Hyper-Violent Sci-Fi Satires by Guys Named Paul Double Feature! Death Race 2000 and Robocop

Death Race 2000, by Paul Bartel, 1975

I love the way Roger Corman worked. He would give his writers and directors near total freedom to make the movie they wanted within the parameters he assigned them. He might give them a title and a star they had to use, and they had to include a certain amount of violence and nudity (these were exploitation movies, after all), but the rest of the decisions were up to them. Sure, he brought a lot of garbage into the world. Some of that garbage is totally watchable, but a lot of it isn't. And every once in a while, he would give us a true gem. Paul Bartel's action packed satire Death Race 2000 is one such gem.

In a future totalitarian state (in the year 2000, naturally), the government holds a violent race, as a means to keep the masses in check. The object of the race is to drive across the country in souped up cars, earning points along the way by running over civilians (extra points for children!). The champion and star of the Death Race is Frankenstein (David Carradine), a mysterious masked driver who finds himself in the middle of an underground resistance's attempts to assassinate the dictator, AKA Mr. President.

Death Race 2000 is over-the-top, ridiculous, full of gratuitous violence and nudity, and very, very funny. Carradine is great as Frankenstein, and a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone also stars as his rival, Machine Gun Joe Viterbo. Paul Bartel at his best (this and Eating Raoul in particular) was a sharp and witty satirist, and with Death Race 2000, he's giving the moviegoing audience exactly what they need to satisfy their bloodlust, just like the spectators of the Death Race itself. At the same time, he's maybe getting some of his more observant audience members to question that bloodlust. So maybe that violence and nudity isn't all gratuitous after all. OK, it's still pretty gratuitous.

There's also a bit of a subtle feminist message in there, just by having male and female racers on equal ground and no attention being drawn to that fact. Sure there's also plenty of nudity that might negate that message, but as I said before, including the nudity was part of the deal, and Bartel did try to throw in some male nudity to balance things out a little.

Death Race 2000 is a whole lot of fun, and with some great social commentary that was maybe even a bit ahead of its time. I was thinking a great double feature might be to partner this with Albert Brooks' hilarious 1979 mockumentary, Real Life, which basically predicts reality TV a good two decades before it blew up. OR, if you want to keep the violence coming, you could partner it with...

Robocop, by Paul Verhoeven, 1987

Yes, this is the perfect double feature partner for Death Race 2000. Another hyper-violent science fiction super-satire, Paul Verhoeven's 1987 classic Robocop gives us a near future run by corporate interests and crime lords. It's scarily prescient and in some ways may be even more relevant today than it was in 1987.

In a run-down future Detroit, a huge corporation called Omni Consumer Products has its eyes on replacing the police force with its own robotic force. When a prototype for a giant crimestopping machine called ED-209 malfunctions, another plan goes into place, one to convert a cop, recently murdered in the line of duty, into a cybernetic killing machine. That cop is Murphy (Peter Weller), a good man, with a wife and a son. Murphy must then overcome the programming his corporate overlords imbued in him, and rediscover his own humanity in order to bring peace to the streets of Detroit.

I had seen parts of Robocop here and there, but this was my first time watching the movie from beginning to end. The violence is excessive to the point of being downright comedic, and if Verhoeven's intent with that wasn't evident, the hilarious interstitial news reports and commercials woven into the narrative should make it clear. He's using the violence to make a point.

Something that really stood out about Robocop for me was the fact that, besides all the extremely horrific content, it still feels like a kids movie. Robocop's even got a little kid he wants to impress with his gun twirling skills. It's hilarious to think that in the 80's this actually would have been marketed towards kids. There were surely action figures and everything. I remember Robocop toys when I was young, but I don't remember if they were for this or the sequels.

Anyway, Robocop is great. Peter Weller is great, too, though I will always prefer Buckaroo Banzai over this role. I love the stop motion animation of the ED-209 and the animatronics and all the other effects, too. I don't know what took me so long to watch this movie. Both of these movies, really. Watch em watch em watch em!

