grindhouse classics last house on dead end street

Of all the films in the history of grindhouse cinema, perhaps none has had so convoluted a path to (entirely well-deserved, in my opnion) cult status as Roger Watkins’ seminal “Last House On Dead End Street.”

The story begins in 1972, when recent grad Watkins returned to his alma mater The State University of New York at Oneonta, a sleepy little campus upstate that nonetheless seemed to have a thriving film department at the time. Though not a graduate of the film school (I believe he earned his BA in English Lit), Watkins nevertheless had several friends in the department, including professor (and influential film historian) Paul Jensen. When Watkins returned to campus with a moderate supply of reversal film he’d picked up in his travels out west, Jensen was able to secure him use of a 16mm camera from the film studies department and Jensen, together with de facto DOP Ken Fisher, was able to recruit a handful of students and even some faculty (including Jensen himself) to be his actors in a largely improvised film he was calling “The Cuckoo Clocks Of Hell.”

If memory serves me correctly, the entire film was shot in under three weeks, mostly at night, utlilizing free locations around campus and an abandoned rail station nearby.? Watkins has claimed his total “budget” for the film was somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,800, all of which he blew on keeping himself hopped up on crystal meth during the entire duration of the shooting. When you’re watching LHODES, then, what you’re watching is literally a film with a budget of zero dollars.

Watkins himself plays the lead character, Terry Hawkins, a guy just released from the slammer who evidently was screwed over by some business associates in the porn film racket, and he emerges from the clink a hardened man determined to give the porno world “something they’ve never seen before.” Quickly enlisting the aid of a buddy(played by Fisher) recently released from a mental institution where he’d been locked up for sodomizing a calf (yes, you read that correctly), they recruit a Monson Family-type group of young female followers to be the co-conspirators in their new film project.

They get down to business making honest-to-goodness snuff films and show them to Hawkins’ unsavory contacts in the porn industry, who praise the his work for its “realism,” not knowing that they are, in fact, watching actual murders on film. They soon learn the truth the hard way, though, for when they screw Terry over again, he and his followers embark on a new round of filmed killings, with said porn “entrepreneurs” as the victims/stars!

It has to be said that the killings of this unsavory lot are among the most memorable in film history, especially the notorious “fellated goat’s hoof” scene that has passed into exploitation film legend. The gritty, visceral nature of the unfolding violence, with most of the “gore supplies” coming from a local butcher’s shop, is immediate and unforgiving. Having no budget actually helps in this regard, as you get the feeling you almost could be watching real murders committed to cheap, low-grade film.

In fact, it has to be said that the cheap (as in non-existent) production values (it was recorded silently, with voices dubbed in later and music and such sound effects as there are coming from library tracks a la George Romero) are one of this film’s greatest assets, as it literally feels like this film could have been found buried in a canister under the basement of a particularly loathsome vice den after a police raid.

The ingenious use of freebie props from the school theater department? such as the Greek theater masks worn during the killings? (pictured at the top of this post) lends a further air of authenticity by making it appear s if the killers want to protect their identities.

The film has its flaws, to be sure, but how many of these can actually be laid at Watkins’ feet is debatable. The fly-by-night producers who bought the film for a song off Watkins and later cheated him out of any and all royalties he had coming his way trimmed the flick down from a length of over three hours to a mere 77 minutes, and thus much of the explanatory backstory and huge segments encompassing character development and other aspects the producers evidently found to be irrelevant were excised, with the end result being a rather jumbled affair that goes right from “guy gets out of prison” to “guy makes a snuff film” to “guy gets screwed over and makes more snuff films starring the folks who did him wrong.” Most unforgivable is the cop-out voice-over ending, where we’re simply informed that Hawkins and all his cohorts were busted and are now doing life sentences in the state pen.

Still, all the slicing and dicing done to the film can’t take away from the power of the slicing and dicing that we see in the film,? nor can it diminish the movie’s overall nihilistic and obsessively bleak vibe.

After being butchered, the film was finally released in 1977 under the title of “The Funhouse” to the southern drive-in circuit, where evidently it pulled in somewhere around $4 million, unbeknownst to Watkins. He finally found out about his movie hitting theaters when it played 42nd street sometime around 1979 under the title “Last House On Dead End Street,” a title the producers cooked up hoping to cash in on the last vestiges of “Last House” title-mania inspired by Wes Craven’s phenomenally successful “The Last House On The Left.” Nobody knew who the stars and production team resposnible for the film were, though, as Watkins had, in disgust, excised his name and the names of all his “fellow travellers” from the flick when he got wind of what the producers were doing to his movie in the editing process back in 1973/74. Having washed his hands of the whole sordid mess (he’s credited in the film as “Steven Morrison” for his acting work and his director’s pseudonym is “Victor Janos”), he assumed the film was never released and was just getting dusty in a cabinet somewhere. When people started coming up to him and asking if he was the guy they just way in that movie where everybody’s getting butchered up, though, he found out that the latest “Last House” rip-off he’d been seeing hearing ads for on the radio was, in fact, his film! Evidently he and Jensen caught it on a double-bill with “The Hills Have Eyes” on 42nd Street and he reports of audience members getting sick and running from the theater. Apparently in Chicago a screening even caused the audience to riot and start setting fire to chairs in the theater!

From there, the story only gets weirder. Released a few different times by various fly-by-night home video labels in small print runs under both “The Fun House” and LHODES titles, the film took in a few bucks for lower-than-the-bottom-rung VHS distributors, all working off a crummy, washed-out, who-knows-where-they-found-it print. It was picked up for a song by some Venezuelan TV network and ran as a midnight movie on that station for years, and throughout most of the 80s and 90s bootleg copies of the Venezuelan broadcast were almost the only way horror and sleaze aficionados could see the film. Given the falsified names of everyone on the credits, no one even knew who the hell to contact for any further information about the film, much less who actually made the thing!

