The best of the worst: Trennen Sie Ein
One year ago today, I started this kooky blog, and it has been quite a fun ride since. Thanks to anyone who's read my crap. As a means of celebration, the lovely and talented Kitten suggested a run-down of my favorite bad movies - ones I actually like. To thank her for both her response and her fabulous ushering, I will dole out ten choice nuggets of entertaining cinema le pew over the next several posts. But first, some words about the art form itself.
My annual list of favorite movies always includes a "so bad it's good" designation to single out the year's best cinematic trainwreck, something particularly awful but nonetheless fascinating. (For instance, last year's winner was the screamingly terrible visual assault "Son of the Mask", the most expensive-looking mega-flop sequel since "The Flintstones In Viva Rock Vegas.") There is a crucial difference between bad movies and movies that are merely mediocre. A bad movie is usually not planned very well, poorly executed or at least an ill-conceived bid for commercial success by someone very confused about what the public likes. A mediocre movie is the product of a competent crew and production values, doesn't aim higher than would be appropriate and always achieves what it sets out to do.
But that crucial difference is in how much harder mediocre movies are to sit through than bad ones. A bad movie can make you spit out your beer and gasp, "Did you see that?" or "What did she just say?" The lighting will make the actors cast shadows. The soundtrack music will start and stop abruptly, as if operated by a monkey with a tape recorder. Exposition will confuse, annoy, sometimes even amaze with its sheer stupidity. Special effects will cause laughter rather than wonder. Sets will tremble if an actor bumps the wall. Dialogue will have you marveling at the ways language can be perverted. With a mediocre movie, you get none of these mistakes, but none of the surprise or bewilderment a bad movie can engender. It just sits there like leftover beige wall paint - inoffensive, bland and useless.
This is why I think the Medveds, and even on occasion the MST3K crew, tended to confuse "bad" and "unwatchable." How can Ed Wood's customary craziness be considered harder to sit through than, say, "Bed of Roses"? In what way is the thoroughly ridiculous "Glitter" a tougher slog than something as aggressively mediocre as "Speed"? It's been argued that bad movie fans are condescending jerks who like to laugh at other people's failings, and as a bad movie fan, I will admit there's some truth in that. However, to me, a bad big-budget movie is far more offensive than a bad cheap one, because the low-budget folks probably lacked the resources and experience, and their films are as often labors of love as get-rich-quick schemes. Bad big-budget flicks have just wasted enough money to have wiped out AIDS in Africa. I don't care one bit for "The Blair Witch Project", "Nowhere" or "Gummo" (well, that one has a good soundtrack), but they're all more creative than anything Roland Emmerich has foisted upon the public.
For the films that follow, that condescension comes with a bit of genuine admiration. The insanity they dole out is as entertaining as anything you'd get in a "good" film, just not in the same way. Of course, it's stacked toward horror movies, because I've seen more horror movies than anything else, and there are a lot of bad ones. All but two were made on the cheap, since not too many bad big budget movies are worth saluting. So, in no particular order, here's the beginning of the ten best bad movies I can think of...
"Blood Feast"
(1963)
The first gore movie in history was the product of director Herschell Gordon Lewis, an advertising genius who was working out of the Wrigley Building and had previously churned out a number of "nudie cuties," plus David F. Friedman, the legendary carnie-turned-exploitation film producer. The pair decided that since mainstream Hollywood was starting to show more skin to compete with what independent movies were doing, they would stay a step ahead by delivering something no big studio would: extreme onscreen violence. Now, I respect Friedman, but consider myself a big fan of H.G. Lewis, not just because of the blood and guts. The guy's story is amazing. I interviewed the man for a college class. There's a picture of him on my desk at work. He's my MySpace friend. Lewis is also partially responsible for the no-joke worst movie I have ever seen: "Monster A-Go Go", which even Joel, Servo and Crow couldn't make pleasant. But aside from the historical significance and still-extreme carnage shared by a number of his highlights, his movies are very often plain-out nuts, and "Blood Feast" is a fine introduction to that madness. Look no further than the first exchange between the homicidal Ishtar-worshipping Egyptian caterer Fuad Ramses (hammy Mal Arnold with thick brows painted on) and Mrs. Freemont (the vacuous Lyn Bolton), who is trying to set up a dinner party for her idiot daughter. Fuad says, "Have you ever had... an Egyptian FEAST?!?" and gives her the evil eye as a loud soap opera organ portends calamity. The lady's response? An enthusiastic "Why, that would be fine!" It's so inappropriate and abruptly edited, it gives you the instant giggles. Bolton, one of the most obviously amateur cast members, later reads lines off of a script clearly visible on a table. After Fuad's first murder, a newspaper headline screams "LEGS CUT OFF!" The music, composed and performed by Lewis, is a bizarre jumble of trombones, kettle drums and organs.
