From the Bottom to the Top to the Bottom: Part One in a Series

Hollywood is a fickle mistress. One minute she’s a Brazilian supermodel who goes down on you in the middle of Spago and begs you to have a threesome with her even hotter Australian supermodel best friend, and then the next her lawyers are serving you a restraining order that says if you’re even on the same continent as her, the police are allowed to club you to death in front of your crying children.

And that’s how the pretty people get treated! It’s so much worse for the merely talented, who manage to win the celebrity lottery by being cast in the right role in the right movie at the right time. Oh, man, does Hollywood hate those assholes, especially if they’re unlucky enough to get nominated for an Oscar for their efforts. Sure they’ll give them a movie or two to star in, but once those movies-no-one-asked-for inevitably tank those poor bastards are lucky if their agent can get them an audition for a dog food commercial.

In need of interesting content, I’ve decided to occasionally mock these one-hit wonders by not only pointing them out, but also by singling out the lowest moment of their subsequent careers—the one film that well and truly should have driven them out of the business forever (but probably didn’t).

Tonight’s entry is one of the just plain oddest dudes to ever earn any attention from the Academy. The fact that he was eventually perfectly cast as Mr. Mxyptlk in the dreadful 80s Superboy syndicated TV show pretty much says it all.

I am, of course, talking about:

Michael J. Pollard

A theatre and television actor who specialized in playing beatniks and children (everyone remembers that episode of Star Trek where he played the leader of a group of kids on a planet where going through puberty was fatal—he was 27 at the time), Pollard came to national attention when he was cast as C.W. Moss in Arthur Penn and Warren Beatty’s Bonnie & Clyde (producer/star Warren would get upset if I credited it solely to its director). As Moss, Pollard proved to be a unique and intriguing screen presence, which—combined with the critical and popular success of the film—resulted in a Best Supporting Actor nomination.

Despite being the clearest possible archetype of a “character actor”, Hollywood made a game attempt to allow him to carry some movies. He co-starred with Robert Redford in the period motorcycle drama Little Fauss and Big Halsey and played the title character in the very 70s revisionist western Dirty Little Billy. The failure of the last film, combined with his genuine oddness, quickly halted his trajectory and he pretty much disappeared for most of the 70s (the one decade you’d think would appreciate him the most), only to reappear in many terrible B-Movies and the occasional studio picture during the 80s and 90s. Whether in the hilariously misguided American Gothic, the charming Roxanne or blockbusters like Dick Tracy and Tango & Cash, he always played the same role—the really weird elfin guy.

Looking through his IMDb page there are a lot of low moments to choose from. I’ve already mentioned American Gothic, but it’s more weird than terrible. Fast Food is pretty miserable, but it has post-porn unbelievably hot era Traci Lords in it, so it too must be allowed to pass. I reviewed The Patriot for Flick Attack and thought it was horrible, but I now have no memory whatsoever of Pollard even being in it. Night Visitor is more bland than bad (which actually makes it that much harder to sit through) so that just leaves one clear choice for the lowest moment of Pollard’s post Oscar-nomination career. That’s right, folks:

 

Everyone remembers the original Sleepaway Camp. It’s the slasher classic where the killer turns out to be a twelve year-old girl with an enormous cock (spoiler). Much fewer people remember the two subsequent sequels, and if they do, it’s only because they starred Bruce Springsteen’s sister!

Having set the cinema world aflame with her role as the first Pat Benatar lookalike in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Pamela Springsteen was cast as the now adult version of the original film’s transgendered murderer. Unfortunately this didn’t lead to her achieving iconic horror franchise status, since the filmmakers (the same dude’s responsible for the above-mentioned Fast Food) decided to do something completely different that no one had ever done before and make a slasher movie that made fun of slasher movies! Even better, they did it twice!

Confused folks at the video store might have thought that the existence of Sleepaway Camp III indicated that there was a demand for the story to continue after Sleepaway Camp II, but the reality was that the filmmakers pulled a Salkind (look it up) and shot the two films back to back.

