Tag Archives: So bad it’s weird

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

LA CASA DEL TERROR (1960) AND FACE OF THE SCREAMING WEREWOLF (1964)

1 Comment

The posthumous classification of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello erroneously places them on a level with  or The Marx Brothers.  However, few, if any, of the Abbott and Costello films withstand the test of time.  Their initial rendezvous with a trio of Universal monsters retains some dated charm, but little of it comes from the comedy team.  Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) is essentially a vehicle for ‘s Dracula parody and Lenore Aubert’s vamp.  The Monster (Glenn Strange) has little to do, and  seems mightily uncomfortable with the surrounding juvenile antics.  Even worse is Bud Westmore’s unimaginative assembly line makeup, which reduces Lugosi’s Count to baby powder and black lipstick and Lon Chaney Jr’s Larry Talbot to a rubbery lycanthrope.

La casa del terror (1960) is a south of the border imitation of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, along with about a half dozen other films, including King Kong (1933).  German Valdes (aka Tin Tan) is Casimiro and, just like in A & C Meet Frankie, he is doing some work in a house of wax horrors, which currently has a real mummy display.  Below the exhibit, the Professor (Yerye Beirut) is deep in mad scientist experiments (just like  in his Columbia movies or Lugosi at Monogram).  None too surprising, the Professor has an assistant who helps his boss steal bodies and blood.  When bodies are not to be found, the two extract fluids from Casimiro, which renders our hero lethargic (at least Lou Costello kept his energy level up).  Narratively, having your protagonist sleep through half of the film does not seem like a sound idea.  Casimiro’s gal Paquita (Yolanda Varela) doesn’t think so either.  After all, she is working a full time job and beau here is one lazy sot!  Perhaps the all too repeated shots of Casimiro counting sheep are not necessarily a bad device after all because when he does wake up, he breaks into comedic patter which actually makes Lou Costello look funny again.  Valdes elicits more groans than laughs and he even engages in a song and dance number with Valera.  YES, IT’S A MUSICAL TOO!  Valera does not have to work hard at making Valdes’ musical talents look pedestrian.

Still from La Casa del Terror (1960)Director Gilberto Martinez Solares cast Lon Chaney Jr, clearly past his prime, as a dual mummy/wolfman which, of course, were the two characters that Chaney played most often in the 40’s  cycle.  Chaney is only briefly glimpsed as a mummy, and a rather well fed one at that.  The make-up job is something akin to a glob of silly putty.  The Professor, tired of Casimiro’s rotten blood, decides to steal the mummy for experimentation. The Doc and his assistant put the ancient Egyptian into a big Son Of Frankenstein (1939) contraption.  Briefly, a Continue reading LA CASA DEL TERROR (1960) AND FACE OF THE SCREAMING WEREWOLF (1964) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: SANTA AND THE ICE CREAM BUNNY (1972)

1 Comment

Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny was promoted onto the List of the 366 Weirdest Movies of all Time. Please make all comments on the official Certified Weird entry.

Beware

DIRECTED BY: R. Winer, Barry Mahon (Thumbelina)

FEATURING: Jay Ripley, Shay Garner

PLOT: Santa’s sleigh is stuck in the Florida sand, so he shows the assembled kids a movie until help arrives in the form of a giant rabbit-man in a fire truck.

Still from Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (1972)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  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.

COMMENTS: When someone like me, who’s watched They Saved Hitler’s Brain multiple times—voluntarily, not as part of a CIA experiment in breaking interrogee’s wills—tells you that Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny is quite possibly the worst movie they’ve ever seen, you should take notice.  First off, there’s the paradoxical fact that Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny is hardly Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny at all.  It’s actually much more Thumbelina.  Or, maybe it’s primarily an advertisement for a sad-sack, pre-Disneyland southern Florida bemusement park called Pirates [sic] World.  If you’re confused, and not concerned with the prospect of having Ice Cream Bunny‘s plot spoiled, then read on.

The movie begins with what looks like home-movie footage of Santa’s sleigh stuck in the sand on a Florida beach.  The tone-deaf Kris Kringle sings a plaintive (dubbed) tune of lament, then falls asleep, then psychically summons the neighborhood children to help him.  (This sequence of events suggests that the entire movie may be St. Nick’s heat-stroke influenced nightmare).  At any rate, the children flock to his aid, bringing livestock (?) and a man in a gorilla suit (??) to attempt to dislodge the sleigh out of the half-inch of sand it’s buried in (why did the kids think a pig would succeed where eight magical reindeer had failed?)  When this brain-dead plan predictably bears no fruit, Santa decides to tell everyone a story—a story of eternal hope, a story about a magical place called Pirates World.

