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.
LOWER LEVEL (1991)
Fans of genre movies and B-movies might recognize the names Kristine Peterson and Joel Soisson. Peterson was an assistant director on the likes of Chopping Mall, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child, and Tremors, and also directed the films Deadly Dreams, Critters 3, and The Redemption: Kickboxer 5. Soisson produced Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge, Trick or Treat, Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence, and much more, while working on the scripts for the likes of Hellraiser and Children of the Corn sequels. But what a lot of people probably don’t know is that, back in 1991, Peterson and Soisson joined forces to make a thriller called Lower Level, which Peterson directed from a script Soisson wrote, working from a story by Hillary Black, W.K. Border, and Michael Leahy. And it’s a shame that this one has slipped into obscurity, because it’s actually worth checking out.
The Arkansas-born Elizabeth Gracen was Miss America 1982 and made headlines in the ‘90s when she claimed to have had a one-night stand with President Bill Clinton back in ‘83, when he was the Governor of Arkansas. She stars in Lower Level as architect Hillary White, who is on her way out of her office building’s parking garage when her yuppie boyfriend Craig (Jeff Yagher) stops by to let her know he has to cancel their plans. Following this disappointing conversation, Hillary and Craig find that they’re stuck in the parking garage. The gates won’t open. The elevators don’t work. This isn’t a technical issue. The building’s security guard Sam Browning (David Bradley) has been keeping a close eye on Hillary. He’s obsessed with her. And he has trapped Hillary in the building on purpose. He wants to have a chance to have a nice chat (and romantic dinner) with her, so he has arranged this “meeting.”
Hillary realizes she’s stuck in the building right at the beginning of the movie, and the rest of its 88 minute running time focuses on her struggle to get out of this situation alive. She might make it – but there are plenty of side characters who aren’t so lucky. When they cross paths with Sam, he takes them out.
Even if a genre fan hasn’t seen Lower Level, this “trapped in a parking garage by a security guard” set-up might be familiar – and that’s because Lower Level has elements that are so much like the thriller P2, it’d be difficult to believe that film’s writer/producer Alexandre Aja wasn’t taking direct inspiration from Lower Level when crafting P2 with his collaborators. Aja does have a tendency to tell versions of stories that have been told before – after all, he was at the helm of the remakes The Hills Have Eyes and Mirrors and the reboot Piranha 3D, he wrote and produced the Maniac remake, and has been accused of “borrowing” many of the scenarios seen in his movie High Tension from the Dean Koontz novel Intensity. So yeah, I would bet that Aja had seen Lower Level at some point. But just because he took ideas from this movie to make P2 doesn’t make me like P2 any less. I still watch that movie every Christmas season.
Lower Level passed me by completely in the ‘90s (and every decade since) – and the only reason why it finally came to my attention is the fact that I found out Joe Bob Briggs presented a showing of it on his The Movie Channel show back in 1993. (On July 31, 1993, to be exact.) I’m glad I finally did hear about it, because it turned out to be the makings of an entertaining viewing experience.
Gracen does good work as the heroine, as does Yagher as a character who turns out to be surprisingly heroic, but the real standout here is David Bradley, who was primarily an action movie star during his acting career, with a lead role in some of the American Ninja sequels. Here, he plays against type to bring an awkward, love-lorn, insane character to life, and he did a great job at it.
WOLFCOP (2014) – Hosted by Joe Bob Briggs on The Last Drive-in
Written and directed by Lowell Dean, the horror comedy (or “Canadian superhero film”) WolfCop is a movie that I attempted to watch as soon as it reached home video, as I was intrigued by the idea of a horror comedy about a werewolf police officer... but it didn’t hold my attention. I have seen a lot of low budget horror comedies with the exact same sense of humor as this one, and it gets tiring. So I didn’t really get through WolfCop, with my attention focused on the screen throughout, until drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs hosting a screening in the sixth week of his Shudder streaming service series The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs. With Joe Bob guiding me through, I successfully completed WolfCop.
This double feature episode of The Last Drive-in gets started with a scene where Joe Bob is showing sitting outside at a drive-in, discussing the saying “I’ll tell you one goddamn thing.” Which is usually said by people who will go on to say at least ten things – but since they tend to be drunk, they do only know one thing at the moment.
The episode then moves on to the trailer park set, where Joe Bob sits beside a trailer to introduce WolfCop, which he describes as “Teen Wolf meets Bad Lieutenant.” The film was made in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, which gives Joe Bob the opportunity to address the fact that some Canadians think their American neighbors are stupid and ponder the idea of Canadians raiding Montana. He almost says that Lowell Dean comes from the indie film movement of Saskatchewan – but he doesn’t just “come from” it; he is the movement.
WolfCop stars Leo Fafard as Sergeant Lou Garou, an alcoholic cop in the small town of Woodhaven, where criminals wearing pig masks have been terrorizing the local businesses and dogs and cats have been going missing, possibly being eaten by the legendary “Woodhaven Walking Bear.” Lou’s buddy Willie (Jonathan Cherry) suspects there’s occult activity in the town, but Lou brushes it off... until he comes across the sacrificial murder of a local politician. He gets knocked out by the cultists and wakes up with a pentagram carved into his stomach – and that’s just the start of his problems, because that sacrificial murder has passed the curse of the werewolf on to him. As it turns out, a group of shapeshifters have been operating in Woodhaven for 200 years, creating werewolves so they can drain their blood, because it’s werewolf blood that extends their lives.
