Director Ti West is in THE HOUSE

Director shares memories of helming his indie horror hit THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL

Eager to leave her dormitory to acquire her own apartment, cash-strapped coed Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) takes a baby-sitting job from an eccentric couple (Tom Noonan, Mary Woronov) at their isolated Victorian mansion. Once there, the husband confesses to her that the job involves caring for an elderly woman, but she “won't have to do anything” in exchange for a hefty fee. As the evening wears on, she does her homework, watches a little TV, orders some pizza ... but since this film is called The House of the Devil, things are not what they seem, bodies begin to pile up, horrible secrets are revealed and there's a blood-drenched climax followed by an abrupt shock conclusion.

In a genre marketplace cluttered with “torture porn” and self-reflective remakes of classic grindhouse fare, The House of the Devil earns its scares the old fashioned way, i.e. through story, characterization and suspense. Set in the Eighties, The House of the Devil takes pains to recreate a world of dial telephones and analog tape players but does so in the service of a story wracked with tension and nail-biting dread. House's director Ti West is especially proud of the film's credit sequences, which invokes a television movie-of-the-week circa 1973. “We worked very hard on getting those titles just right,” West beams.

With a budget set “under $1 million dollars,” West made sure that House's small cast included a lot of genre favorites such as Woronov, Noonan and Dee Wallace Stone (E.T., The Extra Terrestrial, The Howling). “I love Dee Wallace Stone, and although she has a very small part at the film's beginning, we were able to convince her to come up to Connecticut for one day's shooting and it was great to put her in a movie where she wouldn't be doing anything gross,” West says.

A longtime admirer of cult film queen Mary Woronov, West had to take a special approach in getting her to appear in the film. “She wasn't really acting anymore, she was concentrating on her painting and writing, but I was adamant that she appear in the film. I got her phone number and we met at her apartment. We had a really nice conversation, and I talked a lot about her Warhol days. Since we had a much more intellectual conversation, concentrating on her artwork and her association with Warhol, she agreed to do the part.”

Actor Noonan had worked with West prior to Devil, and actively sought out the director to sign on to the project. While his character plays the leader of a Satanist cult, Noonan and West agreed to play his part as that of a “nagged, hen-pecked husband.”

West says the project was something of a personal film for him, with a special identification for the film's hapless, down-on-her-luck heroine. “I had these friends in college whose parents paid for everything, and I had no money, just barely scraping by doing these movie projects. A lot of the film deals with what they call a 'quarter-life crisis,' when one is done with college and has to deal with the harsh realities of the real world,” West says.

While generally positively received, there have been some grumblings among some fans that the film has a long buildup until the final payoff. Characters do mundane things in almost real-time. West says that this is intentional. “We were playing with audience expectations. Instead of a character wandering into a room and making a horrific discovery, we have the characters go into a room, nothing happens, and we build up audience expectations even further.

“It kind of causes your imagination to do a lot of the work for me. It makes the audience active participants. Everyone is really post modern right now, they kind of know what's coming in a movie. Once the audience doesn't know what's coming next, it's kind of an exciting experience.”

In a bid to relieve the film's oppressive Gothic atmosphere, Donahue takes time to strap on her Sony Walkman to dance around the gloomy manse to the Fixx's Eighties classic, “One Thing Leads to Another.” In spite of House's limited budget, West saw to it that the music rights for this track were included. “That was in the script. I was very adamant about that. The person who owned the song, we called and begged and begged and begged.

“The title of the song has special significance. She knocks over the vase, the reason she's there. One thing really does lead to another. The song also had the right vibe also,” West explains.

“I was really nervous about that scene. It's sort of a bold moment in the movie, and thankfully it's everyone's favorite moment as well. It was something that we were shooting, where I thought 'I really hope this works.' We were sort of embarrassed to rehearse that, so we rehearsed everything except for that scene. I didn't know what the dancing was going to be like. She comes dancing through the door, and she had all these dance moves planned out, and at the end the whole crew got up and applauded.” The scene calls to mind Tom Cruise dancing in his underwear to the strains of Bob Seger's “Old Time Rock 'n' Roll” in Risky Business (1985). West says that it was totally unintentional until a crew member brought it to his attention.