Switchblade Sisters, You're Gonna Miss Me

All I've wanted to do lately is watch movies. I don't really know why, but I've just been experiencing a hunger lately to take in as many films as I possibly can. I'm sure that's what those of you who know me think I'm like all the time, but truthfully, until fairly recently, I was happy to watch three or four movies a week, mixed in with countless TV shows, comic books, novels, video games, and websites, not to mention what passes for my piddling social life.

Suddenly, in July, I started watching a movie every single day, sometimes more than one. I watched close to 40 in that month alone, and that was even with me prepping a cross-country move! It looks like I'll come close to that again in August. In the last month and a half, I've watched 1/3 of the total movies I've watched all year!

Why am I telling you this? I have no idea. I just have so many movies to talk about right now, and the list of films I want to see keeps getting longer. The last couple months have felt quite fulfilling in that respect. I don't know how long I can keep up this momentum. Probably not long, since I'll be back to working full time by September. But I'll try to drag it out as long as I can.

The Switchblade Sisters, by Jack Hill, 1975

Watching old exploitation movies can often be a squirmy, unsettling affair. The violence doesn't usually take me aback very much, but the sex often can. Not that I'm prudish, I just don't really like it when things get rapey, as they often did in the 70's. In those cases, you usually just have to try to look past those scenes and try to appreciate the movie within the context it was made in.

Jack Hill's The Switchblade Sisters is actually a pretty well made film, despite the scenes that make you feel like a creep for watching them. It's about a gang of tough, kick-ass high school girls known as The Dagger Debs, who are like a sister sorority to a man gang called The Daggers. Maggie, a new girl in town, manages to work her way into the Debs, befriending the leader, Lace. Over the course of things, Maggie takes over the gang, throws out the guys, and changes the name to the much cooler sounding The Jezebels, and eventually, it all comes down to a big gang fight, with Maggie going up against her old friend Lace. Lots of violence and titillation along the way.

The Switchblade Sisters walks kind of a weird balance. The girls in the gang are strong, independent, three-dimensional characters, which is pretty impressive for its time. But the movie must also give in to the demands of its financiers and its target audience, so there's a lot of pretty tasteless stuff mixed in. You could almost say this movie is kind of feminist. You could also say it's not in the least bit feminist, and you would not be wrong. Overall, I did like The Switchblade Sisters. It has an entertaining story, and the lead girls were actually really badass. It's worth watching if you know that you're getting into some pretty gloriously trashy stuff. I know Quentin Tarantino is a big fan, if that's any indication.

You're Gonna Miss Me, by Keven McAlester, 2005

Rock and roll history and lore is riddled with stories of success and highly publicized accounts of tragedy. But along the paths of those famous stories are tangential stories of bands that almost made it, or artists who burned out before they even began. Bands who disintegrated after recording one ahead-of-its-time album. Artists who couldn't stand the attention. These stories are often just as, or more, interesting than hearing about The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, or Kurt Cobain again.

You're Gonna Miss Me is a documentary about Roky Erickson, lead singer of a 60's rock band called The 13th Floor Elevators, and apparently, the man who coined the word "psychedelic". They have some songs you might recognize, look them up. Erickson took too much LSD, was diagnosed schizophrenic, and committed. But when he gets out his guitar and sings, he still can make phenomenal music. A very interesting and pretty sad documentary, and an important side story in the Annals of Rock.

The Fly (1958)

Kurt Neumann's original 1958 version of The Fly was way better than I thought it would be. I expected the usual 1950's monster movie, something along the lines of the stuff you would see on Mystery Science Theater 3000. There is some camp, of course, but there are some genuinely creepy moments, the characters are three dimensional, and the narrative structure is quite smart.

