comedy

Tammy and the T-Rex (1994)

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fourstar

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One year after the release of Jurassic Park, a baby-faced Paul Walker & a teenage Denise Richards starred in a sci-fi horror rom-com about a remote-controlled animatronic Tyrannosaurus Rex. Tammy and the T-Rex is a work of inane beauty, a straight-to-VHS gem for schlock junkies & 90s culture fetishists to drool over. It’s technically, objectively, and even sometimes morally a horrendous film with no redeeming value as a work of art. On the other hand, it’s far more fun than it has any right to be, especially when its Looney Tunes logic takes over & the film accepts itself as the dumb, rudderless trash that it is.

Denise Richards plays a teenager cheerleader in the middle of a violent (especially for high school) love triangle. At one end, you have the brutish punk ex-boyfriend (complete with leather jacket & convertible) who refuses to let go of a dead relationship. At the other end stands a naive virgin of a goofball jock (played by future Fast & Furious star Paul Walker) who’s willing to risk life & limb to get under Richards’ cheerleader uniform. The brawls between the suitors are quite vicious. They kick each other in the head, orchestrate drive-by baseball bat beatings, take vice grips on each other’s genitals (“What we have here is an old-fashioned testicular stand-off”), and just generally aim to maim & kill. This escalates to Walker’s empty-headed jock being thrown into a lion & jaguar exhibit at the city zoo, a trauma that leaves him comatose, then “dead”, and then, once interfered with by an over-acted Dr. Frankenstein mad scientist archetype . . . transplanted into the “mind” of an animatronic T-Rex.

Of course, Tammy and the T-Rex really kicks into high gear once the dinosaur hijinks ensue. Continuing the surprise viciousness of the first act’s boyfights, the animatronic dino actually murders people. He crushes heads, flattens bodies out into bloody Bugs Bunny pancakes, tears teens open with his gigantic talons, etc. It’s treated as a lighthearted rampage, but it’s pretty brutal. The killings are fun & all, but what really makes Tammy and the T-Rex special are the dino jock’s more human activities. Watching his little dino arms lovingly stroke the cheek of his lifeless human body & operate a payphone is genuinely belly-laugh hilarious, as is the scene where he attends his own funeral, crying gigantic dino tears & the one where he proves who he truly is to his cheerleader girlfriend by playing charades & eating flowers. The best part is that the cheerleader decides to stick with her dino beau, riding him like a horse & helping him pick out potential new bodies in a morbid bit of window shopping at the morgue. Even when the dino jock is (spoiler alert) cruelly gunned down by the police, his cheerleader sweetheart keeps their love alive by storing his brain in a jar & feeding him strip teases & whiskey as sustenance.

Tammy and the T-Rex is a goofy mess, but it’s an enjoyable mess. Directed by Stewart Raffill, the buffoon behind Mac & Me and The Ice Pirates, the film has a decent schlock pedigree despite having essentially no traction as a cult classic. It can waver a bit in the details, especially in the depiction of the cheerleader’s gay bestie, who alternates from delightfully sassy to homophobic parody from scene to scene. For the most part, though, it’s a delightfully eccentric slice of forgotten schlock. If nothing else, Denise Richards’ wardrobe is 90s fashion-blogging Tumblr ready & the idea of a “party animal” teen dinosaur is goofy enough to carry the film on its own. There are surely some cult followings that have been built on less.

-Brandon Ledet

Entertainment (2015)

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threehalfstar

Neil Hamburger’s comedy isn’t for everyone. Actually, that’s putting it too lightly. Neil Hamburger’s comedy is atrocious, just godawful, completely useless. Anti-comedy is a difficult trick to pull off. When it works, it’s a brilliant form of audience antagonism à la Andy Kaufman & his ilk (I defy anyone to watch Hamburger’s tirade against the Red Hot Chili Peppers without laughing at least once) but when it fails that antagonism feels like an empty exercise. Who could find a capable comedian intentionally telling shitty, unfunny jokes worthwhile if that’s the only thing they ever do? How is that entertainment? Neil Hamburger (aka Gregg Turkington) asks that question of himself in the pitch black comedy-drama Entertainment.

Entertainment follows a fictionalized version of Hamburger (billed here simply as “The Comedian”) on a stand-up comedy tour through the desolate American West. His opening act is an old-timey clown/mime (played by the immensely talented youngster Tye Sheridan). His venues are a depressing parade of prison cafeterias, hotel conference rooms, and dive bar stages. Bombing is essential to his act, which is true of the real-life Hamburger as well, but the movie takes it to a whole new low. Actual jokes from Hamburger’s routine are repeated verbatim in Entertainment, but any semblance of humor that can be found from in his work has been removed wholesale. All that is left is the antagonism. As “The Comedian” cracks monstrous jokes about rape, makes fart noises, and repeatedly pleads “Why? Why? Why?” in a piercing, nasal whine it makes all too much sense why no one in the audience is laughing. When he becomes savagely combative with them for not rewarding his efforts, you have absolutely no sympathy.

Just as director Rick Alverson disassembled Tim Heidecker’s brand of hipster anti-humor in The Comedy to make it into something unforgivably ugly & self-absorbed, he more or less repeats the trick for Neil Hamburger’s shtick here. Entertainment is about depression, addiction, and the uselessness of pursuing art for the sake of pursuing art, but it paints such an ugly portrait of the artist in question that there’s no sympathy to go around for his existential crisis (and intentionally so). You’re prompted to think “You should be depressed. Maybe you should quit comedy. Maybe life itself isn’t worth the effort for you.” There’s an excess of eerie imagery & spacial pacing in Entertainment that reaches for a Lynchian aesthetic I’m not sure that Alverson fully commands, so overall The Comedy endures as a much more confident, successful example of the anti-comedy-is-useless-cruelty genre the director is carving out for himself. Still, Entertainment stands as a brave act of self-reflection for Hamburger/Turkington & a pitch black drama/dark comedy for the art house crowd at large.

