TWINS OF EVIL (1971)

Having recently sat through COUNTESS DRACULA and THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, I decided to track down the one Hammer vampire flick that I'd never seen, namely TWINS OF EVIL, the last of the studio's Karnstein Trilogy and a film I'd heard was not all that, despite it starring a pair of very, very cute twin sisters who were not afraid to get nekkid. Lemme tell ya, I'm glad that I put forth the effort, because TWINS OF EVIL came from out of nowhere to become my favorite Hammer vampire flick. No disrespect to Christopher Lee's work as Dracula, but this film works solidly for me from start to finish, something I can't say about most of Lee's films.

Taking place in that signature Hammer world that's like some particularly grim fairytale (pun totally intended), TWINS OF EVIL opens on an ominous note as we see a group of witchfinders dragging an innocent woman from her hovel and burning her at the stake. This group is The Brotherhood and they are led by the fanatical Gustav Weil, played by Hammer mainstay Peter Cushing in what may be his most intense performance.

Peter Cushing as the fanatical Gustav Weil.

Basically a pack of sexually frustrated religious fanatics and misogynists who can't deal with the existence of sexy women, The Brotherhood is feared throughout the land for their sadistic activities, but the public can do nothing by way of protest because The Brotherhood has the support of the government. Into this not exactly female-friendly environment come the lovely Gellhorn sisters, Maria and Frieda (played by Mary and Madeleine Collinson, respectively), just in from Venice in the wake of their parents' deaths and now they are entrusted to the care of their uncle, who, unfortunately for them, is Brother Weil.

Frieda (Madeleine Collinson) and Maria (Mary Collinson), the title characters.

Upon seeing their "disrespectful" attire, Gustav's dislike of the girls is instantaneous and he relegates them to their room, where they spend a lot of time hanging out (quite literally, if you get my drift) in their diaphanous nighties. It is there that we get to know the girls' unguarded personalities and they are quite easy to tell apart, thanks to the lusty-eyed Frieda being something of an enthusiastic "bad" girl with an interest in boozing and men, while Maria is sweet, innocent and decidedly virginal, as well as being the never-heeded voice of reason in their sibling dynamic.

Upon their arrival in town, the tasty twins catch the eye of every creature with a Y chromosome and in short order they are informed of the castle across the way from their uncle's house, a textbook example of the kind of place in horror movies where you just know great evil resides. It's the home of the sybaritic Count Karnstein (Damien Thomas), a sleazy and totally evil aristocrat who would be Number One on Brother Weil's hit list if not for his connection to the government, and he's introduced when The Brotherhood goes to burn another innocent woman and finds her about to get her hump on with the Count.

Count Karnstein (Damien Thomas): giving the amoral a bad name.

In the exchange between Brother Weil and the Count during that sequence, we witness the interesting contrast/comparison between the two characters, one being balls-out and unashamedly evil, and the other committing heinous atrocities but deluding himself into believing he's doing God's work, and it sets the two on paths of character development that bears satisfying fruit as the film progresses. Anyway, upon hearing about the forbidden pleasures to be had up at Castle Karnstein, Frieda practically drips like a broken fridge at the prospect of spending some quality time there, while her sister implores her not to consider such pursuits.

Frieda, yearning for corruption.

Meanwhile, the Count earnestly seeks to be even more evil than he already is, openly proclaiming his desire to become an active agent of Satan and going so far as to conduct a black mass in his dining hall, complete with a naked local peasant girl — who is equipped with an impressive briefly-glimpsed '70's bush — as a sacrifice. Dissatisfied with the performance of the so-called professional Satanists brought in by his chief servant (where one found those back in the days before Craig's List is anyone's guess), the Count dismisses them and himself prays to the Devil in what amounts to a job application, and in no time the spirit of his infamous vampiric lesbian ancestor, Countess Mircalla Karnstein (Katya Wyeth), manifests, fucks him senseless and puts the bite on him before returning to her infernal rest, thus transforming him into an undead suckface and he could not be happier.

A Karnstein family reunion: Mircalla (Katya Wyeth) returns from Hell.

Once happily vampirized, the Count embarks on a wanton and unholy killing spree, setting his sights on the clearly interested Frieda as a very personal "fuck you" to her uncle.

The lusty Frieda, as first seen by Count Karnstein. Ah, the subtlety of Hammer's filmmaking...

Quicker than you can say "girls gone wild," Frieda sneaks out of her uncle's house and hightails it to Castle Karnstein, where the Count turns her into a vampire and offers her his understandably horrified girlfriend as her first kill.

Frieda, fully vamped-out.

From that point on, Frieda becomes a full-blown force in direct opposition to common decency and starts feasting her way through the immediate populace, all while innocent Maria realizes something is quite wrong and the hunky boar-hunting choirmaster at the girls' needlepoint school (who coincidentally happens to be an expert on the occult in general and vampires in particular) begins fancying Maria, a sentiment that is definitely mutual. Needless to say, these plotlines eventually collide with apocalyptic results, and no one comes out of it unscathed.

The twins in their room: guess which one's the newly-minted undead suckface?

