Gobsmacking Cinema: THE BABY (1973)

Directed by Ted Post, who gave us the wonderful BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES, and improved no end by a Gerald Fried score that is by turns ominous and unmistakably seventies, this thriller has to be seen to be believed. I almost called it a horror movie, but to be honest I don't know how to classify it.

The story, which borders on ridiculous from the off, centres around a grown man with the mind of a baby, his domineering mother and the kind-hearted social worker who takes a special interest in the case. So far, so daft.

It gets odder though. As if the sight of a grown man wearing a nappy and making baby noises isn't strange (and vaguely uncomfortable) enough, the real action is yet to come. How about a sexual advance on him by a babysitter? How about that same babysitter having the crap beaten out of her by the man's mother?

Still not doing it for you? Okay, lets throw in a trippy birthday party, hints of incest and the impromptu use of tasers.

If I've still not convinced you, well, first of all, what's wrong with you? And secondly, you should still see this film anyway. It's colourful, it's totally deranged and it's like nothing else you've seen. You'll spend the whole film wondering if you should feel amused or disturbed.

Best of all, the highlight is saved for last. I won't spoil it here, but let's just say that the expected sensible action of the social worker taking some kind of court action against the mother never quite materialises, and the final scene... well, I still don't know if it's amazingly downbeat or stupidly happy but it's certainly interesting.

With no big names attached to it and presumably many markets not knowing what to make of such a crazy film, it's understandable that it has faded into obscurity. I'm not about to proclaim it as a classic (well, actually, maybe I am, though a classic of what I'm not sure) but urge anyone with a chance to see it to do so. Love it or hate it, you certainly won't forget it.

Best of 2008 (15-11)

15 THERE WILL BE BLOOD
Daniel Day Lewis deserved his Oscar for a terrific performance, although it perhaps overshadowed what was an overall triumph of filmmaking.

14 CLOVERFIELD
Or, GODZILLA with a handycam. There are certain lapses of logic but most only become obvious when you stop to think about it - which, during this rollercoaster ride, you're not likely to do too often.

13 NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD
Brilliant documentary about the world of Australian cult cinema.

12 A BLOODY CANVAS
Fascinating documentary about an incredible boxing match that took place on St Patrick's Day in Dublin during the Irish civil war.

11 PASSAGE
The accepted history of the discovery of the North West Passage gets a good kicking in this inventive and sadly under-seen documentary which I saw at Hot Docs but which also got aired on BBC Scotland.

Best of 2008 (30-26)

30 IN BRUGES
Glad to see this one has been nominated at various awards as it's a terrific black comedy, in which hitmen Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson hide out in Belgium after a hit goes wrong. Marketed very badly, this should surely find a wider audience on DVD.

29 PRESTO
It's the short film that preceded WALL-E in cinemas. I loved it. Now Oscar-nominated.

28 STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE
One of the better Iraq documentaries, although you'd expect as much from the veteran Errol Morris.

27 TRULY, MADLY, CHEAPLY: BRITISH B MOVIES
Excellent BBC4 documentary in which Matthew Sweet explores the cheap and largely unknown British exploitation cinema. If you've not read his book SHEPPERTON BABYLON, you should buy it right now.

26 RED
Low-budget Jack Ketchum adaptation boasting a powerhouse performance by Scotland's greatest actor, Brian Cox.

TARANTULA (1955)

There's always a risk when watching classic monster movies and B-pictures that they won't be as good as you remember when you first saw them as a kid; or that somehow their reputation has grown from other people's memories of it and watching it for the first time will only be a disappointment. Frequently you just discover how dull these movies actually are.

Not so with TARANTULA, which delivers everything its title promises. This one had managed to pass me by until recently - despite a childhood spent watching such films on TV, I was usually limited to the four terrestrial channels rather than the TV overload we have now - and I did go in expecting another film made up of 90% scientists talking and 10% badly dated spider effects.

The film throws us into the action straight away with the delightful sight of a mutated man dying in the desert, before the opening titles have even rolled. Yes!

I don't need to rehash the story since the title and the fact that it was made in the fifties tells you all you need to know. Scientific experiments, giant spider, etc. The mutated humans are a bonus and Bud Westmore's make-up is okay, but the real star is the tarantula itself. Even today the effects are surprisingly good - THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN is perhaps the only other film of the era which has effects that are still this good.