All that changed in the year 2000, when Watkins’ girlfriend alerted him to a discussion going on about his film on the message board of the FAB Press website, where the usual questions— “who made this thing?” “does anyone know anything at all about it?” were being asked. Once he chimed in and provided details about the film that only he’d know, the true identity of the man behind “Last House On Dead End Street”—and the identities of his cohorts—finally came out.

The late, great Barrel Entertainment then set to work finding the best print available (from a west coast film collector), and assembling a plethora of extras from Watkins himself (early home movies, a radio interview circa 1972, an interview appearance with Jensen on The Joe Franklin Show, even recording of phone calls he made at the time he was working on the film!) in order to put out an absolutely astonishing double-disc DVD release in 2002. Sadly, this is now out of print and commanding top-dollar prices on both Amazon Marketplace and eBay. An inferior region 2 release that’s edited even further (it’s only 74 minutes) is somewhat more readily available, but even that’s not cheap, and you’re getting a seriously lackluster product.

All in all, if there is one film that represents the epitome of a tortured path from inception to completion to distribution to eventual DVD release, it’s LHODES. Well worth tracking down if you can fit it into your budget, this is a relentlessly and authentically brutal viewing experience that you’ll never forget.

halloween horrors 2011 “slithis”

And speaking of more-or-less bloodless old-school monster movies, in 2010 the fine folks at Code Red DVD finally got around to releasing the long-sought-after 1978 cheapie (as in total budget of around $100,000) Slithis (alternately titled Spawn Of The Slithis, which is more technically accurate I suppose since “slithis” is the name of the nuclear/toxic good that creates the much-moster in this movie and not the actual name of the creature itself? (which, incidentally, has no name) but has the unwarranted effect of making folks think this might be a sequel to a previous movie called Slithis when, of course, it isn’t). While the DVD is pretty much a no-frills affair that features a decently remastered widescreen print (although it’s still pretty grainy to the extent that it’s even hard to make out just exactly what the hell is happening in a lot of the scenes filmed at night) and perfectly acceptable mono sound, some extras beyond the inclusion of the trailer for the film and a selection of other Code red previews would have been nice, especially since writer-director Stephen Traxler insists that this thing made millions worldwide and he never saw a dime thanks to a rip-off distribution deal he signed in desperation.

But I guess it’s the thought that counts, and I’m not one to complain about any world in which this now-obscure title is even available at all, so I won’t.

Traxler’s little opus takes place in the quaint confines of 70s-era Venice, California, and to be honest it’s this atmospheric locale, complete with its hippies (and aging ex-hippies), winos, vagrants, and general weirdos, as well as the director’s innate familiarity with it, that makes Slithis the joy to watch that it is. Certainly there’s even less gore on display here (notice the “PG” rating on the poster, for gosh sakes!), and the monster itself is more crudely realized, than in the recent release Creature, which I maligned to no end less than 24 hours ago. But whereas Creature never really makes effective use of its (at this point done to death in horror) Louisiana bayou setting, the town of Venice, with its canals, public parks, and beaches is itself the most compelling character in this tale of Three-Mile-Island-inspired anti-nuke scaremongering (not that your host is a fan of nuclear energy — anything but, the stuff is seriously bad news — I’m just trying to put the plot in some historical context).

So anyway, in case you hadn’t guessed it, the plot here revolves around a leak at the local nuke plant that infect some swamp mud teeming with unsavory bacterial life and the end result is a mud-encrusted beast that does what all these guys do and goes on a (completely gore-free in this case) killing spree. That’s all you need to know because honestly that’s all there is to it.

I’m sure at the time, if I’d been doing these armchair movie reviews like I am now (I was a little young for it back then, thank you very much), I would have written Slithis off as being a dull, hackneyed cash-in on contemporary news stories. But time changes everything, as they say, and Slithis, despite being obvious,? overwrought, hopelessly unsubtle, and all the rest stands out as a fun-filled nostalgic romp to a bygone era when our societal worries seemed to make a lot more sense. In short, Slithis hasn’t gotten any better over time per se, but the passing of time has made Slithis seem better. If you can get your head around that (and it’s not that tough, is it?).Plus there’s the fact that Slithis pretty much represents the tail end of the era when guys in rubber suits could still be played off as being (in this particular instance even vaguely) scary. So for all its attempts to be contemporary as hell, it was actually verging on relic status right from the get-go, and that sort of adds another layer of, dare I say it, charm to the whole proceedings.

So what the hell, give Slithis a go,? I think you’ll find it a fun slice of celluloid nostalgia.

grindhouse classics “i spit on your grave”

In the storied annals of exploitation cinema, few films have ever stirred as much controversy as Meir Zarchi’s rape-revenge masterpiece “I Spit On Your Grave.” Originally released in 1978 under the title “Day of the Woman,” which is actually much more appropriate to the movie’s content but far less—shall was say—noticeable, the story of Jenny Hill(played by Camille Keaton, veteran of Italian exploitation fare such as “Tragic Ceremony”), sophisticated but mild-mannered Manhattan author who rents a cabin on the Husatonik river in Connecticut for the summer in the hopes of getting some peace and quiet so she can write her first book only to be descended upon savagely by a gang of four local, and absolutely merciless, it must be said, redneck rapists(played by Erin Tabor, who turns in a fairly solid performance as the group’s ringleader, Richard Pace , who features as the dim-witted virgin buddy who the others are trying to? “get laid” that summer by any means necessary, Gunter Kleeman and Anthony Nichols) before pursuing her own brand of justice, came and went from the drive-in and grindhouse circuit pretty quickly while only kicking up a slight bit of outraged dust from the morality police. When Jerry Gross picked it up for wider distribution a couple years later with a new and more provocative title with an ad campaign to match that played up the film’s subject matter in the most prurient way possible, though, audiences took note. And so did the critics.