Following THE VAMPIRE LOVERS (1970) and LUST FOR A VAMPIRE (1971) as the final installment of the trilogy, TWINS OF EVIL kicks the shamelessly exploitative lesbian angle to the curb, presumably in favor of the titillating twin thing, but the two do not spend even one second face-deep in each others' humid and furry recesses, which is surprising since the Collinsons reportedly did exactly that three years earlier in SOME LIKE IT SEXY, one of the innumerable European softcore flicks, a film shot when they were seventeen (!!!). Hailing from Malta, the mirror-image beauties came to the attention of the American public when they became PLAYBOY's first twin centerfold models in the landmark skin-mag's October 1970 issue.

Needless to say, many an imagination was put into carnal overdrive at the mere thought of the myriad geometric configurations possible with this pair of stunners, and their centerfold has since understandably become the stuff of legend.

Mary and Madeleine Collinson, PLAYBOY's first twin centerfold models. Jumpin' Jesus in a basket of honey-glazed chicken...

Sadly, TWINS OF EVIL proved to be the last acting work of the Collinsons, but their legacy lives on in the hearts of vampire fans and Hammer devotees. What I would not give for their autographs on this behind-the-scenes shot...

This is only a third of the shot in question; the rest can be seen in author and Hammer expert Wayne Kinsey's excellent book HAMMER FILMS: A LIFE IN PICTURES (2008).

Along with the indelible presence of the Collinson sisters, TWINS OF EVIL offers a plot that's sure to keep vampire fans glued to their seats and is a firm reminder of the time before Anne Rice pussified vampires by making them into unscary fops, a cultural blight that opened the door for the even more odious pussification found in the TWILIGHT series (aka "Transylvania 90210"). Hammer's trademark Gothic sensibility is in full effect here, aided and abetted by Peter Cushing's fantastic performance as Brother Weil, and the expected amount of gore and boobs that put the company on the map. Though quite tame by today's standards, the "adult" content found here was the good stuff back in the days and it still serves its purpose, yet its excesses are nothing that I would not allow my nieces and nephews to see.

Madeleine Collinson's "rightie": not a threat to western civilization. Quite the opposite, actually.

The sexy bits are handled with considerable good taste and would mostly go right over the heads of the under-tens — a naked boob here and there notwithstanding — and the gore, while shocking, is of the bogus but fun red paint variety familiar to anyone who's seen even one post-1966 Hammer flick. For example:

And this:

The film also contains what may be the best Hammer beheading on record, but I'll let you see that one for yourself when you check out the movie.

TWINS OF EVIL definitely doesn't deserve its rep as a feeble late entry in Hammer's vampire cycle, and I'm guessing it wears that ignominious mantle due to audiences who'd enjoyed the Sapphic elements in the two previous Karnstein movies being irked at the loss of the girl-on-girl action. Whatever the reason for that unfair assessment, it is an unfair cross that the film bears and now the film can be re-evaluated on DVD by those who did not get to see it thanks to it being infrequently run on TV or any of the numerous cable movie channels (although I hear it has run fairly recently in uncut form on Turner Classic Movies). If submitted as is to the MPAA nowadays for a rating, TWINS OF EVIL would most likely garner an R for the very brief nudity, but it's really a hard PG-13 if you ask me, so TRUST YER BUNCHE and add it to your Netflix queue.

RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (1962)

The westerns of Sam Peckinpah come from a place informed by the director's boyhood amongst real-life cowboy types and his absorption of their reminiscences of the waning days of the old west, and RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY is the film where the Peckinpah oeuvre as we came to know it got started. Originally intended as nothing more than a B western, in Peckinpah's hands RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY stands as a solid and very entertaining tale of two aging lawmen whose era has come and gone.

Western cinema legends Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea as Gil Westrum and Steve Judd.

Western legends Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott star as Steve Judd and Gil Westrum, once partners in law enforcement, but now considered over the hill. When Judd takes a job transporting what's quoted as a quarter of a million dollars-worth of gold from a mountain mining camp, he encounters Westrum for the first time in years and enlists his old friend's aid as a second hand for the job. But while Judd has stayed true to his path as a lawman, Westrum has fallen to working as a carnival games gunman in the Buffalo Bill mold and engaging in endeavors of questionable legality with the young and impetuous Heck Longtree (Ron Starr), and, at Westrum's suggestion, the two plot to go along with the trusting Judd and steal the gold once it's transported away from the mining camp. Longtree's an excitable kid with no impulse control and a hair-trigger temper, so he spends a considerable amount of the story fucking up and getting his ass handed to him by a number of opponents, including the elder lawmen who both rightly think he needs to get his shit together as a man. A major stumbling block on Longtree's path of development enters the narrative in the form of Elsa Knudsen (Mariette Hartley in her screen debut), a lovely young woman who leads a restrictive and sheltered life with her fanatical preacher dad (R.G. Armstrong), a man of the cloth who sees sin in everyone and everything, so he has done all within his power to keep his daughter away from the outside world. (There is a strong hint of the preacher thinking that no man is good enough for his daughter except for himself, a point that his daughter calls him on and earns her a hard smack in the mouth for her efforts.)

Longtree (Ron Starr), about to put the moves on Elsa (Mariette Hartley).

Upon seeing Elsa, Longtree immediately puts the moves on her, but finds out that she is engaged, a point that frustrates him because Elsa is clearly attracted to his rough-and-tumble bad boy charm (isn't that always the case?). Much to her father's consternation, Elsa tags along with Judd and his cohorts since they are on their way to the camp where her miner fiancee, Billy Hammond (James Drury) resides, and during the trip Longtree attempts to get "ungentlemanly" with the shocked Elsa, an act that earns him a back-to-back ass-kicking from the elder gunslingers. All the while, Westrum schemes to steal the gold, fully aware that he would be betraying his old friend in doing so, but an old dude's gotta do what an old dude's gotta do...

