We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
C.H.U.D. (1984) – hosted by Joe Bob Briggs on The Last Drive-in
After making his triumphant and long-awaited return to movie hosting with a dusk-to-dawn-to-dusk marathon on the Shudder streaming service in the summer of 2018, drive-in critic Joe Bob Briggs was given two holiday specials (Dinners of Death for Thanksgiving and A Very Joe Bob Christmas for Christmas) and then Shudder greenlit a weekly version of his show The Last Drive-in. That show began airing at the end of March 2019 – and the consensus behind the scenes was that Joe Bob had to get it started with an ‘80s horror movie. The one that was pushed on him was a movie he’s not a fan of, but does have a solid cult following: C.H.U.D. A movie that has a great cast and an awesome meaning for its title (Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers), as well as a not-so-awesome meaning for the title (Contamination Hazard Urban Disposal). It also has some interesting creatures... but the problem is, the creatures aren’t given a whole lot to do.
The first episode of The Last Drive-in (weekly edition) starts with a clip from a concert show Joe Bob released back in the ‘80s, Dead in Concert, which was an hour-long stand-up special. Yes, Joe Bob has done stand-up in the past. The clip shows him and the audience reciting the Drive-in Oath: “We are drive-in mutants. We are not like other people. We are sick. We are disgusting. We believe in blood, in breasts, and in beasts. If life had a vomit meter, we’d be off the scale. As long as one drive-in remains on the planet earth, we will party like jungle animals. We will boogie till we puke. The drive-in will never die. Amen.”
Then we’re dropped in 2019, and Joe Bob starts off by complaining that the version of C.H.U.D. they’re about to show is somehow, for some reason, missing the nudity that used to be in the shower scene. Sure, actress Kim Greist had let it be known that she didn’t want to do the nude scene, but the nudity belonged to a body double, not to Greist, so it’s not clear why it would be retroactively removed. Joe Bob misses the days when genre movies could be depended on to show shower scenes that represented a character’s physical or emotional vulnerability. It was a tradition spawned by Psycho and Carrie, and its heyday is estimated to have lasted from 1970 to 1995. Joe Bob mentions that the great producer Roger Corman believed that bare breasts improved a movie’s box office prospects, and he said that the ideal number of nude scenes is four. The lead actress should be nude from the waist up in two scenes, one near the beginning and one near the end, and two supporting actresses should be nude in one scene each. If all of these scenes are skillfully placed, it would make the male viewer think they’ve seen even more nudity than they actually have. This topic branches out into discussion of the Corman production Angel of Destruction, where Charlie Spradling was replaced by Maria Ford (and her character killed off) in the middle of production because she wouldn’t do the required nude scenes. There’s also mention of scream queen Tiffany Shepis, who has done quite a bit of nudity in her time, and the amount of bare male skin shown in movies directed by David DeCoteau.
Then it’s time to get C.H.U.D. rolling – and since the movie deals with toxic waste disposal, Joe Bob mentions that the ‘80s were the “toxic waste decade,” there were a lot of instances of toxic waste being featured in movies back then and it’s primarily due to the fact that there was an environmental disaster in the Love Canal neighborhood of Niagara Falls, New York back in 1977 because the Hooker Chemical Company had been dumping toxic waste there for decades.
Joe Bob informs us that C.H.U.D. was originally intended to have your regular, crazy people cannibals, but the decision to have the cannibals transform into monstrous creatures was made at the last minute – so late in the process, that the FX artist was only able to make a C.H.U.D. head and some arms, which is probably why we see so little of the creatures in the movie. The back story for the film goes like this: some New York theatre people were having a party, and in attendance were actors John Heard and Daniel Stern, as well as a guy named Shepard Abbott. Abbott happened to mention the tunnels beneath Manhattan during the party – and then this trio started brainstorming ideas for a movie that could center on those tunnels. By the time the party was over, Abbott had even come up with the word C.H.U.D. Abbott went on to write a rough draft of the script before the passing the writing duties over to mystery writer Parnell Hall. A budget of $1.25 million was raised, Douglas Cheek was hired to direct the film, and Heard and Stern agreed to be in the movie and work for scale and a percentage of the profits as long as their friends were hired to be in the film with them. So that’s how we got this creature feature that’s packed with New York stage actors and Shakespeare in the Park performers.