It wasn’t just the Jerry Folwells of the world who objected to “I Spit On Your Grave”‘s shockingly brutal sexual violence, or the purported film sophisticates like Pauline Kael who jumped on the supposed exploitation of its audiences most base “urges”—even perfectly mainstream critics like Siskel and Ebert were appalled and outraged by what they deemed on “Sneak Previews” (remember that?) as “the most sexist movie ever made.” The passing of time has cast things in a new, and in this case proper, light, though, and I have to say that your friendly neighborhood TFG agrees with B-movie aficionado par excellence Joe Bob Briggs, who, in his superb commentary on Elite Entertainment’s? “Millennium Edition” DVD of the film released in 2002 declared it, rather, to be quite possibly the most FEMINIST movie ever made. Let’s take a quick look at why I think this is the case and explore why it is that this flick retains its power to shock and disturb even now, over 30 years after its original release.

The standard feminist line, as I understand it, is that rape is not a crime about sex, but about violence—about power, control, and the objectification and dehumanization of its victim. Seems like a fair enough analysis to me. It’s not anything to do with using violence to to obtain sex, it’s about using sex as a tool of violence. Well, there’s no question that “I Spit On Your Grave” absolutely shows that to be the case—a little too absolutely for most audiences, truth be told. There’s no “rape scene” in “I Spit On Your Grave”—there’s a long, harrowing, maliciously brutal SERIES of rape scenes strung together that take up nearly 45 minutes of the film’s 100-minute run time. It’s well and truly excruciating stuff to sit through and there’s nothing even remotely “kinky” about any of the proceedings. Each is more savage and relentless than the last. And you know what? For the purposes of the story being told here, that’s the way it’s got to be. This isn’t a story about the better angels of human nature. It’s not about love and forgiveness. It’s about a brutally violent crime followed by brutally violent revenge. Given what Jenny does later—freeing her attackers from the bonds of this mortal coil with extreme prejudice—the crime perpetrated upon her needs to be shown in all its repulsive barbarity or else the methods by which she chooses to dispatch these guys is going to seem like some serious overkill. “I Spit On Your Grave” is about the deadly consequences of psyche-and spirit-shattering attack. Skimp out on the details and the story itself loses most of its meaning and all of its power.

Unlike the film, though, your humble critic is going to spare you the details of both the attack on Ms. Hill and her vengeance in case you, dear reader, haven’t seen this movie yet and would like to.? Suffice to say neither are pretty, but if you’re a properly-morally-hardwired human being, one will leave you disgusted beyond words while the other will have you high-fiving whoever you’re watching the movie with (assuming they, too, have standard human moral codes—if not, get some new friends. Fast.). Which is where the shock and disgust of the Siskels and Eberts of the world once again come into play. Apparently they stated that when they went to see the movie in the theater, some audience members were literally cheering during the midst of Jenny’s ordeal. I have to admit, that’s sick—really sick. I just don’t see how any honest analysis of the film can lead a person to conclude that was the reaction Zarchi was aiming for in any way, shape, or form, and a director really I can’t help who buys a ticket to see his or her work.??I’m also willing to bet?those some assholes were probably sitting there in stunned silence, clutching at their balls to make sure they were still there, when the animals they were whooping and hollering for get their comeuppance. Let’s just say guys out for payment in blood for the wrongs done to them or their families like Charles Bronson (no disrespect to Chuck, TFG loves the guy) could learn a lesson or two from our girl Jenny(apart from her one mistake—she kills the group’s head honcho— a guy, by the way, shown as having a wife and kids, therefore destroying another myth of rape, that it’s perpetrated by masked intruders and not “decent family men,” therefore making another very feminist, and sadly accurate, argument about sexual violence, namely that it can be perpetrated by people in all walks of life for any reason or no reason at all— second, rather than saving him for last—but hey, it’s understandable, you gotta kill these guys in the order you come across them, you may not get a second chance).

Your host isn’t terribly fond of the idea that cinema, literature, or music can somehow “influence” somebody to do something they wouldn’t have done otherwise, and frankly I find the idea that critics of “I Spit On Your Grave” advanced at the time that this film would somehow “inspire” anyone to go out and rape somebody is absurd. Those buffoons that Siskel and Ebert heard cheering obviously had problems to begin with. But in truth this film does nothing to “encourage” them, rather it shows the unbearable ugliness of rape in the coldest and most clinical light possible and shows the rapists themselves as being mindless thugs who get exactly what they deserve. This is movie isn’t told from their point of view, it’s told from hers — it’s quite apparent that in no uncertain terms, as far as Zarchi is concerned, these guys are inhuman monsters.

The critical reevaluation this film has seen over the years is finally waking some folks up to the fact that they had it wrong the first time around and what we’ve got here is not a prurient piece of irredeemable garbage but, in truth, probably the best entry into the “rape-revenge” subgenre of all time. Sure, classics like “The Last House on the Left” still stand out in this tiny cinematic ouevre, but the crime itself and its aftermath are much more personal, and therefore immediate, in “I Spit On Your Grave.” No family members getting even for what was done to their daughter or wife here. This is a woman settling the score for what was done to HER, personally. It’s not flashy or stylized or in any way “glamorous”(another great point Briggs makes in his DVD commentary is that, sure, there’s some gratuitous nudity early on—it’s an exploitation film, for Christ’s sake—but Zarchi doesn’t dwell on extreme close-ups of Keaton’s naked breasts as one would expect, rather it’s all shown from quite a considerable distance). It’s raw, authentic, and unvarnished. And yeah, that makes it ugly, but it’s an ugly crime — is it even right to portray it in any other way?

