Tag Archives: Horror/comedy

Canonically Weird (The List)

190. BUBBA HO-TEP (2002)

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“I’m watching this movie, it’s this picture about, uh… it’s really weird. It’s like the guy who took the acid or something, he smoked a marijuana or something before he wrote this picture…”—“The King,” speaking to an unknown party on his cell phone during the Bubba Ho-Tep DVD commentary

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Ossie Davis, Ella Joyce

PLOT: Having giving up fame for a simple life and switched places with Elvis impersonator Sebastian Haff, Elvis Presley is now an aging old man with a boil on his penis languishing in an East Texas retirement home. One of his fellow retirees is Jack, an African American who insists that he is actually ex-President John Kennedy. The two old men discover that a mummy is haunting the corridors of the rest home, feeding on the souls of the elderly, and together they hatch a plan to defeat the creature.

Still from Bubba Ho-tep (2002)
BACKGROUND:

  • Bubba Ho-Tep is a faithful adaptation of a novella by cult horror writer Joe R. Lansdale first composed for the now out-of-print anthology “The King is Dead: Tales of Elvis Post-mortem,” which also contained stories and essays by Roger Ebert, Lou Reed, and Joyce Carol Oates, among others.
  • The budget was reported to be between $500,000 and $1,000,000. Although there is a flashback concert scene in the film, the producers could not afford to license any actual Elvis songs, so you only hear generic Vegas-showroom-style intro music. Similarly, the scenes from the “Elvis” movie marathon seen on television are just cleverly-edited stock footage, with no actual Elvis films ever glimpsed.
  • The end credits announce a prequel called Bubba Nosferatu: Curse of the She-Vampires. Although intended as a joke, fan interest in such a movie ran so high that Coscarelli, Lansdale and Bruce Campbell tried to get it made, although it never came together. Campbell has reportedly lost interest in the project and it is presumably as dead as Elvis.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Aging Elvis, in his trademark rhinestone suit and cloak and a walker, marching off to face off against a mummy.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: The only way Bubba Ho-Tep could have failed to be weird is if it lacked faith in its premise of a geriatric Elvis and a black JFK fighting a mummy in a rest home, and instead turned the tale into a self-congratulatory parody. Thankfully, everyone involved takes the story and characters at face value, honoring the oddness and humanity of the inherently absurd situation.

Original trailer for Bubba Ho-Tep

COMMENTS: No matter what we achieve in life, whether it’s Continue reading 190. BUBBA HO-TEP (2002) →

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: WITCHING AND BITCHING (2013)

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Las Brujas de Zugarramurdi

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Hugo Silva, , Mario Casas, Jaime Ordóñez, , Terele Pávez, Gabriel Delgado

PLOT: Small-time crooks bump into a coven of witches while on the run.

Still frpm Witching and Bitching (2013)
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: Like most of ‘s spiffy, nutty B-movie efforts, Witching comes close to making the List at first glance. Its spell is mad and it makes for near perfect Halloween (or post-Halloween) entertainment—but does de la Iglesia have a better weird candidate out there lurking in his canon?

COMMENTS: About midway through Witching and Bitching, as the three main protagonists are tied up at a feast while their hostess paces on the ceiling talking on her cellphone, one of them speculates that they must have been drugged by witches’ ointment and are experiencing a mass hallucination. From their standpoint it’s a credible theory, but in the world of the movie, the scene is terribly real, and it’s about to get worse. But let’s go back to  the beginning. After a Macbeth-ish “bubble bubble” prologue, Witching begins in earnest when Jesus, a green toy soldier, and some trademarked cartoon characters (you’ll never think of a certain sponge the same way again) rob a sad-sack pawn shop of its fortune in hocked wedding rings. Following a hail of bullets and a car chase, we learn that the shotgun-toting Jesus has brought his elementary school-aged son along on the heist. Fleeing in a hijacked taxi towards the French border, the two escaped gunmen recruit the driver to their cause by sharing sob stories about women problems.

Unfortunately, the gang’s escape route takes them through the Basque town of Zugarramurdi, a historical center of witchcraft, and things take a supernatural turn. Before we know it there are women walking on the ceiling; along the way we also get grabby toilets, a pair of transvestite witches, and hot punk sorceress Carolina Bang in black undies humping a broomstick while dousing herself with fresh-squeezed toad blood. With the protags tailed by an angry ex and a pair of squabbling detectives, it all ends up in an apocalyptic eldritch ceremony with a globby giant demon-Goddess whose appearance actually elicited a “wow” from this reviewer.

There’s plenty of comedy, too, much of it revolving around child custody and sexual politics. In fact, the grossout gags mixed with a pseudo-misogynist, women-are-inherently-evil subtext at times suggests Antichrist by way of Evil Dead II, although the men here are no prize either and the warring genders are reconciled by the film’s happy ending. Despite the battle-of-the-sexes thematic subtext, Witching is overwhelmingly a plot-and-gag based affair with hardly a whiff of seriousness. It’s a rambunctious ride that seldom lets up for a breather; it just keeps pressing the petal to the floor, injecting more crazy fuel into its insanity engine. Witching is the movie From Dusk Till Dawn wanted to be: wall-to-wall frenzy, without the smug egos.