Joe Bob gives C.H.U.D. 2 stars out of a possible 4. He doesn’t understand why, but people would often request that he show the movie, and here he did on The Last Drive-in.
Two stars seems like a fair rating to me, because while it’s nice to have John Heard and Daniel Stern in a creature feature and there’s a really cool idea at the center of C.H.U.D., the film doesn’t reach the potential of that idea. It’s quite uneventful for long stretches of its running time and doesn’t have nearly enough C.H.U.D. action.
Heard stars as photographer George Cooper, who has decided to take pictures of New York’s homeless population as his latest personal project. Stern’s character is A.J. "The Reverend" Shepherd, who runs a homeless shelter. When homeless people who live in the underground tunnels start disappearing and/or developing a mysterious ailment, George and The Reverend get pulled into the situation along with NYPD Captain Bosch (Christopher Curry), who looks into the disappearance of the homeless people and hopes the investigation will lead him to answers about the disappearance of his own wife. George’s girlfriend Lauren Daniels (Greist), who reveals she’s pregnant in the midst of the story, also gets involved with this whole mess, and has a standout scene where she gets to face off with a C.H.U.D. while wielding a sword.
The characters eventually figure out that toxic waste has been dumped into the city’s abandoned underground tunnels and is turning the homeless people who live down there into flesh-eating monsters. C.H.U.D.s. As I said, it’s a cool idea, the movie just doesn’t do enough with the C.H.U.D.s, so there are times when it can feel like it’s a slog to get through, even though it only has a running time of 88 minutes. This is one of those occasions when Joe Bob’s hosting segments liven up a viewing experience – and another way to liven up C.H.U.D. is to watch it with the audio commentary Stern, Heard, Curry, Abbott, and Cheek recorded for the film.
During his hosting segments, Joe Bob gives an overview of the careers of several of the actors, but spends most of the time picking the movie apart. He gets irritated with the movie because it feels to have like the makers of it thought they were superior to the material; they were just stopping off to do this little horror movie on their way to Shakespeare in the Park. He notes that the script is similar to Larry Cohen’s Q: The Winged Serpent, but not as good as the Q script. It has goofy motivating incidents, dramatic scenes that serve no purpose, logic issues, cat and mouse sequences (and Joe Bob hates cat and mouse), on-the-nose writing, and a scene that features John Goodman and Jay Thomas in an all-night diner (Joe Bob misses all-night diners) that doesn’t fit anywhere, so it was moved to several different points in the film during the editing process. He notes that there are remarkably few C.H.U.D.s and not much monster chomping, which makes him wonder, aren’t fans pissed at the lack of C.H.U.D.s? He feels like the stage actors should be giving better performances, as most of them come off as smug or lifeless. Everyone except Stern is phoning it in, and Joe Bob is annoyed by Stern because he’s chewing the scenery. Joe Bob presents the theory that people like C.H.U.D. because they enjoy movies where New York turns out to be even nastier than we thought it was. When the movie wraps up, he mocks the synthesizer score (I think the score is one of the better things about the movie), the plot’s lack of sense, Heard and Greist’s lack of chemistry, and lazy script. Darcy the Mail Girl, on the other hand, thinks the movie is fun.
CASTLE FREAK (1995) – hosted by Joe Bob Briggs on The Last Drive-in
On the first night of the weekly version of The Last Drive-in, C.H.U.D. was shown in a double feature with Castle Freak, a Full Moon production that was directed by Stuart Gordon and (like Gordon’s films Re-Animator and From Beyond) inspired by a story written by H.P. Lovecraft. So Joe Bob starts the Castle Freak half of the night by saying that when artsy fartsy Chicago theatre people make horror movies (like Gordon’s movies and John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer), it turns out better than when artsy fartsy New York theatre people try the same thing (the examples given are C.H.U.D. and The Toxic Avenger). But before he can get to properly introducing this rough, puke-inducing flick that he happens to love, he gets sidetracked by the fact that bikinis are no longer featured in the Miss America competition, which is not supposed to be referred to as a beauty pageant or a talent show. Joe Bob goes on about Miss America for so long, we’re more than 11 and a half minutes into this part of the show before he can really start digging into Castle Freak, which he gives 4 stars. A perfect rating.