Of course there are still some dated elements, such as the prediction that by the year 2000 the world's population could be as much as 3 billion. If only. Still, there are times when the of-another-time feel generates a good laugh. Wonderful dialogue includes the line "Give women the vote and what do you get? Lady scientists!" Try keeping as straight a face as he does when he says it.

Of course the ending is the usual wholesale destruction although this time with the novelty of the armed forces actually doing something effective rather than failing miserably before the heroic scientist figures it all out. It does raise the question however of why explosives and missiles fail to take out the creature when napalm ends up doing just fine.

That's just me being too cynical though. This movie is splendid fun and one of the best of the fifties monster movies if you're planning to revisit the era of abnormally large wildlife.

HUSTLER SQUAD (1976)

The graveyard of exploitation cinema is littered with the corpses of good ideas badly executed. To that pile of rotting cinematic flesh you can add this Filipino actioner. It's hard to imagine how you can take an idea like the army training a group of women as killer prostitutes and make it dull but somehow HUSTLER SQUAD manages just that.

Directed by Cesar Gallardo, the film was produced by the legendary Cirio H Santiago and could sorely have done with him behind the camera. Sure, it would still have been cheap crap with a ludicrous story but you can be sure it would have been a hell of a lot more enjoyable.

That's not to say that HUSTLER SQUAD is totally devoid of cult movie appeal. The story itself can't help but at least be partly charming to the enthusiast of sleazy cinema - hardened maverick army officer trains women to bed the enemy and kill them - but incredibly the really tasteless stuff comes in justifying the ladies' reasons for agreeing to the mission. They range from terminal illness to revenge for being raped to the fact that one of them has been in jail for ages and needs a man. Obviously.

Given that the crazy soldier in charge is picked solely because "you're the most unconventional officer I've got!" you don't exactly expect too much in depth character development but even by the usual exploitation standards, the film is pretty thin. Perhaps most surprising of all is the general lack of nudity and violence - what little that does pop up is not all that impressive or sustained either, questioning who exactly this film (also released under the title THE DIRTY HALF DOZEN) was aimed at.

All in all, some brief promise shown early on only ends up climaxing in a bit of a damp squib. Along the way we are treated to bad Australian accents, terrific death spasms by anyone being shot and a training montage with wholly inappropriate jazz score.

I'd hate for you to think it was all bad though, so I have to award a couple of bonus points for any film that can, with a straight face, deliver a line like "I guess what the world needs is a few more nymphomaniacs with killer instincts."

SATURN 3 (1980)

The film opens in outer space... a loud orchestra bursts into life... a gigantic spaceship drifts into the screen above our heads...

No prizes for guessing where the sci-fi horror SATURN 3 took its inspiration. The aim seems to have been to create a claustrophobic horror-thriller but within a STAR WARS-style setting. That might sound like a nutty thing to do and to be honest it's a pretty nutty film. I'd call it a failure but that would be to gloss over how much fun there is to be had watching this turkey.

Firstly the visuals... despite being made three years after George Lucas's groundbreaking sci-fi event, SATURN 3 somehow manages to look much, much cheaper whether it be the flimsy spaceships, the second-rate set design or the futuristic settings that look like LOGAN'S RUN might have done if it had run out of money half-way through. That comparison is only compounded by the presence of LOGAN'S RUN's support player Farrah Fawcett in the female lead role.

There are really only three principle cast members to speak of. Fawcett is accompanied by Kirk Douglas, who somehow manages to be not just her work colleague but also her lover, despite looking more like her dad. They're joined in their solitary, isolated Saturn base by a newcomer, Harvey Keitel.

Keitel is equally aghast at the sight of Fawcett and Douglas being an item, and decides to move in on her. Unfortunately he's also moving in on the work they're doing too. And he's a psycho. And he talks like a robotic William Shatner. And he has a killer robot with him.

The combination of half-finished STAR WARS knock-off material and brightly-lit LOGAN'S RUN sets certainly lend the film an interesting look, which is helped by the accompanying electronic score (just like LOGAN'S RUN again!) but now we have the added fun of a totally insane robo-Shatner as well.

So that's the set-up - Fawcett hangs around looking pretty, Douglas runs around with mad staring eyes and Keitel tries to kill them both with a mental and stupid looking robot. The fact that it's poorly written, shot and edited or that the enticing electronic score is used entirely inappropriately can't completely stop it being fun. In fact, if anything, it just makes it more of an enjoyable experience, particularly since the premise seems mainly to be "let's make it look like STAR WARS, but with nudity and violence". It's ironic that this makes it more adult and yet more juvenile at the same time.

