Marty Stouffer's Wild America: Fantastic Follies

Marty Stouffer's Wild America: Fantastic Follies

United States - 1996

Director - Mark Stouffer

King World Direct, 1996, VHS

Run Time - 58 minutes

9 1/2 Ninjas

9 1/2 Ninjas

United States - 1990

Director - Aaron Barsky

Republic Pictures Home Video, 1990, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 28 minutes

This low budget ninja parody film neatly secures a place among the most irritating films of all time with a spectacularly grating performance from, everyone in the film. Granted, there are a number of brilliant double entendres and visual puns sprinkled throughout, the script is actually quite good, it's just the execution that's lacking. Not in the enthusiasm category mind you, but the subtlety category. I realize that subtlety is not the stock in trade of physical comedy, quite the opposite, but when all is said and done with a film like this, one almost feels emotionally abused rather than entertained. I'm not stupid, you don't need to punch me in the face with ham, just humiliate yourself and everything will be fine. Perhaps that's the problem. When the characters are so annoying that you can't empathize or identify with 'em, even when you're laughing, it's no longer funny.

That Lucky Touch

That Lucky Touch

United Kingdon - 1975

Director - Christopher Miles

Video Treasures, 1987, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 33 minutes

The Wild Pair

The Wild Pair

United States - 1987

Director - Beau Bridges

Media Home Entertainment, 1988, VHS

Run Time -1 hour, 29 minutes

As a late entry into the 80’s buddy-cop cycle that was turned up to 11 by one Eddie Murphy, The Wild Pair is yet another white-cop/black-cop combo, but it is also another local-cop/federal-cop pairing. Yet neither of these “ironies” is mined for its humor. Baby-faced Beau Bridges plays FBI agent Joe Jennings with enough suave confidence and pig-headdedness, and Bubba Smith plays short-fused Narc Benny Avalon with sufficient pathos to be convincing, but given that by this late date the context has been standardized, it’s not surprising that their performances are also comfortably standard. Together they foil a criminal endeavor perpetrated by a fairly run-of-the-mill array of semi-inept punks and nominally-sinister kingpins and all ends more-or-less happily. As a result, The Wild Pair is both predictable and unsensationally flat, an otherwise forgettable flare-up of Action’s most chronic case of sub-generic herpes.

And yet, beneath this placid, run of the mill surface is a not so subtle current of transgression just waiting to drag you under. The Wild Pair could have gone the way Hellbound  and Cop and ½ eventually did (following precedent), making Benny into a Jim Crow stereotype to compensate for the film’s flaccid storyline. But Benny is not the comic relief to Joe's more serious (and hence we are led to surmise more important and worthy of our identification) quest/project. His physicality, in it's unusualness (to the film) is certainly hard to ignore, and (as with obesity, shortness, boobs etc.) simply must be exploited by the conventions of low comedy (Police Academy) reliant on physical idiosyncrasy for narrative engagement. What humor there is in The Wild Pair (and there aint much) is dependent on Smith's being huge, not on his “acting black" and fulfilling those standards that make white viewers feel safe liking him.

This works because while Jennings is technically on the other side of the tracks, the film is not about his discomfort and the sort of coming to terms for which white audiences need irony and stereotype to feel vindicated. It makes sense then that Benny is the character with depth, history and personality while Jennings is a two dimensional milquetoast (despite Benny’s pointed questioning: “Do you drink your own bath water?” “Sometimes.”) It is after all his neighborhood, his friends and ‘his’ kids who are being subjected to the terrorism of drugs and political violence perpetrated by a racist white conspiracy that goes right to the top levels of government.

