The Undertaker and His Pals (1966)

Once rather aptly released on a double bill with The Corpse Grinders, The Undertaker and His Pals is a weird melange of gore, body horror and slapstick comedy.  It has all the hall marks of a low budget movie of its era: the California locations, hugely variable acting performances, awkward dialogue and perfunctory plotting, often tinny sound and shaky camera work.  But what sets it apart from its contemporaries is its sheer, well, weirdness.  Its main inspiration seems to have been the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis, with their gallons of gore and animal entrails as various members of the cast are carved up.  But it adds to this a whole series of sight gags, slapstick and camp performances.  The result is a beguiling, if mainly misfiring, horror comedy.  The gags range from the surreal - watch the framed photo of the sailor during the pre-credits murder, his facial expression changes to one of shock as the knives go in, before he covers his eyes in horror the next time the camera cuts to the photo - to the lame - the undertaker's skateboard aide pratfall, for instance.  Much of the would be humour comes from left-field, with no real connection to the action on screen: the aforementioned pratfall, for instance, or the customer getting Spike in the face with a custard pie in the diner.

All of the gags are accompanied by a soundtrack which includes the 'wah-wah-wah' sound when someone falls over and, during the climactic chase, provides musical cues for the characters (the imperiled heroine is accompanied by a tinkling silent movie style piano, while every time the camera cuts back to the pursuing undertaker, switches to a villainous organ score).  Some of the dialogue comes over better in comedic terms, with the undertaker taking a grieving father to one side as he and his wife are viewing the body of their daughter, to pay the extortionate bill, telling him that this is the best time to do it, as his outrage will help him forget his grief.  Indeed, probably the outstanding performance of the film comes from Ray Dannis as Morton, the undertaker.  Dannis, a veteran of B-movies and bit parts (he was also in The Corpse Grinders) seizes upon what was surely his biggest role to deliver a performance of high camp.  When he isn't trying to wheedle his way around prospective customers, trying to get them to sign bogus contracts on the promise of cheap funerals, he is remonstrating with his co-conspirators for trying to double cross him by murdering victims without telling him.  At at least one point he even breaks the fourth wall, addressing the audience directly.

The plot of The Undertaker and His Pals is straightforward:  Morton is in cahoots with Spike and Doc, who run a scuzzy diner actually called 'The Greasy Spoon', to murder random women and partially dismember them.  The bits they cut off end up providing the meat dishes at 'The Greasy Spoon', while the rest of the victims end up providing business for Mort's funeral parlour.  Their activities attract the attention of both the police and private eye Harry Glass.  Mort specialises in offering cheap funerals which, after his various 'add ons' end up costing a small fortune.  (When Glass insists Mort stick to the quoted price for his murdered secretary's funeral, he finds that the undertaker has interred her in a crate rather than a coffin).  For their part, Spike and Doc (a med school drop out), specialise in turning their victims into dishes which play on their name: Sally Lamb ends up as 'leg of lamb', while Anne Poultry becomes 'chicken breast'.  Unfortunately, the film-makers clearly ran out of inspiration for these meat-related character names: the next victim is called Friday and ends up as plain 'hamburger', as this was what she was trying to order before she was murdered.  Inevitably, despite not being much of a detective, Glass starts to figure out the scheme (but only after losing two secretaries to it) and the undertaker, Spike and Doc begin to fall out.

Ultimately, the plot is simply there to loosely string together a series of gory murders and several slapstick routines and never really hangs together convincingly.  Its progress relies far too much upon coincidence and inexplicable events (how did Friday's sister Thursday know that Glass was looking for a secretary when she didn't know him either, for instance).  But none of that really matters as that isn't really what The Undertaker and His Pals is about.  Rather than attempting to present a properly coherent story, its real intent seems to be to parody the low budget gore films of the kind made by Herschell Gordon Lewis, which were beginning to gather cult followings.  Consequently, the sort of bloody killings presented in deadly seriousness in these gore movies are here usually conducted with some comedic element: the sailor's photo in the first, the whole business with the fly spray when Friday is dismembered, for instance.  That said, the gore is laid on thick, although, in truth, it isn't very convincing, and the final attack, when a woman in a sauna is beaten with a chain, (which, for no good reason, is hanging from the ceiling of the sauna), seems entirely gratuitous and overly brutal.

So, what are we to make of The Undertaker and His Pals?  Well, its bizarre mixture of gore and broad comedy is ultimately undermined by the usual ineptness of execution which, all too often, is the hallmark of this kind of movie.  Sound effects often don't synch with the action on screen, confusing execution of key scenes, (Harry Glass's fate, in particular, is very poorly handled, leaving the viewer unclear as to what has actually happened), amateurish performances from some of the supporting cast and choppy editing all militate against the film's effectiveness.  Moreover, the relentless victimisation and objectification of women becomes wearying long before the end of the film.  That said, the main cast all give enthusiastic performances (with the exception of 'Rad Fulton' as Harry Glass) and the film is carried forward on a wave of its own delirium.  Some sequences are actually pretty well shot - the opening murder, with the circling motorcyclists, for instance - but tend to go on too long.  The wonderfully named writer/director, TLP Swicegood, seems never to have made another film.  His only other screen credits seem to be as a writer on an episode of The Untouchables and again on another low budget movie, Escape From Hell Island (1963).  One of the film's biggest pluses is that it only runs sixty three minutes, meaning that it never quite outstays its welcome.  It would be tempting to dismiss The Undertaker and His Pals as a piece of campy trash.  But there is just something about it which raises it to a different level of weirdness.  Not a classic, by any stretch of the imagination, but a curiosity in a class of its own.