Actually, the story is the fairy tale “Thumbelina.”  But we can’t simply jump into it.  That would Continue reading CAPSULE: SANTA AND THE ICE CREAM BUNNY (1972) →

Canonically Weird (The List)

101. SKIDOO (1968)

2 Comments

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

“It is the gassiest, grooviest, swingingest, trippiest movie you’ve ever seen… Anybody that don’t like that, daddy, don’t like chicken on Sunday.”–Sammy Davis, Jr. recommending Skidoo to the younger generation in the film’s trailer

DIRECTED BY: Otto Preminger

FEATURING: Jackie Gleason, , , Alexandra Hay, , Austin Pendleton, Frankie Avalon, , , , , Mickey Rooney, Peter Lawford, George Raft, , Harry Nilsson

PLOT: Tony is a retired mobster living in the suburbs with wife Flo and daughter Darlene, who has an unwelcome (to Tony) interest in dating hippies. A crime kingpin known as “God” pressures the ex-hit man into doing one last job—going undercover in Alcatraz to assassinate a stool pigeon.  When Tony accidentally ingests LSD in the pen, his entire worldview is flipped and he decides to ditch the hit and break out of the clink; meanwhile, Flo and Darlene have taken it upon themselves to track down God with the help of a band of flower children.

Still from Skidoo (1968)

BACKGROUND:

  • Director Otto Preminger had been nominated as Best Director for two Academy Awards (for Laura and The Cardinal).  Known for pushing the envelope on taboo topics, Preminger was instrumental in breaking the back of the Hollywood Production Code by releasing The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), which dealt with the then-forbidden topic of heroin addiction, without MPAA approval.
  • Skidoo was a giant flop sandwiched between two other Preminger flops, Hurry Sundown (1967) and Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970).  Despite its notorious reputation, Skidoo was part of a series of failed films and was not solely responsible for Preminger’s fall from grace.
  • Two years after Skidoo, screenwriter Doran William Cannon penned the exceedingly weird Brewster McCloud (1970).
  • This was Groucho Marx’s final film.  He dropped LSD (with writer Paul Krassner) in preparation for the role.
  • Preminger also took LSD, supposedly under the guidance of none other than Timothy Leary (who promoted the film in the trailer).  Preminger had originally been slated to make an anti-acid movie, but had decided that he should experience the drug before condemning it.  After his trip he decided to make Skidoo instead.
  • Frank Gorshin, Burgess Meredith, and Cesar Romero, who all have cameo bits in Skidoo, had also appeared together in the same movie just two years before: as the Riddler, the Penguin, and the Joker in Batman: The Movie (1966).  Director Otto Preminger had a rare acting role as Mr. Freeze in two episodes of the “Batman” TV show in 1966.
  • After flopping in 1968, Skidoo became virtually a lost film—not because it was suppressed or the prints were unavailable, but because no one seemed interested in exhibiting it.  A Turner Classic Movies screening in 2008 was the first opportunity most people had to view the movie since its release.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Jackie Gleason’s acid trip is one for the ages, particularly when he sees Groucho Marx’s cigar-puffing head affixed atop a rotating wood screw.  His response to the apparition, naturally, is to say “Oh no, I’m not playing your game… go ahead, drop,” at which point the screwball vision slips down the prison sink drain.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Like an onion soaked in high-grade acid, Skidoo contains layers upon layers of weirdness. In 1968 it was not that far out for a movie to take us on a swirly psychedelic journey to check out that purple haze all in our brains. What was freaky was for establishment icons Otto Preminger, Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing and Groucho Marx to serve as our tour guides. Add to that the fact that the film is a notorious flop full of painfully strained attempts at comedy, jaw-dropping left-field musical numbers, scattershot satire, and Harry Nilsson singing the closing credits, and you have a singular pro-drug oddity that mines rare camp.


Screenwriter Larry Karaszewski discussing the trailer for Skidoo (1968)

COMMENTS: Watching Otto Preminger’s Skidoo is like listening to a cover version of the Doors’ Continue reading 101. SKIDOO (1968) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE MANSTER (1959)

Leave a comment

DIRECTED BY: George P. Breakston, Kenneth G. Crane

FEATURING: Peter Dyneley, Tetsu Nakamura, Jane Hylton, Terri Zimmern

PLOT:  A Japanese scientist corrupts an American foreign correspondent in Tokyo, eventually

Still from The Manster (1959)

turning him into a two-headed monster…. um, man-ster.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: When you’re titling your movie The Manster, you’re probably not expecting to make any exclusive lists, other than the List of the Most Shamelessly Cheesy Movie Titles Ever.  Thanks to its historical provenance and overwrought, tastefully depraved atmosphere, this psychotronic oddity is worthy of a mention; it will take its place as a footnote to the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies Ever Made, and like it.

