Tag Archives: So bad it’s weird

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE MANSTER (1959)

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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)

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CAPSULE: BLOOD SABBATH (1972)

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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)

Capsules

CAPSULE: THEY SAVED HITLER’S BRAIN (1963/197?)

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Beware

DIRECTED BY: David Bradley/an uncredited director

FEATURING: Walter Stocker, Audrey Caire, Carlos Rivas, Dani Lynn, Bill Freed

PLOT: They (renegade Nazis in South America) saved Hitler’s brain (actually, his entire head).

Still from They Saved Hitler's Brain

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  They Saved Hitler’s Brain is awfully strange, and strangely awful, but it has one huge strike against it: most people would rather cut off their own head than wade through the nonsensical plot just to see a few brief moments of a Hitler impersonator in a pickle jar.

COMMENTS: If you pick up Hitler’s Brain on a lark because of the title and pop it into the DVD player without any sort of background information, you’re going to be terribly confused.  In one scene, some dull-witted secret agents in miniskirts and bushy Nixon-era haircuts are lackadaisically investigating a research scientist’s assassination; then, in the next scene, men in starched suits with narrow lapels and sturdy Eisenhower-era ‘dos are sitting in at a no-dames-allowed intelligence briefing. We watch people we don’t know get abducted by gunmen in sedans while the female agent calmly watches, then follows from her Volkswagen bug, taking care to stay out of the same shot with the kidnappers.  It’s almost as if someone took two separate movies and slapped them together to make one longer feature (and that impression grows even stronger during a chase scene when the prey is fleeing at night, but the pursuers are chasing him during broad daylight).  In fact, that’s exactly what happened: by all accounts, Hitler’s Brain was the result of persons unknown shooting 20-30 minutes of additional footage to add to a ten-year-old B-movie titled Madmen of Mandoras so that it would be long enough to fill a two-hour television time slot.  The newcomers made little attempt to match the film stock or wardrobes of their additions to the style of the older movie. The main dramatic effect of the added chapter is that, one third of the way through the movie, the lives of the people we assumed to be the hero and heroine are senselessly wasted in what turns out to be a meaningless subplot.  The original Madmen of Mandoras footage is more enjoyable than the newly shot scenes, in the same way that herpes simplex I is more enjoyable than herpes simplex II.  The entire plot, of course, is completely absurd (there’s not even an attempt to explain why Hitler thought it necessary to cut off his own head in order to escape the Allies), and while the movie never quite rises to the level of the truly weird, there are plenty of odd, ridiculous moments: the casual stuffing of a dead body into a phone booth, fact the Mandoran operative insists on calling Hitler by the pet nickname “Mr. H,” and a beatnik chick with a crazy made-up hepcat lingo (“never glum a pony in the tonsils!”)  There’s also the occasional strangely evocative, expressionist shot—as when Nazi soldiers appear in a doorway framed so that their heads are missing—to remind you that filmmaker David Bradley (whose first movie credit was directing Charlton Heston in an adaptation of Peer Gynt) isn’t a complete hack.  Those flashes of talent make the existence of this incompetently plotted movie even more mysterious. Of course, the movie’s chief attraction is the bodyless head man, and Hitler’s brain—er, head—indeed steals every scene he’s in.  The Nazi noggin (played in equal parts by actor Bill Freed and a wax sculpture) only remembers two words of German (“macht schnell!”) but is capable of conveying ludicrous emotions with the body parts he has left, grinning evilly when his henchmen are shot and darting his eyes from side to side nervously when danger approaches.  Still, the pleasures of this film are few and far between; it’s more a movie to watch just to brag that you’ve seen it, rather than something to check out for actual entertainment purposes.  It’s not impossible to enjoy Hitler’s Brain, but to do so will probably require a small group of quick-witted friends ready with quips locked and loaded, and a large supply of adult beverages for anesthetizing your own brain.

We don’t usually link to these kinds of comedic reviews, but this guy’s badmovies.org synopsis/review is worth reading, if overlong and over-sarcastic. They Saved Hitler’s Brain is frequently packaged together with other el-cheapo drive-in films and is available as part of several different collections, including Drive-In Cult Classics, Vol. 2 (8 movies, including the original uncut Madmen of Mandoras for comparison purposes) and Mill Creek’s Pure Terror 50 Movie Pack (where it plays alongside Manos and Horror Rises from the Tomb).

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“[The added prologue] only adds confusion and a sense of weirdness, as it is patently obvious that the new footage does not match the footage of MANDORAS in any way… [the movie] really only has a great bad title and a couple of campy scenes that entertain; the rest is snoozefest incarnate.”–Dave Sindelar, Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings (DVD)

Canonically Weird (The List)

78. ZARDOZ (1974)

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“When I see the film now, I’m astonished at my hubris in making this extraordinary farrago.”–John Boorman in his 2001 director’s commentary for Zardoz

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: John Boorman

FEATURING: Sean Connery, , John Alderton, Sara Kestleman, Niall Buggy

PLOT: Zed is an Enforcer, a warrior and slaver who pillages the countryside and takes commands from Zardoz, a floating stone head, in a distant barbaric future.  One day Zed sneaks into the head and is carried away with it to Vortex 4, a land filled with technologically advanced people who never seem to age.  Zed is a curiosity to them and becomes both a slave and an object of scientific study, but his presence disrupts their society in profound ways.