Upon arriving at the mining camp, Judd begins collecting the gold while Longtree, now pissed off about Elsa leaving, escorts Elsa to the area where her fiancee lives with his four brothers. Much to Elsa's horror (and Longtree's, for that matter), it very quickly becomes apparent that once married to her loutish fiancee, Elsa will be expected to share her body with her husband's brothers, a scurvy and unwashed bunch comprised of, among others, L.Q. Jones and the always sleazy (and awesomely so) Warren Oates.

The grubby redneck awesomeness that was Warren Oates.

That prospect is bad enough on general principle, but it's made worse by the simple fact that Billy's brothers are about on par with the ass-rapin' hillbillies from DELIVERANCE or the cannibal mutants in THE HILLS HAVE EYES, only displaying a rather sociopathically redneck sense of humor.

Perhaps the worst wedding in cinema history.

The naive Elsa gets a hard dose of reality when the wedding ceremony, held at the divey local saloon/whorehouse, swiftly degenerates into a Fellini-esque parade of human freakishness and poor behavior fueled by booze that culminates in her attempted gang rape at the hands of the Hammond brothers. Fortunately, Elsa's screams attract the attention of our heroes and they rush to her rescue, holding off her would-be attackers at gunpoint and hauling her ass out of there. The Hammonds are not at all pleased with this development and challenge Judd and company's right to Elsa in a miner's court, but Westrum resorts to a necessary underhanded move (that I won't spoil for you) to ensure Elsa does not end up returned to what would be a lifetime of unwilling sexual slavery, and our heroes leave to return her to her father. But just before they set off to take Elsa home, it is revealed that the estimated quarter-mil to be transported is actually less than one tenth of that figure, but Westrum's desperate enough to continue on with his plan, something that does not sit well with young Longtree, who has come to respect Judd and re-consider his partnership with the duplicitous Westrum. When Judd twigs to Westrum's intended treachery, things take a turn for the worse, only to be compounded by the very pissed-off Hammonds who are bent on getting Elsa back by many means necessary...

I've only related the basic elements of the film's plot, but several of what would become recurring themes in Peckinpah's films are set in stone with this narrative. The plight of the elder gunslinger becoming a dinosaur with the advent of the 20th century, examinations of masculine loyalty, the redemption of men who have lost their moral way, it's all here, plus a very sympathetic female character in Elsa. Who can't understand the sadness of her desire to escape her smothering life on her dad's farm, only to have her dreams of a better, more exciting life utterly crushed by her filthy fiancee and his disgusting, drooling brothers? Peckinpah is obviously very much on Elsa's side, despite her naivete, thus shooting down his oft-cited reputation as a misogynistic pig.

RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY is truly one of the great westerns and should not be missed by serious students of the genre or even the casual DVD watcher. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for a great many reasons that I will leave you to discover for yourself.

THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE (1970)

Stella Stevens and Jason Robards in a sweet love story directed by Sam (THE WILD BUNCH) Peckinpah. Yes, you read that right.

It will come as no surprise that Sam Peckinpah is a filmmaker whose body of work I mostly hold in very high esteem (though let us not make mention of THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND), yet in recent weeks I realized I had not yet seen all of his films. Setting out in earnest to correct that gaping hole in my cinematic education, I ordered some of what I had not seen from Amazon and what awaited me was a pair of very pleasant surprises. I'll get to discussing RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY soon, but before that I thought I'd show some love to THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE, easily the most atypical of Peckinpah's films and one of the most under-appreciated and misunderstood.

Coming a year after his fantastically violent (for its time) and simultaneously artistic THE WILD BUNCH (1969), THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE is a work that seems almost intentionally calculated to piss off audiences whose blood thirst was catered to with Peckinpah's previous film. It's a western alright, but when you look at it it's really a love story that happens to have a western setting. Yes, you read that right: a love story directed by Sam Peckinpah, a complex filmmaker and man whose work and person have been labeled as misogynistic innumerable times over the past four decades.

Rated R for no good reason — it would get a PG-13 if submitted to the MPAA these days — THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE is the story of the title character (played by Jason Robards in an outstanding and totally believable performance), a man whose "friends" (L.Q. Jones and Strother Martin) strand him in the desert with no water, yet, after a few day's trek through blistering heat and a sandstorm, he discovers a watering hole and survives to profit from it. After setting up a dinky makeshift way-station where he charges ten cents per drink — the nearest water for horses and carriage passengers is twenty miles in either direction — Hogue meets a sleazy and rather fraudulent traveling preacher (David Warner, in the first of three collaborations with Peckinpah) who gives him the idea of staking a legal claim on the land where the water is. Venturing into the nearest town to make said claim, Hogue lays eyes on Hildy (Stella Stevens in her finest role), a local whore, and in no time Hogue finds himself deeply smitten by her. There are other sub-plots, the most significant one involving Hogue's firm belief that the sons of bitches who left him to die will some day end up at the watering hole and in Hogue's vengeance-seeking clutches, but the film belongs to the romance of Hogue and Hildy, and if ever there were a film featuring a believable "whore with a heart of gold," this is it. The two snags in all of this are Hildy's disapproval of Hogue's plan for vengeance, something that does not sit well with her or the audience because Hogue is clearly not a killer, and Hildy's goal to leave the remote desert town for the high life in San Francisco, a path that will spell the end of a relationship that's a truly beautiful thing to behold. The sweet Hogue treats Hildy like the lady she very obviously is, her vocation as a whore not mattering to him one bit, and his kindness to and respect for her affect the woman deeply, an aspect of the tale that also touches the audience. Stevens deserved an Oscar for her performance, as did Robards, and their romance is a great example of the oft-seen but seldom believable cinematic trope of true love. The montage that illustrates Hildy and Hogue's blossoming relationship once she moves in with him out in the middle of nowhere is both sweetly intimate and heartfelt, and considering my love of Peckinpah's testosterone-fueled cinema of violence and sheer manliness, you can imagine my surprise at discovering the director was capable of anything even remotely within that realm of appreciably tender humanity.

