Monkey Butler!

There are two ways to instantly convince me to bump any movie up my Netflix queue: remind me that it costars Terence Stamp or that its titular character is an orangutang butler. The two are equally appealing in my eyes. Toss in the fact that an orangutang butler qualifies for The Shortening and why WOULDN'T I be watching 1986's Link?

Quick Plot: A plucky zoology major named Jane talks her way into being the assistant for a leading animal researcher Dr. Philip, offering to clean his gorgeously secluded country manor while he studies a trio of chimpanzees. Or orangutangs. Or orangutangs dyed to look like chimpanzees. 

It's all very confusing, in much the same way that Rob Marshall cast Chinese actresses to play Japanese women speaking broken English in Memoirs of a Geisha.

Back to the orangutang butler--

Wait, I didn't even TELL you about the orangutang butler? Where are my manners! Remind me to hire a butler that can school me on such things.

At Dr. Philip's castle, Jane grows close to the simian charges, particularly the titular 45-year-old Link, probably because even It Girls of the '80s couldn't resist a monkey in a tuxedo. It's a timeless look on any species.

Dr. Philip, on the other hand, CAN resist a monkey in a tuxedo and plans on unloading Link, dead or alive, to the most convenient bidder. Before he has a chance to get an estimate, his caged charges ominously surround him as the film cuts away, leaving Jane wondering where her boss went. The rest of the film is essentially a cat and mouse game as Jane discovers the lovable house servant might have crossed over into eviiiiiiiiiil territory. She's helped out in this endeavor by a more lovable oranutanzee named Imp and an intensely electric late '80s era musical score by Jerry Goldsmith.

Link is one of those titles that randomly pops up on cult movie lists, and while it's ultimately somewhat dull, I can also see why film fans would want to talk about it. Shue was in her post-Karate Kid glory and just one year away from landing some extraordinary Adventures In Babysitting, while intelligent monkeys were charming human society by talking to kittens. Add in the almost Labyrinth-ian music and you have the kind of film with its date all but watermarked under every reel.

As an artifact of a certain time, Link is certainly unique. Directed by Patrick's Richard Franklin, the film overcomes the seemingly impossible task of making trapped in a beautiful countryside manor with a tuxedo-wearing monkey a frightening affair. Unfortunately, it's also rather boring. Shue makes a sympathetic stalkee, but 45 minutes of her eluding a silent chimpazangutang isn't the most compelling viewing. Yes, even with an awkward shower scene that has a presumably naked (but not for the audience, sorry boys) Shue staring into Link's expressively wandering eyes, Link is just kind of a snore.

But it goes without saying that it earns a million bonus points for heavily featuring a monkey in a tuxedo.

High Points
Did I mention that the monkey wears a tuxedo?

Low Points
Zzzzzzzz

Lessons Learned
Monkeys can’t smoke cigars!

Being female gives one a genetic aptitude towards cooking and cleaning

Don’t cook phones. Seriously, don't COOK PHONES

Stray Emily Fantasy Alert
I find Terence Stamp to be incredibly sexy. The same can be said for Michael Crazy Is As Crazy Does Shannon. Do I just have some weird fetish for men chosen to play General Zod, or is this a common female condition?

Rent/Bury/Buy
Link is a strange film, but it's also too slight to really be any good. After the initial thrill of watching a well-dressed orangutang carry Elizabeth Shue's luggage up to her room wears off, there's really not enough to keep you intrigued. Formal wear animal completists will want to take a peak, but the rest of you can probably get everything they need out of this image:

Kingdom of the Shatner

Before it became a treasure chest of cleverly themed Law & Order: SVU marathons, the USA Network was a haven of sorts for random genre films. Chief among that rotation was today's short-astic AND Shat-astic creature feature, Kingdom of the Spiders.

Quick Plot: A quiet farm town in Arizona struggled through 50 weeks of the calendar in order to reap the benefits of the fortnight long country fair. Nothing can possibly stop this national attraction from bringing wealth to everyone, right?

Oh you silly post-Jaws movie characters. Haven't you learned anything?

As a local farmer's prized calf falls victim to mysteriously deadly spider venom, a no-nonsense entymologist is brought in to diagnose the problem. Keeping her comfortable is the town stud/veterinarian Rack, played by William Shatner as if he were trying to convince viewers that he is indeed William Shatner. The Shat is in his ladies' man prime here, giving us the kind of southwestern charm that would melt any female scientist's icy heart. Seriously, what woman could resist a line like "You're kind of pretty for a girl?" 

Apparently, negative amounts of women. Shat is so Shat that he has not one but TWO women pining for his affections, one being the aforementioned city gal scientist and the other, the wife of his late little brother. This leads to all sorts of weird sexual innuendos about how Shat would like to milk his brother's widow, though she only wants him to do so with war hands, but ACTUALLY he wants nothing sexy of her because she's his little brother's widow. I realize this sounds confusing, but I offer no apologies: how do you think I felt watching it?

