Bigfoot (1969)

Jasper Hawks (John Carradine) and his feckless poltroon of a partner Elmer (John Mitchum, brother of Robert) tool the backwoods area of (let’s assume) the Pacific Northwest with their carload of tchotchkes and junk.  Meanwhile, Joi (Joi Lansing) is a pilot whose plane crashes in the same mountainous area where she is summarily captured by a Bigfoot.  Also meanwhile, motorcycle enthusiast Rick’s (Chris Mitchum, son of Robert) girlfriend Chris (the fulsomely bestowed, beauteous Judith Jordan) is likewise kidnapped by a Bigfoot.  Chris and Joi are held captive while everyone else does a lot of talking and walking in their search for them.

Robert F Slatzer’s Bigfoot does its damnedest to capitalize on the then-recently released Patterson-Gimlin footage of a Bigfoot sloping around Bluff Creek in Northern California.  Admittedly, the country had gone Bigfoot Crazy, and the beast (and regional variations thereof) swiftly became as much a pop culture icon as it was a figure of myth and speculation (this carries through to today, though in far more cynical fashion).  The first thing that struck me while watching this film was how much it reminded me of 1972’s The Curse of Bigfoot.  The resemblance is not so much in narrative content aside from the subject matter.  While I haven’t seen Curse probably since I was a kid, I clearly recall three things about it.  One, its finale (monster movie endings back then were straightforward).  Two, the monster was discovered wrapped like a mummy in a Native American burial mound.  Three, the monster makeup looked like a giant meatball that someone had dropped into a pile of dog hair and rolled around for a bit, then slapped eyes and fangs on it (and it had a habit of walking directly at the camera as a sort of transitional device).  

Bigfoot shares two of these traits, specifically.  First, the monster makeup is horrible (though, in fairness, better than that in Curse), consisting of an immobile rubber mask and an ill-fitting fur suit.  The kid Bigfoot simply has some black stage makeup around his eyes and nose.  It’s almost sad, really, these yearnings for more Pakuni-esque makeup effects that this thing evokes.  Second, is the creature’s ties to Native American culture and its own tribal structure.  The characters come upon what they take to be an Indian burial ground, but they find a dead Bigfoot in a shallow grave.  Later, a Native American woman, upon hearing of the monster, utters the word “Sasquatch,” thus giving the film a bit of cultural diversity (no, not really).  The Bigfeet are dying off, the same as the Native American tribes had been for a long, long time but had somehow only around this era really become a topic of discussion in pop culture and media in general.  Like the Stick Indians (the more maladjusted version of the Bigfoot legend in Native American mythology), these Bigfeet steal women in order to breed with them.  In essence, they play the role of savages that Native Americans occupied in many a Western.  Of course, all of this takes a back seat to the rip-roaring excitement of walking and talking or getting the latest on Sheriff Cyrus’ (James Craig) love life with Nellie (Dorothy Keller) down at the local store.

Likewise, the film calls back hard to 1933’s seminal King Kong as well as 1740’s Beauty and the Beast (to which Kong also calls back).  In the opening credits, the creature is billed as “The Eighth Wonder of the World,” just like Kong.  After the film’s climax, Jasper laments that “It was Beauty killed the Beast.”  This wouldn’t be so egregious if it weren’t so wrongheaded.  Certainly, comparisons can be made between Jasper and Carl Denham, but the Carradine character is portrayed as avaricious and opportunistic to an almost villainous degree (plus, he’s really mean to Elmer).  Denham, at least as played by Robert Armstrong, had a fatherly, caretaking connection to Ann Darrow, motivating his sometimes-selfless acts in the efforts to rescue her.  Yes, he could be myopic in his lust for fame and fortune, but he wasn’t a total jerk.

