Tag Archives: So bad it’s weird

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THEODORE REX (1995)

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DIRECTED BY: Jonathan Betuel

FEATURING: Whoopi Goldberg, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Juliet Landau, Bud Cort, Stephen McHattie, voice of George Newbern

PLOT: A cybernetically enhanced cop and a genetically restored dinosaur are paired up to solve a murder, but their investigation uncovers a larger plot to destroy humankind and bring about a new ice age.

Still from Theordore Rex (1995)

COMMENTS: Once upon a time, the high concept of a cop paired with another, weirder cop had been efficiently reduced to its purest form by including the signifier “Heat” in the title. There was a run of movies with titles like Red Heat (cop is paired with another cop who is from the Soviet Union), Dead Heat (cop is paired with another cop who is deceased), and very nearly Outer Heat (cop is paired with another cop who is an alien) until some studio executive realized that “Heat” wasn’t moving any tickets and switched the name to Alien Nation. That one word did all the work of summing up the premise while warning savvy filmgoers to avoid it at all cost. What I’m saying is, the producers of Theodore Rex had Jurassic Heat sitting there, ready to go, and they passed. Cowards. It wouldn’t have helped the movie, mind you. It just would have saved us all a lot of time.

A mostly forgotten bomb today, if Theodore Rex has any reputation at all, it’s either as the most expensive film of its time to be released direct-to-video or as the movie that Whoopi Goldberg only agreed to appear in after the producers sued her for trying to bail on the project. This is unfair, because Theodore Rex ought to be remembered as terrible on its own merits. It’s always a delight to find a diamond in the rough, a gem that the masses were too closed-minded to appreciate, but sometimes the masses are right, and a bad movie gets the public raspberry it deserves. 

The premise is so aggressively high concept that its overall illogic barely qualifies as an afterthought. You have to take a lot on faith from the outset: dinosaurs have been resurrected via hand-wavey DNA science as human-sized, English-speaking, long-armed, ghettoized cartoonish weirdos. (They are all animatronic caricatures, bumpkin cousins to the stars of the sitcom “Dinosaurs.”) The city is a Dick Tracy-style candy-colored series of backlot alleys. Whoopi Goldberg wears a skintight Lycra catsuit. If you can accept all of these ideas into your heart, then you’ve achieved the bare minimum of scrutability to get you into the plot. 

About that plot. It’s already a shopworn premise — initial crime leads to bigger conspiracy — that is drained of all suspense by the inexplicable decision to reveal the identity of the villain and his elaborate scheme in the opening narration. Aside from killing the little bit of mystery the film might have, it forces the story to become a character study of two completely empty shells: Goldberg’s cop, who is so devoid of personality that she plays both by-the-book and screw-the-rules without any seeming contradiction, and Teddy the dinosaur, who combines an endless display of neuroses with the vibe Continue reading IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THEODORE REX (1995) →

Apocryphally Weird

53*. IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU, WHAT WILL HORSES DO? (1971)

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“I see strange people coming to churches across the land.”–Reverend Estus W. Pirkle, “If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?”

“Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard,
they have trodden my portion under foot,
they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness.”–Jeremiah 12:10

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Estus W. Pirkle, Judy Creech, Cecil Scaiffe

PLOT: The Reverend Estus W. Pirkle gives a sermon on the dangers of the imminent Communist takeover of America, dramatized by actors who demonstrate the coming persecution of Christians. Young Judy arrives at church late, telling her boyfriend she’s only going to keep up appearances. Initially, she’s bored by Pirkle’s sermon, but at the end she becomes moved enough to approach the altar and give her soul to Jesus.

Still from if footmen tire you, what will horses do? (1971)

BACKGROUND:

  • “If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?” began as a sermon Estus Prikle preached, beginning in 1968, in evangelical revivals across the southern U.S. The preacher became so fond of it that he published the sermon as a pamphlet. When Pirkle met former exploitation filmmaker turned born-again-Christian Ron Ormond, he conceived the idea of turning “Footmen” into a movie to reach a wider audience. It would prove to be the first of three collaborations between Pirkle and Ormond.
  • Samples from If Footmen Tire You… were used in Negativland’s provocative 1987 single “Christianity is Stupid“; it was the first exposure for many people outside of evangelical circles to Pirkle’s work.
  • For many years Pirkle would not allow the film to be released on VHS or DVD, insisting it only to be screened in person on 16mm film in a church so that there would be a pastor there to lead people to Christ after the movie concluded. This led to the film being largely unseen for many years, especially after 16mm projectors became rare; it circulated in the underground through bootleg editions, keeping its legend alive.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Though many will fixate on the unexpected gore, the most significant recurring image is the leering face of pseudo-Cuban commissar Cecil Scaiffe, whose bushy sideburns remind you more of the rockabilly promoter he actually was than of a diehard Commie. Ormond loves to focus on a tight closeup of Scaiffe’s grinning, greasy face as he and his flunkies commit the most unspeakable atrocities against Christians.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Candy-throwing Commie; bamboo ear torture makes kid vomit

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Completely sincere, completely wrong, and completely bonkers: this attempt to use exploitation filmmaking techniques to preach the Gospel is pure hallucinatory propaganda.

