MANIAC (1980)

MANIAC (1980)

Director: William Lustig

Starring: Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro, Abigail Clayton, Kelly Piper, Tom Savini

Maniac is the gold standard of slashers. I’ll go as far to say that Maniac is better than the original Halloween (Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love the original Halloween, it’s a personal long time favorite. In my top three, to be somewhat exact), and easily the first two Friday the 13^th movies, or, really, any of the Friday the 13^th movies, to be honest. Friday the 13th may have had more imaginative kills, but with Maniac there’s more of a story here, and there’s more of a character as opposed to a faceless killer with minimal backstory. It’s a movie you can watch over the the years and not grow bored with. Characters aren’t essentially marched in front of the camera and killed off.  Something else that elevates Maniac above all the others, and  what makes it the most disturbing is that this killer could actually exist. He’s not some super villain endowed with insane powers of bouncing back to life from every attempt on his life.

Joe Spinell’s performance is excellent. He’s absolutely believable as the tortured Frank Zito who lives a sad and mundane life vacillating between cold ruthless murderer to an emotionally destroyed soul who spends most of his time in isolation. He’s not someone who stands out. You would pass by him on the street without a second thought. He’s a Norman Bates type, but fully aware of what he’s doing. After some kills we see him reading about it in the morning paper, or watching the news, and you can see hints of shame and remorse in his reactions.

As the story progresses we learn he was physically and emotionally abused by his mother who died while he was still young, which did his head in for good. He sees her in the women he kills, which is confirmed when he murders Rita, as he keeps asking, “Why did you leave me? I was scared. Now we are together again, and I will never let you go. I’m just going to keep you so you won’t go away ever again.”

The kills in this movie are brutal, and Tom Savini’s effects are in top form. A woman sees herself ran through with a sword as she looks into a mirror. One woman is forced to agonize in terror before she’s finally snuffed out, and that one shot gun blast scene still stuns to this very day. Even the most jaded, and most modern of audiences will be visually shushed into silence.

Maniac isn’t the sort of movie one would, could, or should love, but I do. It’s sleazy, violent, and grim as hell, but it lures you into the the filth and it’s hard to resist. Even the soundtrack by Jay Chattaway with it’s downer mood anchors you down solid into the muck.  There’s nothing pretty about this film and you should see it.  (MA)

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Nate Wilson: NW  Devon Cahill: DC  Matt Average: MA

 

 

BONNIE’S KIDS (1972)

BONNIE’S KIDS (1972)

Country: US
Starring: Tiffany Bolling (Ellie), Robin Mattson (Myra), Steve Sandor (Larry)
Director: Arthur Marks
Music: Carson Whitsett

Viewed:  Streaming, Amazon Prime

Transfer Quality: Excellent! Top quality restoration and transfer

Larry: You mean to tell me that God made two of you?

Ellie: God had nothing to do with it, darling.

Hot, oversexed, devious, and cruel would aptly describe the sisters, Myra (Robin Mattson Candystripe Nurses, Phantom of the Paradise) and Ellie (Tiffany Bolling The Candy Snatchers, Kingdom of the Spiders), but Bonnie’s kids aren’t the only morally bankrupt denizens of this twisted and superficial world of predator vs. prey. Virtually every character that appears on screen is on the make in one way or another. Even the camera is a lecherous creep, shamelessly panning up and down the contours of every female figure and implicating the viewer along the way whether we like it or not. This feature is gratuitous, but why would you expect any less of a film that was a major influence on Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.

There are some magical moments in this movie, which makes its impact on Tarantino easy to figure. For example, the arrangement of shots in the opening scene is quite brilliant in its portrayal of teen innocence that’s just slightly askew. It’s difficult to describe how well done this scene is, but director Arthur Marx (Bucktown, Monkey Hustle) employs some great visual storytelling techniques here that set the deliciously cynical tone for the film. An ice cream truck, headlights glowing in the distance, blares its syrupy looped tone made even more unsettling by its incongruity with the nighttime scene. Something is off balance, and it creates a sense of foreboding that subconsciously prepares us for the nihilistic excess that will occupy the rest of the film.  As the ice cream truck jingle continues, we see two high school couples making out in a convertible. While the ominous vehicle slowly rolls towards the make out session, Myra skillfully rebuffs the advances of her boyfriend as he presses his luck trying to unzip her dress. In the meantime, the truck passes without incident and the camera moves away from the action in the car to zoom in on the front window of the house where Myra’s stepfather, the tightly wound Charlie (Leo Gordon, Riot in Cell Block 11) is playing cards with his buddies.

Myra leaves her friends and enters the house where things get intense quick. Charlie’s buddies take turns teasing Myra and him about what they’d do with her and her older sister Ellie if Charlie wasn’t around. Myra quickly reveals herself as no innocent as her sexual teasing of the older men shatters any presumptions lingering from the opening scene. Later, as an undressing Myra is ogled at through the bathroom window by his departing guests (and then by the local police!) Charlie, who’s planning a trip to Montana to be with his terminally ill father, is in his bedroom chugging down a bottle of Seagram’s. Things continue to devolve as the drunken Charlie catches Myra on the phone talking sexy to her boyfriend. The out of control stepfather unleashes on Myra in a violent rage, and initiates what most certainly will end in sexual assault. It’s at this precise moment that Ellie enters and from quick back and forth we infer that she too was molested by Charlie. No sooner do we piece it together than Ellie blasts Charlie twice in the chest with a shotgun, leaving him dead. And so it begins…

The hallmark of the great morality exploitation film is that it titillates the viewer with precisely the vice it purports to condemn. At first I thought this was going to be one of those kinds of movies, but the ambiguous principles of each character left me wondering if anyone could be described as the morally righteous hero in this story. The way this film ends (and I’ll leave it for you to watch) only led me to further abandon all hope for humanity. However, when I wasn’t catching myself sinking into depression or contemplating the reason for my own existence, I actually found this film quite difficult to pause.