However, the match of dialogue and delivery provides the biggest laughs. It's hard to properly describe, but the actors are all stagey and wooden, like a high school play rehearsal. In group scenes, everyone has to shout their ridiculous lines because there's only one microphone, a budgetary limitation that inspired John Waters to later use it for its comedic effect. I always laugh at the melodramatic rantings of the botched murder victim ("Wild eyes! He had WILD EYES!"), the awkward romantic scenes (the lead couple, upon leaving a lecture on Egyptian sacrifice rituals: "To actually eat human flesh... Pete, how could they?" "Oh, come on, honey, let's talk about something more pleasant. Like, for example, you and me?") and the cops' forehead-slapping repartee (the hero - played by the great Bill Kerwin, going here under his frequent and appropriate stage name "Thomas Wood" - says to his boss, upon discovering gory remains: "Frank, if I'm right, these are the leftovers from the preparation of the feast of Ishtar. That's a blood feast. They take all the young girls... and they cook 'em to satisfy their goddess." Frank's reply: "Oh, no."). But the most gut-busting moments occur after a girl gets her brain scooped out on a beach, in the histrionic reactions from her wailing masher boyfriend (he goes from "Now prove you love me!" to "Waaahh! She wanted to lee-hee-heeeave!") and grieving mother ("I made her a dress, a white dress... and now she'll NEVER WEAR it she'll never wear i-hi-hi-hit!"). Even today, most of the gore scenes in "Blood Feast" are pretty gross, especially the chunky gunk that sluices out of Astrid Olson's mouth after the famous tongue-ripping scene. The limbs are usually very fake, though, and some will object to the opaque paint-like quality of the blood, which became a staple in all of Lewis' subsequent, more ambitious gore epics.
Others have dissected its myriad charms much more capably and thoroughly than I could, so I suggest you check out what they have to say. Me, I chose "Blood Feast" for this list over "The Wizard of Gore", the best Lewis gore movie (soon to appear as a remake with Crispin Fucking Glover in the lead role of Montag), because at a mere 65 minutes, it's shorter and more compact, thus more conducive to repeat viewings. I have seen it many times, and it still entertains - which is all Lewis and Friedman set out to do. The infamous trailer, with intro by Kerwin himself:
"The Executioner"
(aka "Massacre Mafia Style," 1978)
If you're one of those Italian-Americans who gets their undies in a bunch over unflattering stereotypes, this movie will give you a coronary. Producer, director and star Duke Mitchell was once the Deano part of the Martin & Lewis knock-off act that starred in "Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla". Mitchell also allegedly did Fred's singing voice on early episodes of "The Flintstones." Here, he crafts a sensitive post-"Godfather" portrait of an unhinged racist Sicilian mob assassin with a penchant for voice-overs and an unsettling mother/whore complex. First of all, the guy's nickname is "Mimi," which may be at the root of some of his problems. He's got a bushy pompadour and a moustache to match, wears a lot of tight pants and loud, open shirts, as befitting the style of the time. He enjoys big gold rings, watches with thick gold bands, and not trimming his nails. Actually, he looks like an extra from the parts of "Casino" that are set in the '70s. The movie starts off with a great sequence - lifted for the trailer, which was attached to Lucio Fulci's "The Beyond" when Sage Stallone and Quentin Tarantino rereleased it eight years ago - where Mimi (Mitchell) and his goombah Jolly electrocute a guy in a wheelchair by sticking his foot in a urinal and running over a plugged-in a cord from his desk lamp. Then the boys proceed to wipe out the entire building, going office to office and blasting everybody they see, all while some peppy "Mob Hits" song bops along in accompaniment. Then the movie flashes back to Mimi's kid getting baptized, describing his soon-to-be-dead wife as "a woman of simple Italian heritage, a saint, a woman in fear of the man she loved." What a sweet fella. From here, we get the whole story of Mimi's tumultuous rise and fall, like a skid row spin on "Scarface" with worse actors but also without all the coke and annoying synth music. His dad is a deported patron, and Mimi wants to get the old order up and running. His plan, I think, is to go to LA and wipe out all the pimps and bookies so he can take mob business back for the, um, right kind of people.
