Short Things

 

 (mubi.com)

BARBEQUE DEATH SQUAD FROM HELL-1986-Penn & Teller star in this short advertising their company that turn boring family home movies into horror films. Lydia Lunch is their secretary. Crude, clever, deranged and funny. Directed by the wool hat wearing guitarist of “The Monkees”, Michael Nesmith.

 (imdb)

THE ADVENTURES OF RED ROOSTER-1984-So it seems around 1984, no budget sleaze master Andy Milligan decided to tackle the TV sit-com! He and screenwriter Donald Tobey made 5 episodes of the title show. This is sometimes called the pilot but it really seems like some kind of highlight reel with scenes edited together from the episodes. The plot concerns a young country girl (Leslie Den Dooven) who comes to NYC to work for the company Red Rooster, that manufactures a Viagra type pill. It reminded me more of a Hershell Gordon Lewis hillbilly movie. It's pretty bad. Star Den Dooven was also in Milligan's CARNAGE the same year.

 (archive.org)

INSTANT ADORING BOYFRIEND-A British guy (Brodie Bass) speaks into the camera. He seems to be talking to a woman he loves and worships, throwing out compliment over compliment while he works out, irons, etc. It's left to the viewer to figure out what's going on. Strange.

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Gay Girls

 

ALWAYS ON SUNDAY-1962-Silent black & white takeoff on Jules Dassin's NEVER ON A SUNDAY by the Gay Girls Riding Corporation, a group of gay men and transvestites. Female prostitutes (men in drag) go to a bar. It's not very good but ahead of it's time.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO BABY JANE-1963-Short film by GGRC about the events leading up to the movie WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? and then parodying the film. All the roles are played by men.

SPY ON THE FLY-1967-Transvestite parody of James Bond includes slapstick, car chases, fights and explosions. It's a short film (43 minutes) that seems to go on forever.

ALL ABOUT ALICE-1972-Hour long color parody of ALL ABOUT EVE. Looks like it could have influenced John Waters.

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Rabbit Magic

 

 (imdb)

GET TO KNOW YOUR RABBIT-1972-Crazy counterculture comedy about an executive (Tom Smothers) who quits his high-pressure job to become a tap-dancing magician trained by Mr. Delasandro (Orson Welles).

He's hounded by his boss (John Astin) to come back. He goes on the road and is pretty much a success at gin mills and strip joints. He meets a “terrific looking girl” (Katherine Ross) and they have an affair. Later he gets pulled back into the corporate lifestyle but has his way in the end. Allen Garfield, Charles Lane, King Moody and M.Emmett Walsh are also in it. Timothy Carey appears un-billed as a cop.

Director Brian De Palma made this offbeat comedy the same year as SISTERS and two years after HI MOM! His next movie would be PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE IN 1974.

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Frank!

FEARLESS FRANK-1967-In this comedy/parody nuttiness country boy Frank (Jon Voight in his film debut) leaves his home and goes to the city where he falls for Plethora (Monquie van Voorhen,) daughter of mob leader Needles (author Nelson Algren) and is killed. “The Good Doctor” (Severn Darden) brings him back to life as a super hero to fight evil. Frank can fly, is bulletproof and is very strong. His strange gang consists of Cat (Ben Carruthers), Rat (David Steinberg) and Screwnose. Later the doctor's evil brother Claude (also Darden) shows up and creates “False Frank” to combat the hero. Eventually both Franks meet and have a fight on some roller coaster tracks. When Frank is killed it's up to False Frank to save the city from destruction. Director Phillip Kaufman creates a weird personal (maybe too personal) one of a kind low budget oddity that seems to be using elements of Frankenstein, Superman, My Fair Lady and even FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACE MONSTER! Outrageous touches include Frank and Plethora having sex with loud Batman TV show sound effects.

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Bond Take-Off

KISS THE GIRLS AND MAKE THEM DIE-1966-Mike Connors is Kelly, an international James Bond like CIA agent in this tongue in cheek spy drama with comedy overtones, a co-production between Columbia Pictures and Dino De Laurentiis.. 

Kelly is in Brazil tailing a rich industrialist named Ardonian (Raf Vallone) and his connection with some missing women. Ardonian is in league with Red China in a plot to sterilize the US but in actuality he wants to sterilize the whole world except for himself! The missing women are kept in suspended animation until he needs them. Dorothy Provine (THE 30 FOOT BRIDE OF CANDY ROCK) is Susan Fleming, Ardonian's bimbo girlfriend who wears some really weird outfits and has a Rolls Royce with Aston Martin like features. Terry Thomas is her chauffeur who beats up 5 guys. Later, after it's revealed she is with British Intelligence, she and Kelly team up. They wind up in an underground lab where Provine ends up on a rocket. There's some dumb humor (including a slip on a banana peel) but the real highlight of this movie is Ardonian's massive desk and multi-screen TV monitoring system in a couple of scenes. There's great shots of Rio though. 