West states that one shot in the film, where the headlights of a car are seen traveling by a window, after an atmosphere of isolation from the outside world has been meticulously established, is a happy accident. “We could have dipped into our CGI paint box and brushed that image off of the film, but we left it in.” When this writer points out that the headlights imply that the car – or the car's occupants will play a larger part of the story, West says that this added to the overall feeling of isolation. “Terrible things are going on in the house, and cars are just driving by as if nothing is happening.”

While set in the Eighties, this writer argues that there are elements of 21st
Century horror film elements in The House of the Devil as well. I point out that the film's extended scenes of tension-wracked silence seems to evoke recent Japanese horror films. West disagrees. “Mainstream American horror films are aimed at the lowest common denominator, with test screen audiences. There is just one scary moment after another, they sort of become like porn, it's just 'get to the good stuff every few seconds.' I'm not particularly intersted in that. I think J-horror, when that had a good run, it was because those films were very serious, and very original scary movies. They weren't elbowing the audience in the ribs, they were genuinely terrifying.”

An original work with a fresh, daring approach, The House of the Devil is best appreciated by an audience going in without expectations. West does admit that the film's shock conclusion is a homage to “the greatest devil movie ever made .. .” For those who have yet to see the film, it includes a bit of business that occurs offscreen, and something that the heroine had assiduously avoided up to that point.

DEEP RED magazine founder Chas. Balun dies, 1948 - 2009

It was grim resignation that I recently learned of the passing of Deep Red magazine founder, Chas. Balun. I had been out of contact with Chas. for several years, and what news I did hear was not good. A cancer survivor, Balun had suffered a resurgence in recent years.

I had worked closely with Charlie in the late Eighties and early Nineties on Deep Red-related projects, landing the title of Managing Editor of Deep Red Alert magazine. It was my access to the-then rarefied world of desktop publishing that granted my entry to Balun's fan boy universe. It was a rewarding collaboration and was a wild and wooly ride.

My association began with him in 1988, when Deep Red issue #2 hit my local comic book store. Balun waxed enthusiastically about Cecil Doyle's Subhuman fanzine, a Xerox publication where I found welcome outlet for my early writings. Seeking further exposure, I cautiously submitted a query on my best stationary if he was interested in some genre-related pieces from yours truly. In blood red felt pen, Charlie replied “Welcome aboard!” and we were off to the races.

I met the man in the flesh that year at the Los Angeles Fangoria Convention. A tall, physically imposing gentleman, Balun quickly dispelled any misgivings with his open and friendly manner. He had a thick, Southern Californian hippie accent that recalled comedian Cheech Marin: “Right on, bro!” At that time, Deep Red magazine was an on-again, off-again proposition due to an shaky agreement with Balun's then publisher and distributor, one of several shady figures who will remain nameless in this story. I would annually greet and meet Chas. at the various Fango-related conventions held in Los Angeles over the years.

Charlie always encouraged my writing. He felt that my stuff had a wit and joie de vivre that was lacking from his other contributors, who were all quite good but just a bit too scholarly when it came to the horror genre. “Sheesh! It's all rock 'n' roll,” he would declare. He especially liked my piece for the 1989 Deep Red Horror Handbook, “The Unwatchables,” a skewering of all the wretched offal that was cluttering up video rental stores at that that time. He and his lovely wife of many years, Pat Petric, got a big hoot from it, and he said it was the only chapter of the book he "read more than once.”

It was at the 1991 Fangoria Convention, where I coincidentally met fellow Screem contributor Shane “Remo” Dallman, that I shared to Charlie that I was then employed in the world of desktop publishing. He had been having issues with the various typesetters in the production of the magazine, and I offered him a golden opportunity with a “fan friendly” solution to his current crisis. A cautious phone call from him asking if I was interested in such a venture was made at my place of business, to which I wholeheartedly agreed, and we were off to the races once again.
The Deep Red night train and all its attendant publications was a wild and hectic ride, one that had a tremendous influence on the current state of genre fandom.