What’s intriguing in this movie is the idea of bestiality and sex in general which it puts at the forefront.  Joi and Chris are being held specifically to have sex with the male Bigfoot and carry on its bloodline (Joi somehow intuits this as if she were Jane Goodall).  Further than this, the two actresses’ pulchritude is prominently on display throughout.  By 1969, depictions of sex on screen had become much more graphic, yet Slatzer and company never go the extra mile into pure exploitation.  It feels as though they wanted to have just enough salacious teasing for the teenagers in the audience (which also explains the “biker” angle, and yes, that word should be in quotes with regard to this film) while also being chaste enough that parents could take their families to see it.  Like the beasts in the movie, the audience is allowed to get fired up about the possibilities available for sex in the film but will ultimately be denied the experience, even vicariously.  Add to this the fact that the Bigfeet have no discernible personalities.  They are pure animals, acting on vicious instinct, and this robs the film of any empathy we may have about their plight.  Unlike Kong or the Beast, who formed connections with their captives and made us care about the deep emotions that undo them, the Bigfeet are the proverbial pack of rabid dogs in need of putting down.  But, then, to expect more from this movie is to not understand it.

Slatzer varies scenes shot on location with scenes shot on stage sets.  The country store is perhaps the best lit (in a fake sense) one of its kind ever put on screen.  These staged scenes serve to give the movie the feeling of something made for television.  One can understand this, as indoor sets are far easier to control from a technical perspective, but their insertion here undermines (or augments, depending on your point of view) any of the low budget charm this film could have had.  It’s too sterile, too unnatural.  I can guess why the filmmakers chose to shoot so much filler of people ambling through forests or motorcycling through forests or chatting in forests.  It’s cheap and easy.  But I would surmise that most people would want to see this thing for a little bit of skin (a very little bit) and some Bigfoot action.  Watching actors (even the great Carradine) spout variations on the same theme over and over again with the occasional glimpse of what you’re anticipating feels more like a carny cheat (and maybe Slatzer worked in carnivals, I don’t know) than the buildup and payoff that an audience would actually want.  At least the Patterson-Gimlin footage got it right.  It’s roughly two minutes of what people desire: to have their sense of awe and wonder stoked.  Bigfoot is the equivalent of roughly ninety minutes of moving furniture, and who desires that?

MVT:  The idea isn’t bad.  It just never lives up to the come-on of its advertising.

Make or Break:  The extended scene of Cyrus and Nellie discussing the local goings-on in their neck of the woods about which no viewer in their right mind would give even the slightest shit.

Score:  3/10      

Diary of a Lady Killer (1969)

**SPOILERS**

I tried to keep a diary for a while, way back when (men call them “journals,” damn it!).  It was, essentially, a five-subject notebook, not the sort of leather-bound, classy tomes you see in films like Ko Nakahira’s Diary of a Lady Killer (aka Lie Ren aka The Seductive Accounts of a Hunter aka My Amorousness Ruins My Life).  The thoughts I had at that time were what you would expect from a guy in his early twenties.  That is, a couple of interesting insights/ideas and then a whole lot of grousing, garbage, and emotionalizing.  Re-reading it, even then, it was painful, and I completely don’t regret shredding the whole damned thing.  Sometimes, one’s musings are better left in one’s head, to come and go like a prostitute’s trick (a crass analogy, yes, but apropos, nonetheless).  Sometimes, what you have on your mind is mundane and only interesting to you in the moment because you’re exorcising some tiresome demon.  Sometimes, keeping a diary will only help get you convicted of a crime, as is the case in this film. 

Lin Qiuhua, at the end of her rope (insert rimshot here), flings herself from her upper floor apartment to a spectacular dummy death on the pavement below.  Her sister, Lin Hongzhu (Ha Yee-Chau), suspects foul play, since Qiuhua was six months pregnant at the time of her death, and she had only slept with one stranger six months back.  Enter said stranger, Zhou Guoxiong (Han Chin), a womanizer engaged to Su Xiulan (Fang Ying), a society deb recently returned from Japan.  And then there’s Li Donghai (Wu Fung), an associate of Zhou’s who pines for Su just to complicate matters as Zhou’s former flings start turning up dead.