Thanks to Ronald Reagan’s little war, drugs and junkies were as necessary to 80’s cinema realism as punk-rockers, but it was his predecessor Richard Nixon who initiated the War on Drugs, clarifying that it was really about black folks, you just couldn’t say it was. At the same time, the CIA really was deliberately introducing narcotics into black neighborhoods to undermine the Black Power movement. (Not surprisingly this was also the same time that the NRA was for gun control; to prevent armed Blacks.) To be sure, there’s a black guy in there peddling drugs in The Wild Pair. It’s easier to dismiss all of this conspiracy stuff if they do it too, but I choose to see his name “Ivory” as somewhat more than accidental. As my friends over at Comeuppance Reviews said in their write-up of The Wild Pair, “it’s all there,” to which I would add; IF you choose to see it. It may appear too convenient to find all this baggage in a forgotten crime dramedy, but after realizing that The Wild Pair has already subverted the staid norms of its genre, its allusions to history appear much more deliberate. The Wild Pair may not be the most original buddy-cop flick out there, but for rocking the narrative boat, it does have the most to say.

Flying Down to Rio

Flying Down to Rio

United States - 1933

Director - Thornton Freeland

Turner Home Entertainment, 1990, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 29 minutes

Lunch Wagon

Lunch Wagon

United States - 1981

Director - Ernest Pintoff

Media Home Entertainment, 1982, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 28 minutes
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In the metropolitan areas of the United States, the food truck has now become ubiquitous. The taco truck was probably the first contemporary incarnation, but you can find just about anything these days. A few blocks from my apartment in Seattle, in the parking lot of a gas station/convenience store you can get fresh sushi, while a little further down the same street, Haitian Creole is available. Although they’ve been around practically forever, this level of cultural variety is a relatively recent development. I cannot of course speak for anywhere else, but virtually all of these rolling establishments seem to have appeared in the last 10 years, most in the last five. Talk all the nonsensical ignorant trash you want about immigration, but even bigots love a curry.

Presumably intended to be just as exotic as the smorgasbord of international options now available from food trucks, Lunch Wagon unfortunately comes from an era when, as its name implies, the typical vehicular dining establishment offered a much more banal culinary experience, like hot dogs and burgers. It is also, again one can only assume, supposed to be more titillating than the average food truck of today* since its owners are two scantily clad and buxom young women (prominently advertised on the box as former playmates Pamela Bryant and Roseanne Katon.) Unfortunately both the exotic and titillating spins on the food truck premise, which might under other circumstances actually work really well together, are afterthoughts. The truck itself, painted pink and named the “Love Bites,” plays only a peripheral role in the film, serving predominantly as a vehicle (literal and figurative) for a septic stew of lounge-act comedy.

A thrilling surprise cameo by Evel Kneivel pinball!

Move it Proles!

After inheriting their lunch wagon from Dick van Patten, our two leads recruit a sexy cook and begin selling food to construction workers. By parking over a particular manhole cover however, they run afoul of a swanky white-collar criminal type who is using said manhole to gain access to a bank. With the help of freshly landed (color coordinated) boyfriends, the female trio manage to foil not only that dastardly plan but another, less dastardly but no less annoying plan by another set of cloying “comedians.”Snagged on the undercarriage of this heretofore thrilling ordeal and dragged along like week-old road kill is yet another tangentical story, this one a talent show which goes on for days and days and is notable only for an early appearance of Missing Persons whom repeatedly perform their song Mental Hopscotch.

It’s an apt metaphor for a film that jumps all over the place yet somehow still lands on a conclusion. Using a food truck as the crux of your film is clearly not a lucrative source of material. As Wheels on Meals, the only other film with a foundational food-truck demonstrates, some other element is critical (in that case incomparable kung fu.) Instead, Lunch Wagon takes its cue Loose Shoes style, from the trashy and titillating exploitation trailers that are entertaining when compressed into 3 minutes, but stretched to feature-length become a chore.

Yes, it's that good.

*Here in Washington State there are a number of drive-up coffee joints that “offer” young women in lingerie or bikinis making the coffee. I suspect these exist elsewhere in the country as well. However, the interior of food trucks in my experience are not typically attractive, sexually or otherwise. 