Balun left his meaty and bloody imprint on how we enjoy horror films today. First and foremost was his celebration of Italian genre cinema. While the work of Mario Bava had international recognition, the works of such diverse auteurs such as Dario Argento (be sure to check out Stephen King's curt dismissal of Suspiria in an old issue of Film Comment if you want to know what Argento's critical cache was at that point in time) and Lucio Fulci had yet to be fully appreciated. Balun saw to it that pristine VHS copies of these films, chopped to ribbons by stateside distributors, got into the hands of the people who mattered via various shady networks. This tactic got Charlie into hot water more than once. Many several guilty parties will go unmentioned.

Balun was also forthright in celebrating graphic violence on the screen, as politically incorrect as that notion is. Charlie would wax effusively on the joys of severed limbs and the geysers of guts that would spray across the screens in some of his favorite films. Balun saw these displays as cathartic in nature and the raison d'arte of these films. Rest assured, Charlie knew the difference between real and “reel” violence, and was a relatively gentle soul in person -- although I did see him unleash his wrath on one very memorable occasion.

It's at this point that I share something about Balun that is not widely known in fandom. While he enjoyed graphic violence in his horror films, Balun NEVER embraced graphically violent horror films simply on that basis alone. It was all a matter of tone and intent. Truth be told, he found quite a few titles – ones from a certain nation in particular – to be repulsive and dehumanizing. He did not suffer fools, the ones with multiple piercings inquiring about “snuff” and “gang rape” videos, gladly.

I would also be remiss in saying that Balun was a jovial Santa Claus figure beloved by all. If one judges a man by his friends, then the same could be said of his enemies. The people who actively disliked and trash-talked Balun fell into two camps: those who were jealous of him and those who couldn't take a joke. Over and over again, the people I personally encountered that fell into the anti-Chas. camp would reveal themselves to be highly unreliable figures of dubious, if any virtue.

It must be stressed that Deep Red was not the only key on the grand piano that was Chas. Balun. He was so many things – a hippie, a body-builder, a world-class athlete, an intellectual, a scribe, a raconteur: truly a complex individual. He shrugged off the controversies that surrounded his publication that he had battled cancer several times in the past and had won. What someone said or wrote about him was inconsequential in comparison.

As I mentioned earlier, I had been out of contact with Charlie for several years, so I was never to hear his take on how graphic on-screen violence would enjoy a renewed popularity at the box-office. I also was to never learn how he felt about the directors and films he once championed receiving deluxe Criterion-level treatment on DVD and Blu-Ray. Chas. was a driving force in making these things become reality. I suspect in his final days he took some pleasure in seeing these things come to pass, but he never lost sight on the things that really mattered –love, life health and serenity.

Balun fought the brave fight until the end. I end this reminisce with a sobriquet with which he would end many of his letters to me -- “Here's blood in your eye!”

MESSIAH OF EVIL (1973)

Directed by William Huyck

Arletty, a young woman (Marianna Hill) in an insane asylum relates her weird tale through voice-over and flashback. She relates a series of disturbing letters received from her artist father (Royal Dano) while ensconced at his seaside mansion near the “stucco, neon” environs of Point Dune, California. In a secondary voice-over, her father relates an experience that audiences watching Messiah of Evil for the first time will share: “These grotesque images keep crowding me ...” Driving to Point Dune to investigate, Arletty stops at an ultra-modern gas station for fuel where she is shooed away by a fearful mechanic (Charles Dierkop) who is then bloodily murdered by an albino African-American man (Bennie Robinson) who drives a pickup bearing mutilated corpses. Arletty learns of a trio of jet-setting hippies, Thom (Michael Greer, Fortune In Men's Eyes), Laura (Anitra Ford, Invasion of the Bee Girls) and Toni (Woody Allen favorite Joy Bang) who are likewise seeking her missing artist father. Tracking the threesome to a nearby motel, she discovers them interrogating a bum (film noir icon Elisha Cook Jr.) who tells them of a plague that has gripped Point Dune's townspeople, and how it ties into a mysterious satanic figure set to return after a 100-year hiatus (hence the film's original title, The Second Coming). As is the case with all American horror films, the sophisticated city folk sadly underestimate Point Dune's local yokels – who turn into white-complected cannibals when the moon turns a blood red, and are all dispatched in a series of show-stopping murders.

