Crossroads (2002)

March 21, 2015 / swampflix / 1 Comment

Shonda Rhimes is currently one of the most powerful women in television. She’s the mastermind behind programs such as Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder, and Grey’s Anatomy, but before all of her fame and success, she wrote the infamously terrible film, Crossroads. After attempting to figure out how Rhimes was responsible for writing such a bad movie, I came across a quote that explains everything: “I never thought the critics were going to say Crossroads was a brilliant movie. My goal was for 12-year-olds to think it was brilliant [. . .] I became a rock star to the preteen set.” She went on to say “That movie bought my house.” It turns out that she has always been a genius. In 2002, Britney Spears was a god to teenagers around the globe and Rhimes was able to make loads of money by writing this garbage.

I was a 12-year-old Britney Spears super fan when this film came out and I annoyed every adult I knew by constantly begging them to bring me to the movie theater so I could see Crossroads. The movie trailers would play on MTV all throughout the day and I never got tired of watching them. I remember thinking that by watching this movie I would be an even better and more loyal Britney Spears fan. Come to think of it, it was like being in a preteen cult. Well, someone finally caved in and I was able to see Crossroads on the big screen. I didn’t really understand most of the movie, but that didn’t matter because I was so thrilled to see Britney Spears in something other than a music video or a Pepsi commercial. I recently revisited the film for the first time in 12 years and the experience I had was very different compared to my initial one. Everything was just so embarrassing and awkward to watch, but it was slightly enjoyable due to its nostalgia value.

Lucy (Britney Spears) has lost touch with her two childhood friends, Kit (Zoe Saldana) and Mimi (Taryne Manning). After their high school graduation, the girls dig up an old “wish box” they created as children and they’re reminded of their past wishes and friendship. They all decide to go on a road trip across the U.S. to fulfill their wishes: Mimi, who is pregnant, wants to go to California; Lucy wants to visit the mother who abandoned her in Arizona; and Kit wants to visit her flawless fiancé in Los Angeles. They hitch a ride to California with a supposed ex-con from a local trailer park, which is such a terrible idea for 3 immature teenage girls, but since this is a tween flick, he actually turns out to be a hunky good guy who doesn’t slit their throats. Their journey brings out many horrible secrets and truths, but it really makes them all closer to each other while allowing them to sort of “find themselves.” The film ends with Britney performing “I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman” and the song pretty much sums up the meaning of the film.

The most memorable scene from the film would be the “I Love Rock n’ Roll” karaoke performance. The ex-con’s car breaks down near New Orleans, and no one has the money needed to fix it. They just so happen to come across a karaoke contest with a cash prize at a bar on Bourbon Street, so the girls decide to give it a shot. They do a really awkward performance of Joan Jett’s classic hit and end up winning a good bit of cash. Even though it’s the most memorable, I think this is actually the worst scene in the entire film because it’s so embarrassing to watch. Lucy, Kit, and Mimi try their best to look “alternative” and cover themselves in glitter. Mimi nervously attempts to do the lead vocals, and the audience trys to boo them off the stage. Dave Allen has a quick cameo as a bar patron that yells “Get off the stage!” and it’s pretty damn hilarious. Of course, Lucy saves the day by taking over the lead vocals, and the entire bar starts dancing and cheering them on. I cringed the entire time because everything about their performance (especially their outfits, facial expressions, and dancing) was so horrendous.

Britney Spears is a kickass performer that I still adore to this day, but she is definitely not cut out to be an actress. She didn’t seem to be very comfortable with her role as Lucy; every gesture she made and every word out of her mouth felt forced. It’s a good thing she sticks to music videos, commercials, and the occasional guest appearance nowadays. Still, I honestly think that Crossroads is worth a watch due to its goofy nature and its nostalgia value. Thankfully, it’s currently streaming on Netflix.

-Britnee Lombas

The Fast and the Furious (1955)

March 21, 2015March 29, 2015 / swampflix / 1 Comment

When I said yesterday that I had yet to see a single Fast & Furious film in full, I wasn’t being 100% honest. I had previously seen the film the series derived its name from, a 1950’s car racing cheapie from Movie of the Month vet Roger Corman. 1955’s The Fast and the Furious is far from Corman’s most interesting film, but it is only the second title (out of hundreds) that he’s produced and the first title produced by American International Pictures, the film company that helped make him a b-movie powerhouse. The film has very little connection to the much-more-infamous Paul Walker series outside of the purchase of its title rights, but that purchase was most certainly worth every penny. It’s a damn good title. Good thing they decided not stick with the much less compelling original name for the film, Crashout.