So it may have failed to make the same impact as Lucas's baby, but look at it this way. STAR WARS gave us crap TV spin-offs and ATTACK OF THE CLONES; SATURN 3 has severed body parts and a naked Farrah Fawcett.

So which one is really the more important movie?

SOUTHLAND TALES (2006)

When I first heard about Richard Kelly's follow-up to cult sleeper hit DONNIE DARKO, I wondered if he was taking the piss. Not so much the story - which, when you look at it closely, is actually very similar to DONNIE DARKO - but rather the casting choices.

Arguably the biggest name in the movie is Sarah Michelle Gellar, an actress who achieved fame in a popular television series but has done little of note since (we all know why people remember CRUEL INTENTIONS, don't we?).

Added to the cast list alongside he we have mediocre pop stars turned bad actors Mandy Moore and Justin Timberlake (the latter also providing the voiceover which, I confess, I thought was actually a woman until Timberlake showed his face).

Then we get Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, a former wrestler who acts every bit as badly as you'd expect him to, and he's in pretty much the lead role.

There's also Sean William Scott, the man who was, is and forever shall be Stiffler from the AMERICAN PIE movies. THUMBSUCKER's Lou Taylor Pucci turns up as a young draft dodger who says "dawg" to everyone a lot. And how about Christopher Lambert, who starred in the HIGHLANDER films before churning out a living from straight to video turkeys? Still not selling it to you? Okay, throw in a couple of cameos from directors Eli Roth and Kevin Smith just to amuse those in the know, and garnish it with Miranda BLACKADDER Richardson sitting at a desk for the whole film and a supporting role from the wee woman with the high pitched voice from POLTERGEIST.

That latter one's particularly ironic given that I'll always associate her with the words "step into the light" - something that anyone viewing this in the dark of their local cinema probably couldn't wait to do.

So, I ask again, was Richard Kelly taking the piss?

I've just watched the film and I still don't know. The story, what I could piece together of it, is as follows: in 2005, America came under nuclear attack. It's now 2008. America are still at war in Iraq; a police officer is searching for his twin brother; a star of adult movies has her own TV show; there's an election coming; sod it, I can't be bothered. There's lot of stuff happening, which may or may not be related to each other.

What unfolds (or rather entangles) is a mess of a movie which actually proves it's possible to have too many ideas. The stories are all over the place but seem to be tied together in some way that eludes me. Kelly appears to have enjoyed the combination in DONNIE DARKO of crazy physics, weird people, odd dialogue and kooky music so much that he's essentially just done the same thing again but on a grander scale and with a bigger budget. Will this film, which also tanked, gain the same kind of cult following?

I doubt it. DONNIE DARKO at least concentrated, more or less, on one story rather than a huge number of stories all fighting for prominence. It also created a coherent mood and atmosphere so that you were in no doubt that you were watching a serious, if odd, sci-fi drama. SOUTHLAND TALES on the other hand is wilfully weird far too often and the combination of ludicrous scenes and bad acting just leaves you wondering, as I already stated, if it's taking the piss. Is the film a sci-fi drama or a comedy? I genuinely have no idea, but lines like "the soul of a monkey can't survive the dimensional threshold" really don't help.

The film has some redeeming features - the opening scene is terrific, there are some nice visuals courtesy of the increased budget and most of the score is terrifically evocative. Sadly, pretty much everything else is way off the mark. Sure, Kelly has obviously made a film that's exceptionally ambitious but then again, climbing Mount Everest on a spacehopper is also exceptionally ambitious but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

I'd love to know what sort of film the cast of this turkey thought they were making. Maybe once they've figured it out they can tell the rest of us.

Horrorthon'08: NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD (2008)

Or NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD: THE WILD, UNTOLD STORY OF OZPLOITATION! to give it its full title.

While Peter Weir and his ilk were turning the newly emerging Australian film industry into the darlings of the arthouse film world, a new breed of Aussie filmmakers were ensuring that the country would also leave its mark on the exploitation map. This documentary tells the story of Australian exploitation cinema and is as entertaining as many of the films featured.

The film covers the early days of racist comedy and low-brow sex movies through the more famous films such as MAD MAX, STONE and PATRICK to horror films like RAZORBACK and neglected classics like LONG WEEKEND (one of my personal favourites), eventually ending with a look at how these films that went before have influenced the new generation of directors who have given us films like UNDEAD, WOLF CREEK and the smash hit SAW.