Anyway, Shat gets a girl (or two) as the mysteriously venomous spiders start building terrifyingly giant hills and biting locals, be they the long-suffering farmers or a cocky crop-dusting pilot with the greatest girl scream in cinema history. At a certain point, the mayor doesn't even bother showing up to remind us that the film is retreading Jaws territory because EVERYONE IS BEING EATEN BY TARANTULAS.

It's kind of a thing of beauty.

For a girl.

Kingdom of the Spiders is one of the better known titles from that wonderfully rich subgenre of Nature Strikes Back. Like so many of those films, it crams in some social commentary about man's disruption of the animal world through pollution. The adorable thing about Kingdom of the Spiders, however, is just how quickly it abandons that theme when the spider action hits. A heated debate about spraying DDT ensues, but once the pilot administering it is (hilariously) killed, it's straight on to tarantula porn from that point on. Shat and his scientist girlfriend never offer any reasonable action towards eliminating the threat of man-eating tarantulas, and our final act is left to an alternatively funny/creepy siege as the arachnids pound on glass windows to eat our last heroes.

You think I'm kidding, but among the other things Kingdom of the Spiders taught me is the fact that a bunch of tarantulas sticking to a glass window will eventually cause it to shatter. My dream MythBusters experiment to test this theory would of course be to find as many of those suction cap handed Garfields as possible and see how long before they come to life, morph into one all-powerful Critters 2-like being, and eat people. 

That might be testing a different theory. 

High Points
Look, only the freakishly brave/possibly cyborg people are not disturbed by the fuzzy grandeur of tarantulas, and Kingdom of the Spiders utilizes this life fact to pretty skin-crawling degree

Low Points
Sadly, much of this was accomplished in the kind of pre-90s manner that killed a good deal of the stunt spiders used in filming

Lessons Learned
Shooting your hand off doesn’t hurt too much

In some parts of the country, a dog that is visibly breathing is considered dead

If it ain’t Arizona, it’s all the same

Just because it only takes a handful of abnormally venomous tarantulas to take down a cow does not mean it takes five times that amount to take down the Shat

It is impossible to dodge tarantulas without looking as though you are skipping down the Yellow Brick Road

This wouldn’t be the first horror film to teach it, but reinforcement is always educational: if planning on ever being stuck in your location as human-eating zombies/demons/spiders abound, always be sure to stock up on wooden furniture

Fun Fact
Ve Neill, best known to modern day audiences as the kickass judge of SyFy’s Face Off (and my dream aunt to drink mimosas with at family reunions) worked as a makeup artist for the film

Rent/Bury/Buy
Kingdom of the Spiders is a worthy cult classic that should certainly be seen by any genre fan. The recent special edition DVD release is loaded with goodies, including a commentary track and terrifying hands-on demonstration with a famed spider wrangler who knows no fear. So throw down a few bucks and get your own copy. Where else can you find so many musical cues borrowed directly from the Twilight Zone library? Where else can you find William Shatner heroically hurling his toddler niece only the hard wooden floor covered by toddler-eating tarantulas? What other films end on such glorious matte paintings? All of these things and more make Kingdom of the Spiders something truly special.

My Valentine? A Horror Anthology of Course!

Like many a horror fan whose genre life was crafted in the 1980s, I have an automatic affection for the anthology. Hence, when my pal and Fozzie Bare (he of the fine Walking Dead/True Blood/Other Stuff podcast Fozzie & Tina) recommended one that I’d NEVER HEARD OF streaming on Netflix Instant, I was there before you could say ‘killer doll segment.’

And then, Christmas repeated itself in January when I learned that not only does Screamtime include a violent puppet chapter, it ALSO boasts a KILLER GARDEN GNOME STORY. 

Yes, I played the lotto that day. 

Quick Plot: Like most anthologies, we begin with a wraparound. Unlike most anthologies, this one is superior to almost everything that’s ever happened in the world as we know it.

A pair of New Yawkahs slips into a video store. Despite the VERY tempting poster for The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas, the fellas instead swipe a trio of VHS tapes, hop on the R train, and barge into one of their gal pal’s apartment’s because “we just wanna watch some mooovies!” 

So they do.

The first segment follows a British puppeteer with an unsupportive wife and delinquent stepson. As you can probably guess, his Punch doll takes matters into his own tiny wooden hands with a giant wooden paddle. It’s both adorable and slightly creepy, especially since Punch makes some strange chomping giggle noises as he beats his enemies to death. 

Story 2 is surprisingly eerie, as a young married couple get torn apart by the wife’s strange visions of a bloody massacre. To say more begins to spoil the twist (a typical trope of any anthology segment), but the segment has some decently staged jump scares, as well as some kickass oversized glasses and a wonderfully mod Twister-like comforter that kept me distracted any time our characters were under the covers.