Along with the unlikely spectacle of a Peckinpah romance, the film is also loaded with the most humor in any Peckinpah film before or since, and, unlike many attempts at comedy within a western context, it actually works here to genuinely amusing effect. Hogue's dealings with officials in the town, Cable's initial encounter with Hildy and his subsequent fleeing from the saloon where she plies her trade, the preacher's "comforting" of a nubile and grieving young woman, and several other segments are quite funny and may be somewhat jarring to some of those in the audience who expected a standard western, especially when taking into account the film's very straight and dead-serious opening five minutes and largely serious final fifth. It's something to keep in mind when approaching this film for the first time.

Considering how open, honest and tender THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE is, I would have loved to see Peckinpah return to the narrative well from which it sprang, but such was not to be. Peckinpah immediately followed THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE with 1971's STRAW DOGS, a vicious piece of work that more than any other earned him his rep as a misogynist (thanks to its infamous two-on-one rape scene) and remains highly controversial to this day. That film could not have been more of a polar opposite to CABLE HOGUE if it tried, and from then on Peckinpah remained firmly entrenched in the realm of ass-kicking uber-masculinity, forever more denying his potential for the more sensitive story to us he-men who are unafraid of and unashamed about our enjoyment of that which is romantic.

There is much about the film's plot particulars that I have not discussed in order not to spoil its myriad surprises for the first-timer, so I'll sum up by saying that this is a very special film from a director who handled elegiac looks at the old west like no other, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to see a side of Sam Peckinpah that puts the lie to those who ignorantly slag him off as a macho shithead. With that in mind, I especially recommend THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE to any women who never gave Peckinpah a chance thanks to his mis-diagnosed misogyny or a dislike of westerns. TRUST YER BUNCHE!!!

Poster from the original theatrical release.

LAND OF THE LOST (2009)

I don't know what you think, but I say the vast majority of feature films culled from old TV shows majorly bite the big one, so with that fact in mind, coupled with a general apathy toward the overrated comedic talents of Will Farrell, I gave the bigscreen adaptation of LAND OF THE LOST a miss during its bid for summer blockbuster supremacy. Considering how the movie was obviously replete with dinosaurs, sci-fi elements and lowbrow humor, all things that I usually enjoy, me skipping it confused the hell out of several of my friends, but even with my love of stories in which dinosaurs eat each other's heads and also chomp on hapless humans, I was never a fan of the 1970's Sid & Marty Kroft kiddie show that served as the movie's source material. The previous works of the Krofts did little to draw me in — with the hippieish Brit charms of Joy from THE BUGALOOS being a rare exception to that rule — and the dime store dinosaurs found on LAND OF THE LOST looked rather wan to the eyes of a nine-year-old already indoctrinated to the films of Ray Harryhausen (although I did give them props for giving stop-motion a shot on Saturday morning). Come to think of it, one of my grade school contemporaries at the time described the show's baby Brontosaurus character, "Dopey," as looking like it had been cobbled together from freshly chewed bubble gum. I thought that assessment to be more than a little unkind, but the show did bear an undeniably cheesy look and feel that helped to nearly bulldoze over such fascinating elements as Enik (a super-genius lizard-man in a dress) and the mystery of the Pylons, a series of semi-organic formations that served as controllable gateways through time and space (controllable provided you had a clue as to how to operate the damned things). But whatever my own feelings on the series, LAND OF THE LOST lives on in the hearts and minds of those who were there to experience it as it happened, and even its budgetary constraints could not quash its considerable imagination (something that can also be said of DOCTOR WHO back in the days).

So then came the inevitable movie version of LAND OF THE LOST, a film that was met with indifference at best from many critics and outright panning from others, to say nothing of a largely apathetic response from the moviegoing public, thus leading the film's box office receipts to fall short of its production costs. In other words, it bombed. I was surprised by that, especially when taking into account how brain-dead audiences have turned pieces of shit like EPIC MOVIE and PAUL BLART: MALL COP into box office champs. Then AIN'T IT COOL NEWS — a journalistic organ whose critical opinions I give virtually no credence — intrigued me by postulating that the movie's failure lay in the fact that it was improperly marketed, with the studio pushing it on a kiddie audience when the film's content was clearly aimed at a fifteen-and-up audience. Now that I've seen the movie on DVD I have to agree with AIN'T IT COOL NEWS. The bigscreen LAND OF THE LOST was in no way what either the general audience or the original TV show's fans were expecting, taking the show's main concepts and jettisoning nearly everything else to come up with a parody of the concept, what I would consider something like a comedic DOCTOR WHO story as done by Americans, only minus the Doctor and packing a huge special effects budget.