The question remains: is Messiah of Evil an unsung genre masterpiece or yet another “pretentious horror cheapie?” Seeing as screenwriting couple William Huyck (who directed) and Gloria Katz (who produced) are simultaneously associated with one of America's most beloved films, American Graffiti (1974) and the universally reviled Howard the Duck (1986 – also enjoying a recent DVD release), the answer is probably a little bit of both. People discovering the film at drive-in triple bills, VHS tape or on countless public domain DVD releases are initially bowled over by its bizarre visuals and knockout setpieces, but later become acutely aware of its shortcomings on return visits. The parts Messiah of Evil gets right is absolute perfection, and several scenes rank up there with the very best that post modern horror film has to offer. But there's no escaping the fact that the film sometimes falls flat due to its budgetary limitations and has stretches of some egregiously bad acting.

Historically, Messiah was one of the very first films to capitalize on the success of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) and as Huyck points out on the commentary track to this Code Red DVD, Romero's representatives were quick to file a lawsuit when the film floated briefly under the alternate title of Dead People. (Huyck also points out in the disc's audio commentary that certain people were loathe to associate themselves with the project when it went under its original title The Second Coming, as it had connotations of being a pornographic film!) This tidbit is ironic, as this certainly didn't turn the tide of countless other Romero imitations flowing from Europe, most without an original idea in their undead craniums. Messiah's ghouls share much more in common with the dignified, pasty-faced ones in Carnival of Souls (1962), with all acts of cannibalism kept discretely offscreen.

Messiah of Evil has more historical signifigance in foreshadowing trends in modern horror, with David Cronenberg's explorations of visceral horror exploding in modern, sterile settings still a few years away. Messiah's most notorious scene follows Anitra Ford, after she flees a roadside pickup from the aforementioned albino gentleman. Walking the deserted city streets, lit by flouresecent tubing, Ford walks past the the strangely uninviting storefronts before ducking into a supermarket. The muzak plays loudly, and shadowy figures stalk her through the aisles. (One recalls the use of a similar setting to evoke soul-crushing dread in the 1975 adaptation of The Stepford Wives.) Ford encounters the town ghouls chowing down on some fresh meat in the freezer section, tries to run away – and in a finale worthy of novelist J. G. Ballard, is captured and killed by the zombies when the supermarket's automatic sliding doors refuse to slide open.

Messiah's other standout scene, Joy Bang watching a noisy collage of cowboy movie clips in an empty movie theater as it slowly fills up with zombie spectators, clocks in as a close second. Bang watches the onscreen action with disinterest, munching on a box of popcorn, until she realizes far too late that she is to be the featured late night snack. One wonders how this scene went over in similarily deserted grindhouse theaters during Messiah's initial theatrical run, inspiring the few attentive, sober viewers to nervously look over their shoulders to inspect the people sitting behind them.

A major key to the film's success is the main setting, the artist's abandoned seaside mansion, its walls covered with massive murals. Detailed, hard-edged paintings of department store escalators vie for attention alongside life-sized depictions of elderly ghouls intended to foreshadow the true identities of the Point Dune residents. An outsized pop art portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald rounds out the exhibition. The work of perpetual Hollywood handyman Jack Fiske aided by local artists, a telephone interview with muralist Joan Mocine recalling her time on the set is included as an Easter Egg on the DVD.

