lists & articles

Body Slam (1986) and the Often Superfluous Nature of Bloated Spectacle in Pro Wrestling

/ swampflix / 3 Comments

wrasslin

Like most adults find themselves doing from time to time, I spent this past Friday night yelling myself hoarse at sweaty, costumed men as they wrestled each other in a middle school gymnasium. It was my first exposure to New Orleans’ own pro wrestling promotion Wildkat Sports, at an event called Wildkat Strikes Back. Sitting in a cramped, hot gymnasium with a crowd that ranged from screeching children to their elderly grandparents to hardcore, middle-aged wrestling nerds to roving gangs of way-out-of-place crust punks was a welcome alternative to the way I usually enjoy the sport: in the cold, TV-provided glow of living rooms. There was an intense, communal vibe in that gym that can be lacking in the larger, televised promotions and it made me realize just how much of a spectacle the sport can be on its own merit. When stripped down to its bare bones (sans the slapstick comedy sketches, celebrity cameos, pyrotechnics and half-baked stunts that can exhaust a more bloated program), pro wrestling is still entertaining in a genuine, visceral way.

Sometime in mid-80s pro wrestling had reached its most bloated point in history. With the rise of Hulkamania, the undeniably potent likeability of Andre the Giant, and the cutthroat business-sense of juggernaut promoter Vince McMahon, WWE (then WWF) reached the pinnacle of its cultural dominance when WrestleMania III broke the all-time attendance record of an in-door sporting event with more than 93,000 fans present in the stands (a record that still holds today). The level of sheer spectacle that accompanies events like WrestleMania is as disparate from the brand of pro wrestling you’d see at events like Wildkat Strikes Back as the difference in size of their respective crowds, but that spectacle isn’t exactly necessary to make “sports entertainment” . . . entertaining.

Arriving just a year before that record-breaking crowd at WrestleMania III (and a whole three years before WWE got into the film business themselves with No Holds Barred), the 1986 film Body Slam similarly gets confused about what makes pro wrestling entertaining, putting more value into the spectacle surrounding the sport than the sport itself. In the film’s laughably convoluted plot (it is a comedy, after all) rock ‘n’ roll manager Harry Smilac is struggling to make it with only one client under his wing (a band called KICKS) when he fortunately expands his roster by signing on pro wrestler “Quick” Rick Roberts (played by “Rowdy” Roddy Piper), mistakenly assuming that he is a musical act. Despite his initial repugnance toward pro wrestling, Smilac discovers that there’s good money in the sport and pretty much dives head first into the wrestling business until he (late in the film) has the brilliant idea of combining KICKS & Quick Rick’s talents and voila! Smilac gives birth to “Rock ‘n’ Roll Wrestling”. The spectacle of a live rock band playing while sports entertainers perform is treated here like the discovery of the cure for cancer. Smilac is lauded as a genius.

In Body Slam’s logic, Smilac not only improves pro wrestling with this invention, but he also improves rock ‘n’ roll. These are two forms of art that don’t need improvement. Both rock and wrestling are perfectly appealing when reduced to their most basic parts; they don’t need 80s-tinged grandstanding to make them worthwhile. It’s fitting, then, that the band Smilac manages, KICKS, is an obvious stand-in for the band KISS, who are no strangers to using theatrics & merchandising to distract audiences from their okay-at-best brand of rock ‘n’ roll. In the movie’s logic, KICKS’ songs (as well as their deep love of pyrotechnics) are not only a draw for the crowd, but they also give the wrestlers (well, the faces at least) strength to overpower their opponents. They’re breathing life into a far-from-dead brand of entertainment that really didn’t need their help in the first place.

Of course, Body Slam is a silly trifle of a film that shouldn’t be judged too harshly about what it has to say about pro wrestling as a sport, because it doesn’t have too much to say about anything at all, much less wrestling. However, the film does have some charms as a campy delight. The 80s cheese is thick enough to choke you as early as the opening scene, which features Smilac hanging out of a convertible, hair slicked back, hitting on bikini babes by showing off his gigantic car phone. There’s also some corny humor in exchanges like when a friend asks Smilac, “What are you gonna do, Harry?” and he responds “What I always do: manage!” The campy appeal of the rock ‘n’ roll wrestling plot doesn’t really get going until the last third of the film, but the montages are so worth it, especially the one that’s accompanied by the Body Slam theme song. There’s also, of course, a wide range of 80s wresters to gawk at here. Besides the aforementioned Roddy Piper, the film includes “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair, “Captain” Lou Albano, “Classy” Freddie Blassie, “The Barbarian” Sione Vailahi, and several members of the Samoan Anoaʻi family (including Roman Reigns’ father Sika), among others. Besides the innate fun of seeing them all in a feature film, they’re also more or less abysmal at acting, which helps keep the mood light. With all of this 80s-specific cheese flying around, the inclusion of always-welcome Billy Barty & Charles Nelson Reilly is somehow just icing on the cake.

