Helter Skelter

Helter Skelter

United States - 1976

Director - Tom Gries

Key Video, 1985, VHS

Run Time -1 hour, 59 minutes
(cut by nearly an hour from its original TV length)

The time honored tradition of Hippy hating was born mere moments after its target. Twinned from the plaid-jacketed, buzz-cut mid-century Company Man, the Hippy was an ideal scapegoat for an isolationist generation. Representing social rebellion, the Hippy also promised an escape from that same stifling society. The Hippy was the repressed desire of a frightened culture. Having spilled itself from the television screens of the nation for nigh on a decade, Vietnam had poisoned the cultural pool and a populace addicted to the visceral lunacy of social breakdown was jonesing for their next fix of televisual carnage. Based on the bestselling book of the same title, this 1976 TV epic was perfect. Written as it was by Vincent Bugliosi, the attorney who prosecuted the case against Manson, Helter Skelter is an exemplary case of spectacular polarizing demonology.

First our competing protagonists, each inseparable from the other for each is a negative image of the other. The Tate/LaBianca victims constitute the America we admire and envy; rich, famous and beautiful socialites, as clean and untouchable as they are unattainable. They are essentially the American Dream promised. Contrast this with Manson and his “Family,” a pack of unwashed, filth encrusted, fatherless maniacs inspired by a group of drug-taking foreign musicians to do the unthinkable: literally and figuratively puncture the barrier between the dream and the nightmare. Manson was the leakage of sin (the fringe, poverty and non-conformity) into the blinding promise of salvation (the center, success, comfort.)

The irony is that, though the film is cloaked in the trappings of secularity and rational legal procedure as the machinations of justice move inexorably onward, the puritanical framework of the whole debacle can’t help but reveal itself with handwringing glee. Consisting of roughly two halves Helter Skelter first uses an appeal to visceral emotion to elicit an endorsement of the preeminence of judiciary law.

The crimes and their lead-up are presented in classic TV true-crime expose fashion complete with time signatures at the bottom of the screen and stern narration provided by that icon of objective justice, the prosecuting attorney. One of the great selling points of the movie was that it was filmed on location at the actual crime scene using actual pieces of evidence as props. Friends of the victims are shown weeping and vomiting at the sight of the dead bodies that litter the yard of the lavishly furnished home. The proximity of the holy artifacts, the imaginary irrational inspires in its audience (both TV and actors) a visceral reaction and a rapturous appeal to the logic of legal justice.

Yet in the second half of the film when it transitions to the trial (again recreated but ‘present tense’)  it is the very idea of justice elicited by the sin/crime that now demands the condemnation of emotion. The crushing normalcy of modern culture is what inspired Charlie and his cohort to ecstatic messianic prophesying. Now that the film has elicited our emotional endorsement of the rational, it uses that rationality to condemn ‘irrational’ emotion.

Ending with the threat of further spectacle, Helter Skelter reminds us that in just two years time (1978) Charlie, and by proxy his transgressive ‘vision’ would be up for parole. Listening to Charlie’s courtroom ranting as delivered by a young Steve Railsback one can’t shake the realization that he’s right, the culture that condemns him is the same one that created him. The world loves to hate a Hippy because s/he is a necessary illusion, a foil for our own normalcy.

Innumerable serial-killer and real-crime films and television programs have come since, but Helter Skelter was exceptional because it kicked down the gate. Hippys were the perfect scapegoat because like Commies, they were easily painted as outsiders, not because of what they were but for what they represented; opting out, rejection of the establishment. In that case Charlie Manson, at least insofar as Television was concerned, was the perfect Hippy. He transformed secular right and wrong into religious good and evil merging marketplace and mythology and making the Puritanical sin and atonement binary commercially palatable to a “secular” mass audience.

I found this flick on that sweet, sweet Key Video box above, but it is available on DVD. This cover is from DVD Covers.

 This VHS sleeve insert and the courtroom image above are on loan from Black Hole Reviews
Top image of George DiCenzo as Vincent Bugliosi and bottom image of shaven Charlie are from The Stuff You Gotta Watch

Murderlust

Murderlust

United States – 1985

Director – Donald M. Jones

Prism Entertainment, 1987, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 30 minutes

Because I enjoy horror films people often assume that I don’t mind violence and gore in real life, but that’s pretty off the mark. I like splatter and dismemberment performed by zombies and even sometimes people as long as they’re fictional, but the real thing is pretty repulsive to me. Even working in a meatcutting union I have a hard time watching the butchers break the sides of cow. That’s why I’ll never get the “popularity” of serial killers. I can sit through a Giallo or slasher movie fine, but I prefer silly monsters, and  Henry: Portrait of A Serial Killer did not appeal to me.

Murderlust seems to have come at a time when things were changing from the fictional to the biographical in the serial killer microgenre. It would have been difficult to get away with too much realism before then, which I suspect is why Henry is considered such a watershed moment. Something happened in 1984-6 that hardened the American psyche, and that sort of callousness wasn’t so shocking anymore.
One of the things that distinguishes the pre-biographical era is its combination of the ridiculous and sinister and Murderlust is no different. In fact it actually has a lot in common with Bill Lustig’s Maniac (1981), and not just in that respect. Intentionally or otherwise, Joe Spinell’s Frank Zito was both a psychotic murderer, natty photography critic and affectionate boyfriend. But he was above all over the top.

In Murderlust Steve Belmont is pretty much the same , but his overarching problems are stupidity and religion. He manages to stain a borrowed necktie before even putting it on but easily forges a masters degree in psychology to land a job as the director of his churches teen crisis center. Steve is fundamentally unsettling but the character is portrayed with a sort of pitiful slovenly loserishness that comes across mildly comedic. The guy is literally beer swilling trailer trash and can’t hold down a job or pay his rent but functions as the church's highly respected Sunday school teacher. This dichotomy captures the irony of horror films for me; Steve does unpleasant things, but otherwise the guy is a bumbling laughable idiot. Even the direction and script treat the subject as a sinister joke, and while I’m not compelled to sympathize, I can’t help but chuckle, and I can appreciate it because of it's hyperbole.

