Throw Out the Manipulating Night Trains From Harlem! aka The Return of Mill Creek Madness

It's that time again...

For the uninitiated, Mill Creek Madness marks the not at all monthly post wherein I review an entire DVD from the magnanimously cheap Mill Creek 50 Packs. Up today: Disc 9 from Drive-In Movie Classics.

1. Night Train To Terror, aka Shiver

Year: 1985...extremely 1985

Warp Speed Plot: The most enthusiastic ‘80s dance party ever tells us that Everybody’s Got Something to Do (Everybody But You) and engages in all sorts of crimes of Reagan Era fashion, including, but not limited to the following:

Head bands

Acid washed jeans

Puffy pants

Pastels

Primary colors

Half shirts

Half shirts over whole shirts

Gloves

Fingerless gloves

Leg warmers

One earring

Off the shoulder sweaters

Streaks

And they’re just the framing device of a framing device as Mr. God (a man with a dangerous resemblance to Colonel Sanders, proving where the filmmakers’ sympathies lie) and Mr. Satan (think Christopher Lee’s Hammer Dracula put through dry cleaning) discuss three short stories in order to decide who gets to claim whose soul. This may very well be the best anthology setup of all time. Anyway, the stories are as follows:

1- A man gets in a car accident and ends up in a hospital that specializes in lobotomizing male patients, raping the females (I think; ‘rape’ may be a subjective word better defined as pawing and shaking back and forth) and dismembering the remains to sell to medical schools. I think other stuff happens but it’s incredibly not clear. Still rather awesome though, plus heads in a jar!

2- A very active narrator tells the story of Greta, a struggling musician with an aversion to pants, who leaves her job selling popcorn in a carnival to star in porn films under the patronage of a millionaire. When a frat boy falls in love with her, Greta’s life gets complicated, leading her and her two paramours to start attending game night at the Death Club, where a random assortment of folks engage in Russian Roulette, Saw style. People die in hilarious ways. The story ends.  It involved this:

which is fine by me.

3-A lot of stuff happens, some of which involves Nazis, Satan, doctors, and the best stop motion animation since Pee Wee’s Playhouse. An extended scene is scored to Holst’s classical piece Mars, the Bringer of War, which just brings me back to high school band. I actually have no idea what this segment was about, but it happened and I think I watched it.

Celebrity Cred: At this point, seeing Cameron Mitchell in a Mill Creek film is hardly noteworthy, but Night Train to Terror redeems itself with TWO appearances by Richard Moll (who can also be found on the hilarious Mormon propaganda epic Savage Journey) as a rapey orderly in the first story and a doctor (I think) in the third.

The Winning Line: 

“The electrocution death was the turning point for Greta.”

Now if that’s not a dealbreaker, I don’t know what is

Verdict: An abominable movie, a fantastic time. Apparently the three stories were culled from half-finished unreleased films, which is appropriate and wonderful. The effects are about on par with a second grade art class project and the acting, a smidgen better than  the film on the disc that follows it. Satan is played by Lu Sifer, God is played by Himself. My conclusion, therefore, is as follows: If you don’t see this movie, you will go to purgatory.

2. The Guy From Harlem

Year: 1977

Warp Speed Plot: I temporarily wonder if I was accidentally fast-forwarding through the entire film when it opens with a credit reel. All of it. I can’t tell you how happy I am to know the names of the actors that played Man #1 and Man #2 before I even know what the movie is going to be about. Talk about innovation. 

Anyway, back to the *story.* Loye Hawkins plays Al Connors, the guy from Harlem who I assume spent his Harlem days as a banker. Now, however, he spends his days protecting attractive women (sometimes ones married to powerful African politicians) from kidnapping and murder schemes, then shagging them, much to the chagrin of his wife/roommate who has a constant overnight bag for those typical sleepovers. The oddest thing about this marshmallow textured blacksploitation is that the film seems divided into two complete plots, almost as if The Guy From Harlem was a failed television pilot. 

