Cocaine + Calvins = Conan / 4 Post-TARZAN Barbarian Wonders (1982-88)

I was walking to work the other morning, the horrors of FINDING NEVERLAND playing over and over in my head, wondering how on earth we collectively managed to ignore all the signs--when a seemingly unconnected epiphany took hold: When crushing guilt is instilled in childhood--via Catholic school, fundamentalist or overbearing mothers, etc-- cocaine's effect as inhibitor of empathic responses means instant liberation from a lifetime of that guilt, enabling its user (if they are Catholic or otherwise oppressed by guilt) to feel ten feet tall, like a crushing weight has been lifted for the first time. Protestants, public school-educated, atheists without maternally-instilled guilt (like me) can't imagine what it's like to have such a burden lifted from our psyches because we never had it in the first place. We feel only the loss of our human warmth, not the sudden release from a crushing weight of Catholic guilt. Perhaps that's why cocaine is depicted as such a mystical symbol in the works of guilt-ridden Catholic directors like Hitchcock, Scorsese, Abel Ferrara, and Brian De Palma. Those of us whose ancestors hail from colder climates, who have no constant nagging guilt merely stand there, irritably, waiting for our turn at the mirror and trying not to sneeze. Cocaine makes us merely sociopathic. Dark dirty desires we'd never entertain during our normal sober state (indeed would be horrified by) are released. For us, it's the Mr. Hyde elixir, it's the pineal From Beyond vibrator. When we wake up the following evening we feel terrible remorse, and can't breathe through our nose for two days. Catholics just finally feel normal. 

This is just a working theory, but since cocaine plays such a huge part in the films of the
70s it behooves us to look into it while discussing the era's intense licentious interest in icons of sexual purity and the permissiveness, until slavering over young 15-16 year-old girls--the ultimate pseudo-incest taboo-- was somehow socially acceptable. 

As Randy Newman sang:

"They say that money

can't buy love in this world.

But it will get you a half pound of cocaine

and a 16 year-old girl. 

In a big black limousine 

on a hot November night.

That might not be love,

but it's all right" 

-- "It's Money that I Love" - from Born Again (1979)

In the height of the drug's popularity (late-70s) there was disco and there was a 15 year-old Brooke Shields inferring she wore no underwear underneath her Calvins, creating quite a lot of tabloid and water cooler arguments  as to where naughty fun ended and licentious statutory leering began. Shields already had a lightning rod signification having appeared two years earlier in a film by Louis Malle, Pretty Baby, about a New Orleans child prostitute. The jeans ads rocketed her into a weird place in the zeitgeist, one that--nowadays--would be unthinkable. The more the press condemned her exploitation and licentious positioning the more the jeans were sold.

But on the other hand, sex wasn't supposed to be as rapey/vile as it seems today in shows like Euphoria and other HBO dramas. It was considered fun, and no harm done, and everyone entitled to a lover. You know, like in Europe? Were we finally grown up, or just living a fantasy that would have long-lasting consequences, you know, like a hangover?

One sniff makes you wilder.... 

To set the scene: 1978 was a special year: Saturday Night Fever (1977) was no longer in theaters but the album was still #1. We elementary school kids listened to it and danced obsessively. The film itself was depressing and sordid compared to the relatively cleaned-up Travolta figure next year -Grease. Looking back, was it magical fairy dust that changed Olivia Newton John overnight from a goody two-shoes to a freeze-licking biker chick overnight? "You better shape up!" she sings, blowing Travolta's mind (left).

Looking back at it, man it had to be that she tried coke the night before her radical change. In an effort to win her man she said yes to her first line of coke and was blown out of her goody two-shoes. By the second line she was borrowing Roz's trashiest black leather, and by dawn she was chain smoking. This is the power of drugs, and especially the insidious power of coke to remove one's sense of empathy, guilt, shame, and responsibility - all the things that keep a girl virgin pure. Just like Laura Palmer or some victim of Monarch mind-control: give any girl cocaine, it seemed, and she was forever out of reach of her parents and teachers --yours for defiling, as long as you had a stash back in your bedroom drawer.

At the time all this was going on, I was just a kid myself, two years younger than Brooke Shields. She was, in a sense, too young for my tastes (I was way into Charlie's Angels), and a little too generic and skinny for my tastes. I remember having zero interest in seeing either The Blue Lagoon (1980) or the following year's Endless Love (1981).

But as someone unable to buy a ticket to an R-rated movie (which they both were), it was fascinating that, actually, neither could she.

Shields reclines by the BLUE LAGOON

Looking back to the silent era and their never-ending exotic locations with castaway waifs taking soft focus showers in waterfalls; never knowing of men or of sin, so how could they be ashamed of these strange feelings, etc., it's clear just how thoroughly socially-instilled repressive sexual guilt has lessened over the years as far as needing to escape to a desert island to avoid one's mother and priest. 

The 'return to Eden' surge at the end of the powder-coated 70s led to a plethora of "corruptible innocence" films at the box office. Not just Malle's Baby, but Polanski's Tess (1979), The Blue Lagoon (1980), Foxes (1980), Little Darlings (1980), Manhattan (1979) -- They all feature innocent, wide-eyed, underage sexualized nymphs that fit the mood of the moment perfectly. If they caught any flak, it was the groups who flung it that were judged, as prudes.

Throughout the 70s, America was still in a pre-AIDS hedonistic mindset whilke nudity was still something you could only get on the big screen at an R-rated picture (or-X, gasp - for there were no video players except in the homes of super rich a-holes). Maybe we saw sex as 'good' maybe because we hadn't seen that much of it. We were all curious and felt protected in that way children are who don't yet know how ugly the world is. How could there be anything bad about sex, especially with adorable Dr. Ruth dispensing prime time sex advice?

We were too innocent to know how dangerous it was to let coked-up producers capitalize on our prurience by promoting innocence itself as sexy.

As recent events and movements indicate, we're still learning.



In this light, it's clear 1982's Conan wasn't born in a vacuum, but because people were confident about the success of the insanely-hyped Bo Derek film Tarzan the Ape Man (1981 -above) a kind of adult's only-Lagoon meets the violence and macho of classic pulp, a short jump from Burroughs to Howard - indeed, the paperbacks looked almost alike.

In the late-70s, crazes ran in quick succession. Thanks to the surprising box office of Blake Edward's "10" (1979), Bo Derek was the goddess at the top of a big pyramid (everyone was giving everyone else a number all of a sudden - were you a seven or an eight?). Girls got those tacky micro-dreads--or tried--then combed out the damaged hair, the resulting frizz leading to the perm. John Derek, Bo's husband/ photographer, was the 80s American equivalent of the 60s Roger Vadim (see Pimps: The Devil's Auteurs). decided she needed his guidance.  He would direct her next film: Tarzan would be a kind of Blue Lagoon 2 for a slightly older pair of naturalist lovers to entwine within.

