Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Legion of Fire: Killer Ants! (1998)

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Who better to help resurrect the nature-run-amok film in the late 1990s than Fox, the television network behind all those glorious When Animals Attack specials? In Legion of Fire: Killer Ants!, the exclamatory bastards in question are feisty and man-eating. When an underground volcano starts rumbling and tumbling, the six-legged South American menaces are forced to the surface. Popping up in the sleepy Alaskan town of Burly Pines, they’re like, “Sweet, this’ll do. Let’s prey.”

Following the telefilm’s docu-shock foreword, a young couple in the forest for an impromptu photoshoot find a heap of trouble when the woman hops atop a giant anthill to vogue. She gets dragged through the hole to die, as does her shutterbug boyfriend while trying to save her.

It becomes painfully obvious to the locals that sinister insect forces are at work, stripping their moose population to the bone in a matter of minutes. Bug expert Dr. Jim Conrad (Eric Lutes, Bram Stoker’s The Mummy) rushes to the rescue. With the aid of a cute, frizzy-haired schoolteacher (Julia Campbell, Opportunity Knocks) and a widowed police chief (Mitch Pileggi, Shocker), Conrad wages war against the largely computer-animated rascals, which are seen at one point walking across a yard while carrying the body parts of their latest victim.

Also known as Marabunta, Legion of Fire sports dirt-cheap effects and leads thrown into one preposterous, predictable situation after another. However, any movie — especially one made for TV — that dares to snuff out so many living things (kids included) in such laughable methods deserves a couple hours of your time. And so does the weeping deputy who shoots at the ants with his gun. —Rod Lott

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Documentary

Zero Budget Heroes: The Legend of Chris Seaver & Low Budget Pictures (2022)

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To enjoy the documentary about Rochester-based moviemaker Chris Seaver, you don’t have to be a fan, assuming you’ve even heard of the guy. You need not have seen Anal Paprika or Scrotal Vengeance or even Anal Paprika 2.

Just know he’s made upward of 75 flicks now, and, as one of his regular cast members notes, “most of them have come out.” My sole exposure to his work was a tasteless segment he contributed to the Hi-8 shot-on-video horror anthology. His backyard epics may be hard to like for the average viewer, but Zero Budget Heroes: The Legend of Chris Seaver & Low Budget Pictures is easy to love.

For this introspective retrospective, first-time director Zach Olivares captures the shooting days (all three of ’em!) of the ska-obsessed, rarely not ball-capped Seaver’s then-latest crass comedic opus, A Stoinkmare on Halloween Street. His titles — and penchant for terminology like “clam flaps” — suggest a juvenile approach to cinema. Proud yet humble, Seaver doubles down on this risk-free theory, telling Olivares’ camera, “I am a very immature human being.”

And he doesn’t apologize for it. (Well, except for playing the role of Bonejack in blackface. But hey, when an actor doesn’t show, it’s the director’s job to make lemonade.)

A modern-day Andy Hardy, Seaver enjoys a loyal band of repertory players eager to debase and deride themselves in the likes of Filthy McNasty, Moist Fury and Taintlight — barely scripted vehicles for “boobs and cum and poop jokes” — for no monetary reward.

And you know what? Now I kinda get it.

The more Seaver and company revisit his relative hits, affectionate misses and never-weres, the more you see the appeal — foremost for them; the audience, second. That’s by design, as no one is more surprised than Seaver at the level of success he’s enjoyed in the DIY realm. He and his friends make the movies to amuse themselves; that anyone devotes attention or time after that is pure bonus. One would think the enemy of this real-life story would be monetary deficiencies, but the Low Budget Pictures gang has turned that into an asset. (Also, the true enemy is Troma.)