It’s not a great movie, but Body Slam is effective as a time capsule of the 80s as an era of corny comedies, show-off musicians, and the birth of bloated spectacle in wrestling. The time capsule aspect goes both ways, though, both funny in its quaintly out-of-date aesthetic and disturbing in its penchant for finding cheap humor in topics like misogyny, racial caricature, cross-dressing and pedophilia. Those offenses aside, there are moments late in the film when they finally get the basic appeal of pro wrestling down when during a rock ‘n’ roll wrestling performance the band KICKS is attacked by a group of heels and the whole show devolves into chaos. There’s also a particularly bloody street fight match involving chains that feels pretty close to what a lot of hardcore fans are looking for in the sport, despite an announcer’s exclamation that “This is setting wrestling back 1000 years!”

When considered from the perspective of an enterprising showman (like a Harry Smilac or an Eric Bischoff), Body Slam is an interesting case study of what outsiders often get wrong in their assumptions about what makes pro wrestling entertaining. I’m not saying that local promotions like Wildkat Sports are inherently better than their televised, large scale, rock ‘n’ roll wrestling competitors; I’ll still be eagerly watching all 4 bloated-spectacle hours of WrestleMania XXXI this coming Sunday. I’m just saying that the sport is entertaining enough on its own merit, even when stripped of the fireworks, the KISS-knockoffs, and the David Arquettes. There’s a basic appeal to its violence & pageantry that’s evident whether you’re in a middle school gym with 1,000 sweaty nerds or an outrageously packed stadium of 90,000 rabid fans. The bloated spectacle is delicious lagniappe at its best and unnecessarily excessive at its worst. In Body Slam, it’s mostly the latter, though the film argues otherwise.

-Brandon Ledet

Bergman vs. Corman: Death vs. The Red Death

/ swampflix / 2 Comments

EPSON MFP image

In our Swampchat discussion of March’s Movie of the Month, Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, I pointed out how great of a one-two punch the movie was in combination with February’s Movie of the Month, Roger Corman’s The Masque of the Red Death. As a double feature, the two movies feed off each other well thematically, especially in their contemplation of an uncaring, inevitable Death. Even Roger Corman himself saw the similarities in the films’ subject matter, which lead to him delaying the production of Masque for years. According to Wikipedia, he was quoted as saying, “I kept moving The Masque of the Red Death back, because of the similarities, but it was really an artificial reason in my mind.” The films do have a similar doom & gloom aesthetic in their personifications of Death in the time of a plague, but the differences that ultimately make their connection “artificial” are very much fundamental in nature. The Seventh Seal and The Masque of the Red Death are connected by a plague and by Death’s portrayal as a living character, but both Death’s personality and the social effect of a plague on its suffering population are strikingly different in the two films.

Both The Seventh Seal & The Masque of the Red Death rightfully portray Death as an inevitability, but the personality traits they assign him are almost directly oppositional. In The Seventh Seal, Death allows himself to be amused. The movie’s iconic chess match, while a stay of execution for Antonius Black, is nothing more than a diversion, a light entertainment for Death. Death later continues his playful bemusement with Antonius by posing as a priest and taking his confession. Death has a sly sense of humor in this exchange, albeit one with a morbid result. In Corman’s Masque, The Red Death wouldn’t be caught alive participating in such tomfoolery. The Red Death is very much a professional in his duties, carrying the impartial poise of a courtroom judge in his interactions with Prince Prospero. The only time he allows himself to react to Prospero’s schemes is when the prince begs mercy for the captive Francesca and even then his reaction is only mild surprise.

The plagues that accompany Death & The Red Death are more or less interchangeable, but there’s an essential difference in Corman & Bergman’s interpretations of the victims’ reactions to the hardship. In both films the plagues are met (at least by some) with a form of naïve celebration, a kind of a party while the ship goes down. In The Masque of the Red Death, this party is a disgusting display, a vilification of opulence. Wealthy party guests assume they are above The Red Death’s inevitability merely by the merit of their breed & fortune. Considering themselves invincible, they shut the poor out of the gates of Prospero’s mansion and party their final hours away in excess. Their thirst for a good time while others suffer is a vile impulse that Corman represents disapprovingly and Vincent Price skillfully amplifies with gusto. As James first said in our Swampchat on The Seventh Seal (and which I later explored in my comparison of the film to Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey), the central couple “Jof and Mia who, while maybe naïve, fully embrace life, family, and art despite the dread and despair that surrounds them. As Jof, Mia, and Mikael are the only characters to survive the film, I think Bergman is trying to say that the only way to conquer the fear of death is to truly embrace life, which makes the film, in my eyes, an ultimately uplifting one.” In Bergman’s viewpoint, celebration in the time of Death is a human ideal. While the celebration in Masque is a hateful sin, the one in The Seventh Seal is a life-saving virtue. Bergman even pushes the idea further by having Jof receive visions from beyond this mortal realm. In some ways his naïve celebration of life is downright divine.