The Land of the Lost: an extra-dimensional dumping ground for all of time and space.

Disgraced scientist Dr. Rick Marshall (Will Farrell), his cute British field assistant and science groupie Holly Cantrell (Anna Friel), and white trash roadside attraction owner Will Stanton (Danny McBride) find themselves hurled through a warp in time and space that traps them in a bizarre inter-dimensional nexus where they encounter hairy and horny proto-human Chaka (Jorma Taccone) and a number of threats in the hostile environment that make nearly every waking moment a fight for their lives. The exact whys and wherefores of how they got there and their motivations once stuck in the Land of the Lost are utterly beside the point and merely serve as a springboard for wall-to-wall live-action (and CGI) cartoon gags, so if you're expecting anything other than that you're shit outta luck. Many of the old school LAND OF THE LOST purists that I know wanted a big-budget rehash of their beloved kiddie show and as a result did not care for the feature film, but when I mentioned all of the stuff that I enjoyed in the movie as a non-fan and an appreciator of a fun parody, they agreed with each item cited. Go figure.

Holly and Dr. Marshall with the "tachyon amplifier," a device that opens a doorway to the Land of the Lost while blaring "I Hope I Get It" from A CHORUS LINE.

As stated, there really isn't much of a story but it's got it's moments, such as:

• Dr. Marshall arrogantly going on and on about a pursuing Tyrannosaurus Rex's allegedly walnut-sized brain when in actuality the T-Rex — a great parodic version of "Grumpy" from the TV series, and after whom this version is named — is not only smart but downright intelligent and it does not take kindly to Marshall talking that condescending shit, thus setting up the film's best running gag.

Grumpy, not at all amused by Dr. Marshall's ignorant trash talk.

• The film's version of Chaka is quite amusing, as is Dr. Marshall's first instinct upon meeting him being to attempt to "benevolently" enslave the ape-man and have himself accepted as his god. When Chaka completely ignores that crap, Marshall's frustrated reactions are priceless.

• There's a male bonding sequence involving Marshall, Will, Chaka and heavy-duty natural hallucinogens that joins the ranks of the classics of the genre.
• If you ever wondered what would happen if a Good Humor-style ice cream truck, complete with uniformed ice cream man, suddenly landed in one of the more hostile areas of Jurassic Park, wonder no more.
• The sequences featuring Marshall on the TODAY show tormenting interviewer Matt Lauer (playing himself) that serve as the movie's bookends are hilarious, especially the one at the end that proves the whole movie was merely one big setup for a punchline at Lauer's expense.

So the bottom line is that LAND OF THE LOST is a fun time-waster of a live-action cartoon that succeeds well enough for what it tries to be and it's definitely more entertaining than the majority of feature films with their roots in old television properties. It's a perfect mellow stoner film with a decent amount of genuine laughs (I laughed out loud several times and was not stoned, BTW), wall-to-wall visuals of interest, a shitload of Sleestak (including Enik) and a terrific take on Grumpy, so I say give it a look when it's on cable or snag it on Netflix.

Will encounters the "ugly" females of Chaka's tribe.

INGLORIOUS BASTERDS (2009)

 

 Quentin Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS was a movie I meant to see on the big screen but missed thanks to every single show I tried to get into being sold out, so I figured I'd wait until it hit DVD. Well, less than four months after its U.S. theatrical run it's out on disc and I sat through it the other night, fully expecting an R-rated, ultra-violent, cussing-riddled Q.T. version of SGT. FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS, but what I got was something else entirely.

I read the film's script when it was leaked to the Internet (however long ago that was) and figured what I read was most likely going to see several revisions before it finally hit the screen, simply because the movie read more like some kind of WWII-set arthouse flick rather than the kind of non-stop violence-fest I would have expected from Tarantino. Let's face it: when evaluating the guy's filmography it's impossible not to realize that what he's succeeded in building his career on is crafting what are basically high-end exploitation movies. To some degree each of his films has taken the tropes of a given exploitation mainstay genre — crime thrillers, blaxploitation, revenge/chopsocky flicks — and stripped them of their low-budget rawness while infusing them with a "quality" Hollywood look and not losing an ounce of that signature exploitation visceral charge, and now Tarantino applies his grunge-film makeover skills to the brutal WWII "mission" genre, and the finished product did indeed undergo a number of tweaks from what I read in the script, including the loss of my favorite scene, but I'll be getting to that shortly.

WARNING: If you intend to read any further, keep in mind that here there be spoilers.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (a title whose spelling is at no point explained in the film) is ostensibly about a behind-enemy-lines mission undertaken by commanding officer Aldo "The Apache" Raine (Brad Pitt, chewing up the scenery in unashamed and ludicrous full-blown good ol' boy mode) in which he and his all-Jewish squad of American commandos wage a war of terror against their Nazi foes. Making a name for themselves as a deadly scourge of the Boche, Raine and his "Basterds" mercilessly exterminate all comers and mark any they chose to let live to spread the word of their terroristic activities with a swastika carved into their foreheads with the tip of Raine's Bowie knife, an act that strikes deep terror into the hearts of Nazi scum everywhere.

The Bear Jew (Eli Roth) and Aldo the Apache (Brad Pitt) do what they do best, and it sure ain't pretty.