Murderlust is a movie that I bought for the same reason I became obsessed with VHS tapes in the first place: I saw the cover art and had to have it. The artist responsible is Roger Loveless who went on to do young adult mystery book covers and Dungeons and Dragons artwork (right) before turning to religion and “inspirational” artwork as it is called on his website. I can’t find any other movie related art to his credit, and needless to say, the Murderlust cover is not featured on his website. Although disturbing, like the movie itself the cover is rendered too intentionally, in a way that lends it a surreal, posed quality that pretty much makes my point all over again.

Contagion

Contagion

Australia - 1987

Director – Karl Zwicky

Sony Video Software, 1988, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 30 min.

I don’t like narration, particularly when it’s vague and arcane and meant to add suspense to a film that appears about to not otherwise have any. I wasn’t expecting this to be Australian either and that’s set me off balance a little. A well-paced scene of a motorcyclist getting beheaded is nice, but ultimately it’s all implied and happens offscreen. There better be something redeeming, that’s the only way implied gore is tolerable, when there’s another hook.

When our protagonist Mark takes a drive in the woods and witnesses a girl getting kidnapped he tries to rescue her. A graphic and prolonged scene of her attackers fondling her is a bit unsettling and suggests this is actually going to be visceral. The attackers turn out to be mulleted Australian hillbillies who capture and sodomize Mark while wearing furry masks. I’m thinking it was less for having interrupted their city-girl raping than for having the audacity to sport a wee dust-ruffle mullet of his own. Mark later escapes after pickaxeing one of the hillbillies in the skull, traumatized to the point of losing all social grace and common sense. Worse than the yellow sweatshirt over a white button-up he's already wearing that is.


His first decision is to trust the two attractive women and the old guy in a robe who rescue him. These total strangers offer him limitless riches and sex if only he’ll “do the right thing” which he interprets to mean crushing and suffocating his co-workers to death and robbing and strangling his harpy of a wife.

Even though Mark is clearly desperate for financial gain his primary motivator quickly becomes the twins. Okay, my primary motivation became the twins, I did say that this movie needed another hook after all (and yes, all the deaths are still off-screen). Cleo and Helen are it and Mark and I keep hoping for more. It doesn’t matter that despite the notorious reliability of financial market speculators the old guy hasn’t proffered any actual cash. What matters is that the girls have delivered on their part of the bargain, repeatedly, at least in Mark’s head. I suspect that he’s hallucinating the whole thing, they are a bit out of his league and he’s still wearing the same filthy sweatshirt from the hillbilly ordeal.


I bought this movie based almost exclusively on the bad cover art which turned out to be deceptively accurate. It’s the title that doesn’t make much sense. It did make me think of a boob-sprinkled Aussie Cannibal Apocalypse plot, the trauma of tiger cages in ‘Nam and viral cannibalism replaced with hillbilly sodomy and shallow male fantasy. (guilty) The money is thrown in there just to round out the insanity. C’mon, hot Aussie nympho twins isn’t possibly enough to make a guy crazy right, but it will save a movie.

A Japanese clamshell VHS and an Italian DVD. I like the distributors logo on the VHS.

A UK VHS clamshell insert from It's Only A Movie(.co.uk).

Zipperface

Zipperface

United States - 1992

Director – Mansour Pourmand

AIP Distribution, 1992, VHS

Nothing special about this movie, nothing surprising about it, until you find it in your mailbox. I ordered this film on the name alone, partly because of my familiarity with the term “zipperhead”, from the Vietnam War that referred to enemy “personnel”. The video cover on the other hand, was quite a surprise and I was wondering what masochist experiment I had gotten myself into.

After a boring shot for video police shootout, beat cop Lisa Ryder is surprisingly promoted to detective on the coattails of a hardcore law-&-order ticket woman political candidate. Next, three hooker types go into a long-creepy-corridor laced warehouse to meet a kinky John. The two experienced hookers attempt to coerce the terrified newbie into joining their game and the John, clad in spike studded full body leather, wraps his whip around her neck as she flees, breaking it. The two surviving ladies also flee, and one of them ends up at her friend’s house, an older hooker with whom it is insinuated there is a sexual relationship.


Detective Ryder is partnered with a sexist old-dog detective, but instead of proving herself competent in an oppressive environment, flirts drippingly with the creepy denim clad erotic-photographer who is the primary suspect. While correcting her partners sexist vocabulary later, Ryder gets a call from the photographer, Michael who demands that she come over for a shoot that night, then hangs up. She exudes sexual excitement.


Coerced into a bondage session by her sexy guardian, the witness-hooker witnesses the killer hacking off her girlfriends head with a machete before she herself is thrown off the roof to an unimpressive splat.

Ryder shows up at Michael’s house where he plies her with wine and soon cuts her loose of her professional façade, her neckerchief and the top buttons of her shirt. Responding with a huff and another swill of wine, she playfully tosses her hair and bites on a string of pearls and soon is sucking face with him. After a brief murder - investigation/plot interlude, Michael shows up at her house with a bottle of booze and a hardon, and really? Even at this point, I was still surprised at the sheer cautionless unprofessionalism with which officer Ryder flings herself into the creep’s sweaty grope.

After another intimidation copulation session or two there’s got to be some swilly redemptive status quo ending in which everyone is happy in their proper place, and emasculating power grabbing feminists can be held responsible for male sexual frustration and violence. Way to show ‘em.

A German video sleeve from Filmflausen.de