Reading Material

Forgotten Horrors to the Nth Degree: Dispatches from a Collapsing Genre

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forgottennthOf the three collaborative volumes between Michael S. Price and John Wooley in the ongoing Forgotten Horrors series I’ve read thus far, Forgotten Horrors to the Nth Degree: Dispatches from a Collapsing Genre is the best.

It speaks directly to the film geek in me, saying, “Hey, read me, film geek.” It also is different from the others — Volume 6 just came out last month — in that instead of being a collection of reviews, it is a collection of columns that operate as both reviews and interviews. The contents are culled largely from the authors’ long-running, now-defunct, eponymous column in Fangoria magazine.

Roughly 40 films are examined in depth in such a manner, with Price-Wooley incorporating their opinions with the insights of at least one direct participant from the flick in question, no matter which side of the camera. The names include — but are by no means limited to — Donald Pleasence (Raw Meat), Rudy Ray Moore (Petey Wheatstraw), Ivan Reitman (Cannibal Girls), Chuck Connors (Tourist Trap), Marilyn Chambers (Rabid) and Jamie Lee Curtis (Terror Train).

Just about everyone seems thrilled to discuss the particular, peculiar CV entry in question, save for two examples: The Entity‘s Barbara Hershey and Barn of the Naked Dead director Alan Rudolph, who refuses to admit association with it, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Purposely, the pieces fall within the horror genre’s heyday, said by the authors to begin with H.G. Lewis’ invention of the gore picture with 1963’s Blood Feast and end with the shot-on-video Blood Cult, which changed everything in 1985 by being the first feature film expressly made for the home-video market.

Emblematic of its name, Nth Degree, the 304-page trade paperback ventures off its own beaten path to include plenty of extras, in the form of extended pieces on David F. Friedman, Larry Buchanan, Leo Fong and others. Comics great Stephen R. Bissette provides an “afterword” of capsule reviews of Vermont-set horror films, and hell, there’s even a multipage comic-book story that opens the volume.

My only complaints with the book are minor: an overuse of antiquated phrases such as “et. seq.” and an egregious use of some godawful Adobe Photoshop filter that noticeably mars so many of the photographs (thankfully, poster art escapes this mistreatment). Otherwise, Nth Degree is an infectious trip for the psychotronic-inclined; seat belts optional. —Rod Lott

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Action

Black Lightning (2009)

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blacklightningNot an obscure vehicle for the early African-American superhero of DC Comics, Black Lightning is an obscure movie about a vehicle — a super-powered car, and we would expect nothing less from producer Timur Bekmambetov, the Russian director of Wanted.

In Moscow, a poor, Peter Parker-esque student named Dima (Grigoriy Dobrygin) wishes he had the dough to snag some hot wheels so he could snag the hot girl (Ekaterina Vilkova) away from the rich classmate who downs Mentos like meth. The bad news is that the car his family gifts him for his birthday is a real clunker. The good news is that, thanks to crystals found in a soil sample from the moon or something (it doesn’t really matter), the car can fly.

blacklightning1It’s only during his job delivering flowers that Dima discovers this, when it suddenly goes all Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on him in order to avoid a collision. Soon, he learns how to operate it properly and becomes a crime fighter, using his rocket-boosted wheels to save a child from an apartment fire, thwart a purse thief and, hopefully, keep the greedy Kuptsov (Viktor Verzhbitskiy, Night Watch) from destroying the city with his diamond mining. We know Dima means business, because he dons a hoodie.

The more you defy gravity, the less impressive it becomes, which is to say that Black Lightning, like much of Bekmambetov’s filmography, doesn’t know when to quit. Initially, the film is a fun and spirited action-fantasy that can be enjoyed by young and old. By the time Chernaya Molniya (its Russkie title) passes the halfway point, the story has all but given up trying to keep from being overwhelmed by the effects — a valiant, but futile try.

Still, the ride is worth taking once. —Rod Lott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Godzilla 2000 (1999)

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godzilla2000The first Toho-born Godzilla feature to play our shores since Godzilla 1985, the equally unimaginatively titled Godzilla 2000 is seriously silly fun, wringing unintentional laughs out of every stab at earnestness. And of course, the nearly wall-to-wall scenes of demolition and destruction don’t hurt, either.

