Death Warmed Up (1984)

(Spoilers throughout)

David Blyth’s 1984 film Death Warmed Up has achieved some degree of notoriety for being one of the New Zealand’s first slasher films, if not the first. This is debatable—and not merely because such claims are always dubious—but because Death Warmed Up resists any sort of neat categorization. On paper, the film has a typical horror set-up, and contains all the constituent elements of a slasher, but somehow these elements never seem to come together in a meaningful way, and what is instead presented is a confusing and uncomfortable—although in many ways interesting—mess of a movie.

Confusion should be the operative term here. The film opens in-media-res after some beautiful pop-art design-y titles (a bizarre through-line), wherein precocious sixteen year old Michael Tucker (Dangerous Orphans’ Michael Hurst) barges into some strange facility, where a woman shouts at him “Wonderful news about your father’s promotion!” as he rushes absurdly fast down a hallway. He stops at the door to some sort of operating room and peeks in. Mike’s spying is indicative of the absurd amount of voyeurism found in this film, and the first hint at the bizarre sexual undertones lurking behind practically every scene in the film. An unknown man (who turns out to be Mike’s father’s research partner Archer Howell) claps a hand down on Mike’s shoulder and leers “You’re all sweaty… let’s get you cleaned up.” Before Michael can respond, the scene cuts to a highly eroticized shot of him luxuriating in the middle of a large locker-room shower. This low-lit, steamy scene is the first of many which heavily sexualize Michael Hurst’s nude or semi-nude body. Dr. Howell (Gary Day) enters silently and sticks Mike in the ass with a needle, cradling him in his arms as he passes out, whispering “trust me”. The lighting in this scene is of a sickly yellow hue. Most of the lighting in this film is monochromatic, the color palette mostly consisting of reds, greens and yellows.

Death Warmed Up is full of smash-cuts, and the first one comes directly after this scene of penetration. Michael is on the same operating table he spied earlier, thrashing about while the camera hovers around his crotch as he turns into some sort of mind-controlled zombie soldier. Following another smash-cut, the locale switches abruptly to Mike’s home, as his scientist father and mother return from some sort of awards banquet. In another heavily sexualized scene, Mike’s mother (Tina Grenville) is seen hanging out in a see-through nighty while his father (David Weatherley) scoffs at a television interview with his partner Howell, who raves “We are the generation of the end!” while detailing his theories about immortality. What follows then is a very uncomfortable sex scene, similarly lit by pallid yellow light (note that it’s light, and not lens gels, which goes farther to create the film’s diseased verisimilitude than stylistic gel shading could).

Just when it seems the film has abandoned Michael, he appears in the bushes outside his folks’ house with dead eyes and a shot-gun. Piling on more scenes of voyeurism, compounded by explicit Freudian theory, Michael pauses to observe his nude mother, before—in what can be read as Oedipal rage—blowing his parents away with Howell’s shot gun, held at crotch level. His father he even blasts below the waist. The grimiest part of this coitus-interuptus is the way the camera seems to sympathize with Michael, lingering outside the house with him and presenting him as a bystander, an innocent pawn, although certain choices he makes seem representative of psychological impulses rather than efficient drone tactics. The shot-gun blasts are presented in agonizing slo-mo, with extended blood-spray and time-stretched screaming.

Amidst more smash-cuts, Michael is taken to an abusive mental ward by Howell, where he is kept in a padded cell lit with blue lamps. The color palette in Death Warmed Up seems at odds with the typical cinematic color wheel, because colors usually associated with warm and positive emotion—yellow, blue—are used to indicate sickness, decay and abuse. I can’t imagine this was an intentional bit of unsettling bait-and-switch, but such counter-intuitiveness works nonetheless. After Mike’s institutional abuse is adequately represented, unassuming text awkwardly explains that “…on an isolated island Doctor Archer Howell is now operating on human patients a trans-cranial application. His first patient was Mr. Tex Monro.” (Whom is played by the great Bruno Lawrence from The Quiet Earth and Jack Be Nimble). As awkward as this bit of exposition is, it’s welcome, because despite the prior detailed synopsis of only the first ten minutes of the film found here, exactly what’s happening can only be realized upon multiple viewings. So much is unstated; characters names aren’t necessarily provided; relationships are unclear; motivations are mysterious. Questions which viewers would naturally ask are never answered. Everything that has just happened could provide the complete narrative for an entirely different film, but here it is squashed down to preamble.

“NOW”, appears on the screen (more 1980’s pop-art advertising-type design, with the same sharp lettering, jagged marks and bright colors from the opening credits), and it’s seven years later, and Michael is traveling to “an isolated island” (coastal Australia) to confront Howell. Yet, for some unknown reason, he’s brought his girlfriend Sandy and two of his dopy friends along. There is of course no great reason to bring pals along on a quest for vengeance; this is simply the transparent and non-diagetic supplying of murder victims.

Michael’s quest for revenge/closure could begin on the island, but instead we meet Mike & Co. on a ferry en route to the island. While the film’s prologue moves at break-neck pace, the rest is disproportionately slow, meandering and frustrating. Unimportant scenes drag and drag, while significant plot points come and go with neither care nor attention. There is no reason to include a ferry-ride to the island if not to introduce and set up characters. However, Mike’s pals are so thinly characterized that the opportunity is wasted. Most of the characters in the film are at least shown on camera in this sequence, as it seems the ferry is sailing into the remainder of the film, rather than to an actual island, because all the henchmen and human guinea pigs Mike will confront later are also on the boat. A severely fucked up and decomposing Bruno Lawrence in sequestered in captain’s quarters, while Howell’s lap dogs Jannings and Spider wait in a black van watching Michael’s friends Jeannie and Lucas having sex; “I love the smell of blonde pussy in the morning”, one quips.

These are the patients who’ve undergone Howell’s immortality treatments. The greasy, strung-out lowlifes Howell is experimenting on look like they walked off the set of a post-apocalypse film. Lawrence’s Tex is a creepy hunchbacked retard who’s practically rotting. Presumably Michael underwent a similar treatment, which somehow failed to have the same effect on him. Before the close of the sequence, Tex sprays some neon vomit on the deck and Lucas (William Upjohn) starts a fight with Spider after pissing on his van. Spider is the movie’s most interesting character, really, played with sadistic relish by David Letch (“Ratbag” in Nate & Hayes).

