Monthly Archives: May 2010

Chuck Norris Ate My Blog: Silent Rage (1982)

So yesterday when I said I’d see you after Memorial Day? I kinda forgot the Chuck Norris Contestothon ^[1] submissions were due today. Update: CNAMB’s list of submissions is here!

My Chuck Norris Ate My Blog Contest entry is the 1982 semi-horror flick “Silent Rage.” The movie features Chuck, breasts, a maybe-zombie, and a dozen great character actors; my review features Spoilers!

Originally, I had planned to watch “Code of Silence,” but when I told my husband this he asked “Hey, is that the one with a zombie?” There’s a Chuck Norris movie… with a zombie? Oh, I had to see that. However, it’s equivocal whether the bad guy in “Silent Rage” is really a zombie or not. The movie’s promotional material seems to take great pains to frame him as a product of genetic science gone wrong, but genetics were a bigger marketing ticket than zombies back in the early 1980s, so I’m not fully willing to dismiss the zombie theory.

The film — which is sadly in 1.33:1 ratio on the DVD — opens with boarding house roomer John Kirby having a freak out, on the phone with his doc and sweating heavily. An annoying landlady and some screaming kids drive him a bit battier than he probably would have been otherwise, so of course he walks out into the back yard, grabs an axe, and starts choppin’ the people around him.

Not the kids, though. Chuck wouldn’t have stood for that. Kids don’t get chopped into chum in his movies no matter how much they might deserve it. After Kirby makes quick mincemeat of a fellow boarder and the landlady, our hero arrives:

Sheriff Chuck Dan emerges from his chariot like a sun-blessed golden Adonis. Not shown: His trusty chubby sidekick Deputy Charlie (Stephen Furst).

At first, it’s tedious watching Sheriff Dan just mosey through the murder house, but actual tension builds for a precious few moments. In what would become a running theme in this film, the tension is wasted on a rather weak surprise entrance from killer axe dude. Sheriff Dan chases Kirby through a field behind the house, gets him cuffed, but Kirby has superhuman strength (d’oh) and breaks his chains. Several deputies empty their shotguns into him just as Kirby’s doctor (Ron Silver) arrives on the scene.

At this point I should mention that all the deputies have the same outfit: Light blue Oxford shirts and khakis. But not Chuck, oh no, he’s in Action Jeans! Jeans that he models several times throughout the film by unnecessarily propping his leg up on something while chatting with another actor.

Dr. Tom Halman (Silver) and his partners Dr. Phil Spires and Dr. Paul Vaughan — played by ubiquitous character actors Steven Keats and William Finley, respectively — appear to save Kirby in surgery, but then we learn he’s brain dead anyway.

But here’s the kicker: The doctors have been working on a genetic serum called Mytagen 35 ^[2] and Phil wants to try it on the brain-dead Kirby. Surprise surprise, it works, but Tom ain’t fer it, he’s agin’ it, so they pull the plug on Kirby… until Tom leaves, then they inject him again with a few gallons of Mytagen 35 and hide him in a basement laboratory while telling everyone else he’s dead. Kirby heals rapidly while remaining unconscious, and Phil and Paul think he’s still brain dead. Ha!

Meanwhile, Tom’s sister Alison runs into Sheriff Dan, and we discover they used to date several years earlier. She’s mad at him but of course sleeps with him immediately after reconnecting, thus starting a really insipid romantic plot line that just does not work on any level, unless “boring the whole damn audience to tears” was their goal.

So Kirby escapes the hospital, as the technically-dead bodies of psychotic criminals who have been brought back to life through artificial means are wont to do, and he kills Dr. Tom and his wife. The wife hiding in the attic from Kirby is the best part of the film, by the way. Alison comes home to discover their bodies and screams for a few thousand hours while Ron Silver hangs on the door trying really hard not to laugh while he’s supposed to be playing dead. It’s actually quite endearing, kind of like Craig Reynolds in “The Case of the Lucky Legs”, so I can’t hate on him.