Over Committed

I frequently regret committing myself to do things, particularly when the commitment is made to myself.  I just hate letting myself down.  Right now, I fear that I've over-committed myself to myself with regard to Halloween.  As my regular reader(s) might recall, I sort of committed myself to writing a series of horror movie related posts here for Halloween.  Well, I've managed a couple, but the final one, scheduled for Halloween itself, well, I haven't even gotten around to watching the bloody film yet.  Scheduling its viewing is becoming a real problem.  Mainly because I've also committed myself to producing a seasonally-themed podcast for the Overnightscape Central, not to mention coming up with a vaguely supernatural-themed story for The Sleaze for publication on 31 October.  Now, the podcast is just about complete, only awaiting uploading, but the story I haven't started yet.  Indeed, I have only the vaguest of ideas for it, so far.  But whatever idea I pursue for it, the story will have to be written tomorrow evening, when I get back from work.  Which leaves me little time to watch that film.

Anyway, to get back to the story idea: so far all I have is the idea of people being trolled by the spirit world.  You know the sort of thing - ouija boards spelling out that one of the participants is fat, or the spirits at seances commenting unfavourably on the fashion sense of the participants.  Pretty thin, but it's all I've got.  I did have the idea of presenting it in the format of a 'problem page', a follow up to the one I did a while ago about the reader having problems with their pyrotechnic abilities, with 'The Rev' giving advice.  But who knows.  I'll have to think some more about it.  Of course, if I had any sense, I'd simply 'forget' that I'd ever made these commitments and quietly drop some of them.  After all, nobody but me would know in the case of the podcast and the story.  But, like I said, I hate letting myself down, so I'm just going to have to plough on and somehow schedule watching that movie in somewhere, (luckily, it is pretty short).  We'll just have to see if I can it all done in time.

A Brexit Free Halloween?

I'm currently trying to ration myself to writing about Brexit here no more than once a week.  Not only is it a seemingly never ending saga with obvious solutions that nobody seems to want to take, but it really isn't good for my blood pressure.  But we've had another reprieve: we won't be leaving the EU on Halloween, (despite what that very expensive government advertising campaign has been telling us).  Strangely, though, this doesn't appear to mean that Boris Johnson has died in a ditch, (you see, BBC and right wing twats, that isn't an incitement to violence against the PM, but rather a re-purposing of his own words for satiric effect) as he was busy today trying to sell parliament another general election.  Get the message fatso, we don't want your fucking elections, let alone your Brexit deal.  But hey, at least now none of us will run the risk of responding to a knock on the door on Thursday and find ourselves confronted by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove trick or treating:  "For God's sake, it's a trick, isn't it?  It's always a fucking trick with you bastards!"

Speaking of Halloween, (now guaranteed Brexit free folks), I wonder if this year we'll see trick or treaters wearing horrific Johnson and Gove masks?  I should imagine that the Jacob Rees-Mogg mask has been adjudged too terrifying for kids.   Of course, if their parents are devout leavers, then they'll be wearing horrifying (to them) masks of Donald Tusk, Michael Barnier and Jean Claude Juncker.  Maybe even the odd Angela Merkel.  Perhaps we'll see pumpkins carved in effigy of Nigel Farage - now there's a horrifying thought.  Perhaps we'll have to wait until Guy Fawkes Night next week to see the political effigies out in force - atop blazing bonfires.  There would undoubtedly be a real satisfaction in setting fire to Boris Johnson, or Rees-Mogg.  Actually, burning an effigy of the latter would be very apt, bearing in mind that, like Fawkes himself, he is a Catholic agitator plotting to destabilise the nation, albeit via a hard Brexit rather than by literally blowing up parliament.  OK, that's my Brexit ranting ration for the week fulfilled.  Back to less contentious stuff tomorrow.

'Crushed By Eight Giant Arms of Hell'

It's been a while since we looked at a men's magazine cover, so here's True Men from April 1959.  The featured story is another of those staples of the men's magazines - animal attack tales.  This one features a favourite attacking animal: the octopus.  The eight tentacled molluscs feature on many covers, always aggressive and always giant sized.  In reality, I don't think that there are any recorded cases of octopuses attacking people. Indeed, they are generally the prey of larger predators, (their lack of a hard shell makes them vulnerable).  Moreover, the majority of octopus species are actually quite small, even the giant octopus (which is fairly rare), isn't as big as those illustrated attacking men on magazine covers.  You have to wonder what those guys did to those octopuses to enrage them so much that they decided to turn homicidal.  Mind you, when they weren't attacking random blokes, they seemed to be forever entwining bikini clad women in their tentacles, usually with a look of unnatural lust in their eyes.  This one is clearly a multi-tasker, as he is both attacking a man and groping a woman simultaneously.

Perhaps he is a friend of one of the 101 men killed by the protagonist of one of the other featured stories when he escaped from somewhere.  Or maybe he was hired by the mob, which was apparently crazy for someone's blood.  Then again, it could all be the result of some bizarre love triangle - perhaps she turned to the octopus because she found that 'Rugged Working Men Make Inadequate Lovers' (that guy is definitely a rugged working man if ever I saw one), and it all turned nasty when the guy found out.  Actually, stories about sexual inadequacy on the part of various male demographics was another staple story type for these magazines.  Clearly they were hoping to drive sales amongst these demographics by playing on their fears of impotence, banking on the idea that they might by the issue in the hope of finding some solution to these 'problems' in the story.  In the case of rugged working men, I'm guessing that the 'reveal' was that they were too shagged out after spending the day lumber jacking or whatever, that they were too tired to satisfy their women, (although, for the latter, it was probably a relief not to have to be pawed and mauled every night in some fumbling sexual advance of the kind that these magazines encouraged).  So, there you are, another little glimpse back at the strange world of fifties masculinity.

Not Cinema?