The story begins in a factory, where the body of Andre, a scientist, has been found, his head and arm crushed in a pressing machine. We meet the scientist's brother Francois, played by Vincent Price, and his wife, Helene, who was at the scene of the crime, and under suspicion for murder. They are unsure if she is insane or just faking it. After earning her trust, Francois gets Helene to tell the story of the events leading up to the incident.

In flashback, we learn that Andre was developing a matter transporting machine. He excitedly shows it to his wife, demonstrating it on an ashtray. When it dissipates and appears in another chamber, the letters on the bottom are all jumbled up, so apparently it still needs work. After fixing it, he tries it on the family's cat. It disappears and never reappears. It's one of the creepier moments in the movie, when you just hear the cat's seemingly tortured cry coming from nowhere. Finally, sure he's fixed it, Andre tests his matter transporter on himself. Unfortunately, a fly gets in with him and their bodies are crossed with each other.

The movie is told from Helene's point of view. She is unsure what has happened to Andre, just that he refuses to leave his lab and speaks to her through notes. When she finally does see him, he has his head covered up by a cloth, which is also creepy. She finally learns that the fly has his head and one of his arms, and the only hope of returning him to normal is to find that fly. She and her son and the maid all go on a hunt for a fly with a white head, before Andre loses his grip on his humanity and becomes a monster.

I liked the slow reveal of Andre in fly form. It's sort of like how you don't see the shark in Jaws until the end, just glimpses. This works the same way, where you know whatever is under that sheet is horrifying, and when you finally do see it, well, it's kind of fake looking but it looks pretty great for the 1950's.

I won't spoil the ending, of course, but since you know that Andre's head and arm are smashed from the very beginning, you know it can't end well. I actually can't believe they got away with the way they ended the movie. Or the whole pressing machine thing. The movie is pretty gruesome for its time, and unsettling.

I enjoy being surprised by a movie like The Fly. I had already written it off as B-movie fare before even watching it, and it wound up being genuinely good. It's nice when one's preconceived notions are proven pleasantly wrong.

American Grindhouse

Any regular readers of this here webbity page can probably tell that I love watching B movies, cult movies, and other such cinematic oddities. I love the strange and fantastical, and many of my favorite movies are the ones that show me things that I have never seen or even imagined before. As an extension of that, I also love watching documentaries about such films. After watching them, I always end up with huge lists of movies I want to check out.

Elijah Drenner's documentary American Grindhouse is basically a complete history of exploitation movies, going back all the way to the dawn of cinema. It's highly informative, demonstrating through footage and interviews with experts, fans, and participants in the genre, how the societal mindset of each era was reflected in the usually cheap, often seedy films that played in the dingier, more rundown theaters across America.

I learned a lot, and perhaps saw some things that I can't unsee, such as a live birth (surprisingly, I handled it well), and footage from Tod Browning's Freaks, which I always kind of avoided, because that kind of stuff always makes me sad (it still made me sad).

I loved the section of the film about the films of the 1950's. I thought it was hilarious that there was an entire genre of Nudist Camp movies, just showing naked people frolicking and playing volleyball and stuff. That's such a strange, sexless way to sell sex that it could only have come from the repressed 1950's, you know?

The sixties are when things started to get pretty sick, which also makes sense because society was getting pretty sick, too. You know, turbulent times, and stuff. That's when the nudie movies got violent, and the horror movies got gory. I liked learning about Herschell Gordon Lewis, AKA the Godfather of Gore, who most of you might know from the scene about him in Juno. I'm not sure if I want to see his movies, but the guy was a trailblazer, taking horror movies to the over the top, Grand Guignol level.

A great debt is also owed to Roger Corman, who I have a particular appreciation for. He directed and produced so many independent movies, and found so many major movie talents in the process, that you could make an entire movie just on him. (What? They already have? I plan on watching that one too!) He was always able to tap into what the youth were looking for and, well, exploit it.