That was the hype. But a critical laughingstock was born instead. Hoots and hollers and not in a fun The Room kind of way, but a boring way... Bo began a descent as meteoric as her rise.

Still, Tarzan was massively profitable, so much so that the engines of Italian 'draft rider' pulp started up full force. Dino De Laurentiis' Conan (1982) was another 'adult' adaptation of classic pulp (Robert E. Howard instead of Burroughs -above) with a fetishized male body (Arnold) instead of female, and this time it worked! People liked it, boys like me especially. And the best element was the genuinely touching romance with Sandahl Bergman as Valeria, a character we loved from the comics and were worried would not be represented well, and Arnold - whose accent endeared him to us immediately. We adored these lovers' openhearted moxy. Valeria (left) was a strong, capable character suddenly vulnerable through a first love. Bergman did most of her own stunts, and wielded a real scimitar -- she was no kibbitzer. She was worlds away from the innocent naifs of Tarzan, Blue Lagoon. This was a movie where corruption of innocence was met not with musical numbers and leers but with sharp steel. This was barbarians sneaking downstairs to crash the party and send the reptilian cokehead directors running for the door. Like April in Taxi Driver, we helped Brooke Shields home to her worried Max Von Sydow father to sober up, and the doors of the orgy room were sealed shut.

Conan was a hit. And so the draft riders pulled in behind that, and the sword and sorcery age of the early-80s was born. The hedonistic debauching of innocents was out - the disemboweling of hedonists by the innocents was in. 

Imitators sailed in from New World, and of course, Italy, where they mixed and matched with the other big hits of the moment (see my list of awesome ROAD WARRIOR rips from last month) and hey -- many are on Prime. Four of them are worth mentioning, for they give the right kind of viewer a peaceful, easy feeling of nostalgia and archetypal alignment. They are all perfect for napping to... on a lazy... Saturday... after... nnnz. And hey, onr og yhrm stars Miles O'Keefe, Derek's Tarzan himself! Everything comes full circle. 

1. ATOR, THE FIGHTING EAGLE

(1982) Dir. Joe D'Amato 

**1/2 / Amazon Image - B+

Maybe it's the languid sexually uninhibited postures, the dreamy pace, the tastefully provocative fur loincloths and armor; maybe it's the muted cinematographic palette of purples and yellows; maybe it's the rumbling timpani and Wagnerian brass of Carlo Maria Cordio's score; the long flowing wigs and cute fur boots and wrist bands on the young leads, their flawless faces conveying just the right level of youthful blankness, maybe it's the lack of narrative urgency coupled to hitting all the expected marks, but goddamned it there's something about this terrible movie I love. It's a case of less is more: the lack of blood and gore makes the clumsy fights adorable; the lack of nudity and sex helps make everything paradoxically sexier, more alive with a kind of polymorphous haziness. And then there's the clankety fight scenes and minimalist set design. Look at the above, for example: is that supposed to be a cave wall or a frumpy dark purple tarp behind our plate-chested hero? Look at his splayed posture! Look at who he is, the Derek's Tarzan himself, Miles O'Keefe! Could we be any chiller?

Wake up, Miles! You're playing Ator, a young warrior type raised by farmers after escaping a 'first born male son' purge by an evil warlord (a not uncommon procedure in these films). Not to pick on poor Miles, whose fault it surely isn't that the Dereks' Tarzan was such an epic--albeit profitable--fail. Here, thanks to D'Amato's sleepy mise-en-scene and a good (famiar-voiced) dubbing job that manages to inject just the right note of deadpan knowningness to every cliche'd line (i.e. "first I must complete... what I was born to do."), his dazedness aura insures his inability to play his role any other way than deadpan straight (there's not a bone of self-awareness in his lithe, muscular body). Rumor has it that D'Amato was routinely frustrated with his star's continued listlessness --but then again, looking around at the rest of the film, O'Keefe probably had a lot to listless about! Still, his combination bride/sister Sunya (Ritza Brown) has been abducted by a band of roving spider-worshipping brigands led by "the Hight Priest of the Spider" (Dakar), who holds onto power by making his army of about 15 stand around for hours while he plays with a real tarantula. Plenty of time for Ator to quickly train with a guy in a terribly hacked-up dusty Mongol warrior wig who instructs him in the art of war for about two minutes. He is ready! 

Inevitably, Ator--and his little bear cub pet-- soon hooks up with an enterprising young Amazon named Roon (Sabrina Siani- above, a regular during this brief phase of Italian Conan knock-offs) after she wins him in combat over breeding rights. She's not in the same league as Sandahl Bergman, fighting skill-wise but a perfect match for O'Keefe as far as strung out wavelengths. She shoulders an equal share of battling derring-do once they team up, and I'm a fan of her lack of moral compass. You can decry as clumsy and amateurish their brawls with blind sword makers, indignant robbery victims, and spider worshippers, but why bother? They're not using stunt doubles, and they're probably tired, and D'Amato can work sly in-camera miracles just through blocking (I especially like Ator's battle with his a pesky mirror shield shadow). I don't find any of that a problem, since it reminds me of my own Conan-inspired super-8mm opuses made around this same time. We used all the same tricks. And befitting something perhaps suitable for the whole 13 year-old boy's slumber party,  D'Amato spares us gore and torture, sleazy sex close-ups, and all the other things associated with trying for an R-rating, and just delivers the rest in that pleasingly totemistic ritual manner that makes me so enamored of Luigi Cozzi and Ed Wood. There's no trauma, no emotional investment, no wasting time with long caravans and mustered armies of extras (the Temple of the Spider holds onto power for thousands of years with an army of about ten guys in long black Kiss wigs) suspense, no loud noises. the weird golden-pale color palette is a great mix of D'Amato's own gift with cinematography and a good restoration (it doesn't try to do too much) are very becoming to the actor's naked limbs and the purple cave walls, Siani and Brown are very pretty, the hero is unobjectionable (like that good-looking guy you're still friends with because he's not somehow not a vain prick) and there's a giant spider that puts the fur Volkswagen in Bill Rebane's Giant Spider Invasion to shame. I haven't even mentioned D'Amato regular and fan favorite Laura Gemser (below).