Other than Joe Spinnell's repulsive Frank Zito, I can think of no other movie protagonist who is so thoroughly slimy and unsympathetic but so creepily fascinating as Duke Mitchell's Mimi Miceli. His frequent rambling monologues, spoken or otherwise, often veer wildly into existential moaning, supremacist rhetoric, food metaphors or just some totally insane shit. For instance, as he's eating dinner with some mob guys, one laments Italians being disgraced despite their pleasant, bacchanal nature. Mimi counters that it's their fault. He gestures to the guy's mother, who just cooked their huge meal, and says, "This old woman here is the one who's been disgraced. She's the one who's been taking the punches. She's the one that was handed the organ grinder and the monkey when she got off the boat." He almost sobs during that. Then he grabs the visibly shocked old lady's hand and kisses it. I quote verbatim: "See these hands? You know what they smell of? Oregano. (unintelligible Italian word) Beautiful herbs. They gave you mostaccioli, lasagna, pizza, the most appreciated foods in the world. What did we give her? We gave her violence. We gave her death. We gave her dishonor. We gave these hands the ability to follow the rosary beads and pray for us in jail facing the electric chair. These hands, praying for me and you, kissing the cross for us before the guy pulls the switch. Let 'em call her wop, dago, the old Guinea, the one with the bun on the back of her hair with the knitting needles in it and the knots in her stockings. Because to me, she's as pure as the homemade wine she makes, the cookies she bakes. She's a powerful as the atomic bomb that Fermi invented, her son. I love her, and some day we'll forget that she is violence, Cosa Nostra, that ugly name we gave her, mafia. So every time you see her beware of this woman. She'll come up to you and she'll ask, 'Did you eat? Have some more.' That's all she wants. I love her. I love her." If that made any sense to you, you must be more Italian than I am.
Mitchell also croons a number of Englebert-y lounge songs, and they conjure the appropriate velour mood, but the best song is at a wedding. Immediately after a guy lectures us about the significance of the groom serving bread to his father, the movie comes to a halt for some old dude to lead a sing-along that will be stuck in your head forever: "Rigatoni, moostaccioli or spaghett/It's a dish a-like you never gonna forget/When the waiter comes around/don't be bashful, just siddown/For rigatoni, moostaccioli or spaghett." But don't worry, "The Executioner" does not just taunt Italians. I think every black person in the movie dies, including a pimp named (gulp) Super Spook, who gets crucified in a cemetary. "Hey, he told me Jesus was black," quips Mimi in what's supposed to be a light-hearted moment afterward. "Let him make a resurrection." And we're supposed to be rooting for this guy. Anyway, Mimi and Jolly kill some people, piss some people off and make some porn. Mimi's hot girlfriend and Jolly get iced, so Mimi blows up the funeral to kill all the mob guys, then goes back to Sicily, tells his dad at length about how fucked up America is with their blacks taking over and their free love and their "Godfather" movies, and is finally shot up by his own son with a gun hidden in a loaf of bread. This is a mean, ugly film, one which would never get made by a studio. If you ever get the chance to see this rare bastard, the shit that comes out of that guy's mouth will make your mind feel foamy. Grindhouse Releasing was supposed to put "The Executioner" and an unreleased follow-up entitled "Gone With the Pope" out on DVD, but there's apparently some legal issue because they put the awesome "Massacre Mafia Style" trailer in the extras of their fabulous "I Drink Your Blood" DVD without permission. Imagine how pleased I was when I bought that.
UPDATE 6/30: At the request of someone (who?)... I have removed the "MMS" trailer that I originally posted. I don't want to tread on someone's legal shit, even if I am helping to advertise the movie. So, you can go watch the aforementioned awesome trailer here. RIP, Duke.
