Two weird, wild and wooly films that pay homage to the thrilling drive-in fodder of yesteryear have shimmied up my ladder the last few weeks: one finds the middle ground between the 50s juvenile delinquent musicals and the Roger Corman aliens of Bronson Canyon; the other says fuck the middle ground and crashes a threesome of tough babes ala Faster Pussycat Kill Kill into frickin' Loch Ness, more or less. Both paths are noble and meanwhile I've seen two films from the actual drive-in era with which to compare and contrast: one's a solid entry in the 'three women share an apartment during a sexy summer' genre and the other a female-directed film about a female vampire... So there are a lot of women going on in these films --their flesh soft, curves wanton, but a note of caution, handle with care and don't drop your guard....
EL MONSTRO DEL MAR
(2010) dir. Stuart Simpson
**3/4
Here, at last is a movie that actually delivers what the Bitch Slaps and Cat Runs all promise - genuinely bad girls of the sort we though only Russ Meyer, John Waters, and Jack Hill ever truly understood. Starting out in Faster Pussycat black and white, the film erupts into color with the ladies' first throat slit of a pair of innocent Australian dudes, letting us know right off that while some 'bad' girls spend their time waiting for some sleaze bag to warrant their vengeance, hesitating before killing them because murder is 'yawn' wrong, these girls consider any dude they meet as a blood orgy waiting to happen, no one gets the better of them, not even the kraken....
Needless to say, they're Australian.
Needless to say, they're Australian.
For some reason Aussie cinema has sidestepped the bad faith arrangement that says women protagonists can't kill without a reason and even then have to cry afterwards, or be somehow damaged from it. You can bet they don't carry soft drinks in their cooler, and if you get that reference, then you've probably seen Faster Pussycat Kill Kill! as many times as I have. These broads all carry folding knives and when they sense danger they reach into their boots and unfold them as naturally and subtly as they might light a cigarette They smoke constantly which makes them cooler than even Meyer's Pussycat trio (1). If only Russ'd studied his Dobbsianism he'd know...
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Occupying a punk rock zone between John Waters and Russ Meyer-Jack Hilldrive-in feminism but amping up the attitude, there's a gigantic larger than life leader, Baretta (Nelli Scarlett), delivering badassery that's still sexy though but carries that slight drag queen edge so perfectly embodied in Divine, Tura Satana, Mary Woronov, and Shirley Stoler; Karli Madden is in the Lori Williams role; Kate Watts is the Haji. They're all decked out in that retro 50s Trash and Vaudeville chic--bows, bangs, and black-- but it seems like their genuine style. It works. The film might well be set in the 50s or now; the girls transcend time and fakery (this is their film debut and they're joyously free of 'professionalism').
While the it lacks Meyer's punchy editing, wild angles and existentially gonzo dialogue ("like a velvet glove cast in iron!"), Monstro (a strange title since not one word of Spanish is ever uttered in the film) makes do with colorful gore and sheer perversity and the sense these girls must be pretty fun to hang out with in real life; their playful coked up drunken banter and horseplay is naturalistic and real in the ways it just clearly wasn't with Meyer, where his women were big and strong but it was clear they weren't deviating from an already gonzo script. In Faster the over-the-top acting worked because the lines were great, they could stand the attention; here the lines are just okay but they feel natural; these girls look like they drink and could fuck a man up no sweat and not even remember it. The naturalism doesn't work however with the old man tied to this chair for life ("better you should be nailed to it!") Norman Yemm is a little too old and dour here; it would have been better with a man like Stuart Lancaster ("you girls nudists or are ya just short of clothes?") who could actually match the larger than life action and shape the less accomplished performers around him.