When considered on its own, The Fast and the Furious doesn’t amount to much. It’s story of an (innocent) escaped convict who comes to hold a female race car driver hostage in hopes that she will drive him to freedom across the Mexican border. At first they bristle at each other’s hostility. In an early exchange, the race car driver, Connie, spits, “I hate you.” Frank, the convict, responds, “Just hate me all the way to Mexico.” There’s a lot of violent sexual energy between the couple that becomes less violent and more sexual as they stop struggling to outsmart each other and start working as a pair in their confrontations with police & other, less forgiving race car drivers. The racing culture of 1950s is portrayed as rich man’s hobby here, which leads to some occasionally interesting class politics in Frank’s interactions with Connie’s circle. This also plays into why Frank was convicted of a crime he didn’t commit in the first place, which is revealed in his line “It isn’t what you are that counts. It’s what you get taken for.”

Filmed in just ten days, The Fast and the Furious is one of many examples of Corman’s superhuman ability to make a surprisingly watchable picture on a tight budget, even if it isn’t a particularly memorable one. It does share some incidental similarities the Paul Walker franchise of the same name, like felons getting mixed up in car racing, racers inspecting/admiring each other’s gear, the featured inclusion of female racers, and (most incidentally of all) mentions of Coachella, California. Both Corman’s film and the 2000s franchise also have a tendency to mix corny comedy in with their criminal intrigue as well as an over-reliance on dated effects (whether they be CGI or driving scenes filmed in front of a projector). Corman’s The Fast and the Furious is by no means essential viewing, but it is an interesting footnote to the trashy cultural powerhouse that followed nearly 50 years later.

The Fast and the Furious (1955) is currently streaming on Netflix.

-Brandon Ledet

The Fast and the Furious (2001)

March 20, 2015March 20, 2015 / swampflix / 9 Comments

Despite the 15 year run of the franchise’s cultural ubiquity, I’ve somehow managed to avoid ever seeing a Fast & Furious movie in full. Sure, I’ve seen them playing as background noise in various bars & living rooms over the years, but I’ve never bothered to watch a single picture from front to end. When the series first got started I was a gloomy teenage snob who wouldn’t be caught dead watching such mindless machismo, but something happened in the years since: I grew a sense of humor. And while I was working on that, something else happened: the series seemingly got exponentially ridiculous with each sequel. It’s rare these days for any genre film outside of slasher flicks to earn six sequels, but here we are in 2015 with a car racing movie reaching its seventh installment next month: Furious 7. It’s with the ads for that seventh installment that I’ve finally reached my tipping point. The trailer for Furious 7 is so deliciously over the top that when I first saw it in the theater I finally felt compelled to catch up with the entire series.

It turns out that the very first installment in the Fast & Furious franchise was a very effective baseline measurement for the series. It was exactly what I had expected: rap-rock era machismo way more concerned with cartoonishly fast cars, gigantic guns, and impressively elaborate action sequences than its superfluous plot about an undercover cop. The movie opens with a dangerous, in-motion highway robbery, then moves on directly to a fistfight, then a drag race, then a feud with a biker gang and so on. In addition to fistfights, armed robberies, motorcycles, and sports cars, The Fast and the Furious features such macho trademarks as rap metal, backyard grills, and lipstick lesbianism. The film also features Vin Diesel in his early 2000s prime (he had a prime, right?), Ja Rule (unmistakably in his prime) as an early sign of the series’ unique interest in rappers-turned-actors, and the strikingly sexy Jordana Brewster as the designated trophy girl for face-of-the-series Paul Walker to lust after. Above all of these macho hallmarks stands what I suppose is the film’s main attraction: fast cars. Cars so fast that light warps around them like spaceships in old-line sci-fi, their roaring engines overpowering the sound design & the inner workings of their nitrous oxide systems becoming a fetishistic focus for the CGI. The series, of course, is all about furiously fast cars, with plot & dialogue taking a very distant second.

