Tag Archives: Low budget

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND (1966) BLU-RAY CRITERION

Leave a comment

‘s two 1966 Westerns, The Shooting and Ride In The Whirlwind, have finally received due recognition in a Criterion edition. For years, Hellman’s “existentialist” Westerns (as they are often termed) have languished in execrable transfers on Z-grade DVD labels. Even these have usually been out of print, and only available at mortgage payment-level prices.

Both were produced by  (uncredited), , and Hellman, with Hellman directing both simultaneously. The Shooting was written by Carole Eastman, Ride In The Whirlwind by Nicholson. The writing proves to make the difference; Nicholson lacks Eastman’s sense of pacing and aptitude for coherent nonsense. Still, each film is sharply focused and securely grounded among films for the bourgeoisie to walk out on (a quick glance at the deluge of prosaic comments from banal IMDB users serves as a verification of Hellman’s provocative reputation).

Ride In The Whirlwind opens as a traditional Western, with a stagecoach robbery. Tradition soon gets thrown out with yesterday’s bathwater. The robbery goes askew, as do concepts of righteousness, virtue, honor, and frontier justice. The ensuing shootout between rival gangs lays waste to our inherent ideologies of heroes and villains.

Still from Ride in the Whirlwind (1966)Nicholson is shockingly subdued and vulnerable. Even better is , an overly familiar character actor villain, in his best celluloid role. Despite very good performances, Ride In The Whirlwind lacks  and Millie Perkins, who gave The Shooting its essential grounding.

Hellman is a Western grim reaper, as vital and original as Sam Peckinpah as a harbinger of the genre’s death. Comparatively, Clint Eastwood and his celebrated deconstructionist Unforgiven (1992) are obvious and unsatisfactory.

The films premiered together at Cannes and were enthusiastically advocated by  and other notable French critics. Alas, it was to little avail. Hellman’s twin opuses received scant attention in the States and only belatedly earned cult reputations.

The Shooting was previously reviewed here. Ride In The Whirlwind has received considerably less attention, but Criterion astutely treats the two films as inseparable. True to form, Criterion provides a definitive edition. Both films finally receive spotless, lush transfers. Among the plethora of extras are interviews with Corman, Perkins, Harry Dean Stanton, and Will Hutchins, an outstanding homage to Oates (written by critic Kim Morgan), critic Michael Atkinson’s equally excellent essay, and several commentaries by Hellman accompanied by film historians Bill Krohn and Black Lucas.

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

THE COLLECTIVE VOLUME 7 (2014)

1 Comment

The Collective Volume 7 goes a long way in proving Andrew Sarris’ comment about the extinction of the horror film as a serious genre. If ‘s Bride of Frankenstein (1935) represents the art form’s apex, then the latest (and hopefully last) Collective anthology is something close to the nadir.

Indiana indie filmmaker Jason Hoover and his Jabb Pictures have been producing and distributing The Collective for several years. The concept is simple: ten films created by ten different filmmakers with a horror theme. These anthologies have actually produced a few halfway decent entries since the first volume debuted, but predictably, the bad has consistently outweighed the good. Even less surprising is the prevailing diminishing quality and enthusiasm over the span of seven collections. This 2014 entry is a wheezing death bed for a corpse that should have given up the ghost at least two collections ago.

Keys are the theme here, and first up is an entry from 3 O’clock Productions. “Avengement” is co-directed by Jim Dougherty and Laura Noel, both of whom also star. Noel penned the dull, pedestrian screenplay, which begins as here we go yet again misogynistic torture fare, and morphs into spectral revenge. Dougherty is an occasionally competent director, but rarely finds enough inspiration to take risks.  More often than not, his work is hampered by a dire need for good writing, which he does not get here. Relief almost comes in the way of woefully campy acting, but it is not enough.

Liberty or Death Productions’ “Chrysalis” is at least wistful enough to be honest about its sense of nostalgia. It clearly pines for the romance of “Dark Shadows.” Director/writer  is an excellent actor. When tapping into his theatrical background or erudite nature, Mannan is capable of producing challenging work, but his primary weakness also lies in writing and a pubescent, fan-like adulation of horror as a genre. Chrysalis holds true to Mannan’s M.O. Unfortunately, he casts other actors, and Brad Good (as the husband) is no Mannan. Kaylee Spivey Good (as the wife) is barely more adequate. Visual homages abound: the grand guignol  soaper “Shadows,”  Dracula (1931), Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Nosferatu (1922) constitute a vampire metaphor for energy-draining abusers, but it is thinly fleshed out, and the result is an unmemorable narrative.