Thus commences the part of the film where Sheriff Dan goes to find Kirby and stop him. Kirby makes short work of Drs. Phil and Paul and even chubby sidekick Stephen Furst, which upset me more than it should have. Kirby is shot, blown up, burnt, and he still keeps comin’, but of course Chuck’s martial arts save the day. Which, look, I don’t care if you’re Mr. Bruce Freakin’ Lee, if being explodiated doesn’t kill you, several kicks to the torso won’t kill you, either. Guess that’s why the final freeze frame of the movie has Kirby jumping up out of the water he was allegedly floating about dead in, although I got the impression that was more about possible sequels than for authenticity.

“Silent Rage” was so much better than I expected. It’s the kind of bad B movie I like to watch voluntarily, so I’m pleased I saw it. It was also fun to pick out the visual and plot elements stolen directly from other films: “Apocalypse Now,” “Night of the Living Dead,” “Way of the Dragon” (aka “Return of the Dragon”), “The Shining,” and of course “Frankenstein.” There are plenty of breasts to be had and occasional gratuitous beefcake:

What makes a really good B movie is the stellar supporting cast. I like Chuck, I really do, but the poor guy has one facial expression when in front of the camera. It’s beyond awesome at one moment in “Missing in Action” when he tries to smile and just kind of squinches up half his face instead, but in “Silent Rage” it is a liability, as horror films rely so much on extreme emotion that Chuck comes across as a wee bit miscast. Then again, when they killed off his sidekick, his stone cold expression worked pretty well, ’cause you knew some maybe-zombie butt was about to get kicked.

[1] I made that word up.

[2] Maybe. It’s an invented word; I do not know how to spell it. Besides, doctors never pronounce the names of medicines correctly anyway. This is truth.

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My Best Post: The Blogathon

This entry is for the He Shot Cyrus “My Best Post” Blogathon which runs from May 21st to May 23rd. Start at Day 1 here. You can read Day 2 here and Day 3 here.

My Best Post: “The House of Mirth” (2000) for the Counting Down the Zeros series.

It was hard to choose my best post, mainly because I have no love for my own writing style. I considered a lot of things. Did I have an influential post? Uh, no. Nothing I wrote was influential, not even the pair of posts about a certain horror film controversy — a controversy that won a stupid Rondo Award, of all things. (Because rewarding attention whores who make up lies about lost films is always a good idea.) Did I have a popular post? Rarely do I get more than maybe 300 page views on one post, so no. I had to fall back on what I liked, and I liked not only my entry on “House of Mirth” but the terrific comments I got from readers as well.

Speaking of what I like, I have been meaning to find a way to write a separate entry about a bunch of other bloggers’ posts which I think deserve a little love. This blogathon has given me a great segue into listing other blog posts from the past I highly recommend:

* Shyamalan Is As Shyamalan Does. Quite frankly, D.C.Girl@TheMovies is the best blog you aren’t reading. D.C.Girl is perceptive, insightful, funny, and this post is an excellent introduction to her blog. I generally don’t read blogs about new releases because I rarely go to see new movies, but I read D.C.Girl and I love it.

* Dialer Turden. From Pluck You, Too!, this is an introspective note about Tommy’s own life and, at the same time, a concise reflection on the reasons to re-think the philosophical daydreaming behind 1999′s “Fight Club”. I remain swooning and envious of his ability to craft such a deft, cutting remark: “Compassion for the weak is not weakness. We were all weak once.” Right to the bone, my friend.

* The Unbroken Dream of Edward D Wood Jr. This post makes me cry. I probably shouldn’t say that, because it’s the exact kind of awkward, sincere confession that makes Ed Wood’s life such a goldmine of semi-cruel humor for the rest of us. Mykal’s post is at once well researched, perceptive, and positively overflowing with the enthusiasm for films and for Ed Wood that make movie blogging worthwhile. Plenty of people in the movie blogosphere have Big Ideas, Big Plans, Big Names, but they don’t have any excitement for the movies they wax poetic about. When I’m tired of reading — and writing, as I’m not innocent of this myself — posts that just go through the motions, I come back to Mykal’s Unbroken Dream and remind myself why I’m blogging in the first place.

