Schlock Weekend
I spent the weekend watching a lot of schlock. I didn't start out with that intention - I had ideas of catching up with some films of artistic worth. But, as it panned out, I ended up watching schlock, courtesy of the free-to-air streaming services I get via my Roku box. It all started innocently enough with a late night viewing of Beach Girls and the Monster on Friday. I only watched it - so I told myself - because it was relatively short and I'd been meaning to catch up with it for some time. It was one of those B-movies which could easily have been made twenty years earlier. Only the presence of a beach full of young beatnik.surfer types dancing wildly place it firmly in 1965. (Once again, the kind of squares who produced these youth-orientated films assumed that all these crazy hepcats were dancing to jazz music). The sight of director/star Jon Hall (one time sarong-wearing star of numerous forties South Seas set movies) dressing up as a fish-monster to murder young beach goers because they are a bad influence on his son, luring him away from following in his father's footsteps as an oceanographer, is something to behold.
I thought that I'd get things back on track on Saturday, with a viewing of the 1985 Robert Ludlum adaptation The Holcroft Covenant. I'd last seen it when it was released to cinemas and had forgotten just how schlocky it was. Actually, I'd forgotten just about everything about it: I recalled only the opening and the climax, as it turned out - everything else about the plot was unfamiliar to me. Usually when I rewatch a film, even after a couple of decades, various scenes and bit of dialogue will come back to me as it progresses, but with The Holcroft Covenant - not a thing. It was, it seems, a completely unmemorable film. Which is surprising, as it is pure schlock. It might have a big budget and an A-list cast, but it leaves no conspiracy thriller cliche unused as it lurches through all too familiar plot twists and perfunctory action scenes. On paper, it should have been a good film: a noted director in John Frankenheimer, script by George Axelrod, based on a best selling novel, international locations and a cast lead by Michael Caine and including the likes of Victoria Tennant, Anthony Andrews and Bernard Hepton. In actuality, the characters are paper thin, the plot largely nonsensical and the dialogue and situations predictable and unengaging. While it might be possible to lay the blame with the source material, the fact is that beyond the basic scenario and some of the character names, the film bears little resemblance to Ludlum's novel. Axelrod, who wrote the final script, based on two earlier drafts by other writers, admitted that he had never read the book, so some of the film's most ludicrous twists - an incestuous relationship between brother and sister characters, for instance - can only be assumed to be down to him.
The pity is that Ludlum's novel had plenty of potential for a film adaptation, with its mix of neo Nazis, World War Two conspiracies, international intrigue and a hapless hero caught between competing shadowy groups. (The Holcroft Covenant comes from Ludlum's middle period, alongside such titles as The Chancellor Manuscript, The Matarese Circle and The Matlock Paper, before his standard formula became repetitive and the plots overly fantastical). What we got instead, was this mess. To be fair, it looks good. It just makes no sense. So, after that, I decided that I needed another shot of pure schlock, so cued up Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, of historical interest because it was directed by a pseudonymous Peter Bogdanovich for Roger Corman. At least, he directed the scenes with the 'Prehistoric Women' (who include Mamie van Doren and sport skin tight trousers and sea shell bras). The rest of the film is edited from the Soviet science fiction film Planeta Burg, (which had also formed the basis of another Corman film, Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet). Its a curious concoction, with the newly shot footage of the rubber pterodactyl-worshipping women (who are telepathic, so as to avoid the expense of post-synchronising dialogue), never quite matching the look of the Soviet footage. The two groups of characters, women and cosmonauts, of course never meet and the plot is ingeniously devised to accommodate this fact. The Soviet effects work is, for its day, not bad and the finished film has the advantage of being relatively short, so it never outstays its welcome. It also makes a lot more sense than The Holcroft Covenant, not to mention having more believable characters.