The Fast and the Furious is entertaining enough as a mindless action flick & a trashy cultural relic, but it’s nowhere near the peak ridiculousness promised in the Furious 7 trailer. It does have its campy moments, though. The dialogue is often laughable. For example, early in the film when Paul Walker’s character suspiciously patrons a subpar sandwich shop, a hooligan asks, “What’s up with this fool? What is he, sandwich crazy?” In addition to the nonsensical vocal posturing, there’s the hideous detail of someone being force-fed engine oil as a torture tactic, the fact that somehow no one seems to think it’s fucked up that their drag race competition is called “Race Wars”, and a straight-out-of-a-girl-group-song moment when Paul Walker screams “Don’t do it, Jesse!” while trying to convince a reckless teen not to race. Also, as a lazy Louisiana nerd who barely leaves the house, I have no idea exactly how over the top the depictions of widescale California street races that result in thousands of people running from the cops are, but they felt pretty silly to an outsider. The campy charms never reach a fever pitch, however, and the film mostly serves as a baseline measurement for the sure-to-come shameless retreads inherent to sequels as well as the cartoonish absurdity promised in the ads for Furious 7 (and hopefully elsewhere in the five films in-between). It was a decent start to the series, but I doubt it’s the best or the worst that it has to offer. We’ll see.

-Brandon Ledet

Tammy (2014)

March 19, 2015April 17, 2016 / swampflix / 7 Comments

Tammy is unmistakably a passion project for actress/comedian Melissa McCarthy. Ever since her career-making turn as a hot mess in Bridesmaids, McCarthy has been unfortunately typecasted as an obnoxious slob, so it seems peculiar that a film she personally developed with her first-time writer/director husband Ben Falcone would again have her fill that role. Instead of feeling like more of the same, however, Tammy feels like the culmination of what McCarthy has been building towards since her long line of hot mess characters began in 2011. Structurally, the film plays like a genre exercise in the vein of a standard road trip/buddy comedy that throws generic plot points at the audience as if they’re somehow still surprising despite their over-familiarity. However, Tammy’s strict genre adherence is a merely a front, a platform for the dark, irreverent working class comedy the film really is at heart.

The character Tammy (nearly every character is known by just their first name here: Pearl, Earl, Lenore, Bobby, etc.) is almost instantly familiar to the audience. As we follow her through an especially shitty day in which she loses a car, a job, and a husband, she not only builds on the personality McCarthy has developed since Bridesmaids, but she also establishes herself as a descendant of a long line of have-vs-have-nots comedic characters. Tammy is like a complicated black comedy cocktail with equal parts Strangers With Candy (sharing Jerri Blank’s near feral human-raccoon nature) , Roseanne (with her disinterest in feigning poise), Observe & Report (in her tendency to obscure her crippling depression with outsized bravado), Tommy Boy (in that she destroys everything she touches, but in an endearing way), and Freddy Got Fingered (in both her irreverence & her interaction with dead animals, though both of those factors are thankfully toned down). It’s a hilariously bitter formula that’s just as delightful as it is depressing. Tammy is an eternal fuckup with no discernible promise in her future, but she’s also refreshingly honest & super friendly. Her nature is best understood in a scene where she’s ineptly robbing a fast food restaurant while making friends & plans to hang out with the employees she holds at gunpoint. No one describes Tammy better than she does herself when she says “A little taste of Tammy and you’re going to come clammering back for more. I’m like a Cheeto; you can’t eat just one.” Her character (and in some ways the movie itself) is the personification of junk food; Tammy is cheap, cheesy, and most likely bad for you, but she’s also potently delectable.

In addition to Tammy’s penchant for finding somber humor in poverty, alcoholism, and depression, it’s also subversive in the way it swaps the traditional gender roles in the road trip & buddy comedies it emulates (the same way The To Do List subverted teen sex farces in 2013). Not only is the titular Tammy not the gender you’d expect in a crude, bumbling buffoon protagonist in this genre, she’s also surrounded by a large cast of hilarious women, with the film’s men taking largely a backseat role. The always-welcome Allison Janney & Kathy Bates both have great turns as Tammy’s uptight mother & boisterous lesbian aunt, respectively, but it’s Susan Sarandon that steals the show as Pearl, Tammy’s alcoholic, pill-addicted fuckup drunk of a grandmother. Even though it’s a story we’ve all seen told before, the film’s most heartfelt moments are when Tammy & Pearl drop the self-righteous posturing and bond as two vulnerable people, like in the scene where Pearl reveals that she was in a sexual relationship with “the wrong” Allman Brother and Tammy confesses that she got fingered by Boz Scaggs (but it’s okay, because “it turns out it wasn’t Boz Scaggs”). The film not only allows its women to misbehave in unconventional ways, it also limits the roles its male characters are allowed to fill. The only two male characters of note are played by Gary Cole, who essentially serves as a drunken bimbo for Pearl to conquer, and Mark Duplass, who plays the central character’s way too attractive & emotionally stable love interest, defined only by the depthless selflessness he offers the world. It’s an exact gender reversal of traditional slapstick farces.