The surprising thing about the differences between Death & The Red Death is that they’re somewhat counterintuitive. As a superficial assumption I would think that The Seventh Seal, a black & white art house drama from Ingmar Bergman, would have been the film that portrayed Death as a somber executioner and the party that surrounds him a crime against man. I would also expect that The Masque of the Red Death, a Vincent Price horror film helmed by camp legend Roger Corman, would be the film that portrayed Death as a playful prankster and the celebration of life that surrounds him a moral asset. Instead, the two films find their respective art house pensiveness & over-the-top camp in other characters & plot devices, the trivial elements that bind them as a pair used for entirely different ends. Although their connection is primarily artificial, our back-to-back discussions of The Seventh Seal & The Masque of the Red Death will forever link them in my mind anyway, both for the ways they are superficially the same and in the considerable ways they differ on a fundamental level.

For more on March’s Movie of the Month, 1957’s The Seventh Seal, visit our Swampchat discussion of the film and last week’s exploration of its thematic similarities with Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.

-Brandon Ledet

Bergman’s Image of Death in The Seventh Seal (1957) and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)

/ swampflix / 7 Comments

EPSON MFP image

In our Swampchat discussion about Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal last week, James pointed out that “the film is now remembered mostly for its historical significance and that iconic image of Death, parodied in movies like Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey and Last Action Hero, rather than its substance.” It’s no wonder to me why. There’s more than one way to be a cinephile after all. Some folks gravitate toward the artier side of cinema, preferring to grapple with life’s big questions about art and morality and death every time they pop in a movie. Others are more escapist in their tastes, seeking out mindless films that that are less confrontational & more purely entertaining in both story & style. I would like to think that most people are somewhere in the middle, like a cinematic version of a Kinsey scale, appreciating both the heftiest art & the trashiest pleasures in varied amounts. Folks who are watching Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey aren’t necessarily interested in confronting the nature of death & “The Silence of God” in those 90min, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t appreciate a reference to a more “important” film that does. In fact, acknowledging the existence of an art house classic in a dumb, time-traveling stoner comedy can only enhance the film’s gleeful stupidity by way of comparison.

As a sequel to a deliberately lowbrow buddy comedy, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey could have easily been an uninspired retread. Instead of taking the expected step of having the time-traveling goofballs collecting historical figures to pass a college course (as opposed to the high school course they pass in the first one), Bogus Journey readjusts the franchise’s plot to make room for “fully full-on evil” robot doppelgangers, space aliens, God, Satan, and the rock band Primus. Mixing practical effects & overreaching set design with then-impressive CGI, the film aims to achieve a lot more than sequels to hit comedies generally do. One of the film’s most impressive ambitions of all is its eagerness to interact with Bergman’s daunting The Seventh Seal.

On the surface, Bogus Journey & The Seventh Seal are unlikely bedmates. One is set in the future; the other in the past. One features deviously evil robots as its antagonists; the other an indifferent Death. One is a stoner comedy about winning over bodacious babes; the other art house cinema that tackles “The Silence of God”. However, the two films share an oddly similar moral. As James stated in our conversation about The Seventh Seal’s central couple, “Jof and Mia who, while maybe naïve, fully embrace life, family, and art despite the dread and despair that surrounds them. As Jof, Mia, and Mikael are the only characters to survive the film, I think Bergman is trying to say that the only way to conquer the fear of death is to truly embrace life, which makes the film, in my eyes, an ultimately uplifting one.” If Jof & Mia are naïve, Bill & Ted are barely mentally functional. They are constantly cheerful (even while being murdered) and their central message of “Be excellent to each other” is not at all dissimilar to how Jof & Mia escape The Seventh Seal unharmed. I’m not sure if Ingmar Bergman would have seen or enjoyed Bogus Journey before he died but if he did I would hope he would at least appreciate the film’s central philosophy.

That’s not to say that Bogus Journey gets everything right about The Seventh Seal. In Bergman’s classic Death only participates in the film’s iconic chess match as a diversion, an amusement that allows the protagonist Antonius Black to delay his inevitable fate. In Bogus Journey, Bill & Ted challenge Death as the ultimate wager, the fate of their souls hanging in the balance. The gag involving Death losing to the boys in Battleship, Clue, electric football, and Twister is pretty damn hilarious, but does sort of miss the point of the chess match in The Seventh Seal entirely. Bill & Ted also visit both Heaven & Hell in the film, which I’m not sure are places that exist in The Seventh Seal’s worldview and Death takes more of the position of the butt of jokes than the menacing, but playful figure he is in Bergman’s film. When the boys give Death a wedgie and exclaim “I can’t believe we just melvined Death!” it’s a far cry from the character’s opposing presence in The Seventh Seal. That’s okay, though. It is a dumb comedy after all.

Attempts at defining the meaning of life and the nature of death couldn’t be more varied than they are in The Seventh Seal and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. What’s more interesting than their differences, though, is the common moral they share, namely that we enjoy this good thing before it’s gone and above all else we should “be excellent to each other.” Whether you want that message packaged in a somber, black & white art film or an endearingly idiotic stoner comedy can vary depending on taste & mood. Either way, it’s an admirable message all the same and it’s awesome that Bogus Journey used a reference to Bergman’s character design for Death (which I earlier described as “somewhere between a mime & a wizard”) to bridge the gap between those two aesthetics.