Still from Zardoz (1974)

BACKGROUND:

  • Zardoz was John Boorman’s first film after being nominated for an Oscar for Deliverance.  Boorman had been trying to get an adaptation of “The Lord of the Rings” off the ground, but the project fell through.
  • This was Sean Connery’s second role after completing his run as James Bond with Diamonds Are Forever in 1971 (although he would return to the role for a one off in 1983’s Never Say Never Again).
  • Burt Reynolds was originally slated to play Zed but fell ill.
  • According to Boorman the film’s budget was one million dollars, $200,000 of which went to Connery’s salary.
  • Cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth also lensed 2001: A Space Odyssey, among many other films.
  • Boorman later co-wrote a novelization of the film.

INDELIBLE IMAGE:  Try as he might to fill his film with unforgettable visions of giant floating stone heads vomiting firearms and of humanity’s entire cultural heritage projected onto the half-nude bodies of immortal hippies, the one image that adorns almost every review of Boorman’s Zardoz is a simple one: Sean Connery standing in the desert, pistol in hand, ponytail insouciantly thrown over one shoulder, dressed in thigh high leather boots and a red diaper with matching suspenders.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: This sci-fi spectacle starts with serious ideas and weighty themes, but gets weighed down under an avalanche of self-indulgent dialogue, a confused script, low-budget psychedelics, and consistently bizarre directorial choices. Fill a talented young director’s head full of anticipation of adapting Tolkien, then pull that opportunity out from under him but instead give him Sean Connery and carte blanche to make whatever film he wants, and the result, apparently, is Zardoz. (Oh, and LSD might have had something to do with it, too).


Original trailer for Zardoz

COMMENTS: Zardoz is introduced by a floating head weaving through a void, slowly Continue reading 78. ZARDOZ (1974) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: HORROR RISES FROM THE TOMB [EL ESPANTO SURGE DE LA TUMBA] (1973)

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DIRECTED BY: Carlos Aured

FEATURING:

PLOT: The head of a medieval warlock possesses the bodies of young people staying at an isolated country estate, turning some into zombies and causing them to kill each other.

Still from Horror Rises from the Tomb (1973)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Horror Rises is a worthwhile, but not quite exemplary, illustration of the tendency of 1970s Eurotrashy fantastique horror to elevate atmosphere and effect over sense and logic. Made out of equal parts camp, decadence, and incoherence, it’s a decent choice for a midnight viewing some evening when you don’t want to think too hard while getting some pre-bedtime chills.

COMMENTS: Most of the plot developments in Horror Rises from the Tomb need to be prefaced with the phrase, “for unclear reasons…”  When invited to a seance with a medium, swinging playboy Hugo suggests they contact an ancestor of his who was hanged for practicing witchcraft (and vampirisim and lycanthropy), then decapitated so his head and body could be laid in separate graves to prevent him from rising from the tomb.  The same warlock ghost has been haunting Hugo’s artist pal, dripping blood from his severed head on his canvases.  After successfully contacting the spirit, Hugo, the painter and their girlfriends travel to Hugo’s isolated country estate to go digging for the head but are waylaid by bandits, then rescued by vigilantes who execute the criminals on the spot.  Upon arriving the foursome hires village locals to dig up the head, or buried treasure, whichever they find first.  Halfway through the movie, after the cast is mostly dead or possessed, the caretaker’s daughter remembers that her father hid a magic talisman that would protect them from any evil spirits that would rise from the nearby tomb in a well.  Besides possession, the warlock also creates a mini-army of walking corpses, and when daylight comes Hugo goes to dredge up their corpses from the river (where he dumped them earlier—for unclear reasons) and burn the bodies, even though he already incinerated them the night before.  And so it goes. The storytelling is jumpy—characters are killed off before you even realize who they are—and awkward editing exacerbates the problem.  According to legend, star Naschy took anywhere between two days to a week to write the script, and it’s easy to believe.   You go into every story segment presuming it’s not going to make sense, and you’re surprised when, on reflection, there’s a hidden logic to some development.  Besides writing the script, Naschy is also credited as playing three roles (the warlock and Hugo are two of them, but somehow I missed the third one). Horror Rises gets by on atmosphere—beautiful, misty Spanish scenery; gorgeous doomed women in gauzy nightgowns; floating heads; zombies; Paul Naschy flinging his black cape about and keeping his bushy arched eyebrows flying at full mast.  There’s also a screechy organ score that is irritating but effective in keeping you on the edge.  The decadent exploitation, in combination with the disjointed storytelling and jittery editing, produces a comic-nightmarish effect typical of 1970s Eruohorrors; it’s a style that can become addictive if you give yourself over to it wholeheartedly.

The version of Horror Rises from the Tomb reviewed here is the edited, full frame version, likely compiled for television broadcasts, that’s commonly found in multiple-movie bargain packs.   This edition cuts out the abundant nudity and most of the gore (including, reportedly, heart-eating) and runs 10-15 minutes shorter than the uncut film.  The frequent edits to produce a TV-friendly, PG-rated product likely increase the incoherence factor, but given the movie’s edited in the purely expository scenes, I don’t believe the complete version makes significantly more sense.  The out of print but widely available BCI/Eclipse DVD contains both cuts of the film, along with a third “clothed” version intended for European distribution that substitutes alternate takes for some of the nude scenes but keeps the blood and guts intact.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…there was no denying the strange, unsettling otherness of this film as I watched it in a dark room, illuminated only by my portable black-and-white TV set.”–Troy Guinn, Eccentric Cinema (remembering a 1970s TV broadcast)