* Color in the Movies – Part 1 – Kinemacolor. From the always delightful All Singing! All Talking! All Dancing! blog, Jonas’ first part of what I hope will be a continued series is both entertaining and well researched. You can get lost in this post for hours.

* Movies I’ve Stared At Recently #47. I like all of Ivan’s Movies I’ve Stared At Recently series, not just because of the postmodern titles, but because Ivan manages to write about more movies in a day than I’m able to do in a month. This one in particular charmed me because of his mid-post rant about Margaret O’Brien.

* Allure’s Anna Sten series, Part 1 and Addendum. I don’t know where Operator 99 gets all that neat stuff. He must own 1000 vintage magazines and books. So I drool a lot when I read Allure. You understand, I’m sure.

* Directors Who Deserve a Film About Their Life #1 – Herschell Gordon Lewis There is no way I couldn’t love this entry. A movie about Lewis is a brilliant idea, honestly, and anything that mentions Sam Rockwell is going to get an “A++++ WILL READ AGAIN” review from me.

Picture of the Kinemacolor projector courtesy of The Bioscope, which I also highly recommend.

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Bette Davis Project #9: “Hell’s House” (1932)

“Hell’s House” is an odd film. It’s part drama, part social commentary /exploitation, part juvenile delinquency film, and all badly-made quickie. For evidence of the quality of this film, just check out the title screen. Who did that, the director’s 8-year-old nephew? More than anything, this is a boring movie, as it tried to be salacious without going so far as to offend anyone.

And this really confuses me, but the opening screen just after the credits tells us that this story “goes back to the days of PROHIBITION.” Since the movie was filmed in late 1931 and released January 1932 — the Cullen-Harrison act didn’t get signed until over 2 years later (Prohibition completely ended at the end of 1933) — audiences wouldn’t have had to go “back to the days” of Prohibition at all. Even if that was a screen tacked on for re-release several years after it was first shown, I can’t imagine any studio would assume audiences were so dim as to not know the movie was made during Prohibition, because it’s obvious from the first few minutes.

For this film, Bette was on loan from Universal who, by this time, had no idea what to do with her and were probably happy to ship her off somewhere. She got top billing above Pat O’Brien, and the 3rd star is juvenile actor Junior Durkin, hot off of 2 popular performances as Huckleberry Finn. Durkin made very few films, and besides his roles as Huck Finn, today he is best known as being one of several young men to live with producer/agent Henry “Adonis factory” Willson over the years. Durkin died just 3 years after this film was made, in a car accident that claimed three other lives including an agent and Jackie Coogan’s father. Jackie Coogan was involved in the accident, too, and was the only one to survive.

By the way, this is a public domain movie. I don’t know if the condition of the screencaps gave that away or not.

Jimmy (Junior Durkin) finds himself orphaned and sent to live with his aunt and uncle in the big city. One of his aunt’s boarders is a man named Kelly (Pat O’Brien), a boastful man who claims to know the mayor, editor of the NY Times, Rudy Vallee, and anyone else that would impress his listeners. When his aunt and uncle need money, Jimmy asks Kelly for job without realizing Kelly is not the well-connected businessman he appears to be but rather a bootlegger. Jimmy takes a job at Kelly’s office; it gets raided and, even when he finds out what Kelly is, he refuses to snitch on him. He’s sentenced to 3 years in juvie, forced to work hard labor in a brickyard. Kelly is the only one who knows what has happened to Jimmy, but he tells everyone that he wanted to help Jimmy but couldn’t find him. The truth is that he didn’t help Jimmy at all because he’s too big of a coward to come forward.

At juvie, Jimmy makes friends with a sickly young guy named Shorty. Their relationship is what most people talk about when they mention this movie, as it is more than a little homoerotic. Shorty calls Jimmy “big boy” all the time, for one. Yet the strange affectionate nature between Shorty and Jimmy is also shown early on between Jimmy and his mother, and I am certain this is simply a case of something old-fashioned not translating well to modern day audiences. It’s certainly not deliberately titillating like lingerie-clad daughters flirting with their dads. I’m lookin’ at you, “Tarzan.”