THE GHASTLY LOVE OF JOHNNY X
(2012) Dir. Paul Bunnell
***1/4
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| The irrepressible De Anna Joy Brooks |
I was also a little put off by the inordinate amount of time abusing women as opposed to men fighting fair and square, but on the whole it's kind of refreshing, since the women are all without a doubt the strongest characters. Other strengths: composer Ego Plum (Frieda Kahlo's grandson) delivers such a great score of theremins, booming brass, crashing timpani, wailing harmonies and lurid synth notes I can only hope Tim Burton sees this film and finally gets rid of the overbearing Danny Elfman on future retro projects; there's old, and I mean old, Kevin McCarthy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers) as the alien judge in a Devo hat who asks of Johnny X "only a modest conformity" but he doesn't get it so he's exiling the perennial rebel, with his leather jacket and opaque sunglasses and crew of snickering abusive toadies and preening molls and stolen electro suit that gives him the power to control people's motor functions... to Earth.
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| Cute Kate Maberly as Mickey O'Flynn's devoted fan |
THE ROOMMATES
(1973 ) Dir. Arthur Marks
***
The "quartet' or trio of hottie young things all having summer flings with an array of aged and marital-status arrayed men" genre stretches back to the 30s' Gold Diggers series, but don't let that stop you from believing it all began with The Valley of the Dolls while digging Arthur Marks' spritely The RoomMates. They even use the phrase "beyond the Valley of the Dolls" in some of the Laugh-In derived, cut-on-the-punchline 'modern women sexual mores' joke soundbytes bandied betwixt hot college students while preparing to depart for summer fun up at Lake Arrowhead. Kind of a Russ Meyer for the normal proportions / hot bare midriff set, Marks' short but memorable foray into drive-in exploitation is much less known, though Tarantino is helping that, spurring ravenous pro-women genre enthusiasts like myself. The RoomMates comes in the middle of a three film roll beginning with Bonnie's Kids and Detroit 9000 all of them in 1973, and all of them slamming, and looking great on DVD. But Detroit is for one in a Joe Rocco mood, which is always. (He's also in Bonnie's Kids and another Marks' film, the lesser but compelling A Woman for All Men).
I could excuse my occasional lapses into womanizing by telling you that in the 1970s I saw a lot of groovy guilt-free swinging going on all around me and being a child and thus cut off from experiencing it directly except in the flirtiest of doctor and post office game ways, flirted with by cute babysitters, runaway shelter Xmas guests, and dads' cute secretaries at bridge parties in the Mad Men mould; treated as some kind of Bosley-esque eunuch by girls my elementary school because I was always picked last at kickball and allowing a deep inferiority complex to settle in unchallenged; and then came the 80s, and God help us. So when the 'when it rains it pours' phases come along, I seldom say no, and then word gets around of my tomcatting and the phase ends abruptly, and then alone and in pain I turn to films like thee, oh The RoomMates, and praise be to St. Marks of Los Angeles that thou art with me.
And like Russ Meyer, Jack Hill, and Roger Corman, Marks loves strong women and gorgeous mountain lake scenery and there are groovy 70s cars so what's not to live for? The girls are all top notch: AIP WIP prison mainstay and hot blonde Roberta Collins thinks she's found love with an older rich divorced swinger, but she rushes it by getting too gooey too fast or, as he puts it, 'picking out furniture together' which he tells her next morning at the diner "never works." Pat Woodell plays a bitchy hothead who sleeps with a no-good married loser every time she comes up (as he sleazily mentions they've been having these trysts since she was sixteen) to her family summer house, and she in turn treats a young handyman like shit--he tries to get her to let her guard down but... is he the killer? In prime male fantasy the older sleazy dude even catches the eye of her younger cousin (Christina Hart) staying there for the summer; Marki Bey works at the local library, arousing male middle aged white male attention and dumping her white boyfriend for a cool black cop. These 'never mix never worry' relationships--the only black man and only black woman in the cast hooking up--usually irritate my liberal arts rash, but I only mention it here because here it's cool because the black guy's less a 'brother' or a 'cop' and more a nice, low key guy along the lines of Austin Stoker in Assault on Precinct 13. and the white guy a hipster like herself and none of the three seem particularly stigmatized; instead Bey's doing her usual witty brand of over-acting where she might be hamming it up but is radiating a contagious kind of blast-having; and there's no racism for either to tangle with at all in the script. And as I'm a big Bey proponent, that's dope.
