Burnout (1979)
Originally published on Criticplanet.org
Crown International made a fair number of transportation-based films, including two Vansploitation movies and several biker films. Burnout is a bit different as it’s the only film Crown produced that deals with drag racing. In fact, it’s one of what seems to be a very small number of films that take place in the world of professional top fuel drag racing– one of the others, Heart Like a Wheel, is a biopic of Shirley Muldowney, the first female NHRA (National Hot Rod Association) driver. Burnout is a fiction film, but it almost feels more like a documentary and actually includes footage of Muldowney and other real drivers in action. This gives the film an air of authenticity, which is good since the weak storyline isn’t really a compelling reason to watch it.
Steve (Mark Schneider) is a spoiled, entitled layabout who likes to drive fast. After an accident in which he kills an old woman’s dog while racing on city streets, his license is suspended and his father decides it’s time they start spending more time together. Luckily, his father is rich and influential, so when Steve decides he wants to go into drag racing his dad takes little convincing to drop thousands of dollars on a built-from-scratch dragster to take out on the pro circuit. Steve gets his license to drive professionally, but the very same day he forfeits two races by leaving the starting line early and then blows out his engine in his third race. Steve blames his chafing under his dad’s involvement for wrecking his concentration and is ready to quit his first day out, and any hint of sympathy the audience may have had for him up until this point is snuffed out by his ranting.
At this point, Steve returns to Will, the mechanic who built the car for his father, and asks to join Will’s racing team as a crew member. Steve claims that all he wants to do is work his way from the bottom up to driving like the other professionals do, and Will hires him as a crew member for the rest of his team’s season. Things start off bad but gradually get better as Steve learns what it’s like to do the work instead of just buying a car and driving right away, although he’s still so anxious to get behind the wheel again that he’s willing to sabotage a teammate in order to get a shot at his race. By the end of the film, Steve maybe has learned some lessons, but he’s been such an irredeemable bastard throughout the movie it’s hard to care.
Director Graham Meech-Burkestone packs in plenty of race footage from Orange County, Indianapolis, Las Vegas and various other stops on the NHRA tour as the film speeds along. Again, this gives Burnout almost a documentary feel given that its slim 75-minute running time is split probably about 60-40 between race footage and storyline. For fans of this style of racing, Burnout is going to be a fascinating time capsule of the NHRA racing scene in the late 70s. For everyone else, the endless scenes of burnouts and seconds-long races will probably get boring pretty quickly, and the paper-thin story (and utterly unsympathetic protagonist) will not be enough to keep anyone’s attention who isn’t already on board for the racing.
The Butcher (2007)
Originally published on Film Monthly 18 October 2009
Let’s resolve this issue for everyone right away: if you want to watch what is probably the most convincing fake snuff film ever made to date (except, of course, for the opening and closing credits, which sort of give the game away), you’re going to want to see The Butcher. If, however, you want any sort of narrative to contextualize the vicious brutality being presented, you definitely don’t want to watch it.
The Butcher is a difficult film to review. It’s a difficult film to watch. This is handheld or first-person horror taken to its extreme: almost all of the footage in the film is from a camera mounted on a helmet worn by a torture victim. We watch along with it as it captures everything, unblinking, more or less in real time. At least one single shot runs well over twenty minutes. In the arms race to create the most convincing fake snuff movie of all time, The Butcher is pretty much neck-and-headless-neck with Toetag Pictures. So what does it mean that this film is getting mainstream distribution? Are we going to start seeing August Underground on the shelves at Best Buy? Is this a good thing?
Recently, the British Board of Film Classification refused a classification to a Japanese film called Grotesque. Naturally, this caused a stir and resulted in the film getting a lot more attention than it would have received if it had not been banned. Intrigued, I tracked down a copy of the film and watched it. Grotesque is a thoroughly unpleasant film in which a man kidnaps a young couple, takes them to his hideout and spends most of the film’s 74 minutes sexually humiliating and torturing them. It’s gross, ugly and mean-spirited, but otherwise completely forgettable. It really wasn’t worth the effort it took to ban. However, Grotesque is at least honest about its intentions: there are no pretensions here that the film is anything but a particularly nasty take on the “torture porn” subgenre.