There have been a few different DVD editions of “I Spit On Your Grave” over the years (and incidentally, this was one of the films on Britain’s infamous “video nasties” list, movies which were literally BANNED by the UK government during the early-80s VHS boom), but the “Millennium Edition” from Elite Entertainment is the way to go here. In addition to the fantastic commentary from Briggs referenced a time or two above, there’s also an insightful commentary track from writer-director Meir Zarchi (who would go on to to make one other film, “Don’t Mess With My Sister,” which also centers on a revenge them—guess he wasn’t too terribly interested in other types of stories. Oh, and he married his leading lady from “I Spit On Your Grave,” Camille Keaton, so I guess she wasn’t too convinced herself that he’d made some “pro-rape” movie here),? a selection of outraged (and outrageous) text reviews from newspapers and magazines from around the time of the film’s release,? and the theatrical trailer and a sampling of TV spots are thrown in for good measure, as well. The digitally-remastered picture and THX sound are great. An essential addition to the home video library of exploitation film fans everywhere.

s probably more accurate to say it was a “

It’s been nearly two years since the America’s unofficial poet laureate of the working class, Cleveland’s own Harvey Pekar, passed away, but thanks to the estimable folks at Top Shelf Comics, we’ve been given one last glimpse at his creative genius via their publication, in hardcover no less, of what’s apparently his last complete work, Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland, a book that serves as both a semi-mournful look back at a once-great city’s heyday and a final, and comprehensive, autobiographical sketch of its narrator’s life and an analysis of his admittedly complex relationship with the place that he called home for all of his 70 years.

For those of you out there unfamiliar with Pekar’s American Splendor (what, you mean you haven’t seen the movie?), it was a (mostly) self-published anthology series of short stories in comics form written by Pekar, a VA hospital file clerk and blue-collar intellectual, and illustrated by a bevy of the finest sequential artists of its day (most notably underground legend Robert Crumb) that ran for well over a quarter century. Although largely viewed (and categorized) as an autobiographical series, in truth it’s probably more accurate to say it was a “slice-of-life” series, since Harvey was just as likely to include stories about things that happened to people he knew as he was to relate stories about his own life and experiences in its pages, and often brief snippets of overheard conversations formed the basis for some of his most memorable strips. In short, it wasn’t always so much about Harvey Pekar himself as it was about events he witnessed, or that were related to him by others he knew.This presumably final work seamlessly blends the two, as it bobs and weaves downright seamlessly between tales of the city of Cleveland proper and Pekar’s life? and times within it. While he’s unarguably the main character, in truth his geographic locale as his “co-star,” as he both recounts straight narrative chronology of the city and gives detailed background on some of his favorite establishments within it. The net effect is a sort of historical odyssey through Cleveland, with detours chosen for specific purposes by our guide, who writes? with both the appreciation and disgust of someone who knows? his subject well (some might say too well). With painstakingly detailed art by the talented Joseph Remnant (a name I’d previously been unfamiliar with, but that I will definitely look for in the future) that conveys both the actual, physical reality of the city as well as the mood and atmosphere that permeates its environs, and a wide-ranging story that spans decades of the author’s life and even takes care to accurately relate events that happened over a century before his birth, the phrase “labor of love” would definitely apply here — except for the fact that Harvey makes it perfectly clear that he’s had a love/hate relationship with his hometown almost from the word go.

Longtime American Splendor fans will be glad to know that stalwart characters such as Toby Radloff and Mr. Boats are present and accounted for, but for those unfamiliar with Pekar’s previous work and the real people who populate it there’s no reason to be put off from reading this — in fact, even though it’s his final piece of graphic nonfiction, the truth is that serves as an excellent “jumping-on” point for new readers, as it’s such a comprehensive (yet conversational and frankly uncomplicated) work that one needn’t know anything about the city itself, or even who Harvey Pekar is for that matter, to find it a thoroughly engrossing and evocative work.

In fairness, however, it’s incumbent upon me to state that Pekar was never what one would call a “feel-good” author, and if the observations of a major metropolis that’s been on the decline for at least 50 years written by a guy with a definite curmudgeon’s perspective (and speaking of lovable, intellectual curmudgeons, Alan Moore provides the introduction) aren’t your cup of tea, then you’re going to find the tone of this book rather off-putting from the outset. Sugar-coating harsh realities was never Harvey’s “bag,” and while thos of us who are in tune with his wavelength will appreciate the rare form we find him in here, folks who like things a bit sunnier and less nonchalantly harrowing might be well advised to give this book a pass since it’s many things to be sure, but positive and uplifting aren’t among them.

I loved it, of course, and immediately read through the entire thing from start to finish a second time before putting it down. The only downside is that it made me miss Harvey’s distinctive, authentic, and altogether necessary voice more than ever.

turns into nothing more than a crushingly boring police procedural

Over the years, your intrepid host has sought out films that literally no one has anything good to say about in my endless quest to prove consensus opinion on just about everything wrong . Quite often it does seem that the masses are mistaken, of course, as the chart-topping success of drivel such as “American Idol” or “Transformers” proves. On occasion, though, I have to say that what passes for “conventional wisdom” is, in fact, absolutely correct, and some stuff that most people think is crap really is, well, crap.

The few reviews I found over the years for stuntman-turned-director-for-a-minute Dave A. Adams’ 1977 slasher (I guess) flick “Another Son Of Sam” stated in no uncertain terms that one’s best course of action was to just stay away from the thing. That even for zero-budget regional cinema (this was shot in Charlotte and Belmont, North Carolina) this was lamer than you’d expect. Any particular saving graces the film had went unmentioned even by the most seasoned exploitation junkies, and if this movie couldn’t even appeal to that crowd, well—it must be irredeemably lousy.? So few people ever saw this thing that any information on it was scarce at best, but what little I could find painted such an unflattering picture that I felt literally compelled to see the thing just to see what all (and I use the term “all” loosely, trust me) the slagging-off was about.? Could it really be as bad as the tiny handful of commentaries about this film suggested? For that matter, could ANYTHING? be as bad as the tiny handful of commentaries about this film suggested?

The answer, as it turns out, is yes, it can, and yes, it is.