When the Basterds are assigned to wipe out the German political/military hierarchy while said officials attend a film premiere in occupied France, their plans coincidentally collide with a similar agenda held by Shoshanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), a French Jew who escaped the massacre of the rest of her family at the hands of Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), a Nazi whose renowned knack for tracking down Jews earned him the nickname of "the Jew Hunter." Escaping from Landa some four years before the real meat of the story takes place, Shoshanna inherited a movie theater in Paris (stocked with an impressive library of highly flammable reels of old film prints) and through various plot machinations ends up being forced to host the aforementioned premiere.

Shoshanna (Melanie Laurent) steels herself for the premiere of "Nation's Pride."

Filled with a desire for righteous vengeance, Shoshanna, aided by her lover (Jacky Ido), aims to trap Hitler, Goebbels, Goering and other high-ranking officials within her cinema and burn the place to the ground. As the plans of the Batserds and Shoshanna converge, an apocalypse of carnage is guaranteed, but will the good guys prevail or will they end up just another statistic on the Third Reich's score card?

That's the basic setup and it sounds like fertile ground for a slam-bang WWII-era actioner, no? Well lemme tell ya, bunky, if you're looking for action, you've come to the wrong war movie. Rather than being the DIRTY DOZEN-style pic the trailers led one to believe it was, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is more of a somewhat-highbrow WWII epic with arthouse pretensions that is by no means a bad movie, but it is definitely not all that it's been cracked up to be. Let's break it down, both the good and the not-so-good (there's very little here that is outright bad):

• The movie is over two-and-a-half hours long and there is perhaps a total of ten minutes of action/mayhem. Not good for a war movie that advertises itself as an action flick.
• Despite being the title characters, the Basterds are given virtually no development and consequently register less as characters than as interchangeable plastic army men. The small exceptions to this interchangeable aspect are Lt. Raine, psychopathic German/former Nazi team member Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger), and the menacing Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth), aka "the Bear Jew" who savagely beats Nazis to death with a baseball bat, but the minuscule development they receive is not sufficient to make us connect with them as heroes. The remaining Basterds are cannon fodder at best.

• For all intents and purposes the film really belongs to Shoshanna and her plan for revenge, which is simultaneously given a boost and a thorn in her side when she catches the attention of young Nazi war hero Frederick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl). Zoller stars in "Nation's Pride," a feature film dramatizing a battle in which he picked off scores of men while holed up in an unreachable tower, and he attempts to win over Shoshanna with his status as a star, not knowing he doesn't stand a chance with him thanks to her justifiable loathing of Nazis. Much of the film has to do with Shoshanna's futile and frustrating attempts to give the young soldier the brush-off, but his efforts to win her over include him convincing Goebbels to hold the film's premiere at her cinema, thus cementing the location for the grand finale.

• While not as oppressive with his cinematic cherry-picking and references this time around, Tarantino did annoy the living shit out of me by using David Bowie's "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" as a would-be mood-setter as Shoshanna gets ready for the big premiere evening. That song is indelibly linked to Paul Schrader's (1982) remake of CAT PEOPLE, and those of us who've seen that film cannot hear that tune without having flashbacks to hallucinatory sandy dreamscapes, horny panthers and a sultry Nastassja Kinski, so finding its dance floor-flavored throb juxtaposed against a WWII setting is both jarring and incongruous. Yeah, I get that Shoshanna is "putting out the fire" of the entire Nazi hierarchy by trapping them and immolating them, but the use of that song was just too on the nose.
  

• Christoph Waltz's Hans Landa is a terrific villain and completely steals the movie whenever he's onscreen.
  

The superb Christoph Waltz as the vile yet utterly charming Hans Landa, aka "the Jew Hunter."No lie, this guy deserves the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

Landa is smooth as greased otter shit, an accomplished detective (albeit one who puts his considerable talents to highly questionable uses), quite charming, a polyglot with apparently native speaker fluency (which is a huge problem if you're trying to get disguised enemy operatives past him, as happens during the story) and a pragmatic opportunist of the highest order. When it comes to bad guys, Hans Landa comes from out of nowhere to make my Top 10 list of the best villains of the past fifty years, so make of that what you will. In fact, I think Tarantino's biggest error was in not devoting a whole movie to the character, especially since Tarantino looooooooves characters who like a good conversation, but audiences may have suffered from the CLOCKWORK ORANGE effect had that been the case, and would probably have left the theater realizing they'd been made to care about a piece of human garbage. Very charming garbage, yes, but refuse nonetheless.

• By far the worst thing in the film is the ill-advised inclusion of Mike "Austin Powers" Myers in the role of a high-ranking British military official. When he shows up in a uniform and makeup that renders him balding, bewhiskered and graying, the viewer cannot help by say, "Hey! That's Mike Myers! What the fuck is he doing in this film?" Seriously, when he appears he launches into more of his tired U.K.-accented schtick, although not (?) meant to be humorous in this context, and his miscast and intrusive presence brings the movie to a dead stop and completely removes the viewer from the "reality" that the film had thus far successfully set up.

• In Tarantino's original script, there was a powerful explanation of why Donny Donowitz wields a baseball bat against Nazis, namely that he'd gone throughout his neighborhood and asked all the Jews who still had family in the old country to write the names of their loved ones on his bat, thus infusing it with power to be used against the enemies of their people. I dunno what you have to say about it, but that's some major mythic shit that I completely understand and feel would have gone a long way to give the Bear Jew a stance as a righteous avenger instead of just presenting him as some creepy thug with a bloodied Louisville Slugger. Do yourself the favor and track down the script online, then read the sequence where Donowitz explains his mission to an old lady in his neighborhood. Very strong narrative stuff that is nowhere to be found in the final product.