Over the course of this scene (which feels like prologue number two) Michael is revealed to be a rather unlikable character, a hick with a faux-punk attitude. This seems a strange choice, as Michael is a sympathetic character from the start, and, in such an unambitious revenge film, it seems in the film’s best interest to position Mike as a justified protagonist, not a reject from the Future Kill fraternity.

What’s interesting about Death Warmed Up has to do with how the fractured narrative allows for interesting mistakes and flaws. For example, instead of building up to the final confrontation between Howell and Michael, Michael sees Howell walking across the street the moment he arrives on the island. Instead of getting to work at collecting information and planning some sort of attack, Mike takes his friends to the beach or to explore some weird tunnel. The film takes unnecessary diversions into embarrassing comedy, including a truly offensive scene were a white guy plays an obnoxious Indian convenience store clerk.

And while we spend a lot of time with Mike’s pals, we know nothing about them. Lucas is an annoying jock, Jeannie his horny leopard-print wearing girlfriend. Mike’s girlfriend Sandy is largely underdeveloped, although some tics and idiosyncrasies serve to flesh out her character somewhat. In the beach scene, Mike’s ass and boner (!?) are center-frame, as he struts around in his underwear. When he is dressed, he’s wearing a Roy Lichtenstein-esque print shirt and cut-offs, complimenting the film’s specific design scheme. While there’s a lot of slack creatively here, at least the costume department and title company seem to be in sync. All the fashions here are fetishistic, from the tight pants and muscle tees to the post-apocalyptic leather to the revealing nurses’ outfits Howell’s supermodel-assistants wear.

The tunnel-exploration scene at least moves the film forward, as the crew are ambushed by Spider and his pal, who chase the kids on motorbikes. As they ride they pass through orange, red, yellow and blue lights. By this point, any interpretation of color-specific thematic resonance breaks down. In a rapid-fire succession of events reminiscent of the opening scenes, Spider’s partner is killed and Jeannie is nearly killed. What exactly is wrong with her isn’t clear, aside from perhaps a vague head injury. Sandy flips, and demands that Mike take her to the psychiatric hospital, and gets so heated that she strangles Michael while yelling at him. Of course, asking the same people who are responsible for one’s injury for help is ridiculous, but, the narrative needs to get the kids to get to the hospital somehow. Of course, this could have been solved by simply giving Mike a plan in the script, instead of sending him off to the beach without any sort of concrete plan.

As Michael and his friends make their way to the hospital, all hell is breaking lose, as Spider—heartbroken—has decided to free all of Howell’s patients, essentially turning the film into a zombie flick. This scene features a Doctor yelling, “We got an outbreak of psychos!” which is particularly offensive. The zombies mob the island, while Mike and the rest finally arrive at the hospital. In a succession of clunky set-piece action scenes, most everybody dies, including Jeannie. In a satisfying moment, Spider kills Lucas. The subtext here is that Michael is directly responsible, as he’s risked his friends’ lives, and doesn’t seem to feel any guilt or even make the connection.

If it seems like I’ve barely mentioned Dr. Howell, this is because he’s barely a presence in the film. His motivations are broad and clichéd. His part is mysterious. In fact, he’s only really on screen at the beginning and end of the film, serving only to motivate changes in Michael’s personality and priorities. Their confrontation is a role reversal from the early shower scene, and is just as intimate. Howell again wields a phallic weapon under sickly yellow lighting, only this time Michael does the penetration, thrusting a scalpel into Howell’s body as he says “trust me”, mocking Howell earlier line. While this should be the film’s denouement, it seems merely to be another inconsequential moment in a fractured narrative full of confusingly isolated moments.

The real climax comes while Sandy and Mike attempt to flee the island (Spider and hundreds of zombies presumably nearby). They come upon some debris in the road, and are unable to pass. Sandy sobs “Why!?!?” while banging Michael’s head violently while they sit in the defeated getaway-car. Her impulsive violent outbursts are bizarre, but at least serve as some kind of characterization. “It’s over,” he says, then “It hasn’t even begun.”, as if the film is actually the prelude to an epic zombie apocalypse.

(Major spoiler here).

After this, this histrionic and weird film wraps up with a histrionic and weird ending. Michael walks stiffly to the side of the road—recalling his zombified movements from the film’s opening—and is killed by falling power lines. This seems to suggest that Mike is paying for his earlier sins, and that he accepts this, as something about the action of the power lines seems supernaturally predetermined. That said, this is a film which stubbornly resists psychoanalysis. Attempts to pin ideas onto certain moments seem futile.

After Michael dies, Sandy clutches his lifeless body and wails in agony, which is a suitably depressing end for a rather misanthropic film. After the end credits (in the same style of the opening, set to a minimal Eno-esque score), there is one final tag, Spider’s catch-phrase “I’ll get you all!” which seems directed at the audience. This is actually a nice touch, in keeping with this film’s strongest attribute: its assured, cutting edge style, which seems more in line with European art-house cinema, which actually became a hallmark of NZ genre cinema. There isn’t much in Blyth’s resume to indicate this, however. In fact, I don’t know much about Blyth, as his filmography is obscure. Apparently he was fired off the set of House III and directed a childrens film called Grampire. Aside from Bruno Lawrence’s extended cameo, there’s not much here to attract the average genre fan. And while Death Warmed Up is a minor cult film, it hasn’t achieved nearly the notoriety it demands; it would be interesting to see some sort of special edition DVD release.