The Corsican Brothers

The Corsican Brothers

United States - 1984

Director - Thomas Chong

Lightning Video, 1985, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 31 minutes

I picked this one up just because of the Lightning Video box.

Green JellO - Cereal Killer

Green Jello - Cereal Killer

United States - 1992

Zoo Entertainment/BMG, 1992, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour

My Demon Lover

My Demon Lover

United States - 1987

Director - Charlie Loventhal

RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video, 1987, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 30 minutes

It's been some time since I saw My Demon Lover, and I watched it then almost as an afterthought. In retrospect after a little bit of research, that cool side-opening VHS box from RCA is not necessarily the coolest thing about this movie.

The primary sales pitch on the box focuses on Scott Valentine, then a supporting actor on the show Family Ties (Michael J. Fox was the star,) but My Demon Lover is much more about the lead female, Denny played by Michele Little. Women writers do not of necessity write films for a female audience, but they can certainly add a depth of character to women's roles that male writers tend to lack. And, despite the pitch on the box, Leslie Ray a woman who has written mostly for TV sitcoms managed to make My Demon Lover far more about Denny than it is about Kaz.

Dead Heat

Dead Heat

United States - 1988

Director - Mark Goldblatt

New World Video, 1988, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 26 minutes

Among the more bizarre buddy cop films, Dead Heat ranks pretty high up there. Although the plot itself, with a mad-scientist transplanting old people-souls into young people bodies, isn't all that exciting, the execution is pretty damned fun. Joe Piscopo and Treat Williams are at their knuckle chewing best as endlessly annoying and whiny buddy cops respectively. Who would have them any other way? Quite possibly one-upping the medical supply warehouse scene from Return of the Living Dead in which the butterflies and split-dogs are zombified, Dead Heat features a similar scene in a Chinese butcher shop
They don't make 'em like this any more.

The Weird Al Yankovic Video Library

His Greatest Hits

United States - various years

Scotti Bros., 1992, VHS

Run Time - 45 minutes

Rebel High

Rebel High

Canada - 1987

Director - Harry Jakobs

Academy Entertainment, 1988, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 32 minutes

A number of years ago I bought this tape for a few bucks. Anticipating much revelry and low budget entertainment, I was not disappointed until about 30 minutes in when the picture went staticky then black. The audio kept playing just fine, I could hear all the bad jokes and sight gags still pluggin' away. But the nature of most physical humor and prop-comedy, especially when it's bad, is that it needs to be seen. No dice. I still haven't found a VCR that will play this tape. Plus, somebody cut the box to fit a clamshell, that just adds insult to injury.

Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death

Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death

United States - 1988

Director - J. F. Lawton

Paramount Home Video, 1989, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 30 minutes

Is there actually a cut-off point when parody becomes self-parody? That is, is it clear, can it be clear, the point when making fun of something or someone says more about the mocker than the mockee? Or is it a sliding scale subject to variations in context and interpretation? The great questions of the universe may never be answered. We do however have Cannibal Women In the Avocado Jungle of Death, a film written and directed by J.F. Lawton, the man who brought us Pizza Man and The Hunted.

As tempting as it is to prove my intellectual superiority by talking trash on this movie, about how it's funny but it's so bad and I'm sooooo aware of that, it's much easier to be honest. After watching CWAJD I retired to my study and consulted the ultimate arbiter of objective truth, Wikipedia where I discovered that there were a number of clever references in this film that I had completely missed. Oh, it's true, CWAJD is low budget, looking more like a Corman produced Filippino production from the same era, and the dialogue and acting are a bit flat (sorry Bill,) but it's far better than it pretends to be.

The foundation of my argument rests on the fact that despite ample opportunity, this film didn't rely on nudity to compel viewership. It could easily have made fun of feminism (it does) and been chock full of boobs thereby undermining its parody of men. But it didn't and so, even though Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death was way over my head, what I was able to understand was worth it.

