Dean Jagger’s name is not usually associated with stinkingly bad movies. It’s true, he was in the disappointing Revolt of the Zombies in 1936… but those were early days, both for Jagger’s career and for zombies on film.

Jagger went on to win acclaim for his roles in Brigham Young and Twelve O’Clock High (for which he won the 1950 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor). As for his genre performances, he’s fondly remembered for playing a Quatermass surrogate in X: the Unknown, in which he teamed up with Leo McKern to fight a radioactive blob from the Earth’s core.

That’s why it’s so surprising to find a movie like Evil Town (1973/74/87) near the end of his distinguished career. It’s not just that Dean Jagger’s in a movie this bad — Evil Town took 14 years, three versions and at least five titles before it finally got released, so you can imagine what a nightmare the finished product turned into. No: the real surprise is that of all the terrible things in this terrible movie, Jagger’s performance is pretty close to the bottom.

Okay, enough is enough! Yeah, I know you have been coming to b-masters.com on a regular basis to laugh and chuckle over reviews of various B-movies, but it’s time you were exposed to something different. It’s time you experienced some ART. So here’s a review of the first filmed version of the 1972 Pulitzer Prize-winning off-Broadway play That Championship Season. Before you protest and shield your eyes, I compromised in my choosing of an art movie to educate you. While it may be an art movie, it was produced by schlockmeisters Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus of Cannon Films. Feel better now?

This may be a bit of a variation on the Falling Stars theme, as it’s not a film per se. But it is a very cinematic project, combining prog rock opera, symphonic bombast, HG Wells, and a near-the-end-of-his-career Richard Burton.

The Musical Version of War of the Worlds

“This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede–a stampede gigantic and terrible–without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of civilisation, of the massacre of mankind.”
– HG Wells, The War of the Worlds

My parents were always willing to indulge my state as kind of a weird kid. One year for Christmas, they got me an LP with which I would become obsessed as a kid, and one that continues to find it’s way into my playlist. It was a bizarre amalgamation of rock opera and old time radio play, featuring the voice talent of none less than Richard Burton: Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds.

The Skeptic (2009)

The tag line for The Skeptic is “A tormented man’s reluctant search for greater meaning in his life.” Uh, no: that’s the synopsis for last week’s “Dr. Phil”. Actually, The Skeptic is a ghost story. But it’s a ghost story that spends about half its time crowing about how stunted and miserable people become if they question the Great Beyond.

Sure, I’ve seen much more aggressive and less technically-proficient attacks on rationality, but still: even when expressed so mildly, this sort of thing sets my teeth on edge. In fact, I found some of the implications so irritating that I had to comment on them, however briefly.

Fortunately, about halfway through, the movie forgets it has an axe to grind and remembers how to tell a story. But, oh, that first half…

W IS WAR

This movie features an army of well-armed, leather clad Filipinas with shaved heads. If you know me, you know that alone qualifies this as one of the greatest movies of this or any generation. Everyone is all crowing about Citizen Kane all the time, but to those people I ask 1) have you ever even seen Citizen Kane; and 2) did it feature even a single well-armed, leather clad Filipina with a shaved head? It didn’t, did it? So stop calling it the greatest film of all time. And since W is War is Filipino trash cinema, it’s not satisfied with just cute women with shaved heads, even though that was enough for me. W is War is the sort of movie that just keeps giving and giving. Cartoonish villains in capes, dune buggies, motorcycles shaped like sharks, massive shootouts, dudes in leather pants, exploding huts, sloppy kungfu fights, scenes shot from between the legs of hairy men wearing yellow Speedos — truly W is War is the movie that has something for everyone, and plenty of it.

ALIEN 2: ON EARTH

In this unauthorized Italian sequel to “Alien” a group of spelunking bowlers (Or are they bowling spelunkers?) discover that their favorite cave and favorite bowling alley are infested with alien monsters that hatch from rocks.

Review Snippet:
Now we are subjected to another ten minutes of watching the group perform a spelunking rescue in every detail. Once Jill’s inert body is hauled back up, the only person at the top is Rod. He starts the process of rigging the ropes so the others can ascend. Unbeknownst to Rod, the camera is slowly panning back through the cave and up Jill’s body to her face. This takes an additional four minutes. So, for the last twenty-four minutes the only thing keeping my attention has been complaining about the complete lack of anything to keep my attention.

Lesson Learned:
Spelunking is an important branch of physics.

So of all the things I could have used to try and kickstart things again, why this? Because I was watching it again the other night after an interval of years, and man—I’d almost forgotten how craptacular it is. And because as I was watching, I started captioning things in my head, which is usually a good sign.

THE HAUNTING (1999)

In which Jan de Bont and David Self teach us all new appreciation for Robert Wise’s 1960 adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s seminal horror novel by botching every one of its set-pieces. In which a subtle tale of psychological horror becomes the $80 million equivalent of trying to frighten someone by blowing up a paper bag and bursting it behind them.