So, superhero movies 'aren't cinema', in fact, they are 'despicable', when they aren't just 'boring'.  So say Martin Scorcese, Francis Ford Coppola and, er, Ken Loach.  They are all perfectly entitled to their opinions, of course.  Personally, when it comes to superhero films, I can take them or leave them. Of the Marvel films I've seen, I've liked some more than others.  But then, I'm not their target audience any more than middle aged directors of 'serious' films are.  I do know that they are cinema, though, just a different kind of cinema to the films of Scorcese, et al.  But the thing I find most beguiling about this whole non-debate is the way it is being treated as some kind of great revelation that such films are essentially studio 'product', tailored to their potential mass audiences.  Well, obviously.  Mainstream studio films always have been.  They are commercial ventures, for God's sake - studios have never made films primarily for art's sake, or because they want to make a social statement.  No, they want to turn a profit.  That's the way it has always been.  It is easy to romanticise the major studios in their Golden Age of the thirties and forties, but the fact was that they were factories, turning out cinematic product on an industrial scale. A lot of it was crap, but a surprising amount was good, regardless of genre.

Of course, these days the major studios are all corporate subsidiaries, owned by huge multinationals, rather than being corporations in their own right.  What this means in practice is that they are now part of wider entertainment concerns, turning out product destined, not just for the cinema, but for release across multiple platforms, each part of a wider inter-locking sales campaign which will include all manner of spin offs: direct-to-DVD sequels, video games, animated series, toys and games, fashion accessories, etc.  It also means that their products benefit from the greater marketing resources of their corporate overlords - they now have access to the sort of market research which can help them shape their films to their audiences expectations in the way that the old studios could only dream of.  Not that it always works. Cinema remains an industry where it is notoriously difficult to sure fire hits.  Which is why those Marvel superhero movies are so carefully tailored to their audiences - nothing succeeds like success, so they never stray too far from their established, popular, format.  Let's not forget that before the Iron Man films, Marvel had found it extremely difficult to translate its characters to the screen with any degree of success.  So when they finally found the formula, they weren't going to change it.

The fact is, of course, that all of these highly successful studio movies, regardless of their quality, subsidise all those other, worthier, movies which are never likely to find a mass audience.  Or, those which, against all odds, become commercial successes, but would never usually get initial financing - studios with a string of successes under their belts are going to be more willing to take a chance on something more, well, arty.  But it isn't just big studio films which have always been 'product' - it has been even truer of the low-budget, exploitation end of the industry.  Sure, these films might be rough edged and far less slick than their big budget counterparts, but, by necessity, they have to know their audiences.  While they can take a few more risks than studio pictures as they have less at stake in budget terms, they still have to know who they are trying to persuade to part with good money to buy the DVD.  Which is why I found Coppola's remarks on the subject of superhero movies particularly surprising, as he started his movie making career in exploitation, working for Roger Corman.  Corman is a man who boasts that he never lost a dime on any picture he ever made, his secret being that he kept budgets low, knew his target audience and knew how to market films to them.  He turned out 'product', including Coppola's first directorial credit, Dementia 13.  Before Corman ever greenlit a picture, he knew which exploitable elements had to be in it - directors could do anything they liked, so long as those elements were present.  It was an approach that worked.  Something that Coppola should be grateful of.  But hey, it doesn't really matter what any of us, famous film directors or ordinary cinemagoers, think of those superhero films: as long as they keep entertaining their target audiences they'll keep making money and the studios will keep making them.  When they cease to do these things, the studios will find some other genre to attract the mass audiences, regardless of what we think.

The Maze (1953)

A curious film which always seems to be building toward some big revelation, but which ultimately disappoints.  Part of The Maze's problem is that it never really seems sure what kind of film it wants to be: Gothic romance, straight up horror, old dark house mystery, it has elements of all of these, but never settles on one of them as a main theme.  All of which makes for a listless narrative, which stutters along, turning one way, then another, a little like the titular maze.  The narrative structure comes on like a Gothic novel, opening - after a brief sequence in a creepy Scottish castle - with an onscreen narrator(the heroine's aunt) telling us that the preceding scene was the beginning of  series of events that eventually led to her extraordinary experience in the maze.  The story then flashes back a year, to Cannes, where Kitty, the heroine, her aunt and some friends meet Gerald MacTeam (Richard Carlson).  Kitty and MacTeam get engaged, but the latter abruptly departs for Scotland, breaking the engagement, after receiving news from Craven Castle (the creepy old pile seen in the prologue) that his uncle has died and that he has inherited the family title and estates.  Kitty and her aunt eventually decide to travel to Scotland and arrive at the castle unannounced.

At which point, the moves into old dark house territory, as they find Carlson prematurely aged and acting extremely brusquely, doing his best to get them to depart the castle.  The latter comes complete with a pair of shifty servants, cold and gloomy corridors, no electricity, telephone or other modern conveniences and a garden maze that the guests are forbidden from entering.  In fact, they find themselves forbidden from going anywhere in the castle, especially the tower room, where someone, or something sleeps on a bed of straw.  Oh, and they are locked into their rooms overnight.  Now, this part of the film is quite atmospheric and suspenseful, with all of the usual creepings around torch-lit musty corridors, secret passages and strange midnight excursions to the maze by Carlson, the servants and, something, which they keep hidden behind a sheet.  These trips culminate in strange splashing sounds from the pond in the middle of the maze and weird wet footprints leading back up the stairs to the tower room.  It all culminates with the aunt getting a fright when she glimpses the something in the tower room.

Unfortunately, the expectations built up by this middle section can't be fulfilled.  The tension is somewhat dissipated as Kitty manages to get word to her friends and persuades them to join her at the castle.  One of them is a doctor, who proceeds to try and diagnose Carlson as suffering from some kind of psychological malady.  The castle feels less threatening with the addition of so many characters, all apparently intent upon spreading cheer and bonhomie.  Of course, it all ends badly, with Kitty and her aunt penetrating the maze in dead of night and discovering the big secret:  MacTeam's two hundred year old anecesetor is still alive and is a giant frog.  That's right, a frog.  He was apparently born in frog form after his development in the womb halted at the 'amphibian' stage, (this element of the plot was inspired by a totally discredited idea that the human foetus goes through every stage of evolution during its development in the womb).  Seeing that others were repulsed by his appearance, he chose to live as a recluse, with a string of descendants and servants sworn to keep the secret and look after him.  His one indulgence, apparently, is to bathe in the maze's pond by night.  So all the secrecy was intended to protect him from prying eyes, rather than to protect anyone else from a monster.  This non-monster is so startled by the sudden appearance of these interlopers in his maze that he rushes back into the castle, up the stairs to the refuge of his room, only to fall to his death from the window.