First off, let’s deal with the absurdity of the title. Harvey, the escaped-mental-patient-turned-serial-killing-maniac in this film has about as much in common with David Berkowitz, the “real life” Son of Sam killer,? as Steve Miner’s horrendous “Day of the Dead” remake has with George Romero’s original.? Apparently the original title of this film was “Hostages,” which is dull as watching paint dry (then again, so is the movie) but at least bears some relevance to the plot. Apparently Adams changed the name at the last minute in order to “cash in,” as it were, on the story that was dominating the headlines at the time (and before the credits roll, we’re treated to a short list of history’s other famous serial killers, everyone from Jack The Ripper on down). That’s an established trick in exploitation filmmaking, of course, and I don’t hold it against the guy—it’s the film itself that he deserves a verbal drubbing for.

The “action” starts off with a pretty generic 70s -looking dude and his girlfriend going around in circles in a speedboat. This, we find out in short order, is our “hero,” police Lieutenant Claude Seltzer (played by Ross Dubuc, a Charlotte-area TV weatherman — you’ll believe it when you see him), and his lady-love, psychiatrist Dr. ( I don’t think we ever get her fist name) Ellis (Cynthia Stewart, another local “talent”).

After a hard day’s waterskiing that we’re told about incessantly for the first ten minutes but never see, our loving couple heads over to a seriously ultra-70s cocktail bar called the Treehouse Lounge, where they find a cop buddy of Claude’s moonlighting as the emcee and take in the mellow sounds of seriously ultra-70s crooner Johnny Charro, whose musical number “I Never Said Goodbye” is probably the “highlight” of the picture (Adams must have thought highly of it, as well—or more likely couldn’t afford any other music, since the song pops up? every time somebody turn on the radio and again over the end credits).? Think of a poor man’s Tom Jones.? Hell, think of an absolutely destitute man’s Tom Jones. Think of the most flat-busted, never-had-two-nickels to-rub-together-in-his-life man’s Tom Jones. Then knock your expectations down about another ten rungs. That’s Johnny Charro. Oh, hell, words can’t do the man justice, THIS is Johnny Charro—

As an aside, our guy Johnny is apparently still at it. He bills himself as “the Dean of Tampa Bay nightlife”( he must have done at least some regional touring in the late 70s to make it up to Charlotte) and you can catch his act every Thursday night at the American Legion Post 111 and every Saturday night at Tampa Bay Sports Grille in Oldsmar. He’s also got a new record out called—I kid you not—”Do-Wa-Diddy Ybor City.” This all according the clearinghouse for all things Charro,? www.johnnycharro.com.

Anyway, where were we (and does it really matter)? Oh yes—after a groovy night out, it’s back to work the next day for our middle-aged lovers. Claude is sitting around his office doing a whole lot of nothing, but his ladyfriend has spent her morning giving? electroshock “treatment” to a violent psychopath named Harvey, who seems pretty pissed off about the whole deal. So angry, in fact, that they have to restrain him, which still doesn’t do any good as he breaks his restraints and kills the orderlies attending to him.

After a phone conversation with the good Dr. Ellis where he mentions waterskiing yesterday yet again, Claude decides to head over and see her, but on his way he’s detained by an urgent call to go investigate the robbery of $500 from the dean’s office at a local (apparently all-women’s) college (who knew deans kept a cash box around?). It proves to be a very costly call, though, since while our guy Seltzer is taking statements and dropping off his business card at the college, his girlfriend is being attacked by her hospital’s resident psycho-on-the-loose.

When Claude pulls up to the hospital, he has to slam his brakes to avoid hitting a man fleeing from the scene with blood literally dripping from his hands. Rather than do what you’d think any cop would in the situation and actually go after the guy to see what the hell was happening, though, our crack police lieutenant instead just saunters inside, makes some idle chit-chat with one of the other doctors, and heads down the hall to find his girl.Needless to say, she’s in pretty rough shape (a coma, we later find out, although we never do find out if she lives or dies—and trust me, by the end of the movie you really don’t care, either) and he finds the strangled orderlies, as well.

Then—finally!—the “chase” is on, but it’s a pretty limp one—Claude’s buddy from the Treehouse and another cop head over to provide backup while he chases the killer around the park a little bit, draws his gun, and then doesn’t fire. After that harrowing action, we’re treated to a little bit of standard right-wing get-tough-on-crime cop dialogue, with Claude’s buddy telling him “don’t worry, Lieutenant, we’ll catch him,” with Claude replying “and then what? We let him out on the streets again?” (funny, I didn’t realize that escaped mental patients who killed people with their bare hands were turned back out on the streets in even the most liberal jurisdictions—which I’m assuming Belmont, North Carolina isn’t).

In short order our two competing subplots neatly dovetail, with Harvey taking refuge at the dormitory of the women’s college and killing the girl who stole the $500 before taking a couple of her friends hostage during an agonizingly lengthy and dull standoff with the cops, who have a SWAT team in tow.

Essentially, after the initial escape “Another Son Of Sam” turns into nothing more than a crushingly boring police procedural, with lots of cops standing around talking about not very much. We learn that Harvey was sexually assaulted by his mother (what a surprise) at a young age and his mind completely snapped. He’s not averse to using firearms. He takes pleasure in killing young women.? He can’t be reasoned with. He won’t be taken alive. And we learn all this because the cops have brought in another of Harvey’s doctors who provides this info-dump off-camera and then decides he’d better leave the scene of the hostage crisis because, hey, he’s gotta get back to work.