-Brandon Ledet

 

Brannigan (1975)

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fourstar

When you bring up John Wayne, it’s inevitable that his name will conjure images of old-fashioned Westerns. He’s synonymous with the genre, an in-the-flesh embodiment of cowboy cinema. That’s why I was surprised when I sat down at a Christmas party with my grandfather to watch one of his favorite John Wayne pictures to find that it wasn’t a Western at all. It’s not even set in America, let alone the Old West. Brannigan is a fish-out-of-water action comedy about a hard-boiled Chicago detective brandishing pistols in a stuffy, crime-ridden 1970s London. Of course, John Wayne plays the titular police detective with the same worlds-away-from-Chicago cowboy swagger he’s most closely associated with, but the setting is still jarring. In some ways, though, it makes you appreciate Wayne’s screen presence even  more to watching him operate outside of his element.

Besides casting a Western cinema legend in a non-Western role, Brannigan hosts several other glaring self-contradictions. Tonally, its mix of severed-finger, bullethole-ridden, sexual assault-threatening violence pairs ridiculously with its sarcastic, seen-it-all-before humor. This contrast can be best observed in an over-the-top pub brawl when Brannigan punches a goon so hard that he slides across the entire length of a bartop in a surprise tangent into Looney Tunes physics. Genre-wise, the film can’t decide if it wants to be a suspenseful heist film or an outright comedy. It can’t even decide which storyline is its main concern: the plot that has Brannigan chasing after a notorious crime boss being held for ransom or the plot that has Brannigan being chased himself by an assassin prone to using bomb & shotgun booby traps like an especially vicious Kevin McCallister. Or are both of these stories merely a backdrop for a blood-soaked comedy about Old World stuffiness vs. New World cavalier?

My favorite aspect of Brannigan‘s self-contradicting nature is where it sits on exploitation cinema’s temporal landscape. Although it’s a major studio film, it feels like it’s caught somewhere between the welcome-to-the-real-world harshness of New Hollywood, the righteously funky world of blaxploitaion (except with a white man as the lead, of course), and the as-yet-created humorously violent world of 80s action cinema. John Wayne establishes himself here as an early action star. His super-sarcastic, know-it-all one-liners play like a precursor to characters that would later be played by folks like Arnold Schwarzenegger & Sly Stallone. Brannigan doesn’t just burst into a room; he bursts into a room & dryly intones “Knock, knock” while brandishing a pistol. Then there’s the fact that every criminal in the world apparently knows legendary supercop Jim Brannigan by name, even though he works for Chicago’s municipal police department. That detail would be later repeated in every Commando, Cobra, and Hard to Kill to follow. He’s even provided a cute, tiny, foreign sidekick, another staple of the 80s action genre, although this time she’s never threatened to become a love interest despite all of Brannigan’s incessant leering. She does, however, spontaneously reward him with a kiss on the cheek over a dinner for two. Why? She explains, “You’re just so damn solid.” Indeed.

John Wayne badassery aside, Brannigan is a well put together action flick. Its lush shots of drive-bys, gun holsters, and sexy workers showing leg – all the leg – are all surprisingly intricate enough for a film that didn’t have to try too hard to succeed. John Wayne is entertaining enough on his own to carry the film, but a lot of effort still goes into detailing the organized crime end of London’s underbelly. Pubs, saunas, brothels, and late night stakeouts provide a nicely detailed background for Wayne to perform against and the car chases & counterfeit money production play like a precursor to Friedkin’s masterful To Live & Die in L.A.. Even without Wayne, Brannigan would still be a decent, humorous action flick with a great villain & hero, and a satisfying (albeit slow-moving) plot. Wayne’s hard-drinking, gun-toting supercop who calls everyone within earshot “Partner” is 1000% more cowboy than he is Chicago detective, but his performance is still what makes the movie special instead of merely decent. I’m far from a Western fanatic, so this oddly humorous & wildly violent action pic ended up being my favorite performance I’ve ever seen from Wayne. It’s easy to see why my grandfather holds it in such high regard despite it being far outside headlining star’s wheelhouse & being generally regarded as trash.

-Brandon Ledet

Barely Lethal (2015)

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twohalfstar

Sometimes the most frustrating films aren’t the ones that fail outright, but rather the ones that show a great deal of promise but still fall short of success. I really wanted to enjoy the teen-girl-assassins action comedy Barely Lethal despite the mountain of negative reviews warning that I wouldn’t, but the movie at no point makes an effort to distinguish itself as a unique property worthy of praise. Even though I’ve never seen D.E.B.S. (I should fix that soon), I recognize that Barely Lethal has distinct origins in that film’s premise. It wants to be the next link in the Heathers-Clueless-Mean Girls high school clique comedy chain, but even The DUFF from earlier this year is more deserving of that honor. As far as being a female-led spoof of the superspy genre goes, Spy is a much better example from 2015. Hell, it’s not even the worst film featuring Thomas Mann from 2015 thanks to Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl (alternate title Me, Me, Me, and Me). Even the pun in the film’s title (a winkingly violent play on the porny idiom “barely legal”) falls short of establishing any kind of significance as it ends up meaning that the the girls are incompetent as killer spies, which was not at all the intended effect. Similarly, the film itself is barely lethal in its compromised tone, which is unfortunate given the possibilities in its killer teen girls premise.

Early in the proceedings I was willing to buck consensus on this one. The film begins by profiling a “top-secret, government-run school that turns little girls into killing machines”. Samuel L. Jackson (once again proving that he will star in anything) is fairly amusing as the top instructor at this trained killer production facility. His darkly comic commands that toddler age girls (or “Double 0 7-year olds”, if you will) operate machine guns & flamethrowers and to remember that while stabbing combatants”It’s all about putting holes in the subject. Ladies, spring some leaks!” are pretty damn amusing, but the feeling is fairly short-lived. The film mostly follows the story of one trainee instead of the institution as a whole, detailing the life of a teen assassin’s decision to fake her own death & attempt to lead a normal life as an American high school student. There is a lot of promise in this set-up, touched on just a tad when the protagonist complains that the cruelty of high school teens is far worse than being beaten or drowned, but it’s mostly wasted. Because she uses past high school clique comedies teen gossip rags as “intel” for “Mission: High School” (ugh) the film devolves into mostly empty, self-conscious references to films like 10 Things I Hate About You, The Breakfast Club, and (duh) Mean Girls. Even worse, it wastes a vicious rivalry between two teen girl assassins – a concept that should register as a super cool take on the genre – on a climactic catfight over a boy.