What’s most unique about Death Warmed Up is how its flaws actually work in its favor. Instead of being a typical slasher film, it is instead a dense and curious mess of a movie which demands repeat viewings. The counter-intuitive workings of the film ask questions that are hard to answer. Why does the film focus its attention of the trivial yet gloss over important events, creating a confusing and elliptical narrative. Why the elevation of typically uninteresting minutia and irrelevant characters driving, waiting and hanging around, while presumable more interesting plot developments take place elsewhere. The film is seriously flawed, yes—these interesting elements never gel as a cohesive whole—but it’s strangeness and ineptitude seem almost experimental in light of the deliberate, assured stylistic choices made. This internal juxtaposition works to cook up a film which has many problems, yet still stands as an intriguing and dreamlike cinematic mutation.

The October Ordeal II 01: Dead Heat (1988)

(Thanks to Analog Medium for some of these images)

With the right four leads, zombie comedy Dead Heat could have been a minor cult-classic. Unfortunately, we have Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo as Roger Mortis (get it?) and Doug Bigelow, and Lindsay Frost and Clare Kirkconnell and plot-moving ingénues Randi James and Rebecca Smythers. That said, Dead Heat is still a fun, harmless B-pic that manages to successfully exist in several genres: Buddy-Comedy, Cop Actioner, Science Fiction and gross-out Zombie horror.

While writer Terry Black has a slim resume, director Mark Goldblatt has an interesting oeuvre. He’s edited many Arnold movies, from Terminator and T2 to Commando and True Lies. He edited Get Crazy, Predator 2, The Howling and tons more. Dead Heat was his first foray into directing, which he followed with the Dolph Lundgren Punisher the following year. Also, Goldblatt is credited as First A.D. to Paul Verhoeven on Robocop (also he edited Starship Troopers, Showgirls and Hollow Man).

And, Robocop clearly had an influence on this film. Dead Heat opens with an aerial skyscraper tour of L.A. against a Pouledouris-biting main title theme. The similarities continue as we join a crime already in progress: two masked hoods robbing a yuppie Jewelry store. The cops soon arrive to complete the triad, and a spectacular display of indiscriminate gunfire seems to kill everyone except the thieves, who nevertheless take plenty of bullets, baffling the cops (PCP? They wonder). The way civilians and cops alike go down reminds of the ruthless and misanthropic action cinema of the time.













The comparisons to Robocop end here, with the entrance of Piscopo and Treat as Doug and Roger, two rogue cops on “double probation,” who cruise around listening to generic new wave tunes in a drop-top. Piscopo plays himself, mugging, wearing muscle-tees and telling offensive, unfunny jokes. Treat’s character, “Roger Mortis”, is his foil, a dry, deadpan stoic. Treat Williams is a B-string lame leading-man of the Matt McCoy or Parker Stevenson variety, here doing a straight man’s version of an off-beat cop. This casting (a boring actor as a low-key guy) actually makes you want more of Piscopo, which I never thought would be possible.

The two hear about the stand-off on the Police radio, which gets Piscopo so hyped-up he squeezes his hot dog really hard, causing the ketchup to obscenely bust up out of the bun. This seems to really shock them both. They jam on over to the scene, finally disposing of the long-lived criminals with a grenade and a speeding car, which really steams the chief! But the force has bigger things to worry about, because the coroner’s office immediately recognizes the bodies as recent arrivals... as in dead guys who walked away.

While the shifty Dr. McNabb (Darren McGavin) is uncooperative, Roger and Doug turn to his assistant—and their friend—Rebecca Smythers, played by Clare Kirkconnell, who has the right look and attitude, but not the chops. Her and Treat together are really a snooze-fest. She discovers that an experimental drug called “Sulfathyasol” is pumping through their un-dead veins, which can be traced back to the monolithic “Dante Pharmaceuticals”. While Becky stays at the morgue to perform a second autopsy on the thugs, Roger and Doug head over to Dante Pharm to check it out.

There they meet PR head Randi James, who gives them the standard tour. Of the four principles, Lindsay Frost is the best actor, well-cast and game for the part (she’s been in loads of TV shows, including Lost). Doug sneaks off to break into the super-secret wing of the facility, and is immediately assaulted by a many-faced mutant biker. My Netflix DVD started to skip at this point, so I lost a few minutes of the battle. While this is going on, Roger finds himself locked in a decompression chamber, where he suffocates and dies. Doug joins up with Randi (who claims ignorance), and they promptly rig up the re-animation machine and bring Roger back to life, with little deliberation aside from Piscopo trying to emote and saying “But what about the soul?”
The two cops visit Becky, who diagnoses Roger as a walking corpse, with less than a day to live. He’s determined to use his remaining hours to bring down Dante, so Doug and zombie-Roger rush off while Randi continues doing whatever it is that she is doing. They stop off at Randi’s, and find two hilarious zombies straight out of Miami Vice, who they kill with a harpoon and an electrified hot tub.

Randi seems to recall something about a sketchy Chinese butcher Dante Pharm makes mysterious deliveries to, so the three zip over to his deli to check it out. They find Professor Toru Tanaka chopping up a chicken! This is the best scene in the film, as Doug and Roger have to fight not only Tanaka but also a roomful of reanimated deli-meat, including a giant headless cow, which Doug dispenses with a meat hook. The pre-CG special effects here are impressive, as are the prosthetics and make-up FX throughout the film. They miss out on the butcher, “Thule” (Keye Luke), who’s escaped back to Dante.















After a short stop at the library (to give Treat a chance to freak out and flail through an existential crisis), they split up to follow different leads. Roger and Randi travel to Randi’s adoptive father’s crypt (Dante Pharmaceuticals honcho Arthur P. Loudermilk, played by Vincent Price!), where they discover some useful cryptogram on a lampshade. When they get back to Randi’s, they find Doug upside-down in a fish tank dead! From here they race over to Dante for the big conclusion, as all parties converge. Loudermilk isn’t dead after-all, as we see him trying to convince a crew of oldies to invest in his regeneration tech. A nearly decomposed Roger comes in with a machine gun, and has a hilarious fight with a zombie where they shoot each other about a thousand times. Also, most of the old people go down as Thule indiscriminately shoots up the room. A brain-dead Zombie-Piscopo comes at Roger, but he snaps him out of it by quoting homophobic jokes the two had cracked earlier in the film. I’m not lying. (Spoilers coming’) They then swiftly take out McNab and Loudermilk and blow up the lab. The two walk off to the cheesy credit song, flipping Casablanca: “This could be the end of a beautiful friendship.”