Castle Freak shows us what happens when an American family - consisting of Re-Animator/From Beyond stars Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton as John and Susan Reilly, with Jessica Dollarhide as their blind teenage daughter Rebecca - inherit a castle in Italy... unaware that a man has been held captive in the castle; a horribly disfigured, emaciated man who was kept chained up to be beaten mercilessly. What happens is “nothing good,” because this man has soon slipped free of his bindings so he can stalk the castle grounds, killing people who are unlucky enough to cross paths with him and creeping on Rebecca. This is a good movie, but it’s also a nasty one to sit through.
During his hosting segments, Joe Bob says the opening of the film reminds him of the 1960 William Castle production 13 Ghosts, which he describes as a “lame” movie, but I enjoy. He loves the set-up where the family inherits the castle, has to wonder what the catch is, and then realizes they need to get out of there. He also tells the back story, which is the fact that producer Charles Band had a poster made for a movie called Castle Freak, but he had no story to go with it. When Gordon spotted the poster and asked what that project was all about, Band said, “There’s a castle and there’s a freak.” That’s all he had in mind, so he let Gordon take the idea and run with it. Joe Bob appreciates the makeup effects that were used to bring the Freak to life, and gives information on the career of Freak actor Jonathan Fuller, as well as Jessica Dollarhide – who didn’t have much of a career in the entertainment industry. This was her first and last time acting in a movie. This was also one of the last acting jobs for Raffaella Offidani, who appears as an ill-fated prostitute who has a terrible time because the Freak has a literal interpretation of a locker room phrase.
Special guest Barbara Crampton stops by to talk with Joe Bob during some of the segments. She confirms that the cast lived in the castle, which was owned by Band, during the production. Joe Bob says Crampton was in the two greatest Lovecraft movies ever made, Re-Animator and From Beyond, and reveals that, between the two, he prefers From Beyond. He and Crampton agree that Castle Freak doesn’t get as much respect as those two movies (not even from Joe Bob, as he didn’t say Crampton was in the “three greatest” Lovecraft movies) because it’s so dark and serious, whereas Re-Animator and From Beyond had a good amount of humor in them. Crampton talks about working with the Freak on set, working with Stuart Gordon and Jeffrey Combs, the path she took from growing up in Vermont to working in film and television, and her time working on soap operas, where she would have to memorize 40 pages of dialogue in a day. Her career sank for a while after Castle Freak, which she believes was because she was 35 at the time and there weren’t roles for her anymore. Thankfully, she has been able to make a comeback, as there seems to be more roles for women over the age of 35 these days. They ponder whether the Freak’s motivation is to get a girlfriend or just to make a human connection, and Crampton states that Gordon’s motto when it came to making his movies – whether it came to the cast’s performances or the gore and slime – was “More is not enough.”
Throughout the episode, Joe Bob is shown to be preoccupied with the Freak’s penis and whether or not it’s functioning. He’s so obsessed with this topic, he makes a call to Sleepaway Camp star Felissa Rose, who was made the show’s official “mangled dick expert” after she was a guest during the marathon. Then Darcy the Mail Girl shares a letter where a viewer asked Joe Bob to name a movie based on their description. Joe Bob is stumped, but most people probably would be, because the answer is the 1991 sci-fi action film Steel and Lace. Not exactly a popular movie. Joe Bob will not admit that he was stumped, but he does wrap the night up with a joke - and with that, the first episode of the weekly version of The Last Drive-in was successfully completed.
THE HAND (1981) – hosted by Joe Bob Briggs on MonsterVision
In 1996, it was announced that drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs had been hired to host the show MonsterVision on TNT every Friday night – and soon after that announcement was made, Joe Bob hosted a double feature of Oliver Stone’s 1981 psychological horror movie The Hand and the movie that turned Hammer Films into a company known for its genre movies, the 1955 sci-fi horror film The Creeping Unknown, a.k.a. The Quatermass Xperiment.