"Rats: Night of Terror"
(aka "Rats: Notte di terrore," 1984)
What's better than an Italian post-apocalyptic action movie? One that's also a killer rat movie! This fucked-up picture collides the two concepts into a grimy, shambling progression of forehead-smacking stupidity. "Rats" is the product of genre hack Bruno Mattei, whose "Hell of the Living Dead" is admittedly one of the more satisfying lesser Italian zombie flicks, but whose spotty resume not only includes ugly shit like "SS Extermination Love Camp" and "Emanuelle In Prison", but the non-Fulci parts of the universally reviled (for good reason) "Zombi 3". This seems to be his most entertaining work, if only for its relatively unexplored hybrid approach and its extremely laughable proceedings. The only similar movie that comes to mind is the relatively boring "Damnation Alley", a big budget affair highlighted by a part where George Peppard and Jan-Michael Vincent are temporarily beseiged by flesh-eating cockroaches in a post-nuke desert town. "Rats" takes that segment's brilliance to feature length, packing in weird dialogue, bizarre visuals and a quintessentially Italian lack of concern for animal welfare - something usually showcased to a brazen degree in cannibal gut-munchers.
Upon viewing it, you may be reminded of that beloved children's rhyme: "Shake and shake the rat-filled bottle/None will come, and then a lot'll." That's how a lot of the rat attack scenes are played out. I particularly love the scene where a horde of rats plummets from a fireplace; they all fall in one huge mass, as if someone just dumped a box down the chimney. Then the poor little guys just sit there, looking dazed and irritated at the paint that has been slopped on their fur, ostensibly to make them scarier. The filmmakers don't appear to have been very concerned with the fates of Feivel and family, since they toss piles of live rodents down water pipes and all over various victims, including one who's on fire. (By endorsing this movie, I'm not saying that filming real violence perpetrated against animals is cool, but a sad fact that inevitably adds to the film's trash factor, revealing another shoddy and sleazy facet of its construction, albeit one which might rightfully dissuade some viewers.) When the rats advance on Our Heroes during the climax, Mattei cuts from the humans' bug-eyed reaction shots to what appears to be hundreds of rubber novelty rats glued to a rickety conveyor belt, a risible effect that outdoes even the famous bogus bat in "The House By the Cemetery" and the plastic tarantulas from "The Beyond." In addition, whenever rats appear in "Rats," the apocalyptic biker scumbag protagonists flip out, either shrieking in overblown terror or launching into hilarious anti-rat diatribes while smashing at the confused critters. Like Cookie Monster, these rats will eat anything - they even chew through the bikers' tires so they can't leave. Personally, as is the case with snakes, I don't find rats frightening in the least; I'm sure I'd freak out if I woke up and found one in my sheets, but otherwise I find movies where they're supposed to be fearsome very amusing.
About those bikers... let's start with Lilith (Moune Duvivier), because she's the hottest, and while she's unfortunately killed too soon, she gets one of the more lurid demises. Lilith struts around in a red cape and appears to be the only woman in the group with a libido, since she and her jerk boyfriend get ostracized for having sex too loudly. They leave and finish, then he goes off to get chomped. She stays in their sleeping bag, which has already been established to have a faulty zipper. Sadly, one little Ratty McRatticus gets in there, finds its way to her bare uh-uh and tunnels its way through to her mouth (you only see the exit). This leaves behind such losers as Video, who mistakes a computer for an ancient video game and tries to mask his ignorance by declaring that the "stupid machine needs a kick in the balls," and Chocolate, the lone black woman who, during a maniacally joyful discovery of packaged food supplies, gets playfully covered with flour and proceeds to dance around telling her companions, "Look! I'm as white as you!" Of course, this group of morons is just there to get picked off, and you'll cheer for each subsequent strengthening of the gene pool. I won't blow the astounding "shock" ending, but it's so totally pulled from the asses of screenwriters Hervé Piccini (who'd previously worked on the abominable Michael Sopkiw vehicle "Devil Fish") and Claudio Fragasso (the man behind another of our upcoming flicks), I'll kiss your ring if you can see it coming in any way. Once again, the trailer, under the ludicrous alternate title "Blood Kill":
To be continued ASAP. Today's recommended listening is "The View", Eucharist's characteristically odd slice of Gothenburgia which was exclusive to the 1993 Peaceville Deaf Metal Sampler. Remember when I was saying their old A Velvet Creation was a much better slow melodo-death album than the new Dissection? Well, you can get a free, band-endorsed download of that, its astounding follow-up Mirrorworlds and (almost) everything else the late Eucharist ever recorded right here. Drummer Daniel Erlandsson is now in Arch Enemy, where his skills are often shunted aside to keep the spotlight on the Amott brothers' guitar wrangling. Generally considered a footnote today, Eucharist was up there with early Darkane and Dark Tranquillity in my book - unique, infectious and remarkably tight. Swedish supremacy!