Diary of a Lady Killer is, first and foremost, Shaw Bros’ stab at a Hitchcockian thriller, and it has all the basic ingredients for this and then some.  There is a slow build of components (perhaps a bit too slow) that are revealed to drop another puzzle piece into place (in a puzzle that is fully assembled to start off).  There is a level of misogyny at play, and Nakahira delivers on some skin as Hitchcock wouldn’t be able (but really, really always wanted) to do until Frenzy in 1972.  There are shots laying out the machinations going on against Zhou, attempting to ratchet up tension.  Most importantly, there is the Wrong Man trope in which Hitchcock specialized.  Zhou is being set up for a fall, and it’s intriguing to watch the aligning of these elements against him (most clever is a bit where a straw broom drops onto his face, scratching his cheek like a woman’s fingernails would).  This being said, Zhou is also a patsy in the most reactive way possible.  These things happen to him, he knows they’re happening, but he does nothing to stop/prevent them, and he’s taken out of the narrative for much of the back third so Su can try to exonerate him.  This wouldn’t be so bad, in and of itself, if any attention had been paid to Su up to this point.  Instead, the film focuses primarily on Zhou and his horndogging escapades, none of which cast him in even a slightly sympathetic light.  Consequently, one couldn’t care less whether he’s railroaded by a false accusation and sent to prison.  I suppose in some way this is meant to be his penance for the way he treats women, but it’s difficult to give a shit whether or not this character is redeemed.  

Yes, as we all know, men are pigs, and this film does its level best to underline this while simultaneously playing to the men in the audience and tickle their libidos.  The opening credits are a series of women in colorfully stylish boudoir settings and various states of undress.  When these women aren’t posing seductively for the camera, the camera is focusing on different naked (sometimes even tastefully photographed) body parts of theirs (alongside frisky kittens; surely, not a metaphor for anything).  When Zhou can’t get Su to give it up for him (she’s waiting for marriage), he instantly dumps her, heads off to a bowling alley, and picks up the first single woman he sees there (totally not skanky).  These flings are manipulations for Zhou.  He claims to have physical needs that MUST be satiated.  Fair play, but he also treats these women like things because things are all they are to him (any port in a perpetually raging storm, so to speak).  Thus, he lies to all of them, giving each a different name or occupation.  When they say they would like to see him again, he agrees and then blows them off (at least once actually showing up to see if the woman is gullible enough to wait for him).  Zhou’s life, what we’re shown of it, is little more than a quest for power fueled by lust.  This could be interesting if any of this had consequences outside of how it fucks over Zhou’s life, but the women in these scenes are merely warm (soon to be cold) bodies, and the scenes don’t build as anything other than a daisy chain of conquests repeated over and over for the express purpose of trying to be a little sleazy.  The film simply spends far too much time detailing these filler encounters (skirting close to being porn without the porn).  While they are important to the main point of the movie (narratively and exploitatively), they swiftly become repetitive, and the viewer is left only with the desire for the plot to move the hell along, already. 

Zhou and Li, the two main males in the film are sociopaths.  They ritually display callous indifference for others throughout the film.  But they have an excuse, and her name is Su.  In Zhou’s diary, aside from depicting the various chicks he’s laid, he includes a statement intended specifically for his fiancée.  Basically, he says that, gosh, he really does love Su and wants to spend his life with her, but her reticence to bang him is what forced him to find other outlets for his concupiscence.  Sure, love is all about spirituality between two people, but it’s also about physical enjoyment, and clearly, the latter trumps the former.  It’s such a dickheaded rationalization for dickheaded behavior, but, naturally, Su buys it lock, stock, and barrel, because the film doesn’t actually give a shit about her.  Likewise, Li looms around Su constantly, desperate to pick up Zhou’s scraps and eager to profess his more earnest love for her.  It’s no surprise, then, when he just can’t help trying to take advantage of a drunken Su after Zhou has been taken out of the way.  Li and Zhou are two sides of the same shitty coin, the only difference between them being that Zhou will fuck anything that moves while waiting for Su to come around, while Li will kill (it’s insanely obvious who the bad guys in the film are from the outset) anything that Zhou fucks while waiting for Su to come around.  And that’s what Diary of a Lady Killer is: killing time waiting for some fucking satisfaction.

MVT:  The film’s premise is solid.  It’s just poorly handled.

Make or Break:  By Zhou’s second pickup, it becomes clear that the film is more interested in these fantasies than it is in what story it has.

Score:  3/10        

Two Undercover Angels (1969)

Directed by: Jesus Franco
Run Time: 78 minutes

Acid jazz, a werewolf, 60's pop art, dead models, incompetent cops,  and a pair of beautiful and deadly private investigators. Welcome to weird world of Jesus Franco and his equally weird movie Two Undercover Angels. Without further stalling let's dive into the weird world of Jesus Franco and his out there creation.