This time around, they have chosen the wrong “village idiot” to turn into a werewolf, because Lou’s alcoholism makes him stronger and more resistant to the shapeshifters’ manipulations than previous werewolves have been. Lou fights back – and gets laid along the way. This may be the only movie to feature a sex scene between a male werewolf and a willing human female. (At least, that’s what the situation appears to be.)
I’m still not blown away by WolfCop, but the movie was tolerable to watch on The Last Drive-in. Joe Bob enjoys the movie much more than I do, giving it 3 stars out of a possible 4.
During his hosting segments, Joe Bob reveals that WolfCop was the result of the CineCoup Accelerator; a contest run by a theatre chain where aspiring filmmakers can submit a faux trailer for a movie they want to make. The contest winner gets a million bucks to make the movie. He mentions that Lowell Dean grew up making sci-fi, horror, and action movies in his backyard. He gives an overview of the careers of several of the cast members, including Leo Fafard, who previously played a werewolf in a music video that was directed by Dean. Fafard also did the welding on the wolfmobile / wolf cruiser that WolfCop creates and drives around in. There’s talk of Liquor Donuts, which are mentioned throughout the movie. The fact that loup garou is French for werewolf is addressed. We learn that a lot of cheap TV shows were shot in Saskatchewan, but then the production companies went to Manitoba. And since we see werewolf dick during a transformation scene, Joe Bob makes a phone call to Sleepaway Camp star Felissa Rose, who is this show’s “mangled dick expert.”
Joe Bob describes WolfCop as a party film; the sort of movie where the viewer needs beer, weed, etc. to get through it. Which partly explains why I’m not very into it, as I don’t drink alcohol or smoke weed.
Darcy the Mail Girl comes in to deliver some viewer mail after the movie has ended, and since a “wolf” movie has just been shown, there’s reference made to the Seacrest Wolf Preserve, a non-profit organization that’s dedicated to wolf and wildlife conservation and is supported by The Hills Have Eyes star Michael Berryman.
HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (1986) – Hosted by Joe Bob Briggs on The Last Drive-in
As we move on to the second half of the week six double feature, we find Joe Bob sitting inside the trailer, snacking on the saddest-looking bowl of nachos I have ever seen. As Joe Bob says, by going from WolfCop to Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer we’re going from the goofy to one of the most realistic, disturbing, and hard to watch horror movies ever made – although Joe Bob says Henry is more like a French art film than a horror movie. I would disagree, because this movie, which follows a serial killer in “cinema verite” style, is pure horror. And this is also another example of The Last Drive-in programming their movies backwards. One week, Deathgasm was followed by The Changeling. Another week, Demon Wind was followed by The House of the Devil. Goofy movies followed by serious, slow-burn movies. This is not how it should be done. These double features should get started with the serious stuff and then wrap up with a goofy, late night flick. But they think differently as The Last Drive-in.
At least Joe Bob has a special guest to interview during Henry, director/producer/co-writer John McNaughton, so at least showing Henry second makes a bit more sense than showing The Changeling after Deathgasm and The House of the Devil after Demon Wind.
McNaughton and his co-writer Richard Fire drew inspiration from the life of serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, who had just been captured a few years earlier, when they were writing the script for their horror movie, but they didn't stick to the facts of Lucas's life. They built their own story out of the broad strokes. Michael Rooker, who was working as a janitor when he got cast in the film, made his film debut as Henry, an ex-con who had a hellish childhood and eventually killed his abusive mother. He met a guy named Otis (Tom Towles) while in prison, and now he's staying with Otis while regularly going out to kill people. Eventually Otis gets an up-close look at this twisted hobby of Henry's and decides to start killing people with him. He thinks it's fun. Stuck in the middle of this is Otis's sister Becky (Tracy Arnold), who has come to stay with her brother while going through a divorce. Which turns out to be a very bad decision.
Henry is a great movie, but it’s a very difficult movie to watch and, in the end, is deeply depressing. Joe Bob gives it a perfect score of 4 stars.
During his hosting segments and his interview with McNaughton, Joe Bob covers the fact that the MPAA ratings board told McNaughton that Henry was going to be an X rated movie no matter how much he changed in pursuit of an R rating. There were no frames, acts of violence, or lines that could be trimmed that would turn it into an R. It was getting an X rating for its “disturbing moral tone.” When the movie went back in front of the MPAA ratings board thirty years later, they still weren’t willing to give it an R. It’s NC-17.
Joe Bob talks about the real Henry Lee Lucas, who was convicted of murdering murdering eleven people (including his mother), but confessed to well over 300 more murders... despite the fact that he couldn’t have possibly been the killer of most of the people he confessed to killing. Joe Bob also addresses the fact that the real Henry had a 12-year-old “girlfriend.” McNaughton didn’t include a child character in the film simply because he didn’t want to deal with child labor laws – and the mention of such a character allows Joe Bob to go on a tangent about the 1938 film Child Bride, which was promoted as an “education” film and contained an extended nude scene that shouldn’t have been allowed.