It’s also cool to keep an eye out for the connections between Bonnie’s Kids and Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. From a “Bonnie” whom we never see on screen, to Eddy and Digger (Alex Rocco, Timothy Brown) as the inspiration for Vincent and Jules, to the flirty banter and surreal showcase dance scene with Ellie and Larry (Steve Sandor) ala Mia and Vincent, it’s obvious that Tarantino was mining the gold nuggets embedded in this film. Even the shot composition at the diner scene with Eddy and Digger seems strangely familiar.

Check it out…enjoyable to say the least, but you might find yourself craving a shower by the end of it.  (DC)

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NW: Nate Wilson  DC: Devon Cahill  HR: Heath Row  MA: Matt Average

 

MISS LESLIE’S DOLLS (1973)

MISS LESLIE’S DOLLS (1973)

Director: Joseph G. Prieto

Starring: Charles Pitts (Roy), Kitty Lewis (Martha), Marcelle Bichette (Lily), Terry Juston (Alma Frost), and Salvado Ugarte (Miss Leslie)

Blue-ray (Network) also try Diabolik DVD

Transfer quality: Excellent

I’m always on the hunt for fucked up and strange movies. So, when I discovered this obscure gem a few months back, one that is touted as “the lost deranged grindhouse classic!” and seeing the photos of a cross dressing Salvador Ugarte with an axe on the back of the case I knew I had to see this.

Miss Leslie’s Dolls is not a great film by any stretch, but it is entertaining. There’s so much about it that would not fly with today’s audience, such as the cross dressing, using transgender as a shock ploy, and a teacher seducing a reluctant student. But this is not a movie with any message. It’s sleaze, shock, and exploitation from 1973.

It starts off with Miss Leslie performing a ritual in her house, “I too, shall attain this metamorphisis. Tonight, perhaps.” She is a variation on Norman Bates, but with occult leanings, and overwrought dialog. We then see Miss Leslie robbing a grave in a rainstorm and absconding with the body of a freshly buried young woman. Scenes which set up what is to come. Seconds later a car with three students and a teacher returning from a football game in Boston driving through a graveyard, wending their way among the tomsbstones. Why they chose to drive through the cemetery instead of around it is never revealed.  They soon have the inevitable car trouble, ditch the car in the graveyard and run over to a seemingly abandoned house, which turns out to be the home of thee Miss Leslie.

Introductions are made, and wooden acting is revealed. Especially the monotone delivery of Terry Juston as the teacher, Alma Frost. Devoid of any emotion. When Miss Leslie is introduced to Martha, she is taken aback, and from here things grow increasingly strange.

“You are Martha! My Martha!” She thinks Martha is a reincarnation of her long dead best friend of the same name. We learn that the deceased Martha was her “dearest friend. A lovely little creature employed by my mother in our little toy factory. She was the only one who knew and understand the painful sorrow of my innermost secrets.” More clues of what is in store. Miss Leslie’s mother owned a toy factory in Boston where they manufactured all types of dolls until a mysterious fire broke out killing her mother and dearest Martha, and institutionalizing Miss Leslie for some time. She now spends her days in solitude, alone with her thoughts, books on the occult, and the “dolls” that Roy finds when he goes off to find any hidden booze in the house while Miss Leslie sets up places for them to sleep for the night.

When Roy shows the “dolls” to his friends, he remarks that they must be the “goddesses of some weird love cult.” Unbeknownst to them, those “dolls” are the bodies of women that Miss Leslie has tried to transfer her spirit contained within her male body into theirs, but failed. Everyone else thinks they are well made wax figures. But Miss Leslie informs them, “My dolls are not made of wax.” What they are made of is is a “well guarded secret.”

From here the movie picks up the pace and begins delivering in the tasteless sleaze, shock, and violence (though nothing brutal or gory) it promises. Some scenes at the end are a little too low lit, but it works out. Despite the obvious low budget they make the best with that they have, and even the bad acting does not get in the way of the overall enjoyment . Nothing exactly original, but worthy of a late night viewing. (MA)

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NW: Nate Wilson    DC: Devon Cahill   MA: Matt Average

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Who we are: A bunch of punk rock hasbeens/neverwasbeens. At the point in life where we go to shows and stand in the back, watching the clock as much as watching the bands, hoping the whole thing is over by midnight. Whereas, when we go see  movie, it generally starts on time and ends at a decent hour. We are fans of genre cinema and sounds from the underground (if such a thing even exists anymore). We cover what we like, and sometimes do not like. What we do like is: Henry Silva, Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, Barbara Bouchet, Edwige Fenech,  Carpenter, Fulci, Argento, Sergio Martino, spaghetti westerns, Black Flag, Judas Priest, Brainbombs, noise, hardcore punk, metal, Iron Maiden, Mob 47, Black Sabbath, Electric Wizard, doom, Pam Grier, Sid Haig, Robert Forester, Rudy Ray Moore, Tank, Italian prog, Can, Ash Ra Temple, The Offenders, Articles of Faith, Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, Crossed Out, Totalitär, Mads Mikkelsen, Corman, Landis, Godzilla, kaiju, Seijun Suzuki, samurai, Kenji Fukasaku, Dick Miller, Amarok, Roberta Collins, Chuck Connors, Ancient Altar, Pagan Altar, Karen Black, Richard Stark, Anitra Ford, and on and on and on…

 

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