Beverly Adams (HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI, TORTURE GARDEN) is one of the victims. Connors would star in the long running TV series MANNIX the next year. Co-director Henry Levin made a similar secret agent satire the same year, MURDERER'S ROW with Dean Martin as Matt Helm (which according to Mike Connors he almost played). 

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Alien Nonsense

ALIEN OPPONENT-2010-This science fiction idiocy starts out with a bunch of rednecks drinking beer. Then one of them catches his wife Meghan with another man. Then Meghan's mother kills the husband with a hammer.  Then a UFO lands near by. The aliens kill the remaining hicks. Later after not much happens the MIL and daughter advertise on TV to have someone come and hunt down the alien. Lots of dorks come by including a priest (pro wrestler Roddy Piper) with a cross dagger and M-16, a waitress, an exotic dancer, a biker and a soldier of fortune. Even football and baseball teams try to fight it. Some cheerleaders fight over a jock's severed head. The metal clad alien (it looks like a cross between a Star Wars trooper and The Guyver) lets loose slug like creatures and most of  the would be "hunters" kill each other (or themselves) accidentally. It uses a reanimated severed head to communicate. Later on everybody starts killing everyone else to "eliminate the competition". This is a gore comedy satire that's not very funny. In fact it's terrible. Most movies like this make me believe the director (in this case Colin Theys) really wanted to make the story serious but couldn't hold it together and had to settle on a parody. Piper who starred in the cult film THEY LIVE! in better days shows how far he has fallen by becoming an animated corpse and getting a baseball & bat stuck in his head.

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Darkstar

DARK STAR-1974-John Carpenter's debut feature film (which he co-scripted and wrote the music for) is a low budget take off on 2001. 

 A spaceship led by a quartet of hippie like astronauts fly around space destroying planets. They have a female HAL type computer and can talk to their commander even though he's dead. An alien prisoner they picked up is an orange beach ball with feet (influenced by THE PRISONER?).

Everyone swears this is suppose to be a comedy but I'm not so sure. Co-writer Dan O'Bannon is Sgt. Pinback who spends a lot of time trapped in an elevator. I don't really find it that funny. It seems to me the filmmakers weren't sure which way they wanted to go with it. The acting is pretty bad. Maybe that accounts for part of it. It was originally a 45 minute short film that Jack H. Harris had the makers expand for theatrical release. 

Carpenter's next film was ASSAULT ON PRECINCT. O'Bannon penned ALIEN in 1979. 

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Jersey Sharks

JERSEY SHORE SHARK ATTACK-2012-I think this stupid killer shark movie is suppose to feature characters based on the idiotic reality show JERSEY SHORE. (and JAWS of course). I don’t know much about the show but it can't be any worse than this brain dead nonsense. 

Three imbeciles try to warn the residents that albino sharks are on the prowl and want the beach closed down but no one believes them until former NYSYNC member Joey Fatone playing a pompous has-been singer, I mean playing himself, gets killed! Jack Scalia is the sheriff. Later a bartender (Tony Sirico from THE SOPRANOS) relates the (real life) story of the 1916 Jersey Shore shark attacks. Paul Sorvino (looking like an evil Oliver Hardy) has a small role as the mayor and William Altherton is a Donald Trump like builder who's construction site vibrations are attracting the sharks. 

There's some phony gore and bad CGI and some parts are funny but most of it is just annoying dumbness. It takes place in Seaside Heights (I often went there with my friends in the late '70's!) but I don't think it was filmed on location. The director John Shepphird also made TEENAGE BONNIE AND KLEPTO CLYDE. 

Some people think this will achieve cult status but it will be quickly forgotten after the show it parodies burns itself out. Fred Olen Ray was a producer.

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Slaptick Dictator

THE DEVIL WITH HITLER-1942-This 44 minute slaptick comedy from Hal Roach studios has Gesatan, the devil (Alan Mowbray) trying to save his job as boss of Hell because the other devils want to replace him with Adolf Hitler! He goes to Earth to try and make Hitler (Bobby Watson) do a good deed. Joe Devlin is Mussolini and George E. Stone is Suki Yaki. There's a lot of slapstick, one liners and jokes about executions. The freaky part is when Hitler talks about how horrible concentration camps are!

It's very much in the vein of the 3 Stooges shorts YOU NAZTY SPY! and I'LL NEVER HEIL AGAIN (both made first). Douglas Fowley plays an insurance salesman and Herman Bing is a Nazi astrologer who's executed. Philip Van Zandt, John Miljan and Rudolph Anders have un-credited roles. In the end Hitler is chased by devils with pitchforks and Gesatan promises: "This is only the beginning, folks!".

Director Gordon Douglas had made SAPS AT SEA with Laurel & Hardy the year before and later made THEM!. Watson portrayed Hitler at least 9 times during the 1940's.

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