Of course, Tammy is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea (or flavor of Cheeto). In fact, Deadspin named it the worst film of last summer, calling it “an ill-conceived nightmare from the beginning, starting with its star’s basic misunderstanding of what makes her an appealing actress in the first place. (It’s not the pratfalls; it’s the energy and warmth behind them).” I think there’s a lot of genuine warmth & some truly bizarre energy behind Tammy’s character that you can miss if you’re not on the movie’s wavelength (despite the character’s self-explanation that she’s like junk food & her love interest’s constant reassurance that she’s lovably honest & “real”). As with most comedies, your enjoyment is ultimately going to boil down to whether or not you find the film funny. Sure, it has its faults: the heart it tries to grow at its clichéd climax is less than compelling; there is an unfortunate featured inclusion of Macklemore on the soundtrack that will surely date the film; it’s relentlessly dumb & gross, etc. However, those faults are inherent to the genre-framework it operates within. For fans of this brand of subversively dark, lowbrow, working-class farces (from the titles mentioned above to other little-loved features like Brothers Solomon & Dirty Work) Tammy has plenty of charm to spare and a refreshing take on the gender roles established by its predecessors. McCarthy may not be playing to the height of her talents here (she’s an impressive dramatic actress when given the chance), but she has constructed a character and a film that are a welcome addition to a long tradition of surprisingly bitter junk food comedies.

-Brandon Ledet

The Brady Bunch in the White House (2002)

March 19, 2015March 19, 2015 / swampflix / Leave a comment

I’m still trying to understand what I just watched. Why would anyone think it’s okay to create a made-for-television sequel to A Very Brady Sequel 6 years late with an almost entirely new cast? Shelley Long (Carol Brady) and Gary Cole (Mike Brady) were the only two members of the original cast that I noticed, and they were actually okay since they have all that Brady experience under their belts. However, their talent was definitely not enough to save this movie from becoming a flop. The Brady Bunch Movie (1995) and A Very Brady Sequel (1996) were actually very funny, but The Brady Bunch in the White House was absolute garbage. It was painful for me to endure all 88 minutes of this joke of a movie, but I was committed to making it to the end for Swampflix.

After Bobby, the youngest Brady boy, comes across a lottery ticket in an abandoned building, he ends up actually winning the lottery. The problem is that the ticket didn’t actually belong to Bobby, and his father, Mike, refuses to allow him to claim the winnings. Of course, he gives one of his famous all-American dad speeches that make absolutely no sense and are more annoying than funny. It turns out that the ticket’s rightful owner is on death row, so Mike ends up donating the winnings to charity. This attracts much public attention, and the President of the United States invites the Brady family to the White House for a press conference. Shortly after the conference, a scandal occurs that causes the President to resign and Mike Brady becomes the new President. Guess who becomes Mike’s Vice President? Carol Brady! The Bradys basically take over the White House and, well, do a bunch of Brady stuff (perform synchronized musical numbers, wear tacky 70s fashion, etc.).

Here’s my theory on how this movie came about: someone with way too much money had way too much to drink and said, “Hey, what if the Brady Bunch took over the White House? That would be pretty neat! I should waste a bunch of my money on a crappy movie about it.” There’s no way that a sober person would ever invest their time and money on this. The plot was ridiculous, the acting was even worse, and I’m pretty sure it was filmed with a handheld camcorder. There is a slight possibility that I will watch this movie 10 years down the road just for kicks, but that’s just me being optimistic. I really hope that this is the last Brady movie that will ever be made.

Watch if you dare: The Brady Bunch in the White House is currently streaming on Netflix.

-Britnee Lombas

House of Whipcord (1974)

March 19, 2015 / swampflix / Leave a comment

“This film is dedicated to those who are disturbed by today’s lax moral codes and who eagerly await the return of corporal and capital punishment….”