Long relegated to poor quality public domain releases, the folks at Code Red DVD have finally done this strongly flawed but fascinating film justice. Along with a superior transfer, Code Red acknowledges that the story behind Messiah of Evil is perhaps more worthy of attention that the rather arbitrary collection of scenes comprising the film's narrative. The disc is stuffed to overflowing with extras, with an accompanying audio commentary by Huyck and Katz chock full of outrageous stories. Among the countless factoids is that many of the film's zombie extras were freshly unemployed aerospace workers who enthusiastically chowed down on raw meat in lieu of what craft services offered that day. A included featurette, “Remembering Messiah of Evil” likewise culls many enjoyable anecdotes from the film's principals. Especially delightful is a telephone interview with the brassy Joy Bang, who reveals her nomenclature is in fact her maiden name (!) and admits that she was rather out of it at the time of her participation in the project. Bang also has some choice words to share about leading lady Marianne Hill. One wishes that Code Red tracked down albino actor Bennie Robinson for a chat. Stephen Thrower, in his chapter on the film in Nightmare USA describes a telephone conversation with Robinson as most unnerving, but won't say why. (Thrower is alluded to on the disc in a less than flattering light that I will leave for the consumer to uncover hidden amongst all the extras.) The cherries on this mile-high sundae are two short student films by Huyck and Katz, The Bride Stripped Bare and Down These Mean Streets. A documentary and film-noir inspired short story respectively, these two shorts use genre convention to make valid social and artistic statements – something that they attempted, and had limited success with with Messiah of Evil.

While there have been some Internet mutterings on fanboy message boards on the prudence of some recent Code Red DVD releases – Night of the Dribbler over Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker or The Redeemer, anyone? -- their edition of Messiah of Evil can be unconditionally recommended as an essential purchase for all cult horror film fans.

Thank God It's Friday?

FRIDAY THE 13th: THE NEW BLOOD (1988)
Directed by John Carl Buechler

FRIDAY THE 13th: JASON TAKES MANHATTAN (1989)
Directed by Rob Hedden

Love ‘em or leave ‘em, the Friday the 13th series kept horror on the big movie screens through the particularly dry Eighties, in appeasement of rowdy, appreciative audiences who cheered on the graphic murders of unsympathetic youths. Hockey-masked killing machine Jason Voorhees would arise from the dead time and again to provide grist for the mill, and one could count on some seasonal fright flick fare around Halloween time. While often cited as an example of fostering a callous disregard for human life among the young and impressionable, it’s hard to take any of the murders, especially towards the end of the series – seriously. Characters walk into brightly lit rooms where the killer is readily visible and pretend not to notice, people are murdered by being pushed across a room, et cetera. It’s alarming to note more evidence of a societal slide today with video games that encourage adolescents to kill virtual characters in a wide assortment of graphic ways, and real-life torture and murder scenes being available for a download off the net.

Paramount Studios honors its machete-wielding cash cow with two deluxe DVD editions on the waning entries in the series, Friday the 13th: The New Blood (1988) and Friday the 13th: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989). Both films try to bring something new to the shopworn, minimal plots of the previous entries. At this late stage, it appears that the Jason franchise was taking a lesson or two from the competing Nightmare On Elm Street series by jettisoning rational narratives altogether.

Friday the 13th: The New Blood ups the ante with a not-so defenseless teenager this time in the form of Tina (Lars Park Lincoln), a telekinetic teen with an even greater grasp of her abilities than Stephen King’s Carrie White. Taken to Camp Crystal Lake by her domineering mother and overbearing therapist for a week of intensive analysis, Carrie joins a nearby cadre of party hounds (those damn kids never do learn, do they?), and an unintentional burst of orgone energy from our heroine raises Jason from his watery grave (where we lost saw him in Friday the 13th Part IV) and the killings begin anew.

The New Blood has many impressive special effects set pieces, befitting a film directed by movie monster maker supreme John Carl Buechler. However, the MPAA was really cracking down on graphic violence at the time of this film’s release, and the majority of the murders are relatively sauce less this go round. As Buechler explains in the disc’s accompanying documentary Jason’s Destroyer: The Making of Friday the 13th: The New Blood, censors ripped into the film with far more frenzy than Jason did to his victims! Part of this is rectified with the addition of 21 “slashed scenes,” varying from snipped bits of dialogue to scenes of far greater graphic carnage. Other extras on this disc include a commentary track including Buechler, actors Lars Park Lincoln and Kane Hodder, and the fun short “Makeup by Maddy: Need A Little Touch Up Work My Ass” where two actresses from the film meet cute for a fun afternoon of shopping. An additional documentary, Mind Over Matter: The Truth About Telekinesis, featuring paranormal researchers, points out the distressing truth that those blessed with telekinesis can never harness it when a dangerous situation actually arises.

