After the initial panic, the family manages to move to a more central area of the house and tries to figure out why they’re being attacked, but they don’t have much time to wonder before the black-clad murderers (all wearing animal masks) efficiently pick off several of the remaining family members until only a few are left to survive the night. However, one of the family members has a secret that makes her just as much a threat to the killers as they are to her, and the unexpected presence of a competent, level-headed person in the midst of all this mayhem means the killers’ work won’t be as simple as they may have anticipated. As the night drags on and the body count rises, the survivors find that even among themselves, not everyone is who they seem to be.
You’re Next starts with the foundation of a pitch-perfect cast: Joe Swanberg in particular steals nearly every scene he’s in, clearly itching to start a fight with his sensitive brother Crispian and eager one-up (or just be condescending to) anyone else around. However, this is unquestionably Sharni Vinson’s show. As Erin, she’s sweet, tough, and convincingly badass when needed, and just as convincingly worried or frightened when called for. Writer Simon Barrett even makes it a point to give the animal-masked killers their own stories and motivations, rather than leave them as faceless killing machines. The careful characterization pays off once the action ramps up, and the film strikes a fragile balance between tension and comedy (although at least one scene veers a little to hard into splatstick compared to the rest of the film). There is not much that is really new here, but when the attention to character is so well-done–especially in a modern genre film–it feels almost revolutionary. Whether it actually is or not is beside the point. The fact is that You’re Next is the first major post-Cabin in the Woods slasher/home invasion horror film that feels truly modern rather than a tired throwback to the same genre tropes that film so brilliantly, concretely declared as obsolete. It’s impossible for any film to realistically live up to two years of festival hype, but You’re Next comes damned close.
You’re Nobody ‘Til Somebody Kills You (2012)
Originally published on Film Monthly 11 July 2012
Mention the concept of a “black horror” film and a handful of titles are likely to come to the mind of horror fans: Blacula, Sugar Hill, Def by Temptation, and anthologies like Tales from the Hood and the recent Snoop Dogg’s Hood of Horror are probably the best-known films in this unfortunately sparse subgenre. While it’s being marketed as a genre film, You’re Nobody ‘Til Somebody Kills You is more of a drama and police procedural than a slasher film. Executive produced by Spike Lee, Nobody is a straightforward, non-supernatural story that also points up social issues surrounding hip hop artists and the music industry.
Following the murders of popular rappers AD (Michael K. Williams) and Cipha (Al Thompson), the New York police seem to have more on their hands than just the fallout of another clash of egomaniacs. Poetry found at the scene of the crimes seems to indicate that a serial killer is on the loose, targeting high-profile rap stars. Detectives Johnson (James McDaniel) and Francelli (Michael Mosley) are assigned to the case– Johnson is completely uninterested in hip hop culture and mere days away from retirement, while Francelli is a big fan who finds himself suddenly immersed in the world of his favorite artists. While the press speculates on who the next victim will be, Johnson and Francelli must work together to stop the killer before the real story gets out.
Speculation on that next victim all seems to point to Manchild (Nashawn Kearse), an up-and-coming rapper about to drop a new album. The film is about evenly split between the detectives’ investigation into the murders and Manchild’s paranoid reaction to the possibility that he may be the killer’s next target. He holes up in his apartment or recording studio with his friends, ducking out to make public appearances, while Johnson and Francelli keep an eye out for the killer. Interspersed with the main action are “man on the street” interviews talking to people about hip hop culture, sometimes confusingly thrown into the middle of scenes in action. These interviews are the film’s most direct form of addressing social issues, but they seem mostly there to cover up the seams between scenes.
The main problem with You’re Nobody ‘Til Somebody Kills You is that its criticisms of hip hop are wearyingly familiar. Is it a problem that artists are glorified after they get arrested, or considered more legitimate if they have a past steeped in criminal activity? It certainly is, but that’s nothing new, and the discussion is nothing new in film, either. The “spontaneous” interview segments are often jarring and confusing, and in at least one case are used to blatantly smooth over a chase scene that was probably not feasible with the film’s budget. Compounding these issues is a head-scratching final shot that seems completely unrelated to everything that just came before it. Unfortunately, You’re Nobody ‘Til Somebody Kills You falls short as a genre film, and ends up more in the ballpark of an episode of Law & Order with more swear words.
