(1971)
Dir - Ted V. Mikels
Overall: WOOF
For every George A. Romero, there was also a slew of Ted V. Mikels; clueless independent "filmmakers" who dished out exploitation crap on the cheap, talent be damned. The Corpse Grinders reads like a horror comedy on paper due to its premise of a cat food company going out of business and then doing the logical thing of digging up corpses and murdering people in order to make their product, only for felines to eat said food and occasionally leap at non-actors who have to pretend that they are being attacked. It is embarrassing nonsense and unabashedly so, authored by Arch Hall and Joe Cranston, (that is Bryan Cranston's dad for anyone paying attention), and then shot on a shoestring with a combination of colorful and tacky lighting, flat cinematography, both wooden and over-acting, and a Z-grade, sleazy aesthetic that roots it in the early 70s when grindhouse theaters and drive-ins were desperate for any low end hogwash that they could get. Mikels made a career out of such crud rucks, (as well as throwing lavish parties and living in a house that was decorated as a castle apparently), and this one is far from his worst, but there can still be no denying that the man barely knew how to make a movie.
(1972)
Dir - Michael Campus
Overall: MEH
Before doing two back-to-back blaxsploitation movies, director Michael Campus delivered the low-key, dystopian sci-fi thriller Z.P.G., inspired by Paul R. Ehrlich's 1968 non-fiction book The Population Bomb. Boasting a disturbing premise that hyper focuses on one aspect of a totalitarian future society, (namely that child-barring is prohibited to the point where anyone who is caught giving birth is immediately executed in public via suffocation), it has a similar look and sterile presentation that is found in many other Orwellian-esque genre films from the 1970s. Everyone wears matching uniforms, voice over instructions are regularly omitted as background noise, the only food that exists is synthetic, and people live in controlled environments as well as the constant fear of Big Brother. Oddly though, many aspects do not line up with each other. How Oliver Reed and Geraldine Chaplin are able to exist with a forbidden newborn of their own for so long seems preposterous under such a regulated regime where one can get painfully interrogated for watching a few minutes of a documentary on pregnancy yet can also walk around with a wailing infant, hide it in both a basement and an apartment with no suspicion, and escape on a life raft to a unobserved island without rustling a single alarm system. Campus' direction is detrimentally listless and the pacing suffers because of this, but for anyone who wants to witness that rarest of Reed performances where he seems to be on Quaaludes the whole time, this may be for you.
(1979)
Dir - Philip Marshak
Overall: MEH
Considering both that vampires naturally exhibit a type of diabolical sexual force in fiction and that 1979 saw numerous interpretations of Bram Stoker's famed novel getting adapted to the screen, it makes sense that a pornographic version would drop that same year. Dracula Sucks, (Lust at First Bite), puts none other than porn legend Jamie Gillis in the title role with a Lugosi accent and all, who is matched by Richard Bulik doing a pitch-perfect Dwight Frye impression as Renfield's son. Set in some undisclosed time period, it tweaks Stoker's source material by keeping some of the plot points and details while setting it all up at an insane asylum and of course having a more horny agenda than any previous interruptions. Much of the dialog is lifted straight out of Universal's 1931 adaptation, but save for Austrian character actor Reggie Nalder as Van Helsing, these are hardly accomplished thespians we are dealing with, which gives the film a goofy tone that is part low-brow spoof and part atmospheric homage. Enhancing this is random radio broadcasts, (or something), that play over many of the sex scenes, as well as montage type editing that would make the story incomprehensible if not for how familiar it already is to most viewers.
No comments:
Post a Comment