Truthfully it’s hard to tell which of the two are worse. Like all “funny” slasher movies, they are neither funny nor frightening, but Pollard’s only in the third one, so it doesn’t really matter. The sad thing is, he might very well be the best thing in it.

For shame, Sleepaway Camp III.

For shame.

Apparently Pollard’s still alive, but he hasn’t been up to much lately. Rob Zombie cast him in House of 1000 Corpses, which is just the sort of thing you’d expect Rob Zombie to do (he’s such a scamp!). As you probably, guessed Pollard never did take home that Oscar. He lost that year to George Kennedy, who won it for his memorable role in Cool Hand Luke—a great performance in a classic movie!

Next Time On

From the Bottom to the Top to the Bottom Again

 

George Kennedy

Catching Up With Canuxploitation

As you can see I've adopted a new strategy here at Vanity Fear (AKA Still The House of Glib until I get the banner changed) and instead of writing a new longer post every couple of weeks, have decided to contribute shorter daily posts instead. That way, experience has proven to me, leads to people actually visiting the site on occasion, which leads to me experiencing happiness, which leads to me not pressing the big red button the aliens gave me for when I could no longer justify the further existence of my destructive species.

But since I know some of you out there actually enjoyed my longer pieces I wanted to take the time to lead you to some I've recently written for another awesome blog, Paul Corupe's excellent Canuxploitation. It's not everyday you get to write for a website that actually coined a phrase, so I've been excited by the opportunity a random email I sent to Paul has afforded me. I've contributed three reviews and one amusing list thus far to Paul's site and I thought I'd link to them here for those of you who haven't yet confronted them in their natural habitat.

1. The 5 Best/Worst Performances by American Actors in Canuxploitation Films

As the title suggests, this is an amusing list in which I make fun of 10 yanks who went up north to collect a much-appreciated paycheck.

2. Agency

In this early 80s political thriller/ad-world satire, Lee Majors plays a character he never played before and never would again--the world's manliest copywriter.

3. Blonde and Blonder

Someone thought that ripping off Dumb and Dumber by recasting the leads with Pamela Anderson and Denise Richards was a surefire way to B.O. magic. My review explains why they were incredibly stupid for thinking this.

4. Tanya's Island

In this film, my least favourite female Prince protege cockteases an apeman until the creature just can't take it any more. This film is terrible, but that didn't keep me from admiring it.

The ABCs of B-Movie Bullsh*t -- From A to Z

A is for A.I.P.

B is for Blaxploitation

C is for Canuxploitation

D is for Drive-In

E is for Exploitation

F is for Freaks

G is for Gore

H is for Hammer

I is for Italian

J is for Japanese

K is for Kicking

L is for Lost Worlds

M is for Music

N is for Nudity

O is for Out of Print

P is for Poster

Q is for Q

R is for Roger Corman

S is for Scream Queens

T is for Trailer

U is for UFOs

V is for Vincent Price

W is for Women in Prison

X is for XXX-Rated

Y is for Young People

Z is for Zombie

The ABCs of B-Movie Bullsh*t -- Z is for Zombie

Z

is for Zombie

Do you really need me

to tell you about zombies?

Really?

Z

is for Zombie

and

Zombie

starts with

Z

The ABCs of B-Movie Bullsh*t -- Y is for Young People

Y

is for Young People

 

It took Hollywood decades to discover what B-Movie makers knew from the very beginning. Adult viewers may bring prestige, but teenagers will make you rich.

The fact is that when people grow up their lives become busy and the opportunities they have to indulge their need for unconstructive entertainment can be measured in minutes per month. Teenagers, on the other hand, are so overburdened with free time that it’s the very thing that causes them to terrify their elders. Free time means mischief and mischief means reefer and jazz, which leads to murder in the streets.

Realizing this, enterprising low-budget producers started making films aimed directly at the young folks who had the time and allowance/babysitting money to go out see terrible movies over and over again.