Short clip from If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?

COMMENTS: Let’s not be cunning and subtle about this: the main Continue reading 53*. IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU, WHAT WILL HORSES DO? (1971) →

Saturday Short, Shorts

SATURDAY SHORT: ASCENSION MILLENNIUM (2014)

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A typical day in the life of Corey Feldman, circa 2014: wake up next to a sexy blonde, struggle to put on Michael Jackson gloves, throw an inhaler to Sean Astin, pass by a pool party, take a hat hanging from the ceiling by a string, sniff breakfast while watching TV, head to the home studio to record a hit single, and get back into bed with a sexy blonde. One four-and-a-half minute tracking shots with no do-overs for goofs.

Capsules

CAPSULE: “FROM HOLLYWOOD TO HEAVEN: THE LOST AND SAVED FILMS OF THE ORMOND FAMILY”

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Indicator’s expansive Blu-ray box set “From Hollywood to Heaven: The Lost and Saved Films of the Ormond Family,” released in conjunction with ‘s “byNWR” project, collects a remarkable 13 films produced by the incredible Ormond family, split about halfway between their secular and their Christian exploitation films. When I first learned of the existence of this set, I wished that the late 366 collaborator Alfred Eaker had lived to see it. After all, he had endured at least one of Ormond’s proselytizing scare films projected on the wall of a basement of a Pentecostal church as an impressionable child in the 1980s; the experience scarred him emotionally, and was part of an abusive evangelical upbringing that led him to a lifelong crusade against Christian fundamentalism. Alfred reviewed several of ‘s films for this site, a job absolutely no one else volunteered for, and clearly relished trashing this godly man’s reputation (not that Ormond had much of a reputation as a filmmaker to tarnish). I can’t help but believe that Alfred would be tickled by this hi-def testament to his old nemesis’ film legacy, and would have been the first to volunteer to cover it in all its icky, gooey, sanctimonious glory. I imagine he would have been far more gleefully savage in his assessment than my level-headed remarks, but that was always his role as the 366 gadfly.

Historically speaking, the Ormond empire rightfully begins with June Carr, a lovely and talented vaudevillian comic foil who appeared onscreen with Bob Hope, among other luminaries, and who even headlined at the London Palladium for a short time. For some reason, June was smitten with a handsome but unsuccessful stage magician named Ron Ormond. Per June, they tied the knot two weeks after she first laid eyes on him onstage in 1935 and declared she would marry him one day. Thus began a dynasty. It’s difficult to watch June Carr’s early performances without concluding that she married beneath her Hollywood standing, but the couple remained hitched for four decades, through better and (usually) worse films, and richer and (usually) poorer receipts. By all accounts, it was a happy union.

The first stage in the Ormond film saga consists of the eleven B-westerns Ron directed (with June handling the distribution) starring bullwhip expert Lash Larue. To anyone who’s not a fan of the Lash, these are generally considered competent and uninteresting pictures, and are not included in the set before us. Also not appearing in this collection is one early “classic” bad movie co-directed by Ormond, Mesa of Lost Women (1952), about a mad scientist seeking to create a race of superwomen by injecting them with spider venom.

Ron and June continued to make undistinguished exploitation movies. But let us fast-forward to 1955, when the Ormonds set out on their own as independent producers, and where this set begins its comprehensive coverage. Our journey begins with Untamed Mistress. Three men travel into the jungle on a “safairy” (as they insist on calling their safari), accompanied by a woman raised by gorillas; when they get into gorilla country, the apes want her back—carnally. It’s a badly stitched together story with some padded narrative added to flesh out stock footage and parts of a Sabu movie Ron had directed-for-hire. “National Geographic”-style nudity in the form of home movie footage (taken by Mickey Rooney’s doctor!) of topless African women performing authentic tribal dances, alongside newly-shot scenes of half-naked “native” dancers entertaining men wearing gorilla suits, explains why this was made. Despite the salacious material, rife with bestiality and racism, the film crawls at a snail’s pace, but it is more tolerable than some of the Ormond’s hicksploitation programmers to follow. It made money, and the Ormond’s homegrown business (eventually dubbed “the Ormond Organization”) was off.