The final tale is about a down on his luck young man who takes a gardening job with a pair of wealthy but kooky old ladies. Just as the story begins to drag, The Greatest Thing Ever takes place: our villainous thief of a main character gets attacked by a little person dressed like a garden gnome.

At this point, I obviously did what any rightminded movie-lover would do: paused Screamtime to rate it 5 stars on Netflix, and then resumed to watch the conclusion of the brilliantly out of place wraparound. I was not disappointed.

Screamtime is surprisingly mysterious when it comes to research. The film is credited to director “Al Beresford,” though IMDB lists its makers as Stanley A. Long and Michael Mark of the Devil Armstrong. I don’t know who handled which story, but there’s clearly a divide between the fairly professional feeling segments (all British) and the wonderfully hilarious New Yawk framing device. It’s possible that the segments were abbreviated full-length films or aborted television pilots, and it’s probable that the wraparound was smacked on the finished project during someone’s lunch break. The result is uneven (particularly following the well-executed second story) but overall, more enjoyable than a whole lot of straight to video purgatory genre films made during the ‘80s. 

I don’t JUST say that because stuff like this happens:

Okay, *maybe* that has SOMETHING to do with my possibly unreasonable love for this film, but what can a doll-fearing, anthology loving, shortie-embracing blogger say?

High Points

I do mean it when I say that the second story is GENUINELY a good little horror story

Low Points

It ultimately doesn’t matter because it has GARDEN GNOMES COMING TO LIFE IN THE FORM OF AN ANGRY LITTLE PERSON IN A POINTY HAT, but for some time, the third story drags

Lessons Learned

British bystanders are the least helpful

You can tell a movie is British by the way they talk (or tawk)

Nervous breakdowns are very sad

Random Burst of Meta Commentary

A radio program playing during one of the stories makes a passing reference to Mary Whitehouse, that uninformed beacon of misplaced good intentions who foolishly crusaded against the Video Nasties of the 1980s

Rent/Bury/Buy

I’m not quite sure I’d never heard of Screamtime, but darnit am I glad I did now! The film is currently streaming on Instant Watch, and at just 90 minutes long, it’s a pretty fun way to buzz through an evening. Especially when you consider the tragic rarity of garden gnome horror movies.

So I Finally Saw the Bratz Movie

Next to Paula Abdul, I am fairly certain that I, Emily Elizabeth Intravia, have invested more time and energy in Bratz: The Movie than any other mere mortal who has not gone on to receive a reward from it, monetary or otherwise. It all began when the first Netflix disc arrived with the radius drawn out as one giant crack. Bad luck, I thought, perhaps to be blamed on a careless mailman. I immediately requested a replacement, for it wasn’t the Bratz’s (Bratz’? Bratz’z? they never taught that sort of punctuation in college) fault that DVDs are a flimsy invention, and I had already vowed to watch the adventures of the live action version of a lawsuit-pending Barbie knockoff product line for The Shortening. True, the movie has nothing to actually do with dolls or the vertically challenged, but considering its inspiration—a multimillion dollar fashion toy empire coveted by children and hated by adults—it seemed like a good February fit. 

The gods of film did not agree.

Disc 2 arrived. As I removed it from its sleeve, I was reminded of any teenage character in a film with a penchant for self-mutilation. The DVD surface resembled a horribly scarred stab victim, crisscrossed with what I imagine were key marks or fingernail imprints. Somebody did not want me to watch this movie.

Here’s what I learned about myself from my Bratz experience: if I ever end up in a haunted house filled with a helpful ghost who tries, night after night, to convince me to leave before my soul is taken, I am as good as damned. I heed no warnings. I do not back away from evil. I listen to no one.

I requested a third disc. And it arrived. Unscathed.

Now armed with the knowledge that DVDs of Bratz: The Movie are an endangered species with a 33% survival rate, I decided it was my duty to thoroughly explore this special edition for future generations. Hence, rather than approach the film as one typically would, I turned on the director commentary track—yes, there is a director commentary track for the Bratz movie—and dove in.

Quick Plot: It’s the first day of high school for four over-accessorized clear-skinned teenagers who instantly vow to be friends forever, even though their interests in extracurricular activities don’t match. See, Cloe (answer you’re seeking: I don’t know if she’s aware that she spells her name wrong) is blond and a soccer star. Sasha is a black cheerleader. Jade is Asian and therefore, pressured by her mother to be the top Mathlete, violinist, and chemistry student. Then there’s Yasmin, whose thing is sometimes journalism, sometimes music, and when at home, being Spanish.

Oh, because you’re wondering, this is Yasmin:

Dios mio, amiright chicas?

