Bob Muir & The Enemy Below Podcast 3-26-13

Bob Muir & The Enemy Below Podcast 3-26-13

Bob Muir & The Enemy Below Podcast 3-19-13

Bob Muir & The Enemy Below Podcast 3-19-13

Bob Muir & The Enemy Below Podcast 3-5-13

Bob Muir & The Enemy Below Podcast 3-5-13

Son of the Revenge of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 31: Night of the Ghouls

Pride of place for any listing of  cheesy bad films must be set aside for Ed Wood.

While really not the worst director of all time – there is that guy from Italy and a few more names – he is unique, and not always in a good way but always uniquely him and his vision.

This film shot in 1959 was not scene by the general public until 1988 as Ed did not have the money to pay the post-production lab their fee so they held the film – one Wade Williams upon acquiring the rights for Plan Nine from Outer Space found out about this and paid the bill and thus we have the film.

It’s, even for Ed Wood, a odd film. It seems to be a sort of sequel to both Plan Nine and The Bride of the Monster –here  Lt. Bradshaw who we saw in Plan Nine is presented as sort of the LAPD’s X files, along with him is the guy who played Patrolman Kelton  and of course Tor Johnson returns as Lobo – the lobo in Bride of the Monster.

And Criswell returns to utter some more of the bizarre poetics that Ed Wood could create when the mood was on him. In this film he rises out of a coffin to spout his gibberish – in case you wondered where  Tim Burton got the idea for the opening shot of Ed Wood.

The plot of the film – and really can you talk about plots when you are dealing with an Ed Wood film as anything more than a sort of advisory capacity – involves strange goings on happening again at the house on willows lake or lake marsh  - nobody seems to be able to keep their names straight so why I am worrying is bit beyond me

So the house is rebuilt and one Dr. Acula (that’s the name) is running some kind of medium scam – there is a woman in white pretending to be a ghost and a woman in black who seems to really be a ghost – or something early on she kills a young couple who were making out in a car – that’ll learn ya – actually the girl slaps the guy and walks away from the car – as sure as any sign you need she is dead meat – one thing here is that I’m not sure what the post production lab’s fee was but it was too much-  many shots in this segment look like they were under cranked so when projected  you have what for the want  of a better term “the Benny hill” effect where folks are moving very fast but look foolish doing so.

Not quite the look you want in a monster film.

There is an odd constant coming and going in the police station during the shots there – one suspected Wood – who by now had a serious drinking problem , which combined with his dressing in woman’s clothing suggested he know a lot about what went on inside a police station late and night.

An old man and his wife spot a ghost on a mountain road – in another little call back the old man is played by the man who was chief inspector in Bride of the Monster. He also overacts if that is the right word with the steering wheel of the car in the back projection shots – I suppose Ed was saying make it look like the road is bumpy.

Lt. Bradshaw is sent to investigate the claim and runs into Dr. Acula – god what a name. I suspect by this point Ed Wood knew just how silly his films were – the séance that shortly follows has a very fake floating trumpet effect, keeping with Ed’s esthetic you can see the wires holding it up – a man in a white sheet making weird noises – a floating trumpet mute – which I can only ascribe to Ed’s waste not want not way of doing things, or as a way of saying yes I know how fake it looks – see – I’m using a trumpet mute – this is followed by face in close up who gibbers.

We really don’t have an idea exactly where these events are occurring with respect to the séance itself – Ed was never very good at that – but anyway Bradshaw smells a rat and wanders about and finds all sorts of props and Lobo who survived the fire at the end of Bride of the Monster except that one side of his face is gone – otherwise it’s the same old Lobo.

There are escapes and painful comedy with Patrolman Kelton and the like. Eventually more folks from the police come and break up the party – shooting lobo – the girl in white and Dr. Acula try and get away but the girl in white meets the ghost in black – kind of it’s an Ed Wood film after all. And Dr. Acula in the kicker ending finds out that he has actually managed to raise the dead but they are not happy about that.

This or the Sinister Urge was the last of the standard (if you can call them that) films that Ed Wood would make –  the years after that saw a sad decline into alcoholism, and soft core porn and sleazy porn style novels. 

Well this is the last slice of cheese until next time, hope you enjoyed some of them – sorry this was a day late but things happen.

Enjoy with a nice brie and some nice sparking water – Ed drank enough for all of us.

Son of the Revenge of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 30: The Room

A Story, goes one idea, should answer the questions who, what , when. Were, Why and How.