All utterly ludicrous and something of a damp squib after all tat build up and hints of a Lovecraftian 'something nasty in the attic'.  While it was undoubtedly a bold move to make a horror movie (of sorts) where the monster turns out not to be the real threat, (and, ultimately, becomes the victim), it just doesn't really work.  The manner of his death makes you end up feeling, at he very least, resentful of the main characters and their happy ending, which has come at the cost of the frog man's life.  Indeed, it is a real downer to have the film climax with a character frightened out of his wits as he finds his home, his sanctuary, in fact, invaded by a bunch of noisy and nosey socialites.  But there are compensations along the way: the film is very well shot, with lots of atmosphere, by William Cameron Menzies.  At some points he manages to create an agreeably dream-like atmosphere of unreality, (although not to the extent he managed in the incredible Invaders From Mars, which has helped by that film being related from a child's perspective).  Bearing in mind that the film was originally presented in 3-D, Menzies engages in mercifully few shots of objects, characters or fingers being thrust directly at the audience. In the final analysis, one can't help but suspect that Carlson's admonitions in the trailer that audiences shouldn't spoil the film by giving away the 'surprise' ending, were down to the fact that Allied Artists knew that the film's final revelations were such a disappointment that they had to keep it under wraps for as long as possible.  They were quite right - despite a promising start, The Maze just peters out, leaving the viewer feeling somewhat cheated.

Deal or No Deal?

So it seems that Nigel Farage has been converted to the cause of Remain.  How else are we to take his recent utterances on the subject of Boris Johnson's 'Surrender Deal', sorry, new EU withdrawal deal?  You'd think that, as it represents a far 'harder' form of Brexit than Theresa May's deal, which has already been rejected by parliament three times, and seems designed to pander to the far right, Farage would be all in favour of this deal.  But apparently not.  Farage, it seems, would rather have another extension to the leave date from the EU than see this deal become law.  OK, now I know there is a certain warped logic to these pronouncements in that Farage would rather 'No Deal' than any deal, as this would represent a 'clean break' from the EU.  Nevertheless, in view of the fact that the 'Benn Act' effectively rules out a no deal scenario, you'd think that Farage would support the next best thing:  Boris' deal. 

But it seems that Farage has now embraced the 'Benn Act' - how else are we to construe his criticism of Jean Claude Juncker's declaration that there would be no further postponement' now that a new deal was on the table?  According to Farage, it is outrageous that the EU should be, in effect, pre-empting the 'Benn Act' and impinging on the sovereignty of the UK parliament, which still has the right to reject the deal.  All of which certainly makes him sound like one of us remainers.  So, what could explain this apparent 'Road to Damascus' conversion?  Kicked in the head by a horse, perhaps?  Or is it simpler than that?  The reality is that Farage has a vested interest in keeping the Brexit band wagon rolling.  After all, if the UK does leave the EU, then the entire raison d'etre for both him and his Brexit Party will vanish, (not to mention the fact that he'll lose access to the lucrative EU gravy train as he'll cease to be an MEP).  That's the problem with single issue political movements: once their aim has been achieved, their purpose has been seved and the electorate turn their attentions elsewhere.  Farage has already seen it happen with his previous party UKIP, which was centred solely upon winning that referendum.  Once the 'Yes' vote had prevailed, UKIP's support collapsed.  It still exists, but is now a fringe party flailing around trying to establish a new identity.  The Brexit Party now faces a similar problem: its focus has been upon the actual mechanics of the UK leaving the EU and ensuring that the referendum vote is 'honoured'.  Once that happens, it will all be over for them and, if he is to remain in politics, Farage will have to find himself a new vehicle for his ambitions.  Until he figure out what that will be, expect to see him continue to spin out the Brexit process for as long as possible.

The Woman Eater (1958)

'Tree eats woman' pretty much sums up this extremely low budget addition to the ranks of cinematic carnivorous vegetables.  A product of Britain's own 'Poverty Row', (it was distributed by Eros Films, a tinpot outfit responsible for putting out some of the UK's trashiest - and often most enjoyable - schlock during the fifties and sixties), The Woman Eater has an extremely poor reputation.  There's no doubt that it has pretty poor production values and utterly ludicrous dialogue.  Not to mention an incredibly rickety title monster.  The plot is simple: mad scientist George Coulouris discovers an Amazonian tribe who worship a carnivorous tree which, when fed live women, secretes a serum which can bring the dead back to life.  After a bout of jungle fever, he brings the tree and a witch doctor back to London and proceeds to feed unsuspecting young women to it.  Their disappearances naturally attract the attention of the police and it all ends in the fiery conflagration shown at the end of the trailer.

Along the way, Coulouris murders his lover/housekeeper then brings her back to life with the serum, discovering in the process that the tree serum alone can only revive the dead as mindless zombies.  He accuses the witch doctor of double crossing him, which elicits the response: 'Our secret is not for you.  The brain is just for us'.  It is this sort of insane dialogue, along with Coulouris' over the top performance and the utterly ludicrous tree, which are the film's redeeming features.  Otherwise, it is of very poor quality.  Still, it only runs seventy minutes.  There is a certain irony to the final scenes of the woman eating tree burning -  the original prop was supposedly destroyed in a fire shortly before shooting commenced, leaving the props department only a few days to create the awful replacement seen on screen. The Woman Eater does turn up on TV every so often - I originally encountered it on Movies4Men (now Sony Movies Action) and I'm pretty sure that Talking Pictures TV show it every so often.  It' worth seeing, if only as a reminder that we could do low budget trash just as well as Hollywood could.