For more of March’s Movie of the Month, 1957’s The Seventh Seal, visit last week’s Swampchat on the film.

-Brandon Ledet

Pop Music Cinema & That Thing You Do! (1996)

/ swampflix / 4 Comments

EPSON MFP image

After spilling what most likely already amounts to way too much ink on pro wrestling movies, we here at Swampflix decided to collect all of our reviews & articles about the “sport” on a single page titled Wrestling Cinema. As time has gone on it’s become apparent that we have more than wrestling on our minds. We also like movies about pop music. From Björk to ABBA to KISS, movies about or featuring musicians are apparently a source of fascination for us, so we’re starting a Pop Music Cinema page to give those movies their own home as well. To commemorate the birth of our Pop Music Cinema page, I’d like to revisit one of the most delightful examples of the genre I can remember: 1996’s That Thing You Do!

The first feature film written & directed by America’s goofy uncle, Tom Hanks, That Thing You Do! is remarkable both in its effortless charm and in its perceptive mimicry & satirization of pop music clichés. The only film that’s maybe covered more pop music ground in the twenty years since its release is 2007’s Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. The difference is that Walk Hard, while gust-bustingly funny, is poking fun at the pop music biopic & all of its genre-trappings while That Thing You Do! proudly wears the costume of the pop music biopic, playing some jokes at its expense, but mostly honoring it through homage. It toes a fine line between honoring & making fun, between nostalgia & derision, between parody & the real thing. Tom Hanks wrote & executed a very funny, perceptive script with his first feature, something that he failed to do a second time with his back-to-college midlife crisis comedy Larry Crowne just five years later.

Part of what makes That Thing You Do! work so well is its succinct accuracy. Framed as the biopic of a single American, Beatles-imitating one hit wonder group, the story is more the biopic of every American, Beatles-imitating one hit wonder group. It follows the entire birth, rise, and fall life-cycle of the fictional group The (one hit) Wonders. The film opens with the band writing their signature song & trying to agree on a name for their group. They then win a local talent show that leads to a steady gig at a restaurant near the airport where their fan base swells to the point where they decide it’s time to cut a record. An upstart manager takes an interest in the band, gets their song played on the radio, and books touring gigs that eventually lead to them losing touch with the friends, families, and lovers they leave behind in their small town. The band bombs their first major concert, but lands an incredible record deal anyway and begin to tour with much bigger acts, groups they’ve idolized for years. While on tour their hit song climbs the Billboard charts in the inevitable climbing-the-Billboard-charts montage. They land opportunities to appear in movies & television until their popularity reaches a breaking point where their egos are far too oversized for the band to continue. They then dissolve & separate, the band of their dreams now a pleasant, but distant memory as they assume new identities as studio musicians & has-beens. As Tom Hanks himself says in the film, “It’s a very common tale.”

As cynical of a take on pop music as a business as all that sounds, the film is still remarkably celebratory. There’s an infectious nostalgia for the mic’d handclaps, groovy wardrobes, and shoddy Gidget movies of yesteryear. The hit song at center of the film is legitimately enjoyable, which is a great advantage since it plays at least a dozen times throughout the runtime- the same way you’d expect to hear a hit song repetitively on the radio. The cast (which includes Tom Hanks, Charlize Theron, Liv Tyler, Giovani Ribisi and a brief early glimpse of Bryan Cranston) is thoroughly likeable. Even Steve Zahn, who can grate on me in large doses, is nothing but charming as the world’s only lead guitarist who can’t seem to get laid. His brand of smart-ass comedy is the funniest it’s ever been; the way he sells lines like “A man in a really nice camper wants to put our songs on the radio!” are among the best moments of his entire career. It’s as if the entire cast and, by extension, the film itself borrowed Tom Hanks’ likeability as if it were a pair of shoes. The main protagonist, played by Tom Everett Scoott, borrowed so much that he even eerily looks like he could be Hanks’ offspring.

That Thing You Do!‘s central message seems to be encapsulated in the line “Ain’t no way to keep a band together. Bands come and go.” It’s smart to recognize, however, that when a band is in full glory it can be a magical thing. The ecstatic look on girls’ faces as The Wonders play on television, the excitement musicians feel when meeting their idols & living their dreams, and the inevitably sappy true-love conclusion to the story all make the fleeting, somewhat meaningless success of a pop group seem like the most important thing in the world. That Thing You Do! showed me that you can be critical of how a thing works on a fundamental level while still finding a deep appreciation for its benefits. It also taught me that Tom Hanks can be terrifying when he’s acting mean. It’s not the most important film about pop music ever made, but it is an immensely enjoyable one & it’s one that has a lot to say about what the genre means as an art form. I’m sure as time goes on that we’ll cover many films that have a lot to say about the genre as well. The nature of pop music seems to be be an endlessly fascinating subject for both folks behind the camera and the rest of us here in the audience.