Celebrity Cred: Skimming through the credits on IMDB, I can't seem to find one actor with more than two other film credits to their name. It's quite shocking.

The Winning Line: “Okay. Let’s get this over with.”

...says the man about to sexually assault a kidnapped woman. Has there ever been a more reluctant rapist? As his would-be victim, how does your self-esteem recover?

Verdict: When the actors are lucky, the best they do is step on each others lines. At other moments, entire scenes are just looped so that we literally watch a conversation happen three times, cut at different points in the discussion to make us think we are indeed watching an actual scene (was this THAT much easier than just reshooting two minutes of dialogue?). The movie is awful, but...you know...kind of great. Great in the way that our hero rumbles with a shirtless bad guy--whose sole character trait was that he lifted weights in every single scene--as his friends/coworkers/enemies stand behind, look at the camera, and alternate cheering based on cues. With liquor, this movie becomes Citizen Kane. Without...a damn good time.

3. The Manipulator, aka B.J. Lang Presents

Year: 1971

Warp Speed Plot: Mickey Rooney is B.J. Lang, a Hollywood makeup artist on the edge. As he prances around a soundstage with stuffed animals and mannequins (don’t judge, that’s what I call a typical Friday night), we soon learn that he has kidnapped a young actress named Carlotta in order to make her reenact scenes from Cyrano De Bergerac. What follows is essentially 90 minutes of Rooney trying every single trick in a book about insanity to act insane, with the cameraman following suit by speeding up the reels, slowing down the reels, filtering the color, reusing the same shot in a quickly edited montage, and eventually, just flashing back to what he’d already done. 

Celebrity Cred: Rooney, naturally, making us forget his horrendously offensive performance in Breakfast At Tiffany’s by donning blue eye shadow and being scary.

The Winning Line(s): ”Please don’t die. I hate you, just die! Please don’t die.”

Sweetheart, I know being kidnapped and starved is stressful, but realize that your manic pleas are only confusing your manipulator.

Verdict: As experimental avant garde cinema goes, The Manipulator isn’t without merit. At the same time, when you’re actually watching 90 minutes of aggressive electronic music that makes the soundtrack of Irreversible sound like Beethoven, the effect is just kind of annoying.

4. Throw Out the Anchor!

Year: 1974

Warp Speed Plot: A single dad PR fella heads to a swampy community where he quickly falls for a resident and decides to save the town by protesting the crooked local government and their polluting happy ways. I think. 

Celebrity Cred: A classy Dina Merrill and an aight (is that how the kids spell it?) Richard Egan

The Winning Line: “You’re quite virile looking when you’re asleep.”

Use it. It will never fail to get you into someone’s pajama pants.

Verdict: I have to blame myself more than the movie in this case, as it took me three days to get through this 80 minute family-friendly film. Part of it was a subject matter that just couldn’t keep my eyes opened, while another part comes from the simple fact that Throw Out the Anchor is just a dull tale. Unless you’re incredibly environmentally conscious or have an attraction to stereotypical sea captains, there’s really no need to give this one a try. Watch Summer Rental instead.

Cumulative Lessons Learned

Just cause a gal’s bored doesn’t mean she’s hot to trot

Always keep a supply of bloody marys on hand when city folk stop by

Harlem is the experience playground of all people interested in becoming detectives

Being a great actress with a Brooklyn accent is a huge turn-on for short little psychotics

Women who don’t wear bras are very into women’s lib

Everybody’s got something to do, everybody... but you

Keep Those Fingers Out of That Mouth of Madness

John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness has somehow eluded both my VCR and DVD player for 14 years. I missed it in the theaters, possibly because my teenage friends were so battle scarred from being dragged to Species that they boycotted seeing horror movies with me throughout the seventh grade (plus my bringing Mothers Day to a slumber party, which seemed like a good idea at the time). Perhaps I felt that if I could only own film from 1995, it would have to be the special edition of Se7en (because I love few things more than replaying and re-acting "What's in the box???" in my perfect Brad Pitt impression) and if I could have two, I couldn’t NOT choose the Oscar snubbed Clint Howard in The Ice Cream Man. Third choice? What a no brainer: Showgirls (believe me, in the words of Nomi Malone, “It doesn’t suck!”). Hm. 1995 was apparently a far better year for cinema than anyone realized.


