The B-Masters Cabal

RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD

“Return of the Living Dead” is one of the movies that my teenage self considered awesome that has withstood the test of time. Counter to the movie’s oppressive feeling of dread is a ghoulish sense of humor. “Send more paramedics” is a perfect example. The zombies are preying upon the living by asking for more help. We, the audience, know what is going to happen to the next ambulance that arrives at the graveyard. It is ghastly, but we laugh because it is also clever and diabolically unfair.

Lesson Learned:
Lysol destroys 99% of the germs that cause the smell of death.

While waiting for an interlibrary loan to help my research into my next new piece, I thought I’d do a little house-keeping:

.

First up, I have recovered, revised, re-formatted and added a few screenshots to:

THE DEVIL BAT (1940)

In which Bela Lugosi, kindly village doctor by day, mad scientist by night, disposes of his enemies by (i) creating giant killer bats; (ii) teaching his bats to home in on a certain ingredient in an experimental shaving-lotion; and (iii) persuading his enemies to rub some of the lotion on the tender part of their neck. It’s foolproof!

.

I have also given a similar makeover to the film’s sequel-in-name-only, DEVIL BAT’S DAUGHTER (1946).

.

Plus, I’ve re-formatted REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES (1936) and ROCKETSHIP X-M (1950), and fixed up the screenshots in THE WALKING DEAD (1936). (Sort of; they’re still a bit dark, I think.)

.

When I was younger, I was fascinated by the private eye profession. In television shows about private detectives, they always seemed to have a colorful life. They would charge fees running up to several hundred dollars an hour – which seemed like a fortune to me as a youngster. TV private detectives also always seemed to keep meeting sexy women, and they always seemed to need to use their firearm on creeps who really deserved getting shot. But as I got older, I learned the hard truths about private detectives. For one thing, I remember when MAD Magazine revealed to me that private detectives in real life mainly worked on getting provocative pictures for their clients who were involved in messy divorces – not a very glamorous thing to be doing. When I recently spotted the private detective movie Hollywood Harry at my local used video store, my first thought was if it would show me a sanitized look at the private detective life or something closer to the real thing. It also interested me in that Robert Forster was the director as well as the star.

Skull Heads (2009) — A creepy family in an Italian castle confronts the outside world when the teenage daughter falls for a handsome film director. Also, because this is a Charles Band flick, there are killer dolls running around.

Related: I goofed.  Reader Revenge Month is in April. It’ll be sort of like the time lag between Election Day and the Inauguration.  (I’m a lame duck!)

BEASTMASTER
The success of this first wave of sword and sorcery films paved the way for a second wave. Amongst this crop was The Beastmaster. The Beastmaster, like the others was not a runaway hit when it was released. To be fair though, it was up against some pretty stiff competition, including ET – the Extra Terrestrial, An Officer and a Gentleman and The Road Warrior (or Mad Max 2 as it will always been known to me). But the film did reasonable business, making around three-million dollars in the United States, which was about a third of the films production costs. The film did well in Europe, on video, and became a mainstay on cable television. It has been reported that a comedian remarked that the meaning of HBO was not ‘Home Box Office’, but ‘Hey, Beastmaster’s On’.

Once upon a time there was a college professor named John Norman.  He wrote a large batch of paperback novels about a fantasy planet named Gor, whose primary trait was the literal sexual slavery of women and their ultimate fulfillment therein.  (The men seemed happy with it too.)  This  inspired first a real-life subculture, then a movie.  Two movies, in fact, but we haven’t gotten to the second one, yet.

Who left theaters more unsatisfied, the fans of Norman’s books, or those who had never heard of them and just wanted to see another sword and sorcery movie?  The debate rages to this day…

Abandon all hope of entertainment, ye who choose to travel to the planet of Gor.

STAR ODYSSEY

If there is one genre that can be compared to low budget Italian zombie flicks, it must be bargain budget Italian space operas.  Both of them are the mental equivalents of $.29 frozen burritos, and both of them cause my wife serious anguish (as do cheap frozen burritos).  Katie is more likely to complain about the zombie movies than the space operas, but that is splitting hairs.  While I refuse to eat any burrito that costs less than $1.50, I have finally come to the realization that the movies I watch are not good for me.

Oh well.

I mentioned in my review for The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970) the love/hate relationship I have with Dario Argento and his “visuals first, storytelling second” approach to filmmaking. That goes double for Argento’s progenitor Mario Bava. Bava was incredibly influential in his use of color and framing, using his background as a painter to design tableaus that are evocative and enthralling. Unfortunately, his regard for film as a primarily narrative art was somewhat lacking. By the end of Blood and Black Lace (1964), the viewer certainly remembers distinct scenes and shots, but not so much the whole of what they have just experienced for the last 90 minutes. And if you know me, you know that’s a problem for me.

Plus: The last week to vote for Reader Revenge Month! This week’s options are The Arena (1973), The Giant Gila Monster (1959), and The Vision (1987).

 
THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER (1982)

I needed a sword ‘n’ sorcery film for our sword ‘n’ sorcery Roundtable, so I picked The Sword And The Sorcerer.

Not one of my more inspired moments, I agree.

However, apart from being the first of the true sword ‘n’ sorcery films of the 1980s, this also has the distinction of being in all probability the best film ever directed by Albert Pyun.

Contemplate that on the Tree Of Woe.

.

Speaking of which—

CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982)

This Roundtable also gave me the chance to recover and revise my old review of Conan The Barbarian – and to remind myself what an astonishingly good film it is, too.

.

.

.

.

.

.

THREE GOLDEN SERPENTS
The sad passing of actor Tony Kendall – aka Luciano Stella – back in November inspired me to get back on board with the project of reviewing the Kommissar X films for Teleport City. Not that I can say with authority that the Kommissar X films represent the best of Mr. Stella’s work, mind you – I haven’t, for instance, seen Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century, or Hate Is My God, to name just a couple of his many non-Eurospy efforts. It’s just that it’s those movies, and Kendall’s portrayal within them of dick-both-public-and-private Joe Walker, that won him permanent residence in a very special secret space-age lair located deep within my heart.

With the somewhat low-key, Montreal Expo-based antics of the Kommissar X series’ fifth entry, Kill, Panther, Kill!, it might have seemed safe to assume that the franchise had settled into what was, compared to the settings of the earlier films, fairly pedestrian territory. But with Serpents’ Thailand setting we happily see a return to the emphasis on exotic locales that we saw in the initial four movies. Unfortunately, our introduction to that setting is conducted in about the most unexciting manner possible, by way of some uninspired travelogue footage that sees what appears to be a middle-aged Midwestern couple making their leisurely way around Bangkok as the male half of the couple drones on affectlessly about various sights and local customs. This goes on for quite a while, and marks an unflattering departure from the opening sequences of pretty much every earlier Kommissar X, which typically took us right into the middle of the action without pause for preface or scene setting.