Like I said, the worst part about Barely Lethal is that it’s barely unenjoyable. I liked that it worked within the traditional high school rom com plot structure – in this case staging both a Big Party and a Big Dance climax – but it rarely took the opportunity to show its teeth within that frame. The exchange “I’m viral?” (referring to Internet fame, of course) “Like HPV”, a montage of two teens girling  out over guns instead of a traditional dress-up sequence, and a conversation about how they “want the first time [they kill a man] to be special” are all a great start for a first draft, but they’re isolated moments in a film mired in wasted opportunities. Barely Lethal mostly felt like an underutilized cast (including Rob Huebel, Jessica Alba, Sophie Turner, and Rachel Harris) aching for a better movie to emerge in the editing room. With an R-rating instead of PG-13 & a harder edged re-write I could see Barely Lethal enduring as a cult classic As is, I’d suggest that you ‘d skip this one & watch D.E.B.S. instead. And again, just to be clear, I’ve never seen D.E.B.S..

-Brandon Ledet

Forgotten Silver (1995): Peter Jackson’s Silent Film Precursor to The Independent (2000)

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Five years before our December Movie of the Month, 2000’s Jerry Stiller comedy The Independent, went straight to DVD a very similar mockumentary aired on New Zealand television: 1995’s Forgotten Silver. Although Forgotten Silver covers cinema’s early, silent era while The Independent covers its B-movie & drive-in time frame, the two mockumentaries are very similarly minded both in their reverence for the medium they’re spoofing and in their depictions of madmen auteur directors possessed by their passion for filmmaking & troubled by their failure to secure proper funding for their art. While The Independent is a brilliant, must-see comedy for schlock junkies & Roger Corman fanboys, Forgotten Silver covers the same territory for cinephiles & Criterion fetishists.

When it was first introduced to New Zealand audiences, Forgotten Silver was framed as a true-life documentary of “forgotten” (read: fictional) filmmaker Colin McKenzie, who supposedly operated during cinema’s birth at the turn of the century through the tail end of the silent era in the late 20s. Much like how The Independent‘s Morty Fineman accidentally pioneered cinema in his quest to make movies about “tits, ass, and bombs” Colin McKenzie was credited here for accidentally inventing the world’s first tracking shot, color film, feature length film, talkie, close-up, and candid camera comedy, among other firsts. Although this list of feats is beyond preposterous for an unknown filmmaker (and they all end in blunderous fates like smut charges & miscarriages) its deadpan delivery & adherence to a traditional documentary format make it somewhat understandable that some television audiences were initially duped by Forgotten Silver‘s validity as a document of a real-life auteur. It’s got a much more wry, Woody Allen’s Take the Money & Run style of mockumentary humor in contrast to The Independent‘s more over-the-top, Christopher Guest-esque approach to comedy.

It’s difficult to say for sure if Forgotten Silver provided any direct inspiration for The Independent, but there are some undeniable similarities in their DNA. While Forgotten Silver is concerned with restoration of McKenzie’s entire catalog, The Independent follows the discovery & restoration of Fineman’s “lost” anti-herpes PSA The Simplex Complex. Also like The Independent, Forgotten Silver is mostly concerned with the completion of a single feature film, this time profiling the production of Salome, a multi-year production of a Biblical epic featuring 15,000 extras, a city-sized hand-built set, and endless funding issues that similarly plagued Fineman’s Ms. Kevorkian. The film also establishes its legitimacy as a documentary by enlisting several big names in art cinema – producer Harvey Weinstein, critic Leonard Maltin, and actor Sam Neill among them – to provide interview fodder. Peter Jackson, the film’s co-director/creator alongside documentarian Costa Botes, get the most screentime of all, framing the story of how McKenzie’s films were found & restored and what significance they have to the history of cinema at large in his talking head interviews.

The differences between Forgotten Silver & The Independent are just as apparent. Because Colin McKenzie was (fictionally-speaking) long dead before Peter Jackson brought his work to light, Jackson serves as the central voice in Forgotten Silver. Morty Fineman, on the other hand, is Jerry Stiller alive & at his loudest & most demanding, dominating The Independent‘s runtime. The films’ tones are also drastically different. The only time Forgotten Silver approaches The Independent‘s over-the-top ridiculousness is in its depictions of sub-Charlie Chaplin vaudeville routines involving cream pies that McKenzie filmed in order to financially support Salome. For the most part, though, the two films are remarkably simpatico. At heart, they both aim to resurrect long-dead cinema genres in loving spoof form. Forgotten Silver‘s approach is just more subdued & deadpan due to the nature of its turn-of-the-century subject matter. The Independent is a much flashier, more over-the-top comedy, which makes sense given its exploitation cinema homage. Both are great, must-see comedic gems for cinephiles in either camp.

For more on December’s Movie of the Month, 2000’s The Independent, check out our Swampchat discussion of the film, this transcription of Morty Fineman’s fictional filmography, and last week’s recommendation that you also watch the documentary Corman’s World to get the full picture..

-Brandon Ledet

 

 

A Night at the Roxbury (1998)

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fourstar

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My favorite soundtrack for kitchen work is a genre of music I like to call “Gay 90s”. Long forgotten pop acts like La Bouche, The Real McCoy, Snap!, and C&C Music Factory are great motivation for a stressful service industry shift & I’ve been relying on them for moral support a great deal lately. That’s why it felt like an appropriate time to revisit A Night at the Roxbury, a sublimely dumb comedy about a pair of club-hopping airheads who survive on a strict diet of tacky suits, Gay 90s club music, and bad cologne. I have fond memories of this movie from when I was a kid & I’m sure I’m not alone there, but it’s far from the universally loved Saturday Night Live-related properties like Wayne’s World or Tommy Boy or even the recent cult-inductee MacGruber. It’s tempting to say that the film was way ahead of its time, given how much costar Will Ferrell’s comedic stylings have become part of the cultural zeitgeist in the last decade (while Chris Kattan has been left behind & forgotten), but the truth is that the movie is so 90s it hurts. If you squint at A Night at the Roxbury the right way it can be seen as a Step Brothers prototype with a much  healthier family dynamic, but I’m not sure  that prescient element is strong enough to overshadow how much of the film is mired in 90s SNL & Gay 90s dance music – two things I happen to love very much.