-Brandon Ledet

The Magic, Mystique, and Merchandising of KISS on Film

/ swampflix / 5 Comments

EPSON MFP image

One thing is for certain in regards to the rock band KISS: they’re far better businessmen than they are musicians. That’s not to say they’re particularly bad musicians or they don’t have at least a few great pop tunes (I’m personally partial to “Love Gun”); it’s more of a testament to how great they are at selling themselves as a product. The range of KISS merchandise is staggering. In addition to standard rock n’ roll commodities like t-shirts & guitar picks, the band sells everything from beach towels & throw pillows to baseballs, oven mitts, garden gnomes, pinball machines and air fresheners featuring their likeness. This dedication to branding not only made relatively harmless songs about partying seem downright demonic to unsuspecting parents in the 70s, it’s also given the band a strange longevity in the pop culture landscape. No matter how ugly KISS are (both morally & physically) without their makeup or how boring they are without the glam rock showmanship covering up their underlying mundanity, their flare for merchandising makes them an ever-present powerhouse. Their two forays into feature films, 1999’s Detroit Rock City & 1978’s KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, are merely an extension of that keen, pragmatic business sense. KISS on film is not all that much different than KISS on lunchboxes or KISS on lava lamps, all things considered.

The 1999 film Detroit Rock City was my first major exposure to both KISS as a band and KISS as a product. As a young teen misanthrope with an unfortunate affinity for nu metal (it was a different time, folks) I was firmly in the film’s target demographic. Conceived & filmed around the same time as That 70s Show, Detroit Rock City works with a very similar visual language: glorifying the era’s outsider teen ennui while also nostalgically celebrating its more commercial curiosities like vintage K-Mart fashion & disco. I identified with the film pretty deeply at the time. In what basically amounts to a standard stoner comedy/road trip movie, four members of a KISS cover band embark on individual journeys to score tickets to their favorite group’s show in the KISS mecca of Detroit. The characters aren’t nearly as likeable as I remembered (their fondness for the word “fag” is definitely a turn-off), but it’s easy to see what drew teen me to the film. Along their journey to The Concert of Their Lives, the four bumbling fools satisfy typical rebellious teen urges like getting laid, smoking weed, and telling their parents to fuck off. The stoner gags are fairly effective as far as those things go and there are several good turns from a few actors of note. A young Edward Furlong sells menacing teen angst uncomfortably well. Natasha Lyonne is beyond fabulous as a party-hungry disco queen. Character actress Lin Shaye steals the show as an obnoxiously uptight & overeager Christian mother. There’s a lot to love about Detroit Rock City even when the four main characters aren’t themselves loveable.

One thing Detroit Rock City does very well is sell the legend of KISS. Lin Shaye’s overprotective mother leads a conservative protest group called Mothers Against the Music of KISS. She’s the type that proclaims rock n’ roll to be “The Devil’s Music” and has no doubt that KISS is Satan’s favorite group among the worst of the worst. She genuinely, foolishly believes the band’s name to be a sly acronym for “Knights in Satan’s Service”. This attitude, of course, makes the band all the more attractive to her teenage son, who worships KISS in his every waking moment. In addition to the KISS cover band he drums for, the protagonist Jam is the exact kind of kid who collects KISS belt buckles, posters, drumsticks, and so on (behind his mother’s back, of course). The film really does make the band feel like a supernatural phenomenon, like the greatest thing that has ever happened to popular music or maybe even to modern society as a whole. KISS is not just a band to the four main characters; it’s an identity. It’s a personal rebellion that gives them a sense of purpose & sets them apart from straight-laced normals who can’t get it through their thick skulls that “disco sucks!” Like all false idols, no band could ever live up to that level of importance & mystique, so the movie smartly limits the amount of screen time KISS gets in a film designed to constantly remind you about how awesome they are. Detroit Rock City’s killer 70s soundtrack is era-defining, including cuts from The Runaways, T. Rex, Thin Lizzy, Edgar Winter, Black Sabbath, David Bowie and The Ramones. KISS does make up nearly half of the soundtrack, but they’re never allowed to overpower it. As much praise as the band receives during the film’s 90min runtime, they only physically appear at the climactic concert in Detroit, which is the exact opposite of other band-worship films like, say, ABBA: The Movie. It’s an effective tactic, as it affords the band a mysterious, magical charisma.

In 1978’s made-for-TV feature KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, the band’s charisma is literally magical. During the opening credits KISS soars through the air, playing loud rock music over footage of amusement park rides. They then fade to the background during a fairly dull stretch of rising action involving a mad scientist who narrow-mindedly sets his sights on dominating an amusement park instead of the world at large. When the band returns it’s in glorious fashion: they descend from space, shooting laser beams from their eyes and breathing fire while lightning dances around them. Apparently KISS can read minds, burst through walls, roar like lions, and master martial arts maneuvers that would make Batman envious. In KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, the band members aren’t merely Peter, Paul, Gene and Ace. They’re Cat Man, Star Child, Space Ace and The Demon. Although the mad scientist plot starts slowly, it pays off by affording the magical foursome the opportunity to fight opponents like android werewolves and Frankenstein’s monster. It also allows for strange details like a not-so-subtle Star Wars nod in some androids’ light-up swords and strange magical talismans that provides the band their special powers.