What happens when moral standards are taken to the extreme? Director Pete Walker explores this idea in one of the most interesting horror exploitation films I’ve ever seen. I expected House of Whipcord to be a hot mess, but it was actually a pretty solid horror film with exceptional acting from just about every cast member. Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t the crème de la crème of horror cinema; it’s still super campy and goofy.

In an abandoned prison located in the English countryside, there’s a couple of sadistic older women who have turned the building into a phony correctional facility for corrupt young girls. The leader of the facility is an elderly blind man who is mentally in a different century, believing he’s some sort of judge that determines the life or death of imprisoned women. His wife, the reincarnation of the devil himself, and her son, Mark E. DeSade (hmm, sounds a bit similar to Marquis de Sade . . . ), are major sadists who purposely get the imprisoned girls in trouble so they can get off on their punishments, particularly flogging. Mark lures sinful women from the city by offering to bring them to his beautiful home in the countryside (aka the abandoned prison). The film focuses on a French model, Anne-Marie DeVarnet (Penny Irving), who is Mark’s latest prey. She seriously has the worst French accent ever, but she’s a pretty good actress nonetheless. There are lots of twists and turns that occur once Anne-Marie enters the prison, and it all leads to a very surprising ending.

I truly appreciated the 70s low budget charm in House of Whipcord. Shoddy camera work, high-pitched screams, eerie background music, and unnecessary nudity are plentiful, but there’s not a lot of gore, which is surprising for a film about torture and punishment. According to a few articles and reviews I’ve read about the film, it was supposed to make a political statement about censorship and right-wing policies on capital punishment. I guess I can sort of see where it touches on the absurdity of capital punishment, but that’s not the main focus of the film. This is a horror movie and I see it as nothing more than a horror movie. Ultimately, House of Whipcord is a horror film that delivers and does not disappoint.

House of Whipcord is currently streaming on Netflix.

-Britnee Lombas

Phase IV (1974)

March 18, 2015August 29, 2024 / swampflix / 19 Comments

When I’m prompted to imagine a film about murderous insects, I think back to the atomic creature features of the 1950s. I picture close-ups of actual insects scaling miniature models of suburban homes crudely combined with shots of victims screaming for their lives in the grasp of the invader’s oversized paper mache pincers. In my imagination, the insects become monsters through massive size alone, a tradition carried down all the way from 1957’s The Deadly Mantis to 2002’s Eight Legged Freaks. A refreshing deviation from this norm, 1974’s Phase IV surprisingly makes a threat of its murderous ants without blowing them out of proportion, but instead giving them a much more dangerous attribute: intelligence.

The killer ants in Phase IV are shrewd, organized, and scarily adaptable. They attack their predators preemptively, methodically killing spiders, praying mantises, and then humans as if they’re assassins taking orders. They turn automobiles into bombs, dismantle computers, and weaponize reflected sunlight in a vengeful reflection of a bored child with a magnifying glass. When sprayed with poisons, they purposefully evolve to include the toxins in their next mutation. The nature footage the film manages to cull is very impressive. It’s rare that this brand of sci-fi schlock would be perplexing on a technical level, but Phase IV kept me guessing. Sure, there were the inevitable close-up shots of ants eating cut with images of a collapsing set, but a lot of the film had me scratching my head as to just exactly how they got their footage. Did they dye the mutant ants? Was some of the action achieved though stop-motion animation? Did they write the movie around the kind of footage they could influence? I had a lot of questions about the production of Phase IV that I normally wouldn’t have in other films of its caliber.

Of course, Phase IV has its campy charms as well. The scientists that study/go to war with the ants bring a lot of good ole sci-fi nonsense like geodesic domes, futuristic hazmat suits, decontamination steam, and very sciency bleep bloop machines along with them. The opening narration is accompanied by outer space animation that recalls the ridiculousness of The Adventures of Hercules. The film also occasionally adopts the ants’ POV through a honeycomb-patterned kaleidoscope lens probably best described as “ant cam”. The cheap Western landscape setting (which resembles the remote communities where the atom bomb was developed) gives the film an automatic otherworldly look, which combines effectively with the ants’ naturally alien features in the nature footage close-ups. The queen ant is also provided some red/blue Creepshow lighting, which does wonders for her appeal as a villain and the film’s appeal as a silly diversion. It’s easy to see why Phase IV was given the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment, but I feel like that brand of mockery is selling its other merits a bit short.