The problem a lot of SNL sketches-turned-movies have is that they have no idea how to establish a sense of purpose. Recurring SNL sketches can sometimes feel stretched a little thin at two-to-five minute intervals, so the idea of sustaining these properties for full-length film can often be disastrous. A Night at the Roxbury is off to a worrisome start when it recreates its SNL sketch origins in its entirety in the opening two minutes of its runtime . . . which then leaves the question of just what the hell it’s going to do with the remaining 80. You can’t just build an entire film around two gross club rats bopping their heads to Haddaway’s “What is Love?“, right? The film provides some necessary background information its protagonists were missing, like a name (The Butabi Brothers), jobs (they work at their dad’s “fake plant store”), short-term goals (getting laid), and longterm aspirations (opening a dance club where the outside looks like the inside of a typical club & vice versa). There’s also a little tinkering with the sketches’ basic premise, where the brothers imply that they’re cokeheads & bimbos, by making them out to be wholesome virgins. For the most part, though, A Night at the Roxbury succeeds in expanding its limited origins by structuring the plot as a traditional love story. It just so happens that the love is shared between two brothers instead of two potential sex partners.

Of course, the film is more commendable as an irreverent comedy & a 90s time capsule than it is for its narrative strengths. From the brothers’ voguing-while-driving tendencies to the beach butts to Dan Hedaya (the dad from Clueless) playing a father figure to a throwaway line about “dancing The Macarena with Donald Trump”, the movie is an incredibly inclusive collection of the era’s trashiest calling cards. There’s also some completely purposeless irreverence in humorous details like washed-up actor Richard Grieco’s role as washed-up actor Richard Grieco and in random asides like the line “Yeah, yeah, yeah Joanie Loves Chachi, but does Chachi give a flying fuck about Joanie?” What’s most impressive, though, is how these elements are mixed into an oddly sad platonic love story about two over-primped buffoons who desperately want to pick up women but don’t know at all how to interact with them on a personal, intimate level. In that way, considering all of A Night at the Roxbury‘s irreverent humor, 90s time capsule charms, and oddly sad platonic love story the movie works kinda comfortably as a masculine equivalent to Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion, another comedy that’s earned a lot of goodwill simply through the passage of time.

As far as the film works as an onscreen version of Gay 90s Dance Music: The Movie, it’s pretty much everything I wanted it to be. La Bouche & all my old friends were there, including a bunch of hit-makers I had completely forgotten: No Mercy, Ace of Base, Amber, etc. There’s also six instances of Haddaway’s “What is Love?” playing in the film (once as elevator music), which felt like the perfect amount, considering how essential it was to the comedy sketch source material. The next time I’m jamming at work to LaBouche or The Real McCoy I’ll now have a very specific set of images to accompany the music, as well as a pretty easy to nail head-bob dance move. I couldn’t have asked for more.

-Brandon Ledet

 

Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever (2014)

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three star

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Do I have a soft spot for talking animal movies or something? Earlier this year I found perverse entertainment in the talking dog pro wrestling movie Russell Madness and then presented the talking-pig-saves-the-day epic Babe 2: Pig in the City for our August Movie of the Month selection. And now I’m here to report that the Lifetime Original Movie Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever isn’t actually all that bad. “Not actually all that bad” is far from high praise, I know, but for a made-for-TV movie about an internet meme in which the main character repeatedly breaks the fourth wall to complain about how awful the movie is, it’s a fairly surprising distinction. Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever knows exactly what kind of movie it is & doesn’t pretend to be anything more. It self-references its protagonist’s meme fame by adopting I Can Haz Cheezburger font for multiple gags. It willingly points out when it subs a stunt puppet for the real Grumpy. It “jokingly” promotes Grumpy Cat merchandise with little to no pretence. When its self-described “sappy melodrama” plot kicks into high gear, Grumpy complains “Don’t get sappy on me. Oh wait, I forgot. It’s a Lifetime Movie. Go ahead.” Self-deprecation & self-referential humor can sometimes be low hanging fruit, but it kinda works for this movie, given the limited possibilities of its Grumpy Cat: The Movie premise.

I guess a lot of what saves Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever from being the worst movie ever is in the casting of Aubrey Plaza as Grumpy Cat’s voice over (and as Aubrey Plaza in a sound booth). Just like when Plaza played a live-action Daria Morgendorffer in a spoof trailer comedy sketch a few summers back, the casting just makes way too much sense. Her comedic persona is basically of a human cat, right? Her wry, detached, disinterested sense of humor sets the bar so underachievingly low here (in a good way!) that it’s always possible for the movie to succeed. The plot involves some kind of depressive Gordy situation where only one grumpy preteen girl can hear Grumpy Cat talk. This girl gets mixed up in a small-time heist situation involving two rock & roll douches & a Peep Beep Meme Creep mall cop dweeb. While she thwarts their evil deeds Grumpy Cat shows zero interest in getting involved in the goings on. She just sorta riffs on the idiocy of the plot, hanging back, essentially life-tweeting/hate-watching her own movie. Imagine a family comedy with its own MST3k commentary built in, but skewing to a younger crowd & you pretty much get the picture.

Even though it aims a younger audience, though, the movie manages to get a few subversive jabs in there. It introduces its shopping mall setting as “a soul-sucking bastion of consumerism which serves to drain people’s bank accounts and alienate them from the true meaning of life.” Plaza also injects a lot of her own comedic persona into the role, especially in the way she calls her costars “terrible human beings” & “witches”. There are plenty of non sequitur asides distracting from the plot, but the most fucked up of all is a brief tangent in which Grumpy Cat is sentenced to prison (the pound) & promptly executed (put down). Quite the light-hearted gag, that. Worse yet is an exchange after the whole botched heist ordeal concludes & Grumpy Cat’s human’s mother asks her formerly-grumpy child, “Those guys didn’t do anything to you, did they?” & Grumpy Cat responds “That’s a different kind of Lifetime Movie.” I know this is a movie about a cat with a mean streak, but yikes. That one’s got bite.