Brian Williams chews on his fingers, rubs his face, talks to himself, and smokes a lot of cigarettes to convince us he is not “Sane”. Of course, there is a key and while it is a Mostly Harmless production, it is also an excruciatingly vapid one.

Athena Prychodko should probably get an A for effort on her moniker alone, which is easily the hippest name of any filmmaker in cinema history.  Her “Open Me” is a pun on volume seven’s theme. It stylistically imitates silent film, but misses the contextual mark. This Silence In The Dead Of Light production tries hard to convey a sense of fun, but inevitably it is one long, drawn-out joke, though aided considerably by Jason Hoover’s score, which is delightfully all-over-the-place music.

We move uncomfortably from Prychodko style to Klayton Dean banality in Terror Visions’ “63P012,” which overdoses on the profundity of primordial, Aerosmith-styled angst. That means a lot of red and green filters, psychedelic closeups with the type of ghouls seen in far too many redneck haunted attractions, gallons of fake blood, needles, bathtubs, and narcissistic mirrors. It is akin to fingernails meeting chalkboard, but not for any of the reasons the filmmaker has the audacity to imagine.

Quattro Venti Scott’s “176 Days To Freedom” is a tedious, derivative  excursion into a macho post-apocalypse that we have seen countless times. It is written and directed by Cameron Scott, who stars from behind a gas mask.

Jason Hoover’s contributions have been wildly uneven, making some of the best and worst throughout the Collective’s oeuvre. “BlueBird” is a stale scraping of the barrel bottom. Hoodies, beer cans, camouflage  jackets,  and baseball caps are all intact hallmarks of dull, low-grade Hoosier horror.  Cameron Scott trades in his gas mask for a bloody ax in this one.

Hoover’s second entry, under the banner of Death Hug Films, finds the filmmaker mimicking his own earlier work, though it’s far less stimulating. Narration is splashed over rolling landscapes.  Think Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska” married to an unnecessary medium.

Hoover apparently has had difficulty encouraging filmmakers to participate because he delivers a third entry, this time under the banner of Spiral Filmworks. “Notld” is an entirely pointless recut of ‘s Night of the Living Dead.

The Collective Volume 7John Eric Ballinger mercilessly closes what is by now  an agonizing ordeal, with yet more narration. Actually, it is a stream of four-letter words hovering over a white trash collage of evil clowns, dilapidated baby dolls, and skulls.

After mostly suffering through this shining example of Indiana independent horror, I think my impending move westward may provide much needed relief.

The Collective Volume 7 on Facebook

Canonically Weird (The List)

183. SANTA AND THE ICE CREAM BUNNY (1972)

7 Comments

“…one of the strangest and most baffling pieces of outsider art that Mike, Kevin and Bill have ever riffed.”–Rifftrax ad copy for Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny

Beware

DIRECTED BY: R. Winer,  (Thumbelina)

FEATURING: Jay Ripley, Shay Garner

PLOT: Santa’s sleigh is stuck in the Florida sand. After a series of animals fail to dislodge it, St. Nick tells the assembled children the story of “Thumbelina,” visualized as a movie-inside-the-movie, which also has its own wraparound sequence about a girl visiting the “Pirates World” theme park to view a series of fairy tale dioramas. Eventually,  a creature known as “the Ice Cream Bunny” rides out of Pirates World in a firetruck and rescues Santa.
Still from Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (1972)
BACKGROUND:

  • Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny was selected to go on the List of the 366 Weirdest Movies in the 5th Readers Choice Poll.
  • Thumbelina, the movie-within-a-movie that is actually longer than the Santa Claus story itself, is directed by , the nudie-cutie specialist responsible for such erotic atrocities as Cuban Rebel Girls, Fanny Hill Meets Lady Chatterly, and The Diary of Knockers McCalla.
  • Director “R. Winer” never worked again (or if he did, he used a different pseudonym).
  • Pirates World (the park’s official name has no possessive apostrophe) was a pre-Diney World theme park in Dania, Florida that closed sometime between 1937-1975. The Thumbelina insert footage was produced by Pirates World, and the Ice Cream Bunny also drives through the park on his way to rescue Santa.
  • There are reports that some prints of the film contained a retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk rather than Thumbelina as the movie-within-a-movie.
  • The uncut VHS version of the movie runs 96 minutes, while the Legend/Rifftrax DVD version has a run time of 83 minutes due to the omission of a few Thumbelina musical numbers. According to some reviewers, on an alternate VHS release Thumbelina is presented after the Santa Claus plotline has resolved, as a bonus feature.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: The first question is, which movie should the indelible image come from: the Santa Claus wraparound, or the Thumbelina story that actually takes up most of the runtime? As much as we like (by which I mean, shudder at) the image of the furry black monstrosities (flies?) in white bibs and striped swim trunks who hop around the yellow toadstools hunting Thumbelina, we have to go with the title creature (not Santa, the other one). The Bunny is a nightmarish apparition, half mothballed-Easter mascot from a defunct department store, half Frank from Donnie Darko. Your blood will run cold as you watch him dance a happy jig and pat a shivering blonde tyke on the top of her pony-tailed head.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: It’s got a sweaty Santa stranded in Florida, a guy in a gorilla suit, an Ice Cream Bunny (whatever that is), Thumbelina, and scenic footage of Pirates World. Not weird enough for you?  Well, how about the fact that Tom Sawyer (in a Hawaiian shirt) and Huck Finn (with a raccoon) also show up? They may be intended as symbolic stand-ins for the audience, because they seem totally nonplussed by the proceedings. When I initially reviewed Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny, on a sudden whim as a way to fill a column on December 25, 2011, I wrote: “Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny is weird enough to make the List, but the fact that it can only be endured by injecting Novocaine directly into the part of the brain responsible for processing continuity would make Certifying this movie a public health risk.” Rejecting our nanny-site policies, readers overwhelmingly spoke out in favor of honoring Ice Cream Bunny as one of the weirdest films of all time. Your wish is our command, but don’t say we didn’t warn you.


Clip from Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny

COMMENTS: When someone like me, who’s watched They Saved Hitler’s Brain multiple times—voluntarily, not as part of a CIA Continue reading 183. SANTA AND THE ICE CREAM BUNNY (1972) →

Capsules

366 UNDERGROUND: THE GAYS (2014)

Leave a comment

DIRECTED BY: T. S. Slaughter

FEATURING: Chris Tanner, Frank Holliday, Mike Russnak, Flip Jorgensen, Matthew Benjamin

PLOT: The wacky adventures of the Gay Family, matriarch Bob Gay-Paris and patriarch Rod Gay, who raise their gay sons, Alex and Tommy, and teach them valuable lessons in empowerment.

Still from The Gays (2104)

COMMENTS: The Gays is T.S. (Skull and Bones) Slaughter’s twisted take on the family sitcom, where everyone learns a lesson along the way. It also spoofs the Conservative Nightmare about The Gay Agenda: what would happen if gay parents educated their offspring about being gay?

It’s intentionally over the top, in ‘ style, so conventional viewers should find a couple of things to be scandalized by.  Aided by the performances of the two leads, Chris Tanner and Frank Holliday, most of the intended audience for the film should find it empowering and hilarious, and in that aspect, there’s much to recommend.

Objectively, some might find most of the humor a bit one-note to sustain a feature, and some of the other performances aren’t up to the level of Tanner and Holliday, but I think that most of the people who’ll like this film will be more than willing to overlook the lack of Hollywood polish.

The Gays is now available on DVD and streaming video; visit The Gays official site for ordering information.

Still from The Gays (2014)

 

366 Underground

366 UNDERGROUND: THE LAST ROAD (2012)

1 Comment

DIRECTED BY: John Wheeler

FEATURING: Aaron Long, Simon Sokowlwoski, Laura Marklew

PLOT: A down-on-his-luck fighter with anger issues and a penchant for bringing his dog everywhere with him is killed; instead of going to Heaven or Hell, he is left in a Purgatory that looks like Birmingham and must find his place in a brutal, unforgiving afterlife.

