Worth Mentioning - Watching Crazy Movies

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.

Four more movies that were shown on The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs.

DEATHGASM (2015) – Hosted by Joe Bob Briggs on The Last Drive-in

The third episode in the “weekly series” version of the Shudder series The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs (which was preceded by a few specials) begins with legendary drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs talking about the phrase “With all due respect,” which people usually say right before they say something disrespectful. He also talks about the annoyance of people asking the question, “Do you mind if I ask you a question?” So if someone asks you, “Do you mind if I ask you a question?” you should reply with, “With all due respect...”

Then it’s time for Joe Bob to go off on one of his rants, and this time he decided to focus on Tesla cars, Tesla owners, the idea of saving the planet by spending a lot of money on a vehicle, and his own favorite car, the HemiCuda. What does this have to do with the double feature he’s about to show? Absolutely nothing, but the structure of the show allows him to go off on random rants.

When he’s done talking about cars, he can finally get around to introducing the first movie, the New Zealand horror comedy Deathgasm – which he describes as a rip off of Spinal Tap, Trick or Treat, Evilspeak, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and the exploding head scene in Night of the Creeps. Clearly, writer/director Jason Lei Howden has watched a lot of American cable classics. But just because he calls the movie a ripoff (while somehow leaving the Evil Dead franchise off the list of movies it ripped off, which is surprisingly, because it’s very reminiscent of the Evil Dead films) doesn’t mean he thinks it’s a bad movie. In fact, he gives it a perfect rating of 4 stars. It’s a ripoff done well, a high energy party movie with some great one-liners... and even though we’ve seen versions of everything it has to offer before, have we seen it with giant rubber dildo fights?

Deathgasm is a really good time. The story centers on a teenage metalhead who forms a band called DEATHGASM – and when you’re writing about the band, it’s to be written in all caps - with three of his pals. When the young musicians "acquire" some sheet music from metal legend Rikki Daggers, playing it turns out to be a grave mistake. They have just played the Black Hymn, music that has unleashed a supernatural force and jump-started a demon apocalypse.

During his hosting segments, Joe Bob runs through a list of bands that contributed to the film’s soundtrack: Axe Slasher, Beast Wars, Bullet Belt, Skull Fist, Nun Slaughter, The Wretched End. He compares filming in New Zealand, where most of the actors in the country worked on the Lord of the Rings franchise, to the fact that a lot of New York-based actors have worked on Law & Order shows. He digs into the story of the PMRC and Satanic Panic of the 1980s. He compares the film to the 1986 classic Trick or Treat, and says that Tony Fields’ evil rocker character in that film drew inspiration from the real-life Blackie Lawless, while Rikki Daggers in Deathgasm is based on Sammi Curr. He points out a scene that was inspired by a real Norwegian metal band. He digs into the career of Jason Lei Howden (who started as a visual effects artist) and several of the cast members. He talks about producer Ant Timpson and the fact that the project earned public funding in a competition. He wonders what movie had the first exploded head ever seen on the screen. He doesn’t understand why Deathgasm is compared to Dead-Alive, even though they’re both New Zealand zombie movies. He lists the variety of weapons used in the film: angle grinder, engine block, chainsaw, axe, weedwhacker, dildo, anal beads, vibrators, table saw, electric drill, guitar. He reveals that some copies of Deathgasm had to be retitled Heavy Metal Apocalypse so they could make it onto the DVD shelves in Walmart.

When a zombie gets its penis cut off with a weedwhacker, Joe Bob makes a call to Sleepaway Camp’s Felissa Rose, this show’s “mangled dick expert,” to find out how to handle a zombie dick. And in the end, he admits that the film’s complicated, confusing, ambiguous demonology is too much for him to figure out, but that’s okay because Howden took the approach of, “When in doubt, add another zombie or explode another head.” 

After the movie, a cosplaying Darcy the Mail Girl comes in with some fan mail... and it turns out that the fan who wrote in was a member of the band Axe Slasher, which is featured on the Deathgasm soundtrack.