“A maniac is chasing us!” “Welcome to New York,” snaps a brassy Big Apple waitress in Friday the 13th VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. This entry remains controversial even among fans of the series. It takes Jason out of a remote rural setting and pits him in a bustling urban landscape, where his menace is diluted considerably. As it has been pointed out elsewhere there are already lots of people like Jason in Manhattan already, and the heavily armed populace there would more than likely take him out with a store-bought Magnum should he give them any out-of-towner ‘tude. The title alone is more than a bit of a cheat, as Jason chases around his captive prey on a cruise ship and spends less than half an hour in the city.

Jason Takes Manhattan has stunning location photography but leaves all coherent narrative in the garbage can. Characters lie still in order to get killed, survivors of a boat wreck jump out of a lifeboat with their clothes cleanly pressed, and Jason swims undetected across the Atlantic Ocean to stalk his victims in the city. The filmmakers at this point were keen that crowds didn’t line up for these films for their believability, and include a scene of Jason knocking the head off a victim to have it go flying clean off in the manner of a Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Toy Robot!

Special features include on this disc include a commentary track by actors Scott Reeves, Jensen Dagget and Kane Hodder, the documentary New York Has A New Problem, The Making of Friday the 13th: Jason Takes Manhattan, slashed scenes and a blooper reel. Audiences recently clamored for Jason once again in 2009 with a Friday the 13th remake in 2009 that was number one at the box office opening week. As long as the public demands the slaughter of innocents on its movie screens, it seems that a certain hulking hockey-masked slayer will only be too happy to comply.

MONSTERS, MARRIAGE AND MURDER IN MANCHVEGAS (2009)

Directed by Charles Roxburgh

Jenny (Marie Dellicker), All-Star Pete (Thomas Scalzo) and Marshall (Matt Farley) are the sole members of M.O.S. – the Manchvegas Outlaw Society. The three are cheerfully free of all ambition, and support themselves by doing lots of odd jobs in their small town of Manchvegas (in reality, Manchester, New Hampshire). They deliver papers, sell lemonade and record insipid pop music they peddle to the locals. Jenny begins to suspect that there may be more to life, and is frustrated that her relationship with Marshall hasn’t strayed from the platonic. She begins to date a series of older men, and Marshall and All-Star Pete begin a series of childish pranks to put a damper on Jenny’s romantic aspirations. In the meantime, Melinda Corbin (Sharon Scalzo) starts an affair with local grocer Vince (Kyle Kochan) in spite of her ever disapproving father (Kevin McGee). Vince and Melinda then become engaged, when Melinda mysteriously disappears while skinny dipping in the local stream. Shortly afterwards, other young women set to jump the broom turn up murdered. Could the local legend of a tribe of woolly “near men,” the Gospercaps, be somehow responsible? Determined to get to the bottom of all of this, Jenny and Marshall masquerade as a soon-to-be-betrothed couple, leading to a thrill-packed conclusion.

From the makers of Freaky Farley (2008), Monsters, Marriage and Murder in Manchvegas is a movie that is nearly impossible to dislike. Perpetually sunny and good natured, one is far too willing to look past its technical roughness to see a good hearted attempt to entertain its audience. The movie revels in its small town innocence. There is only one cuss word, the bloodless murders take place offstage and the Gospercaps, in their kneejerk monster getups would fail to frighten the most excitable infant. All scenes, with few exceptions are set outdoors in bucolic settings.

The project is altogether so harmless that an unintentional sinister aura begins to pervade it. The character of Marshall (producer Farley, who also played the lead in Freaky Farley) appears to be a textbook example of arrested development. His desire to keep his gang of three chaste and pure verges on the unwholesome, and when he reluctantly accepts Jenny as a girlfriend, one wonders if the relationship ever gets up to the plate, let alone first, second or third base.

