31 Days of Cheese: Day 31 - Plan Nine From Outer Space

It’s all true.

Well, except for the pie plates. While the Flying Saucers are as fake an effect as you can get (but at least you don’t see the stings like you do in A*P*E ) they are not pie plates – I don’t know what they are but they are not pie plates.

Everything else is true.

The fake grave stones and crosses that are about 1/2 a size too small.

The scene where the extra that knocks not one but two of them over in a shot. And when we cut back, they are still down.

The tall guy doubling for the late Bela Lugosi by holding a cape in front of his face. He’s easily a foot taller than Bea was.

The insane opening monologue from Criswell (the white haired guy). A Quote: “ The incidents, the places. My friend, we cannot keep this a secret any longer. Let us punish the guilty. Let us reward the innocent. My friend, can your heart stand the shocking facts of grave robbers from outer space?”

The Airplane ‘cockpit’ with the wooden flight controls and the shower curtain in the background.

The insane (yes I keep using that word) dialogue from the alien Eros: “You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!”

We get to hear Tor Johnson actually talk like a normal person, that is a normal person with a very very heavy Norwegian accent.

The constant shifting from day to night back to day. One example: First a shot of Bela in Dracula cape in daytime, cut to woman running at night in graveyard set (we see the set a lot) cut to man in car in day time, cut to Vampira at night cut back to man in car, now giving aide to woman running in bright daylight. It can make your head hurt.

Police officers using their guns to point or push the brim of their hats up (happens twice).

Stock footage, lots and lots of stock footage.

A puzzling plot cul-de-sac about UFO’s over, I think, Washington featuring a lot of stock footage of guns and rockets going off, a weird discussion by a general and a radio man about UFO’s and the playing of a tape recording of lectures to the earth from the Eros guy.

The chief alien wearing what looks like sur-coat from a movie about Prince Valiant in the middle ages.

The round Flying Saucer with the square entrance.

Tor Johnson breathing heavily in a scene where he’s supposed to be one of the walking dead.

The flying saucer ‘controls’ sitting on top of library tables.

The uniformed policeman who whines all the time.

The clouds in the sky when we see the saucers that never move.

The aliens complaining that the earthlings refuse to admit their existence and yet killing or tying to kill anyone that sees them.

The film is dizzying display of something. I’m not sure what to call it but it’s something. For want of a better term call it the Theater of the Incoherent. During the film the basic narrative keeps waking face first into walls until it just keels over. Why are they raising the dead? What’s the point? Why do the aliens complain that the earth refuses to acknowledge their existence then try to kill anybody that sees them? You just keep asking what is going on but you never get an answer. And there is the day/night shifts and the weird dialogue and the fake sets and the stock footage use that doesn’t make sense either. All of it can’t be intentional, but it can’t all be unintentional either. To call it simply incompetence, you have to assume that Ed Wood gave a damn any of technical goofs or the incoherent moments in this film. It’s obvious he didn’t. I’m not sure it’s intentional or simply the product of a rushed schedule and no money. But it’s there. Truly Dali wished he could be this surreal.

Enjoy with any damn thing you like.

Well that’s it for the 31 days. Some of it’s been fun. But not all of it.

And tonight? I’m going to read a book.

31 Days of Cheese: Day 30 - Manos The Hands of Fate

First a true story:

Some many years ago, back when cable TV showed movies late at night I caught about the last 2/3^rd’s of a film (I think it was on TBS but I can’t remember for sure). It was horrible, bad, ghastly, worse than anything I could imagine. It was such a train wreck I couldn’t look away. I just had to stay to the end (which was about 3 am if memory serves). Then I dragged myself to bed and when I woke up I discovered I had forgotten the name of the film – my brain was trying to defend itself I guess. The name was forgotten but the images stayed in my head.

The years pass. A show called Mystery Science Theater 3000 comes on the air and makes fun of bad films. I am captivated and a little scared as the first six times I see the show, I had already seen the film. I see more shows, and learn that they said worst film they ever did was something called Manos the hands of fate. I had not seen that episode but oh man I had too, like a junkie needs a fix. So when it came out on VHS, I dashed to the store, bought the tape, went home made myself a sandwich, popped the tape in, turned on the set and damn near did a spit take.