But all that doesn't totally begin to explain the appeal, the unique sexual pull of Ator. A great example of it I think can be found in the two scenes of O'Keefe's resting a goblet on or near his genitals (above, and top), splaying his legs out, when sitting, as if trying to get some air flow to his balls or presuming a fluffer is going to be down there momentarily, rummaging amidst the luxuriant pelts of his furry loincloth. In your average 80s sex comedy this pose might be done by some smug jock with a Red Ball cup, and it would be rapey-vile instead of sexy-cool. The difference is between wanting it vs. not even being aware of it, i.e. muscle memory. In other words, our Ator/O'Keefe seems like a very laid guy. Maybe that's why he's so listless? 

Like many truly sexy films, though, Ator is seldom overtly sexual; it's more akin to the kind of thing I used to fantasize about as a seven year-old, all power and submission and polymorphous perversity. Ator is always the desired, not the desirer; the Amazons choose one of their sisterhood to mate with Ator since he looks healthy, and so he's locked up in a hut and the victor comes in to claim him like a prize stud (but without any soft focus or jazz) and then Gemer's enchantress seduces him while Roon spies from a hole in the roof and sends his pet bear through a crack in the rocks to run a Toto-style cockblock. Again and again, sex never happens but almost happens --with Ator fought over as an object being used for sex and seed -- too languid and reposed to resist, preferring to just rest his flagon near his pelted crotch as if a grail light for wandering maidens. Like all good D'Amato movies, a close analysis reveals just how truly fucked up this all is. Ator plans to marry his own sister (even before knowing he was adopted) -- their early scenes together pulse with a yearning primal energy, never falling over the side into the abyss of puerility or camp. Michele Soavi was an uncredited co-writer and I'm guessing he maybe helped keep a kind of surrealist lid on things. Surely his absence is felt in the later sequels. 

In short, my friends, if you miss the smell of 1980s Grateful Dead tour, the mix of patchouli, hashish and sizzling meat all mixed together opening your third eye like a burning ember in the center of your forehead, helping you 'see' as the maroon bewitched core of life itself, the sizzling of a tailgate grill cracking open kundalini serpent eggs, then run, walk, and scamper to Ator. It's all there in Sabrina Siani's gleaming light-blonde princess wig, in the purple hues of the purple crepe paper cave walls, in Cordio's grounding timpani and Holst/cop show woodwinds, the cinematography, the nicely small cast and inoffensive / bloodless violence, the cute black fur boots of his scrumptious sister-wife, and in every strand of oversized clothesline web.

--

SORCERESS

(1982) Dir. Jack Hill

*** / Amazon Image - A

Usurping, wild-eyed sorcerer Traigon (Roberto Ballesteros) needs to sacrifice his firstborn child but his hot young wife (Silvia Manríquez) has twin girls and won't tell him which one came first. A wild-haired good wizard, Krona (Martin La Salle) strides forth to zap Traigon into a 20 year-long period of oblivion, alas, too late to save the mom from Traigon's sword. As is the custom, Krona leaves the babies with farmers so they don't attract despotic attention. He drops back in twenty years later, alas, too late again to save the farmers from Traigon's soldiers. The twins have gestated into blessfully unmodified Playboy playmates Lynette and Leigh Harris. A hearty, if unusually short, red-bearded Viking named Baldar (Bruno Rey), his curly-haired romantic-lead rascal buddy Erlick (Roberto Nelson), and a ridiculous horny satyr, vow to help the twins get revenge against the now-revived Traigon, who still needs that first born sacrifice or his god be angry! Traigon's right hand woman, Delissa (Ana de Sade) promises the second-born twin to her pet monkey monster, and the monkey uses druggy fruits to disorient the gang and abduct the right one. Signal the hair-raising escapes, magical spells, fights, gods fighting in the sky while zapping the battlers below with lightning, remote orgasms (the girls are linked psychically), and undead warriors culled from their crypts.

To call back to my long-winded out-on-a-limb opening introduction, there are copious drug references here: the idea that a drug instantly reduces the heroes to laughing idiots, allowing their shady dealers (the apes) to carry the girls away with no resistance, must have come from parties I've been to. And the later drugging and hypnotizing of the first born of the twins and Erlick so they'll get it on during a big pre-sacrificial sex magick ceremony to appease one's reptilian overlord? That's so Illuminati-Monarch7!  (1)

It was director Jack Hill's final film (alas), made for Corman's New World down in Mexico as part of a multi-picture deal. Its production values are a little higher and the extras and supporting cast a little sexier than we're used to in a New World film of the time (no day-for-night, good lighting, effects, etc.), and Amazon's streaming source is pretty solid, presented HD and with deep, blazing reds and blacks. My only issue is that, perhaps to enhance the night scenes and presumably, and bring out that red, the color correction effort gives a lot of the actors an orange-sunburnt tint. I didn't get this issue on the Scorpion Blu-ray (see my review here), where the blacks are jet deep. But hey, it beats having to get up.

Sorceress's release year (1982) was a high point for A-list sci-fi and horror/adventure, and amidst that year's B-list, Hill could have rocked out for at least a few more classics or even moved up to the big leagues. Today enough Hill fans are in high enough places that he could get a film crowd-funded in five minutes if he wanted. Hell, Tarantino alone could hook him up! Do it, Jack! Do it!

Hey, Jack, I get it, age and experience brings wisdom as well as the loss of exuberance. And Spielberg was coming along to leave decadent deadpan larks like this -- too dirty and weird for the young kids and too cheap for the adults-- lurching along with only the 16-20 year-old males at the video rental store for company.  But here it is 30 years later and those boys now get nostalgic pangs for a simpler age and we're grateful that films like this hold up so well. So thanks, Jack, for putting in the extra effort. Your weird genius endures. Would there'd been a dozen more just like this, that you'd been a Crio Santiago, a Wynorski, or a prolific guy like Matt Climber, the director of...

3. HUNDRA

(1983) Dir. Matt Climber

** / Amazon Image - C

By now you know the story- a peaceful Amazon village is overrun by slavering invaders; they kill the men, enslave the women, the male children - if any - are taken to gladiator school, etc. But sometimes one brave woman escapes, gathers a force, or fighting skillz or whatever, to wreak havoc on the invaders in the name of her fallen sisters. No one's ever stayed awake through the opening to get the exact details of the variations to the plot in Hundra, but there's a bouncing Ennio Morricone score, vivid Spanish desert locations and a reasonable amount of action. As the unstoppable, untamable Hundra, Laurene Landon does all her own stunts, which is pretty cool but she seldom loses her doofus smile, which is not cool. Probably cast due to her resemblance to Bo Derek and Linda Evans, she's also fairly athletic, tall, and has no problem literally picking up guys and spinning them around. She jumps on and off of horses, onto and across roofs, knocks guards over right and left like a merry Errol Flynn in fur bikini, and seems to be having a kind of sloppy boozy time doing it Hanging back on her lines and reactions like she's waiting for a cue card, smiling confidently before leaning into a guy or throwing him over her shoulder like she's Tarzan and he's Maureen O'Sullivan,  all with a buzzed smile on her face. 