In spite of this, the film adheres to its Walt Disney coda of clearly defined bad guys and pure-hearted heroes, and a good time is guaranteed for all. Shot on Fuji Film (a rarity in this digital age), the DVD includes several documentaries on the making of the film. Director Charles Roxburgh cites the American horror films of the mid-Seventies to early Eighties as his biggest influence, but Manchvegas is as far away from those downbeat features as you can get. There are trailers for other films from the same production team, the aforementioned Freaky Farley among them. Manchvegas works well as an after dinner mint after an evening of overly serious film fare.

Battle of the Black Devil Dolls

BLACK DEVIL DOLL FROM HELL (1984)
Directed by Chester Novell Turner

BLACK DEVIL DOLL (2007)
Directed by Jonathan Lewis

Circumspect church woman Helen Black (Shirley L. Jones) tends to her spotless home with vinyl-slipcase- encrusted furniture in an unnamed Illinois suburb. Stopping in a curiosity shop one day, she buys a dreadlocked ventriloquist dummy in spite of the shopkeeper’s warning – cue Casiotone key held down with one finger, eeeeeeeeee – that the doll always returns by its own volition after a couple of days. Once home, the dummy comes to life and spies on Shirley in the shower. The doll overpowers her, then bounds and rapes her bellowing Ebonics-laced obscenities. “Taste the wrath of my tongue, BITCH!”In typical faulty movie logic, the frigid young woman later decides she likes rough sex and begins to cruise the local singles bars for men.

Once you’ve had wood, nothing’s good, and Helen sends her flesh and blood suitor away and has a fatal confrontation with the doll. True to form, the doll returns to the curiosity shop to await a new bitch.

The original Black Devil Doll from Hell (1984), from gutter auteur “Chester N. Turner” was a true cult phenomenon. Found in only the most desolate of mom-and-pop video stores in the Eighties and Nineties, few knew what they were getting into when they popped the VHS tape in their home entertainment systems. Apparently filmed with only the most primitive of video cameras and edited with two VCRs, Devil Doll was a joyously repugnant misuse of magnetic tape. Ugly, foul and mean-spirited, the film fulfilled a requirement that even the roughest horror films often fail to deliver – there were some people out there who really didn’t want you to see this, as it spoke of harsh truths and ugly sentiments lurking in the male consciousness. There’s a scene in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) where the white trash killers kill a family and videotape it for later amusement. Devil Doll was the real thing, baby. Better not get hit by a truck tomorrow and let your family find this tape in your linen closet.

Chester N. Turner would go on to make another shot-on-video horror film, Tales from the Quadead Zone (1986), a horror omnibus once again featuring Shirley L. Jones in the wraparound story. Comforted by the ghost of her dead son, represented by an off-screen hair dryer blowing her hair as a ghostly “yes yes yes yes” trills on the soundtrack, Jones reads some stories from the Quadead zone. Turner had matured as a filmmaker by this time and was able to inject some genuine pathos into his storyline to back up his poverty-stricken visuals. Quadead failed to have the same impact as Devil Doll, and Turner faded into obscurity shortly afterwards. The iMDB claims that Turner died in a car wreck in 1996.

When it was time for horror T-shirt impresario Shawn Lewis of Rotten Cotton infamy to helm his own exploitative horror film, he would call upon Black Devil Doll for inspiration. It was time to bring the Black Devil Doll into the 21st Century, and Lewis and company would successfully breathe life to the wooden one in the post Tarrantino age.

Black Devil Doll focuses on the more worldly-wise Heather (Heather Murphy), bored to tears in her own Northern Californian tract house littered with pop culture detritus. Fooling around with an Ouija board one evening, her plastic ventriloquist doll becomes possessed with the spirit of a militant Black extremist, freshly executed on death row for the murder of young Caucasian girls. The two begin a love affair with trips to the park and romantic picnic until the doll declares his need for sexual variety and sends Heather tearfully away (“Go to McDonald’s, BITCH! I don’t care!”). A quartet of surgically enhanced party girls arrives, and the doll returns to his sensual and homicidal ways in an orgy of rape and murder.