Manos, the Hands of Fate, the film MS3K said was the worst one they ever did…it was the same film that I had seen all those years ago.

And it is awful. The brain child of one Hal Warren in 1966 (he wrote, directed and starred in the film. Just so you know who’s to blame), and filmed near Houston over the course of several weekends, it is cosmically awful in all phases of moviedom reaching a near perfect black hole effect of ghastly hideous suck.

The camera was a hand held silent job that you wound up, so no shot was longer than 35 seconds (although some seem a lot longer) and the dialogue (which is bad) was dubbed in later in what sounds like someone’s echo filled basement. The music is either a weird lady lounge singer song or annoying sax solos or piano chords or almost new agey flute music none of which really fit the story.

Briefly, the story is that Mike (Hal) and his wife, child and daughter stumble onto the lair of the master, who serves Manos and wears a robe with big red hands on it (yes – Manos). He is dead but not so dead and there are women, his wives, who stand next poles while he’s dead. They wear flimsy gauzy garments and what looks like 1950’s style underwear. They fight later. For a long time they fight. I think the entire film was made to have women in their underwear wrestling. Before the internet people had to do things like that. The Master also has a dog and a servant Torgo who looks after the place.

Torgo’s a bit different. He’s got big knees and he walks funny. The idea was that he was supposed to be a satyr (man top half, goat legs and feet bottom half ) but the brace didn’t work well and caused the actor a lot of pain and they never got around to doing the money shot were we see the goat feet. The dubbed voice for Torgo is weirdly synched and matches the weird twitchiness of the actor. Sadly John Reynolds who played Torgo killed himself some time later. It had nothing to do with how bad this film was, despite rumors to that effect (the most recent body count was that three actors offed themselves over this film which seems a bit much to me. After all, really it’s just a movie).

Nobody can act for example Hal as Mike comes across as unlikeable, angry and useless – and nobody can set up a shot either. And nobody could keep the moths away from the lights when they were filming at night.

And then there is the big twist ending that made one woman at the premier slap Hal and has left a bad taste in everybody’s mouth since then. But the whole film has such a slimy sleazy undertone you want to take a shower after you’ve seen it.

This is not the bottom of the barrel. This is where stuff has seeped out of the bottom of the barrel and is soaking the ground below the barrel.

Manos by the way is Spanish for Hands so the title means: Hands, the Hands of Fate.

Enjoy with crackers and goat cheese.

31 Days of Cheese: Day 29 – A*P*E

A*P*E.

Ouch.

To put it bluntly APE (I refuse to keep typing A*P*E – well except for that last time).

To put in bluntly APE sucks. In every possible way it sucks. Acting, Story, special effects, ape suit, editing, sound, soundtrack, use of stock footage, it all sucks.

APE sucks so bad it almost pulled my brain out of my head through my eye sockets as I was watching.

This 1976 Korean/American Attempt was released in an attempt to cash in on the giant ape movie craze caused by the release of the 1976 remake of King Kong. Don’t remember a 1976 craze for Giant Ape films. Don’t worry. There wasn’t one. The Kong remake didn’t do so well and this one utterly bombed.

The story is kind of simple – folks capture a 36 foot tall ape (they keep saying that like it was important, I don’t know why) which escapes a toy freighter, wrestles a dead shark in a pool and then makes landfall in Korea. APE runs amok, then finds a blonde American actress who is in Korea to make a film – I think the title of the film is “Blonde woman gets raped” because the two times we see her making the movie she is being attacked and molested – APE garbs her and takes off with her Fay Wray style. An US Army officer chain smokes and curses a lot. The Blonde’s wooden boyfriend (as in acting not actually made of wood) rescues Blonde from APE, APE finds blonde again after trashing more of Korea (he keeps doing that in the film). He is then killed.

Roll Credits.

It is utterly impossible to convey without you actually seeing this film (and don’t) just how shoddy and cheap the effects are. The ape suit looks like it was made of wool and bought at a used costume store. You see the line for the headpiece a lot. The buildings are just generic white blocks or grey blocks. There is a scene where APE, apparently to show it’s not all bad, steps over a cow. But it’s so obviously a plastic cow that you can’t even believe the filmmakers had the nerve to keep the shot in the film.

The action sequences don’t make sense. You keep going wait, that’s not right and then something blows up. But not in a fun way.

