31 Nights of Terror #20 - The Reptile (1966)

The Reptile (1966)
Director: John Gilling
Starring: Noel Willman, Jennifer Daniel, Ray Barrett
Format: DVD (Midnight Movies double feature with The Plague of the Zombies)

- I don't think I've seen this one before. Getting to watch a new Hammer horror is always great.
- Typically great, moody Hammer opening featuring an old dark house and creepy English countryside
- Director John Gilling helmed several other Hammer horrors (The Plague of the Zombies, The Mummy's Shroud) and a few Hammer swashbucklers (Fury at Smuggler's Bay, The Pirates of Blood River, The Scarlet Blade).
- The lead actor is Aussie Ray Barrett, who I last saw as an old man in the trippy 1987 Australian flick Contagion (the review of which you can find elsewhere on this blog).
- The village in this movie was the backlot of Hammer's Bray Studios and was also used for Plague of the Zombies, which was filmed back-to-back with The Reptile (and shares actors Jacqueline Pearce and Michael Ripper).
- Jacqueline Pearce. Wow.
- Noel Willman (Doctor Zhivago, Kiss of the Vampire) is great as the overbearing and creepy Dr Franklyn.
- It's worth noting the prominence of Indian symbolism and music in this movie, as Indian mysticism reached new heights of popularity in England and the US in the mid-60s (due in large part, I would think, to The Beatles' dabbling with Maharishi Yogi).
- Creeping around in dark old houses, digging up graves, weird and creepy characters... man I love Hammer period horrors.

Overall thoughts: If you're a fan of Hammer horror, particularly their gothic period films, then you'll enjoy The Reptile. It has all the elements that Hammer did so well - a creepy old house, foreboding English countryside and a mystery. The acting is good, the cinematography top notch and the creature effects are primitive by modern standards but effective enough. A must for Hammer horror fans.

CORMANIA 2011 #11 - Little Shop of Horrors

3.20pm - Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
Our King's role: Director and producer
Cast: Jonathon Haze (IT CONQUERED THE WORLD), Jackie Joseph (GREMLINS), Mel Welles (ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS), Dick Miller (BUCKET OF BLOOD), Jack Nicholson (THE SHINING).

Plot: Seymour (Haze) is a klutz who works in a skid row florist shop. He can't seem to do anything right, until he brings in a strange plant that grows after eating human blood. He names it Audrey 2, after the daughter (Joseph) of the store owner (Welles). It begins attracting onlookers and bolstering the store's business, making Seymour more popular than ever. But he has to keep feeding Audrey 2 human flesh to keep it alive, and sooner or later that's going to be a problem.

Observations:
- Full disclosure: I have never seen this version. I've seen the 1980s musical remake, but not this one.
- Animation opening to show "skid row". I guess it was the cheap option. Apparently this movie was made in two days, so plenty of shortcuts had to be taken.
- Dick Miller on screen right away, seguing us nicely from Chopping Mall.
- Mel Welles is great as the harangued shop owner, providing most of the early laughs.
- I'm a huge fan of the Gremlins movies, but up until now didn't realise that the old couple (Dick Miller and Jackie Joseph) in Gremlins had appeared together in this film. It's always great to find out about hidden homages like that.
- "Feeeeeed me".
- Ah, the famous Jack Nicholson appearance as Wilbur Force, the sadomasochist dental patient. Good stuff.
- Just noticed on IMDB that Audrey 2's voice was provided by screenwriter Charles Griffith. Another similarity to our last movie (where writer and director Jim Wynorski voiced the killbots).
- So many great, wacky characters. The old lady whose relatives keep dying is fun, as is Seymour's hypocondriac mother.
- Hey, I guess you really are what you eat.

Overall thoughts: What a fun way to finish this marathon. I had read enough over the years to know that this original Little Shop of Horrors wasn't a musical, but I was also expecting it to be lacking in the comedy department. Boy was I wrong. This one's funny from start to finish, with great, quirky characters. Coming a year after Bucket of Blood, it's in the same vein, centring around a bumbling klutz who gains popularity by accident (through art in BoB and the plant in this one) and has to kill to keep that popularity going. Black comedy at its best!

CORMANIA 2011 #6 - The Wild Angels

9.44pm - Wild Angels (1966)
Our King's role: Director and producer
Cast: Peter Fonda (EASY RIDER), Nancy Sinatra (SPEEDWAY), Bruce Dern (SILENT RUNNING), Diane Ladd (WILD AT HEART)

Plot: Heavenly Blues (Fonda) is leader of the San Pedro, California chaper of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang. He brings his buddy Loser (Dern) back into the fold from an honest life, but a run-in with the heat ends up going not so groovy, and Loser winds up in hospital (sorry, don't know any 60s slang for that). The Wild Angels spring him, but Loser ends up dying. His funeral turns into a "party", in which a church is trashed, a preacher beaten up and Loser's woman (Ladd) raped. Even when they take him to be buried it turns into a big brawl between bikers and townsfolk.