Dead Heat is completely dumb, and derivative, but it’s still fun, and has fantastic special effects. While it’s a far cry from its source material, Dead Heat is loosely based on DOA, which it references twice, with the character of Bigelow and also with a scene playing on a television in Randi’s apartment. Dead Heat is also clearly inspired by An American Werewolf in London, which inspired a whole micro-genre of transforming-buddy or family member horror comedies in the 80s and 90s: Teen Wolf, She's Back, My Mom’s a Werewolf, My Boyfriend’s Back, Idle Hands, et al.

The Anchor Bay DVD I watched is loaded with extras, including twenty minutes of deleted scenes (including a lost Dick Miller cameo), promos, the script, and a commentary with Black, Goldblatt and the producers, where Black reveals that a sequel was commissioned but never filmed, which he wrote the script for (makes sense—Loudermilk’s body is never seen and Becky hints that she’s found a way to slow or reverse the decomposition process). Too bad, as the fully zombied-up duo could have been more fun leads than they are here—neither particularly shines, unfortunately. If Michael Nouri and Wings Hauser played Mortis and Bigelow, this film would have been much improved. Nevertheless, I present here a well-paced, fun, lively, gory little flick with great special effects to kick off The October Ordeal ’08.

The October Ordeal Day 23: Lifespan

October 23rd: Lifespan (1974)

Elysian Fields released in May of this year a pair of lost Terry Riley soundtracks on one disc, songs composed by Riley for both Joel Santoni’s 1972 film Les Yeux Fermes and Alexander Whitlaw’s Lifespan. This bit of excavation put me on the lookout for both films, and only days after learning of Riley’s film collaborations, Lifespan appeared to me during my last visit to the now on-hiatus Astro Video. However, it became clear almost immediately that Riley’s music operates in the film as a phantom, an empty substance. Riley’s music here is barely noticeable: it’s chopped up, lost under dialog and low in the mix, present for no more than 30 seconds at any time. While an Erik Satie piece is also used, Riley’s contribution is slight, with original pieces but also a repeating snip from Riley’s “Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band,” the companion piece to Riley’s landmark “A Rainbow in Curved Air.” While Whitelaw may have good taste, he has wasted the contribution of a true master, the genius of minimalism who is now over 70.

The story: American doctor Ben Land is determined to find the genetic fountain of youth, to develop a serum to “cure” death, which Land terms “a disease.” While Land may claim altruistic motives, he himself is terrified of dying. As one of his colleagues points out, its odd such a young doctor has chosen to devote his life to the eradication of natural death. Land is called in Lifespan’s early moments to Amsterdam, to dialog with the world’s leader in the field, Dr. Linden (Eric Schneider). Before Land can meet with Linden, he is found dead in his apartment, an apparent suicide. Land agrees to continue Linden’s work, and is assigned a personal assistant in grad student Pim (Frans Mulder), the nephew of Linden’s friend Professor Van Arp (Fons Rademakers). In what appears to Land to be a serendipitous encounter, he also meets Linden’s mistress Anna (Tina Aumont, delivering one of the film’s best performances), whom he stalks around Amsterdam after he is blatantly used by Anna to satisfy her kinky sexual desires. Anna is somehow involved with a mystery man from Switzerland, the enigmatic millionaire Nicholas Ulrich (Klaus Kinski, who manages to infuse this stock character with depth and nuance).

The major reason there is no room for Riley’s music to breathe is that it becomes muted by an incessant and unnecessary narration. While the film is Dutch, the protagonist, Dr. Ben Land (American actor Hiram Keller) is an American, and his dialog and narration do not appear to be a feature only of the English-language release. Lifespan’s unending voice-over nearly sinks the film; Land’s narration recounts the events of every scene and outlines the film’s obvious themes. Every scene transition is smeared with this unwelcome insurance. Lifespan is a lesson in how first-person narration can become a heavy blunt object, smashing the film’s integrity as it barges blindly forth.

The narration may be a late addition to the final cut, an attempt to flesh out a main character, who should have allowed to simply be a cipher. Ben Land is a shallow character, driven by his obsessive nature. Keller is a dull leading man, an actor playing it cool but obviously clueless. This would be an example of mindful casting if the narration were removed; throughout Lifespan Land is positioned as a powerless pawn in a game larger than himself. The empty vessel of Ben Land eventually becomes Linden, as Land finds himself inhabiting Linden’s life, examining his notes, inheriting his position at the university, dating his girlfriend, and living in his apartment. Since his ambition was also Linden’s, his fall is orchestrated in a similar manner and Kinski is there to recruit the technician he needs to give his mad scientist dreams shape and structure.

What Ben calls “the horrors of the aging process” are being experienced by Ulrich, who realizes immortality is within his reach as long as he acts. Ulrich and his disciples Land and Linden represent the arrogance of science without ethics or reflection, and while Ulrich may be a more cautious Deadalus, Icarus is played by both Linden and Land, younger seekers flying too close to the sun.

While Lifespan squanders its score, the cinematography is of a specific and well-conveyed mood. Black and white are used to represent life and death, and whomever is in search of immortality (or whomever has found it) surrounds themselves with white; in many scenes, sheets of white linen hang inexplicably. From the white walls of the psychiatric hospital, to the long-lived mice to the reverently photographed Swiss Alps of Kinski’s Fortress of Solitude.

Late into the film, what seems like a traditional narrative essentially crumbles. Ulrich and Anna reveal to Land that Linden was studying the secret notes of a Russian scientist named Rashinski, who discovered the genetic secret to immortality before his death. This revelation breaks into the film uninvited; it is convenient, yet brings the film into a hallucinatory and bendable place. All story up to this fracture is cast into doubt as the crust of a massive conspiracy is exposed. An old man granted immortality by Linden has died, Pim has sold Land out to his uncle, lab notes concerning Linden’s immortal test mice have been doctored and Land is committed to a psych-ward for digging up the dead. This may be the proof of a campus-wide cover-up, it may also be Land’s delusion. Land is a fool no matter the case, led along by all parties, blind in his single-mindedness.