Thanks to zhukaiww for the trailer.

Collision Course

 

Collision Course

United States - 1989

Director - Lewis Teague

HBO Video, 1992, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 39 minutes 

It might be sadly noted that Collision Course merely caps one phase of the ongoing buddy-cop cycle. Coming as it did at the end of the 80's, it would seem to mark the end of the era when the formula could legitimately be taken at least somewhat seriously. Within a couple of years, the genre would be actively autocannibalizing in a frenzy of self-referential degradations that boggle even the most callused mind.

But, by brazenly condemning itself to near-instant obscurity with a plot lifted from an all too brief moment of history, Collision Course happily embraces its fate. As the American auto industry was breathing the last of its hegemonic gasps, racial tension in the USA was at its feature-length comedy finest. So fine that it could afford to hire the likes of Pat Morita and Jay Leno for a little stereotype-pantomiming and good-natured bigotry double-act routine. While primarily concerned with this crude, groan-inducing send-up that Leno is so suspiciously good at, the film does actually dip its pen oh so briefly into real-life before skimming its way to the manichaean Oriental conspiracy toilet.

The welcome addition of battle hardened second-stringers Ernie Hudson and Soon-Tek Oh make the going a little more bearable too. Hey, you've got to look for the good stuff in every one of these things as they flicker across the screen. By the time it was released in the US some three years after completion, Collision Course would would be even more esoteric, ushering in that new cycle of buddy cops that would be the lifesblood of my own blessed generation in the years to come.

Rodeo Bloopers

Rodeo Bloopers

United States - 1989

MNTEX Entertainment, 1989, VHS

Run Time - 30 minutes

Like it's close natural cousin, the Monster Truck Blooper, Rodeo Bloopers is an entirely contextual joke. Without a strong background in rodeo phenomenology, I had very little understanding of what exactly made any of the myriad faceplants and near-gorings 'bloopers' per-se. While far from being an expert, my not-negligible exposure to rodeo had always led me to believe that these sort of things were pretty routine. Ride angry three-thousand pound bull, fall off, escape death, repeat. While perhaps thrilling entertainment for the participants, to an outsider it seemed rather run-of-the-mill.

Still, it would be remiss of me to suggest that the Rodeo Blooper is a altogether mythological phenomenon. The act of naming has a certain existential function in all cultures, acting as a way of understanding and relating to the greater physical world outside of the individual. So to call something a 'Blooper," while you and I may not understand, evokes a certain taxonomy of experience and observation for those of the 'in' group. It marks those who belong, and perhaps more importantly, it marks those who simply never will.

Wild Gals of the Naked West

Wild Gals of the Naked West

United States - 1962

Director - Russ Meyer

RM Film International, VHS

Run Time -1 hour, 5 minutes

Perhaps I should make it perfectly clear and come clean just in case it hasn’t become obvious by now. No matter what I may say elsewhere, the fact is that I'm a heterosexual American male, so I can't help but like westerns. Most of the people that I know who are into horror and science-fiction films aren’t really big on the westerns. I’m not really sure why this is, and the reasons probably vary from person to person, but I’m guessing that it’s primarily due to the costumes. Well my friends, I have some good news to report. That problem has been solved (actually, quite some time ago.) Thanks to the unique and wonderful stylings of dedicated and intrepid writer/director/producer Russ Meyer, costumes are not a problem at all in Wild Gals of the Naked West.