Back to the decent, if pastie-less horror of Carpenter, made just before what became a semi-tragic descent into Sci-Fi channel quality. In the Mouth of Madness stars Sam Neill as John Trent, an insurance investigator who proves that movie characters named Trent are always arrogant jerks. The head of a publishing company played by an unarmed Charlton Heston hires the dapper Aussie to investigate the mysterious disappearance of superstar horror novelist Sutter Cane, a man more celebrated than Stephen King and more disturbed than Jack Ketchum. In addition to vanishing before a deadline (a nice trick all writers have considered/tried), Cane is under a bit of hellfire for writing books that, when read by ‘less stable’ minds, are known to cause a mild case of axe-wielding homicide.

The search begins. Trent and Cane’s sassily named editor Linda Styles (Julie Carmen) take a road trip to Hobbs End, the kind of two worded New England town--always a sign of evil--where real estate is probably deceptively well-priced. While there, our leads visit a Russian cathedral, escape an angry gang of champion bred Dobermans, and meet a creepy but resilient bicyclist that looks oddly like John Carpenter himself (but without the signature cigarette) on the same road once driven on by Pee-Wee Herman and Large Marge. As Trent and Styles bicker over whether the eerie hamlet is a haunted piece of fiction come to life or a grand publicity stunt on a Joaquim-as-Rap-Star scale, the strangeness increases and Carpenter’s makeup department gets busy.

In the Mouth of Madness is a hard film to classify, which makes it slightly great and more than a little messy. Sure, Carpenter flexes his latex to fit squishy monsters, but the most interesting aspect is a story that raises some rather deep questions about the nature of faith. Can something or someone become God if enough people people believe in it? How much control do we give the men and women who create what we covet? Does anyone know Oprah’s favorite color?

 Unfortunately, there isn’t quite enough substance behind Carpenter’s execution to make any of the themes stick strongly enough. Most viewers will probably remember the film for Styles’ post-Excorcist, pre-Unborn spider walk instead.


High Points:
Hobbs End’s demonic children are sufficiently creepy and should have been rehired for Carpenter’s Village of the Damned over those terribly bland wig wearing tots


Yes, that’s Seinfeld’s Marble Rye victim and no, you do not want to mess with her

The relationship between Neill and Carmen doesn’t take the typical direction you’d expect, which is refreshing


Low Points:
As much as I want to use any opportunity possible to champion old school and insult CGI, the climactic demons guarding hell feel a tad too much like bottom shelf leftovers from The Thing.


It takes a little too long to actually develop audience concern for Neill’s off-putting Trent


Lessons Learned:
The best way to prove you’re sane in a mental institution is probably not to shout “I’m not insane” while headbutting the orderlies

A screwdriver is just as convenient as a backup set of car keys


Insurance investigators keep bike horns in glove compartments and are generally more annoying road companions than a family that insists on finishing 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall

Repeat Offender:
Like many a film, every character seems to punch with the same exact force (or at least the same sound effect button)


Winning Line:
Trent: I’m not a piece of fiction.
Cane: I think, therefore you are.


Stray Observations:
The door to hell was made by the same art department that did Labyrinth’s glittery ivy clad walls

Anybody else waiting for the Mormon funded remake centering around a thinly veiled Stephanie Meyer and axe happy 15 year olds? If so, are you as frightened as I am?


Rent/Buy/Bury
Buy at a discount. Intellectually, this is one of Carpenter’s more ambitious films that I believe will grow on repeat viewings. The lines between reality and hell are skewed in a fairly unique style and the finale is simultaneously thoughtful and manic. While it’s not the mind-blowing fearfest some fans claim, this is a unique and dense ride that’s sadly becoming harder and harder to come by in modern theaters.