The Drugs Definitely Do Work

I've said it before and I'll say it again: people really do talk too much - and yet they say nothing at all.  There seems to be this modern notion that talking can solve anything.  (Personally, I blame British Telecom and its bloody 'It's good to talk' advertising campaign back in the nineties).  It doesn't matter what your problem is, let's all talk about it and you'll feel better.  Utter nonsense.  But we seem to be in the middle of one of those media campaigns encouraging people to talk, because talking can solve everything: loneliness, mental health problems, even Brexit, probably.  It's the idea that mental health issues can be alleviated by just talking to those suffering from them, as if mental health sufferers are just waiting for some untrained do gooder to come along and talk to them.  Presumably accompanied by a cup of sweet tea.  You know what people suffering mental health problems really want?  Medication.  That's right, pills.  Because they will help alleviate their problems.  They really will bring them back to some semblance of normality.  And they don't talk all the bloody time.  Sure, not all mental illness can be attributed entirely to chemical imbalances in the brain, (despite what the pharmaceuticals industry would have us believe), and prescription medication alone won't always resolve the problem, but there's no doubt that the drugs do work in easing the problem.  They certainly work a lot better than some well meaning random prick talking to you. 

Based on my own, limited, personal experiences of suffering from clinical depression, when I'm going through a depressive episode, the last thing I want to do is talk to anybody.  Indeed, all I want (and not just when depressed) is to be left alone.  As far as I'm concerned, the sooner the rest of the world fucks off and leaves me be, the sooner I can get on with dealing with my problems.  (And if I do decide to talk to anyone, it will be either a professional or a fellow sufferer rather than some random who doesn't have a clue what I'm going through).  Because experience has taught me that only I can deal with my depression - it is part of me, like it or not, and it is always going to be there, lurking somewhere in my head.  The key is to find a way to keep it marginalised, to develop strategies to constantly distract oneself from the darkness.  But what has set me off on this anti-talking rant?  Well, earlier I found myself on the receiving end of it at work, but not with regard to my mental health.  Oh no.  There now seems to be a notion abroad that you can resolve physical health issues by talking about them.  Jesus,  As I tried to explain, I really don't want to discuss my own health issues with anyone outside of a doctor's surgery.  Mainly because it is utterly pointless.  I mean, we can talk all we like about my high blood pressure, but that won't lower it.  The cocktail of pills I take every day do that.  It's the same with the diabetes: 2000mg of Metformin a day rather than endless talk treats that.  It's like I said, the drugs do work. 

The Tingler (1959)

Along with House on Haunted Hill, The Tingler is probably the best known of William Castle's series of gimmicky black and white horror pictures he made during the late fifties and early sixties.  The two films have much in common, including a star - Vincent Price - and a somewhat rickety publicity gimmick.  While House on Haunted Hill boasted 'Emergo', whereby a tatty fake skeleton was winched over the heads of the audience at an appropriate point in the film, in order to give the impression that it had 'emerged' from the screen, The Tingler had 'Percepto'.  This latter gimmick involved a vibrating device being rigged under some seats in theatres, to give audience members the 'sensation of fear' when the title monster appeared.  But the two films have much more in common than that: both feature plots which hinge around unhappily married couples plotting to kill each other.  In House on Haunted Hill, of course, the entire haunted house shennanigans is staged firstly by Price's wife and her lover as part of a plot to drive another guest mad enough to kill him, then secondly by Price himself, inn order to facilitate the disposal of the wife and her lover.  The Tingler doubles down on this idea, by presenting us with two warring couples: scientist Price and his wife, who tries to use his discovery against him and silent cinema owner Ollie (Philip Coolodge), who tries to use Price's discovery to kill his wife.

Unfortunately, these two intersecting plots ultimately work against the film, resulting in a fractured, episodic narrative and a deathly slow pace.  Worse, all too often, they divert attention away from the film's real asset: its truly lunatic central idea.  The central premise of The Tingler is that fear itself creates a parasitic creature on the human spinal cord - the Tingler.  A creature which, as the fear grows, gets larger and larger.  Screaming releases the tension and destroys the creature.  If the fear isn't relieved, the Tingler will kill its host.  As I said, a truly barking mad concept, but one which makes perfect sense within the film's own internal logic.  The problem is that regular William Castle screen writer Robb White hasn't a clue as to what to do with it.  Ordinarily, one would expect a film with such a premise to focus on scientist Price's attempts to prove his Tingler theory, but rather than do so in a straightforward manner, the movie instead keeps digressing into sub-plots surrounding Price's personal life and the goings on at a cinema showing old silent movies.  Indeed, these digressions start right from the film's outset, where Price's autopsy on a newly executed murderer is interrupted by Ollie, the prisoner's brother-in-law, insistence upon observing it, (apparently his pass to attend the execution also covers the autopsy).  The whole scene is utterly bizarre, with Price conducting the autopsy in what looks like an office, with Ollie lurking in the background in his street clothes.  In the course of the autopsy, Price outlines his Tingler theory to Ollie, as an explanation for why the subject's vertebrae are cracked, which, of course, sows the seeds in Ollie's mind for his own plot to kill his wife.

The weirdness continues as we find that Price has a laboratory (which, again, looks more like an office) where he conducts his research, not to mention a bitchy wife.  The film seems determined to keep throwing the audience off kilter, as Price apparently tries to kill his wife, threatening her with a gun before shooting her.  Except that it is only a blank round and he was just trying to scare her enough for a Tingler to form on her spine.  After she faints after being 'shot', he takes X-rays of her spine (yes, he has an X-ray machine in his home) before the Tingler vanishes, proving its existence.  The film then dissolves into series of episodes as Price goes on an acid trip in order to try and scare himself to further investigate the effects of the Tingler and Ollie tries to scare his wife to death (she's a deaf mute, unable to scream and destroy her Tingler before it kills her).  Actually, these sequences, involving baths full of blood (which is actually coloured red, contrasting shockingly with the rest of the monochrome photography), corpses rising from beds and hairy claw-like hands wielding axes, are probably the most effective and suspenseful in the film.  The plots cross over again, as Ollie takes his dead wife to Price who, after confirming she is dead, takes the opportunity to surgically remove the fully grown Tingler from her spine, (yes, he does surgery in his home).  Inevitably, Price's wife tries to use the Tingler to kill him, before he decides that it is so dangerous that he needs to replace it in Ollie's wife's body, (which is now back at the cinema).  Of course, before that can happen, it gets loose in the cinema and all sorts of mayhem ensues.

