Manson Poppins: DEATHMASTER

The kids gather wide-eyed like he's Manson Poppins, wanting him to say more, man, about the stars and shit. Fix the place up, first. Clean house, sayeth Korda, and switch to an all living things diet (like a vegan Renfield) and he'll be back to discuss further the ways of things. Then, dig it, he vanishes. It's like whoa. The 'now generation' patter continues once the cleaning montage is over. If I could I'd write it all down --it's so spot on/off.  Khorda says he's from 'The Isles of Maybe" and picking apart a flower, notes its beauty is a conceit, "as ephemeral as man's wish for immortality. But little things are odd -- he freaks out over Monk's iron cross pendant (I used to have on just like it). Fuck this bullshitter, says Monk, and announces he's going out for some steak... and some whiskey!! Man, if I was still drinking, that line would have made me stand up and cheer! It might be the best line in a biker film since, say it with me, Heavenly Blue's telling the priest he wants to get loaded in THE WILD ANGELS.

But there's something amiss that Monk, for all his abrasiveness, is hep to, reminding us of the speech about 'needing the assholes' at the end of TEAM AMERICA. After a cleaning montage (cooperation is beautiful - far out), Khorda returns with Barbado, this time playing the conga; Khorda puts the bite on Essine, and the kids hear her scream upstairs. When they come back down, Essine's there dancing. The music "consecrates them to immortal life." But the second sign something is wrong is that Khorda doesn't like when you try to skip out. Pico and Rona figure they better split fast, especially once everyone else starts dancing too. Hey man, let's split. Khorda is taking them outside time-space, as any good guru is wont to do and the scene with them dancing in slow motion has a weird druggy vibe that lets you know, yes, Khorda is delivering the spiritual goods. The trick of all gurus of course is that once you surrender your will to theirs then yes, you feel a deep egoless bliss and connection to the eternal now, but you've also just let someone else take over and now you can't escape the guru's clutches even if you start to smell a rat.






After the excellent Lazlo Kovacs-esque cinematography by Butler what makes DEATHMASTER so supreme is the marvelously off-the-wall cast and their unholy raiment: As with the man called Dean Stockwell in PSYCH-OUT, Ewing wears a combination Native American headband long black hair wig probably 'borrowed' from the B-western unit. His pretty face resembles a young Robert Conrad, and though he can't act, his bi-polar veering from super-hammy to super-low key (making it seem like he was being yelled at by the frustrated director between sets, "show emotion!") finally pays off when he 'snaps' into a weird bug-eyed maniac mode. Whatever the method it took to get him there, I like it. As his girlfriend Rona, Brenda Dickson (below) is a blast --with big expressive eyes, Ellen Burstyn meets Jaclyn Smith vibe and a body that knows just how stretch lithely to expose a celestial pale midriff. She's cuter than most, with real star quality, wearing the same Howard Hughes-designed bras of AIP beach girls; she's accessibly naive girl-next-door yet cool, open, eyes dilating and contracting on command, and best of all she seems genuinely thrilled to be on camera no matter in what capacity. It's her infectious good nature that seeps into the corners of the film like helium and lifts the whole first swath. Alas she disappears for most of the second swath, though her absence creates an anxiety in young Pico that we feel too.


As the Van Helsing there's Pop ('voice of Pooh') Fiedler, a mousy middle aged little balding capitalist in a hippie vest and sandals, who looks out for the kids. It's to him Pico runs when he realizes the truth about this suave new guru Khorda, and of course when this long-haired faux Native American Pico barges in on him foaming at the mouth and raving about vampires, Pop just assumes he's on acid. Why wouldn't he? Who hasn't been tripping at a party and have some hip know-it-all older skeeve show up with coke and turn what was moments ago a peace-love-unity happening into a dirtbag-studded fiend fest of foamy-mouthed sex-obsessed reptilian egotists and had to run, screaming and hysterical, naked into the night? I used to rant myself hoarse trying to convince Johnny that his couch guest Doug E. Fresh was a moronic townie dirtbag who could give him nothing but IOUs, lowered whiskey bottle water lines, and crabs. Johnny would just look at me slack-jawed. It was a nightmare.

At least Pop's convinced eventually (his dog gets killed, of course) and soon they're examining a paperback on magical cults through the ages, very typical of west coast used bookstores at the time, and those same books are probably still there, well-thumbed and never purchased by the dirty broke hippies of the region. Dude, I bought a used paperback of Gravity's Rainbow at one of those bookstores, and was raving to my friend Beth about all the reptilian evil swine around us at Reggae on the River. She thought I was hallucinating too. Why wouldn't she listen?? I barely understood a word of Pynchon's prose but I kept reading, hoping she would be impressed. It was the summer of 1990, there was a massive draught so no campfires, and Operation Green Sweep was in full effect, so no weed. Ever try to camp without a campfire, or enjoy reggae without weed, or share close quarters while traveling platonically with a gorgeous blonde hippie while suffering terrible DSB? Or read an 800+ page book with no comprehension of its presumedly rich historical subtext? It's enough to make anyone see vampires everywhere. I was ready to drown myself, but could barely afford enough whiskey to make it worth the drive into McKinleyville. And when I got it back to camp, the seagulls, as the song goes, would descend, or were they more like vampire bats, for every drop of that 1.75 of Ten High should have been coursing through my grateful bloodstream instead of theirs.


And that brings us to the final marvelous performance in the clan - the 'adult' in the group, the great Robert Quarry, who'd played a similar role in the two Count Yorga movies the previous years. You would think this might be the third film in the series, considering as Yorga he started as a self-help guru to a slightly older and richer enclave of California swingers, but there's apparently no relation, which is fine, because I like this film much better than either of those, and I know full well they're far better reviewed than DEATHMASTER. But Quarry doesn't ham it up or phone it in until the very end, when he drops one of the fakest worst evil laughs-turned-screams in horror history, which is followed almost immediately by Ewing's farewell "Lorna... it's all right Lonra" speech, which must be seen and heard to be believed. Part of my tolerance is due to my penchant for this kind of indie DIY countercultural druggy ambiguity-horror aesthetic, but the other is that the photography is beautiful --it's easy to see why Bill Butler would go on to be one of the best in the business - there's a kind of Gordon Willis duskiness, he catches more than a few great magic hour shots, and even when Khorda claps the lights on in the mansion it still has a deep dusky atmosphere. And that abrupt switch from the PSYCH-OUT hippie house vibe to full on psychedelic uber-cheap vampire film is well turned by actor Ray Danton. Granted by then the whole enterprise has gone south, as the saying goes. But what a great drop!

There are annoying things, like that Pico is such a genius with booby traps but forgets to use his kung fu on Barbado, twice, and forgets he managed to defeat him the first time by just painting a cross on his chest, but never even thinks about bringing a real cross with him, or to bring a priest instead of the cops, fucking Paul Walker-Keanu Reeves narc type that he is.

I kept hoping that it would turn out that the only way to defeat Khorda would be to get a hair cut, a suit and a job. But you can't have everything.

But, if you have Prime and a tolerance for plastic fangs, you can have 90 minutes with the DEATHMASTER. May the joy it bring add fruitful notes to your blood's bouquet! Ave Santa Sangrardo!