Eventually, in no small part due to Corman and the generation of talent he discovered and mentored (Scorsese, Nicholson, Dante, Demme, the list goes on...), exploitation movies became the mainstream blockbusters that we go and see today. Which is exactly why knowing this history should be important to anyone who loves the movies.

I seriously love documentaries like this. I always end up with huge lists of movies I want to see after I watch them. Did I mention it was narrated by Robert Forster? Pretty cool, right? Just be warned if you watch it: lots of nudity, lots of gore. Put the kids to bed!

Anyway, if you watch American Grindhouse and are still interested in learning about movies like this, might I direct your attention to the fantastic documentaries of Mark Hartley? Instead of the broad picture that American Grindhouse paints, Hartley narrows his focus to specific global movements or subgenres and digs deep. Not Quite Hollywood covers the Australian "Ozsploitation" movement, and Machete Maidens Unleashed covers Corman's exploits making movies on the cheap in the Phillipines in the 70's. Fascinating, educational and funny stuff. All three of these movies are on Netflix Instant (if you're in America, at least).

The Mighty Peking Man

Action! Adventure! Excitement! Animal Cruelty? Well, I can't confirm that last one, but it looks probable. I don't think they had any laws preventing animal cruelty in 1970's Hong Kong.

The Mighty Peking Man, originally released in the states as Goliathon, is an attempt by legendary Hong Kong producers, The Shaw Brothers, to cash in on the 1976 remake of King Kong. Why they didn't just call it "Hong Kong" is beyond me. The story is similar to that of King Kong, but with a little bit more exploitation, because hey, sex and violence sell, right?

The producers, The Shaw Brothers, are best known for making many of the classic Kung Fu movies of the 60's and 70's, such as The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. I wasn't even aware that they made other kinds of movies, but I guess it makes sense that they did. Later, in the 90's, Quentin Tarantino rereleased it through his distribution company.

Johnny (Danny Lee) goes on a dangerous expedition to the Himalayas, on a search for the Peking Man, a monstrous ape that has been terrorizing villages. He loses all of his men on the way, due to tigers and climbing treacherous cliffs and such, and ultimately makes it to the jungle that the Peking Man calls home. There he meets Samantha, a scantily clad American woman whose parents died in a plane crash there when she was a child. She is the only one who can control the Peking Man. After a snake bites her inner thigh and Johnny sucks out the poison (oh come on!) and nurses her to health, the two fall in love, and the Peking Man gets jealous. Then of course comes the scene when Johnny's boss finds and rescues him, along with Samantha and the Peking Man, bringing them to Hong Kong, where a rampage ensues.

Considering the fact that it's a knock-off movie, The Mighty Peking Man is actually very well made. Johnny and Samantha are likeable characters. I thought it was funny when, on the ship to Hong Kong, he gave her a dress to wear. Not seeing the point of clothes, she waits until he leaves for a minute and tosses it out the window. The effects are solid, too. Not so much the effects themselves, which looks like any B-Movie would, but more the use of the effects. Director Ho Meng-Hua integrates and blends various different methods, such as animation, miniatures, rear screen projection, and even stock footage to make his story work.

I like some of the slight changes from King Kong, too. Ok, I've never seen the 1976 version, so these might actually be directly lifted from that, for all I know. I like that instead of just putting Kong on a stage, they put the Peking Man in an arena, in basically a big Monster Truck Pull. It's too bad Truckasaurus wasn't around yet. I also like that the Peking Man is inspired to break free from his bonds because he could see through a window that the bad guy was trying to rape Samantha.

What I found rather unsettling, however, are the jungle sequences with live (and possibly dead?) animals. It began when a tiger attacked the explorers. At first, I was amazed that they had a man wrestling a real live tiger. But then I thought, obviously the tiger was declawed, probably sedated, and worst case scenario, de-toothed. That's kind of a horrible thought, right?