The Last Road

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Every film that has been both excellent and unique enough to make it onto the List of the 366 weirdest films of all time has been guided by a strong sense of purpose, or at least a sense of identity. The Last Road is hopelessly lost on the very road it sets out on; it is the film equivalent of listening to someone decide out loud what they want to eat for dinner.

COMMENTS: It wasn’t that long ago that when people said the words “independent picture” in conversation, the image brought to mind was of a navel-gazing, impenetrable vanity project from someone who hadn’t had the career or life experience to demand a moviegoer’s attention span. With the explosion of pop culture indie-centrism in the early ’00s and the digital camera revolution, indies have come a long way since then, but a stigma still remains in the public consciousness from decades of snoozers like Smilla’s Sense of Snow and twee-fests like Garden State. The Last Road is an ambitious independent feature from first-time writer/director/key grip John Wheeler about life after life, and while it is obvious that the spirit here is willing, the body, unfortunately, is weak.

Set in the arsehole of Britannia, which will henceforth be referred to as Trainspotting-ham, it chronicles the misadventures of Toby, the angriest bloke who ever bloked. This guy is the worst; imagine an unemployed Morrissey with short hair who binge-watches MMA bouts and thinks he looks good in tank tops. He is a fighter with a nasty temper, a temper that is affecting his relationships at home and in the ring. His ill mother is subject to one of his tantrums and has a pint of milk dumped on her head as a result, and when his anger gets the better of him while talking to his shady underworld boss, it leads to his dog being viciously killed in front of his eyes (!!!). This sets him up for an (ultimately final) outburst in the ring, whereby his overwhelming explosion of violence leads his opponent, in desperation, to slash Toby’s throat with a nearby broken beer bottle and end his life. This is only the beginning of the story, however, as we are taken to the afterlife, where Toby is confronted with his poor life decisions by a shrewish blonde angel driving a Mini. She tells him that he has to find his own way to salvation, otherwise he can never be redeemed in the eyes of God. So Toby wanders the wastes of Limbo, meeting new friends, inciting bitter rivalries, and reuniting with familiar faces from his previous life.

…at least, I think so. The Last Road is really very noncommittal about what it wants to say or do. Or perhaps it is covering up a lack of narrative with visuals, strange set pieces, and maudlin introspection. Whatever the case may be, there is not enough happening (truly happening, not just tiresome flashbacks and unappealing static shots) to justify a 90 minute feature. Which is quite a setback, considering this is a 123 minute-long movie! That means lots of time taken up by the INNER TURMOIL of our hero, without context in the story or reasonable explanation.

And this is the most contentious aspect of the whole affair, because Toby’s struggle, the entire impetus of the film and the reason both he and the moviegoer set out on the sojourn that is The Last Road, is an informed attribute. We are not given an ounce of exposition as to why things are so difficult for him, why he is suffering on the inside, or what his motivations are for doing any of the seemingly arbitrary things he ends up doing. He is just an angry guy with a mission to redeem himself. But why? Who is this person? Why does he want to be redeemed in God’s eyes? Why does he need to be redeemed at all? Instead of answers, or something resembling an answer, we are treated to indulgent, laconic moments of on-screen anguish, as if Toby, in a wrestling ring on the seedy side of Trainspotting-ham, had died for our sins.

The Last Road is an independent feature that, while admittedly unique, lives up to that grand old indie tradition of being very difficult to watch. It is a shame, because it exhibits a wealth of potential from a first-time director: the shots are carefully composed, the sound design is remarkable, and the sets are eerie and full of nihilistic expression. But the delivery of these qualities in the form of unlikable characters trudging through a banal narrative ends up feeling confused at best and emotionally manipulative at worst (i.e. anything involving the damn dog). A similar-yet-better experience would be turning on What Dreams May Come with the brightness level on the television adjusted down 50%.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Trying to figure out what the film was getting at with certain characters and situations allows you to run with the narrative in a number of directions beyond the obvious, and that offers an extra level of engagement. It all comes down to whether you find the ideas presented interesting enough to ponder, of course, but I think the film delivers enough variety to avoid becoming too stale.”–Mark Bell, Film Threat (DVD)