Schlock: The Secret History of American Movies

I went into Ray Greene's 2001 documentary Schlock: The Secret History of American Movies thinking that it would be a bit of a waste for me. I would say I'm somewhat familiar with the exploitation films of the 50s and 60s, and worried that the film would not contain anything I didn't know. I was SO wrong, with its great collection of interviews and well-researched narration the film left me surprised, informed and delighted. It is not the names or content of the films that matter but the overall narrative of early exploitation that Greene constructs for the viewer.

The film's strength lies in its great collection of interviewees. David F. Friedman (H. G. Lewis collaborator and producer of Blood Feast and The Acid Eaters), Doris Wishman (Bad Girls Go to Hell, and, according to the film, the most prolific female director of the sound age), Roger Corman (legendary producer/writer/director/talent-magnet), Harry Novak (prolific sexploitation producer) and a bunch of other equally distinguished guests relate anecdotes and commentary as Greene examines the main movements of 50s and 60s exploitation (Teen, Sexploitation, "Roughies," Horror, etc.) in chronological order. Some highlights include both Forrest J. Ackerman and Harry Novak taking swipes at the success of Blood Feast. Forry just wrinkles his nose and politely declines to comment on the film while Novak takes the less-than-classy path and regards the film with absolute contempt(and, if I'm not mistaken, a touch of jealousy that he didn't think of it first). There are also some priceless self deprecating lines from Doris Wishman and some delightful and thought-provoking weirdness from Maila Nurmi (a.k.a Vampira). For me the highlight of the film is Friedman recalling stories from the road show circuit of the fifties. He laughs and describes the days when he and other producers were peddling "educational" films that featured childbirth and VD as "sexy."

The film could have easily been three hours if Greene had chosen to cover the exploitation of the 70s and 80s, but he instead chooses to end with the formation of the MPAA (and some bittersweet footage of a drive-in being demolished). He implies(convincingly) that the studios' ability to show sex and violence diminished the appeal and need for filmmakers and producers like those interviewed.

They may seem crude by today's standards, but I dare you to watch this film and not have your Netflix queue balloon. A good percentage of these films are available on double feature discs from Something Weird Video (which use quantity of features to make up for what they normally lack in transfer quality) and many of the Corman/AIP films covered have readily available editions.

The film poses questions about the artistic validity of the films, and while almost all the filmmakers deny any "messages" Greene's documentary definitely leaves you pondering.

Hellfire Right Out of the Gate: Shock Totem's First Issue

I ordered my copy of Shock Totem #1 its first week of release, but had Amazon send it to the wrong house by mistake, so pardon the lateness of me jumping on the bandwagon.

The first thing that jumps out at you as you behold this journal is the overall quality of the physical product itself. It has a really nice glossy cover, perfect binding, and a convenient 1 placed on the spine, ensuring it will look spiffy on a bookshelf(which is exactly where editor K. Allen Wood wants you to keep it, he says so in his editorial).

There is a refreshing level variety in the fiction. The quality is consistently high but the stories vary greatly in tone and subject. They range from creepily whimsical ("Music Box") to funny ("Murder For Beginners") to devastating("Thirty-Two Scenes from a Dead Hooker's Mouth") , and cover topics as ranging from acute paranoia ("Complexity") to the zombie tale ("The Dead March" one of my favorites...and here I am thinking I would never give a crap about a zombie story again). Hats off the the readers, this is truly the best of what's out there.

There are some very insightful interviews as well (the stand out being John Skipp, which had me on ebay the second I finished it, looking for some of his older collaborations with Craig Spector) and some very persuasive reviews (many things covered made their way into my Amazon wishlist).

One other interesting feature of the mag is the inclusion of "the stories behind the stories," in which the authors talk about the origins of their works. A truly inspired idea.

The issue is available for only SIX BUCKS. That's ridiculously cheap, six dollars for 100, ad-free pages. I know next to nothing about the publishing biz but I pray there is enough of an audience out there to make this a success, especially considering its modest price. The editorial decision to make the journal bi-annual was probably another wise one: over-ambition has been the kryptonite for far too many print magazines.

Buy it, blog about it, twitter it, graffiti it on your neighbor's fence and let's hope Shock Totem is here for the long haul.

The Hood Has Eyes: Urban Gothic Brings Sawney Bean to the Inner-City

The sub-genre of mutated inbred cannibals has almost exclusively been set in the wilderness (Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes, Jack Ketchum's Off Season and its sequel Offspring, Richard Laymon's The Woods are Dark) but for his newest novel modern day horror maestro Brian Keene moves the action out of the wilds and into the cities.

The plot concerns a carload of kids who break down in the wrong part of Philly coming home from a concert. The teens try to find shelter in an old house, but soon learn what lurks inside it is far worse than the inner-city has to offer.

The plot is simple but its execution is the marvelous part. The first thing I was doing was laughing at the characters Keene presents us with. I was rolling my eyes at their apparent clueless-ness and could not wait to see a few bite it. But once they get inside the house and are faced with its perverse tenants, characters develop, emotions shift and the reader begins to genuinely care for these kids, rooting for them every step of the way. We aren't presented with victims; we're presented with people put in a illogical situation (to borrow one of the character's rationalizations).