Land breaks from the University and Van Arp to join Kinski in Switzerland as his Igor. After the film’s only piece of inspired narration, Lifespan abruptly ends on a note of appropriate ambiguity. This conclusion is highly satisfying and even the film’s flawed elements crystallize into a cohesive and cooperative whole. While editing could have made Lifespan a classic, it is nevertheless a dreamlike, hallucinatory film about the collective mad quest for immortality.

The October Ordeal Day 21: Body Bags

October 21st: Body Bags (1993)

Like the Romero/Argento effort Two Evil Eyes, Body Bags is an early 90s horror anthology largely forgotten by genre fans. John Carpenter directs the first two segments ("The Gas Station", "Hair"), while Tobe Hooper takes care of the final section, "Eye." Body Bags was originally conceived as a Showtime original series. When the network bailed, a longer edit of the pilot was released as Body Bags the feature film. More than ten years later, Showtime gave the fright anthology a chance with Mick Garris' Masters of Horror/Fear Itself series, which failed to live up to its potential in three seasons.

Carpenter is featured here also as an actor, playing a kind of zombie coroner who introduces each segment. In these brief wrap-around moments, Carpenter lazily plays the Crypt-keeperesque "Coroner" while Tom Arnold and Hooper appear as assistants. The gags in these scenes fall flat; it's hard to imagine this set-up working in an ongoing television series.

The look of Body Bags is similar to every workmanlike, homogenized Stephen King television adaptation or Sci-Fi channel original movie. I have nothing against this stock style; actually there's something nostalgic and disorienting about the look of this type of television. The uniform and dressed-down sets and camera set-ups wouldn't be out of place in a sitcom or Lifetime movie, and perhaps that's why this style is inexplicably frightening in its seeming displacement.

This lends a lonely, depopulated feel to the segments, particularly the first, "The Gas Station." College student Anne (Alex Datcher) faces a serial killer while working her first-ever shift at an all-night pay-and-pump. While accomplished in mood and pacing, this segment suffers from a poor performance by Datcher and a distracting series of cameos. In a row Wes Craven, Sam Raimi and Carpenter favorite "Buck" Flower drop by. The entire film is full of cameos, in fact, from Arnold to Roger Corman to Debbie Harry and beyond. While the comedic second half benefits from its crowd-pleasing cameos, here they serve only to take the audience out of a segment which relies on the immersive rhythm of a taut thriller narrative.

Stacy Keach chews it up as Richard Coberts in "Hair", the film's best section. Coberts is a balding man who'll do anything to grow his hair back, equating his receding hair with receding vitality. Coberts, desperate to gain his self-confidence back, signs up for an experimental program in which intelligent hair follicle-monsters are grafted onto his scalp. In what plays like an adult version of The Peanut Butter Solution, Coberts wakes up the next morning with a ridiculously long, flowing mane of Fabio hair. The hair won't stop growing, and the killer micro-organisms seem to be eating him alive. While gruesome, "Hair" takes full advantage of its comic premise. Many of the jokes are laugh-out-loud funny. By allowing the segment to play for laughs at the expense of scares, Carpenter makes the film's smartest decision.

In the section which is the closest to the EC Comics/Creepshow aesthetic, Hooper directs "Eye" as a gory shocker, only subtracting the black comedy altogether. "Eye" is the weakest of the three segments, especially due to Mark Hamill's typically awful performance as Brent Matthews, a rising major league baseball star who loses his right eye in an auto accident. You guessed it-- the eye is cursed, transplanted from the dead body of a serial murderer (Ala yesterday's flick Body Parts). Hamill is just terrible, and sports a gnarly 'stache I found difficult to look at. Twiggy plays his wife. Weird.

While Body Bags may have been something of a throwaway gig for many involved, it actually remains interesting, despite the obvious and dated elements. I much prefer Body Bags to Masters of Horror, honestly. Who doesn't dig a good anthology film? While this may not be a classic, at least Carpenter's contributions are fully worthwhile. With Halloween fast approaching, now would be the best time to check this one out.

The October Ordeal Day 20: Body Parts

October 20th: Body Parts (1991)

(This is the final cop-out, I swear. Here's an old review. It isn't very well written. I'm running out of reserves, so this should be the last time I'll have to mine old SD material. There was simply too much going on today for me to watch a flick)

Body Parts is directed by Eric Red (writer of The Hitcher and Near Dark, and also potential murderer- Google it), and stars Jeff Fahey as Bill Chrushank, a psychology professor who loses his arm in a freak accident. As part of a new experimental program supervised by Dr. Agatha Webb (Lindsay Duncan), he receives a new arm, cut from a recently deceased serial killer (naturally). It takes Bill a while to get used to his newly grafted-on arm, especially since it seems to have retained some homicidal tendencies!

After alienating his family and freaking out his students, Bill decides to do a little P.I. work and figure out what’s up. He manages to find the names and addresses of the other participants, including unstable artist Remo Lacey (played by Brad Dourif!), who received the other arm and is now famous for his gruesome paintings, which are actually the killer’s murderous visions. He also locates the legs, which went to basketball player Mark Draper (Peter Murnik), an all-around nice guy who now runs incredibly fast, and hilariously drop-kicks people left and right. When Bill finds him, he’s just narrowly avoided crashing his car, when his foot slams unexpectedly on the gas at an intersection.

The three go to a bar to hash things out, but are so messed up from the killer parts they instigate a massive bar-brawl, fighting the patrons and each other. But things get even worse, when the killer returns- his head on a new body- and starts killing our protagonists to get his limbs back.

From then on the twists and turns never stop, with questionable science, schizoid performances, flying dropkicks, amazing basketball skills, evil doctors, suspicious cops, and Fahey shooting a gun at living body parts, suspended in a holding tank.

The film’s most inventive scene comes towards the end, when the resurrected killer (whom we learn is Dr. Webb’s son) pulls up alongside a police cruiser which Bill is sitting shotgun in, handcuffs Bill’s hand to his own, and speeds off, while the Jamaican cop in the driver's seat has no choice but to follow! Body Parts is one of the most inventive and enjoyable horror flicks I’ve seen in a while, thanks to real-life madman Eric Red.