Observations:
- Brief Dick Miller sighting in the first scene.
- Even tough biker guys liked to shake their tailfeathers in the swinging 60s.
- Heavenly Blues don't like no hard drugs, ya dig?
- Diane Ladd was quite attractive in her younger days. I only know her from David Lynch's Wild at Heart, when she plays a crazy old bat.
- Ladd plays the "old lady" of her real-life hubby, Bruce Dern.
- I have to wonder what Old Blue Eyes thought about his daughter Nancy appearing in a movie about long-haired nogoodniks.
- This movie came out the same year as Nancy's hit song These Boots Are Made For Walking.
- Nazi flag draped coffin. Classy.
- Blues' famous speech during the funeral: "We wanna be free to do what we wanna do. We wanna be free to ride our machines without being hassled by the man. And we wanna get loaded. And we wanna have a good time. That's what we're gonna do".
- You know it's a real party in the 60s when they bust out the bongo music.

Overall thoughts: Those who think of Roger Corman as a low-budget director who mainly followed the latest fads can take a look at Wild Angels to see the great man actually starting a trend. This is the first biker flick, three years before Easy Rider. It started the counter-culture fad, simple as that. Does that mean it's a good movie? Well, no. It's all a bit pointless really, with no real narrative thread. Just a bunch of bikers doing rebellious stuff. The acting is pretty great, led by a brooding performance by Fonda, but there's just not a lot of meat in this sandwich.

CORMANIA 2011 #2 - Ga-s-s-s

1.53pm - Gas-s-s-s, or It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save it (1970)
Our King's role: Director/producer
Cast: Bob Corff (FRIGHT NIGHT), Bud Cort (the MASH movie), Talia Shore (ROCKY, GODFATHER series), Cindy Williams (AMERICAN GRAFFITI), Ben Vereen (ZOOBILEE ZOO).

Plot: A deadly gas kills off anyone under 25. A young hardcase anti-authoritarian type (Corff) and his girl (Elaine Giftos) find that life under these new circumstances isn't to their liking and hit the road. They run into a fellow group of survivors (early roles for Cort, Shore, Williams and Vereen) and continue travelling across country, encountering various situations, including a rock concert, a town run by a group of deluded American Football players, a wacky doctor, a golf course community run by a cart-driving gang, some bizarre American Indians and The Oracle. They end up at a pueblo commune and the marauding, dune buggie-driving American Footballers show up before a wacky finale.

Observations:
- We open with badly-drawn animation about a gas escaping from a nuclear research facility in Alaska. This is going to be an odd flick.
- Great 60s rock soundtrack. Groovy man!
- Amidst all the wacky humour, a shot of downtown Dallas with empty streets and an elderly couple dead in each others' arms is actually quite eerie.
- Ah, Cindy Williams how cute and perky you were.
- I can't look at Ben Vereen without thinking about him wearing animal ears, whiskers and a big ol' grin on Zoobilee Zoo. Haven't seen that show since I was a kid, but it creeped me out back then.
- Why are they shouting out the names of big screen movie stars while pretending to have a western shoot out? Wait, they really died? I'm confused.
- Hey, there's a cameo by well-known anti-war musician Country Joe McDonald of Country Joe and the Fish. The guitarist from that band, Barry Melton, is the man responsible for the soundtrack to this film.
- Free love awash with psychadelic colours and patterns. No 1960s/early 70s hippy movie would be complete without it.
- Gratuitous dune buggy chase scene!
- The one guy has a massive machine gun mounted on top of his dune buggy but never fires it. Lame!
- Gratuitous golf cart chase scene!
- Okay, the golf ball attack is pretty awesome and fun.
- "What was that, a bomb?", "No, it sounded more ironic than that". Uh, okay.
- What a far out ending man.

Overall thoughts: Wow. That was something. What that something is, I'm not quite sure. The main characters were likeable, the concept pretty fun (I'm a big fan of post-apocalyptic films, no matter what the genre) and it was fairly well shot, but a lot of the humour fell flat for me. At times it felt like an extended episode of The Monkees, if The Monkees had featured a few more adult-natured jokes. It could be that I'm from the wrong generation or that the humour hasn't dated well, but I only really laughed once or twice. I'd like to think there's some kind of message at the heart of this pretentious movie, but I'm damned if I know what it is. In saying all that, this isn't a bad movie per se - if you're looking for something quirky it definitely fits that bill.