How are we supposed to read the tone with this weird actress? The Ennio Morricone isn't going to help --he's no Mickey Mouser and not about to add comic effects or ominous undercarriages, quite the opposite. He practically invented the Italian style of operatic antithesis, so leans back on the stick himself, pumping the lady up like a cheering papa with Wagnerian orchestral urgency. Since she's proving her mettle right in front of us, it's hard not to forgive her goofball trespasses, and even her dated frizzy ironed hair (were they trying for those Bo Derek braids and then gave up and just hot combed most of them out?) See below.



Alas, as an adventure of feminist empowerment, the ramshackle tale tries to do too much and in the process gets old fast (it's taken me three years to finish watching). It may help to consider that the writer/director Matt Climber was once married to Jayne Mansfield, and shepherded the original GLOW (Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling) TV show, shortly after making this film, making him the obvious inspiration for the character played by Marc Maron in the Netflix series of the same name (see also Climber's masterpiece, The Witch Who Came from the Sea). When you realize Laurene Landon played one of the lady wrestlers managed by Peter Falk in All the Marbles (1981) it gets clearer. Whether or not Climber has some weird women wrestling 'thing' or not, his love of strong women makes him an ally, of some sort of other. 

Pros: That big chase scene I mentioned really benefits from Landon doing her own stunts as we see her leaping around like Errol Flynn or Buster Keaton might do (or we see in films like The Stuntman), albeit a bit sloppier. A standout scene goes on an on in and around this small gated village, with Hundra running from parapet to rooftop to second floor balcony and back again, her horse and dog keeping up with her progress in perfect time from ground level (the dog leading the horse!), all three together in an elaborate and quite impressive centerpiece action scene. It ends with her falling through the roof and onto the bed of a brooding doctor (Ramir Oliveros). Without even pausing to shake off the wild ride she just had, she jealously eyeballs the girl who's leaving without missing a beat, not even being out-of-breath, grabbing and eating an apple from his table, pinning him to the wall with hurled daggers, and proclaiming she intends to mate with him! She's like a one-woman version of Liz and Dick in Taming of the Shrew, rolled together and sheathed in odd furry raiments!



Cons: Alas, the inevitable temple orgy sequence that follows the lengthy single-take / clearly  great chase sequence, is sordid as hell. Full of hot girls pawed by fat ugly-hairy-middle-aged drunks, and seeming to go nowhere, it just drags on and one and seems present mainly to show how vile temples were before the Christ our lord did pass amidst them. We're subjected to gross men loudly announcing their superiority to women, who are all there solely to serve them, etc. and making women bow down to a bull they worship (how and why and what is expected to happen between the women and the bull is vague). The snotty king (Cihangir Gaffari) meanwhile, reigns via one interminable snit fit,  letting girls know who's da boss while his little toadie does the close-up bullying. It's all paving the way to Hundra teaching the court virgins to kick their men's asses and --in a big slow motion climax set to dynamic Morricone howling Wagnerian ecstasy--killing every last oppressor with her mighty sword. It's cathartic but at the same time very odd that she'd wait so long, and submit to make-up regimens and learn how to walk in heels, rather than just wiping them all out and odd that Climber keeps it all in extreme slow-mo so we have time to notice the punch pulling in some detail.

Maria Casal - right

Caution: Even if you like Hundra, I'd advise you to steer clear of Climber's western follow-up with Landon (also on Prime), Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold, wherein she's a half-breed after Aztec treasure with her bumbling Mexican sidekick. It looks even worse than this, both figuratively and literally, and Hundra looks bad enough, "Clearly" sourced from a letterboxed (not anamorphic) video source, it has a very blurred streaky look, with digital edge enhancement added as an attempt to make it more palatable. The color contrast issue is not helped by the over reliance on daylight outdoor scenes, all tan/brown sandy deserts which help make the blonde haired, pale skinned, earthen-clothed actors all but disappear. The occasional purple tunic, as in above right, is so jarring by contrast it seems like it was superimposed.

4. DEATHSTALKER 2 

(1987) Dir. Jim Wynorski

**1/2 / Amazon Image - C-

Even if, like me, you have problems with Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) you still love John Lazar as the insane and charismatic record mogul. And even if, like me, you have problems with the oeuvre of Jim Wynorski, you can still love Deathstalker 2, because Lazar is the evil villain, Jerek, and though he's not looking quite as dashing as he was 17 years earlier and spends most of his few scenes 'practicing' swordsmanship, killing off his warriors with a drowsy hooded-eyed flatline level of bemusement. John Terlesky stars as the titular 'stalker and luckily he's self-aware grin is free of the snarky puerility that undoes so many of his ilk. Toni Naples is Jerek's evil henchwoman. Bewitching-eyed Maria Socas is the Amazon queen. They're all fine but the movie really belongs to Monique Gabrielle as the pauper/princess, her tanned and toned limbs, buckskin minidress, cool straight blonde hair and bangs go a long way towards absolving her flat line delivery and over-the-top eye rolls. Lucky for us, what she and Terlesky lack in acting chops is made up for by their youthful chemistry. (She's more overtly sexual and less cute as the slutty evil doppelganger whipped up by Jerek). Though she and Terlesky may plow through their His Girl Friday-esque dialogue like a lawnmower through a victory garden, we can't hold it against them. They are lovely and young and--unlike so many others-- not smug and glazed-eyed narcissistic about it. They're fun, self-depreacting, seem to be having a good time and holding things just this side of camp, able to keep the ramshackle comedy without shucking totally loose from a sense of quality, attentionb to detail, narrative and something being actually at stake. 

The plot is a variation of the familiar "princess disguised as beggar/seer recruits wandering warrior to help her reclaim her stolen throne by an deposing evil sorcerer usurper" story. And though parts are certainly innuendo-laden, even during Deahstalker's trial by combat with a gigantic lady wrestler (Dee "Queen Kong" Booher -- from GLOW - second GLOW reference!)--it's a film that never courts misogyny or grotesque undulance.