At Carry Nation High, the class president/token blond villain Meredith enforces a rigid code of socialization, where jocks only play with jocks, Mathletes only math with other Mathletes, and Kids Who Dress Like Dinosaurs only dress like dinosaurs with Kids Who Dress Like Dinosaurs. It’s a cruel system akin to centuries of racial segregation, and when our perky freshmen heroines threaten the status quo, a movie plot is born.

I knew I was in for something terribly special/specially terrible when I chose to watch a movie based on a product that makes Barbie look Gertrude Stein. I knew this even more when the opening credits rolled with three magical words, the likes of which I haven’t seen since a certain Briard showed off his martial arts skills:

“And Jon Voight”

Midnight Cowboy. Coming Home. Deliverance. Bratz: The Movie.

The beauty of the American right to free choice is not lost on this man.

Voight plays a filthy rich high school principal constantly berated by his spoiled daughter Meredith and probably very uncomfortable in facial and ear prosthetics. Why does Jon Voight wear a fake nose and set of ears? Director Sean McNamara does not explain this (and yes, we can all probably figure it out on our own), although he does praise the Oscar winner for bringing his own ideas to his character and rewrites to the script. I don’t know about you, but this bit of trivia puts me in a confusing place: on one hand, it’s nice to know Voight doesn’t phone in performances, even when, you know, PLAYING A SUPPORTING ROLE IN THE BRATZ MOVIE. On the other, it’s almost sadder to know that someone with the talent of Jon Voight actually cared about this film. It takes the easy excuse of ‘he just needed a paycheck’ or ‘he was high on goofballs’ or ‘the director was dangling a Butterfinger just out of his reach’ out of the equation, making Jon Voight a true enigma for our time to ponder.

Less mysterious, but still noteworthy are a few other faces that stop by. Olympic silver medalist figure skater Sasha Cohen plays an unmemorable cheerleader. Tom Hanks’ Twitter star son Chet does, according to the director, his very own kung fu moves as a science nerd. Future Glee star Kevin McHale performs some slick boyband moves. Kadeem Hardison plays a divorced dad, Lanie Kazan is a Spanish/Jewish bubbie, and an elephant steals the show playing an elephant.

I am too good a person to insult any of the young actresses shouting “BFF!” over, and over, and over and over and over and over (and over) again. As pretty teenagers wearing tacky jewelry go, the girls are on par with any Babysitters Club caliber performance. A DVD extra includes a behind-the-scenes look at casting, where one producer notes “We were looking for girls who are not terribly defined.” I imagine this translates into “not TOO ethnic,” leaving us with one sorta Asian, a green eyed African American, and a hilariously strawberry blond Latina who confirms her background by knowing all the words to La Cucaracha and living in the kind of household that has a mariachi band stationed in the kitchen on a weekday morning.

No, I’m serious. Estoy seriouso!

“A lot of shoes were worn in this movie,” director McNamara notes on his solo commentary track. This comes only twenty minutes or so after he compares one of his shots to Hitchcock with a stunningly sincere sense of enthusiasm. A longtime Disney and Nickelodeon employee, McNamara has nothing but glowing compliments for his movie and cast, and by the end of the film, it’s almost hard to resist his Corky St. Claire confidence.  

High Notes

In perfect honesty, there are some positive messages to glean from Bratz: The Movie. The young actresses are thankfully less scantily clad than their doll namesakes (because to be otherwise is illegal at their age), and the characters do make valiant efforts to maintain good relationships with their friends and family. So while the results are laughable, I won’t fault the heart of the film. Just its skill.

Low Notes

Any film that features product placement for MTV’s My Super Sweet Sixteen has a hot seat reserved in hell

In a perfect world, and I say this knowing there’s a full-size recliner for me reserved in hell, the actresses playing Bratz would have gone through extensive head implants to better match their plastic counterparts

Lessons Learned

Real friends cancel their ski trips when their pals need a hand

Juggling is not talent show worthy

Divorce isn’t that bad, so long as you have two incredibly wealthy parents

Words that rhyme with brattitude include platitude, latitude, gratitude, and attitude

As Glee already taught me, high school is different today than in the late ‘90s when I was there: for the 21st century youth, it is no longer acceptable to participate in more than one extracurricular activity. Consider it the new 1-Child Act

Rent/Bury/Buy

Did Bratz: The Movie live up to my expectations? Certainly, but I never said I had good taste. This is as ridiculous as any entertainment based on skanky dolls ever was, made all the more so when you turn on Sean McNamara’s earnest commentary track. The DVD is embarrassingly rich in special features, with mini-specials on casting the leads, choreographing the music, and giving tips on how you—yes, YOU!—can dress just like your favorite Brat(z). Those with a soft spot for just-how-bad-can-this-be? will find plenty to enjoy here. Those with standards need not apply.