After seeing how extensively KISS was worshiped by their fans (or “The KISS Army”, if you will) in Detroit Rock City it’s satisfying to see them act as literal deities in Phantom of the Park. The only problem is that it’s hard to imagine that The KISS Army would have enjoyed the film at all, because it not only tries to appease them, but also tries to win over their parents. Scenes showing the band’s gentler side in heart-felt ballads, gags about an animatronic barber shop quartet, and an onslaught of corny one-liners all do a huge disservice to the band’s mystique. Only “The Demon” Gene comes out unscathed & still menacing while the rest of his bandmates are portrayed as truly good dudes under all that scary makeup. Personally, as a fan of cheese & schlock, I enjoyed how awful & miscalculated the humor was in Phantom of the Park. It’s just hard to imagine the bong water-soaked, KISS worshiping teens of Detroit Rock City feeling the same way, considering that the band’s demonic powers are used for good instead of party-minded chaos in the film. I imagine the band’s younger fans were over the moon for Phantom of the Park; I just can’t say the same about stoner teens.

Even for those who aren’t fans of KISS’s music, both Detroit Rock City and KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park are surprisingly watchable. It’s fascinating to an outsider how an okay-at-best party band branded themselves through mysterious lore and on-stage theatrics as fire-breathing, laser-shooting gods of rock n’ roll. As a stoner comedy, Detroit Rock City is an amusing glimpse into the late 90s’ nostalgic fascination with 70s cool. As a family-friendly, made-for-TV creature feature about robot werewolves and a band from outer space, KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park is entertaining enough as how-was-this-even-made shlock. Together they help paint a picture of a rock group that was incredibly adept at brand-awareness, self-lore, and merchandising. KISS may not be the greatest musical act on record or on film, but they might very well be the best act on golf club covers, lip balms, snow globes and Christmas ornaments. That’s certainly a feat within itself.

-Brandon Ledet

UPDATE: The Indywood Kickstarter Campaign was a Success!

/ swampflix / 1 Comment

EPSON MFP image

Last week I wrote that the independent New Orleans cinema Indywood was looking to expand their programming through a Kickstarter campaign. The intimate theater has already been up and running at the edge of the French Quarter for just over a year now, but through a very reasonable requested donation they were looking to expand the scope of what services they could offer to the city’s cinephile community. At the time I wrote about their Kickstarter campaign it had two weeks to fund its project and just over half of its requested funds secured. I am happy to report that Indywood has since reached its goal and will now be able to expand its programming to include diverse offerings like Saturday morning cartoons, stand-up comedy, silent films with live musical accompaniment, “80’s VHS gems” and more.

In the last announcement I wrote that Indywood “occupies a strange, comfortable middle ground between watching a film in a traditional theater and popping in a DVD in a friend’s living room. Much like the experience of seeing a film at Zeitgeist or the outdoor Moonlight Movies screenings, there’s a communal aesthetic to Indywood that can’t be achieved at a larger, corporate-owned venue.” It’s awesome that the very community Indywood shares movies with stepped up to help them expand & grow. Personally, I very much look forward to watching to see what they bloom into and believe that, no matter what the scope of what they can accomplish, New Orleans will be all the richer for it.

Although the Kickstarter campaign has been fully funded, it’s still not too late to contribute if you haven’t already. They’ve secured the basic donation amount they’ve asked for, but more funding always helps. At this time there’s exactly one week left (until 8pm on March 5th to be exact) to contribute to the growth of New Orleans’ cinematic community & claim some truly cool rewards. There will also be a celebration for their backers (including a screening of The Big Lebowski) on March 5th to commemorate the success of the campaign. Hope to see you there!

-Brandon Ledet

The Other Vincent Price Masque: The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

/ swampflix / 5 Comments

masque

Vincent Price’s fey, effete, menacingly campy persona made him a natural for old-school horror. It was a persona he intentionally cultivated. In his transition from 50’s monster movie classics like House of Wax and The Fly to the 60s Corman-Poe Cycle that made him infamous, he gradually ramped up the eccentricities in his voice & mannerisms that established him as a horror staple. By the 70s Price had devolved into delicious self-parody. His playful demeanor was perfect for the horror genre: his characters were not only evil; they took great delight in their wicked deeds, proudly snickering at the depths of their own cruelty.

It was this persona that made Price perfect for the Prince Prospero role in February’s Movie of the Month, 1964’s The Masque of the Red Death. The film’s masquerade setting not only afforded Price the chance to be sadistic to a large group of costumed guests, it also gave the sadism a party setting. That mischievous combination of pleasure & pain was positively ideal for the Vincent Price aesthetic. The masquerade setting was so perfect for Price, in fact, that it was recycled years later in another one of his iconic roles: 1971’s The Abominable Dr. Phibes.

