Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Man Beast (1956)

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manbeastAs vast and desolate as the Himalayas it depicts is Man Beast, an abominable turd. In her film debut, Asa Maynor (Conquest of the Planet of the Apes) plays Connie Hayward, a young woman who hires Steve Cameron (Tom Maruzzi, in his one and only acting credit) to lead her high up into the mountains to find her brother before it’s too late.

Like a few other “distinguished scientists,” Connie’s sib has gone in search of the yeti — “a kind of people covered with hair,” we’re told — and yet not a single member of those expeditions ever was heard from again. For quite a while, viewers of this freshman directorial outing by Jerry Warren (The Wild Woman of Batwoman) may wonder if the missing men committed suicide simply to have something to do.

manbeast1Only two things happen in Man Beast: climbing and boring, in roughly equal measure. Although the movie is a mere 62 minutes, it seems to take hours to reach the bargain-basement creature of the title, who sits in the snow and carries a big stick that resembles a salami hanging in a deli. Upon first glance, it looks like a cosplay version of Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion; as Warren allows his monster to stumble toward the forefront, rejected Chewbacca sketches come to mind.

The whooshing of the wind bears more personality than the yeti or any of the human cast, making Man Beast a steaming pile of cryptozoological crap. When Connie cries the flick’s last line, “Take me away from here, Steve! Take me away!,” you will share the sentiment. —Rod Lott

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Reading Material

Mad as Hell: The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies

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madashellYes, the subtitle of Dave Itzkoff’s Mad as Hell promises a behind-the-scenes chronicle of Sidney Lumet’s Network. Yes, the reader gets that, but the author delves deeper than that, to the point of telling not just the making of the 1976 film, but its conception, release, impact, blowback, legacy and continuing influence.

Part of that is because the book is as much as story about Network‘s celebrated screenwriter, Paddy Chayefsky, as it is about the Oscar-winning movie. A magnificent writer of television, stage and screen, Chayefsky was also an incredible control freak who ironically had no control over his family life; he clearly cared more about the written word than his flesh and blood.

Always waiting for the other shoe to drop, Chayefsky could not ever truly enjoy his incredible success — Network would bring him his third Academy Award for screenwriting — and harboring a near-extreme paranoia couldn’t help matters; he believed a second Holocaust was imminent. Nevertheless, he was able to function to do his job, starting with his much-abhorred boob tube. But it was film we forever will associate him with, especially the one with which Itzkoff’s book is concerned.

Network, we know now, was prescient — and continues to be more so as the years tick by — and even in scenes that never made it past the page, which Itzkoff details. One such case I found astounding is when the UBS execs dream up programming that is supposed to be considered wild: a show adapted from The Exorcist and a soap about homosexuals. We already have the latter; the former is being developed.

That’s one of many juicy bits the Mad as Hell reader will learn, thanks to Itzkoff’s judicious digging. Others include the revelation that Peter Finch could not complete two takes of “the” speech, that Lumet considered firing Faye Dunaway well after filming had begun, the pronunciation error that the to-the-letter Chayefsky failed to catch, and how Ned Beatty lied his way into a role. (I’d include how Dunaway did her damnedest to alienate most everyone, but everyone already knows that.)

If you haven’t seen Network — first off, shame on you — do not read this book until you do. Those who have may not want Mad as Hell to end, particularly knowing the fate of a reinvigorated Finch before the film could be fêted as that year’s Oscars. Only in a coda examining how Finch’s Howard Beale character has given rise to the likes of Glenn Beck does Itzkoff — turning from storyteller to social critic — produce a paragraph that’s not intensely readable. —Rod Lott

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Sex

The Ultimate Degenerate (1969)

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ultdegenerateHaving completed his Touch of Her Flesh trilogy, New York City writer/ director/producer/editor/perv Michael Findlay attempted to top his horndog histrionics with The Ultimate Degenerate. He failed. Watching it, if you can get through all of its 72 minutes, you may find yourself wishing some women would get murdered — not because you have something against the superior gender, but because the film needs something to liven it up. Nudity should not be so dull, even when accounting for black-and-white budgets.

Frequent Findlay skin-starlet Uta Erickson has zero inhibitions as Maria, a close-cropped blonde nympho with a thing for putting on window shows for an elderly neighbor. (As in Findlay fashion — one where moving mouths rarely match dialogue — viewers never see this old man.) Such exhibitionism sickens her live-in lover (Donna Stone, A Thousand Pleasures‘ Boobarella), so Maria answers a sex ad for a three-week gig that promises $500 per.

ultdegenerate1Said “job” is in the home of Spencer (Findlay), a wheelchair-bound man who pays various lovelies to bring his seemingly endless sexual kinks to life; to that end, he injects them with “a harmless aphrodisiac of my own creation.” Spencer’s right-hand man is played by Earl Hindman, who co-starred as Wilson on the long-running family sitcom Home Improvement. Remember how you never saw his face on that show? Well, sometimes you don’t see it here, either, but that’s because instead of being concealed by a backyard fence, it’s buried in whores’ crotches. #nomnomnom