Then we come to Samantha's pet leopard, also obviously sedated. It follows her around and she plays with it, carrying it over her shoulders, lifting it by its underarms and spinning it around. It just kind of looks confused. At one point they toss the snake that bit her his way and he starts fighting with it. Pretty sure that was a dead snake. And absolutely worst of all, there's a close-up of the leopard when Samantha is saying goodbye, and I am pretty certain that this poor cat is trying to open up its mouth but completely unable to.

I hope that poor leopard was alright after the shoot. It seems to me that there's a pretty strong chance that it wasn't, which, well, it really dampens my enjoyment of the movie.

Removing myself from all that, The Mighty Peking Man is actually a well made movie. I can't really recommend it to animal lovers, but lovers of B-Movies, monster movies, and Shaw Brothers movies might get a kick out of it.

The Howling

Joe Dante is possibly my favorite of that crop of directors to come up in the post-Spielberg 1980's that include such giants as Burton, Donner, Zemeckis, and Cameron. Dante may not have been as huge as the others ultimately became, but his body of work was always fun, often silly, and touched heavily and proudly by the B-movies he loved to watch growing up in the 50's and the exploitation movies that he began his career working on for Roger Corman. I still haven't seen a few of Dante's films, but the ones I grew up watching (The Burbs, Innerspace, Gremlins, and my personal favorite, the utterly wacky Gremlins 2: The New Batch) are all a ton of fun.

The Howling came quite early in Dante's career as a director, after only previously making his debut with Pirahna for Roger Corman. It's about a woman named Karen (Dee Wallace) who, after a traumatic experience with a psycho stalker, is sent with her husband to a vacation resort by her shrink. Something is fishy about the resort (aka "The Colony"). The people there are rather suspicious (aka "Werewolves").

There's a lot to like about The Howling, though it wasn't great. It's quite well made for having a relatively tiny, $1 million budget. The cinematography is moody, the effects and gore are cool and done practically, the story has some fun twists, and the score by Pino Donaggio is dramatic and Hitchcockian in that way that he does.

I liked the transformation of Karen's husband from a gentle metropolitan vegetarian-type, to a violent, aggressive meat-eater, after getting seduced and bitten by a particularly naked member of the colony. I also liked the performance of Dante regular Robert Picardo as one of the big villains. He gets the big transformation scene in the movie.

Speaking of the transformation scene, it's a tough one to judge. It was partially designed by Rick Baker, who left during production to do his masterwork, An American Werewolf in London. There are a few similarities between the two, but American Werewolf is a far superior film with a bigger budget, and a much better transformation. It is THE werewolf movie and THE transformation sequence. The biggest difference between the two is the performance of the transformee. In American Werewolf, it looked excruciating. You could feel the agony of his body transforming into a four legged beast. In The Howling, cheaper versions of some of the same effects are in place, but Picardo doesn't play it as painful. In fact, his sadistic character seems to be enjoying it.

Still, The Howling is a different kind of movie than An American Werewolf in London. It's a fun and pulpy B-movie with lots of gore and scares. The ending is actually really clever and quite funny. The credits run over a shot of a hamburger slowly sizzling on a grill, which is a fantastic way to end the movie. You can totally see how The Howling, though imperfect, could have paved the way for Dante to direct Gremlins.

Machete Maidens Unleashed!

Documentarian Mark Hartley has made a name for himself chronicling cinematic histories that nobody else seems to want to touch. With his first film, Not Quite Hollywood, he explored the creative energy and weird anything goes vibe of the Australian exploitation movie scene. Along with countless trashy ones, some genuinely good films came out of that genre, such as George Miller's classic Mad Max, and Richard Franklin's demented horror film Patrick (which Hartley is now set to remake).

Now comes Hartley's second film, Machete Maidens Unleashed!, about the cinematic revolution in The Philippines through the 60's, 70's, and 80's, spurred on by schlock producer Roger Corman. Like the Ozsploitation scene, this is a lesser known piece of cinematic history that still deserves to be told.