PART TWO: MULTI-TITLE REVIEWS 2008-PRESENT
Abduction of an American Playgirl (1975) and Winter Heat (1976)
Originally published on Daily Grindhouse 16 January 2014
Vinegar Syndrome has done some spectacular work since launching in early 2012 with their Lost Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis Blu-ray release. Their Drive-In Collection series of double features has mined some amazing lost gems of American exploitation cinema, from obscure horror films of the ’60s to hardcore adult films of the ’70s. In order to differentiate their hardcore content from other films, Vinegar Syndrome has launched a new series called “Peekarama” that will basically be the Drive-In Collection for adult films: double and triple features featuring new transfers of classic hardcore features. The first in this new line features two takes on an appropriate theme with 1975’s Abduction of an American Playgirl and 1976’s Winter Heat.
In Abduction of an American Playgirl, Will and Fred (Eric Edwards and Alan Marlowe, familiar faces to fans of 70s porn films) are two losers looking to get laid. They decide to kidnap voluptuous blonde Jackie (Darby Lloyd Rains, who appeared in Radley Metzger’s Naked Came the Stranger and The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann) and take her to Will’s sister’s remote cabin to have some fun. Things start looking up when they realize she’s the daughter of a rich business owner and they hatch a plan to hold her for ransom. One thing they could not have anticipated, however, is that she’s also completely insatiable, and soon our hapless “heroes” are begging her to leave them alone and dropping her ransom price, desperate for her father to take her back. Meanwhile, Jackie’s cooking them breakfast and giving them 10 minutes of rest, and failure to meet her demands means she’ll go to the cops and report kidnapping and rape.
Ah, the 1970s! As repellant as the storyline is, Abduction of an American Playgirl is pitched at a sub-Benny Hill level of goofy broad comedy, and almost absurdly focused on character-based “laffs,” so much so that the first sex scene doesn’t even start until about 17 minutes into the 71-minute film, when our heroine gets a look at Eric Edwards’s package and enthusiastically sets the games in motion. The plot goes pretty much as one would expect from here, extended thanks an interlude with two hunters who stumble upon the cabin to help pad out the running time to feature-length (and provide an excuse for the classy line “I see a bush I’d like to whack.”) and a lesbian sex scene between Jackie and her younger sister Lee (Shelly Turner, wearing one of the least convincing wigs in film history). The stereotypes don’t stop coming until the end of the film, as the incestuous sisters have a threesome with a black bellhop (Daryl Spangler) whose appetite puts even theirs to shame. They respond to his request for “more!” by putting him in the neighboring hotel room with a gay male couple, although the last we see of him he’s just standing at the door in shock when the girls close the door, so maybe that worked out? A frustrating loose end in this otherwise airtight narrative!
This would all be some seriously uncomfortable viewing if it wasn’t for the light tone and weird choice of mambo muzak that plays o
ver almost every sex scene. There’s also a pretty hilarious sequence in which Edwards, Marlowe and Rains run through a bewildering number of positions in fast motion while some frantic vaudeville music plays, lest you have any question about what kind of movie this is. Interestingly, the DVD includes a trailer for the film under the title Abduction of an American Plowgirl, perhaps a working title to throw off the locals during production?
Now, for some genuinely uncomfortable viewing, one needs look no further than Winter Heat, the second part of this double-feature disc and a film that falls squarely into the “roughie” subgenre. Four criminals on the lam, led by Stevie (Jamie Gillis), decide to hide out in a house where three female friends are taking a weekend vacation. Unsurprisingly, the situation quickly devolves into the criminals having their way with the women, who respond with varying levels of consent. As the day continues, two of the women turn the tables on their captors in very different ways, ending the film with a visual punch line that has Stevie literally brought to his knees.