At one point in The Butcher, one of the torturers utters the critic-baiting line “This isn’t art at all.” Clearly, the filmmakers are begging for someone to argue with them, but the line rings true. Like Toetag’s August Underground series, The Butcher works better as an effects reel than an actual movie. There are some nauseatingly realistic makeup and gore effects here, so good in fact that if it weren’t for the opening and closing credits this might as well be an actual snuff film. There’s no narrative driving the events, they just unfold and you have to watch, as it happens. Whole minutes pass by with the camera pointed at the ground as the guy wearing it whimpers and shouts. If the film has anything to say at all, perhaps the filmmakers are trying to give torture fans exactly what they want in the hopes that they’ll realize how sick it is to derive entertainment from another person’s suffering. But I seriously doubt that much thought went into any aspect of the film, no doubt the majority of the planning went into the sickening gore effects.
Frankly, it’s pretty shocking that any studio would snap this up for wide release. It’s tough to imagine anyone but the most jaded gore addict deriving any enjoyment from this film at all, and then it’s probably more a matter of showing it to people and saying “check out this sick fuckin’ SHIT” than anything else. It’s not even really a horror movie, certainly not the “Blair Witch meets Saw” that the promotional materials make it out to be. This is a genuinely disgusting, seriously disturbing “torture porn” that actually lives up to the genre name.
Calamity Jane’s Revenge (2015)
Originally published on Daily Grindhouse 11 September 2015
Ohio-based filmmaker Henrique Couto has been very busy the last few years, knocking out multiple feature projects a year and dabbling in different genres with his regular collaborators. Most of his work as of late has been comedy or horror, but this year Couto made a move into a genre that would have been difficult for anyone to predict: Calamity Jane’s Revenge is Couto’s first Western. What’s maybe even more surprising is that other than some implied violence, this is Couto’s most family-friendly film since A Bulldog for Christmas.
Calamity Jane (Couto regular Erin R. Ryan) is roaming the Wild West, searching for the men who planned the murder of her husband “Wild Bill” Hickok (Joe Kidd, heavily mustachioed). While she tracks down the killers, she is in turn being tracked by Colorado Charlie Utter (former pro wrestler Al Snow) and the new sheriff of Deadwood. One of the men Jane is tracking has kidnapped two women, Pilar (Joni Durian, another Couto regular) and Fay (newcomer Julia Gomez). Pilar continues on her journey after Jane rescues them, but newly-widowed Fay joins Jane on her quest for vengeance and tries to temper Jane’s thirst for revenge before it consumes her. But now, hot on the trail of her last few targets, will it be too late for Jane to return to a normal life?
Aside from an opening shootout in the ruins of a town standing in for Deadwood, most of Calamity Jane’s Revenge takes place in the wilderness. The heavy smoke of the gunplay in that opening scene goes a long way toward establishing a sense of period, and keeping the action mostly confined to woods is a cheap and effective solution for maintain
ing that illusion. Couto has repeatedly proven that he knows his way around tiny budgets, and Calamity Jane’s Revenge is one of the best showcases yet of his ability to make maximum use of his resources. Canny use of horses and other minimal period signifiers go a long way toward excusing the rare occasions when something anachronistic inevitably pops up in the background. The film’s light tone and likable cast prevent those things from being too much of a distraction.
Erin R. Ryan turns in a typically solid performance in the lead, convincingly making Jane both tough and vulnerable. Julia Gomez, in her acting debut, is also very good as Fay, the skittish “tenderfoot” who provides a compassionate foil to Jane’s fiery temper. As probably the most experienced entertainer in any of Couto’s films to date, Al Snow has an easy charm that makes his scenes a lot of fun. Joni Durian has a much smaller role than in some of her previous work with Couto, but she makes her character memorable in her brief screen time. The rest of the cast is pretty good across the board, and everyone seems to be having a good time.
