Terror In the Aisles

Terror In the Aisles

United States - 1984

Director - Andrew J. Kuehn

MCA Home Video, 1985, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 24 minutes

Hosted by Donald Pleasence and  Nancy Allen.

Operation 'Nam

 
Operation ‘Nam

Italy – 1986

Director – Fabrizio De Angelis

IDF Films, 1986, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 35 minutes

The ‘Nam was such a major shock to the United Statesian social psyche that it catalyzed over a decade of filmic reinterpretations and finger pointing. Here at Lost Video Archive we’ve talked about the well-worn cast of comfortingly predictable stereotypes to which United Statesian ‘Nam movies quickly devolved. The unhinged ‘Nam Vets and sensitive killers are fun and all, but never so entertaining as when percolated through the Italian exploitation cinema machine. Fabrizio De Angelis' Operation ‘Nam is the most intense concentrated dose of predictable ‘Nam that I have had the pleasure of experiencing.

Ethan Wayne kicks grandpa ass.

Dispensing with all pretense, Operation ‘Nam opens with its four protagonists weathering a barrage of ‘Nam Vet stereotypes that doesn’t stop until the clip is empty. Within seven minutes one man’s wife declares that “you ‘Nam vets aint worth shit!” A potential employer says “Three years in ‘Nam don’t count for shit” on his resume. A pawnbroker assessing military medals offers, “Yeah, looks like you fought the whole Vietnam War by yourself pal. How much did you say you want for these?” At her wedding a third man’s daughter complains that her dad and his war buddies embarrass her and the wife throws them out. Deciding to commiserate over a few cold ones they head to a nearby bar where they have a run in with some WWII and Korean War vets who call them druggie cowards from a pussy war.

A few brief minutes to catch your breath and then, government conspiracy tales kick in full blast. Channeling all the Chuck Norris they can muster (Missing in Action came out just two years earlier) our squad of protagonists, (their fourth ‘rescued’ from a mental hospital) confront the charge that Washington knows about but doesn’t care about the P.O.W.’s still in ‘Nam. But why hold the Fed accountable when you can still blame the Vietnamese! So our protagonists head back to Southeast Asia to re-fight the war in under an hour. Along the way they pick up weapons from Donald Pleasence, a holdover French priest with a stash of firearms available for packs of embittered ‘Nam vets. The next forty-five minutes of explosions (including a toy helicopter!), gunfire and yelling go precisely according to cinematic formula. The accompanying chase results in the deaths of all the rescued P.O.W.’s, the whole point of the operation actually being the philosophical redemption of the soiled honor and dignity of veterans.

'Nam Vet vs. The World

Operation ‘Nam would be exactly like any other crude Vietnam conspiracy movie except that it’s exactly like all other ‘Nam conspiracy movies in one fucking movie. Stacked with a stable of action-exploitation movie veterans that includes Gordon Mitchell, Manfred Lehmann, John Steiner and John Wayne’s son Ethan, this movie is the very meaning of “if you see only one shitty reactionary ‘Namsploitation movie in your life” make this the one. Operation ‘Nam covers all the bases without any of the confusing subtlety or moral complications of its contemporaries.

Treasure of the Yankee Zephyr

Treasure of the Yankee Zephyr

Australia – 1981

Director – David Hemmings

Vestron Video, 1984, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour 37 minutes

Treasure of the Yankee Zephyr is essentially a formulaic Western, set on the margins of civilization where intrepid loners are defined by their actions and uphold a stoic moral code in a lawless land. Nothing but the accents have changed. New Zealand is more or less the rocky wild frontier of the (English) Empire afterall, still unpenetrated by metroplitain 'order'. Gibbie (Donald Pleasence in top form) is a rugged frontiersman who has spent his life living on the fringes forging his own path. Barney (Ken Wahl) is a young rebel, born into a society that offered nothing but a conformity he couldn’t stomach and wouldn’t eat anyway. So reticent are they to stray from the lonely path of personal initiative that our protagonists argue with each other for the first half of the film.

On the left is Bruno Lawrence of Quiet Earth

Drunken mountain-man Gibbie discovers a U.S. military planeload of WWII vintage loot half-submerged in a remote New Zealand lake. Trading some of his haul in the nearest village he finds himself the subject of persecution by a semi-official and terribly fake-accented George Peppard. Gibbie reluctantly teams up with bitter youth, ‘Nam-era cultural drop-out Barney, they action-scene their way through the remaining film. With the help of some stalwart Kiwi frontiersmen, they keep Peppard’s forces of modern metropolitan greed from commodifying their myth of rugged self-sufficient outsiderism and win the day with handfuls of loot and hugs all around.