THE CHANGELING (1980) – Hosted by Joe Bob Briggs on The Last Drive-in

With the second film in the double feature shown on the third week episode of The Last Drive-in, we have the first example of an issue I have with the programming of this series. As Joe Bob himself says, by leading with Deathgasm and following that up with The Changeling, we go from one of the fastest developing horror movies ever made to one of the slowest. This is not how a double feature should work, especially not on a show that begins at 9pm Eastern, so many of the viewers watching in the Eastern time zone have trouble staying awake through both movies no matter what’s being shown. By programming the slower movie second, you’re making it even more difficult for them to stay awake. And The Last Drive-in has done this time and time again. They should start with the slower movie and then liven things up with the double feature, but they repeatedly choose to start fast and lively, then slow things down in the second half. Also, when you’re talking drive-in double features, they’re supposed to start with something more prestigious, then go to a “B-movie” for the second feature. That’s where the term B-movie came from. So starting with a blood-drenched B-movie like Deathgasm and following it with the prestigious The Changeling makes no sense.

Anyway... Deathgasm followed by The Changeling is what we got. And the fact that The Changeling star George C. Scott was from Virginia and had a drinking problem allows to go on a long rant about moonshine, whisky, Scotch, and hipster alcohol. I couldn’t care less about any kind of alcohol (other than the stuff I use to sanitize my hands), so this goes right over my head. Then we can get to the movie, which is often ranked in the “haunted house hall of fame” alongside the likes of The Uninvited, The Innocents, House on Haunted Hill, and The Haunting. Joe Bob feels House of Usher should be on that list, too.

The Changeling does move rather slowly, feeling longer than its 107 minutes, but it is a great haunted house movie with a very interesting and well-crafted story. Scott plays composer John Russell, who loses his wife and daughter in a car accident at the start of the film and then, as part of his healing process, decides to move from New York City out to Seattle. When he arrives in Seattle, he makes the very poor decision to stay in a massive mansion that he's shown by Historical Society representative Claire Norman (Scott's real life wife Trish Van Devere). He hasn’t been staying there long before he realizes the place is haunted by a spirit that’s trying to communicate with him.

During his hosting segments, Joe Bob tells us that this movie that takes place in a creepy old house in Seattle was based on supposedly real events that took place in a creepy old house in Denver in 1969 and was filmed in a fake house in Vancouver. Although this is a “high brow horror film” with snob appeal, it’s still good enough to earn a 3.5 rating from Joe Bob, even though he takes opportunities to gripe about its fans poo-pooing gore movies and saying The Changeling is an example that you don’t need special effects to make a good horror movie, overlooking the fact that it has plenty of special effects in the climax. He discusses the fact that Scott and Trish Van Devere were married and worked together a lot, and points out that actors who are married to each other can’t do hot love scenes together. It doesn’t work. He goes over some of the filming locations, one of which is the cemetery where Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee are buried. He goes over Scott’s career, the career of co-star Melvyn Douglas, and the career of journeyman / artiste director Peter Medak, who actually spent time on the set of The Haunting and is considered a mentor by Guillermo del Toro. The script was crafted by Diana Maddox, William Gray, and Russell Hunter, and Gray went on to write the likes of Prom Night, Humongous, The Philadelphia Experiment, and Black Moon Rising, among other things.

Joe Bob goes off on a tangent on the murder shows and the Amish shows that he likes to watch, and he’s not happy that Court TV became truTV. He’s confused by the talk of different ghosts in the film, one of which is a little girl that was hit by a coal cart, which lets him decree that any movie that features a mine must also feature the mine collapsing. There’s talk of the movie being filmed in Canada because it was part of the Canadian tax shelter years. Joe Bob goes over the details of the “real events” and calls bullshit on them. He gives the séance scene a 100 on the creep scale, and – probably accurately – says the movie would be less detailed if it were made today.

The level of detail and the slow pace worked out for it, though. The film was a modest box office success and has gone on to become a a cult favorite. Martin Scorsese included it on his list of the scariest movies, and Neve Campbell has named it as her favorite scary movie. 

Once the movie has come to an end, Joe Bob mentions that the first haunted house movie ever made might be Georges Méliès’ 1896 short The Haunted Castle or The Devil’s Castle. Then, Darcy the Mail Girl comes in with some mail from a fan who sent Joe Bob a bar of Lone Star beer soap. And after Joe Bob confirms that washing himself with the beer soap was refreshing, the show comes to an end in the usual way: with the telling of a joke.

MADMAN (1981) – Hosted by Joe Bob Briggs on The Last Drive-in

The fourth episode in the weekly series version of the Shudder show The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs begins with Joe Bob sitting in a drive-in parking lot, talking about the beauty of Switzerland, and the fact that even if you move there, you’ll never be considered a local. On the other hand, if you move to Texas, you can be considered a local within minutes.