Ubiquitous character actor Morgan Wallace shows up as Gebhardt, a journalist (or something) looking to write a report about the conditions in juvie, but officials clean everything up so he doesn’t know the truth about the deplorable conditions. While Shorty lays dying in solitary, Jimmy escapes and runs to Kelly for help for his friend. By this time Kelly’s girlfriend Peggy (Bette) has figured out Kelly was lying about Jimmy running off. When Jimmy returns, she insists Kelly help him since he was the one who got Jimmy into trouble in the first place. It takes a lot of pushing for him to do the right thing.

Peggy gets in touch with Gebhardt who in turn gets in touch with an official of some sort. They listen to Jimmy’s story and vow to change things, but it’s too late for Shorty, who has become slightly dead. Dead, I tell you! For the life of me, I can’t remember if Kelly gets any comeuppance or not, but I think he might. You’ll understand if I don’t go back and re-watch to find out.

There is very little to say about this film. Bette does almost nothing, but when she does show up on screen she’s the sole voice of reason, the best actor, and she and Durkin are the only two you even try to elevate the material. I dislike Pat O’Brien intensely, and I hate movies that have unbelievable plot points, so “Hell’s House” was an ordeal.

I’m rather surprised that the production company splurged on promotional shots for this movie, but apparently they did. This is Bette in one of her “Hell’s House” outfits:

Atlantis: The Lost Continent (1961)

There is so little to say about “Atlantis: The Lost Continent” in terms of plot, acting, or high adventure. Rather, one watches ATLC for the enormous cheese that abounds in this campy Metrocolor B-grade flick.

Much of this movie is stolen outright from popular Italian Hercules-based movies as well as hit 1950s Hollywood features. The IMDb says some props were borrowed from “The Prodigal” and “Forbidden Planet”, that make-up and music were taken from “The Time Machine”, and so much stock footage from “Quo Vadis” was used that an attendee at a screening of ATLC quipped that his favorite scene was the one “where Robert Taylor saved Deborah Kerr from the fire.” I hope someone handed that man a contract; he had the exact kind of wisdom the Hollywood studios needed in 1961.

So just what does “Atlantis: The Lost Continent” have to offer?

Exciting hats!

Behind-your-back bitchface and bleached blonde pixie cuts: They never go out of style.

Triangle bling!

Traditional peasant fashions, dirty washed for that vintage look.

Kicky lavender wrap skirts with festive fringe! Also, great big screws.

These guards are fashion forward in trendy fall favorites: Brown leather tunics accentuated with gold duct tape and worn over fuzzy leopard print tees, tastefully paired with bright yellow tights.

ATLC also provides plenty of sessy mens:

I watched this for John Dall, and folks, he did not disappoint, especially at the end where he went fucko bazoo with the ray gun, as seen on “Mythbusters:”

The only way you can get a copy of this is in a old pan ‘n’ scan VHS release that has some obvious color issues and, of course, will run you a good $20. TCM does show it, at least they did once a couple of years ago, so cross your fingers that it will be on again.

Update 2013! Thanks to the miracle known as Warner Archives, Atlantis: The Lost Continent has been released on made-on-demand DVD. (The TCM print that is usually shown is pan n scan, though a nicer copy than the old VHS, but I can assure you the Warner Archives version is letterboxed and proper aspect ratio, and it looks terrific.) A copy has been acquired by yours truly and an updated post is in the works. Don’t get too hopeful that it will arrive soon, because things on SBBN tend to take a while to appear, but know that if you want some better screengrabs than these from an old TCM copy of the film, they will arrive. Eventually.

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Recently Watched: The “I Made This Face” Edition

It’s not often that a movie causes me to look like this:

Usually I’m pretty stoic like my beloved Henchman 21 in the background, but “Jamaica Inn” (1939) gave me Dr. Girlfriend face for days. I spent much of the movie wondering what the hell was even going on. Almost nothing works in this film, neither technically nor artistically. Laughton’s make up is unnecessary. The sound quality is terrible, and I’d blame the cheapie DVD transfer except half the dialogue was spoken in caves, during windstorms, or, in Laughton’s case, through a ridiculous set of prosthetic teeth. The editing was so bad I still believe there are some scenes missing in the film.