Newly hired as the permanent MonsterVision host, Joe Bob started the episode by claiming that he has been hounded by the press ever since the announcement was made and addressing the fact that his Movie Channel series was cancelled. He then pledges his commitment to showing films that focus on blood, breasts, and breasts... even though, since MonsterVision was on basic cable, the breasts and most of the blood would be removed. Such was the case with The Hand, which Oliver Stone made back in the days before his career took a more serious turn. Joe Bob gives it three and a half stars; just a half-star short of a perfect rating.
The film stars Michael Caine as Jonathan Lansdale, writer/illustrator of the Conan the Barbarian-esque fantasy comic Mandro. When we meet him, his marriage to Anne (Andrea Marcovicci of The Stuff) is already crumbling, and soon his career is also put in jeopardy because he loses his right hand in a car accident... and no one is able to locate the severed hand. Jonathan’s personal and professional lives fall apart more and more as the movie goes on – and soon, people who have wronged him start getting attacked, murdered... and it appears that his severed hand is responsible for the crimes. Or has Jonathan gone mad and homicidal himself?
The Hand is an interesting movie; a solid psychological thriller featuring a great performance from Caine as a troubled and never very likeable character. It’s a bit slow and goes on longer than it needed to (it has a running time of 104 minutes), but it’s worth checking out.
During his hosting segments, Joe Bob points out Stone’s cameo as a “homeless bum,” is disgusted by Anne’s exercise class and especially by her yoga teacher, drools over Annie McEnroe (who plays a character who hooks up with Jonathan while his marriage withers), says the severed hand looks cheesy and lame, calls the ending weird, starts rooting for Jonathan more and more as time goes on, and mentions that Michael Caine might have gotten more credit for his performance in The Hand if the movie hadn’t been overshadowed by The Shining being released in the same year... but Joe Bob was confused on that one, because The Hand came out the year after The Shining. His pick for the best moment involves the hand crawling up someone’s pants leg.
THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (1955) – hosted by Joe Bob Briggs on MonsterVision
The Quatermass Xperiment was a major success when it was released in 1955, but Joe Bob is not a fan. As he introduces it, he says, “The best thing I can say about it is that it does eventually end.” He gives it just one and a half stars.
During his hosting segments, Joe Bob is baffled that the script was originally written as a play, because how do you do a mutant creature sci-fi outer space story on a stage? He expresses impatience with the pace throughout, making comments like “Jesus, these things were slow,” and complaining about the amount of scenes that involve men in grey suits and trenchcoats talking about the sci-fi horror that has arrived in England, while we don’t get to see much monster action from the “half man, half jelly, hand is cactus plant” creature at the heart of the story. There’s even a scene where a guy is shown getting dressed while talking to his wife, who’s trying to give him a cup of tea. Because that will really speed up the plot! Toward the end, Joe Bob acknowledges that the movie is about to get moderately interesting - not fascinating, but bearable for about 8 minutes. He also takes a moment to talk about the short career of Margia Dean and that, since the movie was forty years old by the time he was showing it, some of the cast members had passed away since filming. “I’m watching a dead person.”
The movie tells the story of what happens when Professor Bernard Quatermass, played by Brian Donlevy, conducts an experiment that involves the unsanctioned launching of a manned rocket into space. When the rocket returns, two of the three crew members have vanished and the third one isn’t doing so well. Sure enough, he’s mutating into a creature that Joe Bob describes as a “giant rubber octopus with a monkey face.” It’s a good enough story, but the movie, directed by Val Guest, does move along at an achingly slow pace. There’s not a whole lot going on in here... which is shocking, since the 82 minute movie was based on a mini-series that took six thirty minute episodes to tell the story. You’d think whittling 100 minutes out of a story would result in a faster, more eventful movie than this one.
Joe Bob admits that The Quatermass Xperiment, or The Creeping Unknown, does have at least one of the great lines in sci-fi history, but it’s too slow for his taste. In the end, he says that the British shouldn’t do horror movies because it’s impossible to be scared when people are speaking with those accents.
And with that, the first episode of Joe Bob’s MonsterVision host era came to an end. He would host the show for just under four years.
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