During the standoff, Harvey makes an absolute mockery of the cops and their highly-vaunted (and apparently pretty new at the time) SWAT team, who can’t find him, can’t fire shots at him for a million convoluted reasons, and essentially can’t do anything right. He kills Claude’s Treehouse buddy and has no problem dodging the other policemen at every opportunity until they finally get him pinned in a room, at which point they resort to what must be one of the most unorthodox (and very probably illegal, or at least against every regulation in the book) methods of “crisis negotiation” in the annals of police lore. They actually bring Harvey’s sexually abusive mother over to talk her son out of the room. She apologizes for never visiting him in the hospital. She says she just wants to talk. She promises he won’t get hurt if he just comes out of the dorm room. She says the police are there to help. Harvey listens. He responds. He opens the door. He comes out—

—and the cops shoot him dead on the spot. Folks, Harvey’s mom isn’t exactly the strongest candidate in 1977′s Mother of the Year contest. First, she sexually abuses her son, turning him into a raging psychotic maniac, then she doesn’t visit him in the hospital, then she lures him into his death. Not exactly June Cleaver material. Next time your mom is driving you nuts about something or other, remember — things could be a lot worse.

Finally we’re “treated” to some inane dialogue among the surviving female hostages, and the movie, mercifully, ends around the 1:10 mark.

I don’t mean to be too hard on “Another Son of Sam”—well,actually, I do—but I will say this in its favor. Its absurdly low budget does, in fact, provide a few not-quite-sublime-but-nevertheless-fun “flourishes” to enjoy—for one thing, all we ever see of Harvey is the exact same shot of his eyes staring out of complete darkness. Lighting and location of the rest of the scene aside, Harvey’s eyes are always peering out of a pitch-black background, even on a sunny afternoon.? For another, Harvey himself is never shown full-on until the movie’s end and we “experience” things from his point-of-view through a series of patently amateur hand-held “perspective” shots that are so poorly executed as to be almost disorienting.? Thirdly, there are numerous occasions during the movie when the film literally stops dead yet the sound keeps rolling for another four or five seconds (this could be considered, I suppose, some sort of attempt at artistry using intentional freeze-frame shots, but believe me when I say it looks a lot more like what happened was that Adams shot this thing using nothing but short ends a la Andy Milligan and that they kept running the sound even after the film had run out of the camera). And finally, of course, there’s Johnny Charro — honestly, maybe he’s as much awesomeness as one film can really handle.

“Another Son of Sam” is available on DVD-R from Something Weird video. It probably goes without saying that this is as close to an “official” DVD release as this flick is likely to get — and about as close as you’d probably want.

Al take Princess

I know what you’re wondering already : can the movie possibly be as low-rent as that poster?

The answer is : and then some.

Affectionately (I guess) referred to as “The ‘Plan 9′ of blaxploitation” by fans of the genre, Rene Martinez Jr.’s 1977 offering “The Guy From Harlem” is actually, on a purely technical level, even worse than Ed Wood’s unintentional masterpiece — or any of Wood’s films, for that matter. It rivals low-grade 70s porn in terms of sheer artistic inability and leaves a person feeling somehow unclean for having even seen it, even though there’s little by way of nudity or even convincing violence on display. Of the 18 comments posted about the film on IMDB, a good majority of them refer to it as the worst film ever made. And while in many cases that’s simply hyperbole, or even a tag applied by fans of the film in order to gain it a cult following, in this case it might actually be the truth. I’ve seen plenty of cheaply made haphazard films, but few can rival “The Guy From Harlem” for overall incompetence. Many a low-rent production has been referred to as “looking and feeling more like a student film,” but again, in this case it’s? absolutely true —it looks and feels like a student film. Like a 6th grade student film!

The movie throws us right into the middle of the “action” — a foul-mouthed young black woman with a bad attitude is tied to a chair in what looks to be some kind of cabin. Her captor informs her that she’ll soon be joined by another “of her kind,” in fact, her soon-to-be-arriving guest is from Africa. You can safely put this entire situation out of your mind, though, as we won’t be getting back to our feisty damsel in distress until about halfway through the movie. Now it’s time to meet The Man himself!

As the credits roll — literally — over a scene of an enormously-fro’d dude driving his car, we hear the the film’s constipated-sounding theme tune bumping away : “The guy from Harlem! That cat’s a baaaad dude! Ugh! Watch the moves! The guy from Harlem! Ugh! He’s mean, he’s clean, he’s a fighting machine!”

Good to know he’s clean, huh? We always look for that in a hero.

The first thing you’ll notice, apart from the titular guy from Harlem’s hair, is that we’re not actually in Harlem at all. We’re in Miami, and the whole film in fact takes place in sunny south Florida. That doesn’t mean our hero ain’t from Harlem, though — he never misses a chance to tell anyone and everyone where he hails from (“Tell your boss that nobody messes with the guy from Harlem!” being a favorite line). Remember, the title of the movie is “The Guy FROM Harlem,” not “The Guy IN Harlem.”

So, anyway, our man of the hour is Al Connors, (supposedly) bad-ass private eye who doesn’t take no shit from anyone, doesn’t play games, and scores with every piece of tail that crosses his path. In the hands of a capable actor, Connors could, potentially, be a serviceable, if still entirely unoriginal and uninvolving, two-dimensional cardboard cut-out John Shaft-wannabe.

In the hands of star Loye Hawkins, however, he approaches the level of unintentional caricature, almost a walking parody of the excesses of the entire blaxploitation genre. Think of the comical OTT nature of Rudy Ray Moore’s “Dolemite” character — only the makers of “The Guy From Harlem” WEREN’T trying to be funny. The end result’s certainly the same, though. In fact, “Dolemite” looks like a big-budget blockbuster next to this thing.

Hawkins can’t act. Period. He looks the part enough, I suppose, but he’s got all the screen presence of wet lumber, and emotes about as well. You’d honestly think he was reading directly from cue cards — if it weren’t so painfully obvious that most of the “dialogue” in this movie was just ad-libbed on the spot. Jumbled lines, repeated information from a few seconds earlier, garbled delivery and barely-intelligible exchanges are mainstays of “The Guy From Harlem” — apparently director Martinez either had very little actual film at his disposal and couldn’t spare any to actually shoot more than one take of anything, or else the only words in his vocabulary were “okay, cut — and print.” Quite literally everything on display here NEEDS to have been done in one take — otherwise there’s no, and I mean NO, explaining it.