In which we learn that 19th century architects never argued with their clients, that decapitations don’t bleed, that a dead child in your bed is nothing to get worked up about, and that the best way to rid your house of an evil spirit is by yelling at it.

Oh – and that scientists are unethical. Big surprise.

What do you think when you come across the word “scientist”, besides good ol’ Liz? Well, you probably don’t think of the kind of scientist found in the movie Choke Canyon, who comes across as a kind of modern day Indiana Jones. But these particular filmmakers seem clueless as to how to pull off this unusual scientist character successfully, among other things, and end up with a movie that’s both illogical and boring.

INTREPIDOS PUNKS
Though I didn’t realize it at the time, Teleport City was created for one reason and one reason only: to eventually review Intrepidos Punks. In fact, it wouldn’t be entirely beyond the pale to say that my entire life has been leading up to the moment I first heard of, then tracked down and watched this overwhelmingly fantastic slice of punk rock exploitation from, of all places, Mexico. At its heart,Intrepidos Punks is really nothing more than a by-the-numbers biker film updated for the loser censorship morals of the 1970s. But the frosting it layers onto the biker film cake make it into something utterly sublime. Everything I’ve ever been interested in — exploitation films, sleaze, punk rock, luchadores, scantily clad new wave girls, dune buggies — it all comes together in this perfect storm of day-glo mohawks and ten foot tall teased-hair brilliance.

With some people saying that 2012 will be the final year of mankind because of what the Mayan calendar says, what could be better than to encourage building panic by starting off the year with a movie about the end of the world? In This Is Not A Test, several strangers gathered together in the desert find out their country is about to be struck by a nuclear attack. What should they do? What would you do?

Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale / A tale of a cinematic slip…

The movie The Wackiest Wagon Train In The West is about a wagon train headed by a seasoned older gentleman who has a bumbling and dim-witted sidekick played by Bob Denver. The other people in the wagon train consist of a rich couple of good breeding, two sexy young women, and a young man who knows the latest in the field of science. Sounds familiar?

Naked, naked Mathilda May

LIFEFORCE Lifeforce is another one of those horror movies that wrapped itself in science fiction marketing. It’s also another one of those movies that lots of people seem to loathe but I predictably love — and not just because of Mathilda May, though there’s no arguing that she doesn’t hurt. It’s referred to by some as a rip-off of Hammer’s Five Million Years to Earth, akaQuatermass and the Pit (one of my all-time favorites, by the way), with a little bit of Night of the Living Dead thrown in, plus probably some Planet of the Vampires. And pretty much every movie that could was ripping off Alien at that point as well, so we might as well through that one onto the pile too. It mixes everything up into a completely loopy sci-fi horror tale featuring a perpetually nude female lead and an exploding Patrick Stewart.

Catching up on posting updates…

Legend of the Tsunami Warrior I don’t think looking for any historical background to the movie is necessary, because it’s quickly obvious that this movie has less to do with Thai history and folklore and a lot more to do with the fact that someone wanted to make a Thai version of the Pirates of the Caribbean series. In look, scope, and setting it is very similar to the Pirates franchise — lead actor Ananva Everingham even gives off a sort of Orlando Bloom vibe, with all the good and bad that entails.
Rambu: The Intruder Rambu is a gold mine of low budget action entertainment, and what it lacks in polish it certainly makes up for with enthusiasm. Indonesian trash cinema seems occupied first and foremost with giving audiences their money’s worth, and Rambu never once lets you down. From the opening showdown to the frequent fights, then on to the scene where Rambu faces down a gang of thugs by whistling to summon an army of tuk-tuk driving bad-asses who we had no idea existed at his disposal until that very minute (and who never appear again), Rambu‘s only concern is making sure there’s something entertaining on screen.
The Stabilizer Compared to the appellations given to the protagonists of other 1980s action films — the Exterminator, the Punisher, the Executioner — the Stabilizer sounds pretty benign. You’d almost think that he was given that name only because all of those others had already been taken. But then you learn that what the Stabilizer is in charge of stabilizing is the very balance between good and evil itself. And that, it turns out, is a job that involves an awful lot of exterminating, punishing, and executing.
The Vampire Lovers As latter-day Hammer films go, The Vampire Lovers is an entertaining, sexy romp. It relies less on the hammy scare tactics of the later Dracula series and more on the audience’s assumptions. To us it’s obvious that Carmilla is a vampire, but it isn’t explicitly stated with shots of Pitt in fangs until late on in the film. Instead the movie shows the good guys trying to figure things out while Carmilla manages to keep one step ahead each time. The movie’s biggest asset is Pitt, who looks an absolute knockout, her husky Polish accent adding a welcome dash of the exotic. There are a few amusing nods to her vampiric nature, such as a preference for red wine, and refusing breakfast because she isn’t hungry having spent the night feasting on Emma’s blood.
Wolfhound Anyone who knows the tropes of the sword and sorcery genre will be on familiar ground with this movie, but the fact that Wolfhound lacks originality doesn’t mean it lacks for entertainment value. It’s fantasy formula well done, with some decent performances, gorgeous location work, and a lack of the smirking irony that befouls most of the fantasy fare on SyFy. The official story is that it’s based on a novel from 1995 by Mariya Semyonova, but I think it’s pretty obvious where the true influences lie. While this film obviously got made as a Russian answer to Lord of the Rings, it has a lot more in common with Conan the Barbarian, including an opening scene and motivation for the main character that is basically plucked wholesale from the John Milius barbarian classic.
Intrusion: Cambodia Here’s how to test whether or not you are a true resident of Teleport City: if I tell you there’s a movie starring Richard Harrison, Anthony Alonzo, and Tetchie Agbayani, do you look at me quizzically and shrug, or do you start to shake with giddy anticipation? If it’s the former, then let us soothe the wound by agreeing that you have much yet to learn, and the path before you is rich with astounding discoveries. If it’s the latter, then we are all together as one, like a rag-tag band of misfits soldiers fighting our way across ‘Nam on some mission whose objective is entirely unclear but never the less must be undertaken.

