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.
This is an old guilty pleasure from my teenage years. Almost two decades later, as I talk a big game sometimes about feminism and the struggle against patriarchy, yet I am still subject to the same socially programmed male desires as always. That said, Jennifer 8 is a decent STV Noir. In retrospect, any teenaged excitement at Uma Thurman's nudity is now tempered by an awareness of the ugly context.
It isn't a pleasant movie, but what well made Noir is?
Until this last week, I probably hadn't seen a Godzilla movie in 10 or 12 years. I was at my favorite bar and the bartender Danny was playing old VHS tapes on the TV, one of which was this kaiju classic. It may be old news to a number of you, but even without the dialogue I was totally thrilled with this movie and had a hard time focusing on the conversation I was supposed to be having. Consider me a born again Godzilla fan.
These two beautiful posters come from Space Monster.
This poster for the double bill comes courtesy of Emovieposter.
These two come courtesy of Wrong Side of the Art. I would be willing to eat a small horse for a copy of that long format one. Damn that's awesome.
I recently watched The Forbidden Zone on a recommendation from Shelby Cobras over at Illogical Contraption and I immediately began to feel the stirrings of recognition deep in my gut. I had seen this sort of debauchery before in one of my favorite movies of the last decade; Shrunken Heads. A twisted locale like The Forbidden Zone is the only possible place to similarly conjure heroes out of fascist State policeman/senile graverobbing voodoo priests and their reanimated shrunken heads.
Tommy, Bill and the new neighborhood arrival Freddie are not quite old enough to be totally concerned with chasing girls. Instead they remain focused on candy and comic books. However, their tiny sugar and newsprint utopia is repeatedly harassed by an older generation in the persons of Eddie and The Vipers, a cheap not-quite-adult street-gang striving to assert its status as something no longer juvenile. Having suffered enough of their abuse, our nerdy heroes decide to document the Viper’s petty criminal activities and submit the evidence to the police. But the Vipers have their own niche in the generational pecking order and at the behest of their transgender crime boss Big Moe (Meg Foster) they haul the boys in for a discussion on “how the real world works,” which as we all know really means “how I, the adult, say the world works” and boils down to a brief delineation of the inevitable, dream crushing pragmatism of adulthood. To quote one of the babysitters of my own horrific childhood, “There are no what-ifs!” A truism she repeatedly drilled into our optimistic eight–year-old brains whenever we waxed fantastic.
But in a far more cuddly and understanding world Tommy, Bill and Freddy escape captivity and steal Big Moe’s daily numbers-slips. To get them back she orders the disillusioned middle generation to gun the boys down in the street. Understandably eager to prove their maturity and be treated as adults, the Vipers comply. But what could have become a typical soul crushing “learning experience” actually takes a sudden turn at the intersection of WTF? at the hands of Aristide Sumatra (veteran blaxploitation actor and cuddly old guy Julius Harris), ex member of the Tonton Macoute turned corner newsstand operator and source of Tommy, Bill and Freddy’s comic books and candy. Sumatra’s resounding answer to all the petty struggles of youth is to collapse the whole misguided intergenerational dialogue into a surreal comedy. He is the grandpa whose dementia clouded foul mouthed nonsense makes everybody laugh uncomfortably. A perfect excuse to get into trouble with the grandkids.
To revenge the innocence of youth upon the responsibilities that crushed it, he attends the tripartite funeral of our heroes, saws off their heads then "boils and lovingly dries them." But it’s only starting to get good, for he also reanimates them and trains each of them to use a special power with which to punish malefactors. Furthermore, their deceased victims revive as pants-shitting zombies compelled to perform community service. From start to finish it is a send-up of a whole mosaic of social taboos; death, race, underage sexuality and poop jokes, adult themes within a framework of childhood fantasy, the merging of Sumatra’s disregard for convention and the boys desire to keep from falling into it.
Tommy gets some post-shrinkage lovin' from his new ladyfriend.
“Aristide Sumatra” also happens to be an alter-ego/nom de guerre of director Elfman, one of the founding members of The Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo and all around madman. The fact that he plays such a crucial role here both off-screen and hypothetically on-screen as well suggests that it is something of a pet project. The dissonant logic and mild discomfort of Shrunken Heads, while polished to appeal to a larger audience, clearly comes from the same distorted imaginations that created The Forbidden Zone. It is a kid’s film steeped in a rich dose of adult rebellion just barely on the safe side of excess; drunken Saturday morning cartoons in epic proportions.
“Mr. Sumatra, there’s been a terrible stench, coming from your apartment.”
“As you can see, this cat has not been well at all, that is the source of that terrible stench. But please, be patient, the doctor of cats has predicted that he will soon be bursting with health.”
Preceded by previews for Beach Babes From Beyond, Bloodlust: Subspecies 3 and a Shannon Tweed film called Cold Sweat which looks like a piece of shit simply because Charles Bronson was in a different movie called Cold Sweat, which I know for a fact did suck, but it still had Charles Bronson so it’s inherently better than anything Shannon Tweed ever squoze out. Enough, on with the film.
Kyle, a young naïve Nebraskan hottie trying to escape the stuffy traditionalism of her old-timey daddy’s rural home crashes headlong into her first big city in a montage of hyperbolically “real” modern Hollywood witnessed from the window of her Greyhound. With little time for her quaint ideas to catch up, the crazy metropolis takes hold and sends her spinning into a wasteland of unfettered vice.
The 90’s were a time of redefining social roles and coming to terms with razzle-dazzle technological advances like three color computer screens that were just beginning to allow a certain section of society to feel special. Detective Teffler is just such a man; flashy and suave with his grasp of heady cutting edge techniques like ordering his fat lackey to make the computer do stuff. Thusly Teffler will not shut the fuck up, and when he’s not feeling sorry for himself does most of his detective “work” in the office ordering that fat old walrus to operate the clacking and whirring fax-machines and keyboards. The fact is however, that no matter how demanding and jerky he can be Teff is all alone in the world, driven to work ever harder by a deafening loneliness and drifting through life with the careless abandon of a man in search of a purpose.
When a street goon is killed, Teffler uses the first half of the movie to show off just how much his unfocussed emptiness has overcompensated with wanton aggression. Tracking down the main suspect - a common hooker who moonlights as a singer in a terrible grunge band - he finds Kyle, the hooker’s little sister who’s been sleeping in the hall of a sketchy apartment building for an undisclosed period of time.
Since they can’t find her sister, Teffler makes Kyle stay at his house. Her brief street education has already corrupted her and she spends the second half of the film repeatedly slinking around in small or no clothing insulting a sweating and understandably bug-eyed Teffler, and trying to browbeat him into her pants. Having apparently never heard the adage that in order to eat the cake you first have to commit to having it, he refuses each time and she consequently removes the object of his desire from his grasp, running away like an aberrant child to aimlessly wander the streets in search of a job, a friend, hell, any acceptance at all to the strains of horrible shitty wailing “desperation” saxophone solos.
Ruthlessly crushed between two patriararchetypes, Teffler cracks. By “making her a woman”, Teffler has accepted Kyle, and she can feel wanted as long as she keeps it lookin’ good and offering her body as collateral, presumably whenever he gets restless. Teffler effectively has Kyle under lockdown now that he’s made the commitment that is the only way to keep the insatiable little lass from slopping it on the streets. Now they can spend the rest of their lives hating each other for a stifling relationship that they both implicitly reinforce. But wait! In the 90’s it’s OK to get a divorce and start all over again with someone else. At least the concept of love hasn’t changed in these modern times, Kyle’s daddy would sure be proud.
See, she looks happy with the arrangement already.