Poster for please don't touch me (1963)After this, Ron did about four other (now lost?) low budget movies before the box set picks up again in 1963 with the unusual Please Don’t Touch Me, starring one Vicki Caron, a pneumatic redhead who would have immediately been the headliner at any burlesque joint she walked into. Caron was never seen or heard from again, but her frequent lingerie changes and a brief Continue reading CAPSULE: “FROM HOLLYWOOD TO HEAVEN: THE LOST AND SAVED FILMS OF THE ORMOND FAMILY” →

Capsules

CAPSULE: INTERNATIONAL GUERILLAS (1990)

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International Gorillay

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DIRECTED BY: Jan Mohammad

FEATURING: Ghulam Mohjuddin, Mustafa Qureshi, Saeed Khan Rangeela

PLOT: Salman Rushdie (portrayed here as a Bond-style supervillain) plots to destroy Islam by building casinos, nightclubs, and brothels to spread vice and corruption; three brothers band together to avenge their faith and kill Rushdie, who is hiding in the Philippines under the guard of the Israeli secret services.

Still from International Guerillas (2024)

COMMENTS: The publication of Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses” in 1988 sparked a wave of intense debate and controversy that led to bans, riots, assassination attempts, and other violence. The affair, which became one of the major cultural events of the latter half of the 20th century, culminated in a fatwa issued by Iran’s then Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. International Guerillas starts from this context, but the plot summary above should tell you everything about the tone of the film. It’s safe to assume that the filmmakers were not passionate ideologues looking to contribute a propaganda piece in the fight against Rushdie, but rather businessmen who saw the recent controversy as an opportunity to cash in on the ongoing issue by slapping it on a generic spy/action flick plot. The producer would go on to admit that the film was a purely commercial, rather than artistic (or, shall we say, ideological) affair. Regardless, it should be noted that BBC originally intended to ban the film upon its release, a decision opposed by Rushdie himself, who appealed to the principle of unconditional artistic freedom (even if applied to works that portray him as a cartoonish villain) and feared that a ban would only increase the film’s popularity.

The register is not far from a typical B-movie, with some kinship to older Bollywood cinema (over the top caricatures, cheesy dramatics, sensationalist camerawork and score); nevertheless, the combination of general silliness, the inherent oddity of the backstory, and a fair share of eccentric choices along the way makes for a strange viewing experience, especially for the western viewer.

The bloated runtime of nearly three hours (!) allows for plenty of funny (or, depending on the viewer, tedious) moments, including a surprisingly detailed set-up (the main credits only appear past the 40-minute mark) where we witness the murder of the protagonist’s sister at an anti-Rushdie protest, and his gang’s subsequent vow of revenge. What follows is a more or less continuous flow of senseless action interrupted by long (5+ minutes) dance numbers and seemingly random narrative detours. At some point along their quest, our heroes show up donning Batman costumes for some reason (or, more likely, none at all). We’re treated to the activities of “Rushdie” in his Philippine resort where, of course, he lives a hedonistic lifestyle. Besides torturing and executing Muslims by hanging, beheading, crucifying, or dropping them off a helicopter (Pinochet-style), another method of torture appears to be reciting excerpts from his blasphemous book. He also turns out to have an interminable host of clones, guaranteeing a lot of additional screentime and endless fighting scenes. And, of course, there’s the famous ending where “Rushdie” is destroyed by three flying Korans that inexplicably appear in the sky, a quite literal deus ex machina.

The basic premise of Muslim fundamentalists (undisputed heroes in the comic book morals at play here) hunting down “Rushdie” (even if he bears no resemblance at all to his real-life counterpart, physically or otherwise) might make some viewers understandably uneasy. This may be even more pronounced in today’s uber-politicized world, especially since Islamist terrorism has become more common. The obvious cheekiness of the presentation, however, means most will struggle to take it seriously as a piece of propaganda. In any case, this cult curiosity is likely to please or at least entertain viewers familiar with “Turksploitation” movies, with which Guerillas shares similarities—mainly, the idea of appropriating a popular western filmmaking template while giving it a gloriously over-the-top “national” spin for a cheap and quick cash-grab that proves funny in some intended ways and in all unintended ones. Although it might prove taxing for some, anyone who had fun with the likes of 3 Dev Adam or the Turkish Star Wars should have a guaranteed good time with International Guerillas.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a hallucinogenically awful mish-mash of music, action, crude comedy, continuity screw-ups, and dreadful production values… One of the weirdest scenes has the trio dressing in baggy Batman costumes and tracking down a bunch of identical Rushdie impostors…”–Steven Puchalski, Shock Cinema