The Philippines offered many resources for Corman to exploit: extremely cheap non-union labor, real life jungle sets, and stunt men willing to do anything for a buck. Corman made his movies there one after another, cheap and fast, utilizing many of the same actors and directors. He explored and exploited many genres there, including many Women in Prison films, some blaxploitation, martial arts, and horror. Most of these movies were, of course, terrible, but some of them do have their moments. Actors Pam Grier and Sid Haig cut their teeth making movies in The Philippines, and The Silence of the Lambs director Jonathan Demme got his start writing them. The fact that the movies were so trashy allowed him to sneak in some subversive political subtext in places where nobody would look.

Hartley's documentary is told in a series of interviews, with, among others, Corman himself, Grier and Haig, his trailer cutters Alan Arkush and Joe Dante, and director John Landis. The interviews are intercut with scenes from the movies themselves. There are a lot of interesting stories told. A particularly funny one is Arkush and Dante's story about the exploding helicopter, and how it found its way into many of the trailers they cut.

The history of Americans shooting their films in The Philippines ultimately culminates in Francis Ford Coppola bringing his infamous production of Apocalypse Now to the country. Since there's already an entire movie about how that went down, they just spend a few minutes on it, but it's still some of the most interesting stuff in the movie.

After Apocalypse Now, The Philippines started exporting their own products. We're introduced to Weng Weng, a dwarf action star who starred in James Bond spoofs such as "For Your Height Only". He was their first homegrown success story in the international scene.

Machete Maidens Unleashed! is an extremely interesting, often outrageous story. I love this kind of thing, I find the oddballs working on the fringe of the mainstream so much more interesting. I hope Mark Hartley keeps on making these documentaries and exposing the world to the stories behind all these weird grindhouse gems. Next up, he's telling the story of Cannon Films, the Israeli production company that produced the hilariously bad disco musical The Apple (WATCH IT, EVERYONE!), Breakin', its sequel, Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, and Masters of the Universe. Can't wait!

Machete Maidens Unleashed! and Not Quite Hollywood are available on Netflix Instant if you want to see them.

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

I would stay the night at a haunted house for $10,000.  The trick is this: Stay in one place for the whole night, and never separate from the group.  Why doesn't anybody ever do this?  Come on, losers!

House on Haunted Hill is a fun little chiller brought to us by the great P.T. Barnum of B-Movies, William Castle.  He added another layer of fun to his movies with his love of twists, gimmicks, and trickery.  Even though these gimmicks were primarily to put butts in seats, there was a real sense of showmanship behind them too. 

The characters in this movie are a lot like the audience of a William Castle movie.  They have been issued a challenge by a millionaire to stay the night in a haunted house.  If they stay all night, they get $10,000, no ifs, ands or buts.    The millionaire is played by Vincent Price, a man who is on his 5th unhappy marriage.  The other four wives have met unfortunate ends. 

One of the guys staying in the house is played by the jittery dude from Stanley Kubrick's The Killing.  He's a bit of a drunk, but he knows the history of the house, and he explains to the others (and the audience) that there have been a lot of grisly goings on in there.  Bodies found with missing heads, a giant pit full of acid in the basement.  A question to all you homeowners: If you buy a house with a giant acid pit already installed in the dungeon, do you keep it?  Does that increase the property value? 

So the group gets locked in, and there are some ghost sightings, but to me they don't look like ghosts, they just look like an old lady on wheels.  But still, severed heads appear and disappear.  One particular lady appears to be seeing all these things.  Then somebody turns up dead, hanging from a rope.  Also, I don't know how far ahead Vincent Price planned for this, but he has a bunch of adorable little coffin shaped boxes containing a handgun for each of his guests, just in case.

Anyway, the plot makes little sense, and once the twists start adding up, one after the other, the house of haunted cards comes tumbling down with even a little bit of questioning.  Who is betraying who?  Is the house really haunted or not?  How long did they have that planned?  Not important.  What matters to Castle is that the shocks keep coming.  He surely knew if he kept surprising the audience, the logic of the surprises wouldn't really matter in the long run.

