Tuesday Travels

Shortness isn't something that should ever be faced alone. Thankfully, friends of the Doll's House have lent their longer legs to bulk up the celebration of Year 2's Vertically Challenged Villainy. 


Over at The Death Rattle, Aaron is watching Puppet Master movies with more fury than Andre Toulon on a Nazi hunting spree and naming the Most Valuable Puppet for each. Glorious, right? Head over for his reviews of Part 1...

The Torch-fueled Part 2

The Six-Shooter vs. The Third Reich-filled Part 3

The new direction of Part 4

Part 5, where this thing happens:

And the non-numbered Part 6

Not to be left out of the Full Moon eclipse is the Direct to Video Connoisseur himself, who tackled David Schmoeller's original Puppet Master and the Tim Thomerson classic Dollman (South Bronx represent!).

Remember munchkins, if you have a site and are feeling short love, be sure to email me your links for next week's roundup. Now if you'll excuse me, my chariot awaits.

Doin' the Kinski Crawl(space)

David Schmoeller is responsible for one of my favorite Doll’s House discoveries (Tourist Trap) and biggest failures (Netherworld). Forrest Gump might even liken the man’s style to a box of chocolates. As much as I hate biting into a hard fruit nougat, I’ll risk the disappointed tooth chip if there’s even the slightest chance I’ll discover coconut.

So in keeping with my chocolate theme (stay with me) let’s read the ingredients: Klaus Kinski. Nazi doctors. Instant Watch. 1986. 80 minutes.

I’ll bite.

Quick Plot: A pretty gnarly prologue follows a young woman discovering a room filled with a caged prisoner and implements of torture. Enter the Kinski. 

“It’s a shame. I liked you.”

Stab.

I’ll have another chocolate, please.

Kinski plays Karl Guenther, a creepy apartment landlord with a face that makes the Crypt Keeper cry. Despite his intense Kinskiness, Guenther somehow attracts the deposit of a seemingly intelligent (though an ill-advised haircut might suggest otherwise) grad student who needs a new room in order to escape her possibly vampiric previous neighbors. Or something.

Meanwhile, Kinski’s other female tenants have all sorts of fun. The token ‘80s blond plays rape games with her boyfriend and inexplicably ruins a perfectly good lacy bra by cutting out its nipples (listeners of GirlsOnFilm Radio know of my hatred of bra shopping. What is wrong with this woman?). A sassy Southahn brunette serves tequila milkshakes to her friends and another airhead tenant attempts to seduce a wealthy paramour by comparing him to her grumpy old uncle. Oddly enough, it only mildly ruins the mood.

Neat. The only thing of interest my neighbors do is sing along to gospel music at 6 in the morning on the weekends. My neighbors are awesome.

Guenther keeps tabs on his ladies by watching them from his titular crawlspace, a movie-big AC vent that connects throughout the whole building. Occasionally, he grabs a few almost Food of the Gods-sized rats to come for the ride and make the night more fun.

Secrets are revealed about Guenther’s not so pure past. At one point, he wears more makeup than Mickey Rooney in The Manipulator. At another, he’s luging through the vents with the best odd smile a man could make. All of this in just 80 minutes, why would you NOT queue it up?

High Points

Ah, Kinski. Even when performing subpar material, he simply remains such an incredibly odd enigma that warrants your total attention. It certainly helps that he actually seems to care, approaching genuinely sad resignation during his regular games of Russian Roulette

Low Points

So about 4 characters are murdered. Offscreen. That’s a shame.

Lessons Learned

After future pet DJ Chocolate Thunder, my next cat will be named Claws Kinski

Rich bachelors have difficulty staying in the mood with the distraction of mouse scurries

When hunting a man you suspect of multiple homicide, one should exert some form of caution

Rent/Bury/Buy

Holy Hitler this was a fun movie. Bizarre as what you’d imagine Kinski’s third grade art project looked like, with a quick pace that always offers something weird. The film is streaming on Netflix and at 80 minutes, is easily worth a quick watch. There are expensive and rare DVD and VHS copies floating around the NetherNets, but with its brisk pacing and slickness, this isn’t necessarily worth the big bucks. Though I could see revisiting it in the not so distant future, it also doesn’t quite climb into the pantheons of great gotta-own movies. Watch it with ease and happily await a real release.

There Is a Place Between Heaven and Hell: It's Called Boredom

Few things are sadder than a filmmaker who debuted with a unique, creepy, and haunting little thriller making a piece of cinematic--actually, straight-to-video-matic--rotten oatmeal twelve years later. (I say oatmeal because it has the bland, thick, and generally hard-to-get-through texture and feels akin to a film that just sits in your stomach without a single bright spot of tastiness.)