Oh, I’d be lying to you if I said this was some kind of western with aliens or zombies, because it isn’t. It’s still a western, and there are still the usual boots, chaps and neckerchiefs. But you probably won’t even notice them, or at worst, you'll notice but won’t care. That’s because you’ll be taken in by the sheer volume of cutting edge filmmaking techniques displayed by this auteur director. First and foremost is the dramatic set design of Wild Gals. It's a sparse minimalistic look reminiscent of the finest groundbreaking German films of the silent era. I hesitate to say avant-garde (that’s French anyway), but it’s very different and experimental, sort of like meta-set-design if you know what I mean

Second is Wild Gals' pacing, a cacophony of repeated obnoxious Benny-Hillesque audio-blasts synched with a staccato of quick repetitive close-ups. It’s a collage effect very much ahead of its time, in fact it presages the fast-paced, short-attention-span editing style of films popular some 50 years later with today’s youth. It seems very nearly designed to induce a Pavlovian response to images rather than contributing in any way to the narrative. Don’t get me wrong, there is a story to Wild Gals, it just, how shall we say…. doesn't require much of an attention span at all.

Finally, and this is probably the most important innovation in the western genre since John Ford met John Wayne; the lack of costumes altogether. True, as I mentioned above there are still costumes, but here comes the kicker; not on everyone (or every body.) It is precisely the dearth of costumes, or more accurately their sparing use that makes Wild Gals such a watchable western. When half of the cast is barely wearing anything at all, the relative level of attention that the costumes get pretty much averages out if you ask me

All told Wild Gals of the Naked West is a deceptively simple film with an incredibly clever nucleus. Budgetarily it may not be a shining star, but what it does have it isn’t afraid to hang out in the open. Actually its willingness to bare itself in all sorts of ways is what makes this film such a special piece of cinema history. So I guess I'm not sorry that I like westerns. Ever since my first mindboggling exposure to Wild Gals so many years ago, I have held for them a very dear place in my bosoms.

House on Bare Mountain

House on Bare Mountain

United States - 1962

Director - Lee Frost (R.L. Frost)

Something Weird, VHS, 1993
Run Time -1 hour and a full 2 extra minutes of hilarious bouncing and bootlegging.

Granny Good runs an exclusive finishing school for girls high in the mountains of somewhere. At Granny Good's School for Good Girls, many of the lessons are conducted in the open air. As one would hope, physical education takes place without material confinements, but even the more intellectual pursuits are taught free of binding restrictions.

With the increasing emphasis on privately subsidized education these days however, Granny is finding it incredibly difficult to meet the school's financial needs. To make up for the shortfall she's begun distilling moonshine in the basement. Or rather, she's impressed a werewolf to do the distilling while she assists in the girl's unrestrained education. Unfortunately one of her new students, while not too concerned about physically covering up, is metaphorically speaking an undercover cop. Right in the middle of one of those wonderful go-go parties that lend such energetic authenticity to low budget films of the 60's, the Feds bust Granny's still and the school is shut down, bringing our titilating tale of woe to a tumultuous termination.

A textbook Nudie-Cutie from the auteur who brought you such classics of good taste as Black Gestapo and The Thing With Two Heads, House on Bare Mountain is pure dumb entertainment from the days when pornography was still kitschy. It's a concentrated nugget of exploitation history, a lowbrow vaudeville/burlesque comedy chock full of gyrating pelvises, big boobs, amazing hairdos and men in rubber masks. But you know, to tell the truth, if I have to participate in base objectification, I'll feel a lot better about it if it's goofy.

The Last Circus

It had been almost a decade since I saw any of the films Spanish writer/director Alex de la Iglesia had made. When I read that Balada Triste de Trompeta, A.K.A. The Last Circus was playing in town I was super excited, but like too many things, it slipped my mind and I missed it. Fortunately thanks to this amazing thing called "home-video" I was able to track it down and give it a watch. Much to my delight and horror, it was fucking amazing. I recommend that you read what I wrote about it at Paracinema, and then watch the damn thing, it's soooo good.

Ray Stevens Comedy Video Classics

Ray Stevens: Comedy Video Classics

United States - 1992

Director - various

Clyde Records, 1992, VHS

Disorderlies

Disorderlies

United States - 1987

Director - Michael Schultz

Warner Home Video, 1988, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 27 minutes