The B-Masters Cabal

It’s the Klan and hippies and all sorts of pain for the audience as Richard Burton (!), O.J., and Cameron Mitchell as “Butt Cut” join Lee “I swear I only did it for the paycheck” Marvin as The Klansman.

A handful of new short reviews has been added to Et Al.

This update mostly concerns films that don’t quite qualify for a full review. So, we’ve got a bunch of non-sharky underwater films, a few of Roger Corman’s non-genre offerings, and a couple of proto-disaster aviation movies; as well as some purely random entries, including one film I love so much, I can only babble about it incoherently.

As opposed to, um…

How glad I am to have not been a hippie. I think the main reason why I have a negative look towards hippies and the youth of the ’60s comes from reading back issues of Mad magazine when I was young. Artists like Dave Berg would always draw them with impossibly long hair (wouldn’t they be hot under all that hair?) and clothing that was ragged and laughable-looking. They were also usually portrayed as being idiots, with all their pot-smoking and constant proclamations of “Peace!” Even though what I observed from Mad magazine and other sources about hippies repulsed me to that lifestyle, I must admit at the same time I was almost fascinated by it. Why would young people intentionally drop out of the mainstream and do all those negative (to me) things? To this day I still feel this way. That’s why I decided to review The Hippie Revolt for this roundtable, to get some sort of answer to this question. Did this documentary give me answers? Read the review and find out.

A lot of people enjoyed Able Edwards (2004), which tells the Citizen Kane-like story of a clone of Disney-esque entertainer opening theme parks in the “civilization pod” in orbit to which humanity is confined after a global bioaccident, more than I did.  Being the first feature film shot entirely against a green screen, it was a technological milestone.  But it seemed to capture the fascinating character of neither of the personalities that inspired it.

I’m in Canada! Or as they say in Quebec, “Ayyy! Mamma mia! I’m inna da Canada!” Or something like that. But at least one person at Teleport City saw fit to get some work done on this roundtable…

TIMES SQUARE
As a result of these hijinks, the Sleez Sisters’ legend continues to grow, with Nicky and Pamela building up an enormous, rabid following among Johnny LaGuardia’s young listeners. Of course, we’ll have to take Johnny LaGuardia’s word for that, because we’re not shown any actual evidence of this overwhelming public response until the film’s conclusion. Before that, we just have to make due with the DJ’s grandiose proclamations about how “a new iconoclast has come to save us” and him exclaiming about how his “switchboards are jammed” with calls of support for the two. Finally, Nicky and Pamela make their ultimate statement by dressing up in garbage bags, painting raccoon masks over their eyes, and throwing television sets off of the roofs of various buildings throughout the city. This wouldn’t seem that significant if not for Tim Curry’s rapturous exultations on the subject, which would lead you to believe that it was some kind of profoundly society-challenging act.

Yes, it’s a cheat; but an El Santo-approved cheat. So there.

LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE (1974)

In which the use of an experimental pesticide device based upon ultrasonic radiation has the unforeseen side-effect of causing the dead to rise up and start chowing down upon the living.

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And where is local law enforcement while all this is going on? Oh, they’ve got something more important to worry about – like an out-of-towner whose hair touches his collar…

[Warning: some screenshots NSFW. (I seem to be saying that an awful lot lately, don’t I??)]

I briefly considered doing my review of A Bucket of Blood (1959) in a stream of Beat poetry such as opens the movie. Then I thought, “Naah.  That’s not my thing, and all the cats will know that I’m just a poseur, I’m not REAL, I’m not TRUE, I’m not AWARE.”

So I did my own thing. Which, if I may say so myself, I do darned well.

No, I have not forgotten this month’s roundtable – my contribution is finished and will be posted later this month. I just couldn’t resist first reviewing a movie from those mischief-makers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. This particular movie from them – Surrender – is different from their usual stuff. First, it’s a comedy, somewhat rare for them. Second, it’s a more mature-themed movie. Michael Caine had this to say about the movie in his autobiography: “I was surprised it flopped since I had a marvellous co-star, Sally Field, and a director who is still one of the funniest men I have ever met – Jerry Belson. The script too seemed pretty hilarious, but as Harry Saltzman once said to me: ‘It’s amazing how often the public is wrong, isn’t it?’ And to repeat Sam Goldwyn on the subject: ‘If the public don’t want to go and see a movie you can’t stop them.’ That’s what happened to Surrender, the last movie I was to make as a resident of my youthful dreamworld, Hollywood.”

Zombies are roaming Texas. I am not making this up: it is absolutely true. Actual Maggot-ridden Zombies Are Roaming Texas. An insect parasite lays eggs in its host, and when the larvae hatch, they eat away the host’s brain, causing it to shamble aimlessly — literally mindlessly — for about two weeks. Then the host’s head falls off… and the parasites emerge to infect new hosts. What’s more, the Government has a hand in the spread of the parasite. Didn’t you always just know this is how things would happen?

I guess it might come as a bit of an anticlimax to reveal that the zombies aren’t human: they’re ants. And the Government involvement is merely USDA approval of the parasites as a natural anti-pest tool.

Nevertheless, I can smell a SyFy Orijinul Moovy (Black Swarm II: Entomological Boogaloo?) already being made…