Unlike Abduction, Winter Heat does not have a playful tone. The criminals bully and force the women into having sex with them, and in one particularly nasty extended scene Stevie tells Jenny (Jenny Lane) repeatedly that she has to do what he says or he’ll beat her up. An extended scene in the kitchen of the house has Stevie forcing Gail (Bree Anthony of The Taking of Christina) to eat huge spoonfuls of oatmeal while he molests her. Gillis was a solid actor, and the fact that he’s so cold and creepy in Winter Heat is proof, contrasted with some of the more (and, amazingly, sometimes less) likeable characters he played for various other directors. He’s genuinely menacing here, putting the “rough” in “roughie.”
Despite the fact that the criminals end up dominated by the end of the film, the tone of Winter Heat is too mean-spirited to be any kind of fun, regardless of what the wildly inappropriate library music playing over the sex scenes might otherwise suggest. And if you had a problem with the loose ends at the conclusion of Abduction, you’ll probably be driven to distraction by the fact that Clair (Susan Sloan, who appeared in some of Carter Stevens’s films as Nova Kane) just seems to disappear after being coerced into a lesbian scene by the female criminal Agnes (Helen Madigan, who also appeared in Radley Metzger’s Naked Came the Stranger and Wes Craven’s hardcore The Fireworks Woman). A similar fate befalls dim-bulb Benji (Alex Mann, who appeared in films by Doris Wishman and Joe Sarno), who gets one scene with young Jenny and is never seen again.
Both films are presented on a single disc, Abduction scanned in 2k from the film’s 35mm negative and Winter Heat scanned in 2k from an archival print. Abduction looks very clean, while the print of Winter Heat had clearly seen a lot of use and has some splices and noise, although it’s still entirely watchable and no doubt the best (if not only) presentation of the film available widely on home video. As with all of Vinegar Syndrome’s other titles, just having these films available on disc is a pretty huge deal for fans, and the inclusion of the Abduction trailer is a nice touch. Overall this is a fine launch title for the Peekarama line, and promises even greater things to come.
Er, no pun intended.
All Night Long (1976) and Tapestry of Passion (1976)
Originally published on Daily Grindhouse 18 July 2014
While he was most active in the 70s during the “Golden Age” of adult cinema, the name “John Holmes” is still synonymous with pornography. Holmes made a staggering number of films during his career, although the best known of these may be his “Johnny Wadd” series of films, casting Holmes in the part of a laid-back private dick who spends more time having sex with his clients than doing any actual detective work. Holmes and his work with Bob Chinn inspired Paul Thomas Anderson’s film Boogie Nights, although he did similar story-driven features with other directors. Vinegar Syndrome’s Peekarama double feature DVD of two Holmes films directed by Alan Colberg works as a good introduction to Holmes for anyone who might have heard the name but hasn’t seen his work. For established fans, this disc’s fantastic visual presentation makes it indispensable
All Night Long opens with a bizarre awards ceremony held by the Home & Hearth Society, which appears to be a sort of Moose Lodge, but where everybody has sex. After handing out a few awards (with a couple of interruptions from exploitation film favorite George “Buck” Flower in a cameo as a classic “wet blanket” character), the festivities turn to the contest for the society’s mascot: The Goldenrod Award. This year there are two candidates: Ric (Ric Lutze) and John (John Holmes). Their mission is to head to an address given to them in an envelope, perform the sexual tasks required by the woman at the location, get the next envelope and repeat. The first man who returns to the society headquarters by morning is the winner, and is in charge of providing the ladies of the Home & Hearth Society sexual pleasure on their command for the next year.
True to its goofy library music soundtrack, All Night Long has the tone of a dirty comedy album you might find buried in a trunk in your grandparents’ attic. The opening awards ceremony establishes this tone immediately, and the jokes throughout the film cruise along at the same level: there’s an Asian girl named Lotus Flower, decked out in a kimono, a kinky dominatrix who constantly belittles John’s performance, and the film cuts back occasionally to the Hearth & Home Society watching Ric and John’s progress on a monitor and commenting on the proceedings. There’s not much of a story in All Night Long, but the tone is goofy and light, and everyone looks like they’re having a great time, so it’s fun if mostly forgettable.