That sense of fun is infectious, as is the ambition of trying to make a Western in Ohio on a micro budget. There are some issues inherent in making such a movie on such a tiny budget–an over reliance on stock footage to establish the passing of time and some minor sound issues are the most glaring–but depending on your taste for independent cinema, some of that may well add to the film’s slightly rough-hewn charm. Perhaps the main problem with the movie is its languid pacing, although it makes sense that something like this would move slower than, say, a slasher flick. Despite its technical shortcomings, it still looks better than a lot of movies that probably cost a lot more to make. Even better, Couto and screenwriter John Oak Dalton put a lot of care toward building worthwhile characters, and the likable cast does a good job of fleshing them out.
Calamity Jane’s Revenge is a unique independent feature, an old-fashioned style Western that’s a lot of fun and well worth seeking out. The film is premiering Friday, September 25th at the By-Jo Theatre in Germantown, Ohio, and is available to preorder in a limited edition Blu-ray/DVD combo set.
Camel Spiders (2012)
Originally published on Film Monthly 27 March 2012
Today is a good day for Roger Corman fans, with the release of the documentary Corman’s World coinciding with the release of Corman’s latest low-budget epic Camel Spiders. Produced by Corman for the SyFy Network, Camel Spiders is the latest in a line of low-budget original creature features made for airing on the cable channel, and is again directed by Corman veteran Jim Wynorski (inexplicably under the name “Jay Andrews”). B-movie fans should know what to expect going in, and although this is a little more tame than Wynorski’s non-cable work, Camel Spiders delivers a good time, provided you’re willing to check your brain and/or standards at the door.
Brian Krause stars as Captain Mike Sturges, introduced in the midst of a tense gunfight in an unspecified Middle Eastern country. Just before all the enemy shooters suddenly disappear– dragged off or immediately eaten by huge “Camel Spiders”– Sturges takes a bullet to the leg and one of his men is hit in the head. Sturges finds himself on a plane home to deliver the bad news and the corpse to the man’s family, but before the body was bagged up a few small spiders climbed into his mouth. When a freak accident knocks the body out of the truck being driven by Sgt. Shelley Underwood (Rocky DeMarco), the spiders escape and begin to multiply extremely rapidly.
From this point, Camel Spiders is all about setting up victims for the spiders to knock out as quickly as possible. A group of college students on a field study watch their professor approach a dog-sized spider with predictable results before they hole up in an abandoned house in hopes of outsmarting the spiders. Capt. Sturges is at a diner with local Sheriff Beaumont (C. Thomas Howell) when the spiders storm the place, and Sgt. Underwood brings the truck to get as many people out of the crowded diner and out to safety as possible. These folks end up hiding inside the offices of an old mine, where they have to fend off the spiders and contact the military for help.
Camel Spiders is dumb fun, with some spectacularly unconvincing computer effects that extend beyond the spiders themselves to completely ridiculous helicopters and fighter jets. The cast is decent and they all look like they’re having a good time, and picking the next victim of the spiders is never too tough, but it’s generally pretty satisfying. Wynorski keeps the action moving at a decent clip, and the whole thing’s over in just over 80 minutes. It’s not a game-changing masterpiece or anything, but Camel Spiders is proof that Corman’s approach to low-budget filmmaking is still capable of turning out fun stuff.
Cavegirl (1985)
Originally published on Criticplanet.org
While not all Crown International Pictures films are diamonds in the rough, it’s fair to say a good number of them are at least amusing. Or, at worst, decent wallpaper. The same cannot be said, however, for Cavegirl. Even among the glut of awful 80′s sex comedies, Cavegirl stands out as one of the most offensively inept films of the genre. Astute audience members will recognize a serious problem right away: the film starts with what seems like several minutes of footage of a helicopter flying very low over desert terrain, all set to an upbeat bubblegum synth pop song. This is clearly supposed to be the opening credits sequence, but there aren’t any credits being displayed. This is not a good way to start, and it just gets worse from here.