Riding through the Ed Wood-esque graveyard

Another thing I like about this film is how much of it occurs at (actual) night, leading to a fun kind of cool breeze atmosphere not present in films usually bound by using natural light on hot desert sets which can give things a washed-out patina even before they age and fade (i.e. in latter films in this genre from New World, like Warrior and the Princess). It was filmed in Argentina as part of a multi-picture deal, so the craftsmen down there must have known how to light their backlot so it glows beguilingly in the moonlight (as in the green-tinged cardboard cemetery at left). With castle mattes courtesy The Terror (New World's eternal wellspring), it's the ideal film to watch as the sun is coming up when you're still debating opening another jug or slinking up to bed before your significant other wakes up for work. :)

Also recommended:
* YOR: HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE (1983) - Now on Blu-ray or for $$ download
Great ancient aliens / dinosaurs / ape creature movie with Reb Brown as Yor and a bevy of comely Italian actresses vying for his... love.

*SHE (1984) Starring Sandahl Bergman
 it was once on Netflix! Now... in the void. By cracky, it must be released! If you're the one holding it hostage hear my demand: Release SHE! (not to be confused with the 1935 film or Hammer's Ursula Andress remake)

* HEARS AND ARMOR (1983) - avail. on VHS, but needs a good Blu-ray upgrade - Tanya Roberts as the Muslim princess! A beautiful Italian girls lying in beds of flowers wearing full armor - never was all that is cool and lovely so succinctly in a single image wrapped.

DEATHSTALKER 1(1983 - get the anamorphic shout DVD with Deathstalker 2, and two forgettable other films)

Sigh - this concludes my lengthy and obsessive journey into Amazon Prime's mid-80s post-Conan bloom. See them all! I'm moving my focus to the Criterion channel. I need art, damnit!
NOTES:
1. See (for starters)L The Illuminati, Hypnosis, Paranoia, Schizophrenia, Kubrick, and Tom Cruise

10 Surreal Cult Gems of the 80s: A Prime-Stream Special

What was the 80s and why was it such a golden age for weird sci-fi and head trips? Was it thanks to the dawn of MTV and Night Flight and their power to amuse stoned kids back late from the punk shows on weekends? Repo Man, Return of the Living Dead, and Night of the Creeps in theaters; Liquid Sky and Street Trash were at (shhh) inner-city theaters; drive-in and the video rental places co-existed comfortably.., for the moment.  Conan, the Terminator, and Robocop made such big money that art house wonders like Brazil and Blue Velvet could be seen and occupy hallowed places in the press.

Also, it was the height of Nancy-fueled anti-drug hysteria, and so--just as, during Prohibition, imbibing booze had become a symbol of American freedom and defiance of knee-jerk puritanism, so now there togetherness and patriotism to be found in smoking weed during the 80s (when you could go to jail for years just for having a joint in your pocket). Today weed is mostly legal and so innocuous its users are unnoticed. But back then, getting high and going to the midnight movie was a rite of dangerous passage. And going home to watch Night Flight and weird rented movies was simply the norm. And as a result, thrived a momentary nation of the strange. We were a decade away from the ecstasy-and-blue recovery roller coaster of the Prozac 90s. We had to invent micro-tripping just to get by - so we liked it weird. As ye shall see, brave wanderer:

1. SOCIETY

(1989) Briam Yuzna

***1/2 / Amazon Image - A

For sheer over-the-top surreal class-commentary, nothing really beats Brian Yuzna's SOCIETY which has one of the best WTF denouements in cinema history. I'm going through great pains to not spoil any of it, let's just say that in best surrealist form it taps into the Freudian Id impulse and the anxiety that one is shut out of a massive 80s upper crust orgy--that even your parents are in on some licentious surreal group sex cult secret. It's this very real feeling that underwrote the Satanic panic of the 80s (and continues today in things like Pizza-gate, Q-Anon, and the conspiracies of David Icke -[here]), so it makes sense this came out in the "me" decade, a time when Reagan was in office and 'yuppies' were gobbling up everything, their little IZOD collars turned up and Ray-bans on in slavish imitation of their god, Tom Cruise. Not for nothing, then, does Society star the euphonious Cruise-clone Billy Warlock as a privileged lad who enjoys the finer things thanks to his adopted family, yet is ever reminded of just how much better a slightly richer contingent at his elite school has it.  He begins to realize something is going on when his older sister's paranoid ex-boyfriend-cum-stalker plays him tapes he secretly made of the sister's private conversations with their father re: her debutante 'coming out' party. It sounds, in this weird conversation, like she's going be offered up to some evil reptilian throng as a sexual offering, forced to sleep with everyone in the cult, including her parents and local officials--and that she's looking forward to it. But that can't be--can it? 

To amp the paranoia we're never quite sure, til it's too late, if we're just reading into it. Billy is paranoid, but the truth is far crazier. Along his journey, he picks up a hot mess girlfriend (Devin DeVasquez) and--in the weirdest element--her "mother" (Pamela Matheson), a bizarre hair-eating nutcase that seems to have wandered in from a John Waters casting lagoon, and seems younger than her daughter, starts hanging around with them, regularly trying to eat Billy's hair. 

 Yuzna produced those early Stuart Gordon gems From Beyond and Re-Animator so clearly knew how to hire and use the best effects teams. The gooey weirdness would be CGI today but here it's all latex analogy--the weirdest coolest mess since Carpenter's The Thing. Too bad that, like The Thing itself, so few people saw it in theaters --did it even get a release? Either way, what a blast! It goes everywhere Eyes Wide Shut does in about 1/3 of the time, and then a whole, whole WHOLE lot farther. Along the way it lays down full bushels of insight on the nature of desire, social-climbing, consumer culture, the parasitical nature of the rich, and what's known today as FOMO - or the feeling a massive beautiful people orgy is going on whenever you're not around. Kurbick really should have gone out more, or at least watched some horror movies --Society would have maybe saved his film from its fatal inertia.

And even today, some still believe there's a secret basement where gorgeous women abandon themselves to hairy ugly men at the clang of Get Out teacup rattle or an Eyes Wide Shut Rammstein-style synth/chant dirge. How that 'missing the orgy' feeling ties in with priapism and paranoia could be a full semester course (see here for full syllabus), but Society says it all in 99 minutes and without bitter aftertaste. 