Whoever approved the English-language title, however, should be burned at the stake.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Full of weird and wonderful insanity, Witching and Bitching is the kind of wild ride you don’t look away from.”–Neil Miller, Film School Rejects (contemporaneous)

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

JAMES WHALE’S THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935) ON BLU-RAY

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“With a few exceptions, The Bride of Frankenstein represented the last gasp of the horror film as a serious genre,” claimed Andrew Sarris. The late critic had a point. By now, Whale’s blackened horror comedy sequel to Frankenstein (1931) has become so legendary, it is almost too easy to forget how much Bride of Frankenstein (1935) is a standalone film, possessing a texture unlike anything before or since. Genre classifications be damned.

Director  had vehemently and repeatedly refused Universal Studio’s pleas for a sequel to his runaway 1931 hit, but when they promised him carte blanche, his enthusiasm was inspired.  Whale set to work on a high camp satire, playing havoc with Western family values. Our contemporary idea of a Gothic celluloid baseball bat taken to the bourgeoisie might be Barry Sonnenfeld’s Addams Family Values (1993). Compared to Whale’s authentic island of misfits, the creepy, kooky klan are comparatively status quo.

It may be tempting to dismiss the endless essays addressing the film’s homosexual themes as wishful revisionist hindsight, but the head-in-sand  types are as clueless as yesterday’s batch of “Liberace is gay?”naysaying muggles. Yes, James Whale was gay; shockingly, openly gay for the 1930s. The queered eye of Bride‘s hurricane blows in the form of Ernest Thesiger’s Dr. Pretorius, extending his role of Horace Femm from Whale’s The Old Dark House (1932). Accompanied by his horticultural box of little people, Pretorius endorses necrophilia, snubs his beautifully bitchy nose at homophobic mores, and constructs a deco bride for a simpleton bisexual monster, gesticulating with all the subtlety of a high-dive belly buster.

Still from Bride of Frankenstein (1935)Although Thesiger practically walks away with thespian honors, Boris Karloff excels in his greatest performance. Karloff initially objected to the monster’s dialogue, which is understandable in light of his mastery of silent pantomime that rivaled both Chaplin and Chaney. However, Continue reading JAMES WHALE’S THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935) ON BLU-RAY →

Canonically Weird (The List)

182. SPIDER BABY (1967)

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“In pinning its narrative to a weird family’s desperation to keep its own shadow from touching the outside world, Spider Baby anticipated a score of disparate works… Regardless of what may have inspired it or what subsequent films it may have influenced, Spider Baby remains very much its own animal. Set as it is off to one side of the real world, there’s a timelessness to the film, whose freshness remained sealed in during its decades languishing in obscurity.”–Richard Harland Smith

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING:  , Jill Banner, Beverly Washburn, , Carol Ohmart, Quinn Redeker

PLOT: Merrye Sydrome is a “rare degenerative disorder,” the result of generational incest, which causes mental regression back to a primordial state and… cannibalism! The three Merrye children  are the last of the Merrye line, cared for by their genteel chauffeur Bruno (Lon Chaney). Together they live relatively peacefully in a dilapidated Gothic mansion, until distant relatives and a sleazy lawyer arrive.

Still from Spider Baby (1967)
BACKGROUND:

  • Although made in 1964, Spider Baby was not released until late 1967, financial difficulties being the primary delay. Director Jack Hill relates that in his first meeting with potential distributors, his entire audience bolted for the exit door within twenty minutes of the screening.
  • Originally, the film was titled Cannibal Orgy: Or, The maddest Story Ever Told, but when picked up for distribution, producer David L. Hewitt changed it to Spider Baby. To add more confusion, it was given yet another title for the drive-in circuit: The Liver Eaters.
  • Jill Banner was only 17 in this, her film debut. Following Spider Baby, Banner she was moderately active in television and, shortly before her death, she was romantically involved with Marlon Brando. Unfortunately, her life and career were cut short when she was killed by a drunk driver in 1982.
  • Hill was so proud of Spider Baby, he planned a sequel, Vampire Orgy. However, the film’s numerous post-production struggles effectively ended those plans.
  • In 2004 Spider Baby was adapted into a successful stage musical, which still plays in large cities.

INDELIBLE IMAGE:  Veteran character actor Mantan Moreland has a brief field day spoofing his old “spooked black man in haunted surroundings” character as he gets invited to play in Jill Banner’s chilling version of “itsy bitsy spider.” The sight of the dead postman hanging out the window, a victim caught in Virginia’s web, inspires a arched eyebrow from Lon Chaney Jr., and from us.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: The weirdness of Spider Baby is guaranteed right from the opening credits, with a hoarse Chaney singing: “This cannibal orgy is strange to behold/In the Maddest Story Ever Told!” He is not exaggerating.


Jack Hill discusses Spider Baby for “Trailers from Hell”

COMMENTS:  Attempting to describe Spider Baby, critics often compare it to the Little Shop of Horrors, “The Addams Family,” and Eraserhead. Continue reading 182. SPIDER BABY (1967) →