Reading Material: Short Ends 3/18/24

Damn you, Scream Queen filmmaker Brad Sykes. Damn you to hell! Do you expect anyone to ever get through your new book, Neon Nightmares: L.A. Thrillers of the 1980s? You’ve made so many of the movies sound so intriguing, one has to stop reading immediately to hunt down and watch the film under discussion before proceeding. Was this part of some master plan all along? Are you receiving a cut of royalties for every VOD stream of Richard Gere’s Breathless remake? Judd Nelson in Relentless? The computer-dating oddity Dangerous Love? Because this took me a month to finish reading, rather than my usual weekend. Do you not realize what that much lunch-hour viewing does to an iPhone battery in a day? I hope you and your addicting BearManor Media paperback, richly illustrated as it is, are happy for hijacking so much of my free time. Highly, highly recommended.

For Cloudland Revisited: A Misspent Youth in Books and Film, the venerable Library of America rounds up the late S.J. Perelman’s 22 New Yorker articles in which the literary rapscallion casts his adult eyes and poisoned pen on the pulpy paperbacks — and their flicker adaptations — of his boyhood. More often than not, the results allow Perelman to exercise — and exorcise — his considerable, even intimidating wit. The more familiar I was with the topic at hand, like Tarzan and Dr. Fu Manchu, the funnier the pieces struck. That said, I also drew heavy amusement from his discussions of then-“spicy” works, today as tame as Perelman is revered, after “greasing my face with butter to protect it from the burning prose.” One caveat: These pieces were written as early as 1937, when a learned vocabulary wasn’t an obstacle to readers; prepare yourself for “fantods,” “sachem,” “gravid” and more words Google’s ready to tackle. 

You may not believe me, kids, but before your fancy internet rolled around, we got information about new and upcoming movies from artifacts called “magazines” and “newspapers.” On-set articles and interviews for more than two dozen beloved genre movies are collected in companion volumes The Dreamweavers: Fantasy Filmmaking in the 1980s and Science Fiction Filmmaking in the 1980s: Interviews with Actors, Directors, Producers and Writers. To read them is to be transported back to the days of thumbing through issues of Starlog, Twilight Zone and Fangoria at the magazine rack while your mom shopped for groceries. As with 2022’s The Joy of Sets, both trade paperbacks come from Lee Goldberg‘s Cutting Edge imprint; unlike The Joy of Sets, Goldberg shares space with William Rabkin and spouses Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier. Whether a movie qualifies as fantasy or sci-fi sometimes seems arbitrary, yet it hardly matters. In Dreamweavers‘ lineup, you’ll meet Buckaroo Banzai, James Bond and a few guys who ain’t ’fraid of no ghosts; in the other, Mad Max, RoboCop and the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Half the fun is seeing how prescient these journalists were. Case in point: Of Howard the Duck, Rabkin predicts, “There’s a chance that American audiences simply don’t want to see a duck starring in anything besides a plate of orange sauce.” —Rod Lott

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Mad Props (2024)

Aside from the script, performers and digital effects, movies are an amalgam of stuff we find lying around. The alien from John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon’s Dark Star was just a painted beach ball with rubber feet attached. The crew of James Cameron’s Aliens double-dipped into their gear and used Steadicam arms to create the Colonial Marines’ M56 Smartguns. And the walls of the Nostromo from Ridley Scott’s original Alien featured a coffee grinder. (Granted, the space truckers probably just need a decent cup of joe every few million miles.)

Props — regardless of what they’re made of — give movies life. Tulsa banker Tom Biolchini, the subject of Juan Pablo Reinoso’s documentary Mad Props, seeks to preserve that life and celebrate props for what they ultimately are: art.

Though it doesn’t seem like this were ever in question, you probably don’t hear much appreciation for visual and technical designers not named Tom Savini, Phil Tippett or Ray Harryhausen. We love their work, true, but maybe we tend to give directors like Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson credit that’s at least partially due to their prop artists.

That compulsion to find and recognize those masters makes Mad Props more endearing than it otherwise could be. Because let’s be real: Watching a hugely successful banker drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on the Holy Grail from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade isn’t exactly relatable. (Especially when you consider the didactic of that flick was how you shouldn’t obsess over one-of-a-kind treasures — Indy’s dad even shed a tear over it!)

If a wildly prohibitive hobby were all there was to Mad Props, it would frankly be a detached, insufferable trudge of a doc. Fortunately, the film makes a point to profile not just those who collect props, but the people who make and curate them, too. Biolchini has an infectious enthusiasm about this craft.

And while you could make the argument someone who collects a certain thing would want said thing to be recognized as art because that would likely inflate its value, that’s not quite how it would work since these items already command such a steep price. It seems Biolchini genuinely wants to preserve them in an era when less props are taking a physical form at all.

The behind-the-scenes stories Mad Props covers, like the nightmare that was the Goro suit from 1995’s Mortal Kombat, perfectly captures how much effort special effects demand even for just a few minutes’ worth of footage. A giddy Robert Englund recounting the many gloves of Freddy Krueger helps, too.

Mad Props really only wanes with the auction coverage. It just isn’t very interesting and does little to convey appreciation for film. In fact, the documentary finds meaning the further it drifts from the hobby and more into curation and prop production. It also helps that the doc is incredibly easy to watch. At its heart, it’s a light profile of movies and fans who love them. Like, a lot. —Daniel Bokemper

Get it at Amazon.

Good-Bye Cruel World (1982)

Most people only know this obscure comedy for its VHS box art, depicting an arm jutting from a toilet bowl to flush itself. Befitting of that porcelain throne, Good-Bye Cruel World is an unqualified stinker. 