To attract the kiddies, these producers threw in popular pop stars from the day and had them engage in silly, nonsensical plots involving popular fads like surfing, drag racing and dancing. The most famous of these were a series of A.I.P. produced films that starred Frankie Avalon and/or Annette Funnicello. The films were cheaply made cartoons that aped the style pioneered earlier by Frank Tashlin in such films as The Girl Can’t Help it and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter. They were also pretty awesome. Especially when they had Susan Hart in them.

Yowza.

Eventually, the studios caught on to this formula and it's now applied to most films made today. The only difference being that the amount of money being spent is that much greater than it ever has been before.

Problem is that while kids today still have a mega-buttload of free time to spend, they increasingly have access to better ways to spend it, which means the studios might eventually have to start making movies for the older audiences they have spent the past couple of decades specifically alienating.

Awkward.

Y

is for Young People

and

Young People

are

Young

The ABCs of B-Movie Bullsh*t -- X is for XXX-Rated

X

is for XXX-Rated

Quick question:

What’s the most financially successful movie of all time?

Nope.

Not even.

Don’t make me laugh.

Nope, none of those come close. The truth is that no one actually knows how much the most financially successful movie has made. Some estimates suggest that it could be as high as a billion dollars.

“So what? A bunch of movies have made that much!”

Yeah, but how many of them cost $25,000 to make?

On the basis of pure cost to profit ratio, there has never been a film to even come close to the success of 1972s Deep Throat. And the reason for its success?

Well, it ain’t because it’s a good movie, that’s for sure!

It just so happened that the film came out at the exact time America decided to make good on the promise of the sixties and get its collective freak on. For one brief, shining moment everyone decided they wanted to see a movie where a frizzy haired brunette with an annoying voice inhaled an impressively large penis right down to the short and curlies.

The immediate result was several ridiculous legal battles, but the long term result was that pornography finally became a mainstream phenomenon, which it has been ever since.

“But that can’t be true! People only started talking about porn being mainstream when everyone started acknowledging the existence of Jenna Jameson!”

Yeah, but people are liars. The fact is that XXX videotapes were largely responsible for the home video boom of the 80s. Pornographic websites were the first to prove that online businesses could make money. Pay-per-view porn proved to be a major profit center for hotel and telecommunication companies. Throughout the 80s, 90s and early to mid-00s, XXX productions brought in just as much money as their untarnished Hollywood counterparts.

XXX was mainstream looooong before Pamela Anderson went all Linda Lovelace on Tommy Lee or we spent One Night in Paris. It was just something no one ever talked about. After everyone saw Deep Throat or Beyond the Green Door it became a cultural secret everyone agreed to keep.

The irony being that for most of the time we were keeping this secret, XXX movies actually had plots and occasionally attempted to look and feel like real movies. Today they are the equivalent of a Michael Bay movie—uncomfortable close-ups, weird edits and all-cumshots-all-the-time. It’s enough to make you long for the days of 1972. Just as long as you don't have to watch Deep Throat.

X

is for XXX-Rated

and

XXX-Rated

is an

XXXtremely sensitive subject

The ABCs of B-Movie Bullsh*t -- W is for Women in Prison

W

is for Women in Prison

 

Chicks in chains. Babes behind bars. Ladies in lockup. Slammer sluts. Hotties in the hoosegow. Kittens in a cage. Detention center dames. Whatever you want to call them, they’re a lot of fun to watch.

The formula is simple: Stick a bunch of attractive actresses in skimpy prison gear (bras definitely NOT allowed), have them fight, fall in lesbian love and/or lust, get tortured and/or raped by corrupt officials and then watch as they riot and/or escape. Sound misogynistic? Well, that all depends on the movie.

Take the infamous Ilsa movies, for example. Are they misogynistic? Hooboy, are they! Even their most ardent defenders can’t deny that Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS and Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks film the torture of its female characters with erotic glee, imagining the boners its audience members will get as Shannon Kelly is flogged to death, as Uschi Digard has her internal organs squashed while trapped inside a pressure chamber, as Haji has her breasts put in a vice, and as some actress who didn’t appear in Russ Meyer movies is slowly strangled with a noose while standing on a block of melting ice.