The story open at a fashion show were one of the runway models is being encouraged to spend some time with a generous patron, a Mister Radeck. The model thinks this request while changing out of the wedding dress she was modeling.  Unfortunately for her she loses track of time and finds herself alone at the venue. Things get worse when she comes across the henchman Morpho. Morpho is mute and rocking a Lon Chaney Jr. wolf man look. He molests and kidnaps the model for his boss, the mysterious homicidal artist Klaus Thriller, who photographs her last moments of life while Morpho violently kills her.

The focus shifts to an eclectic art gallery were the murdered model has been painted as garish pop art portrait. The gallery owner, Napoleon Bolivard (Jesus Franco), is investigating the noise from his gallery. He get knocked out by a woman dressed as a dominatrix and she finishes stealing the garish portrait. This is Diana, one half of the Red Lips private investigators criminal  enterprise. Currently they are investigating the rash of dancers and models who  have disappeared mysteriously for two clients. The first client being a pair of inept police officers who  need their help and who also want to arrest them. The second client is Mr Radeck, who is desperate to know the fate of the model from the beginning of the movie.

The women's investigating strategy consists of trying to get Thriller's artwork and talking about how to  solve the mystery before them while wearing lingerie or bikinis. Overall the duo are successful in getting the portrait and a statue of a woman that also  looks similar to one of the missing women. However this leads to Napoleon and another gallery employee being killed by Thriller. On the grounds that Thriller wants his homicidal art available for all to see.

With another session of talking out what to do next in their bikinis it's decided that Diana should go to one of the bars were dancers have disappeared from. Through the power of plot contrivance, Dianna meets Thriller and makes the stupid mistake of going to his place. If not for Regina, Dianna's partner in crime, Dianna would have been Thriller's next masterpiece. Later back at their headquarters and no clue how to advance the investigation, our heroines get into their thinking bikinis. However the plot has other ideas and delivers a bouquet of flowers with a bomb in it. Acting quickly the deadly bouquet is thrown in the pool just in time for the drive by shooting to happen. Avoiding being shot at, our heroines go to Morocco to get a tan and solve the case.

The movie has weird fever dream logic to it. Unlike some of his other films, this one has a plot that can be followed with a few needless tangents. Franco's different views on women, power, and sexuality are on display in this movie but no where as extreme as in Blue Rita or The Girl From Rio. In short, if you are looking for a crazy cinematic ride this is a good movie to start that journey on. The movie is available on DVD and Blu Ray.

MVT: This clip even made the trailer, that how insane it is. The two detectives book a hotel room using the name James Bond. The rational behind this is their names would make them sound like cops but booking a room under the name of the world's most dangerous ornithologist would allow them to blend in.

Make or Break: The only acid jazz go go bar in Spain scene made this movie for me. Mostly because the idea of splicing in Austin Powers would be funny and not change the tone of the film any.

Score: 5.3 out of 10

Night After Night After Night (1969)

A trench coat-wearing maniac stalks the Soho area of London, stabbing women with a switchblade.  Inspector Rowan (Gilbert Wynne) can’t catch a break in the case, though he’s keen to pin the murders on scuzzy lothario Pete (Donald Sumpter).  Meanwhile, Judge Lomax (Jack May) is having marital troubles, and his job may be getting to him (these may not be mutually exclusive).

Lindsay Shonteff’s (under the Lewis J. Force nom de guerre) Night After Night After Night (aka He Kills Night After Night After Night aka Night Slasher) is an intriguing, if slightly confused film.  It’s a sleazy sexploitation movie that indulges in the most prurient imagery (there’s a rather blatant shot of a stripper literally shaking her jugs at the camera) while stating that smut makes “perverts” into killers.  Simultaneously, it’s about how the system (and by extension, the murderer) condemns and punishes people for their sexuality while hypocritically desiring to satiate its own erotic passions.  Rowan and his wife Jenny (Linda Marlowe) are the most normal couple in the film.  They genuinely care about each other, and their relationship is fairly healthy.  Jenny is the only major character in the film who gets naked, and her sex scene with Rowan is loving, as are all of their interactions.  By contrast, Lomax and his wife Helena’s (Justine Lord) relationship is on the rocks.  They now sleep in separate bedrooms, and Helena even tries to reignite the old flame by “behav[ing] like a whore” (this consists of donning some black lingerie).  Lomax is completely disinterested, the daily grind of “remov[ing] cancer from society” having eroded his emotions down to stumps.  Pete states that he practically makes a career of “making birds.”  He flaunts his sexual exploits in Rowan’s face, telling him that he “banged” some woman in the park “and she liked it.”  He taunts Rowan about Jenny, teasing that he’ll visit her and give her what she needs (and what Rowan isn’t giving her [this is, of course, untrue; Pete’s just trying to, and succeeding in, getting a rise out of Rowan]).  Reducing Jenny to a receptacle for sex is tantamount to a criminal act in Rowan’s eyes (most especially since it’s also personal).  

