Horror Grab Bag Week: The Thirsty Dead

Welcome back readers to Horror Grab Bag Week.  This time around I thought I would try to give more of a technical aspect to the movie.   Describe the camera pans and zooms and various techniques to such to give you a more of an objective view.  Less mockery and more observation, so feel free to be shocked.  Actor Terry Becker (Compulsion, Perry Mason, The Asphalt Jungle, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Neighborhood Watch) tried his start in both writing and directing in a horror exploitation genre about abducting young women and dragging them off to parts unknown.  Given most of these girls were street urchins; not too many eyebrows were raised so without further adieu I give you The Thirsty Dead a.k.a. The Blood Cult of Shangri-La.

Silly frat boys, that's not how you pick up girls.

You make friends quickly when you are sharing a spoiler!

Our footage starts with shots of the sea showing a few ships during sunrise to sunset.  The significance to that day to night transition is…Yeah haven’t a clue other than it was available and you get to decipher the symbolism.  Also this is dead quiet for 30 seconds and then a title card followed by a bit of reverb in your speakers.  Then it is off to the go-go bar!  Class all the way I say.   You will also find this has been recorded in mono and the print has not be cleaned up from living on VHS for so long so there is some scratches on the film and the occasion audible pop sound.  Four young women are abducted from the streets of Manila Philippines, through miles of sewer to the main rivers and rowed out for a fair distance from civilization.  I am speaking the middle of nowhere and getting away on foot would be damn near impossible.    

Bless me Rocky for I have been a naughty boy.

Our girls discover they have been snatched for the orchestrations of a cult and not some white slavery sex trade.  Their leader Baru (character actor John Considine of Combat!, Gomer Pyle: USMC, The F.B.I., Mannix and Doctor Death: Seeker of Souls) looks like a genetic hybrid of Peter Lorre and Mike Connors but he is in a flamboyant white high collar cloak that Doctor Strange would have turned away.  I thought he was auditioning for Sigfrid and Roy. Baru tells the girls that one with be chosen to appease their god and the others are just for the ceremony…of blood sacrifice.   I should also point out they seem to worship a head in a red glass cube.   Looks like someone lopped off Sidney Poitier’s head and encased it in plexi-glass.  

Ladies and gentleman, ICE CUUUUUUUUBBBBBBEEEE!!!

Now I did recognize two of the ladies in question brought to this cult.  Laura (Jennifer Billingsley of Lady in a Cage, The F.B.I., White Lightning, Police Story and Hollywood Man) and Claire (Judith McConnell of Star Trek T.O.S., The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, The Brotherhood of Satan and How to Seduce a Woman) and to be fair their acting was impressive for this film in spite how goofy the script is.

Yes, this is where I am going to nitpick and point things out.   The cavern location looks like the land of cardboard cutouts and trash bags to conceal the backdrop.  Our cult extras look like they raided the fabric bin of the original Star Trek series.  I swear at least 5 of them look as though they snagged some of the Mirror Mirror costumes or they are wearing these garish robes straight out of The Blind Dead series.  Many canvas died for their wardrobes.

over friendly zoom there camera man.  Sheesh.

Most of the sets are filmed on location and the underground lair is actually a former stronghold on the island so definite props for that.  Dallies of the sewer shots are all hand held and so steady.  I think the main issue I had with this film is it is dialogue driven and sounds as though the girls are formulating plans of escape but there is little to no action in it.   I am afraid it drones on a bit and well all the characters (ladies) are pretty one dimensional so you may detract from them and care not for their path.

Ew, Sweat socks!!!

Hitchcock Week: The Man That Knew Too Much

Back again Hitchcock fans and I apologize for the delay but family emergency has been met and things are scoping very nicely.  I felt this next film is a bit of a lost gem.  A diamond in the rough as it were; many of you no doubt are familiar with its 1956 remake; I felt we should explore the original and see it for what it was.  So grab your seats, enjoy your beverage and movie snacks.   This is The Man Who Knew Too Little.

 

Now dear, we're English, so no emotions.

You know, to a man with a heart as soft as mine, there’s nothing sweeter than a touching spoiler.

Take everything that you know of the remake with Doris Day and James Stewart and toss it right out the window because other than the title, the original’s tone, setting and plot details are vastly different.

Bob Lawrence (Leslie Banks of The Most Dangerous Game, The Fire Raisers, Red Ensign, Wings of the Morning, Cyrano de Bergerac and Henry V) and his lovely wife Jill (Edna Best of Tilly of Bloomsbury, The Calendar, South Riding and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir) are an English couple on vacation in Switzerland with their daughter Betty.  Jill is partaking in a clay pigeon shooting contest when they are befriended by a Frenchman Louis Bernard (Pierre Fresnay of Marius, Fanny, Street of Shadows Le Duel,  Justice is Done and The Hunchback of Notre Dame) who happens to be staying at the same hotel as they.  Louis and Jill are dancing and Jill sees Louis assassinated before her eyes.  Before passing on he gives them both some imperative information to be delivered to the British Consul.    

The diabolical dwarf and dunderhead.