3. LIQUID SKY

(1982) Dir. Slava Sukerman

***1/2 / Amazon Image - A+

We're deep in the height of the artsy early-80s downtown NYC New-Wave scene, back when it was cool, underground, emaciated and addicted to an array of pills and powders. A small alien saucer lands on the roof above the balcony apartment of trendy new wave icon Margaret (Anne Carlisle) and her drug-dealing lesbian roommate Adrian, played by Paula E. (Alice in Alice Sweet Alice) Shepherd. Across the way in a parallel story is Susan Doukas as Sylvia, mother of Jimmy (also Carlisle) a strung-out sneering male model struggling to pay for a high-end cocaine addiction. A German scientist is lured up to lonely Sylvia's apartment for dinner but really he wants to spy on the saucer across the street. What is it up to? It's zapping anyone nearby at the moment of sexual climax, using the orgone (?) energy for, presumably, rocket fuel or their own form of drug. 

There's oodles of great stuff, style, and disaffect, but the ultimate in weird 'scenes' has got to be Anna Carlisle going down on the male version of herself while a bunch of fashionistas hanging out (while using her gorgeous roof balcony apartment for a photo shoot) jeer in a very punk aggro manner that would be scary if it were done by a bunch of straight dudes, but done by coked-up gay aesthetes it's just kind of punk. As Walter Sobchak might put it, there's nothing to worry about --they're nihilists. 

In the end it's Margaret's zonked renouncement of sexual pleasure in favor of drugs and mind expansion is what saves her while all her lovers are zapped. She doesn't say no to sex, even with her old teacher/mentor who drops up (a different time to be alive in NYC, oh me brothers). Then the aliens zap the life essence out of these lovers in the moment of orgasm and--until Anna complains--leaves their corpses piling up in the apartment. If you're not totally down with this film by the time Adrian starts an impromptu smack-shivery poetry slam while playing one of the corpses's bald head like a conga, then well, you may as well leave the city and move in with your brother out in Phoenix, know what I'm talking about? Me, I belong to this film, I love all its little moments, like Sylvia's a hilarious brunch with her sneezy, coke-withdrawal-wracked son. Now that the image is so lustrous, the sun streaming in through the window makes his suffering so beautiful and uniquely NYC I got a 90s strung-out flashback chill just watching him/her -- been there, bro! Not for coke or heroin, but for alcohol. They are actually similar in that (as I learned in. CASAC school) two withdrawals they have to medicate you for in detoxes, i..e. quitting cold turkey can be fatal! So if you've ever tried to hide how hungover and strung out you are while eating brunch with your mom, you'll really relate.

Clearly, this is the female east coast parallel to Repo Man. Was it an influence on Alex Cox? And like that one-off masterpiece, it's a film to be revisited, again and again - especially now that it's been so lovingly remastered. It probably never looked this good even in its initial NYC run. The shrill pre-programmed Casio synth music mat make the raucous punk on Repo Man's soundtrack seem like Mozart by comparison, but it works.  (see full review)

7. BRAZIL

(1985) Dir. Terry Gilliam

**** / Amazon Image - A-

Time was this was the bee's-knees, a universally praised cult hit, and it's kinda forgotten today due to being kinda dated. Though one of the most gamely dark and savage satires of modern bureaucracy in the history of cinema, here in the paperless 21st century its big anti-bureaucracy messages can seem rather labored. The whole Orwellian hodge podge and endless ducts and malfunctions feel so yesterday since  the entirety of the film's vast "Dept. of Information Retrieval" would be replaced by a handful of geeks on laptops. Still, as the missing link between Kafka (a rather heavy debt is owed) and--alas--one of those whimsical too-obvious Danny Kaye 'daydreaming office drone thinks he's a swashbuckler' odysseys, the level of detail and imagination is stunning. Since it's all before CGI and so beautifully remastered in HD, we can really savor the level of obsessive termite craftsmanship (the clouds in the fantasy flying sequences alone are worth the price of admission). 

Terry Gilliam's trouble as a director has always been that--like Ridley Scott--he can never trust the story to work on its own so his films gush over with detail and interesting things while the mythic root is lost like a child in a Black Friday opening door crush of overworked imagery. Here, since that crush is what it's all about, the overkill actually works perfectly, turning it all into a ballet of post-futuristic 30s decor crumbling under the weight of add-on tech (temporary things installed to fix problems with the fixes to other problems, etc). Still, Jonathan Pryce's flustered Walter Mitty-everyman schtick starts to get wearisome during his prolonged panicky run-for-it with the girl of his dreams. With her short hair and trucker's job she'd be instantly pegged as a lesbian today, making her initial resistance all the more glaring. It never even occurs to Pryce to ask if she likes him. 

That's the cool thing about Gilliam's vision - though a knee-jerk leftist reading is the most obvious--i.e. that Pryce is a hapless hero in a coiled universe strangled by evil bureaucrats-- a closer reading shows that the dystopia is the fantasy as much as the clouds. Reality chokes itself on its own exhaust so millions can relax in air conditioned privacy and dream of angels, or watch The Cocoanuts in their own bathtub while smoking a joint. Hey, I relate, I don't have a bathroom TV but I've smoked weed to Paramount Marx Brothers movies on air-conditioned couches far and wide. Realizing the extent to which my first world consumption habits butterfly tsunamis out to mass poverty in the third world doesn't help me change my habits. Trying to change them now would be like throwing a pale of water on a forest fire. It might make me feel less guilty, but it won't even slow the blaze--and I don't like being hot. 

Regardless of whether you think Pryce's character is a hero or just a trust fund Marxist floundering in the deep end, it all gorgeously done, with an extended wordless chase set piece finale that finally fishtails into pure fantasy that references everything from American in Paris to The Red Shoes and (of course) Potemkin under a dazzlingly expansive Michael Kamen score. And what a cast of first-class Brits! Ian Holm has never been funnier as Pryce's nervous wreck boss; Michael Palin is a chilling blast as Pryce's nonchalant torturer college friend and--marvelous as ever--Bob Hoskins is a miracle as a sinister blue collar duct worker. And cuz ya gotta have an American, there's Robert De Niro as a combination Groucho Marx and Che Guevara, zip-lining in and out of windows and balconies along the tall apartment complexes to make bootleg duct repairs without the proper forms. If Gilliam never made another movie after this, he'd be remembered as one of the masters of surrealism and dark comedy. But dystopia has a habit of dragging on... 

6. THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI

(1984) Dir. W.D. Richter 

*** / Amazon Image - A+

The problem with this film was that it kind of positioned itself a shoe-in for cult status, and that's not how cults are made. Cult films are born of legitimately weird outsider types trying to make a normal film, not a normal person trying trying to make a weird outsider film. BUT just because the motives are baffling and the weird hybrid Captain Midnight-brain surgeon-mad scientist-Formula 5 racer-rock band frontman thing is just a little Too Much Johnson, it doesn't mean the cast, effects crew, and too many moments to count in the script, aren't worthy of Sub-Genius-style lionization. Let the lamp affix its beam! Even if one can't simply whip up a franchise out of thin air (Lucas, never forget, used carefully imported mythic ingredients, plumbing Joseph Campbell as well as Alex Raymond), "No matter where you go / there you are" became an instant classic line.