While enjoyable bizarre, the film does seem to take an age to reach this climax.  The constant digressions and over-plotting simply don't do full justice to its wonderfully bonkers premise.  Several severe lapses in logic don't help. most crucially, why isn't Price suspicious of Ollie, an man who likes to hang out at autopsies, from the outset?  Various plot strands are just left hanging - the whole back story of Ollie's murderous brother in law is barely touched upon and, bearing in mind that her husband has just been to see her brother executed, his wife never mentions the issue.  Castle directs the whole thing with his customary slickness, deftly conjuring up a slightly dream like feel as the bizarre events of the film unfold against a series of bland sets representing a typically underpopulated small town.  As with Castle's other films of the period, everything seems slightly disconnected and isolated from a wider 'real' world.  Von Dexter's sparse score, full of creepy piano notes, just adds to this off-kilter feeling.  Perhaps the only thing undermining the fim's enjoyment is the rubbery and unconvincing lobster-like Tingler.  As soon as it seen in this form, the air of menace conjured up by the idea of it is dissipated.  Over the years, The Tingler has gained something of a cult reputation, but this has mainly been on the basis of its crazy central concept.  Unfortunately, in execution, it is rather stodgy, slowed down by too much plot and several long talky scenes. It's still worth watching, though, as a prime example of William Castle in his pomp.

Rough Times

I spent a large part of the weekend feeling rough as a dog's arse.  That cold I thought was finally on the wane came back with a vengeance, leaving me with blocked sinuses, not to mention coughing and spluttering.  On top of that, my stomach decided to go through one of its Metformin-related periods of extreme upset.  Add to that the generally lousy weather and I had a weekend to forget.  I got nothing done other than lying in bed feeling ill.  Consequently, I'm running behind in my film-watching for these proposed Halloween horror movie reviews.  That said, for some unknown reason, I made a detour from my scheduled viewing to watch an old William Castle film which, doubtless, will also end up reviewed here, (along with a couple of other pieces of schlock I haven't yet got around to writing up).  I also made no progress whatsoever with a couple of podcasts I'm trying to record back-to-back.  You'd think, that with all that inactivity, I'd be feeling netter by today.  But I don't, I still feel lousy.

My mood hasn't been improved by learning earlier today that an old friend of mine had died on Friday.  A truly shitty way to start the week.  From an entirely selfish point of view, it provides me with yet another reminder of my own mortality.  Along with the continued fragility of my own health, (my most recent blood tests didn't yield the results I wanted, so it is back to the drawing board with my health regime), this bad news just makes me feel even more insecure.  I know, I know, this is all pretty depressing but, to be honest I'm feeling depressed: my ongoing health issues, the lousy job, my friend's death, it is all getting me down.  But hey, what other choice do any of us have but to dust ourselves off, get back up and carry on?  All I can do is press ahead with my various projects and try to find an alternative means of making money.  (It has now turned into a race as to which will happen first: me finding a new job or me finally getting fed up and just jacking this one in regardless).  But like I say, for now, it is onwards and upwards.  Back to normal tomorrow, hopefully.

Massage Parlor Murders (1972)

Here's a random movie trailer that positively screams 'sleaze!'  Indeed, the trailer goes all out to emphasise just how scuzzy and sleazy the picture itself is.  In essence one of those serial killer plots, (in the days before we called them 'serial killers'), where a mysterious killer targets a particular demographic as their victims.  In this case, female massage parlour workers.  He also murders them according to a 'theme'. in this case the seven deadly sins, with the name of each massage parlour a murder takes place representing, in some way, one of the aforementioned sins.  (The parlours have names like 'The Lust Lounge', 'Everybody's Envy' and so on).  Various sleaze balls, perverts and even a priest come under suspicion as the requisite pair of cops beat and intimidate their way through the investigation.  An investigation which, of course, also involves going undercover as a customer at a massage parlour.

One has to say, though, that surely massage parlour murders shouldn't be too difficult to crack.  After all, even in the largest of cities there have to be a fairly limited number of such establishments and the perpetrator is likely to be a customer, thereby narrowing the range of suspects quite considerably.  But what do I know?  Well, I do know that Jack the Ripper wasn't menacing London at the turn of any century: he was stalking the streets of Whitechapel in the 1880s, some twenty years before the century turned.  I'm a great believer in historical accuracy in schlock movie trailers.  Combining sex, violence and nudity, all set in the sleaziest milieu imaginable, Massage Parlor Murders is, perhaps, the perfect exploitation film and has, over the years, been variously marketed as psychological thriller, horror and sexploitation.   The only really recognisable actors in the cast are George Dzundza and Brother Theodore, both in supporting roles, although female lead Sandra Peabody has cult status thanks to her appearances in Last House on the Left and a number of other low budget seventies horror films.