For the most part, though, the moments I enjoyed most about Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever weren’t subversive at all. The film works best when it embraces its own hokey stupidity. When Grumpy is propped up in front of a green screen to simulate driving, flying, setting off explosions, or going Rambo with a cat-sized automatic paint gun are dumb & simple enough to get by on their own half-assed charm. My favorite moment of all in Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever, though, is Plaza’s line-reading of “We’re in a movie!” during the film’s action-packed climax. It’s a sublimely dumb moment in a thoroughly dumb movie about “the Internet’s biggest cash cat”. In 2014, Grumpy Cat seemed to be doing a lazy, half-hearted victory lap, soaking up the last of her short-term fame in moves like appearing on Monday Night Raw & starring in her own Christmas movie. Anyone tuning in for a dumb made-for-TV Christmas movie about a cantankerous cat should be well-prepared for what’s delivered here, especially considering how the film warns you of its emptiness with early onscreen references to Keyboard Cat & Nyan Cat (come to think of it, Lil Bub was snubbed). Grumpy Cat’s  Worst Christmas Ever doesn’t ask much of itself, which is oddly enough what makes the whole thing work in its own diminutive way. Well, that & Aubrey Plaza, who is delightful in her refusal to be delightful.

-Brandon Ledet

Required Viewing for Fans of The Independent (2000): Corman’s World (2011)

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In our Swampchat discussion of December’s Movie of the Month, the 2000 Jerry Stiller comedy The Independent, we praised the film for feeling remarkably ahead of its time in terms of the modern comedy landscape. Long stretches of the film wouldn’t feel out of place in a modern HBO anti-hero comedy or post-The Office docucomedy, which is true even if both genres are pulling influence from the same souce as The Independent – Christopher Guest mockumentaries. That’s not the only way in which The Independent was ahead of its time, though. Most mockumentaries & spoof comedies wait until the material they’re mocking is actually released. The ever-prescient The Independent, on the other hand, was released more than a decade before the documentary it most resembles – 2011’s Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel.

Roger Corman not only appears in brief “interviews” for The Independent, but Jerry Stiller’s schlockmeister protagonist Morty Fineman mostly serves as a Roger Corman archetype (with maybe a little David Friedman or Russ Meyer sleaze thrown in for good measure). Fineman’s 427 B-movies oeuvre may seem comically oversized & impossible for a filmmaker to achieve, but the timeless Roger Corman (who began making film in the 50s & continues to work to this day) has a whopping 409 production credits (and 56 directoral credits) according to IMDb. For every infamous Roger Corman trashterpiece (Rock & Roll High Schol, A Bucket of Blood, Death Race 2000, Piranha, etc.) there’s dozens of titles lurking in the archives that no one remembers at all, a sentiment reflected in the way that a dozen or so Fineman features are represented throughout The Independent, but hundreds are listed in his filmography that runs in tandem with the end credits.

There’s so much Corman in Fineman that the connection is undeniable, especially if you consider the way that unlikely former Corman collaborators pop up in both The Independent & Corman’s World – particularly Ron Howard & Peter Bogdanovich. There’s also  the two directors’ love for Ingmar Bergman – reflected in Fineman’s herpes-themed The Simplex Complex & in the odd, real-life detail that Corman used to provide distribution for the Swedish auteur’s films at American drive-ins because he thought people needed to see them. The truest connection of all, though, is in the clips of the two directors’ films – Fineman’s fake & Corman’s real. Corman talks at length about the value of text vs. subtext in sneaking in political messages in trashy B-movies features, but watching clips of his work in Corman’s World suggests that the director might be more in line with Fineman’s confession that he was mostly interested in the “tits, ass, and bombs” than he was putting on.

Corman’s World is an invaluable documentary, one that should be required viewing for all movie lovers whether or not they’ve indulged in The Independent‘s delights. Corman himself is just so full of insight from decades of hands-on experience. I particularly enjoyed his rigid, formulaic approach to genre films, like the way he describes that creature features need their monsters to kill someone fairly gruesome easily in the film, then kill at regular, less-shocking intervals until the blood-all-over-the-screen finale. It’s also a delight to see such twisted imagery & violent, sex-depraved themes originate from such a calm, professorial source, a dichotomy he describes as the outer image vs. the unconscious mind. This detail is missing in Fineman’s character, who is just as explosive in his art as he is in his personalty. There’s also a Russ Meyer-esque sleaziness in Fineman that’s entirely absent in the oddly-refined Corman.

What’s most interesting, though, is the ways in which Corman’s career phases serve as a blueprint for the history of cult cinema. Corman started by making creature features & teen rebellion dramas in the 1950s. He then moved on to the much classier “Poe cycle” of his career, a string of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations that married art house aesthetic with B-movie camp (including February’s Movie of the Month, The Masque of the Red Death). This lead him to indulging in arty hippie movies & giving a shot to young Hollywood voices that positioned him as the paterfamilias of the golden era of New Hollywood. Once his collaborators outgrew him & left him behind (names like Scorsese, Bogdanovich, Coppola, and Fonda), Corman survived on a second wave of trashy exploitation cinema until big budget films he heavily influenced (like Star Wars & Jaws) effectively disassembled the drive-in movie market & drove him to home video cheapness & SyFy Channel mockbusters. The story of Roger Corman’s career is the story of modern cinema at large, something that could also be said about the fictional Morty Fineman.

A lot of Corman’s more artistic impulses are missing in the eternal businessman Fineman, but there really is something to say about Corman & his ilk’s ability to make interesting, profitable pictures on shoestring budgets. Fineman doesn’t have fictional credits that match up with Corman’s racial segregation protest film The Intruder or the soaring artistry of the Poe Cycle, but the two directors do hare an eye for finance. As (frequently Corman collaborator) Jack Nicholson puts it in Corman’s World, “A filmmaker who doesn’t understand money is like an artist who doesn’t understand paint.” The Independent is all about Morty Fineman securing funding for yet another B-picture & even though themselves don’t look especially promising, it really is awe-inspiring to see Corman still at work, stealing shots & cutting expenses for SyFy Channel originals (which are essentially Roger Corman knockoffs), Fineman & Corman are survivors, unlikely successes navigating inhospitable waters for decades on end.