Rex (Daniel Roebuck) is a big nerd who has some trouble getting along with the other kids at school. After school one day, Rex goes on a field trip with his class to an old mine. Rex naturally gets separated from the rest of the class and ends up finding a mysterious glowing crystal deep in the mine at the same time the helicopter from the, uh, “opening credits sequence” fires a missile. At least that is what seems to happen. There is some camera shaking and some dirt falling on Rex that is probably meant to indicate an explosion. It’s hard to say. After this, Rex wakes up outdoors, seemingly in the desert. Somehow the magic glowing crystal and the helicopter missile thingy teleported him into the distant past. He somehow figures this out when he meets a bear, although why the bear would indicate to Rex that he is in caveman times is just another question to throw on the pile for whoever is responsible for this movie.
Not to spoil anything, but Rex soon meets a beautiful cavegirl named Eba (Cynthia Thompson) wearing a 2-piece animal hide bikini. Her hairstyle does not seem possible to achieve without 80′s technology, and it somehow returns to this shape on its own after she gets it wet. More questions! Rex, who up until this point has only been depicted as a nerdy loner, suddenly becomes an aggressive pervert. He tries to teach Eba some English phrases, perhaps with the hope that she will understand his request for her to “sit on (his) face.” Suddenly, Rex seems less like a nerdy protagonist who will learn confidence in himself through his adventure and more like a sexual predator. This impression is confirmed when he repeatedly tries to play a “game” with Eba in which he instructs her to lay down on a flat rock and spread her legs. That is something that actually happens in this movie, and it certainly doesn’t get any less creepy the second time he does it, in what seems to be the exact same footage played again in the same order later in the movie. Maybe you’re not supposed to notice that, but there’s not a lot of “movie magic” to distract the viewer from Cavegirl ‘s serious technical problems.
Rounding out the allegedly hilarious prehistoric antics is a group of stupid cave people modeled on the characters Rex goes to school with. First they intimidate him, then one of them flashes her boobs at him, then he frightens them with his Walkman, and God help us it just goes on like this for 85 minutes. The only enjoyable thing about the film is the soundtrack, which features three tracks by a band called SSQ. The band’s frontwoman Stacey Q had a big solo hit in the 80′s with “Two of Hearts,” and actually appears in Cavegirl as one of Rex’s classmates. Now you know everything you really need to know about the film, and then some. Let us never speak of it again.
The Cemetery (20
13)
Originally published on Film Monthly 19 August 2013
Adam Ahlbrandt’s Cross Bearer has justifiably gained him a lot of attention in the independent horror scene for its visual style and its unique take on the slasher template. Fans may be surprised to learn that Ahlbrandt has another feature already completed, and it’s another take on a well-worn horror trope. The Cemetery takes Ahlbrandt’s style and applies it to the “college kids in the woods” concept, and features a lot more humor than the appropriately bleak Cross Bearer. It also cleans up some of the few rough technical edges of the previous film without sacrificing any of its low-budget charm.
The setup of The Cemetery is familiar: a group of young people go deep into the woods and encounter a supernatural force that threatens their lives. In this case, the young people are a video production crew and a medium who are out to shoot an episode of their show Ghost Seekers. One of the crew found a book on a previous shoot that referenced an old cemetery supposedly hidden in the woods, the resting place for scores of victims of a 17th-century massacre perpetrated by a group of demented priests. Supposedly the evil encountered by the priests in this place was too powerful for them to overcome, although from the surviving account it seems the priests enjoyed their exorcism duties a little too much. Legend has it that even a single drop of blood on this unholy ground will be enough to revive the demons that ran rampant here, waiting to once again possess and destroy whoever steps into their path.
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