Pete is odious in his lascivious, callous indifference towards his sexual partners and women in general, and it is this, above all else, that makes Rowan (and the audience) hate him to the point that he’s just dying to railroad Pete for the murders, guilty or not.  Rowan’s personal moral compass overrides his duty to uphold the law and follow procedures.  Likewise, Lomax despises the people who come before him in court, handing out the harshest sentences possible like a vengeful god, dispassionate toward extenuating circumstances.  He would rather send someone to jail for the maximum than get them hospitalized for mental issues or attempt to empathize in any way with them.  Lomax’s clerk Carter (Terry Scully) surreptitiously reads porn at work and frequents strip clubs.  Lomax admonishes him, “Overcome it, Carter, or it will destroy you.”  In Lomax’s mind, porn and rampant sexuality are a scourge, and it must be dealt with in the most severe way possible, but he stares at Jenny while dining at a restaurant, so we know that he still has sexual urges hidden somewhere.  He’s just tamping them down, because to consciously acknowledge them would be immoral.  The extremes of sexuality in the film (from unfettered to strangulated) are bad, morally and criminally, and the line between the two is portrayed as pretty slim.

And yet, the film does not hesitate to give the audience pulchritudinous female flesh at any given turn.  Aside from the aforementioned stripper and the sex scene between Jenny and Rowan, we get things like a gratuitous shot of the new undercover policewoman’s (Jacqueline Clarke) undies (go ahead and guess what she’s going undercover as).  We get an extended scene of Pete getting laid out in a field while some repressed girl (maybe just shy; Who the hell knows?  She’s creepy, regardless) watches.  She then offers herself to Pete, and he takes her up on it (talk about stamina).  We get extended closeups of breasts being groped and the like.  There’s a queasy complicity going on between the film and its target audience.  We want to watch the sex and nudity; we’re no different than the other men in the film.  Seeing these women killed because of the sexuality we desired to watch makes us participants in their deaths in a way that doesn’t happen as much in later slashers like the Friday the 13^th films and so forth.  The difference, I believe, is in the heavy moralizing the two main male characters engage in so vociferously.  This places a sobriety and a sense of audience admonishment on the film, deserved or not.  The constant sex thrown at us is the same thing that created creatures like Pete and Lomax and instigated Rowan to go on the rampage.  So, while we’re being fed it, we’re also being told that it’s bad for us, but it really isn’t, but it is.

Night After Night After Night is competently made, though its pacing is a bit odd.  Oftentimes, adjacent scenes simply butt up against one another with no connective tissue between them.  It can be a little jarring, but if anything, it actually adds to the film’s schizophrenic ambience, continuing, in a way, to describe its juxtaposition of prurience and prudishness.  Even while being distinctly British, there are Giallo elements at play, as well, making for something of interest to devotees of that genre.  The killer wears a black leather trench coat.  There are POV shots of him stalking and stabbing his victims.  There is the plain lurid quality so prevalent in Gialli, including the close tying of violence with sex and how this affects people mentally.  However, the film is simplistic to the point of being somewhat plain, and the finale meanders a bit more than it excites.  Nevertheless, it kept my ass in my seat, and I never truly felt bored by it.  Maybe I’m just another sex maniac.

MVT:  The grittiness of the film, augmented by its low budget aesthetics, is appealing, especially for those of us for whom this is a big part of the attraction to films like this.

Make or Break:  There’s a character’s death rather early on that is not only surprising, but it’s also surprisingly well-staged, and it sends the story in a different direction than you might have initially expected.

Score: 6.75/10