I've read that House on Haunted Hill played in theaters specially rigged to release skeletons upon the audience at certain times in the movie that might call for skeletons.  See?  That sounds like fun, doesn't it?  That's what William Castle's movies were all about.  Fun.  And as ridiculous and hilariously convoluted as House on Haunted Hill was, it was still a lot of fun.

Tales that Witness Madness

In my last review, for The Innocents, I mentioned cinematographer Freddie Francis, who has a memorable and respectable filmography, having won much acclaim shooting movies for directors like David Lynch, Jack Clayton, and Martin Scorsese. But for me, the fascinating side of Freddie Francis was his career as a director. Through the 60's, 70's, and 80's, he made many low budget horror films for smaller studios such as Amicus and Hammer. I doubt it was the career he imagined for himself, but from the few of his directorial efforts that I've seen, I'd say he at least did his best to have a good time with it.

Tales that Witness Madness is one of several horror anthology films that Francis directed. At least four that I know of, including the cult classic Tales from the Crypt. They all have a pretty similar structure: four or five short horror stories, usually with an ironic twist ending, bookended by a character telling the stories, or something similar. In the end, there's one last ironic twist that ties it all together.

In Tales that Witness Madness, the framing device is a psychiatrist (played by Donald Pleasance) showing off his patients at a mental asylum to another psychiatrist. Each patient has a story of the supernatural that brought them there.

One story follows a boy who escapes from his constantly arguing parents by having an imaginary friend. His friend happens to be a tiger. As he begins to grow closer and closer to his imaginary friend (sneaking large slabs of meat into the bedroom and such), his parents begin to get concerned. Unfortunately, that just leads to more arguing. Whatever is a boy and his imaginary tiger to do?

Next, we have a man who owns an antique store. He puts a weird old portrait and an old timey bicycle out for sale. These items draw him in, and give him the ability to travel back in time to the subject of the portrait's past.

The third story is about a man who brings home a weird tree to display as art. His wife doesn't like the tree, as it looks oddly human and creeps her out. As the man's affection towards the tree grows, so does the woman's jealousy of it, until the tree itself takes on a life of its own...

And finally, we have a tale of human sacrifice as Kim Novak plays a literary agent trying to land a client by throwing him a grand luau, traditional of his people. Little does she realize she is aiding him in a cannibalistic ritual, with her own daughter as the main course.

Whoops, that last one was kind of a spoiler. But you know what? It doesn't matter. If you can't figure out where this thing is leading well in advance of it happening, you must be 8 years old. Which is probably the best age to watch this movie. Just like Francis did with Tales from the Crypt, Tales that Witness Madness is infused with a sense of good-natured, self-aware fun. These are the kind of R-Rated movies that a kid can watch and feel like they got away with something, and a parent (well, depending on the parent) doesn't have to be too concerned.

Of the four, my favorite was the first, with the kid and the tiger. It was like a demented prototype for Calvin and Hobbes. The one with the old-timey bike and the painting was really good, too. The painting always changed expressions, and was hilarious.

The twists are usually pretty obvious, but the fun of the movie is really in watching the stories unfold. You get to watch these oblivious characters stumble into their horrible fates, knowing you would never make the same mistakes they did, because you are smart.

Tales that Witness Madness, along with Crypt, and surely other Freddie Francis anthologies, would make for a fun night. The stories are short, usually enjoyable, fun to laugh with and at. The camera work and direction are ably done, and the actors seem to be enjoying their roles. Though Freddie Francis the director never had the opportunities that Freddie Francis the cinematographer had, I have the same amount of respect for him. He took the chances he was given, kept on making movies at the edge of the system, and he always gave us a little twist at the end.