Visually bizarre, technically impressive, tonally unnerving, and backed by a wickedly cool soundtrack of droning synths (recently made available 40 years late by Waxwork Records), Phase IV is a thoroughly strange film. Its loose, psychedelic ending was apparently cut short by butchers at Paramount Pictures (with some of the more bizarre surviving footage thankfully preserved in the trailer and elsewhere on YouTube), but the remaining effect is an open-ended conclusion that’s rare for this genre & era. The film isn’t exactly on an Under the Skin level of obfuscation & psychedelia, but it’s not far off. As far as sci-fi schlock about murderous insects goes, Phase IV is an impressive oddity with a killer soundtrack and some highly effective nature footage backing up its inherently campy appeal. It’s tempting to brush it off as a silly trifle based on premise alone, but there’s something much more peculiar going on here. It’s a shame that first-time director Saul Bass, known mostly as a graphic designer in his work on movie posters & title sequences, would never follow it up with a second feature. He had a great knack for striking visuals & eerie moods that could’ve translated into a long, interesting career if given the chance to flourish.

-Brandon Ledet

Space Station 76 (2014)

March 15, 2015 / swampflix / 2 Comments

The most surprising thing about Space Station 76 is the giant black hole in the movie’s heart. The film’s retro, space-age aesthetic has been tapped for comedy before in titles like Galaxy Quest & Mars Attacks!, but rarely for such a dark effect. Among the film’s inherent “Hey! Remember the 70s?” gags there is some really twisted humor about subjects like substance abuse, adultery, and suicide. Space Station 76 has its cake and it eats it too, displaying both the cheerful 70s vibes you’d catch from TV shows like The Brady Bunch and The Love Boat and the devastating, real-life problems of the audience that used to watch them.

On the “Hey! Remember the 70s?” side of the equation we have details like roller-skates, crayons, tracksuits, bellbottoms, Farrah Fawcett hair-dos, porn mustaches, luaus, Betamax, viewfinder toys, wood paneling, Muzak, marijuana, children named “Sunshine”, and repressed homosexuality . . . in space! On the depressing side we have two dysfunctional marriages, a woman who despises her body because she can’t conceive, a child who is ignored seemingly by everyone, petty jealousies, overreliance on Valium, and repressed homosexuality . . . in space! There’s some real pain in exchanges like when the infertile woman is told “You can have a baby. Anyone can have a baby. What are you talking about?” and the seething hatred that poisons the crew’s personal relationships is overbearingly intensified by the confined nature of the space station setting. As social etiquette deteriorates and the hatred bubbles to the surface in bursts of unusual honesty, the film becomes one of my favorite types of stories, “The Party Out of Bounds”.

It’s a testament to the cast that the movie is both funny and depressing. Patrick Wilson is amusing as the uptight captain, Jerry O’Connell is perfect as a disco-clad cad, and few people could sell emotional fragility like Liv Tyler does here, but none of those actors are the stand-out star of Space Station 76. The most essential character in the film is a retro robot psychiatrist that dispenses empty, monotone, ready-made advice like “You can’t be everything to everyone until you are something to yourself” as freely as it dispenses prescriptions to Valium. The robot psychiatrist is the film in a nutshell: an image of 70s nostalgia that inspires both genuine laughs & genuine pain in its explorations of clinical depression, familial structure, and self-denial. It’s one hell of a robot in one hell of a black comedy . . . in space!

-Brandon Ledet

Dream Lover (1994)

March 14, 2015 / swampflix / Leave a comment

Thrillers and James Spader are two of my favorite things, but they do not come together harmoniously in Dream Lover. The film’s director, Nicholas Kazan, seemed to be more interested in making this a chic, sexy movie instead of a genuine psychological thriller and that was a bad move on his part. Many thrillers, especially those in the early 90s, have sexual elements that enhance their appeal, but something went terribly wrong with this one. Dream Lover isn’t a well-balanced film, but it was sort of enjoyable because it was so crappy (hence the Camp Stamp).

Ray Reardon (James Spader) is a successful businessman that becomes instantly attracted to Lena Mathers (Mädchen Amick), a beautiful woman he meets at an art gallery. They partake in a passionate love affair and after sleeping together a few times decide to tie the knot. Of course, after marrying Lena and not knowing much about her past, Ray finds himself in a marriage filled with mystery and deception. He has recurring clown nightmares that reflect his crumbling love life and I absolutely hated them. They didn’t blend in with the rest of the film and are insanely annoying. It quickly becomes obvious that Lena is psychotic and after Ray’s money, but her plan to get her hands on his money doesn’t surface until the end of the movie. Thankfully, Kazan allows the audience to have a little bit of fun attempting to figure out Lena’s diabolical plan.