By the time Price starred in The Abominable Dr. Phibes, he was in full self-parody mode. Where Corman’s Masque is a trippy horror show with occasional, unsettling touches of humor, Dr. Phibes is a full-on horror comedy. Price’s Phibes is a horrifically scarred car crash survivor hell-bent on avenging his wife’s death against the surgeons that failed to save her life. The pattern of his revenge mimics the seven Biblical plagues. Despite that disturbing premise, it’s a deviously fun film and one of Price’s most memorable performances. Phibes himself wears a prosthetic mask to hide his facial scars, but that’s not the common thread it shares with Masque. In the film’s best scene (or at least my personal favorite) Phibes offs one of his deceased wife’s doctors at a masquerade ball. His murder method? He supplies the doctor with a mechanical frog mask that crushes his head. The frog mask is not only a beautiful work of art; it also cleverly fulfills the frog plague requirement of the film’s premise.

The masquerade scene in Dr. Phibes is brief, but beautiful. It not only echoes Corman’s Masque in the setting, but also in the gorgeous saturation of color and in the other guest’s nonchalance at the frog-mask victim’s pleas for help. Just as Prospero laughs cruelly at his party guests’ demise, Phibes casually looks on from behind a crystal chandelier as his frog mask contraption exterminates his prey. The two films are tonally different works from two opposing phases of Vincent Price’s career, but in the brief moment at the masque in Phibes, The Masque of the Red Death and The Abominable Dr. Phibes are spiritually linked.

For more on February’s Movie of the Month, 1964’s The Masque of the Red Death, visit our Swampchat on the film, the round-up of its dueling 1989 knockoffs, and last week’s photos of The Red Death at Mardi Gras. Coverage of our next Movie of the Month, 1957’s The Seventh Seal, begins early next week.

-Brandon Ledet

Get Excited! Indywood is Looking to Expand their Programming through a Kickstarter Campaign

/ swampflix / 1 Comment

EPSON MFP image

I’ve heard tale of an ancient time when New Orleans was blessed with independent movie theaters, from legitimate single-screen cinemas to the overheated living rooms of shotgun houses where enterprising weirdos would sell you cheap beer & strange art films. By the time I was old enough to care, this cinematic paradise was gone. Up until a few years ago, the only independent theater holding on for dear life was The Prytania, a cultural institution that’s blessed our city with a hundred years of service. Most of our city’s independent cinemas had fallen to the crushing presence of AMC theaters in the suburbs and the convenience of home video.

Thankfully, things have changed. Just in the last few years, New Orleans’ independent movie scene has been veritably raised from the dead. In addition to the Prytania, we now have Chalmette Movies, Zeitgeist, Shotgun Cinema, The Theatres at Canal Place, outdoor Moonlight Movies screenings, the upcoming cinema on Broad Street and Indywood at the edge of the French Quarter. The city is buzzing with filmmaking & film watching activity. It’s a great time to be a cinephile in New Orleans.

One of the more exciting and more recent movie theaters in the city, Indywood, is looking to expand its scope & ambition through a crowd-funded Kickstarter campaign. A much cozier & laidback downtown option than the too-rich-for-my-blood Theatres at Canal Place, Indywood is an intimate single-screen cinema on Elysian Fields, a few blocks from the river. It occupies a strange, comfortable middle ground between watching a film in a traditional theater and popping in a DVD in a friend’s living room. Much like the experience of seeing a film at Zeitgeist or the outdoor Moonlight Movies screenings, there’s a communal aesthetic to Indywood that can’t be achieved at a larger, corporate-owned venue.

Asking the very community it serves for a very reasonable donation to fund an expanse in programming, Indywood is looking to be more than just an intimate place to watch movies. According to the Kickstarter page, they’re looking to serve food & wine, play Saturday morning cartoons, and host stand-up comedy & discussions of classic works. They’re also looking to expand the ranges of films they screen to include spotlights on local films, African American films, silent films with live musical accompaniment and (most exciting to me) “80’s VHS gems”. The campaign’s “rewards” are also pretty cool, including a nifty t-shirt, private screenings, and the right to buy a seat in the theater that you’ll have the right to claim “no matter who’s sitting there for a whole year. Even if it’s Beyoncé.”

If you have the time or a few bucks to spare, help support the revival of New Orleans’ independent cinema scene by donating to the Indywood Kickstarter page or at least spreading it on social media. It has about two weeks left to reach its reasonable goal, but just over half of its funding secured. We at Swampflix would love to see their project completed.

2/26/15 UPDATE: The campain was a success!