This might have been intended to be in 3-D as boulders (on very visible wires) fly towards you, as do flaming arrows and extra’s dressed as soldiers point rifles at the camera and shoot. (By the way you have to work the bolt of a bolt action rifle each time you shoot. Just for future reference.).

The most famous scene is where the ape flips the bird to the army after destroying a helicopter. Your mind goes, ‘no they didn’t. Oh yes they did. Aren’t you sorry you quit drinking now?”

For me, seeing this a second time, what I took away from it – other than a visceral dislike of anyone involved in the making of this film – was a great appreciation for Toho’s maniacal attention to detail in their giant monster films, it’s the level of detail that helps makes the difference between an enjoying a film or wishing you had never been born while suffering through it.

Anyway at the end, as the APE is being gunned down and the Army officer is smoking and saying “let’s see him dance for his organ grinder now” (Huh? What? ) the Blonde weeps on the wooden boyfriend’s shirt (I don’t have time to go into the horror of the 70’s fashions in the film), and asks “Why”

And instead of saying “because he’s killed something like 100-300 people in less than two days and while granted he may have a soft spot for blonde women that still leaves the rest of us in trouble if he’s anywhere nearby. ” what He says is “He was too big for a small world like ours.”

And with that last what the’ hell are you talking about moment’. I leave this film.

Enjoy with Kimchee.

31 Days of Cheese: Day 28 - The Exorcist Two

Oh my, what a mess. What an utter mess of a film. I mean how do you take the most successful Horror film of the era and mess it up this badly.

Well for one you have John Boorman, fresh off his epic disaster Zardoz direct.

Then add an obviously blotto Richard Burton, dress James Earl Jones up in a grasshopper suit and have a lot of scenes with blinking lights in people’s faces and behold! An utter mess from 1977 that ended up finishing second to Plan Nine From Outer Space in voting for the 1980 Golden Turkey Awards worst movie ever made (by only a few votes if memory serves).

Anyway the setting is that it’s a few years after the first film. Linda Blair, Regan has grown up a bit and is in New York. her mother – (the actor didn’t want to do the sequel) is away on location somewhere so she is being care for by Nurse Ratchet (well Louise Fletcher who needed to pay the bulls I guess) who is some kind of doctor for kids and some other woman who acts creepy and weird before she sets herself on fire at the end of the film (an idea that came to me once or twice while watching this mess).

Anyway enter Father Lamont (Richard Burton) who seems to be looking for scotch but actually is investigating Regan’s exorcism. There is some nonsense early on about feuding inside the Church but it’s very quickly dropped and we shall drop it too. Meantime Nurse Ratchet (I’m going to call her that, it’s fun) has invented or is using this machine where two people stare at blinking lights and synch their minds while hypnotized. It’s a massively stupid idea.

Really, watching lights flash on and off on the faces of Richard Burton and Linda Blair does not gripping cinema make.

And then as if the drugs have kicked in the film wanders over this rather pointless story about Kokumo who has power to calm locusts or something that the demon Pazuzu doesn’t like so it possesses him as it would Linda later on.

We then see the Father from the first film as young man climb up some cliff to church in Africa (several folks fall to their death as they climb the cliffs. Would it have killed them to set up a rope ladder? ) and he rids Kokumo of the demon.

Lamont convinced that the demon is still inside Linda somewhere goes to Africa where he meets James Earl Jones dressed as a locust. He then turns into a scientist who is an expert on locusts (and can I say that insects, even lots of them do not gripping cinema make either?). And the viewer’s brain turns to mush.

There is a final confrontation back in Georgetown where Linda is split into the good Linda and the bad Linda the bad Linda is supposed to kind of a hottie. It’s not well right, there really is an icky quality to it and there is an uncomfortable moment were Lamont starts snogging with the bad Linda. But then the room is full of bugs and explosions and Lamont rips the heart out of the bad Linda and the good Linda calms the bugs and I die inside a bit.

Then Nurse Ratchet realizes that only Father Lamont can protect Linda and as they walk away the house bursts into flames.

I’ve read that at the premier of the film people were throwing things at the screen as the film ended. I’m not surprised. I was throwing things at my own TV.

Enjoy with a cheese sandwich and a lot of scotch. I understand you can get grasshoppers as a food but really.