My annual list of favorite movies always includes a "so bad it's good" designation to single out the year's best cinematic trainwreck, something particularly awful but nonetheless fascinating. (For instance, last year's winner was the screamingly terrible visual assault "Son of the Mask", the most expensive-looking mega-flop sequel since "The Flintstones In Viva Rock Vegas.") There is a crucial difference between bad movies and movies that are merely mediocre. A bad movie is usually not planned very well, poorly executed or at least an ill-conceived bid for commercial success by someone very confused about what the public likes. A mediocre movie is the product of a competent crew and production values, doesn't aim higher than would be appropriate and always achieves what it sets out to do.
But that crucial difference is in how much harder mediocre movies are to sit through than bad ones. A bad movie can make you spit out your beer and gasp, "Did you see that?" or "What did she just say?" The lighting will make the actors cast shadows. The soundtrack music will start and stop abruptly, as if operated by a monkey with a tape recorder. Exposition will confuse, annoy, sometimes even amaze with its sheer stupidity. Special effects will cause laughter rather than wonder. Sets will tremble if an actor bumps the wall. Dialogue will have you marveling at the ways language can be perverted. With a mediocre movie, you get none of these mistakes, but none of the surprise or bewilderment a bad movie can engender. It just sits there like leftover beige wall paint - inoffensive, bland and useless.
This is why I think the Medveds, and even on occasion the MST3K crew, tended to confuse "bad" and "unwatchable." How can Ed Wood's customary craziness be considered harder to sit through than, say, "Bed of Roses"? In what way is the thoroughly ridiculous "Glitter" a tougher slog than something as aggressively mediocre as "Speed"? It's been argued that bad movie fans are condescending jerks who like to laugh at other people's failings, and as a bad movie fan, I will admit there's some truth in that. However, to me, a bad big-budget movie is far more offensive than a bad cheap one, because the low-budget folks probably lacked the resources and experience, and their films are as often labors of love as get-rich-quick schemes. Bad big-budget flicks have just wasted enough money to have wiped out AIDS in Africa. I don't care one bit for "The Blair Witch Project", "Nowhere" or "Gummo" (well, that one has a good soundtrack), but they're all more creative than anything Roland Emmerich has foisted upon the public.
For the films that follow, that condescension comes with a bit of genuine admiration. The insanity they dole out is as entertaining as anything you'd get in a "good" film, just not in the same way. Of course, it's stacked toward horror movies, because I've seen more horror movies than anything else, and there are a lot of bad ones. All but two were made on the cheap, since not too many bad big budget movies are worth saluting. So, in no particular order, here's the beginning of the ten best bad movies I can think of...
"Blood Feast"
(1963)
The first gore movie in history was the product of director Herschell Gordon Lewis, an advertising genius who was working out of the Wrigley Building and had previously churned out a number of "nudie cuties," plus David F. Friedman, the legendary carnie-turned-exploitation film producer. The pair decided that since mainstream Hollywood was starting to show more skin to compete with what independent movies were doing, they would stay a step ahead by delivering something no big studio would: extreme onscreen violence. Now, I respect Friedman, but consider myself a big fan of H.G. Lewis, not just because of the blood and guts. The guy's story is amazing. I interviewed the man for a college class. There's a picture of him on my desk at work. He's my MySpace friend. Lewis is also partially responsible for the no-joke worst movie I have ever seen: "Monster A-Go Go", which even Joel, Servo and Crow couldn't make pleasant. But aside from the historical significance and still-extreme carnage shared by a number of his highlights, his movies are very often plain-out nuts, and "Blood Feast" is a fine introduction to that madness. Look no further than the first exchange between the homicidal Ishtar-worshipping Egyptian caterer Fuad Ramses (hammy Mal Arnold with thick brows painted on) and Mrs. Freemont (the vacuous Lyn Bolton), who is trying to set up a dinner party for her idiot daughter. Fuad says, "Have you ever had... an Egyptian FEAST?!?" and gives her the evil eye as a loud soap opera organ portends calamity. The lady's response? An enthusiastic "Why, that would be fine!" It's so inappropriate and abruptly edited, it gives you the instant giggles. Bolton, one of the most obviously amateur cast members, later reads lines off of a script clearly visible on a table. After Fuad's first murder, a newspaper headline screams "LEGS CUT OFF!" The music, composed and performed by Lewis, is a bizarre jumble of trombones, kettle drums and organs.