• For those of you who hate sitting through films with subtitles, bear in mind that a good two-thirds or more of INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is in French, German and a smattering of Italian, so have your reading glasses at the ready. I enjoyed this aspect of the film because the speaking of native languages only adds to the authenticity.
  

• For me the film seemed less like a straight-flowing narrative and came off like a collection of well-shot and well-acted one act sequences, most of which were of interest and occasionally compelling and suspenseful as hell. That said, the movie did not work for me as a cohesive whole work. There was just...something missing, and I can't quite figure out what.

Bottom line, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS looks great and is definitely worth sitting through once, but I find it odd that the film fleshes out everybody except the guys who you'd think were supposed to be the main characters. Perhaps this was Tarantino's attempt to outgrow his more overt exploitation influences, but I found it to be a valiant near-miss. And for the record, out of Q.T.'s entire filmography, I would rate this admittedly opulent and well-acted work as last in my estimation of his work. Some of his other films are flawed, but this is the only one I would never sit through again (although I could be tempted back just to see Christoph Waltz again).

THE CINE-MISCREANT MOTHER'S DAY FILM FESTIVAL

Yes, it's once again Mother's Day, the annual recognition and appreciation of those from whose tortured loins we emerged into this cruel, cruel world. If you're lucky you get a mom who loves and nurtures you, but if you are not so fortunate, you could end up with a mom like one of the ladies to whom I here pay tribute. If you have not seen these movies, you have missed some fine examples of motherhood at its most heinous, sleazy, insane and diabolical. In other words, that's entertainment!

STIFFLER'S MOM from AMERICAN PIE (1999)

While she's definitely a het high school male fantasy come true, Stiffler's mom (Jennifer Coolidge), the character who introduced the term "M.I.L.F." to the common lexicon, is a disturbing fusion of classy, sexy and sleazy as hell. I understand that a cougar's gotta do what a cougar's gotta do, but you don't fuck one of your son's underage best friends, especially not during a party in your own house, and on the pool table, no less. An act compounded by being witnessed by her understandably appalled son.

VIOLA FIELDS from MONSTER-IN-LAW (2005)

Even though her insane obsession and evil was directed at the horrendous Jennifer Lopez, Jane Fonda as the ultimate mom who could not let go of her son cannot possibly be considered a hero.

"MOTHER" from MOTHER'S DAY (1980)

What can you really say about an aged Aunt May-type who lives in the deep woods of New Jersey and teaches her pair of mentally ill sons to rape, murder and torture innocent victims because it's fun? She's so fucking sick that she actually has an area in the backyard reserved for private "shows" in which her boys act out scenarios using terrified young women they've kidnapped in the female roles, such as "cute girl sitting on a park bench," and this mad form of "theater" inevitably ends with the poor girl in question being beaten and tag team raped while mom watches with a huge smile on her face.

MRS. BATES from PSYCHO (1960)

I know this entry is a major spoiler, but if you have not seen this movie by now, you really have no excuse. We never see Mrs. Bates when she was alive — that's covered in PSYCHO IV: THE BEGINNING (1990) — but we can judge her by what she wrought, namely her creepy, taxidermy-obsessed, sexually-confused and ultimately murderous cross-dresser of a son with a split personality, Norman, who single-handedly embodied what later became known as the "slasher" archetype for nearly two decades before the actual slasher genre even got started. So fucked up was her son, that he heard her screeching and scornful voice in his head long after her demise, and any thoughts of lust were soon superseded by mother's desire to crush that sort of thing by any means necessary...

MARY from PRECIOUS (2009)

Probably the most realistically portrayed character on this list, Mary qualifies as a mother only insomuch as she gave physical birth to the story's utter victim of a title character. Way too close to reality, Mary is a horrid, horrid creation, and Mo'Nique's ultra-disturbing portrayal of her was completely deserving of the Oscar she won for it.

BETH JARRETT from ORDINARY PEOPLE (1981)

Mary Tyler Moore killed her sweet, kooky and perky image and buried it stone-cold tits-up dead with this Oscar-nominated portrayal of an embittered and emotionally abusive mother who cruelly torments her remaining son in the wake of her favored older boy's untimely death.

JOAN CRAWFORD from MOMMIE DEAREST (1981)

In a simultaneously brilliant and completely over-the-top performance, Faye Dunaway chews up the scenery like a rabid wolverine on a fistful of Stud City animal stimulants as Hollywood legend Joan Crawford in the film adaptation of Crawford's real-life adopted daughter's tell-all bestseller. Say it with me: "No wire hangers, EVER!!!"

MARGARET WHITE from CARRIE (1976)

Being a physically and emotionally abusive mother is one thing, but throw in utter madness and waaaaaay out of control religious mania and hangups about sex and you have the worst person possible for raising an introverted, socially ostracized girl who has just experienced her first period. Abused, perpetually fearful and practically driven insane by her mother since childhood, poor Carrie's body signalling her ascent into womanhood sets into motion a tragedy of epic proportions, and it does not help that Carrie, denounced by her mother as some sort of Satanic abomination, is a powerful telekinetic... Though nominated for the 1976 Supporting Actress Oscar for this performance, Piper Laurie was denied that honor when the statue went to 12-year-old Jodie Foster as a child prostitute in the excellent TAXI DRIVER. Foster was quite good, but if you ask me Laurie was unfairly robbed and the Academy gave Foster the Oscar because she was a kid playing a whore. NOTE: Actually it was Beatrice Straight who won for NETWORK; I misread the info during my research. Well spotted, Laser Rocket Arm! It's loyal readers like you who keep this blog on its toes.