The October Ordeal day 15: The Incredible Melting Man

October 15th: The Incredible Melting Man (1978)

(Spoilers, but who cares?)

The Incredible Melting Man may be a drive-in sci-fi/horror film from the 70s, but it feels more like a cheap 50's monster flick (Hideous Sun Demon specifically). A guy (Alex Rebar as Steve West) goes into space (to Saturn, actually) and comes back as a melting maniac compelled to kill.

Like Octaman, this film boasts early Rick Baker makeup effects. The melt-fx look fine, but rather average for the era. This is an extremely average film, fitting all the stereotypes of the worst in an already maligned genre (The Clones is similar in its uniform dullness). A pattern develops early on: the local sheriff and some doctors run around looking for Melt-face while he murders whoever happens to be wandering the country side. Featured is Burr DeBenning as Ted Nelson, former friend of Steve's.

Each of these scenes last so long they nearly morph Incredible Melting Man into an anthology film; this makes sense, each attack necessarily pads out the film. Melt-face attacks a group of kids, some fishermen, young lovers and tramps hanging out by the tracks. In fact, the entire film feels padded: it even seems to wait for its own end impatiently. Even though TIMM is less than 85 minutes long, it feels like dull, lifeless eternity.

The tone of this film is strange. While a guy melting to death might lend a seriocomic element to any horror film, at times Melting Man feels downright slapstick. In one nonsensical sequence, Nelson's mother-in-law wanders around trying to pick wild lemons... to circus music. The dialog in this scene is beyond inane.

From the Vestron cover art, I assumed The Incredible Melting Man would have something in common with Frankenhooker or Slime City. While this film and Slime City share a similar plot, they could be no different in tone. The only interesting thing in this film is the ultra-bleak ending: some cops shoot Nelson in a moment of confusion, Melting Man regains his identity momentarily, kills the cops and then melts to death. If this isn't depressing enough, the credits roll to a radio message announcing further trips to Saturn (think the final moments of Mutant or Rabid). A quiet moment belies the fact that the world is about to fall apart. If only the entirety of the film could have mined this one scene for its dark potential.

The October Ordeal Day 13: Frankenhooker

October 13th: Frankenhooker (1990)



















Once in elementary school a kid told me that he and his cousin had cut up a Playboy magazine in order to construct the “perfect woman.” This seemed really strange to me at the time, as I imagined attractive parts actually looking rather nightmarish when combined. Well, perhaps Henenlotter once did the same thing; if he didn’t, he gets to do it here. Protagonist Jeffrey Franken (get it?) is a failed surgeon who works at a power plant in New Jersey. When his fiancée dies in a freak lawn-mower accident, he gets to construct a new and improved version of Elizabeth Shelley (get that one too?) from scratch, utilizing his unique skill-set. Since most of Liz (Patty Mullen) is chewed to bits, he has only her severed head to work with. Jeff’s problem (and—in his mind—an opportunity) is that he needs to find replacement parts somewhere.

One thing that’s always struck me about Henenlotter is that his films are extremely economical. Here, you know all you need to know before the title card, and the rest of Frankenhooker is open for gags, gore, and plenty of stray ideas. Henenlotter here seems concerned with the same themes present in Brain Damage and Basket Case, and elaborates these ideas further and with greater clarity. Also, the tone of this film is quite different. The laughs are more genuine here, as the bleak tone of Basket Case is completely absent. This is a wild and thrilling film, well-paced and bursting with gross-out humor. The budget is also considerably higher, thanks to the investment of producer James Glickenhaus, the director of Exterminator, who brought much of his regular crew along.

The point is clearly made here that while Jeff wants his girlfriend back, he also sees her accident as a perverse opportunity to construct his own super-model fantasy. Jeffrey is a flawed character, but Henenlotter still clearly wants us to like him in spite of this. As Dr. Franken, James Lorinz isn’t a great actor, but he’s well cast here. Henenlotter’s protagonists are never played by the most talented performers, he seems to cast for some schlubbish quality rather than chops, which is fine. It works. While Jeffrey is quite average in many ways, there’s a heightened strangeness about him that Lorinz conveys nicely. How many mild-mannered med-school drop-outs regularly drill holes in their cranium to stimulate creative thought? This trepidation motif is nicely carried over from Brain Damage.

Come to think of it, Henenlotter’s protagonists are all well-meaning but totally selfish obsessives, dedicated to one strange goal: Duane in Basket Case is wholly devoted to the well-being of his brother Bilal; Brian in Brain Damage needs the parasite Aylmer to get high. Jeffrey’s quest to bring Liz back from the dead is both pathetic and touching. In his single-mindedness he never pauses to question his true motives. In one hilarious scene Jeff asks Liz’s severed head: “Honey can’t you picture yourself in this body, kneeling on ma’s couch in the basement?”, while pointing to a centerfold model. His world-view, like much in Henenlotter’s world, is candidly low-rent.

Where does Jeff go to find the “spare parts” he needs? Across the bridge to NYC of course, Henenlotter’s home and creative inspiration. Jeffrey sets out to find a half dozen prostitutes, whom together have the different body parts he needs. Jeff is conflicted in that he isn’t a murderer, but his stubborn determination forces him to rationalize and justify any wrong-doing on his part as an unfortunate necessity. “I can’t feel guilty now. I just wanna make life” He tells himself. In order to feel that he is not responsible, Jeff sets up a scenario so that he himself does not have to perform the act himself, he merely has to create the ideal circumstances. He finds an ally in the bane of the film’s prostitutes: crack cocaine. Jeff synthesizes a “super-crack” which causes the smoker to explode into a heap of junk limbs. Carrying a bag full of eviscerated bodies to his trunk, he promises he’ll bring them all back once he’s got Liz among the living.