So to Sunday, when I had every intention of watching those worthier films I'd originally set out to watch, but somehow ended up watching a double bill of Night of the Demon (not to be confused with the 1957 classic British horror film, but rather the 1979 Bigfoot murder spree movie) and The Dark Tower (not be confused with the Stephen King book, but rather the 1987 UK/US/Spanish haunted office block film). These I caught on the 'American Horrors' streaming channel, which is fast rivalling 'B Movie TV' as my favourite Roku destination for schlock. Anyway, Night of the Demon has a certain notoriety for having been on the DPP's original 'video nasties' blacklist. Like just about every other so called 'Video Nasty' I've seen, by today's standards it is pretty tame stuff. What upset the UK censors in particular was a scene where a biker, relieving himself at the roadside, has his penis ripped off by Bigfoot. Nowadays, it is more likely to elicit laughs rather than screams from an audience. Like the Italian films on the list, the effects work, while gory, are obviously not real. My main problem with Night of the Demon is that it is slow moving, over long and poorly paced. It is also poorly structured, with the main narrative being presented as a flashback, within which there are further flashbacks, confusing the narrative. Most problematically, most of the Bigfoot killings are presented as flashbacks, not only robbing them of any suspense - we know the characters involved will die - but it also puts the main characters at one remove from the real peril for most of the film. Still, it does have some nice touches, such as the cult of backwoods locals worshipping Bigfoot as a god, but never really develops them properly. Moreover, Bigfoot himself looks extremely tatty - from behind he looks all too much like an old rug - and unthreatening. Still, the film is nowhere near as bad as is often claimed as is actually quite enjoyable in its own, schlocky, way.
Which brings us to The Dark Tower. Essentially a haunted house story, this concerns an investigation into a series of deaths at a newly constructed office block n Barcelona. It is actually very slickly made, boasting two 'name' genre directors, Freddie Francis and Ken Weiderhorn, (one replaced the other, but different sources disagree over the order, either way, it is clear that neither director was happy with the finished product, as they hide between a single pseudonym on the titles), and a decent cast including Jenny Agutter, Michael Moriarty and Theodore Bikel. Production values are high and the special effects not bad at all. It builds up a reasonable atmosphere, coming on like a modern day Gothic horror, with the apparently possessed office block standing in for the more traditional haunted castle/Abbey/Cathederal. The plot is driven by security consultant Moriarty's attempts to uncover the nature of the evil force behind the goings on at the tower block, which includes lots of poltergeist activity. The film's biggest problem lies with its denouement - it is revealed that the evil force has actually been after one specific character, which begs the question that, bearing in mind that, from the outset, they've spent most of their time in the building, why it didn't just target them in the first place, rather than causing all that collateral damage among the rest of the cast? Still, it is entertaining enough while it is on, which is a lot more than can be said for many other films I've sat through.
So, there you have it, my unintended weekend of schlock. It was really very enjoyable. The great thing about schlock films is that the have no pretensions to be anything else. Which makes them very easy to watch, despite their shortcomings. Maybe next weekend I'll get around to watching those films I meant to watch, (although it has to be said, that the schlock pantheon has a claim on all of them). We'll see.
I thought that I'd get things back on track on Saturday, with a viewing of the 1985 Robert Ludlum adaptation The Holcroft Covenant. I'd last seen it when it was released to cinemas and had forgotten just how schlocky it was. Actually, I'd forgotten just about everything about it: I recalled only the opening and the climax, as it turned out - everything else about the plot was unfamiliar to me. Usually when I rewatch a film, even after a couple of decades, various scenes and bit of dialogue will come back to me as it progresses, but with The Holcroft Covenant - not a thing. It was, it seems, a completely unmemorable film. Which is surprising, as it is pure schlock. It might have a big budget and an A-list cast, but it leaves no conspiracy thriller cliche unused as it lurches through all too familiar plot twists and perfunctory action scenes. On paper, it should have been a good film: a noted director in John Frankenheimer, script by George Axelrod, based on a best selling novel, international locations and a cast lead by Michael Caine and including the likes of Victoria Tennant, Anthony Andrews and Bernard Hepton. In actuality, the characters are paper thin, the plot largely nonsensical and the dialogue and situations predictable and unengaging. While it might be possible to lay the blame with the source material, the fact is that beyond the basic scenario and some of the character names, the film bears little resemblance to Ludlum's novel. Axelrod, who wrote the final script, based on two earlier drafts by other writers, admitted that he had never read the book, so some of the film's most ludicrous twists - an incestuous relationship between brother and sister characters, for instance - can only be assumed to be down to him.