COMMENTS:  The Manster may not be a very good movie, but it does have transformations, geishas, chaste drunken orgies, theremins, hyperactive overacting, and an erupting volcano, with a plot cribbed from “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” swaddled in Pysch 101 theories about the duality of man.  That counts for something.  Need more?  It’s also got a mad scientist with a cave laboratory complete with giant mushrooms, a cell for his mutated wife, and a furnace for disposing of unwanted monsters.  The cheesy sci-fi accoutrements are shuttled into the background for much of the running time, as the main action becomes watching Peter Dyneley act like a jerk, drinking saki with loose women and slapping his long-suffering wife after being shot up with Japanese chemicals.  (Dyneley takes to the lifestyle of a gin-soaked heel like a 1950s mad scientist takes to collecting Tesla coils).  His chemically-induced devotion to the dark side results in his killing Shinto monks during blackouts and growing an eye on his shoulder, which eventually develops into a full-grown noggin.  Through the magic of b-movie moral alchemy he’s able to kill his creator and redeem himself, literally splitting apart from his hairy id (an extraordinary moment).  The final words of a journalist documenting the mad tale give us all a paradox to mull over: “I’m a reporter, not a mystic, Linda.  But there are things beyond us, things perhaps we’re not meant to understand.  If what’s happened here had made this all clear, well then, perhaps it made sense after all.”  Gotcha: the story makes sense because it makes it clear we weren’t meant to understand it.

Probably The Manster‘s greatest claim to fame is being originally released as the bottom half of a sublime/ridiculous double bill with Eyes Without a Face (which was dubbed and retitled Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus to make it appear like just another B-horror movie!)  As the world’s first two-headed man/monster movie, it’s also the great-grandfather of How to Get Ahead in Advertising, and Sam Raimi even paid The Manster tribute in the weirdest sequence of Army of Darkness.  That’s pretty good company for a movie that began its life as an unsophisticated, exploitative b-quickie!

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…its gorgeous shadow-strewn cinematography, bizarrely mismatched performances, and loopy juxtapositions of Asian and American nightmare iconography make it unforgettable trash that, in its more insane moments, even attains a sort of accidental bargain-bin poetry.”–Ian Grey, Baltimore City Paper (DVD)

Capsules

CAPSULE: BLOOD SABBATH (1972)

Leave a comment

DIRECTED BY: Brianne Murphy

FEATURING: Anthony Geary, , Sam Gilman, Susan Damante

PLOT:  A Vietnam veteran falls in love with a water nymph, but she can’t love a man who has a soul; the local topless witches’ coven offers to get rid of his for him.

Still from Blood Sabbath (1972)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Because, let’s face it, the movie’s terrible.

COMMENTS: Sometimes, exploitation movies are so rushed and cut so many corners that they become incoherent and unintentionally strange.  Cases where movies aimed at a six-pack swilling Friday night crowd dare to be intentionally bizarre are far less common.  Blood Sabbath is an ultra-rare example of a jiggle-fest that manages to be weird in both ways.  The story of a world-weary vet who walks to Mexico, falls in love with a water spirit, and sells his soul for love could have made for an odd enough little modern fairy tale, played straight.  But, instead, Blood Sabbath begins with a scene of a gang of longhaired peaceniks luring our hitchhiking hero to their flower power van so they can spray him with beer and taunt him with the dangling melons of a topless hippie chick as they zoom off into the sunset.  Then, a gang of picnicking naked women (including mammacious nudie fave Uschi Digart) try to pants the harried soldier and chase him until he rolls down a ravine and gently knocks himself unconscious.  The casually introduced fantasy elements—water sprites, the witches coven that demands an annual blood sacrifice from the local peasants—and the solemn tone make this an unusual enough drive-in horror movie, but the way the director seizes any opportunity to put a naked woman on screen, regardless of logic, is its weirdest, and its defining, feature.  In the course of the movie we discover that topless go-go dancing is a much bigger part of Satanism than anyone realized, and being sacrificed at a black mass turns out to be surprisingly similar to getting a lap dance.  The flick is amazing, and amusing, in its shamelessness.  The thespianship is abysmal all the way around; the quiet, tormented village priest who occasionally explodes into loud, dramatic bouts of anguished “acting!” is the worst offender.  Campy though her performance may be, future Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S. Dyanne Thorne (playing a witch-queen named “Alotta”), emerges as the best actor in the troupe (though the guy who plays the hermit who looks like Lloyd Bridges caught in the early stages of werewolf transformation isn’t half bad).  Of course, it would be hard for anyone to shine when reciting lines like “take my soul, damn you!” and “It’s David.  He came into the cave with blood all over him.  Sacrificial blood!”  Ensorcellment is indicated by the usual array of low-budget acid trip clichés: double images, solarization, colored filters, and zoom-lens abuse.  A random shot of David cradling a dying solider suggests it’s all an allegory for America’s experience in Vietnam, or something.  Though it’s pretty terrible, it’s seldom boring, and you already knew whether you were in this film’s target audience or not when you reached the lines “taunt him with the dangling melons of a topless hippie chick…”  With its eerie fairy tale + naked lady formula, I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that director Murphy had been inspired by the previous year’s (much better) Girl Slaves of Morgana le Fay.

Some jokes are just too easy.  I was going to quip “this movie should be called Boob Sabbath,” but when I went looking for a critical quote, I found that someone (probably many people) beat me to it.  Great minds think alike.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…this bizarre cross between seventies witch movies, NIGHT TIDE, LOVE STORY and ORGY OF THE DEAD, with romantic meadow-romping, tepid gore effects, crass exploitation… and bad acting is, in a word, awful.”–Dave Sindelar, Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings (DVD)