With the introduction of crack into the film, a clear line is traced from the anti-drug themes of Brain Damage. While Brain Damage feels a bit short-sighted and reactionary, Henenlotter adds layers of complexity to what it still essentially the same argument here. While in Brain Damage avoiding Aylmer’s addictive juice is simply an act of initial will power, here the message is matured. Henenlotter admits the solution to the problem of addiction is much bigger than “Just Say No.” Jeffrey even, in a moment of intentional ignorance, even recites the slogan. Jeffrey himself, however, is an addict: he’s addicted to his power drill. He also uses drugs to manipulate others, and is mirrored by the pimps who populate the film.

Once he has the raw material, Jeff assembles Elizabeth and sends her on a raised platform into a raging storm. In a technically impressive scene, bolts of lightning bring the patchwork Liz back into the living world. She looks quite monstrous of course, her skin a mosaic of different color tones and textures, stitched together with huge medical staples. He hair is also bright purple, somehow changed by the bolt. Patty Mullen as zombie-Liz is both attractive and repulsive, much like Elsa Lanchester as the original Bride of Frankenstein.

Unfortunately for Jeffrey, she’s not the Liz he once knew, as all the women he murdered to recreate her have lent her pieces of their psyches as well as their bodies. She becomes a kind of ur-prostitute, bent only on drugs and money. Her mad mission is parallel to Jeff’s, in fact. Her mantra: “Got any money?” All of her lines are actually cribbed dialog from earlier in the film. As there is an unusual amount of characterization for a genre film, its even possible to notice individual personalities bubbling to the surface. Re-animated Liz leaves Jeff baffled and heads for New York, her clunking Frankenstein pumps a nice touch. The following scenes are great: sleazy, neon and wonderfully time-stamped (the Batman logo is everywhere).

(spoilers in this section)

After Jeff finds Liz he re-zaps her and manages to momentarily bring back the woman he knows and loves. In the film’s smartest scene, she chides Jeff for his mad quest, and realizes that his selective reconstruction has afforded him certain chauvinistic luxuries, granted without her consent or approval. This moment is short-lived however, as what follows is not only the film’s climax but its goriest moment. Sadistic pimp “Zorro” has followed Jeffrey home, and has finally figured out what happened to his “employees.” Zorro (Joseph Gonzalez from Brain Damage), in a surprising moment, cuts Jeff’s head clean off. After this, Jeff’s storage tank flips over, and the reconfigured prostitutes from earlier in the film spill into frame. Don’t ask how, but the parts have assembled themselves into monstrosities Brian Yuzna may have taken note of. Here the effects come courtesy of Henenlotter collaborator Gabe Bartoloz. The flesh-beasts drag Zorro into the tank and close the lid, leaving the rest to the viewer’s imagination.

(major spoiler here)

In the film’s final moment (which is also the final gag), Liz reconstructs Jeff. But since his mystery serum is estrogen-based (did I forget to mention that?), she needs the leftover parts of women to bring him back to life. Jeff’s lesson is learned here via his castration; it’s a great gag, yes, but it also sums up the entire film in a really smart way. Jeffrey’s quest to create the perfect woman at the expense of all others is reversed; he himself must become that ideal woman. Roles here are also reversed. While I don’t think Henenlotter is that deep, this scene brings into question the validity of essentialist ideas about men and women, at least implicitly. So much of 80s horror is informed by Reagan’s mad rule. While Frankenhooker was filmed in ‘89, as Reagan had left office, he feels present here. While Henenlotter has intelligent things to say here about the failed war on drugs, his strongest move is to cut the predatory yuppie male’s dick off.

It’s clear from the relatively few films Henenlotter directed that he knows his craft. If things had gone a different route, he could have parlayed his low-budget, less-is-more visionary talents to mainstream success, like Raimi or Jackson. He stayed true to his roots instead, putting his time into Something Weird, unearthing lost cult films for DVD. While I find much of Something Weird to leave a sour taste, I admire his commitment. A look on IMDb reveals he’s completed work on a curious new picture, one co-written by shock-rapper R.A. the Rugged Man and featuring many underground-rap stalwarts. While I now find Vinnie Paz and Reef’s faux-underground gun rap unbearable, I would have been hyped up if this film came out five years ago, when I couldn’t get enough of underground “horror-core” hip-hop. We’ll see.

Slime City tomorrow! Black Roses soon!

The October Ordeal Day 11: Thirst

October 11th: Thirst (1979)

Rod Hardy’s Thirst, while shot in Australia, has a lot in common with English and Italian thrillers. Short on logic, the film communicates its style first and foremost: brooding, brutal, cold and claustrophobic. The pulp acting and lyrical dialog remind of Italy’s genre films; what’s substantial in most narrative films is merely ornamental here.

So I wasn’t alarmed when ten minutes into the film I had no fucking clue what was going on. Half the scenes in Thirst are revealed to be dream, hallucination, or drug trip. The diegesis of the film is splintered and notional; Thirst could be chopped up and rearranged in any way.

Thankfully, Thirst isn’t overloaded with characters, as films of this nature often are. Chantal Contouri is totally game as Elizabeth Bathory’s direct descendent Kate Davis. Shirley Cameron (credited as “Ms. Cameron”) plays an ice-queen cult-leader who’s definitely been reading Ayn Rand. David Hemmings, at the beginning of his fat-phase, is Cameron’s mad doctor Fraser. Henry Silva hangs out--as far as I can tell that's his only purpose here. Cameron and co. kidnap Davis and take her to their Jonestown-esque compound for conditioning (complete with machine gunning guards). Turns out she’s genetically predestined to love the taste of blood, which our villains claim is the source of ultimate power. This isn’t a vampire film, although the standard vamp imagery and symbolism are evoked with glee. The film is actually about a gang of neo-fascists systematizing the Big N’s “will to power.”

This isn’t my own observation, as the film’s characters take every opportunity to proclaim as much. Cameron gets the best lines (“[Drinking blood] is the ultimate aristocratic act.”), including a monologue theorizing the revulsion people feel when witness to violence is actually veiled attraction. Our natural state, she claims, is to crave power, here represented by sweet, sweet blood. The blood’s not for everyone though. The cultists keep stores of “Bloodcows,” on-hand. These willing young WASPS hang out by the pool all day, happy to donate the occasional pint. I guess all you need to attract a slave-class is a bitchin' pad. These dozy kids look like they wandered off the set of Logan’s Run.