And what a cast: Peter Weller and Ellen Barkin have never been more beautiful (the way Ellen Barkin opens her mouth for a kiss is so carnal and raw it collapses time and space as we know it), and it's clear they vibe on each other's energy. Jeff Goldblum is saddled with a ridiculous cowboy get-up that's just not working for him, but he's great as usual, and so is John Lithgow as Big Booty or Dr. Lizardo (top), and on and on it goes with way too much fan club stuff ("I'm Buckaroo club, Genus chapter!" like anyone watching was old enough to remember Captain Midnight decoder rings)- did they really expect such fan clubs would start? 

One thing too - this is one dense film - packed with mythos and character running which way and that. You can see it over and over agin and are still noticing little details. Around the tenth viewing, it starts to really work except for, it never quite does. Great end theme though. Too bad there weren't ten sequels! Weller - you are or were a gawd!

7. MEET THE HOLLOWHEADS

(1988) Dir. Thomas R. Burdman

*** / Amazon Image - C

A chamber piece that plays like some off-off family sitcom from an alternate reality (we never see a window or an outside - are they all in some gigantic multi-generational cross-galaxy spaceship? Did I miss that part?). No moment of the typical domestic bliss-ticked early-60s-late-80s sitcom is missed in director Thomas Burdman's (and co-writer Lia Morton)'s keen eye for absurdist surreal digression. The doofus grandpa needs force feeding with a giant syringe; the half-dog half-human 'pet' needs de-lousing (the boys shoot the bugs off him with a slingshot); the boss (Richard Portnow) comes over for dinner and dad (John Glover) is planing to ask for an overdue promotion; wife (Nancy Mette) hopes dinner goes just right!  The cute daughter (Juliette Lewis!) is getting ready to go out on a date with some new wave glorkenspruling doofus; the tentacled one-eyed watcher in the foyer (security system?) makes sure no lurkers walk past unnoticed. It's all played letter straight, such as it is, and the weirdness never stops. 

It's very tube-oriented; everything is round and comes out of tubes that connects to a vast system,  one that is cleaned out chimney sweep-style by men covered in pipe cleaner tubules who speak so abstractly they need subtitles (the same font Spheeris uses in The Decline of Western Civilization!). Lewis does her Lolita thing in due earnest here, clearing the way for her iconic stretch of films as a jailbait thumbsucker from the early 90s (Husbands and Wives, Cape Fear, Kalifornia). Just look at her in the top center picture! She's almost a different girl and who's that on her left? It's Bobcat Goldthwait --pre-screechy voice -- as one of the weird cops who carry her home. 

Come over for an evening with the Hollowheads, and stare agog at a universe that might have been. If the 80s was really that kind to weirdness, this would be on muhfuggin' Criterion!

I confess, I was only able to finish Meet the Hollowheads over several 20 minute viewings, as I found it too weird to endure for longer, especially in such bad quality (it's about akin to what you'd find on youtube, duped from some old first run VHS scored at a close-out) though as soon as I finished it, I started it right up again, so what's that tell you? And it's no dis - I watch Godard movies the same way and I love him. If you love crazy Godard too (for the comedy) and if you like the friendly day-glo genuine insanity of Pee-Wee's Playhouse, the industrial Kafka savagery of Brazil, and post-industrial ennui and alienation of Eraserhead, then this is your film. Just watch it from far enough away you don't get any on you. And though the image is bad it's all worth it for the wacky climax which finds the lecherous Portnow running amok, killed more times than Rasputin, the kids coming home wasted after hacking into a forbidden drug tube (the title I'd give it were I in charge: Forbidden Drug Tube-Tap) and the wasted son almost giving the whole show away by thinking the bruised near-dead boss is a monster. What a family. What a film! What set decoration. Would it was clearer, image-wise as that deep red in the round living room alone is to dye for. Stick with it and it you may never get it off. Maybe you won't even want to. 

8. NIGHT OF THE COMET

(1984) Writer/dir. Thom Eberhardt

*** / Amazon Image - A

With a weird cult-ready veneer that's quintessential 80s, this sci-fi/cult/horror/comedy tics a lot of boxes but does 'em all right. The heroine survives the comet night apocalypse because she was shacked up in the El Rey theater's projection room in a sleeping bag with cult douche Michael Bowen, for god's sake - and rather than work her usher job she eats Twizzlers and rules the Galaga high score in the lobby, saved from being fired by her beauty. Writer/director Robert Thom was one of those almost-iconic auteurs who made too few films to have a following, aside from weirdos like me who love both this and his Sole Survivor (also 1984, though much less widely known - seek it out immediately!) - I remember I saw Night on the big screen in the suburbs during its initial release--by myself, while skipping a high school--so you you know I'm the right guy to defend it. And if you love Mary Woronov and any movie where the teenage heroine warns a guy trying to kill her that she's "been trained" and doesn't want to hurt him (and means it, and does) then you'll love this film which now looks better than ever thanks to a great Shout Factory dusting and color-depth-asizing.

The dazzlingly-haired Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney star as the cool sisters Regina and Samantha--capably rescuing children and mowing down punk mall cops thanks to their CIA op father teaching them home defense before departing for Nicaragua. Woronov's fellow Eating Raoul star, Robert Beltran is a truck driver who answers the girls' survivor call (they set up base at the local LA radio station). Woronov heads an underground lab looking for a cure to the slow decay that hits those who survived the initial mystery dusting of the comet. God, zombies were so much cooler back then. What happened?