Thankfully, Corman’s success story at the conclusion of Corman’s World is much more impressive than Fineman’s at the end of The Independent. Fineman secures funding for his next picture, surviving to see another day & attending a small-town film festival held in his honor. Corman, on the other hand, receives a Lifetime Achievement Oscar, a much-deserved distinction for a director who could film movies as memorable as Little Shop of Horrors in a weekend or provide an environment in which Peter Bogdanovich’s first directorial credit is something called The Gill Women of Venus (aka Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women). I’m glad to see Corman receive the recognition he deserves from The Academy, but it’s almost an even greater achievement that he earned a loosely-based mockumentary homage  in (the albeit little-loved, little remembered) The Independent. The Independent & Corman’s World are inescapably linked in my mind as celebrations of one of cinemas most criminally under-celebrated heroes. Even though one is fictional & the other is a documentary, they’re both indispensable in their reverence for a wonderful artist.

For more on December’s Movie of the Month, 2000’s The Independent, check out our Swampchat discussion of the film & this transcription of Morty Fineman’s fictional filmography.

-Brandon Ledet

Morty Fineman’s Filmography as Listed at the End of The Independent (2000)

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Our selection for December’s Movie of the Month is The Independent, a straight-to-DVD mockumentary in which Jerry Stiller plays Morty Fineman, a Roger Corman/Russ Meyer/Ed Wood/David Friedman schlock director archetype with a grand vision & limited means. Way ahead of its time considering the modern comedy landscape, The Independent features great Christopher Guest-style character work in its talented cast of deeply flawed anti-heroes, but our favorite part of the film is its short-form B-movie spoofs handpicked from Fineman’s fictional filmography. There are dozens of titles from Finemans’ collection represented in the film in the form of brief clips & mock-up posters, but the only representation of his work as a whole can be found in the “complete filmography” that runs in tandem with the end credits, kind of like James O. Incandenza’s “complete filmography” footnote at the back of Infinite Jest.

Fandom for The Independent is scarce at best, so it’s difficult to find too much information on the film. I though it was a shame, for instance, that there’s no trace of Morty Fineman’s “complete filmography” listed online, since it is a pretty great collection of ridiculous one-liners. A lot of our conversation about the film centered on which of Fineman’s films we’d like to see realized, but since the complete list is only available in the end credits, I’m sure we missed a bunch of great gags worth exploring. So, here’s a complete transcription of Morty Finemans’ 427 feature filmography as it appears in The Independent. I don’t mean to make myself out to be a hero, but I feel I’m doing the world a great service here, just as I expect Fineman felt he was doing the world a service when he warned the troops about the dangers of herpes in The Simplex Complex or when he exposed the evils of marijuana in Panic Grass.

MORTY FINEMAN: A COMPLETE FILMOGRAPHY

1964
The Simplex Complex (Non-Theatrical)

1967
Corn: The Ear of Plenty (Non-Theatrical)

1969
Groovy Hippie Slumber Party
Free Love for Sale
Psychedelic Elevator
Brothers Divided
Mondo World
The Young Hip-Ocrits
The Mod, Mod Miniskirt

1970
The Student Coeds
The President Wore a Bikini
The Peacenik Orgy
Bummer, Ma’am
Teenage Flag Burners
Suburban Peepers
Pig Busters
Hillbilly Slip-Around
Panic Grass
33 1/3rd Sexual Revolutions

1971
L.S.D.-Day
The Naughty Swingers
Meter Reader Lolita
One-Eyed Wink
Sock It To the Man
Hot Pants Hoedown
The Evil Membrane
Luv Canal
His ‘n’ Hers ‘n’ His
Papa Woody!
The Eco-Angels

1972
Teenie Weenie Bikini Beach
Squished
Draft Dodger
Lawn Honkie
Crazy Dragonbreath: The Forgettin’ Tibetan
Shindig Motel
Strong, Hard and Black
The Free Riders (Chico and Chaco)
The Well-Marbled Goddess
Itty Bitty Fragidity
Sympathetic Vibrations
Diaper Service
The Peace Zombies

1973
The Moistening
Kung Funk: The Funky Fu
World War III
Diorhythm Method
P.U.!
Day Glo Decolletage
Legalize It
Der Ubergoober
Brothers Under the Covers
The Pollenators
Blood Haze
Neat But Not Clean
Amazon Hot Box
Giant Rabbit, Run!
Destination ‘Shroom
Bald Justice

1974
(Plain Ole) Pud
Draft Dodger II: Makin’ Canadian Bacon
Hollywood Squares: The Movie
Kung Funk II: The Spooky Fu
Coven of Witchiness
American Flesh
Our Gas Line Affair
Kidnap Those Kooks
Chicks With Hicks
I am Curious . . . You are Yellow
The Harlem Globetrotters Meet the Black Panthers
Giant Crab, Run!
Roachclip Motel
Venus De Mofo
Romeo-a-Go-Go
Buddy Cops: Bookworm and Garter Snake
The True Life Historical Search (For Genuine Real Stuff in the Bible)
Carnival of Mutants
Giant Rabid Dog, Run!

