Brain Blasters

And so, after a long summer, it has finally come to this: Snakes on a Plane ceases to be a hot-weather fantasy and becomes a reality. Now we can all see whether this creature that became a cult before it was even finished can in any way live up (or down) to our expectations, hopes, and fears. Let us pause, then, and reflect on killer snake movies from the past.

The question as to whether Snakes on a Plane will be any good is completely irrelevant. A look back demonstrates that there has never ...eally been a snake movie that is... um... well... good. Plenty that have been entertaining. But good? Anaconda is probably as good as things get. As obvious as the CGI effects are, they aren’t as bad as those in many other recent releases, and the death scenes are so ludicrous as to be highly enjoyable (such as the moment where one victim is nabbed in mid-air). Watch the home video release carefully: in one scene, the waterfall is flowing upwards. Anacondas, meanwhile, falls down on the most important front: not enough snake action.

The work of H.P. Lovecraft has had a rather uneasy relationship with film adaptations. The attraction of his fiction for filmmakers is understandable: this is classic horror, and the cosmic evil on display can potentially lead to huge payoffs. Yet his prose style is very difficult, and most of the attempts at adaptation have been, at best, flawed. Stuart Gordon is the director who most consistently returns to his work, but he doesn’t really have the right touch. Re-Animator is a hell of a lot of fun, and it he...ps that the stories it is based on are Lovecraft being deliberately silly, but there is nothing very Lovecraftian about the result. The closest Gordon has come to getting it right is Dagon (which is actually his long-awaited adaptation of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”).

Most of the other Lovecraft adaptations out on DVD aren’t really worth the effort to track down. There are a few that are rewarding. I’ll mention three. Two are mainstream releases. One will take a bit more effort (but not much) to obtain, and is more than worth it.

Without question, the most celebrated bad director is Ed Wood. He is the portal through which so many people discover the joys of the terrible film. He stands out from so many contenders because his films are not ordinarily bad. They are deeply felt, deeply earnest. He meant what he was saying, whatever that was. And his style, particularly his screenwriting style, is unmistakeable. Insanely purple, banal, and incomprehensible, it cannot be mistaken for anyone else’s work. It is as individual as the writing of the Co...n Brothers, but for all the wrong reasons.

But Wood is far from being the only deity in the badfilm pantheon. There are other directors who vie for his throne. And it is one of those I’m here to tell you about today: Doris Wishman.

Let us sing a hymn in praise of bad movies. Not ordinarily bad, of course. There is very little joy to be had in anything touched by Martin Lawrence. No, the crap that brings warmth to the heart of the badfilm fan can be the B-movie so inept that the set falls down. But there is also the big-budget, A-lit pic that pulls a Hindenburg, and those are to be treasured as well.

I have this latter type of badfilm in mind because I saw Lady in the Water over the weekend. Now, I cannot recommend this film if ...ou want to see something good. It is a megalomaniacal mess that is also, taken straight, paralyzingly dull (one of the people I saw it with bailed after an hour, and I can hardly blame her for walking out). However, when viewed as a slo-mo career catastrophe, it becomes quite fascinating. It is also so silly that it just begs to be rediscovered as an unintentional comedy. Let’s think about the names of things: “narf,” “scrunt,” “tartutic,” “Madame Narf.” This is gold, people. Imagine screening the film and yelling “Narf!” every time the somnabulant Bryce Howard shows up. Or do as one critic did, and Google the word “scrunt.” Go ahead, do it now. I’ll wait.

In our last thrilling episode, I talked about Vampyres as being one of the pinnacles of European erotic horror. I felt that I couldn’t very leave the topic without saying a few words about the man whose lengthy career has largely been built around this form: Jesús (Jess) Franco. Cult movie connoisseurs will already be very familiar with him, and should feel free to stop reading now. For the rest of you, consider this a brief, guarded, introduction.

The word “prolific” hardly begins to describe Franco...s output. He’s directed over 150 films, most of which he also shot, wrote and scored. But are they any good? They are certainly very personal, and fine arguments for the auteur theory (but then, so are the films of Ed Wood and Doris Wishman). Lucas Balbo, Peter Blumenstock and Christian Kessler rightly titled their excellent book on Franco Obsession. Franco IS capable of putting together a well-crafted piece of cinema, though this tends to be the case earlier in his career. Kim Newman, writing about Russ Meyer, said that he “knows how to make good films, but refuses to do so,” and the same could very well be said of Franco. (Being utterly consumed with the erotic is something else the two directors have in common, but Franco has none of Meyer’s technical perfectionism). Though Franco’s films are very sloppy, are plagued by a horrendous overuse of the zoom lens, and have plots that can most charitably be described as “loose,” they are also very improvisational, much like the jazz Franco also loves (and plays), and can be rewarding in the most unexpected ways.

Let us consider the term “erotic horror.” This sub-genre doesn’t have a very strong tradition in North America, despite the best efforts of Seduction Cinema and Misty Mondae. I exempt the films of David Cronenberg from this consideration, as they are hardly designed with titillation in mind – they are much colder, analytical works, and the label once applied to them – “venereal horror” – is still more appropriate. No, there just hasn’t been that much on this side of the pond, relatively speaking. Perhaps in its stead... there has been the phenomenon of the “erotic thriller.” And with very few exceptions, the less said about that category of late-night cable-fodder, the better.

Overseas, the story is considerably different. Europe and Asia have been simultaneously targeting fear and desire for decades. Readers looking for a good survey of the European scene owe it to themselves to track down Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs’ Immoral Tales: European Sex and Horror Movies 1956-1984. There’s an enormous wealth of titles to choose from for a case study (and I don’t preclude returning to this topic), but the one I’d like to consider today is Vampyres, a 1974 effort produced in England, with an English cast, but directed by Spaniard José Larraz.

It lurks behind a poster whose taglines are deliciously over the top, arguably meaningless, grammatically dubious, and utterly misleading: “BEHIND THIS MEMBRANE... you will be driven to a point... midway between LIFE and DEATH!” (?!?!) Further: “The only people who will not be STERILIZED with FEAR are those among you who are already DEAD!” Now, there have been many films to promise/threaten heart attacks/strokes/what-have-you in their ad campaigns, but The Flesh Eaters (1962) is, to my knowledge, the on...y one to boast putting a stop to one’s reproductive facilities. This publicity oddity is rather fitting, actually, providing yet another piece of charm to one of the most hugely satisfying B-movies of its era.

Written by Arnold Drake (co-creator of the superhero team The Doom Patrol), directed by Jack Curtis, and edited by future soft-core auteur Radley Metzger, The Flesh Eaters has WWII vet and charter pilot Byron Sanders flying alcoholic star Rita Morley and her supremely competent assistant Barbara Wilkin to Provincetown. Plane trouble forces them to land on an apparently deserted island. There they run into Martin Kosleck, a marine biologist who, despite his friendly manners, is clearly not to be trusted (we know this because of his accent). The next morning, the plane has vanished, and the castaways must contend with tiny, silvery blobs infesting the water. These are the flesh eaters of the title.