However, the match of dialogue and delivery provides the biggest laughs. It's hard to properly describe, but the actors are all stagey and wooden, like a high school play rehearsal. In group scenes, everyone has to shout their ridiculous lines because there's only one microphone, a budgetary limitation that inspired John Waters to later use it for its comedic effect. I always laugh at the melodramatic rantings of the botched murder victim ("Wild eyes! He had WILD EYES!"), the awkward romantic scenes (the lead couple, upon leaving a lecture on Egyptian sacrifice rituals: "To actually eat human flesh... Pete, how could they?" "Oh, come on, honey, let's talk about something more pleasant. Like, for example, you and me?") and the cops' forehead-slapping repartee (the hero - played by the great Bill Kerwin, going here under his frequent and appropriate stage name "Thomas Wood" - says to his boss, upon discovering gory remains: "Frank, if I'm right, these are the leftovers from the preparation of the feast of Ishtar. That's a blood feast. They take all the young girls... and they cook 'em to satisfy their goddess." Frank's reply: "Oh, no."). But the most gut-busting moments occur after a girl gets her brain scooped out on a beach, in the histrionic reactions from her wailing masher boyfriend (he goes from "Now prove you love me!" to "Waaahh! She wanted to lee-hee-heeeave!") and grieving mother ("I made her a dress, a white dress... and now she'll NEVER WEAR it she'll never wear i-hi-hi-hit!"). Even today, most of the gore scenes in "Blood Feast" are pretty gross, especially the chunky gunk that sluices out of Astrid Olson's mouth after the famous tongue-ripping scene. The limbs are usually very fake, though, and some will object to the opaque paint-like quality of the blood, which became a staple in all of Lewis' subsequent, more ambitious gore epics.
Others have dissected its myriad charms much more capably and thoroughly than I could, so I suggest you check out what they have to say. Me, I chose "Blood Feast" for this list over "The Wizard of Gore", the best Lewis gore movie (soon to appear as a remake with Crispin Fucking Glover in the lead role of Montag), because at a mere 65 minutes, it's shorter and more compact, thus more conducive to repeat viewings. I have seen it many times, and it still entertains - which is all Lewis and Friedman set out to do. The infamous trailer, with intro by Kerwin himself:
"The Executioner"
(aka "Massacre Mafia Style," 1978)
If you're one of those Italian-Americans who gets their undies in a bunch over unflattering stereotypes, this movie will give you a coronary. Producer, director and star Duke Mitchell was once the Deano part of the Martin & Lewis knock-off act that starred in "Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla". Mitchell also allegedly did Fred's singing voice on early episodes of "The Flintstones." Here, he crafts a sensitive post-"Godfather" portrait of an unhinged racist Sicilian mob assassin with a penchant for voice-overs and an unsettling mother/whore complex. First of all, the guy's nickname is "Mimi," which may be at the root of some of his problems. He's got a bushy pompadour and a moustache to match, wears a lot of tight pants and loud, open shirts, as befitting the style of the time. He enjoys big gold rings, watches with thick gold bands, and not trimming his nails. Actually, he looks like an extra from the parts of "Casino" that are set in the '70s. The movie starts off with a great sequence - lifted for the trailer, which was attached to Lucio Fulci's "The Beyond" when Sage Stallone and Quentin Tarantino rereleased it eight years ago - where Mimi (Mitchell) and his goombah Jolly electrocute a guy in a wheelchair by sticking his foot in a urinal and running over a plugged-in a cord from his desk lamp. Then the boys proceed to wipe out the entire building, going office to office and blasting everybody they see, all while some peppy "Mob Hits" song bops along in accompaniment. Then the movie flashes back to Mimi's kid getting baptized, describing his soon-to-be-dead wife as "a woman of simple Italian heritage, a saint, a woman in fear of the man she loved." What a sweet fella. From here, we get the whole story of Mimi's tumultuous rise and fall, like a skid row spin on "Scarface" with worse actors but also without all the coke and annoying synth music. His dad is a deported patron, and Mimi wants to get the old order up and running. His plan, I think, is to go to LA and wipe out all the pimps and bookies so he can take mob business back for the, um, right kind of people.