1975
Kent State Nurses
What Planet is This? (Oh My God It’s Earth!)
The Wrath of the Sabine Women
Truckstop Nurses
White House Crooks
C.B.B.C. (Citizen’s Band Before Christ)
Pull My Finger
Brick Sh*thouse
Puberty County Line
Strong, Hard and Native American
What’s Your Sign, M’Lady?
Kohutek, Run!
Swig and Guzzle
Smooth Move, Ex-Wife
Buddy Cops II: Hammerhead and Nailbiter
Life Spasm
Psycho Vet
BT off a Zombie
Infection
Something Big’s on Fire ’75
Bigfoot, All American
Gas, Grass or Ass
Pigeonholers
Assassin in a See-Thru Blouse

1976
The Foxy Chocolate Robot
Return to Moonshine High
The Greatest Bicentennial American Patriot
Da Brothers Bump
Cage Full of Waitresses
Draft Dodger III: The Me Decade
Contact High School
Hot Mamarama
Three Times Fast
Unknown Epidemic, Run!
Metaphors Are Like Dreams
Used Tissue of Lies
Wind and Rain and Wet T-Shirts
Dirt Claude
Ten on a Couch
Buddy Cops III: Strawman and Firebrand
Fat, Dumb and Fuzzy
Sand in my Teddy
Sex Doctor to the Stars
Third Leg’s a Charm
A Stranger Wears My Pants
Nuclear Nun
Wise and Foolish Vixens

1977
Psycho Vet II: The Reenlistment
Cattle Mutilation
Prescription for Justice
Tarzan of the Mall
Neurotica
Mythomania
Steel Hog Hunger Rumbles
Dirt Road Blacktop
Similes Are Dreams
Six-Chambered Heart, Four-Chambered Gun
Go Tell it on the Mountain, Just Get the Hell Out of My House!
Normal Horny Norman
Ebony, Fawn & Jade
Buddy Cops IV: Short Fuse and Longhair
FLK [Funny Lookin’ Kid]
The Family Jeweler
Driving Under My Influence (In Hypnovision)
Saturday Night Fever Blister
Hot Buttered Fingers
Talkin’ Dirty to the Dead
Abra-Cadaver
A Very Malcolm X-Mas

1978
Nanny Hooter’s Hootenanny
Recycled White Trash
World War III II
The Twin Ledgers of Justice
Aerobicaphobia
Gin Blossom Special
“Bang!” (There, I Said It)
Pong: The Movie
Tora! Tora! Tora!
Shuda, Wuda, Cuda
Fudge Factor
Strong, Hard and Chicano
That Rascally Mutt
Dying Kids
Cousin Bloodshot Buckshot
A Stiletto Affair
Buddy Cops V: Hayseed and Toughnut
Plumber’s Little Helper
Esperanto Girls
Baby Booty, Booty Baby
Where to, Brute?
Punks Vs. Jocks
We’re F.*.C.K.E.D.!

1979
Adolescent Sexopolis
Your Stepfather’s Mustache
Lover is a Five Letter Word
Hot Justice in Less than Thirty Minutes (Pizza Franchises as Heroes)
Disco Incantations
Uncle Tomboy
Dying Kids II: The Plague
Summer Bods (For Women)
Summer Bods (For Men)
Barnyard of Hate
Marry Me Heels
Buddy Cops VI: Milquetoast and Honey
Love Hears Everything
Fireball
Pigtails
Pants Full of Ambition
Keeping Secretions
Jungle Freaks
S-E-X! That Spells Sex!

1980
Hoary Old Truths and Truthful Old Whores
The Earth Movers
The Devil Needs a Drink
Asylum of Angels
Victoria’s Principles and Secrets
One Million Years A.D.
The Justice League of Superfreaks
The Love Bombardier
Dying Kids III: Schoolbus Full of Donor Hearts
The Bodacious Oasis
Buddy Cops VII: Flatfoot and Higheel
Did You Feel That?
Starring the Braless Cloggers
Andy Opia: Lazy Private Eye
Pencils Down!
Chunk of Change
Monster Truck Monster
He Bites!

1981
I See London, I See France
Casting Out Nines
Nazis of the Third Reich
Hooked on Classics: The Movie
A Tempting Fate
Solid Gold Dancer Murders
Alfpha and Omega and Pinky
The Ominous Attic
A Filthy Masquerade
Rock ‘n Roll Golem
Festering Destiny
The Despot Removers
Calamari
The Arouser
(Steam Rises At) The Hump Swamp
Throb
Trolling Stone Sober
Whale of a Cop
Nocturnal Suspicions

1982
Sick Gloria’s Transit
Sammy Davis Junior High
Don’t Pick at It
The Pagan Gladiators
Hello, Me!
Undercover Monk
The French Method
The Tender Gender Bender’s Agenda
Priapism Diary
Undulations
The Dirty-Minded Dozen
Death Toll: Turnpike of Destruction
Laughing Til I Hurt You
Joan of Arkansas
Large Angry Antennae
Wallets and Groins
U.F.O. Babes
Aromarama
The Mummy Blushes

1983
Psycho Vet III: Assignment Grenada
I Say!
Right to Live, Left to Die
The Pulverizer
Feelin’ Your First One
Madam Madman
Strong, Hard and Vietnamese
Muff
Two Humans
The Telltale Sheet
King Kong Christmas
Serrations
Foresaking No Others
Learn to Paint with Morty Fineman
Acupuncture Academy
Madam, I’m Adam
Pitbulls vs. Piranhas (Animated)
Which Way to the Money?
The Savage Rebel Savages
Heil, Titler!

1984
Christ for the Defense
Lottery of Doom
Shaft Canary
II Madam, I’m Adam II
Man in the Iron Lung, The
Stop it, You
Cannibalistic Missiles
The Rupture
Hip-Hopocratic Oaths
AKA Dickweed
Jazzercide
Two Humans II: The Humid Humus
A Lick and a Promise
Fistula
A Single Shard of Mercy
Philosophy of Desire
Acupuncture Academy II: Pointy, Pointy, Pointy
E. Teen
The Grounded Stewardesses
Sweet Sinews of Grief
You Killed My Partner, Now I Want Revenge
Cheerleader Camp Massacre

1985
Grounded Stewardesses II: Snowed in at Lake Tahoe
Lower Education
Camisole Man
Three Ho’ Punchout
Street Value of Seduction
The Long Tongue of Memory
Abrupt Reclosure
Ablation!
Blackout (Released in Europe as “Noir”)
Big Burning Boat
The Terrorarium
In the Eyes of the Apes
Arrows and Quivers
Get Down, Moses
The Mini-Computer Wore a Mini-Skirt