All this and yet, director David Hemmings' Kiwi Western fantasy doesn’t manage to be anything but safe. Gibbie and Barney do dabble a little in rebellion, but it would be far too upsetting if they were ever allowed to truly reject society. That’s why, in order to succeed Zephyr’s protagonists actually have to embrace it. What better way to do that than by recreating that bedrock of social institutions, the family with the introduction of a woman. Gibbie’s estranged daughter Sally (Lesley Ann Warren) starts out scolding and yelling, but reconciles with her father and falls in love with Barney in time to assist in their triumph. And of course it’s important to consider that recreating civilization in the wilderness essentially robs it of any of its frontier character. Onward colonizing heroes flush with Old Crow and treasure!

Paganini Horror

Paganini Horror

Italy - 1989

Director - Luigo Cozzi

There is not much Luigi Cozzi material out there, he only directed some 15 films and several of those are very hard to get in the US, this being one. I wish I could see because it looks totally idiotic but fun. That's not a surprise, it is Cozzi, possibly the only guy who could make a horror film about a syphilitic violinist.
Incidentally, Paganini was one of the "characters" Klaus Kinski developed and was obsessed with, regularly raving like a madman "in character" even off screen if Herzog is to be believed.
The above poster comes courtesy of Kitley's Crypt, and you can watch a trailer for Paganini Horror at Cult Trailers.

Fangoria 80 - Donald Pleasence

I was really wanting to post something from one of my old Gorezone Magazines instead of another Fango article, but in light of my recent post about the super crappy (but fun) Chuck Vincent film Warrior Queen, I couldn't resist this article. In that writeup I waxed poetic about the uncanny ability of Donald Pleasence to play crackpot characters. Since he's been dead for 14 years I didn't feel so bad about calling the guy a madman, but I thought it would be fair to let him express his opinion on the subject. In a form anyway.




It might also be noted that I recently said I wasn't going to post anything related to horror films for the entire month of October. In this case if you read the article, Pleasence emphasizes his strong dislike for horror films, so I feel vindicated.

Warrior Queen

Warrior Queen
United States - 1987
Director – Chuck Vincent
Vestron Video, 1989, VHS
Run Time – 1 hour 19 min.

Long before I fully understood the unstoppable social force of the behemoth Barbarian genre I fell victim to the allure of the Warrior Queen cover art. At the vulnerable age of 14 this was no surprise. The film however, was a shock to the system, something I was not prepared for. It was like being an ignorant heathen and stumbling into a full throttle religious ritual. It took some time for me to come to terms with the subsequent viewing experience, and a full six years before I was willing to experiment with barbarians again. To be perfectly honest, Warrior Queen is more of traditional sword and sandal picture than barbarian per-se since it is set in the Roman Empire, but the latter term is more appropriate to the abruptly crude content.

In retrospect there was no reason not to take this film at face value, but I can now understand why such a solidly built exploitation powerhouse as Sybil Danning is looking profoundly bored in her role here. What should be a mildly arousing display of young nubile nakedity for sale in a Pompeiiean slave market becomes somehow simultaneously uninterestingly natural and painfully scripted. Part of this is the disturbing lack of dialogue, but mostly it’s the mechanichal disinterest of the camera, as if somehow group coitus is an everyday experience and warrants no special presentation.

But that’s why I wanted to see this movie, because it is special, particularly at 14! It’s not everyday that we get to see Tally Chanell (Vincent’s Slammer Girls) stripped naked in a slave market and sold to a brothel with a giant cock-n-balls obelisk in the foyer. Nevertheless it’s all shot with the grainy clinical expose feel of a 70’s porno film or one of those German “What Your Daughters Are Really Doing” movies. It’s not a narrative but a series of vague threats.

It’s not nonsense either; Nonsense would infer the intention of sense that had failed, but this is a collection of asensical tableaus. Naked people being sold; sweaty guys arm wrestling; people fucking in a harem. No wonder I was traumatized. Judging by the way the women nibble at a their partners like week old corn on the cob, these people feel a bit violated and directionless too.

Suddenly, enter Donald Pleasence (Will Penny, THX1138) who navigates this emotional desert with magical grace. He has always been a strangely convincing loony character actor, but in Warrior Queen his neurotic gibbering is an astrolabe of precise genius that guides him through these shoals of garbage. I can see now that Pleasence is simply a man driven into the safety of his own head by the world’s inability to understand him. He was not a character but simply himself.

Sybil, Rick Hill of Deathstalker 1 and 4, and Tally Chanell commiserate outside Vesuvius' jurisdiction.

Warrior Queen is a Pentecostal tent revival in which the principal actors are dismissively set loose to improvise, move, act, maybe even speak in tongues, should the spirit somehow move them. Alas, only Pleasence, possessed by his own strange demons masters this movie. Practically oblivious to all the other uninspired parishioners, he flits about in his own world having a grand old time while reality literally crumbles around him in climactic Vesuvian footage (which Chuck Vincent stole from Italy’s 1959 Steve Reeves vehicle Last days of Pompeii.)