There are interviews with far too many people for me to list here, but they include filmmakers (George Miller, Russell Mulcahy, the late Richard Franklin), critics (Bob Ellis rather amusingly seems to hate everyone), home-grown stars (George Lazenby, Rod Taylor) and those who came to the industry from abroad (Jamie Lee Curtis, Dennis Hopper). And of course it couldn't be a film about cult movies without Quentin Tarantino waxing lyrical about how brilliant they are. These are just a handful of examples of those who are interviewed but there are many, many more.

It's essential viewing for any fan of cult films and is sure to open your eyes to a world of films that you never knew existed.

It'll also open your eyes in other ways. The most entertaining, and yet terrifying, strand of the movie is the story of how the films were made with scant regard for anyone's safety. Although they once again point out that, contrary to popular myth, that guy in MAD MAX that gets hit by the bike was not killed, other films weren't so lucky. People were killed on some sets; George Lazenby got set on fire (one of the funnier stories in the film); Dennis Hopper was, well, Dennis Hopper; and just listen to Steve Railsback describing his time on TURKEY SHOOT.

Not horror per se, but a highlight of the festival and one which every film lover should see as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

Horrorthon'08: NIGHT OF THE LEPUS (1972)

Well what can I say about this "classic" 70s horror film? If I wasn't covering it as part of my Horrorthon stuff, it would almost certainly have made it in here in my Gobsmacking Cinema series of oddities. I just had to pick this one over the Irish horror film SEER which was on at the same time (and, I've heard, wasn't very good).

It's one of those nature-strikes-back films that were so popular in the 1970s, whether it be through classics like JAWS or insanely stupid (but simultaneously brilliant) trash like GRIZZLY.

NIGHT OF THE LEPUS definitely belongs in the latter category - like GRIZZLY at last year's Horrorthon, this definitely needs to be seen with a late night audience. If nothing else, the very concept is too barmy for words. Giant killer rabbits.

Yes, giant killer rabbits. This opens up the floodgates for all manner of classic exploitation moments, whether it be the rather unpleasant archive footage of a rabbit cull while a reporter tells us how much of a threat they are, or a combination of (unconvincing) trick photography and men in rabbit suits.

There's some great grizzly death-by-rabbit action but full marks must go to the human cast as well.

Boasting a cast that includes Rory Calhoun (MOTEL HELL), Janet Leigh (PSYCHO), STUART WHITMAN (lots of cult movies) and DeForest Kelley (Bones McCoy himself), it reads like a who's who of cult. What's so brilliant however is the utterly straight-faced way in which they perform despite being in the most ludicrous of movies.

The moment when NIGHT OF THE LEPUS's wonder is best summed up comes as a policeman gets out his megaphone at a packed drive-in and tells everyone to calmly drive away as there is a herd of killer rabbits heading their way. And they do it! No fuss, no argument! They just accept the fact, without question, that there is a herd of killer rabbits coming their way. Ask yourself how you would react in such a situation.

Totally mad, totally crap, and totally and undeniably a must-see cult classic.

Horrorthon coverage continues tomorrow night...

Horrorthon'08: BAD BIOLOGY (2008)

Frank Henenlotter is famous for making outrageous cult movies designed to scare, entertain and offend, probably in equal measure. This latest effort is no different.

The plot, such as it is, concerns a young woman who suffers an abnormality (not dissimilar to the one in TEETH) that basically results in her becoming a crazed nymphomaniac who has her way with men, kills them, then ditches the quickly-hatched progeny. She finally thinks she has found the man who can satisfy her however when she comes across a young chap with an equally gobsmacking ailment.

It would be a lie to say that the two lead actors offer great performances, but they are clearly game for a laugh and throw themselves into a ludicrous film with aplomb. The result is highly entertaining, though one certainly needs to be in the right frame of mind to watch it.

Aside from the crazy premise above and the witty dialogue that relies so much on well-placed profanity that I'm not going to quote it here, the finale of the film is probably the scene by which an audience's reaction can be judged. So, picture a string of beautiful, naked ladies being offed one by one, by a psychotic, foot-long, dismembered, drug-addicted penis.

Yep, that's what I said. I guess from that you can probably tell if you'll enjoy this movie or just want it banned outright. It's late night fun as far as I'm concerned but I appreciate this kind of demented filmmaking is not to everyone's taste.

More Horrorthon coverage later this weekend...