False Equivalence

'Equivalence' is a decidedly dubious concept when applied to things like news reporting.  The BBC, for instance, insists on 'equivalence' in the way it reports contentious issues, in order to maintain its hallowed reputation for 'balanced' news reporting.  Their interpretation of 'equivalence' is having someone on to represent the 'other' view or put forward the 'other' argument.  Which is all well and good when it comes to political issues, where, more often than not, it does all come down to a matter of opinion.  It falters, however, when you come down to things which are a matter of fact.  Like climate change, which, the overwhelming majority of the scientific community will tell you, is accepted as scientific fact.  Only cranks argue with it.  So the BBC wheels on the cranks and gives them airtime in the name of 'equivalence'.  Thereby giving the impression that their uninformed views have some sort of 'equivalence' to actual fact-based science.  The reality is that there is no meaningful debate within the scientific community on the issue of climate change, so there is no need for this false 'equivalence' when reporting it.  I'm only surprised that every time the BBC reports on a space launch or the International Space Station they don't have a flat-earther on in order to give the 'other' view so as to maintain 'balance'.

Anyway, to get to the point, I was reminded of this 'false equivalence' the other day when I read an article on the BBC News website. It presented the results of an investigation into the prevalence of violent language and even death threats toward 'Remain' politicians on private Facebook pro-leave groups.  Now, it should come as no surprise, bearing in mind the tone set by Boris Johnson and hi cronies in the Commons, that there is lots of talk online about hanging anyone pro EU, especially MPs.  But the article's author then decided (or was told by the editorial team) that some 'equivalence' was required, lest the impression be given that same 'leavers' are fanatical thugs with murder in mind.  So, it went on to claim that it had also uncovered similar violent talk in pro-Remain private groups.  Except that what they then published was in no way equivalent to the actual death threats being made in the ;leave' groups.  Instead, it all focused on Johnson's own declaration that he'd 'rather be dead in a ditch' than not leave the EU on 31 October, with the usual sort 'OK, I'll dig the ditch for him' sort of comments.  None of which actually constituted a death threat.  So, come on BBC, stop trying to present both sides of the debate as being 'bad as each other' when your own facts patently don't support such a onclusion.  This isn't balance, it is just bad, not mention dishonest, reporting.

Watching/Not Watching

Do you ever find yourself watching something on TV and wondering why you are sitting through it and, more importantly, why you don't just go and do something else?  It happens to me all the time.  Right now, I'm sat on the sofa watching The Lovers! on Talking Pictures TV.  I have no idea why I've sat through it - it isn't a particularly good film and I don't even remember the 1970-71 TV sitcom it is more or less a prequel to, (I only recall seeing an episode of it when the series was repeated on Channel Four in the late nineties).  To be sure, the leads (Richard Beckinsale and Paula Wilcox) are engaging enough and the script is fitfully witty, plus, it provides a fascinating snap shot of early seventies Manchester, but it is nothing special and drags badly.  Yet I sat through it all (it has just ended).  OK, I know that there was nothing else to watch on TV, (another reason I won't pay for satellite or cable TV - if I can't find anything to watch among the seventy plus channels on Freeview, why would I pay for the privilege of having an even wider selection of channels I'm not interested in?), but that really isn't an excuse, as TV isn't the be all and end all of home entertainment.  The only excuse I can come up with is that I did need something mindless as a sort of moving wallpaper while I thought about some new health issues which have come up.

Yet the truth is that, as previously alluded to, I have form for this sort of viewing.  It goes right back to my childhood.  When I was a kid I used to sit through programmes because there was something on afterward that I wanted to watch.  Quite why I didn't just go off and do something else until my programme came on, I don't know.  Perhaps I was afraid that I'd get carried away with whatever else it was I might have done and miss the show I wanted to watch, (these were the days before we had catch up TV).  Or maybe I was afraid that, if I left my post in front of the TV, someone would commandeer it and change channels, (I come from a large family of squabbling siblings).  Whatever the reason, I ended up sitting through many, many episodes of Jack Hargreaves' Out of Town.  To be fair, it probably helped me build up my stamina with regard to boredom - enduring hour after hour of Jack Hargreaves has left me able to endure boredom of the most stultifying levels.  But even when I was older, I would still sit through stuff because, basically, I was too lazy to get up and do something else.  In my early twenties, for instance, I sat through every episode of the Victorian Kitchen Garden on BBC2 because someone else wanted to watch it and I couldn't be arsed to get out of my armchair.  The worst thing is that I don't remember a thing about Victorian kitchen gardens, so I didn't even learn anything from my self-inflicted ordeal. 

'It's Been Revoked'

It's like Lethal Weapon 2 all over again, isn't it?  This business of that US diplomat's wife fleeing the country after her involvement in a fatal car crash, invoking 'diplomatic immunity'.  Every time I see or read anything about it, I just keep having visions of Joss Ackland shouting 'Diplomatic immunity' in a South African accent and waving his passport about.  Of course, there the conundrum of how to deal with these situations where someone uses diplomatic immunity to avoid prosecution for crimes committed on foreign soil was solved by the simple expedient of Danny Glover shooting Ackland in the head, telling him that his immunity had 'just been revoked'.  Somehow, I don't think that we'll be seeing Boris Johnson doing anything similar soon, despite his promises to take up the case 'personally' with the US and despite his penchant for law breaking.  (I've often idly wondered just how Murtagh avoided prosecution for shooting Ackland at the end of Lethal Weapon 2.  OK, I know that his character was a racist bastard who had been abusing his diplomatic immunity to circumvent US law and run some kind of massive criminal operation, not to mention filling Riggs full of lead - although he had miraculously recovered by the beginning of the next film - but he still had immunity from prosecution in the US.  And being shot).

I sometimes wonder if I should be worried that, increasingly, I seem to filter the world through a lifetime of pop culture references.  Particularly films.  But hell, they've been a big part of my life and is it really any different to people who reference their every experience with classical allusions?  (Like Boris Johnson, for instance).  Well, I suppose the main difference is that most people might actually understand references to, say, Lethal Weapon, whereas referencing Aechylus or Cato would probably leave them puzzled.  (Although, not necessarily - classics aren't just for toffs, even a working class oik like me studied some of the classics when I was at school, albeit not in the original Greek and Latin).  All of which brings us to the snobbery which surrounds ideas of culture: popular culture is always seen as being inferior to 'real' or 'high' culture.  Except of course, that much which is now seen as 'high' culture was originally popular culture: Homer didn't create the Iliad and Odyssey for elite audiences, for instance.  It's a question of what survives down the centuries, which isn't necessarily the 'best' or even the most popular.  Of course, today, thanks to the internet and digitalisation, more and more pop culture is being preserved for posterity, meaning that future generations will have a better overview of it, both the good and the bad.