Netherworld is such a bowl of emptiness, a 1992 release from Full Moon Entertainment, directed by Tourist Trap and Puppet Master’s maestro David Schmoeller. It’s an aggressively dull little “horror” that seems determined to squander any potential it builds. I imagine the filmmakers began the process by reading about Netherworlds in some mythology textbook, thinking them interesting and a ripe concept for a film, then falling asleep for three years and waking up on set in the middle of production to say “Oh. So we’re making this, eh?”

Quick Plot: A geeky young virgin buys his way into a Louisianian brothel, leading us through a dank maze inhabited by the world’s fugliest Marilyn Monroe impersonator. The real story, however, moves to a saucy prostitute getting raped by a nonpaying customer until security--in the form of a disembodied hand with carnivorously phallic fingers--violates his face. 

It’s actually a decent start but sadly, the five minute prologue is as good as the film could possibly dream of being. We’re soon introduced to Corey Thornton (Michael Bendetti), a young man of apparently no past personality save for the fact that he’s the “crackling image” of his long dead father. Corey arrives to stake his claim (I guess) on Pops’ sprawling N’Orleans estate, eager to read an old journal while drooling over the new caretaker’s underage daughter. Dad’s diary soon reveals that he’s been trapped in some sort of death dimension (a netherworld, perhaps? mmhmhmhm?) and Corey must visit a local hooker Pops used to shag to get him out.

Now. I’ve never sought out a film for its sexual content and could generally care less if an unrated direct-to-video thriller utilizes its lack of a rating, but I do believe Netherworld features the lamest, tamest, and most incredibly awful sex scene I’ve seen in quite some time. For starters, it involves Bendetti, an actor who seems like the rejected older brother of the London twins who was busy watching paint dry while mid 90s audiences tried to decide who was Jason and who was Jeremy. His costar, Denise Gentile, exudes a mild spritz of heat, but since she’s previously been introduced as “the most sensual woman in the world,” are we supposed to buy that she’d keep her robe strategically covering her girly parts and use her flat early ‘90s perm to catch what’s left? Her biggest move is to softly touch Corey’s thigh. His signature is the boob cup. And whoa, the guardian of hell is named Delores? No offense to any Delori out there, but such a name calls to mind a bowling league captain before an erotic pinup girl. 

Oh, and did I mention the tepid kissing/sort of nude/not hot scene is cut with elevator style smooth jazz and a slow motion slow dance between Delores--dressed in a puffy white fringed Dallas inspired gown--and Corey’s 60 year old father? ‘Cause that’s what most witch guardians of hell fantasize about when rolling an ice cube over young men’s thighs. 

Yes, there is an ice cube. And no, it does not melt. That’s the amount of heat generated here. 

The biggest problem with a film too blah to even have good problems is that there is absolutely no reason for the audience to actually watch it. Bendetti is a tall pretty boy with the charisma of a DMV employee trying out for a community theater (and possibly named Delores), and yet we’re instantly supposed to follow him into an ill-defined underworld. The central romance is, I think, between the slick Corey and a character introduced as jailbait, so it’s nearly impossible to offer the would-be couple any sort of blessing, not to mention the fact that their chemistry is less kinetic than what happens inside a can of flat seltzer. Dialogue gets as exciting as this:

Corey: Can you teach me what I need to know?

Delores: I’ll teach you everything I know. About your body. Your mind. Your soul.

Corey: I’ll do anything, as long as you teach me what i need to know

Delores: I’ll teach you. I’ll teach you everything

Quentin Tarantino, watch your hunched-from-years-behind-a-video-store-counter back. This banter is hotter than dry ice.

High Points

I did dig a graphic, if makeup effects-y face ripoff in the film’s center. If only I had any reason whatsoever to care about the victim (or anybody else in Netherworld)

As someone with thesaurus.com bookmarked, I’m impressed by Schmoeller’s ability to use about 73 different adjectives to describe “mystical” in Thornton’s journal entry

Low Points

The only thing good about Michael Bendetti is that he has the kind of name you could hear a husky voiced trailer narrator reading off in a slightly menacing way

Why does a film like Netherworld feel the need for a two minute opening credits sequence when there’s nothing but a black screen to show? Even The Devil’s Rain found a few stock photos to toss under the names, giving us something to look forward to. Maybe it was the movie’s way of setting a blackened tone before we got remotely excited

Lessons Learned

The souls of bad people are stored in birds. Perhaps we should reinstall the tradition of throwing avian stomach-exploding rice at weddings once more

The neatest thing about having sex with your father’s prostitute mistress is that you’ll earn a colorful feather in your ear

Grabbing the breast of a 16 year old southern belle will summon all sorts of inner strength