Comedian Dick Shawn (1967’s The Producers) plays Rodney Pointsetter, an evening news anchor who melts down on air after his divorce. He resolves to blow his brains out — ho-ho-HO! — but goes to visit some family members first. One of those is his obese brother-in-law, essayed by Chuck “Porky” Mitchell; that’s how the credits list him, which may be the saddest thing imaginable. 

In between these reunion scenes, brief sketches and parodies play, as if broadcast from Pointsetter’s employer’s channel. Most were outdated by the time Cruel World hit video store shelves, like a hemorrhoid ad featuring “Jimmy Carter,” a spoof of Brooke Shields’ Calvin Klein jeans spot (but with a naked woman and a brand called Joy Crotch) and a commercial for Psycho Soap, with co-writer Alan Spencer (creator of TV’s Sledge Hammer!) doing a better-than-decent Norman Bates impersonation. 

The only amusing portion is a faux trailer for An Officer and an Elephant Man, which is just like it sounds. Novelty value seeps from this bad-taste bit as future Daily Show correspondent Larry Wilmore makes his screen debut making light of Louis Gossett Jr.’s drill sergeant role.

Although not truly interactive, Good-Bye Cruel World comes presented in “Choice-A-Rama,” allowing for a recurring gag of a host asking the audience to vote on what they’d like to see next. The results are never funny, but at least you get Angelique Pettyjohn (The Lost Empire) as a stripping nun. 

Ultimately, Rodney decides life’s worth living because sexy journalist Cynthia Sikes (Arthur 2: On the Rocks) wants to get in his pants. Too bad she and Rodney perish in a tragic accident of slapstick proportions in a finale so “wacky,” it includes a marching band. From a cloud in heaven, Rodney sings a song about life being “a mammy-jammer.” These are the jokes, folks. —Rod Lott

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The Animal Kingdom (2023)

Although The Animal Kingdom won five of its 12 nominations for the Césars, France’s equivalent to the Oscars, don’t mistake it for homework. It’s a superb work of fantasy. With feet planted on terra firma as its head takes a flight of fancy, the picture draws influence from David Cronenberg’s The Fly to the X-Men franchise, while somehow pulling off the appearance of originality.

Director and writer Thomas Cailley (Love at First Fight) presents a world challenged by a new pandemic, in which people undergo zoological mutations that may as well be named for Dr. Moreau. “Critter” is considered a slur; they’re “creatures,” TYVM, and they grapple with adjusting to feathers, tentacles, scales and prehensile tails.

One of the infected is the wife and mother to, respectively, François (an excellent Romain Duris, 2022’s Final Cut) and teenaged Émile (How to Make Out’s Paul Kircher, quite the young find). She’s also vanished. François can’t face the prospect of losing her, although most would agree that, in a way, he already has.

Meanwhile, while searching high and low, Émile comes face to face with startling examples of evolution’s next step. Whether said step leaps forward or diverges off to the side, the path he’s shown goes further than he’s willing to follow. He may not have a choice.

The Animal Kingdom operates on multiple levels of allegory: mortality, minority, puberty — take your pick! Cailley holds such tight control over his material, he’s able to steer deftly from moments of compassion to comedy (a visual gag involving kayaks slays) with no swerve feeling false. One memorable scene nails the tricky balance of conveying both heartbreak and joy as François and Émile drive through the forest at night while blasting their missing matriarch’s favorite song in hopes of triggering recognition.

Irony exists in The Animal Kingdom having the most humanistic viewpoint among movies in recent memory. Technically impeccable with seamless effects, it makes the case for Cailley being his country’s Steven Spielberg. A feel-good film about a bad hand dealt to all involved, it ends not in a cop-out, but a triumph. —Rod Lott

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One-Percent Warrior (2023)

One-Percent Warrior — you just know Warren Buffett favors that nickname in krav maga class at the club — isn’t your ordinary martial-arts movie. It’s meta meta meta. And fortunately in a fun way. 

Played by Tak Sakaguchi, Toshiro is a has-been action hero whose trademark of “assassination jitsu” has aged out of audiences’ favor. I don’t know why, because the guy’s so quick and agile, he literally can dodge bullets! 

Toshiro longs to make a “100% pure action film” — none of this choreographed, 15-takes bullshit. (This must be a nod to Sakaguchi and director Yudai Yamaguchi’s recent single-shot epic, Crazy Samurai: 400 vs. 1.) A decade after his last hit, Toshiro enlists his new apprentice, Akira (Kohei Fukuyama, TV’s Mob Psycho 100), to shoot his comeback vehicle Soderbergh-style (on a smartphone ), on an island housing nothing but an abandoned zinc factory.

Call it an ideal location for limb dislocation. Because at the same time, not one but two heavily armed yakuza gangs swarm the isle, thanks to a secret stash of 2 tons of cocaine.

The 20th (!) collaboration between Sakaguchi and Yamaguchi, One-Percent Warrior finds them moving away from the silliness of their past (Meatball Machine, Battlefield Baseball, et al.) and growing up. It’s for the better. Unable to rest on slapsticky laurels, Yamaguchi comes alive via frenetic camerawork, sweeping and surveying the action unfolding throughout the locale. 

It’s nice to see Sakaguchi do his thing free of gimmicky trappings or cartoon gore. A high point finds Toshiro in the dark, subduing his opponents with flying fists and a disorienting strobe flashlight, all scored to George Gershwin’s sublime Rhapsody in Blue.

Had this Japanese flick starred Jackie Chan (instead of name-dropping him) and came out post-Rumble in the Bronx, it would’ve killed at the box office. Instead, it’s set to stream on the little-seen and largely unheard-of Hi-YAH! channel. Give it and Sakaguchi a chance, because One-Percent Warrior has might and a mind. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

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