Several of Spencer’s twisted games rely on dairy products sprayed from an aerosol can. On one occasion, “games” becomes literal, when a fully nude body becomes a board for whipped-cream tic-tac-toe. One might expect the scene in which Spencer pesters a rope-tied woman with a metal clamp to be the flick’s cruelest, but nope — my vote is cast for the extended one involving about a dozen cobs of corn. You may never eat this vegetable again … but if you do, may you be unable to think of anything but this sequence. More butter, friend? —Rod Lott

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Horror

Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005)

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hellworldHalf a dozen friends are so obsessed with an online game that one of them, not being of sound mind and body, is driven to suicide. (Note: This film predates Farmville.) Two years later, all but the headstrong Chelsea (Amusement‘s Katheryn Winnick, the Canadian Scarlett Johansson) are still into the game — Hellworld, a role-playing version of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser series — and they flip the freak out when they unlock an invitation to a secret, fans-only party. Begrudgingly, Chelsea attends only as the designated driver / voice of reason.

The soirée takes place in a mansion that, according to the host (Lance Henriksen, Aliens), once was a convent and an asylum, although not at the same time. Regardless, for this night, it’s a multilevel monkey house of bacchanalian activities, complete with numbered face masks for anonymous sex — the kind of environment conducive for pickup lines like, “I’d love to see your puzzle box” (uttered by future Man of Steel Henry Cavill) and, naturally, the eventual death and dismemberment of the guests by party-crashing Pinhead (Doug Bradley) and his fellow Cenobites.

hellworld1The eighth film of the franchise, Hellraiser: Hellworld is the first to present its source material as something that exists outside the bounds of itself, with the young cast portraying ‘Raiser superfans who not only play the game, but wear Pinhead T-shirts and “ooh” and “ahh” over official merchandise. As with 2002’s Halloween: Resurrection, it was only a matter of time that the Hellraiser sequels use that bitchin’ Internet as a springboard, and Hellworld‘s one-by-one kills bear striking influence of the then-ascendant Saw series.

All the Hellraisers in which Barker was not involved take a lot of heat as inferior product, and Hellworld doesn’t exactly help its own cause when Henriksen’s host quips, “Like a bad horror movie, isn’t it?” Such statements invite viewer ire. But separate from the others and taken on its own, Hellworld is an enjoyable slasher, competently directed by Rick Bota, who helmed the previous two sequels as well. Packed into black leather pants, Winnick is a heroine I can get behind — and do — in everything she appears; her skills as an actress keep this afloat and far from sinking into the sludge. —Rod Lott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Superman III (1983)

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superman3You’re a movie executive who’s just watched a double feature of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, and inspiration strikes. These movies are great, no question, but you know what they need? Laughs! You set up a meeting and pitch the filmmakers on a third Batman film, only this time, the main villain will be portrayed by Adam Sandler in full Waterboy mode.

Thus, Superman III, a sequel overloaded with pratfalls, double takes, broad acting, pathetic plot contrivances and the ruinous casting of comedian Richard Pryor (Silver Streak) as a computer genius led awry into cartoon villainy. It’s genuinely mind-boggling that producers would take a beloved and financially successful cultural icon and treat it like garbage. Then again, look at 1997’s Batman & Robin. Better yet, don’t.

superman31With the right material, Pryor was a comedy genius, but in a movie laden with miscalculations — replacing Richard Donner’s stewardship of Superman: The Movie and Superman II with the unsuitable campiness of Richard Lester (Help!); treating Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) like an afterthought; believing that computers can do anything, because science — the stand-up legend’s painful flailing about is by far the most atrocious. He seems to be acting in an entirely different film, and not a good one.

Christopher Reeve, the ideal Superman/Clark Kent combo, heroically survives scenes that would cripple a more cynical actor. Reeve’s main strength was an ability to project decency, and this alone allows him to escape the debacle relatively unscathed. He even adds a dash of surly menace when a piece of faulty kryptonite turns Superman evil — well, more dickish, really; a prick with a 5 o’clock shadow. It’s still campy, but Reeve makes it work, even when he goes all Fight Club and battles himself in a junkyard. It makes no logical sense, but it’s by far the most interesting scene.

The rest, sadly, crumbles away as Pryor and co-antagonist Robert Vaughn (The Magnificent Seven) compete to see who can debase himself more. And at the end, after causing untold danger to life and property, Superman releases Pryor because hey, mistakes are why pencils have erasers. Also, Lester hates you.

Side query: While his job is integral to the mythos, have we ever seen Clark Kent actually perform “journalism”? His big story here is writing a piece on his high school reunion, leading me to believe Clark is less a star reporter and more The Daily Planet’s advice columnist. —Corey Redekop

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