The room, as a film, poses another questions

What the f-k?

Seriously WTF.

We start off with Johnny who we are told works at a bank – I’m not sure what bank would hire a guy with scraggly shoulder length hair who looks like he does or did a lot of drugs and works out – seriously he looks like Iggy Pops workout partner. Anyway Johnny is in love with Lisa. He arrives at the room – a room in their apartment – with a red dress that Lisa puts on and then they start to make noise about some afternoon delight when it comes  this kid Danny who is something – surrogate son or something who says he wants to watch –yeah the film starts giving off all sorts of wrong from the word go.

First we have a pillow fight and love scene were we get to see so much more of Johnny than we want to – and the sex scene’s a bit off too. Not to be crude but it seems like Johnny is inserting his manhood into her navel.

Well hell everything in this film is off.

Someone has noted that both this film and Bridemic were made as a result of the producer/writer/director’s wanting his vision to come to the screen. But while with Bridemic you see that the idea of the director was to make something important about global warming while honoring Alfred Hitchcock (both of which it fails to do in a magnificent horrible way) honestly I can’t figure out and a lot of folks can’t figure out why the hell the Room was made. What is the point?

A lot of this strangeness has to be laid at the feet of the auteur of this picture Tommy Wiseau who plays the lead Johnny (big surprise).

I’m honestly not sure what accent he has – vaguely eastern European but it’s really he comes off as some sort of space alien or I think more like a human clone raised by space aliens with only a limited experience with how humans react – to anything.

A plot point is that he does not get the promotion he was hoping for at the bank he’s been working at – apparently for a while- and he utterly melts down expressing his anger at the bank – it’s like dude – if you’re that good at your job there are other banks . Johnny is either happy or recreating in agony.  Moderately unhappy is foreign to him.

And everybody else in the film picks up on this vibe and stats acting like that as well – you’re constantly saying wait humans don’t do this.

And I’d have to say plot point isn’t really the accurate phrase – things happen in this film and are then never spoken off again. For example – Lisa’s mother announces that she has breast cancer, Lisa says oh it’s just breast cancer. The point is never mentioned again. Earlier in the film it turns out Denny – Johnny’s surrogate child – who seems a bit wrong himself – is tangled up in drug dealing – and that is never mentioned again.

The film also tells us that football is played by men in any sort of clothing who toss the football back and forth to each other at a distance of at most 10 feet. That’s not football, that’s called having a catch.

Anyway the main story is that Lisa who has been living with Johnny for five years now and is engaged with the marriage a month away has decided that she doesn’t love Johnny anymore and starts an affair with Mark – Johnny’s best friend.

We know Mark is Johnny’s best friend mostly because Johnny keeps saying that in the weird accent of his “oh Hia Mark. You’re my best friend”

And there are the endless times were other members of the cast – especially Lisa’s mother keeps saying what a great guy Johnny is and how sensitive he is and oh god just shut up.

After Johnny discovers the affair he completes his downward spiral – saying everyone has betrayed me! Why! Why did this happen to me! He’s not in a mood to listen to the idea that man is born to trouble as sparks fly upward and all that. So what he does is stick the huge pistol they took from the drug dealer back earlier in the film (and wouldn’t that have been sent to the police?) into his mouth and shoot.

We end with about 8 minutes of all actors saying “Johnny wake up’” and such while the pool of  blood from the back of his head lovingly expands – it’s very creepy. Johnny as martyr to… well this is the problem – to what?  It’s hard to say.

The Room is one of the strangest films I have ever seen – but in the others the strangeness was intentional as the story being told is odd or unusual or the manner of the storytelling was odd – in this case the strangeness stems from inside Tommy Wiseau.

Watch with a pizza with elaborate toppings.

Son of the Revenge of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 20: The Astounding She Monster

After the cynical rottenness of Batman and Robin it is honestly a relief to watch something that is just dull and awful like Astounding She Monster.

Glowing space lady kills a dog, people and a bear.

Wait what?

Made in 1957 for a budget that wouldn’t have paid for Uma Thuman’s nail polish in Batman and Robin this is one dumb film.