The pity is that Ludlum's novel had plenty of potential for a film adaptation, with its mix of neo Nazis, World War Two conspiracies, international intrigue and a hapless hero caught between competing shadowy groups. (The Holcroft Covenant comes from Ludlum's middle period, alongside such titles as The Chancellor Manuscript, The Matarese Circle and The Matlock Paper, before his standard formula became repetitive and the plots overly fantastical). What we got instead, was this mess. To be fair, it looks good. It just makes no sense. So, after that, I decided that I needed another shot of pure schlock, so cued up Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, of historical interest because it was directed by a pseudonymous Peter Bogdanovich for Roger Corman. At least, he directed the scenes with the 'Prehistoric Women' (who include Mamie van Doren and sport skin tight trousers and sea shell bras). The rest of the film is edited from the Soviet science fiction film Planeta Burg, (which had also formed the basis of another Corman film, Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet). Its a curious concoction, with the newly shot footage of the rubber pterodactyl-worshipping women (who are telepathic, so as to avoid the expense of post-synchronising dialogue), never quite matching the look of the Soviet footage. The two groups of characters, women and cosmonauts, of course never meet and the plot is ingeniously devised to accommodate this fact. The Soviet effects work is, for its day, not bad and the finished film has the advantage of being relatively short, so it never outstays its welcome. It also makes a lot more sense than The Holcroft Covenant, not to mention having more believable characters.
So to Sunday, when I had every intention of watching those worthier films I'd originally set out to watch, but somehow ended up watching a double bill of Night of the Demon (not to be confused with the 1957 classic British horror film, but rather the 1979 Bigfoot murder spree movie) and The Dark Tower (not be confused with the Stephen King book, but rather the 1987 UK/US/Spanish haunted office block film). These I caught on the 'American Horrors' streaming channel, which is fast rivalling 'B Movie TV' as my favourite Roku destination for schlock. Anyway, Night of the Demon has a certain notoriety for having been on the DPP's original 'video nasties' blacklist. Like just about every other so called 'Video Nasty' I've seen, by today's standards it is pretty tame stuff. What upset the UK censors in particular was a scene where a biker, relieving himself at the roadside, has his penis ripped off by Bigfoot. Nowadays, it is more likely to elicit laughs rather than screams from an audience. Like the Italian films on the list, the effects work, while gory, are obviously not real. My main problem with Night of the Demon is that it is slow moving, over long and poorly paced. It is also poorly structured, with the main narrative being presented as a flashback, within which there are further flashbacks, confusing the narrative. Most problematically, most of the Bigfoot killings are presented as flashbacks, not only robbing them of any suspense - we know the characters involved will die - but it also puts the main characters at one remove from the real peril for most of the film. Still, it does have some nice touches, such as the cult of backwoods locals worshipping Bigfoot as a god, but never really develops them properly. Moreover, Bigfoot himself looks extremely tatty - from behind he looks all too much like an old rug - and unthreatening. Still, the film is nowhere near as bad as is often claimed as is actually quite enjoyable in its own, schlocky, way.
Which brings us to The Dark Tower. Essentially a haunted house story, this concerns an investigation into a series of deaths at a newly constructed office block n Barcelona. It is actually very slickly made, boasting two 'name' genre directors, Freddie Francis and Ken Weiderhorn, (one replaced the other, but different sources disagree over the order, either way, it is clear that neither director was happy with the finished product, as they hide between a single pseudonym on the titles), and a decent cast including Jenny Agutter, Michael Moriarty and Theodore Bikel. Production values are high and the special effects not bad at all. It builds up a reasonable atmosphere, coming on like a modern day Gothic horror, with the apparently possessed office block standing in for the more traditional haunted castle/Abbey/Cathederal. The plot is driven by security consultant Moriarty's attempts to uncover the nature of the evil force behind the goings on at the tower block, which includes lots of poltergeist activity. The film's biggest problem lies with its denouement - it is revealed that the evil force has actually been after one specific character, which begs the question that, bearing in mind that, from the outset, they've spent most of their time in the building, why it didn't just target them in the first place, rather than causing all that collateral damage among the rest of the cast? Still, it is entertaining enough while it is on, which is a lot more than can be said for many other films I've sat through.
So, there you have it, my unintended weekend of schlock. It was really very enjoyable. The great thing about schlock films is that the have no pretensions to be anything else. Which makes them very easy to watch, despite their shortcomings. Maybe next weekend I'll get around to watching those films I meant to watch, (although it has to be said, that the schlock pantheon has a claim on all of them). We'll see.
posted by Doc Sleaze at
10:33 pm
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