Together Again must have made Robert Louis Stevenson turn over in his grave, but Jerry Belson’s goof on the 19th-century author’s arguably most famous tale takes care of that in its final scene. It’s one of many unashamedly dopey gags in this unheralded R-rated gem.

Bug-eyed Mark Blankfield (Dracula: Dead and Loving It) is Dr. Daniel Jekyll, resident superstar surgeon at Our Lady of Pain & Suffering. Despite having it all, including an engagement to the hospital boss’ conceited daughter (Bess Armstrong, Jaws 3-D), Jekyll announces his retirement from surgery to dedicate his brilliant mind to drug research. This being the early ’80s, that includes the recreational kind — namely, cocaine … and lots of it.

jekyllhydeTA1Falling asleep with a straw up his nose, Jekyll accidentally snorts a sparkling white powder in the lab that transforms him into a spastic sex maniac, an unleashed id with disco duds, animal instincts and a lone gold tooth. While in this unruly state of Hyde, he couples with a prostitute named Ivy (Krista Errickson, Mortal Passions) and snorts more lines than can be found in a geometry textbook. Such hedonistic activities threaten to derail his professional and personal lives — all three of them.

To my off-guard surprise, Jekyll and Hyde … Together Again is very funny — often laugh-out-loud hilarious, such as Jekyll’s meet-and-treat cute with Ivy, who checks into the emergency room due to a “foreign object” lodged in her vagina. (Trust me.) Working as a broad parody, Jekyll bears more of the National Lampoon stamp than the humor magazine’s official movie that same year, Class Reunion. (The Lampoon staff had to be envious of Jekyll‘s breast-enlargement scene in particular. Speaking of, Elvira alter ego Cassandra Peterson and her right “gazonga” have supporting roles as a surgical nurse and her right “gazonga,” respectively.)

Belson (vet of many a classic sitcom, most notably The Odd Couple) and his three co-writers deserve credit for putting laughs on the page, especially in the tricky realm of drug humor. They realize — as so few of today’s filmmakers do (*cough* Seth Rogen *cough*) — that getting high can’t be the beginning and the end of the joke; something more has to be done with it, and they do. But Blankfield is the largest reason the movie works as well as it does. He’s a terrific physical comedian, and his dual performance here can’t be experienced without seeing a lot of Jim Carrey at the peak of his Ace Ventura/The Mask commercial ascent. Based on this film alone, Blankfield should have been every bit the star. —Rod Lott

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Horror

Hillbilly Horror Show: Vol. 1 (2014)

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hillbillyhorrorBilling itself as “Nuttier than a Squirrel Fart,” Hillbilly Horror Show makes one long for the subtlety of Elvira. The mixed-mailbag showcase of horror shorts takes a comedic approach to its very brief host segments, although the four featured films are serious on the whole. The Hillbilly clan’s Hee Haw sensibility hardly meshes well with the contents it purports to champion.

Doing those duties from the innards of a mobile home are trailer-trash bumpkin Bo (Bo Keister, The Taking of Deborah Logan); his mumbling cousin, Cephus (Scott Geiter, Midnight Matinee Psycho); and Bo’s “kissing” cousin, Lulu (Maxim model Rachel Faulkner). In a stereotypical thick-hick accent, Bo does most of the talking: “You know whut that means? We gettin’ piss-ant drunk and watchin’ movies!”

hillbillyhorror1Four “movies” play, with Lulu sporting skimpier clothing — star-spangled bikini included — between each one. First up is Franky and the Ant; not only is it questionable to qualify it as horror, but the story struck me as pointless and, worse, its two hit men annoyingly speak as Quentin Tarantino rip-offs. Next is the wordless Doppleganger, a fine, stop-motion animation with two skeletons. Although wonderfully executed visually, it also leaves the viewer wanting in all other departments.

Almost free of dialogue, Amused is another inconsequential bit, this one of a woman fleeing a zombie in a snow-covered rural area. Finally, there’s The Nest, the lengthiest segment of all. Its primary special effect — of killer bees stripping their victims to the bone — is excellent, but wears out its welcome, much like Hillbilly Horror Show itself. —Rod Lott

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Thriller

Point of Terror (1973)

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pointterrorPoint of Terror contains so many songs performed in full, it veers dangerously close to being a musical. That performer is Tony Trelos (star/writer/producer Peter Carpenter, Blood Mania), a groovy-esque nightclub singer who fancies himself quite the Tom Jones. Unfortunately, since he headlines at the Lobster House, he’s far more, say, John C. Reilly.

Tony senses that sweet smell of success when he meets giant-haired/giant-breasted record exec Andrea Hillard (Nazi she-wolf Ilsa herself, Dyanne Thorne) and they begin an affair, much to the gritted-teeth disdain of Andrea’s handicapped hubby (Joel Marston, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan).

pointterror1Other than an admittedly pretty-hot pool rendezvous between Tony and Andrea, the movie’s best scene finds her throwing a lawn chair at her wheelchair-bound spouse as he confronts her about her vow-busting style of “talent relations.” As she mimics the motions of a matador, director Alex Nicol (The Screaming Skull) puts ambient sounds from a public bullfight on the soundtrack and — kind of a spoiler, but really more a reason to watch — as Mr. Hillard accidentally rolls into the pool to a chlorinated death, Andrea whispers, “Olé.”

Olé indeed. Thorne is quite the delicious femme fatale, and Point of Terror could use more of her camp-flavored spice to liven up its soap-opera script. The film is an R-rated soap opera, mind you — Nicol turns a sex-on-the-beach scene into a onscreen checkerboard — but full of melodramatics nonetheless. (It is, after all, an ego vehicle for Carpenter, who overestimated his value as a leading man and sadly died two years before Point got around to being released.) The “twist” ending intends to shock, yet instead will leave you thinking it copped out. It did. —Rod Lott

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