But you can’t judge an entire genre by its worst offenders. Just take a look at other famous women in prison movies. Is Chained Heat misogynistic? Well, maybe. The Big Bird Cage? Aum, there is the scene where Anitra Ford is hung by her hair. Delinquent Schoolgirls? Oh, yeah, definitely. Reform School Girls? It’s a spoof, so it doesn’t count. What about all those Jess Franco variations? Well, they were able to turn at least one into an unofficial Ilsa movie, so…. Wait! How about Caged Heat? It was totally directed by noted liberal Jonathan Demme! It isn’t misogynistic at all!

So, there you go. Don’t judge Women in Prison movies by a few bad apples. Judge it by one good apple—Caged Heat. And don’t mind us while we watch and enjoy the rest.

W

is for Women in Prison

and

Women in Prison

are

Wonderful

The ABCs of B-Movie Bullsh*t -- V is for Vincent Price

V

is for Vincent Price

 

I’ve spent the last hour trying to explain why Vincent Price is my favourite actor. The problem is I could write a whole book on the subject and I don’t currently have the time to undertake such a worthy project. So, instead I’ve decided to put my feelings under high heat and reduce them to their very essence—the one concentrated phrase that sums up why I adore this one actor more than any other.

Watching Vincent Price makes me happy.

I realize this is probably not as profound as you might have hoped, but it’s true and if you want something deeper, then you’re just going to have to wait until I have the time to write the book.

V

is for Vincent Price

and

Vincent Price

is

Too great to explain

In just one lame blog post

The ABCs of B-Movie Bullsh*t -- U is for UFOs

U

is for UFOs

 

Thanks to George Méliès, aliens have been a part of movies from cinema’s very beginning, but they didn’t really start getting their B-Movie due until the 1950s, when the gothic horror films of the 30s and 40s gave way to the sci-fi terror of the post-war, nuclear-threatened world.

During this time, aliens could be actual killer vegetables (The Thing From Another Planet, Invasion of the Body Snatchers) or ones who just looked like killer vegetables (It Conquered the World’s walking piece of okra). They could be big-headed mutants (Invasion of the Saucer Men) or horny Martians (Mars Needs Women). They could be misunderstood messiahs (The Day the Earth Stood Still) or easily understood maniacs (Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers, War of the Worlds).

But the “new horror” of the 60s and 70s didn’t have much use for such fantastical monsters and it took George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to bring the alien back into the pop culture zeitgeist. Their efforts were so successful that reports of people seeing and being abducted by such creatures increased by a shocking degree, with most reporting that their otherworldly kidnappers looked just like the aliens seen at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Since then aliens have appeared in every single genre of B-Movie, from slashers (Evil of the Night) to kid flicks (Mac & Me) to buddy cop movies (Alien Nation, The Hidden) to westerns (Oblivion) to sophomoric unnecessary comedy sequels (Meatballs II). They aren’t going anywhere and we’d all miss them if they did.

U

is for UFOs

and

UFOs

are

Ultra Cool

The ABCs of B-Movie Bullsh*t -- T is for Trailer

T

is for Trailer

 

The only thing keeping movie trailers from being as vital a part of the B-Movie experience as movie posters is the fact that—with a few exceptions here and there—filmmakers are obliged to include actual footage from the films they are selling. Unlike a poster, where pure misrepresentation is easily achieved, a trailer has to work much harder to trick an audience into wanting to see it.

That said, there is a proud tradition of crafty trailer editors spinning worthless celluloid into pure gold. These devious Rumpelstilskin’s of the flatbed were not afraid to completely misrepresent the films they were selling or even insert shots from totally unrelated films. There is the oft-told legend of how during a period in the 70s, virtually every trailer from Roger Corman’s New World cinema featured the same shot of an exploding helicopter. Even if this is apocryphal, it still feels like its true.

For this reason, the B-Movie trailer is its own genre, as important and worthy of study as any other. For the enthusiast, 90 minutes worth of trailers is as good as any one movie you can name.

T

is for Trailer

and

Trailers

are

Terrific