Al’s got himself a perfectly serviceable little office staffed by a perfectly serviceable-in-the-looks-department secretary named Sue (Wanda Starr), who of course has the hots for him even though he’s prone to tell her things like “how many times do I have to tell you — this phone is for business purposes only!” when she’s talking to her mother.? Some dudes just know how to charm without even trying, I guess.

One morning Al is visited by an old buddy of his from Harlem who just so happens to work for the CIA. We’re told that a visiting African dignitary is coming to town to meet with the Secretary of State and that his wife may be the target of a kidnapping plot, so they need someone they can trust to look after her. They’d normally task one of their own men from inside “The Company” with the job, but they’re worried that there might be a mole, so they’re hiring outside talent to watch her back. Al’s hesitant to take on the gig, but when his friend tells her that she’s cute, he’s in. He’d better be careful, though — as his CIA budy keeps telling him, if he tries to make time with this lady, there could be INTERNATIONAL REPERCUSSIONS! Still, despite Al’s apparently well-established reputation as a hound dog, they figure he’s the man for the job.

Next we head to one of exactly five, by my count, different locations used for the film (the others being Al’s office, an apartment, the “cabin” mentioned earlier, and a piece of outdoor acreage that functions as all the film’s “various” outdoor locales — my best guess is that they’re all either in or right outside of the same building), a hotel suite (where they’ve checked in under the impenetrably clever aliases of Mr. and Mrs. Connors), and Al is showing Princess Ashanti (Patricia Fulton, who’s variously referred to as a Princess, a Queen, or even simply “the wife of a chief of state” — if her exact title didn’t matter to Martinez and co. it sure as hell shouldn’t matter to us) her spacious new temporary quarters.

The Princess (or Queen, or whatever) has a bad back and needs a massage. Al would normally volunteer his own services, of course, but given those INTERNATIONAL REPERCUSSIONS we’re constantly reminded of, he calls the hotel’s masseuse instead. There are some shady characters hanging out in the courtyard, though, so Al decides to keep an eye on the Princess (or Queen, or whatever) while she gets her rub-down for SECURITY PURPOSES, the next phrase we’ll be hearing repeated about sixty times. Damn good thing, too — the masseuse was about to stick a needle into the Princess (or Queen, or whatever).

Dangers are aplenty at this apparently five-star hotel, though, because next up the room service waitress turns out to be, well, not a waitress —

How could Al see through this impervious disguise? As he tells Princess (or Queen, or whatever) Ashanti : “I ordered a New York strip steak, and I can smell a New York strip steak from a mile away.” Sure enough, under the silver tray, there ain’t no steak, but a gun! And here I just thought maybe he could smell dick a mile away. Still, besides this feat of chameleon-like daring, this scene also treats us to the first of several inanely-staged fight sequences that will become a staple of the film. You’ve simply never seen “action” choreography staged as unconvincingly as it is in this movie. Punches that obviously don’t even connect send attackers sprawling to the ground, people leap a good few seconds to soon, Al barely taps an assailant and they go reeling — they’re an absolute blast to watch, but there’s no point in mentioning their ineptitude time and time again, so whenever I talk about the guy from Harlem taking on an attacker or two (or more) in the future, just assume it’s an unintentional display of absolute buffoneery. You’ll swear that the fight scenes in this flick were? choreographed by Dick Van Dyke or John Ritter.

Are you ready for another change of scenery? I know, I know — things are moving along at a pretty breakneck speed at this point, but try to stay with me.

Deciding that things are a bit too hot at the hotel, Al take Princess (or Queen, or whatever) Ashanti to a safer place for SECURITY PURPOSES — namely the apartment of a white chick he apparently makes time with when he can fit her into his busy schedule. She’s a pretty good sport about the whole thing and heads out to check into a hotel that Al has fronted her the cash for — I just hope that, for SECURITY PURPOSES,? she doesn’t pick the same hotel that the guy from Harlem and the Princess (or Queen, or whatever) just escaped from.

Exhausted from a long day of running (well, okay, she never really runs—) for her life,? our Princess (or Queen, or whatever) needs a shower, so we get a little bit of toplessness, then we see her putting on one of the white chick’s nightgowns, then it’s down to business as Al scores some (apparently, depending on who’s talking about her) royal pussy. And if you thought the fight scenes were bad, you ain’t seen nothing. “The Guy From Harlem” may have the ambiance and technical proficiency of a shot-on-super-8 porn loop, but the love scenes in this flick are as wooden, stilted, pedestrian, and downright nervous-about-themselves-looking as anything every committed to film. You’ll breathe a sigh of relief when you see this one, and all the others in the film, end when Al strips off the woman’s nightgown, climbs on top of her for an obviously fake kiss, and then we jump to the next day. As with the fight scenes — and the dialogue scenes —, in the “love” scenes? Martinez and DP Rafael Remy — who I’m surprised even a took a credit for his “work” here — show an absolute steadfastness in their refusal to do anything other than shoot things straight ahead from about a medium length. It’s cinematographical paralysis of the highest order, and creates a bizarre occult visual rhythm to the proceedings so incessantly lethargic that on those few occasions when they do actually move in for close-ups or show things from any angle other than dead-center ahead, you feel as if some sort of spell has been broken and the world as we know it turned on its axis.

And that’s it for our Princess (or Queen, or whatever). Al’s apparently safely delivered her back to her just-got-cheated-on husband, and he’s back at the office, mission accomplished.

There’s just one problem — we’re only 45 minutes into the film!

Never fear, though, my friends — the Martinezes (director Rene and screenwriter Gardenia, who’d damn well better be related, otherwise there’s no excuse for this “script” making it in front of a camera) have a plan. Remember that PMSing lady I told you about who was tied to a chair in some remote “cabin” at the start of the film? You can remember her again. But forget anything her captors were saying about bringing some African chick to join her (they apparently have, seeing as how it’s never mentioned again), because apparently that’s the Princess (or Queen, or whatever) that they were talking about and Al just took care of all that.