Then we’re on to the trailer park set, so Joe Bob can introduce “the greatest summer camp movie ever to come out of Staten Island,” “the Staten Island Gone with the Wind,” Madman. The movie wasn’t filmed on Staten Island, but a lot of the people involved with the making of it – including writer/director Joe Giannone and co-writer Gary Sales – were from there. According to Joe Bob, Staten Island is “the redneck borough” of New York, and therefore the people who live there are “his people.” 

Madman is set at North Sea Cottages, a special retreat for gifted children, where the local campfire legend involves Madman Marz, a farmer who used to live in the dilapidated house that stands at the edge of the woods, not far from the camp. Marz was an evil man; an alcoholic with a violent temper, he who would get into bar brawls, beat his wife, and brutally punish their two children. One night, many years ago, Marz took an axe and hacked his sleeping family to death. Then he went to the local tavern, bloody axe in hand, and had a beer. When the townspeople realized he had murdered his family, ten men formed a lynch mob and hanged Marz from a tree, bashing his face open with his own axe for good measure. When the men returned the next morning to cut Marz's body down, he was gone. The rope snapped. Also missing were the corpses of his wife and children. Neither Marz nor the bodies were ever found. It's said that on nights when the moon is full, Marz stalks the woods, looking for people to decapitate with his axe or to hang from a tree. He can be anywhere at any time, and if you say his name above a whisper in the woods, he'll hear you and come after you. So, of course, a camper loudly calls out his name... and, sure enough, Marz shows up to start slashing his way through the camp staff.

During his hosting segments, Joe Bob lets us know that Giannone and Sales originally intended to base their movie on the Staten Island legend of a maniac called Cropsey... but during the casting process, actors who came in to audition kept telling them they had already auditioned for a Cropsey project, which was already filming. That project was the slasher movie The Burning, and since it was already in production, Giannone and Sales had to rework the campfire legend part of the story to be about an original character they decided to call Madman Marz. He gives some trivia on cast members and on Giannone and Sales, who attended film school in Staten Island. They wanted to get into the film business, and since the big news at the time was the success of the independent slasher Friday the 13th, they figured horror was their ticket into the industry. They went searching for investors and found a baby carriage manufacturer who was willing to provide the $350,000 budget they needed for Madman. They wanted to film in the Catskill Mountains, but the weather got too cold, so they had to find somewhere closer to home. They located a conference center called Fish Cove Inn at North Sea Harbor in the town of Southampton on Long Island. Sadly, the cabins have since been demolished. As filming went on, crew members would have to spray paint leaves green and paste them to the trees to hide the fact that they were getting deep into fall / winter.

The film’s heroine is played by Gaylen Ross from Dawn of the Dead, although she went by the name Alexis Dubin in the credits because she was in the Screen Actors Guild and this was a non-union production. Joe Bob questions some of the odd decisions made by this ill-fated heroine, who is, due to some of her actions, not the typical final girl. Some might say the movie subverts the final girl rules, but the filmmakers didn’t do that intentionally. At the time, it wasn’t clear that there were any final girl rules. Elements of her character also allows Joe Bob to go on a rant to say that, despite the opinions of executives, not everything needs a “strong female character” these days. Some stories might need a weak character, or a complex human being with strengths and weaknesses.

Madman himself was played by horror fan Paul Ehlers, an illustrator the filmmakers met when they were looking for someone to design the poster. Ehlers did that, and since he was a horror fan with a large build, he was also cast as the killer. Ehlers helped design the look of the character and would play the Halloween theme in his room while he was waiting to be called to set, the music helping him get into character. His wife was pregnant at the time, so he kept a beeper in the pocket of his Madman Marz outfit. His wife went into labor and the beeper went off when he was on set, so he drove to the hospital while still wearing his bloody outfit. Ehlers was disappointed that the movie didn’t get much coverage in the likes of Fangoria or other genre-friendly publications... but there was a newspaper guy called Joe Bob Briggs who took notice of the movie...

Joe Bob says he doesn’t understand why fans think Madman is a great slasher, and he claims that many point to the nostalgia of seeing the VHS cover in video stores back in the day as a reason for loving the movie – and yet he gives the movie 3 out of 4 stars, so that seems like a rating for a great slasher to me. And I do think Madman is an awesome slasher movie. Joe Bob also points out that Madman achieves the three Artistotelian unities, as Aristotle believed that a story should be unified with one main action that has minimum subplots, unity of place (few locations), and unity of time (it should occur within a period of 24 hours). Madman is Aristotle’s ideal story!