However before the Lawrences can deliver these documents the lead assassin Abbott (Peter Lorre of M, High and Low, Mad Love, Crime and Punishment, Secret Agent, The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca) kidnaps the couples’ daughter to ensure their silence.  Unable to go to the police, they return to England and run down leads only to discover the assassins have a head of state to liquidate during a concert.   Now how many of your parents would try to thwart an assassination and come looking for you?   Let’s face it; some of our parents have left us at the store by accident.  

Moving right along I have a few tidbits about the film.    Studio locations were the order for filming in the Alps could get pricey so Switzerland was actually Lime Studios of Lime Grove, Shepard’s Bush, London, England, UK.   A studio made famous as the building blocks of Hitchcock’s first major motion pictures as well as the studio for the comedy Steptoe and Son and Doctor Who.  The scenes of the assassination attempt in Royal Albert Hall were most definitely the Real McCoy. 

I say, old boy it is a trifle nippy out.

While the plot lines are very similar in both versions, I felt Lorre’s performance compared to Daniel Gelin’s was more disturbing and sinister overall.  His idle comments had great undertone coming from a man that had no qualms about killing a young girl and that just sent chills up and down my spine.   I believed Lorre would follow through with his implied threats more so than Gelin’s version.   Both films are equally enjoyable but I must say I do fancy the original.

Before They Were Stars: Ruthless People

Hey there boys and girls!  Back again with another series of films to bash or bask in and one film truly come to mind in 1986.  With all the Brat Pack associated, touchy feely films of this time showing us teenage to mid 20’s angst, a movie by Airplanes’ Jim Abrahams stood out.  With an amazing collective cast, wild story arcs and in general bizarre looks into the varied human psyche; this would also be Bill Pullman’s first feature length movie.   So drop your tuckus in that chair, have some bon bons and maybe a refreshing New Coke.   This is Ruthless People.

Spoilers strike without provocation….

Director Jim Abrahams (Police Squad, Airplane, Top Secret, Hot Shots and Jane Austen’s Mafia) and writer Dale Launer (Blind Date, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, My Cousin Vinny and Love Potion No. 9) team up to modernize short story novelist’s O’ Henry’s “The Ransom of the Red Chief” into a warped, fun romantic comedy drama.  

The story is thus: Sam Stone (Danny DeVito of Taxi, Romancing the Stone, Head Office, Batman Returns, Tin Men, Other People’s Money and L.A. Confidential) is a ruthless slimeball clothing manufacturer whose business is afloat in a soft market of clothing design is hell bent to do in his heiress wife Barbara (Bette Midler of The Thorn, Divine Madness, Bette Midler: Art or Bust, Outrageous Fortune, Beaches, Stella, For The Boys, Get Shorty, The First Wives Club and What Women Want) and claim the wealth entitled to his wife as the grieving husband.   Sam schemes, plots and preps for the event all the while he relays his plans to his buxom mistress Carol (Anita Morris of Maria’s Lovers, A Masterpiece of Murder, Blue City, 18 Again! and Bloodhounds of Broadway) fooling around with her in her bed.   Unbeknownst to Sam, Carol and her bumbling, inept boyfriend Earl (Bill Pullman of Spaceballs, The Serpent and the Rainbow, The Accidental Tourist, Going Under, Independence Day, Lake Placid) plan to tape the murder and blackmail Sam and then it is off to Haiti.   Tahiti Carol corrects.  Oh..I knew that.  

Fate plays as strange hand as neither party gets what they want when Sam gets a call from a unanimous person who claims to have kidnapped Barbara and for the sum of 500,000 US he can have her back.  No cops’ involvement, he has a deadline and if all demands are not met Sam will find his wife in the morgue.   

Joy and rapture fills Sam’s heart that soon his wife will be out of the picture and his hands will be clean of it all.  Barbara’s evil abductors are two middle class people struggling to make ends meet after Sam had screwed them on a deal prior.  Ken Kesseler (Judge Reinhold of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Gremlins, Beverly Hills Cop, Beverly Hills Cop II, Zandalee, and Baby on Board) is a stereo salesman and his wife Sandy (Helen Slater of Supergirl, The Secret of My Succe$s, City Slickers, The Steal, and No Way Back) is a gifted designer whose creations Sam nicked given they had no proper license to them and is using them as his own.  These are the type of people that cannot cheat on their taxes, have to pay a parking ticket and simply could not conceive the notion of wrong doing and yet arrive at this slippery slope.

Here are a few quick notes on the film.  The style of cinematography is phenomenal as it is director Jan de Bont (Die Hard, Black Rain, Lethal Weapon 3,  The Hunt for Red October) for car chase scenes and fight scenes, the lighting is exquisite and double entendre is the name of the dialogue.  The humor can be a bit low brow but it is displayed well in the disgust of the cops, the endless griping of Sam and the easy corruption of innocence.  To this day I cannot say who had the best lines.  Between DeVito’s rants, Midler’s foul comments and Reinhold just being decent, it is a gem I would highly recommend.  Pullman is an absolute doofus/gigolo and his scenes are to die for.