Joe Bob had never seen a movie killer as scary as Henry – and when he saw the movie for the first time in the 1980s, he feared the movie would never be seen by a large audience at all, because McNaughton had a hell of a time getting it out into the world. He even had a distributor drop it because they claimed to be concerned that the real Henry would sue them, which wouldn’t have been legally possible.
Henry has been said to be too extreme for the arthouse crowd and too arty for the exploitation crowd, a description that McNaughton agrees with. He calls it a “mishmash” of art and exploitation. He and Joe Bob discuss his co-writer Richard Fire, who is described as being “crazy,” and yet Fire is the one who was concerned about the content of the film and thought about keeping his name off of it.
A lot of people who see Henry think the cast must have just been people who the director knew. He must have just asked them to play characters who must have been similar to themselves. But Rooker endured a tough childhood to become a trained actor and Towles and Arnold (who might have known someone the real Henry supposedly killed) were theatre actors, working with Stuart Gordon in the Organic Theatre. (Fire worked with Gordon there as well.) And yes, the actors came in and auditioned for these roles. McNaughton had a lot of different jobs, including being a bartender, a delivery man, a carnival roustabout, a jewelery maker, a sailboat builder, working in an ad agency (and dealing with Dairy Queen), and working in a tractor factory, but he went to art school before becoming a director. And Henry was his feature directorial debut, shot in 28 days on a budget of $100,000.
Joe Bob and McNaughton talk about the cast, mention that the ill-fated TV salesman character was played by a real-life “video pirate” with many felony counts against him, and discuss the fact that the actress playing the woman who gets murdered during a home invasion scene was so traumatized by the filming of that scene that she was taken to the hospital.
Also, unfortunately, despite the fact that they were both from Chicago, McNaughton never crossed paths with H.G. Lewis, the maker of Blood Feast.
When he’s first introducing the movie, Joe Bob says it has one of the greatest musical scores in the history of horror. The music composed Ken Hale, Steven A. Jones, and Robert McNaughton makes you feel like the movie is going to take you straight to Hell – and yeah, it pretty much does.
Once the movie is over, Joe Bob gets a mail delivery from Darcy and wraps everything up with a joke... and levity is sorely needed after you’ve sat through Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.
SUPERBEAST (1972) – Hosted by Joe Bob Briggs on Monstervision
On the same summer 1996 night that he showed a screening of the John Carpenter film The Fog, Joe Bob Briggs also presented a screening of writer/director/producer George Schenck’s exceptionally uneventful 1972 film Superbeast, which was shot in the Philippines – which is why Joe Bob jokes that the programming guy bought it at a flea market in Manila. Joe Bob isn’t a big fan of The Fog, but he says that Superbeast will make you long for the cinematic excellence of The Fog... which was most likely the case for anyone who did catch this double feature twenty-nine years ago.
As Joe Bob puts it, this is the sort of movie where the filmmaker got together a few thousand bucks, hired some extras for 20 cents a day, and went crazy with a camera in the jungle. The story concerns secret experiments in a jungle prison, but none of it makes a lick of sense and there are a whole lot of scenes that just show people wandering around in the jungle, some of which are too dark to see. Here’s how Joe Bob describes the film, which he gives just 1 star: it’s “the story of this beautiful pathologist in tight white jeans who goes to the Philippines to figure out why people are turning into crazed murderers in the jungle and she has to spike this guy’s Coco Loco in order to escape. You’ll enjoy that one. You won’t really enjoy that one, but you’ll be under the impression that you can turn it off at any time, so compared to me, you’ll be happy.” He also says that if you can figure out exactly what happens in the first sequence, which is quite difficult to follow, he will buy you a beer.
Antoinette Bower stars as pathologist Dr. Alix Pardee, who is brought in to examine the corpse of a strangely deformed man who freaks out during a flight from the Philippines and gets shot down by the authorities in Guam. She decides to travel to the Philippines to find out what was going on with this guy – and ends up in the jungle compound of Dr. Bill Fleming (Craig Littler), who conducts experiments on convicts that are supplied to him by an unscrupulous law enforcement officer played by Vic Díaz. Turning the convicts into deformed “superbeasts.” Harry Lauter is also hanging around as Stewart Victor, a big game hunter who enjoys tracking and killing Fleming’s subjects once they become superbeasts.
As Joe Bob warned, the movie plods along at an achingly slow pace with nothing much going on for the majority of its running time. During his hosting segments, he points out the fact that nothing is happening, asks viewers if they know or care what Alix is up to, and celebrates some of the bad dialogue and bad acting because, “They don’t make them like this anymore.” In general, I’m disappointed that we don’t get the sort of so-bad-they’re-good horror movies like we used to get during the drive-in/grindhouse/exploitation era, but I’m not particularly upset that we don’t get more movies exactly like Superbeast. (Although I do find many of the “elevated” horror movies of the modern era to be just as dull as this one, if not more so. At least this one is entertaining, in a horrible way.)
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