And if you are interested in asides, feel free to pick through Teleport City’s Eating and Drinking Adventure in San Diego

After a steady diet of Edgar Wallace novels (preparing for the recent Roundtable), I found myself feeling unsatisfied. I decided to go back and re-acquaint myself with an author whose mysteries are much more rigorous and disciplined that Wallace’s: namely, John Dickson Carr.

Carr, an American by birth, lived and worked for much of his life in England. He became known as one of the most brilliant authors of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. He was so prolific that his publishers made him use pseudonyms (the most famous being “Carter Dickson”) to keep his name from growing stale.

Yet in spite of his talent and his reputation, as far as I know only three of Carr’s stories have ever been turned into feature films. I never stopped to ask myself why this might be the case… until I noticed the contrast with Edgar Wallace. Why was it that the better writer of the two had been so completely neglected by the movie industry? Here, then, are my thoughts on two of the very few movies adapted from Carr’s work:

Dangerous Crossing (1953): Based on Carr’s 1943 radio play “Cabin B-13″. A woman and her husband embark on their honeymoon cruise, but before the ship has even got underway the husband disappears. To make matters worse, the woman finds herself unable to prove that her husband ever even existed. In fact, she’s stumbled into a diabolical plot; but she may not be able to stay sane long enough to find out what really happened to her husband.

That Woman Opposite (1958): Based on the novel “The Emperor’s Snuff-Box”. Eve’s abusive ex-husband shows up just as she’s about to get re-married. The situation is bad enough when he breaks into her bedroom at night… but it soon gets worse. There is a brutal murder, and Eve finds herself the only suspect. And that’s just the beginning of Eve’s troubles…

There have been some great combinations concocted over the years, like when H. B. Reese got the idea to blend peanut butter with chocolate. The movie Forced To Kill boasts its own successful mix, adding actor Michael Ironside to PM Entertainment. Like a peanut butter cup, the results are pretty tasty.

Der Wixxer (2004)

You know you’re dealing with a major cultural phenomenon when you can make fun of it fifty years later, and your audience still gets the jokes. That’s certainly the case with Der Wixxer, a parody of the Edgar Wallace krimi genre. Der Wixxer is loosely based on 1964′s Der Hexer, but it gives the unheimlich maneuver to a bewildering number of other krimis, too.

I have no idea what to make of the movie. On the one hand, it’s one of the most unapologetically stupid comedies I’ve ever seen. On the other hand, there’s a great deal of intelligence at work behind the surface stupidity.

Things I Learned from This Movie: 70% of all German comedians are named “Oliver”.

Whew, 15 chapters and done.  As usual, I may not have written well, but I wrote long. Here’s the alpha and the omega of it.

Chapter 1

Chapter 15

THE DARK EYES OF LONDON (1939)

In which an alarming number of drowning victims are fished out of the Thames, all of them insured for surprisingly large amounts of money, in spite of being effectively alone in the world…

The trail of carnage leads from the Greenwich Insurance Company, headed by disgraced former medical man Dr Feodor Orloff, to a home for destitute blind men run by the dedicated Mr Dearborn, who is blind himself.

Throw in one victim’s beautiful daughter, a dumb and blind violinist, a jovial forger, a wisecracking Chicago cop, a hulking, disfigured henchman, a drowning pool and a square-jawed London detective, and we have a story whose moral seems to be never send the police to do a homicidal maniac’s job…

Observation: In England, insurance fraud is a bigger deal than multiple murder.

Hey! Let’s remake King Kong! Only this time we’ll aim it completely towards kids, taking out all of the intense stuff so the movie will get a “G” rating! Since we don’t have much money, we will have it animated as close to Saturday morning style as we can! Plus, we’ll add songs and make it a musical! And we’ll call it The Mighty Kong!

Oh, how the mighty have fallen – and I’m not talking about what happens to Kong in the climax.

Time for another gushing review of Columbia’s 1940 serial The Green Archer, based (sorta) on Edgar Wallace’s novel. See how things come out in the wash in Chapter 7: The Secret Passage.