I was only five when this came out, but it's not too late for the film to have a great half-way through side plot involving a string of mysterious killing via knife and/or high powered rifle, leading to both a great midnight knife chase (like it was prefiguring the slasher 1980's) and there's sniper semi-massacre at a groovy country club party on the veranda. You'll guess the killer early if you're an astute cineaste, but it doesn't matter; the party never stops and everyone has enough material when they head back to school to "write ten books!" Yeah, says Collins, "but have we really suffered?" Weird last line, considering the massacre, but hey, those killings spice it up, aren't too vile in their executions (the knife chase through the night sequence is particularly well done--almost Friday the 13th level good 'enveloping' night photography), and in short little romp is a class act all the way, the Gorgon Blu-ray (doubled with Marks' inferior but still pretty good A Woman for all Men) is flawlessly restored (with the occasional grain part of the retro appeal) so Harry J. May's peerless photography can really shine.
THE VELVET VAMPIRE
(1971) Dir. Stephanie Rothman
**3/4
The box office success of Hammer's 1970 Vampire Lovers showed distributors and producers the world was ready for lesbian-themed vampire movies, Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 lesbian vampire novella Carmilla (pre-dating Stoker's Dracula by 26 years) was a public domain wellspring from which anyone might tap. The result, 1971 saw a plethora of vampire lesbian movies based loosely on Fanu's tale. Just check the date on your favorite one and it's probably from the 1971, the golden year of lesbian (or bi) blood drinkers. The Velvet Vampire (AKA Cemetery Girls) had the distinction though of being directed by an actual woman, Corman company regular Stephanie Rothman. Her avatar within the film is clearly Celeste Yarnall as the titular vampire, Diane LeFanu (!), who takes a shine to a pretty young couple Lee (Michael Blodgett) and Suzy (Sherry Miles) she spots at her friend Stoker's (!) gallery show. Suzy's not keen on going to some mysterious femme's pad for the weekend, god knows what cult orgies might ensue, and it's not just because it's clear Diane and Lee have some sparks between them, they're an open couple, but... you know, her intuition...
Rothman brings way more than the invisible hand of other AIP female directors -- there's a feminine energy one can relate to--it's the gender reverse of those old Universal horrors The Black Cat and The Raven, with the heavy-lidded beauty of Michael Blodgett kind of put forth as the object of the villain's desire (ala say the shirtless boys in Twilight), and his girl just icing on the cake. His increasingly desperate attempt to escape, via stealing the dune buggy, trying to call the garage to check up on his broken down car, all recall The Black Cat and The Raven, gender reversed for a welcome change. It all works, especially if you've ever spent a weekend as part of a couple invited to someone's remote house while you were either seduced by the host, seducing the host or watching as the host tries seducing your boyfriend or girlfriend; I've done all three, two times each - add it up and that's 666--it's even worse when you're the odd one out and they're speaking Spanish all the time together and you're stranded in the middle of Cordoba, Argentina, i.e. as literally in the middle of nowhere at Diane's groovy desert pad, forced to eat steak tartare (though in Cordoba it was asado). Two of them are fun while the last, but none of them leave you feeling good about yourself. Velvet Vampire is a lot like that, the climax involving our vampire chased by hippies at an open market is kind of silly. I'll forgive it because first there's a cool chase through the bus station and the eerie bus ride and it's all raw and delicious. There are at least a lot of eerie, sexy moments along the way and a great scene where Diane in bed alone, seduces first Lee and then Suzy, using the exact same rap, with the exact same sincerity. You tell it like it is, dearest Rothman. And don't be afraid to make the guy take his shirt off for a change. And thanks again to the Lazarus drive-in's true resurrectionist, Shout, the Factory!