-Brandon Ledet

The Masque of the Red Death (1964) on Mardi Gras Day

/ swampflix / 7 Comments

masque

In our Movie of the Month conversation about the deeply strange, beautiful and undeniably ahead-of-its-time The Masque of the Red Death, I pointed out how much the movie reminds me of Carnival season in New Orleans. I wrote, “With Fat Tuesday looming around the corner, it was impossible not to see aspects of Carnival in the masquerade ball hosted by Prince Prospero (Vincent Price). The cheap costumes & mockery of opulence is very much reminiscent of Mardi Gras parades. There’s even a scene where Prospero literally throws beads from a balcony shouting ‘Gifts! Gifts!’ and scoffs at the greed of the people below. As the threat of The Red Death plague becomes increasingly severe, the masquerade takes on a ‘party while the ship is sinking’ vibe New Orleans knows all too well. Horror films are usually tied to Halloween, but The Masque of the Red Death is distinctly akin to Mardi Gras in my mind.” In an effort to put my money where my mouth is, I took the Movie of the Month out into the streets on Mardi Gras, masquerading as The Red Death himself. Here’s a few pictures of the costume below to help solidify the memory.

DSCN1115

DSCN1113

DSCN1134

DSCN1298

I hope everyone had a great, safe Mardi Gras and maybe even costumed as their own pet obsessions, movie-related or not. It’s certainly been a fun Carnival season on my end and I was glad to take a little bit of Swampflix with me into the Quarter on Fat Tuesday. I might even do it again next year!

For more on February’s Movie of the Month, 1964’s The Masque of the Red Death, visit our Swampchat on the film and last week’s round-up of its dueling 1989 knockoffs.

-Brandon Ledet

The 1989 Battle of Dueling The Masque of the Red Death Adaptations

/ swampflix / 3 Comments

masque

“Prolific” is almost not enough to describe the absurd volume of cinematic product Roger Corman has brought into this world. Since the 1950’s Corman has stacked up nearly 60 credits as a director and nearly 400 as a producer. During a particularly amusing anecdote in the documentary Corman’s World he recalls a time when he was producing a dozen films at once, but could only remember ten of the titles offhand, so he reasoned that he should cancel the last two, whatever they were. Something peculiar happens when an artist’s mind gets stretched that thin: it starts to cannibalize its own creations. For instance, the smash hits Jaws & Jurassic Park can both very easily be traced back to the creature features Corman pioneered, but that didn’t stop him from ripping them off in his own knockoff productions Piranha & Carnosaur. Then there’s the curious case of Munchies, wherein he rips off Gremlins, the product of Roger Corman Film School veteran Joe Dante. Similarly, when there was a miniscule late 80’s revival of interest in Edgar Allan Poe’s horror aesthetic, Corman dove in with his own cheapie Poe production, despite already having established himself as the master of the genre over two decades before.

In 1989, Corman needlessly produced a horrendous re-make of his classic film The Masque of the Red Death. The 1964 version of Masque is an undeniable horror classic and one of the greatest films ever directed by Corman. The 1989 version looks like a Wishbone episode or a high school play and was directed by the guy who wrote the travesty that is Halloween: Resurrection. It’s difficult to imagine why Corman would even bother to revisit his ancient masterpiece in 1989. The best I can deduce is that he was meaning to compete with cinematic nobody Alan Birkinshaw, who directed his own shoddy The Masque of the Red Death remake in ’89, along with a needless retreading of another classic from The Corman-Poe Cycle, House of Usher. The sad thing is, if it were meant to be a competition, Corman’s 1989 Masque loses to Birkinshaw’s, if only by default.

Birkinshaw’s The Masque of the Red Death is by all means a terrible adaptation of Poe’s work, but it’s one that at least brings a fresh idea to the concept, forgetting all nuance & mysticism of the story in favor of fitting it into a hilariously simple slasher movie plot. Set in the modern era, wealthy party guests cosplay in their best Ren-fair garb only to be lured individually into coves of a mysterious mansion and slashed to death by a serial killer who borrows murder tactics from various Poe works. Nothing too original takes place here. The killer is a shameless riff on Corman’s visualization of The Red Death from 1964 and his straight-razor slashings feel directly borrowed from every Dario Argento movie ever, but lack of creativity isn’t always a deathblow for the slasher genre. The movie’s cheesy, unconvincing murders combine with even cheesier, less convincing pop music and (cheesiest & least convincing of all) Frank Stallone to create a fairly okay VHS-aesthetic diversion. It’s not great, but it’s not as bad as you’d expect.

Corman’s 1989 Masque, by comparison, feels like a huge step down from the cinematic heights he brought the same story to in 1964. It mostly retreads old ground with lowered enthusiasm & no visual flair to speak of. Corman had a history of remaking/ruining his AIP classics in that phase of his career, but the timing of this particular one makes it feel like an answer to Birkinshaw’s films. Corman’s The Masque of the Death remake is nowhere near being the worst film the beyond-prolific legend ever directed or produced, but it is still embarrassing that of the two 1989 adaptations of a story he had already perfected, his was a clear loser.

For more on February’s Movie of the Month, 1964’s The Masque of the Red Death, visit last week’s Swampchat on the film.

-Brandon Ledet