Other than Joe Spinnell's repulsive Frank Zito, I can think of no other movie protagonist who is so thoroughly slimy and unsympathetic but so creepily fascinating as Duke Mitchell's Mimi Miceli. His frequent rambling monologues, spoken or otherwise, often veer wildly into existential moaning, supremacist rhetoric, food metaphors or just some totally insane shit. For instance, as he's eating dinner with some mob guys, one laments Italians being disgraced despite their pleasant, bacchanal nature. Mimi counters that it's their fault. He gestures to the guy's mother, who just cooked their huge meal, and says, "This old woman here is the one who's been disgraced. She's the one who's been taking the punches. She's the one that was handed the organ grinder and the monkey when she got off the boat." He almost sobs during that. Then he grabs the visibly shocked old lady's hand and kisses it. I quote verbatim: "See these hands? You know what they smell of? Oregano. (unintelligible Italian word) Beautiful herbs. They gave you mostaccioli, lasagna, pizza, the most appreciated foods in the world. What did we give her? We gave her violence. We gave her death. We gave her dishonor. We gave these hands the ability to follow the rosary beads and pray for us in jail facing the electric chair. These hands, praying for me and you, kissing the cross for us before the guy pulls the switch. Let 'em call her wop, dago, the old Guinea, the one with the bun on the back of her hair with the knitting needles in it and the knots in her stockings. Because to me, she's as pure as the homemade wine she makes, the cookies she bakes. She's a powerful as the atomic bomb that Fermi invented, her son. I love her, and some day we'll forget that she is violence, Cosa Nostra, that ugly name we gave her, mafia. So every time you see her beware of this woman. She'll come up to you and she'll ask, 'Did you eat? Have some more.' That's all she wants. I love her. I love her." If that made any sense to you, you must be more Italian than I am.
Mitchell also croons a number of Englebert-y lounge songs, and they conjure the appropriate velour mood, but the best song is at a wedding. Immediately after a guy lectures us about the significance of the groom serving bread to his father, the movie comes to a halt for some old dude to lead a sing-along that will be stuck in your head forever: "Rigatoni, moostaccioli or spaghett/It's a dish a-like you never gonna forget/When the waiter comes around/don't be bashful, just siddown/For rigatoni, moostaccioli or spaghett." But don't worry, "The Executioner" does not just taunt Italians. I think every black person in the movie dies, including a pimp named (gulp) Super Spook, who gets crucified in a cemetary. "Hey, he told me Jesus was black," quips Mimi in what's supposed to be a light-hearted moment afterward. "Let him make a resurrection." And we're supposed to be rooting for this guy. Anyway, Mimi and Jolly kill some people, piss some people off and make some porn. Mimi's hot girlfriend and Jolly get iced, so Mimi blows up the funeral to kill all the mob guys, then goes back to Sicily, tells his dad at length about how fucked up America is with their blacks taking over and their free love and their "Godfather" movies, and is finally shot up by his own son with a gun hidden in a loaf of bread. This is a mean, ugly film, one which would never get made by a studio. If you ever get the chance to see this rare bastard, the shit that comes out of that guy's mouth will make your mind feel foamy. Grindhouse Releasing was supposed to put "The Executioner" and an unreleased follow-up entitled "Gone With the Pope" out on DVD, but there's apparently some legal issue because they put the awesome "Massacre Mafia Style" trailer in the extras of their fabulous "I Drink Your Blood" DVD without permission. Imagine how pleased I was when I bought that.
UPDATE 6/30: At the request of someone (who?)... I have removed the "MMS" trailer that I originally posted. I don't want to tread on someone's legal shit, even if I am helping to advertise the movie. So, you can go watch the aforementioned awesome trailer here. RIP, Duke.
"Rats: Night of Terror"
(aka "Rats: Notte di terrore," 1984)
What's better than an Italian post-apocalyptic action movie? One that's also a killer rat movie! This fucked-up picture collides the two concepts into a grimy, shambling progression of forehead-smacking stupidity. "Rats" is the product of genre hack Bruno Mattei, whose "Hell of the Living Dead" is admittedly one of the more satisfying lesser Italian zombie flicks, but whose spotty resume not only includes ugly shit like "SS Extermination Love Camp" and "Emanuelle In Prison", but the non-Fulci parts of the universally reviled (for good reason) "Zombi 3". This seems to be his most entertaining work, if only for its relatively unexplored hybrid approach and its extremely laughable proceedings. The only similar movie that comes to mind is the relatively boring "Damnation Alley", a big budget affair highlighted by a part where George Peppard and Jan-Michael Vincent are temporarily beseiged by flesh-eating cockroaches in a post-nuke desert town. "Rats" takes that segment's brilliance to feature length, packing in weird dialogue, bizarre visuals and a quintessentially Italian lack of concern for animal welfare - something usually showcased to a brazen degree in cannibal gut-munchers.