Always dance with the dirty old redneck that likes to provide the jump scares

Rent/Bury/Buy

Why I rented this is foggy, but the day after my email informed me of its Netflixed delivery date, I came upon the badass blogger T.L. Bugg’s (of The Lightning Bug's Lair ) spot-on review of just how awful Netherworld was. With a heavy sigh and a hearty serving of pumpkin ale, I soon learned no amount of seasonal beer could make it better. And worst of all, Netherworld isn’t your so-bad-it’s-good Fear of Clowns or campily weird Demonic Toys. It’s just a bad, lazy, and dull 87 minutes that has no right to be seen, much less made by a director capable of so much more. When your best performances involves a filmmaker cameo demonstrating a neat party trick and an animatronic parrot on loan from Disneyland’s Enchanted TIki Room, you know your film needs a good old fashioned burial. 

...Because Mannequins Make Everything More Freaky

The phrase “inspired by J.C. Penny’s” is enough to instill fear into any human; when said inspiration comes not from discount Arizona brand jeans, but from eerily expressive mannequins with violent telekinesis, fear becomes terror at a discount price.


Tourist Trap is a wonderfully fresh remnant of a time just before slashers staked their monopoly on the horror industry. Unfairly overlooked at its initial 1979release, director David Schmoeller puts an interesting spin on the early days of backwoods horror with a decent little cast, a wacky and well-thought out score, and oodles of mannequins that would make Chucky feel inadequate.


Quick Plot: A quintet of traveling pretty people (including an incredibly gorgeous Tanya Roberts) experience the usual road trouble and find themselves modestly skinny dipping in front of a tall widower off the beaten track. Mr. Slausen, the kindly, aw-shucksy samaritan who wields a smile and a shotgun, takes them inside his closed roadside museum to show off the impressive--and nightmarish--moving mannequins designed by his brother. Of course, no folksy lil rest stop is complete without a masked homicidal drag queen with less style than Leatherface and more craftiness than Norman Bates.

Many factors distinguish Tourist Trap from the typical low budget 70s horror. After a somewhat underwhelming opening kill that was probably more impressive thirty years ago, we slowly get immersed into the weirdly haunting atmosphere of Slausen’s Museum. Plastic heads drop their jaws to let out unearthly screams. Lifelike Davy Crockett’s aim toy rifles at our luckless young adults and objects fly across the room like nouns on the run from Carrie. There is certainly some overly heavy inspiration from other 70s cinema padding out the fairly brief runtime of Tourist Trap, but viewed today, the quirky atmosphere and almost artistic kills hold up as something fresh, while the kooky villain's mix of New Yawk and southern fried voice gives Orlaf a run for his accent. The twist is somewhat predictable, but the actual reveal is, like most of the film, so slightly off and oddly timed that it makes it all the more creepier.

High Points
The bizarre soundtrack is sometimes a little overbearing, but overall, its breathy pants and over dramatic musical cues weave together to make Tourist Trap the kind of film that stays in under your skin (or plastered face)

From the humans with mechanical movements to the jaw-dropping heads that do nothing but scream, the diverse collection of mannequins never stops being unsettling


The surrealism of the final death is enough for long term nightmares, while the closing shot just feels wrong and wonderful


Low Points
The actors and writing are good enough that they don’t require blatant stereotypish characteristics, so why is good girl Molly saddled with a white Holly Hobby getup?

For most of the deaths, the score beats insanely until the actual kill, where the filming slows down, gets quiet, and then climaxes in a rather bloodless kill. On first viewing, it lacks any real thrust, but at the same time, it's a different approach to the usual huntdown. I'm still mixed.


Lessons Learned
As someone with a strangulation phobia, I knew this in advance: never try on a scarf that has unclear origins


Telekinetic cupboards need to warm up before they can aim with any precision, sort of like Pedro Martinez


Most folks use highways because they figure it’s gonna get them to where they’re going faster

According to law students, paradise is a waterfall with brown water


Rent/Bury/Buy
If you’ve never seen Tourist Trap, its odd charm should work to give you a sufficient case of the creeps, while repeat viewers will probably find more to admire than they expected thirty years ago. This isn’t a great film by any means, but it’s worth adding to your collection for its intriguing approach to what’s become a tired genre. DVD extras include an illuminating interview with filmmaker Schmoeller, who explains how a PG rating basically killed its box office potential (oddly making a case for the much loathed PG13 so abused today). Also, a few ads for Full Moon products--including kickass Puppet Master toys I still have on my dresser--harbor back to an era of creativity in directo-to-video horror that I still find myself longing for. I guess like Mr. Slausen, I'm just too gosh darn nostalgic for kids today.