The second feature in the set, Tapestry of Passion, is a much better film. Black Widow (Sharon Thorpe) is a serial killer who leaves a trail of male bodies in her wake. Johnny Wadd (Holmes) is hired by the sister (Lesllie Bovee) and wife (Annette Haven) of one of the victims to find the killer. Wadd does some cursory detective work (such as high-fiving a guy outside an adult bookstore) before he stumbles across Black Widow’s ad in the local paper. Will Johnny Wadd catch the Black Widow before she kills again? Or will he become another in her long line of victims? Will he at least get to bang the hot wives and sister of the Widow’s previous victims?
Spoiler alert for that last question: Yes, of course he will. This being a Johnny Wadd movie, most of the action takes place in the bedroom. However, there is plenty here to like beyond the sex scenes. Sharon Thorpe gives a pretty amazing performance as Black Widow, frequently seeming to be genuinely unhinged from reality, especially when punishing her manservant Carl (Mick Jones) and when demanding total obedience from her victims. The scenes of Wadd doing his detective footwork are hilariously perfunctory, and when the case is cracked, he gets a great mental monologue as he reflects on the differences between women and men. “Better stop this shit,” he eventually decides. “Gettin’ depressed.”
Vinegar Syndrome’s presentation of these two films is up to their usual standards, which is to say that it’s spectacular. Both films have been scanned in 2k from the original 35mm negatives, and they look fantastic. For helpful comparison, original theatrical trailers for both films are included on the disc, and the amount of visual noise and splices really throw into stark relief how great it is to have the features in such comparatively pristine condition (although both films do have minor visual imperfections). A special note must be made of the trailer for Tapestry of Passion in particular, which features Lesllie Bovee directly addressing the audience with some dead-on comic timing in her delivery of some hilariously weird lines. This is a must-own for fans of 70s adult cinema and John Holmes, and if you’ve only ever heard of Holmes, this is a good place to dip your toe into his imposing body of work.
The Altar of Lust (1971) and Angel on Fire (1974)
Originally published on Daily Grindhouse 28 April 2014
Roberta Findlay was a genuine grindhouse filmmaker. As in, she (along with her husband Michael) made films that played the legendary 42nd street grindhouses, shooting roughies on the cheap in and around New York, a contemporary of filmmakers like Andy Milligan and Doris
Wishman. The Findlays together may be best known for the “Flesh trilogy” (The Touch of Her Flesh, The Curse of Her Flesh, and The Kiss of Her Flesh) starring and directed by Michael, shot and scored by Roberta. The Findlays, like Wishman, kept up with the times and moved from roughies into hardcore features in the 70s, and Roberta kept up a prolific pace throughout the decade and continued in the 80s, although in her later career she transitioned to directing low-budget horror films such as Blood Sisters and Prime Evil. The exploitation historians at Vinegar Syndrome have released a new double-feature disc of two of Roberta Findlay’s 1970s films, once again giving dedicated exploitation fans a peek at what really played those mythical theaters on The Deuce.
The Altar of Lust (1971) was Roberta Findlay’s first film that she directed without a co-directing credit with her husband Michael, although both the Findlays provide the voices for all of the film’s dialogue. In Altar, Viveca Hansen (Erotica Lantern, voiced by Roberta Findlay) visits psychiatrist Dr. Rogers (Fred J. Lincoln appearing under the name “Tony Vincent,” voiced by Michael Findlay) to determine whether she can be “cured” of lesbianism. The film plays out as a series of sex scenes tied together with scenes of Viveca and Dr. Rogers in his office, and looks very much like a Doris Wishman film in that no one is ever shown speaking on-camera. The first sex scene uncomfortably recalls Findlay’s previous work in roughies, as Viveca tells the story of how she was raped as a teenager by her stepfather Hans (C. Davis Smith, a frequent cinematographer for Doris Wishman). It sets a bleak tone for the rest of the film, but none of the other scenes in the film are anything like this first one.
The Unrepentant Cinephile Page 76