One thing may turn some folks off if they watch in the wrong context: this is the film with the quintessential first shopping montage set to Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun." Echoing Dawn of the Dead as much as foreshadowing Day with its underground scientist think tank bunker, it's not the film's fault that trying-on-clothes montage set to that song have become inescapably and inseparably cliche. We might wish for a world in which it was cliche instead to have super cool, capable girls like Regina and Samantha as our stars of horror and science fiction films, but they're still rare in any genre. (see also Anita Skinner in Thom's Sole Survivor for another cool Hawksian, this one even quoting To Have and Have Not -here)

9. PHENOMENA

(1985) Dir. Dario Argento

*** 1/2/ Amazon Image - B

When the plot of this was first described to my roommate and I by his girlfriend back around 1994, we knew the movie we needed to see after a drug-addled weekend. The description was so weird we doubted it even existed. This being long before the advent if Wiki and imdb, we could only trudge video store-ward and scope out the Argento titles, and nothing even remotely insect-concerned appeared. Years later, when I finally did get to see Phenomena it was the uncut version presented by Anchor Bay (as opposed to the American butcher job, Creepers) and in widescreen on DVD (as opposed to murky VHS) so it was even better than she made out. I was never so happy. Why am I telling you this? Because to relay the actual plot of it is like giving away the trick ending of Psycho if it was all trick endings. While Argento certainly references everything from (the previous year's hit) Firestarter as well as Carrie, (Jennifer Connolly loves insects and they swarm at her telepathic command) it also goes in all sorts of zig-zaggy directions. I'm not a big fan of Argento's insistence (continued in Opera and other late 80s films) of using heavy metal to underscore the murders, ghoubh. Time has been as kind of Morricone and Goblin as it's been unkind to Iron Maiden, in my opinion. At any rate, the rest of the score is the perfectly accentuated flanger-drenched guitar music of Claudio Simonetti, evoking the film's windy foot-of-the-Alps setting with a palpable unearthly chill. 

What I most love about it though is the weird midnight bond that forms between young Connelly, a wheelchair-bound entymologist played by Donald Pleasance, and his helper chimp, Inga. The dubbing is excellent and a real weird unique mood holds between them, as the ever present chilling wind keeps rolling down and up the Alps creating a totally unique mood in the Argento canon. There's also Daria Nicolodi as a nerdy teacher and Daria Di Lazzaro as the sexy-bitchy headmistress. The last 1/3 is a never-ending cascade of shocks and twists guaranteed to keep any jaw glued to the floor, and in the midst of it all, sweet innocent Jennifer Connelly finds herself swimming in lakes covered by burning fuel and calling insects and drowning in pits of maggot-filled decomposing bodies, and almost decapitated, all in great style. You may be warned, but there's no way you can be prepared...

1. BLUE VELVET

(1986) Dir. David Lynch 

**** / Amazon Image - A

I'll confess it took me a long way to come around to this movie: I found its violent thuggery disturbing and without a cathartic resolution. After a few decades of repeat viewings, and absorbing deep tissue analyses of the film by Todd McGowan and Zizek, I was able to unravel my private relationship to its Freudian subconscious Oedipal separation trauma, so I could let go of my ambivalence. Turns out the purple and blue velvet apartment where Kyle McLachlan spies through the closet blinds isn't merely his anger/anxiety over a woman being hurt, but a primal scene as understood through the mind of a child who mistrusts the animal grunts of sex and seethes with resentment over the dad's power to shut him out of the bedroom at a whim. So, turns out, the problem was mine, not Lynch's! I myself was Frank (Dennis Hopper) as much as Kyle - and I didn't want to be either one. I had to make peace with my inner monster. I tried, and am trying, and sometimes I love this film and sometimes not. I prefer actually Lost Highway, perhaps because it isn't as good. I'm not really connected to it, and that's just fine.

Laura Dern co-stars, at her dreamy-but-chipper best; the beautiful Dean Stockwell as a kind of dream world pimp lip syncing Roy Orbison (see CinemArchetype 18: The Aesthete) while Kyle tries not come off like a frightened kid who visits his drug dealer on the wrong night and ends up a veritable hostage in an all-night road trip binge. An initiation into a darker realm of life beneath the grass line of sunny Lumberton, these scary people eventually guide him into becoming a mature man through their loving abuse (like in Sonny Boy, with which it would make a fine double feature!).



Lynch's subsequent works would all point back to this key moment, some improving on it (Mulholland Dr.) some not so much (Wild at Heart). But Blue Velvet is Lynch's first great 'cracking it wide open' while still staying in a recognizable (small town noir) genre format. It's his "Demoiselles d'avignon," his Pollock's 1947 drip stick moment. No matter how many times you see it, it's never the same movie, but it's always, always disturbing. It's the dark nightmare of childhood brought into the light like a screaming, still-alive, tar pit mastodon.

TOO WEIRD EVEN FOR ME: 

These are definitely cult/surreal and look great on Prime but --me--personally - I couldn't stand them. I hate them And I'll give you my reasons why, in case your mileage varies. One critic's bias should never lose a film's chance at the right viewer.

SPIRITS OF THE AIR, GREMLINS OF THE CLOUDS
(1989) Dir. Alex Proyas
*1/2 / Amazon Image - A

In and around a cloistered shack in the middle of a nowhere post-apocalyptic outback, two wildly overacting eccentrics--one a wheelchair-bound aviation enthusiast, one a Gothic virgin introvert--help a monosyllabic punk rocker type escape the empty desert plain via a homemade airplane. Though the scenery is lovely, the actors are grotesque and do little to allay the monotony. The film seems to last forever as nothing happens, but not in a cool Jarmusch way but in an overwrought hammy Aussie way - the worst of both worlds. It needs either a genuinely macabre element (ala Burton's Beetlejuice), savage gallows satire (ala Gilliam's Tideland) or deadpan zest for living (ala Kusturica's Arizona Dream). This has none of the three! NONE! I hate it the way I hate those stale nightmares I used to have when suffering from a bad flu. The deep aqua-blue tint of the wide open sky and the burnished gold sand indicate gorgeous cinematography and color-grading; the Tangerine Dream soundscapes keep it all at a dreamy windswept beguilement; Melissa Davis hams it up like a kind of Helena Bonham Carter gone butoh missionary, but it's not enough to make it worth enduring the spittle-flecked hamming of Michael Lake, usually filmed for maximum grotesque close-ups (his teeth need work).  Director Proyas went on to make The Crow and Dark City, so he has his fans. The rest of us might survive if we view it as a prequel origin story for Bruce Spence's pilot character in The Road Warrior. Nonetheless watching it is too much like that feeling of being trapped in the middle of nowhere I used to have as a child in the suburbs. God, being forced to hang out with these three people the rest of my life seems far worse than any death by dehydration. 

THE FORBIDDEN ZONE

(1980) Dir. Richard Elfman

* / Amazon Image - B

Though zany and strangely familiar to any one who's watched old Betty Boop cartoons while macro-tripping, the ceaseless toilet humor of Elfman's little miracle gets very old fast, in fact before it starts. There's so much shit imagery and septic tanks I wonder how mired in infantile poop obsession can any alleged adult be? Further, Oingo Boingo is one irritatingly uncool band. Clearly a lot of effort went into this film and Herve is amazing (those dewey eyes....sigh), but everyone else -- good lord. I felt sick to my sacrum for weeks after only ten minutes of viewing. God blind me to the sights herein.