1986
Thong Monster
Akimbo Drumbeat
Teachers vs. Students
That’s General Psycho Vet to You!
Attack and Decay
Death’s Black Beemer
Aboriginal Sin
The Vile Turn-On
Dear God, No!
Perpetration
The Phantasy Cult
Thicker Than Blood
This Constipated Earth
Tactile Concentration
Heather, Tethered
Nude Cop
Grounded Stewardesses III: Mechanical Failure in Rio
Ten Million Ways to Die
Dreams, Wet and Arid
Celebrate for the Hell of It

1987
K-9 Bone Patrol
The Grammar of Longhair
1-900-TABOOOO
Twelve Angry Men and a Baby
Eden for Hedonists
Requiem for a Babysitter
Lascivious Neighborhood
Strong, Hard and Hmong
Geographical Bachelors
Grounded Stewardesses IV: Extended Layover in Miami
Large, Natural Laughs
To Hell in a Basket
Star Light and Coffee Black
Safeword Abductions
Trauma, Bwnt Trauma
The French (They are a Funny Race)
Planet Perverted

1988
The Heart is a Strong Muscle
Drive-By Drive-In
Elephant Walk
Searching for L’Ptetomaine
Love is the Right to Leave
I Do; Adieu
RoboHomo
Gladhand
Splattered Palate of Urges
The Moon’s White Torso
A Tube of Forgiveness
Rogue Mime, The Taoist Tatooist
Grounded Stewardess Christmas, A
Man With Two Things, The

1989
Telegasm
Dracula Lambada
B.F. DeeDee
I Smell London, I Smell France
Executrix
Temblor!
Insignificant Others
Sans-a-Belt Slackers
The Electrocutioner
Unnecessary Roughage
Perchance to Nightmare
Dead Cat Bounce
Thai Food Mary

1990
Supermodel Carnival
The Decapitators
Psycho Vet IV: Panama
That’s President Draft Dodger to You!
The Temptation game
Asphalt by Candelight
The Violet Catastrophie
Squall!
Compassion Fagigues
Herm-Aphrodite: God and Goddess of Love
Oh, Flagrant Fragrance! Oh, Pungent Ungent!
Tantric or Treat
The Uncensored History of Revealing Swimwear

1991
You’re Only Worth One Bullet
The Ignoble Calculations of Mme. F. and Her Pimp
Grounded Stewardess Reunion, A
Pomegranite: An Extended Metaphor
Desert Psycho Vet
Hollywood’s Private Personalized Plates
Aromatherapy Execution
My People are Naked
Song of the Pitiful
Vicissitudes of Wickedness
Fluff Pulp Babe
Supermodel Carnival II: Runway Runaways
Secrets the Mouth Won’t Tell

1992
Meal of Generation X
Def 2 Da Noiz
Draft Dodger Meets Psycho Vet
D.O.A. Hole
Obsessionary Income
Thrill Collector
Requesting Network Attention
First Lady Chatterly
Rap Riot
Supermodel Carnival III: Adam and Evil
The Whole of America

1993
Amateur Faces of Death
A Man and a Woman and a Deck of Cards
Psycho Vet Meets Hercules
Consortium and Loss
Duk ‘n’ Run
Two-Hand Solitare
Hot Squat
Uncle Sampire
Who Got the Soul Clap?

1994
Deep Bruise
Prickly Heat
The Sad Forehead in My Mirror
Large Bore Killers
Highest and Best Use

1995
Dessicant Sky
The Spanking Machine

1996
Learn to Paint with Morty Fineman
Learn to Cook with Morty Fineman
Learn to Make Love with Morty Fineman

1997
Arriverderci, Morty
Virtual Wife

1998
The Desert of Small Dreams
Tatoo II: Pierced by an Angel

2000
Ms. Kevorkian

For more on December’s Movie of the Month, 2000’s The Independent, check out our Swampchat discussion of the film.

-Brandon Ledet

 

My Father the Hero (1994)

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Every now and then, The Dollar Tree will have a handful of DVDs for, you guessed it, only a buck! Recently, I was going through the infamous dollar DVD pile, and among 10 copies of Madonna’s flop Swept Away, there was a copy of My Father the Hero. After noticing that the film’s cast contained a couple of decent actors (Gérard Depardieu, Katherine Heigl, and Lauren Hutton), I decided to buy it. How bad could it be?

I could sense that the film was going to be pure garbage within the first five minutes, and because I absolutely love garbage movies, I was getting a little excited. The film starts off with Andre (Depardieu), a neglectful father, arriving to New York City to pick up his 14 year-old brat of a daughter, Nicole (Heigl), for a father-daughter trip to the Bahamas. At this point, the acting was horrific and Depardieu looked like Uncle Fester with his bowl cut wig from Addams Family Values. I was loving it!

Screenshot from 2015-12-07 10:37:29 (Modified)

Unfortunately, everything took a turn for the worse once Andre and Nicole arrive in the Bahamas. Nicole develops a crush on an island boy, and she tells him that she’s on a trip with her lover, Andre. Yes, she pretends that her father is her older lover. And it gets even worse! She then tells her crush that she has to pretend that Andre is her father so that they won’t get into any legal trouble. Why would anyone think that this would be a cute idea for a family comedy? I’m sure the writers thought that this “cute” lie would cause the duo to get into all sorts of funny, wacky situations, but instead, it made this film an excruciatingly painful experience.

There are too many awkward moments in this film for me to discuss in this article (it would literally be the entire film script), but here’s my top 3:

  1. 14-year-old Nicole wears a white thong bathing suit while lying out by the pool, and all of these creepy old guys are checking her out. Oh yeah, and her dad is at the pool as well.
  2. After Nicole makes it well known that Andre is her lover, she attempts to make her crush jealous by having a semi-sensual slow dance with her father. At this point in the film, I recall screaming “Please! Just make it stop!” really loudly.
  3. Nicole eventually comes clean and tells her father about her little white lie, but instead of putting an end to all of this nonsense, he agrees to pretend to be her lover for the rest of their vacation. I’m not one to preach about parenting skills, but I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t condone your child’s lies or pretend to be their lover.

I have one wish for this holiday season, and it’s to have all copies of My Father the Hero destroyed. Please, if you are able to spare a buck, look for a copy of this film at your local Dollar Tree and burn it.

-Britnee Lombas