Kate isn’t down with this scenario. So she’s drugged, and spends most of the film running through her own mind. Hemmings as Fraser dopes her with some mystery serum to induce “90-minute” composite memory hallucinations grown from favored past-events. Once this motif begins, it becomes impossible to tell dream and reality apart. Often scenes will telescope out via false awakenings until not even the script is sure which is which.

The film’s endless pile-ons do becomes tiresome eventually. As the conditioning sequence drummed on I began to suspect that the film’s running time was merely being padded out. That, or the producers wanted a reason, any reason, to place nudity in the film (via Kate’s occasional sex-dreams). Its an over-long excursion for such a short film (about 90 minutes, actually… Hmmm). The ending is just as confusing as everything else here, and whether Kate feeds or not is a mystery. The twist of all twists at the very end is less a denouement than simply another head-scratcher.

I must mention Bryan May’s excellent score. May is something of an unheralded genius. His versatile scores have enlivened many Australian films, including Mad Max and the films of Brian Trenchard-Smith. Here, May’s score morphs from Sci-Fi treble pulses to buzzing white-noise to Debussian string-swells. The key word is sustain. I dig the score so much I’m considering purchasing the OST album from Movie-Grooves.

Is this a great film? Not really. It is however, a solid genre entry. If you dig this sort of thing, go for it. You could do worse. If for no other reason, watch this to see Silva make a strong impression merely by standing in the background and smirking.

Tomorrow I begin one of two cycles. I’ve got some Gialli coming in the mail from Netflix. If the post is late I’ll start a gross-out circuit including Slime City, The Incredible Melting Man and Street Trash. I’ll be taking in some heavy audio-horror tomorrow, as I head to Hampshire College to catch Wolf Eyes. I’ve gone to see a lot of bands these past few months, but this is the most amped-up I’ve been for a show in ages.

The October Ordeal Day 10: Mutant

October 10th: Mutant (1984)

(Also known as Night Shadows.)

If there is one actor who’s truly captured the collective heart of Samurai Dreams, its Wings Hauser. The man is a maniac. The man is an uncontrollable force of nature. Wings doesn’t chew scenery, he eats it alive. Yet every now and then, Wings proves he can actually act. Check him out in Vice Squad, The Wind or Norman Mailer’s Tough Guys Don’t Dance. And while Mutant is no masterpiece, Wings reins in his Wagnerian instincts enough to turn in an atypical low-key performance.

Low key or not, however, Wings is incapable of playing an everyman. Here he plays a man who’s written as such, but his idiosyncrasies as an actor override the character. Wings plays Josh Cameron, a guy with a strange sense of humor who’s on a backwoods road trip with his younger brother Mike Cameron (no relation to the prankster who famously wore a Pepsi shirt to school on “Coke Day”). Lee Montgomery plays Mike as a whiny city-boy, who’s happy to spend time with his brother after a messy break-up, but doesn’t trust the small-town roads. And with good reason. No sooner than they pass into one particularly insular town, the two brothers are run off the road by a particularly ornery batch of rednecks. Their car busted, Mike and Josh are forced to venture into town. Finding a few friendly folks, Mike and Josh decide to stay the night at a local bed & breakfast. Josh’s ordeal begins in the morning, when he awakens to find Mike missing from his room.

Josh finds allies in the town doctor, Myra Tate (Jennifer Warren, turning in a competent performance), local teacher Holly Pierce (Jody Medford as Wings’ love interest), and the inimitable Bo Hopkins as the soused Sheriff Will Steward. These four characters seem to be the only sane component of Goodland, GA, and that’s not just because toxic waste is turning denizens into cannibals. The evil town is a convention as old as the horror genre itself, one that surely predates film itself. How many horror films feature a city-boy learning all about country folk the hard-way? Plenty.

Josh soon realizes that the mystery of Goodland is deeper than the location of his lost brother. It seems like everyone’s coming down with a strange “virus,” and this may have something to do with a sharp increase in zombie activity. About mid-way through, Mutant becomes a somewhat different film. The desolation of Goodland is almost tangible, as more and more people fall off the charts. The deserted-streets motif is really attractive to me. This spooky convention helped to shape the aesthetic of many films; the Phantasm sequels for instance.

Once our gang figures out what’s going on, it’s too late to do anything except hide. In the film’s best scene, Josh and Holly find Doc Tate’s OR trashed, blood everywhere. Finding the Doc’s tape recorder, Josh plays back her last autopsy report, which quickly turns into the soundtrack to her murder. As tinny screams play on the tape, hand-held camera violently scans the wreckage of the destroyed room, Josh and Holly standing motionless. The frenzy of the sequence is remarkable. As artful at this scene is, it’s immediately followed by a poorly-lit (although my worn Vestron vhs may be the culprit here) zombie chase. This is the film’s downfall: something rather good is followed by something rather bad (the bad often a genre convention poorly played). This discord is eased by Richard Band’s dynamic score. I like Band’s Full Moon work, but this is subtler—and ultimately better—work.

The final moments of the film are overwhelmingly desperate. Things really do seem hopeless. In one scene, Holly and Josh share a quiet moment while making Molotov cocktails in an abandoned grocery. Wings’ presence in this scene is undeniable, and he proves that subtly isn’t actually beyond his ability. Its too bad the character is given almost no substance (via a back-story, a rounded personality, etc).

Even though the ending seems hopeful (the chemical plant responsible for the virus is shut down), the momentary victory of Josh, Holly and the Sheriff is shattered by the downbeat voice-over which ends the film: the company responsible has already begun building new plants across the state (despite this late edition to the film, it doesn’t seem justified to call Mutant a political film; there’s no explicit environmentalist theme). While the radio announcer’s message is bleak, the relieved smiles of the three surviving characters may not point to irony or pessimism, but ultimately the virtue of hope, no matter how fleeting. I can’t say if this is the right interpretation, but this is certainly how Wings plays it.