Into Al’s office steps (again, supposedly) bad- ass gangster Harry DeBauld, portrayed with scene-stealing scenery-chewing amateurish overenthusiasm by “Wildman” Steve Gallon, who would go on to star in Martinez’s only other directorial effort, the amazingly politically incorrectly-titled “The Six Thousand Dollar Nigger” (later renamed “Super Soul Brother,” for obvious reasons, upon its video release during the early-80s VHS boom).Of all the reasons to love this film (what, you’re saying I haven’t given you any?), Gallon’s deliriously gleeful performance has to top the list. Sure, he doesn’t actually know his lines — assuming any were ever written down — any more than anyone else in this celluloid fiasco does, but he’s so brimming-over-with-joy at his own often-incoherence that it just plain doesn’t matter. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.

His son Larry (Laster Wilson) and the other henchmen who have accompanied him to the office are as dull and listless as Hawkins or any of the other “actors” in this thing, but Gallon’s is one of two performances in the film (remember the foul-mouthed gal? more on her in a second) that are every bit as unprofessional as the others, but much more eagerly so, if that makes any sense.

Harry’s got a problem. He runs a successful gambling operation, but he’s been trying to take over the local narcotics trade, as well — and along the way he’s into trouble from a guy named Big Daddy, with whom he’s warring over a piece of territory worth, I kid you not, “hundreds of millions of dollars a day.” Wrap your head around that concept! But I digress — as part of his daring plan to get Harry to back the fuck off from his turf, Big Daddy has gone and kidnapped the usually-jubilant gangster’s only daughter, Wanda (Cathy Davis), and is holding her for heavy ransom — a quarter-million dollars’ cash and a whole shitload of coke. Harry heard about what Al did for “that African Queen” (or Princess, or whatever), and figures he’s the man to handle the exchange.

Initially pissed about Harry even knowing about the whole Queen (or Princess, or whatever) thing because “that’s supposed to be top secret,” Al warms up to the idea of working for the crimelord when he checks out a picture of his daughter and decides she’s pretty damn hot. That’s the guy from Harlem for you.

So, he takes the case — Harry forks over an obviously empty envelope (“it’s all there — count it!”), a Ziplock freezer bag full of flour, and Al’s back in action. There’s just one problem — who is this Big Daddy? What does he look like? I’ll let Harry take it from here for a minute —

“That’s the problem. Nobody’s seen him. All I know about him is this — he’s big, six feet tall, and muscles ! You wanna talk about muscles! Curly blond hair, and he always wears these bands around his muscles!”

So — nobody’s seen him, but everybody knows what he looks like.? Only in “The Guy From Harlem.”

Al’s got it all figured out, of course, only he doesn’t let Harry in on the details of his cunning plan — he heads down to the local Gold’s Gym-type place, gets the drop on one on Big Daddy’s lughead henchmen who’s probably twice his size, find out Wanda’s (Ms. bad attitude, in case you hadn’t figured that out already) location, busts her out , a few more inept fight scenes of the sort I mentioned earlier ensue, and suddenly the guy from Harlem is sitting on top of the world with a quarter million – bucks’ “cash,” a half-million – bucks’ woth of “drugs,” and a beautiful, if feisty, female companion who’s grateful as hell for his “daring” rescue of her.

Wanda doesn’t want to go home just yet because she’s pissed at her dad for putting her life in danger by getting mixed up in the drug business, so Al takes her back to that white chick’s apartment from before. She’s not nearly so pleasant to deal with this time, but she gets the hell out of there again, with cash fronts her for a hotel again, and after than Wanda takes a shower, puts on the same fucking nightgown the Princess (or Queen, or whatever) was wearing earlier, and we get essentially the exact same “love” scene we got before. Yes, folks, the only thing differentiating this sequence from the one that took place about 40 minutes earlier is the actress, that’s it. And they both have the same identically-huge afros, and remarkably similar bodies,? so who knows if our guy Al really even notices the difference when the lights are out.

Then it’s back to gangster daddy for the exchange at Al’s office the next day, whereupon he informs them that gangster daddy can keep the money, but he’s taking the drugs to the cops, a fact that only pisses off gangster daddy for a second before he’s back to his usual disturbingly jovial self.

There’s still the matter of Big Daddy to be dealt with, though. He’s pretty pissed at the guy from Harlem for messing up his whole life in one day flat, so they arrange for a “meeting” (read: fistfight) to settle the score, and we get one more of those straight-outta-the-Batman-TV-show-but-without-the-word-balloons? “fight” scenes, which Al of course wins, and then we get a final surprise — Al, who has shown no signs of being anything other than the biggest skirt-chaser on the planet, has apparently fallen for Wanda during the course of their (and I use this term loosely, of course ) ordeal, and, as one of her daddy’s henchmen says to her brother, “it looks like you’re gonna need a new suit!”

And so everyone, apparently, lives happily ever after.

Improbable — maybe even impossible — as it is to believe, “The Guy From Harlem” is available on DVD. It’s part of the ultra-cheapie “Drive-In Movie Classics” 50-film, 12-DVD box set from Mill Creek, masters of the public domain film. The print looks like shit and jumps at several points, the sound is muffled, it’s quite obviously a direct-from-VHS transfer — in other words, it’s absolutely perfect. You can usually score this box for about eight or ten bucks — I;ve even heard of it going for five at Wal-Mart — and is totally worth it for “The Guy From Harlem” alone. You can watch this flick again and again and not get bored in your quest for still more things to find absurd about it.

Beyond bad, beyond cheap, beyond shoddy, beyond comprehension — “The Guy From Harlem” is absolutely without merit on any level whatsoever, and accordingly gets my highest possible recommendation. See it now!