The Thing with Two Heads

I try to bring a good mix of reviews to this website. New releases, classics, foreign films, oddities. Once in a while, I'll watch a movie against my better judgment, out of pure curiosity. So, you tell me: if you saw this poster, you'd have to watch the movie, too, right? Yeah, I thought so.

As the logline suggests, The Thing with Two Heads is about a white bigot who's head is transplanted onto a soul brother's body. The bigot in question is Dr. Maxwell Kirshner, played by Ray Milland. He's a wheelchair bound transplant surgeon, the head of his own institute. He is no longer able to perform the transplants himself, but he supervises them. He doesn't allow black people on his staff. We know this because he somehow let one slip through the cracks. He tries to fire the dude, Fred Williams, but Fred gives a speech and has signed a contract, so he's allowed to stay for the remainder of his term.

At home Kirschner has a secret lab where he is developing the first ever head transplant. He's testing it on a gorilla (or possibly a man in a gorilla suit, I'm not sure). At one point, the two headed gorilla escapes. You'd think it would go on a rampage or something, but all the movie can really afford is to show it walking down the street calmly, and then knocking some things over in a grocery store. When they find the gorilla suit man, he's peacefully sitting in the supermarket, munching on two bananas.

Kirschner soon reveals that he is dying, and is planning on performing his head transplant on himself. You see, the transplant isn't two headed forever. After a month, the bond is made permanent, and the original head can be removed. They put out a call for death row inmates, offering a chance to buy them another month of life and the pride of knowing they donated themselves to science. They find their subject in Jack Moss ("Rosey" Grier), a man about to be given the chair for murder, but, as he says in his final words, he's innocent, and his girlfriend is just about to prove it, so he thinks he might donate himself to science after all. Oh, also, Jack Moss is black. You can tell this before you even see him because of the funky theme music that plays before he's introduced.

They perform the head transplant. It's actually a pretty well done sequence. For some reason, my favorite bit was when they were prepping Jack for the surgery by shaving his shoulder. Kirschner's severed head looked quite good for 40 years ago. It's mouth moved a little bit like it was still breathing, and it's eyes rolled open too. Oh, you know why? This movie is one of Rick Baker's first. Yes, the legendary creature designer is also the man in the two headed gorilla suit, according to the credits.

So the transplant is a success, and Kirschner, regaining consciousness first, is still unaware of his donor. He slowly regains control and narrates as he lifts up his hand, then his arm, and looks at it and goes, "is this some kind of a joke?" This is basically how Kirschner is through the whole movie. He's like your cranky old racist grandpa.

They are having some complications, I guess, because the surgeons summon Dr. Fred Williams to Kirschner's house to help them, with his anti-rejection expertise. When Jack comes to and finds another guy's head next to his own, he's not too happy. He manages to escape, holding Williams hostage, they jump into his car and go on the run.

What happens next is... well, it's... (sigh)... an endless police chase. First our heroes are on the run by car, then they shake the car and find their way onto a Motocross Rally, and take themselves a dirtbike. The chase lasts about half the running time of the movie. Yes, about 40 minutes. And they couldn't afford to do it on the street, so they do it in a field. A lot of police cars roll over. There's very little dialogue. It just keeps going.

Finally, after endless chasing, they make it to Jack's girlfriend's house, with only about 15 minutes of movie to go. Kirschner says more racist things. Jack tries to sleep with his girlfriend, saying "don't worry, baby, I'll just cover his head with a pillowcase!" Okay, that's a pretty funny line. What the movie comes down to is a battle for Jack's body as Kirschner begins to take control. Who can remove which head first???

The Thing with Two Brains actually has some funny moments. It isn't taking itself seriously, and the two leads actually commit to their parts. "Rosey" Grier is actually quite likeable as Jack, and I found myself rooting for him to clear his name and get this white asshole's head off his shoulder. Fred Williams was good, too. If it weren't for the looooooooong period in the middle where nothing of interest happens, this would be a somewhat enjoyable, goofy B-movie, with just a touch of social conscience.