Once the movie has ended, Joe Bob sings the song about Madman Marz that plays over the end credits and is a thing of beauty. Madman deserved to get a franchise, but unfortunately the distribution company went bankrupt and the investor didn’t get his money back. There has been talk of a remake, sequel, and/or prequel being in development over the years, but none of them have ever been made.

With the Madman portion of the night coming to an end, Darcy the Mail Girl brings Joe Bob a piece of mail from a fan who lives in Scotland, and Joe Bob confirms that he has visited the country. Like Staten Islanders, the Scottish are his people.

WOLF GUY: ENRAGED LYCANTHROPE (1975) – Hosted by Joe Bob Briggs on The Last Drive-in

The Universal Monsters classic The Wolf Man was released on December 9, 1941 – just two days after the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service made a surprise military strike on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii. So, understandably, it took a while for The Wolf Man to make its way over to Japan. But it did eventually, and in the late ‘60s a writer named Kazumasa Hirai was inspired to create a manga series about a character he called Wolf Guy, Akira Inugami. Hirai wrote two separate series about Inugami; one in which the character was a middle schooler, and one in which he was an adult. Toho, the studio behind the Godzilla franchise, picked up the film rights to the schoolboy Wolf Guy and made a movie about him in 1973: Horror of the Wolf, or Crest of the Wolf. I haven’t seen that one yet, but thanks to The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs, I have seen the cheap and dirty movie rival studio Toei made about the adult Inugami two years later, Wolf Guy: Enraged Lycanthrope.

Directed by Kazuhiko Yamaguchi from a script by Fumio Kônami that had a story Yamaguchi didn’t understand, Wolf Guy stars The Street Fighter himself, Sonny Chiba, as the adult Inugami, supposedly the last surviving member of a werewolf clan who now works as a crime reporter. He gets mixed up in a case involving members of a band being knocked off one-by-one by a vengeful tiger spirit conjured by a woman they did wrong, and discovers there’s a conspiracy and a whole lot of villains behind the situation. This gives Chiba plenty of opportunities to fight off bad guys, even though he’s a werewolf who never transforms into a wolf because the film didn’t have enough of a budget to handle special effects like that.

Joe Bob gives the history on the Wolf Guy mangas and is joined during his introduction by The Last Drive-in’s set designer / art director Yuki Nakamura, the “Tokyo Cowboy,” since Yuki worked with Sonny Chiba on a rice cooker commercial and a cell phone commercial that also featured Quentin Tarantino. Joe Bob says half of the audience loves it when he shows Japanese movies and half of the audience hates it, as he was still getting unhappy letters at this time about the fact that he included Takashi Miike’s film Dead or Alive in his Dinners of Death Thanksgiving marathon. Whether viewers love or hate the movies, they have to admit, Joe Bob says, that Japanese filmmakers bring hate and cruelty to the screen better than anybody else.

As Wolf Guy itself, Joe Bob describes it as “a martial arts horror thriller mystery superhero werewolf yakuza folk legend hard-boiled cop softcore sleaze medical experiment psychedelic musical about syphilis, bestiality, kung fu, and inter-species romance.” He talks about Japanese mummies, the history of lycanthropy, (including mentions of “wolf in the breast,” “suckling the she-wolf,” and the founding of Rome), and gives a lot of information about Sonny Chiba, including his acting theory that an actors doesn’t need their face, they should act with their whole body. In his view, the test of an actor is having the ability to turn your back to camera and the audience can still read your emotions. Chiba also believes that if you want to be an actor, the first thing to do is train your abs and get a six pack.

Kazumasa Hirai did not like what Toei did with Wolf Guy and even walked out of a screening after just fifteen minutes. Joe Bob, on the other hand, has a good time with the insanity of the film and even gives it a perfect 4 star rating. Despite being a fan of The Street Fighter, I didn’t have much fun watching Wolf Guy, and actually found the movie difficult to sit through and focus on. This is not something I’ll ever be watching without the aid of Joe Bob’s hosting segments. But it is entertaining to watch Sonny Chiba kick and punch people.

After the movie finally ends - and I say "finally" because it takes me multiple tries and a couple of days to make it through the thing, Joe Bob is joined by a cosplaying Darcy the Mail Girl to give an update on an auction they had to raise money for a wolf preserve in honor of their Dinners of Death guest Michael Berryman. Over one thousand dollars was raised, and the link is shared to the Seacrest Wolf Preserve. Then they discuss the fact that Darcy has been to Japan, and saw a Crispin Glover presentation while she was there.

Mail from aspiring horror author and screenwriter The Blogging Banshee is read, then Joe Bob wraps it all up with a joke.