Upon viewing it, you may be reminded of that beloved children's rhyme: "Shake and shake the rat-filled bottle/None will come, and then a lot'll." That's how a lot of the rat attack scenes are played out. I particularly love the scene where a horde of rats plummets from a fireplace; they all fall in one huge mass, as if someone just dumped a box down the chimney. Then the poor little guys just sit there, looking dazed and irritated at the paint that has been slopped on their fur, ostensibly to make them scarier. The filmmakers don't appear to have been very concerned with the fates of Feivel and family, since they toss piles of live rodents down water pipes and all over various victims, including one who's on fire. (By endorsing this movie, I'm not saying that filming real violence perpetrated against animals is cool, but a sad fact that inevitably adds to the film's trash factor, revealing another shoddy and sleazy facet of its construction, albeit one which might rightfully dissuade some viewers.) When the rats advance on Our Heroes during the climax, Mattei cuts from the humans' bug-eyed reaction shots to what appears to be hundreds of rubber novelty rats glued to a rickety conveyor belt, a risible effect that outdoes even the famous bogus bat in "The House By the Cemetery" and the plastic tarantulas from "The Beyond." In addition, whenever rats appear in "Rats," the apocalyptic biker scumbag protagonists flip out, either shrieking in overblown terror or launching into hilarious anti-rat diatribes while smashing at the confused critters. Like Cookie Monster, these rats will eat anything - they even chew through the bikers' tires so they can't leave. Personally, as is the case with snakes, I don't find rats frightening in the least; I'm sure I'd freak out if I woke up and found one in my sheets, but otherwise I find movies where they're supposed to be fearsome very amusing.
About those bikers... let's start with Lilith (Moune Duvivier), because she's the hottest, and while she's unfortunately killed too soon, she gets one of the more lurid demises. Lilith struts around in a red cape and appears to be the only woman in the group with a libido, since she and her jerk boyfriend get ostracized for having sex too loudly. They leave and finish, then he goes off to get chomped. She stays in their sleeping bag, which has already been established to have a faulty zipper. Sadly, one little Ratty McRatticus gets in there, finds its way to her bare uh-uh and tunnels its way through to her mouth (you only see the exit). This leaves behind such losers as Video, who mistakes a computer for an ancient video game and tries to mask his ignorance by declaring that the "stupid machine needs a kick in the balls," and Chocolate, the lone black woman who, during a maniacally joyful discovery of packaged food supplies, gets playfully covered with flour and proceeds to dance around telling her companions, "Look! I'm as white as you!" Of course, this group of morons is just there to get picked off, and you'll cheer for each subsequent strengthening of the gene pool. I won't blow the astounding "shock" ending, but it's so totally pulled from the asses of screenwriters Hervé Piccini (who'd previously worked on the abominable Michael Sopkiw vehicle "Devil Fish") and Claudio Fragasso (the man behind another of our upcoming flicks), I'll kiss your ring if you can see it coming in any way. Once again, the trailer, under the ludicrous alternate title "Blood Kill":
To be continued ASAP. Today's recommended listening is "The View", Eucharist's characteristically odd slice of Gothenburgia which was exclusive to the 1993 Peaceville Deaf Metal Sampler. Remember when I was saying their old A Velvet Creation was a much better slow melodo-death album than the new Dissection? Well, you can get a free, band-endorsed download of that, its astounding follow-up Mirrorworlds and (almost) everything else the late Eucharist ever recorded right here. Drummer Daniel Erlandsson is now in Arch Enemy, where his skills are often shunted aside to keep the spotlight on the Amott brothers' guitar wrangling. Generally considered a footnote today, Eucharist was up there with early Darkane and Dark Tranquillity in my book - unique, infectious and remarkably tight. Swedish supremacy!
posted by SoulReaper at 10:13 AM
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