The sections of the book that take place inside the house itself reminded me a whole lot of the feeling of being inside a haunted attraction: destroyed furniture, twisting hallways and secret passageways. The mutants are plentiful and disgusting, and each one the reader meets leaves them thinking: "oh that has to be the last one." Only to be proven wrong.

There is a subplot taking place outside the house in which we are introduced to the book's most likable character: Perry Watkins. Perry is an aging African American man who has seen his community destroyed by indifference: and he's not going to take it anymore.

To reveal more would be to spoil, but be warned: Keene wrote this one for the hardest of the hardcore. He liberally splatters the pages with every bodily fluid imaginable, with the grace and dexterity of a true master.

For those looking for (comparatively) tamer Keene thrills I would suggest his coming-of-age/monster story Ghoul. For those with stronger constitutions there is no safer bet for some gross, fun(?) and maybe even socially conscious scares than Urban Gothic.

Creamed Corn: How is "Children of the Corn" a classic?

Anchor Bay's new "25th Anniversary Edition" of Children of the Corn is a classic example of "great disc, not-so-great movie."

Based on the Stephen King story of the same name, the film does have a few strong points. There's an early performance by the great Linda Hamilton, some creepy "creepy kids", and some enjoyably schlocky scenes in the first half of the film (the runaway's murder and subsequent car accident) but the overall production reeks of producer meddling and ambition tempered by an ultra-low budget. If feels like these forces were at work, it's because they were. The newly produced special features on the disc confirms this.

Everyone (mainly producer Donald Borchers and director Fritz Kiersch) in the features seems to be offering excuses for why the film is the way it is. Everyone except for Linda Hamilton that is, who seems to be just as baffled as me as to the film's success. In the extra entitled "Stephen King on a Shoestring" Borchers offers a list of reasons why he was the main reason the film failed. Among his many bonehead moves was the changing of the relationship of the main couple (King has them as a marriage on the rocks) to make it more conducive to a "happy" ending, the introduction of two precocious "good" kids, and the film's ill-conceived final sequence where the heroes (Peter Horton's jerk of a character and an annoying little boy) fight "he who walks behind the rows."

Both Hamilton and actor Courtney Gains (Malachai) bemoan the loss of several scenes that appeared in the script but for budgetary reasons were not filmed, which makes the viewer wonder: could this film have been any good?

Probably, but we'll never know. Brochers talks about how he is looking for a second chance in the form of a remake, but on additional research I found that he was alluding to a made-for-TV movie that will air on the newly renamed Syfy. I'll believe that when I see it.

Red Shirt Pictures and Anchor Bay should be applauded for their work, as the features are great and the transfer is solid (my local Best Buy graciously put the Blu-ray on the shelves a month before its street date, and it looks great). If you are one of the many people that likes the film, you should be overjoyed. If you're like me you'll still probably find something to like, or at least be frustrated by.


Special Report:

Buy Catherine J. Gardner's book The Sour Aftertaste of Olive Lemon now from Bucket O' Guts Press.

"Don't Touch Me, I'm a Religious Object.": Simon, King of the Witches

I've heard a lot of conflicting reports on 1971's Simon, King of the Witches. All of the critics have good things to say about Andrew Prine (also the star of Terror Circus, review here) and they all also use the word "weird" somewhere in their review. The division seems to come as to what kind of film Simon (which was its original title, the studio tacked on the "King of the Witches" to rope in audiences looking for horror) actually is. The answer is a bit on the long side, director Bruce Kessler (who is interviewed on the recent Dark Sky release of the film) seems to play up the dark comedic aspects of the film, and while they are there I'm not quite sure the film can be classified as a comedy. It is a cobbling of different sub-genres (among them: broad comedy, "true-life" supernatural expose, underdog story, horror and there's even a dash of Fitzgerald-inspired societal commentary) that never really meshes together.

The film is to be appreciated for its valiant try, but in the end its real shortcoming is its lack of narrative cohesion. For example: we follow Simon, a practitioner of white magic, who finds his way into the position of "court jester" for the city's corrupt high society (think the parties of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls' Z-man, only in suits and without all the fun) when he is insulted and his powers doubted he must put a "death curse" on a member of this society, sending the whole crazy plot into motion. The problem is the film's lack of ANY exposition. There seem to be compulsory explanatory scenes missing from the finished film, the particulars of most characters relationships are only eluded to and once the film's psychedelic final 15 minutes kick in we really have no idea how or why the things we are seeing are happening. All this wouldn't be a problem if the film didn't drag in so many places.

It isn't all disappointment though, the cinematography is pretty solid, there are some funny jokes (when Simon draws a pentagram in his new apartment the landlord responds with "Don't think I'm prejudice, Rabbi"), and there are a bunch of unintentional laughs derived from what can only be described as the red-orb-of-death (seen in the trailer below), an evil spirit that haunts Simon & co. The stand-out moment of the film is a great scene in which Simon (a white witch) stumbles into a pagan ritual being held by silly (or I should say silly-er, Simon's rituals are pretty laughable) black magic practitioners, and then proceeds to rain on thier parade.

All and all I would say this is definitely worth a rental if you go in realizing that it was never intended to be a horror film, even though it was marketed as such (it played a double-bill with the wonderful--and also disingenuously named--satanic biker flick Werewolves on Wheels, a personal favorite of mine).