In the opening a narrator (who leaves pretty quickly I guess he saw the rest of the script and decided that he was outta there – probably demanded his check before he left for the day as well)

Anyway the narrator tells us that some folks believe that this universe started when other folks blew up their universe. It’s an intriguing idea for the source of the big bang but I don’t think the screen writer knew enough about the big bang – which was still in its infancy as a theory to have that in the screen play – just words in a row. At any rate the narrator tells us that now other aliens are worried that Humanity is developing the means to destroy the universe again so off to goes – a dot of light – this is a very low budget picture.

After this we see a ‘society woman’ get kidnapped , as part of a long prepared plan – the plan is simply cut her off then pull her out of her car and drive off. Two five year olds who were waiting to be fed could come up with a better plan.

Then we shift to the mountains were we meet the male lead, a geologist and his dog (played by the actor’s dog per the ever infallible Internet movie database)  man and his dog doing science in the mountains.  As they are doing science in the mountains they see the glowing ball from that planet back there (the narrator by now has left the building so were working with the little information we can get from the screen itself) the glowing ball hits the ground makes something of an explosion and the scientist – a geologist by the by – shrugs his shoulders and heads back for the cabin.

Emerging from the glowing ball is the Astounding she monster – in heels – eyebrows that must be seen to be believed and a skin tighitsh  jump suit. She also is shot out of focus or blurred to give the impression that she is hot with deadly radiation – it’s the major effect in the film – things get blurry when she’s around – given the  tiny budget and the basic level of competence in this film I  think this was about as good an effect as they were going to get – the Director who worked with Ed Wood, shows the effects of  Wood’s influence because they use the same shot of the She monster walking along the road about 15 times.

Also the music is taken from a sound library somewhere and features about two themes on is a loud trumpet heavy da-da DA – Da! Theme whenever the She Monster is walking about.

Fate then sets its wheels in motion to bring all these people together, the kidnappers car goes off the road near where the scientist lives as the diver Bard was distracted by the glowing lady – yes the she monster (da! Da! DA!)

On foot, they arrived at the films one set – the interior of the scientist's cabin – it’s a cozy little crew with the kidnapped girl, Nat, the boss, Brad, the idiot and the drunk woman who is Nat’s squeeze for some reason – Nat not being as smart as he thinks is one of the possibilities here.

So we have a little sub-moron petrified forest set up with the kidnappers waiting the scientist's jeep but as the lights are broken they have to wait until morning. Drunk lady drinks about all the booze, the scientist tires to fight back but gets hit instead. There are phone calls taken under duress and the whole thing is so dull  you start to wish she monster would kill them all.

Well she doesn’t quite do that – Bard hears the dog bark and he goes after what the dog is barking and it’s the She Monster! The she monster kills the dog! Then she kills Brad! Then Nat goes out and drags the body back – arriving just in time to shoot the last bottle of booze in the house much to drunk lady’s upset. Now it turns out that Nat (who as I said isn’t as bright as he thinks)  has picked up radiation poisoning from carrying Brad around – Brad having died from the direct touch of the She Monster who I guess is just radioactive as hell.

So after another in series of phone calls they are outside where the she monster kills the drunk lady – and as she tries to touch Nat – Nat steps aside as the she Monster lunges forward for him (nobody else in the film thinks to do this) and the She Monster falls off of a fairly large cliff – (it seems she isn’t that bright either)

Nat returns to the cabin and at gun point forces the scientist and the girl to drive the jeep (with him in it) down the mountain despite the terrible danger of falling off a cliff and dying.

Worse yet the She Monster got better – and as they round a turn in the road there she is in all her out of focus glory – Nat is killed here – which I was happy to see – when the last disposable character dies it means the movie is almost over. As the scientist and the kidnapped girl run back to the cabin , the she monster kills a bear – mostly because they had stock footage of a bear to use and they wanted to pad the film a little. And then heads back to the cabin.

Inside the cabin the scientist is doing science things mixing chemicals to hopefully kill the she monster – and it does and then, as required by monster films she fades away – the effect is handled by the leads saying ‘look she’s fading away” and then we cut back to the dead she monster them back to the leads who are looking at the fading one assumes, and then back to the spot where the she monster used to be but now no longer as she is presumed to have faded.

As a final twist they find a note inside the one thing left of the she monster a medallion – there is a note inside saying basically please come joint the united planets – ask the lady with this message about it proving that the aliens in this film aren’t very bright either – your emissary to a new world is a mute glowing space alien whose touch kills? Great. You know I don’t think we want to be a part of the United Planets – you’re too stupid.

Enjoy with a TV dinner- it’s such a 50’s grade Z film.