ELEANOR ISELIN from THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962)

This Oscar-nominated role forever made it impossible for me to think of MURDER, SHE WROTE's Angela Lansbury as anything other than coldly evil. I can't explain why without giving away the intricacies of the film's exceptional plot, so just rent it. TRUST YER BUNCHE on this one.

ROSE-ANN D'ARCY from A PATCH OF BLUE (1965)

In what is my all-time favorite tearjerker movie, Shelley Winters deservedly copped an Oscar for her portrayal of the drunken, uncouth, aging white trash whore who intentionally keeps her blinded-by-acid teenage daughter uneducated and helpless, all while plotting with her best friend (who's another long-in-the-tooth prostitute) to start her own whorehouse with her blind daughter as her first rent girl, partly figuring that it was the logical thing to do since her kid had been "done over" when left alone with one of her mother's horny Johns. Rose-Ann maliciously beats and verbally abuses her daughter, Selina (heartbreakingly played by Elizabeth Hartman), and things only get worse when Selina forms an innocent friendship with Gordon (Sidney Poitier) as she sits alone in the local park, threading beaded necklaces that her mother sells to a local sweatshop. Being blind, Selina at first has no idea that Gordon is black, and since he's the first person who's been kind to her in years, going so far as to teach her basic survival skills over the course of their association, Selina, who's definitely blossoming into full-on womanhood, begins to fall in love with her friend and the feeling is mutual. Then mom finds out... No bullshit, if you have not seen or heard of A PATCH OF BLUE, rent it immediately.

THE MACHINE GIRL (2008)

Dear Readers-

if you, like me, are fed up with movies that promise heaps of action, gore and blistering violence but then pussy out in every possible way, allow me to direct you to THE MACHINE GIRL, a live action Japanese offering that is so balls-out crazy and over-the-top across the board that it brought an ear-to-ear smile to my face. 

I was intrigued by this film's trailer when I saw it several months ago, so when I stumbled across the movie itself while DVD shopping on Friday I figured I'd take a chance on it, and, hoo-boy, am I glad I did. I've frequently decried the shit quality of many recent action flicks from the Land of the Rising Sun, but this one gets a solid 10 out of 10 for its unfailing intent to give the bloodthirsty audience exactly what it wants. And then some! It's the goriest film I've seen in who knows how long, and as per what you'd expect from the Japanese it's barking mad in its over the top carnage and violence; no bullshit, I had exclaimed "Holy shit!" no less than three times before the movie was even five minutes into its running time.

A sterling example of the tried and true "you killed my brother" revenge genre, THE MACHINE GIRL takes the story of a high school girl named Ami (Minase Yashiro, in her film debut) who seeks retribution for her younger brother's murder at the hands of a pack of sadistic bullies and sends it clear into the stratosphere of mayhem-laden ass-whuppin' by rendering the sanguinary set pieces as impossibly and cartoonishly spewy as is possible to depict, all while maintaining a brisk pace that barely allows viewers time to catch their breath. The character development is minimal at best, and once the heroine's motivation is established, it's off to the races. To put it as simply as the film does, Ami tracks down the bullies and metes out justice accented with geysers of blood and entrails, losing her left arm in a one-two punch of a tempura deep-frying and a samurai sword dismemberment along the way, eventually replacing her missing limb with a fully functional assault helicopter's machine gun — complete with a seemingly endless supply of rounds — and, near the film's climax, a chain saw originally wielded by her garage mechanic ally.

A bit from the chainsaw fight, before the spewing blood was added.

And as if that isn't enough, the cowardly asshole who leads the bullies is revealed to not only be a spoiled Yakuza prince, but also the heir to a clan of ninja descended from the legendary Hattori Hanzo himself, so we also get modern day ninja action thrown into the mix for good, extra-stupid measure. It's an orgy of bloodshed, creative demises, loony superheroics, and a complete disconnect from reality in one of those worlds where the police simply do not exist until well after the participants in the mayhem have bled out, and I thoroughly enjoyed every frame of the damned thing.

As you've probably gathered, THE MACHINE GIRL is unrelentingly excessive, but the film is so crazy that it soon veers into outright parody of its own genre and is frequently hilarious because it's all played totally straight, with heaps of ass-kicking and violence committed by a cute schoolgirl in one of those now-fetishized school uniforms. And what's not to love about a film featuring the return of the favorite weapon of all us martial arts movie buffs: the venerable "flying guillotine?" And, yes, there's more than a bit of a debt owed to both PLANET TERROR (2007) and ARMY OF DARKNESS (1992), but I had more fun with this movie than both of those flicks combined (and I liked both of them to varying degrees). And just so we're absolutely clear on this, Peter Jackson's DEADALIVE (aka BRAIN DEAD, 1992) still gets my vote as the goriest film ever made — or that it's even possible to make — but THE MACHINE GIRL gives it a damned good shot at the title, and it's entertaining as a motherfucker. TRUST YER BUNCHE and put THE MACHINE GIRL at the top of your Netflix queue immediately!

Ami (Minase Yashiro), in sore need of a shower.