Uncovering the mystery of Lena’s scheme was a bit fun, but the film was ultimately a very unsatisfying, predictable thriller. There weren’t many surprises or unexpected twists, which are some basic components to a decent thriller. Spader was the best thing about the film because his acting was flawless (as always), but it wasn’t enough to save the film from falling into the depths of bad movie Hell.

Dream Lover is currently streaming on Netflix.

-Britnee Lombas

Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (1965)

March 14, 2015 / swampflix / 5 Comments

Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster is of the rare breed of old school shlock that lives up to the promise in its ridiculous title & premise. That’s no small feat. As I noted in my review of the similarly surprising in quality camp fest The Brainiac, “Like with all art forms, it’s difficult to find a great ‘bad movie’. For every transcendently awful Plan 9 or Troll 2 you have to sift through a hundred mind-numbingly dull Hobgoblins”, but on the other hand “When a B movie is firing on all cylinders, enthusiastically exploring every weird idea it has to their full potential, there’s really nothing like it.” Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster, (which is also known by the titles Frankenstein Meets the Space Men, Mars Attacks Puerto Rico, Mars Invades Puerto Rico, and Operation San Juan) is firing on all its batshit crazy cylinders, squeezing a surprising amount of camp value out of its limited premise & budget.

Let’s get the film’s most peculiar detail out of the way: neither Dr. Frankenstein nor his monster appear in the flesh. The “Frankenstein” in the title is instead a government-created bionic astronaut that is horrifically scarred in a botched space launch. As his circuitry goes awry, he turns from ideal soldier to confused monster and haunts the coast of California, murdering its inhabitants indiscreetly. Although the interpretation of “a Frankenstein” is loose here, the practical effects in the gore surrounding the monster are pretty chilling. In an early scene his scalp is peeled back so scientists can tweak his malfunctioning circuitry. Later, the make-up on his disfiguring facial scars are a lot more horrifying than you’d expect based on the precedent of, say, Lobo in Bride of the Atom or the astronaut gorilla in Robot Monster. The other monsters in the film are only slightly less terrifying, including the titular “Space Monster” (who looks like a member of GWAR) and the space alien Dr. Nadir (who looks an awful lot like Bat Boy all growed up). Dr. Nadir may not be as physically threatening as his fellow monsters, but he steals the show with his effete love of his own cruelty, like a dime store Vincent Price.

The film is surprisingly technically proficient considering its circumstances. It boasts a similar premise and overreliance on stock footage as the camp classic Plan 9 from Outer Space, but thoroughly succeeds on both fronts, as opposed to Plan 9’s thorough failures. When the evil space princess that commands Dr. Nadir announces that they are to proceed with “Phase 2 of our Plan: capture of the Earth women” (a.k.a. “bikini babes”) it’s more amusing than embarrassing. You can feel the crew having a fun time making this thing, which is reflected in its music cues, among other things. Almost all of its outer space scenes are accompanied by a spooky theremin score, but its Earth scenes (whether a dance party, a murder, or an alien abduction) are almost all accompanied by a surf rock soundtrack, which gives the film a beach party vibe. The title of the film itself sounds like a ready-made name for a surf rock song and I’m surprised no one’s jumped on that opportunity in the 50 years since the film’s release.

I could go on, but describing what makes the movie work on a technical level is somewhat futile. I doubt I can mount a sales pitch that match the just-the-facts plot summary from the film’s Wikipedia page, so here it is in full: “All of the women on the planet Mars have died in an atomic war, except for Martian Princess Marcuzan. Marcuzan and her right-hand man, Dr. Nadir, decide they will travel to Earth and steal all of the women on the planet in order to continue the Martian race. The Martians shoot down a space capsule manned by the android Colonel Frank Saunders, causing it to crash in Puerto Rico. Frank’s electronic brain and the left half of his face are damaged after encountering a trigger-happy Martian and his ray gun. Frank, now ‘Frankenstein’, described by his creator as an ‘astro-robot without a control system’ proceeds to terrorize the island. A subplot involves the Martians abducting bikini clad women.” If that description alone doesn’t sell you on watching an ancient, goofy sci-fi horror I’m not sure what will. Also we are very different people.

-Brandon Ledet