I didn’t expect this doc to move me. But, like Seaver responding to the magnetic pull of making movies, I couldn’t help it. By the end, Olivares has done an excellent job of getting to the heart of the man’s work and why he and his comrades even bother. You’ll be glad they do, even if Sexquatch and Terror at Blood Fart Lake never, ever land in your queue. —Rod Lott

Comedy

Fat Fleshy Fingers (2023)

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A shapeless mishmash of surrealism, absurdity and all bodily fluids, the way-way-out anthology Fat Fleshy Fingers comes loosely linked by the appearance of the film’s mascot: a toothy pink parasite that looks like a dildo Clive Barker might design. If you’re a fan of the bizarro fiction movement, this experience — and it is that — was made expressly for you. Segments range from inspired to inane; its closest analog may be Japan’s Funky Forest. Regardless, drugs were drugged.

With The Greasy Strangler himself, Michael St. Michaels, as a grandfather to a dying girl, the first bit is the funniest and most successful. He shares a story about an ancient mummy’s curse, which involves “touchable, delicious, fuckable worm juice.”

From there, the law of diminishing returns kicks in as the parasite passes person to person — you know, like It Follows, but with far more consumption of fecal matter and insertion of inhuman things into human holes. From a pirate orgy to a severed finger, shock value is the point for all 10 directors. If the application of “sex perfume” portion isn’t the nastiest thing you can recall seeing of late, I don’t even want to know.

The very definition of “your mileage may vary,” Fat Fleshy Fingers could be called an un-thology for breaking all rules of convention. Its weirdo cartoon interstitials don’t quite qualify as transitions, plus stories aren’t present to be told as much as exploited to an extreme. “Whether you’re a scalawag or a swashbuckler,” to borrow one character’s phrasing, a viewing isn’t likely to endear you to check out the music of the Elephant 6 collective’s Neutral Milk Hotel, whose lo-fi psychedelic tunes inspired each piece. —Rod Lott

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Reading Material

Love and Let Die: James Bond, The Beatles, and the British Psyche

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On Oct. 5, 1962, two titans of popular culture were unleashed to an unsuspecting public: Beatles records and James Bond movies, in the respective form of “Love Me Do” and Dr. No. Whether the result of kismet, fate, dumb luck or preordained from the heavens, this much is incontestable: Although born in Great Britain, these fraternal twins today belong to the world.

Brighton-based author John Higgs tracks how both were able to achieve the near-impossible — on often-perpendicular paths, no less — in the wonderful new book Love and Let Die: James Bond, The Beatles, and the British Psyche.

From the acrimonious Phil Spector to the acronymous SPECTRE, the similarities along the way are mind-blowing. But this is hardly some Lincoln/Kennedy-style listicle. Rather than merely drawing parallels between his two subjects, the author seems more interested in examining their differences on such stances as class structure and racism.

Even topics that hardly shake the earth are considered — including sports, hairstyles, intoxicants and transcendental meditation — as Higgs chronologically mines history, showing how Bond and The Beatles influenced this ever-changing world in which we live in.

Although Love and Let Die is not a salacious book, sex plays a large part in the story. How could it not? It’s present from the start, revealing the BDSM proclivities of 007 creator/virulent racist Ian Fleming. Higgs even notes Fleming’s first novel, 1953’s Casino Royale, referring to a potential tryst of Bond’s as possessing “the sweet tang of rape.”

With that style of misogyny galore, George Lazenby’s final test for securing the Bond role in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service shouldn’t come as a shock, and yet it does: Producers watched him have sex with several hired hookers “to make sure that he wasn’t gay.”

On The Beatles’ side, I certainly knew each member had his womanizing ways. But I didn’t know — or need to know — about their early-days group masturbation sessions. (Fap Four, anyone?) If Paul McCartney’s candor there is outrageous, miserable asshole John Lennon later outdoes him by sharing regret in not balling his own mother after grabbing her breast as a teenager. (Imagine!)

With more than a little help from that story and others, Higgs succeeds in explaining why Lennon’s reputation as the “genius” Beatle wasn’t exactly well-earned, while restoring the luster of the others. He does several things right throughout Love and Let Die‘s pages, including not ignoring Operation Kid Brother (although many would) or 1967’s ill-fated all-star “comedy” version of Casino Royale (although many should). —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

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