If I had a magic genie to rub, I wouldn’t be here. Wait, let me start again. If I had a magic lamp to rub and a genie gave me three wishes, one wish would be for someone to clearly and convincingly explain to me Mary’s (Maureen O’Hara’s) behavior. She tells the law about the scalawags at her uncle’s home, yet gets mad when the law arrives to do something about it. On several occasions she runs directly toward someone who wants to harm her, then gets upset when she’s grabbed and/or harmed. Once, she sees someone get shot and, instead of running for cover, just stands there and then goes about her business as though nothing happened. She is, of course, surprised when someone with a gun shows up seconds later.

The audience is told what to believe without being shown any supporting evidence. For example, the guests at Sir Humphrey’s home are supposed to be engaging in debauchery, yet there is nothing debauched about them. Despite acting as normal as he has throughout the film to that point, Sir Humphrey is said to have finally gone mad. Was this scene edited in the wrong order or something? And trying to figure out the logistics behind the warning lamp that ships use to prevent shipwreck — and explaining just how Sir Humphrey predicted the weather accurately every time — would drive someone mad. Trust me, I know.

***

I’m probably on first level movie-recommending probation with my husband for suggesting we watch “Jamaica Inn” — I was morbidly curious, but he kept saying “It’s Hitch and Laughton, what could possibly go wrong!” I feel responsible for his optimism, and I deserve to be given the evil side-eye the next time I suggest a film. I would be on second level probation except I talked my way out of a violation after “Buio Omega” (1979) last weekend; I only received a written warning.

During “Buio Omega”, my husband and I weren’t making Dr. Girlfriend face, we were making The Monarch face. The movie is gross, graphic, explicit exploitation horror. Now, I admit I’ve seen some intense stuff in my time, and a movie has to be pretty disgusting to freak me out. I’ve seen hardcore porn, I’ve seen “Cannibal Holocaust,” I’ve watched medical procedures online. Ladies and gentlemen, I have seen “The Maltese Bippy.” My point is that I’m no wilting flower and can stomach a lot yet, in terms of “Buio Omega,” I was ill prepared, gentlemen. I was ill prepared.

A long time ago I read Arbo’s excellent “The one you might have saved” article (since turned into a lengthy blogathon-esque event) but, because I didn’t want to be spoiled, didn’t read the entire article, nor did I look anything about “Buio Omega” up online. I just found a cheapish copy online and bought that baby, and the end result of my impulsiveness was realized last weekend when my husband and I sat down, slightly fucked up on red Italian wine, and watched a slightly fucked up Italian movie.

Now, I think there is a lot to like about “Buio Omega.” I enjoyed the overt homage to “Psycho” in that Frank Wyler (Kieran Canter) was an impossibly beautiful innocent-looking man who loved taxidermy and had a bit of an Oedipus situation going on with the caretaker Iris. Iris (Franca Stoppi) was, in turn, dressed exactly like Mother in “Psycho”. I do think that if director Joe D’Amato was going to push the Oedipus button that he should have gone all the way and had the character of Iris be Frank’s mother and not a mother substitute, but I’m twisted that way.

The funeral home employee, too, was terrific. His silent but ever-present role was so good, and discovering his motivation at the end of the film was lots of fun. And did anyone else notice that the funeral home’s logo was an omega?

A lot of horror aficionados love “Buio Omega” and feel it transcends your standard exploitation horror flick. I agree to an extent, but was always reminded that this was, at heart, base exploitation because of how the women were treated. One lovely woman is placed on the bathroom floor at a camera angle so you just see her beautiful body; her face is not visible. Partly this is because of a special effect needed, but mostly it’s because this is wank material and the boobies are more important than the face.

I confess an odd fondness for D’Amato’s “Emmanuelle” movies, which I enjoyed on certain cable channels in the 1990s in the same way I loved the erotic thrillers that also aired. Ultimately, I can’t say “Buio Omega” was a bad film, because it is certainly not, but it is a difficult film for a variety of reasons.

With that I will sign off on the strangest post I have ever written: A double feature of “Jamaica Inn” and “Buio Omega.”

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