October Thoughts

Not a very inspired week, posting wise, I know.  I'm afraid the tail end of a cold, a painfully pulled muscle in my right arm and all the usual crap from work have rather restricted my inclination and ability to write stuff this week.  Oh, and there was was that shitty Spurs result in the Champions League mid-week, that didn't do anything to improve my mood, either.  But hey, October is upon us, which means that Halloween is coming up and, once again, a lot of other blogs seem to be marking it by posting series' of features about horror movies.  I'm still in two minds as whether to do something similar, or not.  For one thing, it can be very time consuming, having to watch (Or re-watch) the films, then write about them.  For another thing, it is difficult to ensure any degree of originality and avoid talking about the same films that everyone else does - you have to dig deep to find he really obscure 'gems' that nobody else is likely to look at.  Last October I did run a 'Haunted House' themed series of 'Random Movie Trailers', which required a relatively low level of effort on my part, but if I'm going to do anything this year, I'd like it to be a bit more substantive.

Talking of the 'Random Movie Trailer' feature, I did, briefly, look at the trailer for The Corpse Grinders yesterday, which would count as a 'Halloween Horror' themed post, I suppose.  More significantly, it did get me looking at Ted V Mikels films again - I started watching Astro-Zombies earlier today, so that might be a possibility for a horror movie-themed post and is suitably obscure into the bargain.  I'm also part way through watching a very obscure fifties horror film at the moment, so that might be another possibility for a post.  See?  It's all coming together already.  Apart from Halloween, though, what else do I have planned for October, I hear you ask.  Well, I'm edging ever closer to convincing myself to hand in my notice at work while simultaneously slowly edging toward sounding out some possible alternative sources of employment.  There are phone calls to be made and CVs to be submitted, but I'm beginning to feel a bit more optimistic on this front.  Even just walking out of my current job is finally beginning to feel as if it would be an entirely positive move.  We'll see.

The Corpse Grinders (1971)

For once the trailer doesn't lie - there really wasn't anything like The Corpse Grinders.  Probably one of the best known titles cranked out by prolific exploitation director/producer Ted V Mikels (whose output also included such celebrated low budget classics as The Doll Squad and The Astro Zombies),  The Corpse Grinders revels in its poverty row production values and ludicrous plot, resulting in a truly bizarre horror-comedy.  The title pretty much sums up the plot: a failing cat food company can no longer afford to buy the meat for its products, so instead turns to grinding up corpses and canning them.  Inevitably, the cats fed on the stuff start attacking their owners, having acquired a taste for human flesh, so a local vet and his nurse investigate.

The film's cheapness is embodied in the corpse grinding machine itself, which appears simply to be a box with various bits attached to it - corpses go in one end and sausage meat comes out the other.  The film has fascinating credits: it was co-written by Arch Hall Sr, another notorious exploitation film maker, (whose son, Arch Hall Jr often starred in his creations) and actor Bryan Cranston's father, Joe Cranston.  The lead actor, Sean Kenney, is, of course, famous for having played the older, wheelchair bound, Captain Pike in the two part Star Trek episode 'The Menagerie'.   Originally released on a triple bill with The Undertaker and His Pals and The Embalmer, The Corpse Grinders unabashedly sets out to provide cheap thrills and a few laughs and generally succeeds in its ambitions.  Ted V Mikels continued knocking out this type of film (including two sequels to The Corpse Grinders) right up until his death, at the age of eighty seven, in 2016.  We should lament his passing - he was one of the last of a breed of low budget film makers who somehow managed to keep making wild and wonderful exploitation movies with next to no resources whatsoever.  Compared to most of today's joyless big budget studio product, tey are a breath of fresh air.

Playing Your Cards Right

Personally I blame those cigarette cards they used to issue, specifically the 'Great British Sex Offenders' series, for all these groping and sexual harassment allegations now coming to light.  I mean, you can bet your life that Boris Johnson and all those other Old Etonians who currently stand accused of touching up women collected the whole set when they were teenagers.  After all, as I recall, card series like that were carried by the posh cigarette brands like Pall Mall.  The working classes had to be satisfied with famous second division footballers in their packets of Woodbines or John Player's 'Famous British Cattle Breeds' series.  So yeah, I bet that Boris Johnson even had them mounted in the album that you could send off for.  I bet he and his chums spent hours in the dorm after lights out, slavering by torch light over the information as how Britain's top sex pests had harassed women.  They had probably spent months swapping the cards between themselves in order to get complete sets.  Is it any wonder they all grew up to be (allegedly) misogynistic bastards who treat women as sex objects?

But it was always the same with those trading cards, even the ones they gave away with packets of tea.  Like a lot of working class kids I collected the PG Tips series like 'The Space Race', 'Prehistoric Animals' and 'History of Flight', (I had them all mounted in the special albums, too), but if you were posh and drank Twinings, you got to collect 'Classic Erotic Art' and 'Famous Artistic Nudes'.  It's all about class.  I remember when petrol stations gave away similar cards, with the number you got depending on how many gallons you bought at a time.  Now, my father could only afford to put two star in the car, (petrol at the pumps was graded in those days, the number of stars - between one and four - indicating the octane level), which meant that I eventually ended up with the full set of 3-D endangered species cards (and album).  I was very happy with the set (I still have the album, in fact).  But I subsequently found out that those filling up with four star, (who typically drove Rolls Royces, Mercedes, Jaguars, Range Rovers and the like), got to collect 3-D cards depicting 'Great Nudes of the Renaissance'.  You see, even when you were filling up, there was no bloody justice.