As the film opens, the Japanese equivalent of Fisher Stevens and his young daughter are carousing about Tokyo with a female reporter in their Godzilla Protection Network Mobile Unit. As soon as the novelty of atrocious dubbing wears down, Godzilla makes his first appearance, and it’s good to see him downright mean and pissed again, bent on reckless abandon.

godzilla20001He then spends a great deal of time trashing the coastline and downtown, either via unconvincing miniatures or poor composite shots. He meets his match in the form of a flying, prehistoric rock that emerges from the sea and eventually breaks open to reveal a shiny, silver UFO that sucks the power of the city via tentacles that only can be seen via infrared vision. (The Japanese are obsessed with tentacles, you know. They’re also obsessed with vaginal imagery, and just when you think the movie will be over before they get to that, it’s “Hello, labia monster!”)

The flick’s Americanization is wildly apparent, perhaps most evident in lines like, “Nice try, you asshole!,” “Oh, bite me!” and “It will go through Godzilla like crap through a goose!” Despite its shortcomings in the special effects and story departments, this Godzilla is at least a true Godzilla — something than Roland Emmerich cannot say. —Rod Lott

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Horror

The Video Dead (1987)

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videodeadHad The Video Dead been made at any time other than the VHS heyday in which it was, I feel like we wouldn’t care. But because it celebrated those days of browsing big boxes at your mom-and-pop video store as those days were happening, it possesses an admirable, of-its-time innocence that offsets obvious deficiencies. If released today, in our post-Ringu world where cursed videos have become de rigueur, it’d be nostalgic, sure, but unable to replicate properly that very ’80s look.

As the writer, director and producer, Robert Scott is not just a triple threat, but a triple treat. In the prologue, he establishes everything the viewer needs to know about the next 90 minutes: A TV set mysteriously delivered to a suburban house plays only the George A. Romero-esque movie Zombie Blood Nightmare; said movie serves as a doorway into our world through which these single-shoe shufflers can shamble.

videodead1Shortly thereafter, aerobics major Zoe Blair (Roxanna Augesen, in her only screen credit) and her little brother, Jeff (Rocky Duvall, ditto), move into the house while their parents are away in Saudi Arabia. It takes them a while to grasp the televised danger, partly because Jeff (who sports some gray hair) is too busy enjoying being visited by the tube’s blonde woman (Jennifer Miro, 1989’s Dr. Caligari) who embodies all his teenage sexual fantasies.

Surprisingly, The Video Dead‘s members of the undead stand out from the zombie-tape fray by actually having personality; one of them looks like singer David Bowie under a face mask of Noxzema that has dried to the point of cracking. Obviously, Scott’s little meta movie wouldn’t exist without Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, but its blend of horror and humor bring the related Return of the Living Dead franchise to mind (although Scott’s scattershot skills puts it more in line with the second chapter than the first). —Rod Lott

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Sex

The Suckers (1972)

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suckersFor those who enjoyed The Most Dangerous Game, but thought it lacked balls — literally, sagging and unshaven balls — there’s The Suckers. I sure felt like one for sitting through it.

Directed by Stu Segall (Drive-In Massacre) under the pseudonym of Arthur Byrd, The Suckers transports a small group of fashion models to the middle-of-nowhere home of Steve Vandemeer (Steve Vincent, Mantis in Lace), “one of the top five game hunters.” The ladies believe they’ve been hired for a photo shoot to pose among the animals he’s killed. As their skeevy agent says, “It’s a little weird, but the money’s good.”

suckers1Vandemeer’s true intentions come to light when he tells him that they will be his prey. Why? “Because rape and slaughter go hand-in-hand when one is hunting human beings,” as if that explains everything. “I’m bored. Bored with the ordinary games of life.”

That sounds like a good ol’ exploitation setup; however, I had no idea going in that The Suckers was most interested in explicit sex scenes that play out in real time, complete with awkward copulation conversation: “Ooh, you just know, don’t cha?” While Segall stops a (pubic) hair short of showing penetration, it appears that the actors are doing the real deal.

Perhaps the raincoat crowd would love such a thing, but I was just bored; nearly 50 minutes passes before the nonsexual action starts. And after that, Seagall has more ass-tappin’ on tap, only now with the bonus element of rape. They’re ugly, repugnant scenes staged in such a way to turn viewers on. The Suckers once was a film considered to be lost; it should have stayed that way. —Rod Lott

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