Hysterically funny, Black Devil Doll uses excess as its key to success. Laughs pile up with scenes droning on for far too long, such as a lesbian car wash scene that goes on and on and on until it ceases to be erotic and becomes an ironic commentary on the bankruptcy of the male sexual imagination. Yet another female character, Natasha Talonz, spends over 40 minutes in a shower washing her monstrous breasts.

The film also takes fresh swipes at our processed food culture, as in the scenes of the lonely Heather picking away at her freedom fries in a dreadful 1950s diner. While blatantly racist and sexist, one could well imagine something like Black Devil Doll springing from minority or lesbian feminist filmmakers as a satirical attack against the cultural hegemony of white heterosexual men.

Black Devil Doll is definitely not recommended for humor impaired viewers. As a searing document against certain unspoken cultural truths about America, Black Devil Doll comes nowhere near the scorched earth territory of the original Black Devil Doll from Hell – but then again, nothing else does, either! Laugh it up.

JACK SMITH AND THE DESTRUCTION OF ATLANTIS

Directed By Mary Jordan

How does one begin to ponder the unanswered question that was underground artist extraordinaire Jack Smith? Fleeing the dreary Midwest of his childhood for New York’s Greenwich Village in the 1950’s, Smith would influence and inspire a generation of filmmakers and artists while steadfastly maintaining an oath of poverty and self-imposed obscurity. Tall and gangly, Smith was an openly gay artist who drew upon the gaudy Technicolor fantasies of Maria Montez for his own personal mythology. Furthermore, Smith embraced these visions of exotic lands replicated on Burbank soundstages at face value, without camp, without irony. To Smith, these films were a portal to another world free of ugliness and injustice. Pulling bits of scenery and costumes from dustbins and recruiting actors off the street, Smith would explore his hothouse vision with fevered abandon.

Flaming Creatures (1963), Smith’s only completed film would create a sensation, with audiences lining up around the block at the fiercely independent theaters who risked police raids by screening it. Using over-exposed black and white film, Creatures follows the rooftop orgy of a group of men, woman and transvestites as they roll in and out of extravagant costumes. The soundtrack consists of classical music from scratchy records, with Smith whispering “Psst! Did you hear? Ali Baba is coming!” at one point. Seen today, Creatures seems tame and antiquated and is best appreciated in a historical context.

Smith would never experience the critical, let alone the financial success of Creatures in his lifetime. Staging plays throughout the Seventies in his loft apartment, hipsters would gather at midnight only to be shooed away by an indignant Smith, incensed that they dare come see his work on their schedule. As one participant in the documentary Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis recollects, the only night Smith staged his seven-hour-plus production in its entirety was on the night no one showed up.

Filmmaker Mary Jordan declares that Smith, who died penniless after contracting AIDS in 1989, was ruthlessly pillaged and then discarded by the art intelligentsia. Using her camera in the manner of a high-powered rifle, Jordan goes on a safari hunt to shoot the purported “villains” in Smith’s life, frequently with their tacit permission. Underground film maven Jonas Mekas is front row and center in Jordan’s sights. Mekas allegedly took Flaming Creatures away from Smith, roadshowing it in the manner of exploitation hucksters of yore, later turning it into the cause célèbre that it would become for defenders of free expression. Mekas happily admits to being partially responsible for this claim.

Next on the hit list are Andy Warhol and Federico Fellini, both no longer around to defend themselves. Warhol was probably inspired by Smith to pick up a movie camera to begin making his own films, but their approaches were as different as you could possibly get. Smith would flood his viewfinder with filigree and exotica, using fluid camera movements, whereas Warhol would nail his camera to the ground and focus his camera on ugly and banal subjects. Jordan then argues that Fellini copied some of the visuals he used in Juliet of the Spirits and Satyricon from Smith. Fellini, in the company of such extravagant film stylists in his native Italy, may have heard of Smith, but had far better sources of inspiration nearby. Smith may have readily influenced schlockmeister Andy Milligan, who was active in New York City at around the same time. Milligan’s no-budget costume dramas and handheld camera owe a certain debt to Smith, but curiously is left out of this retrospective.

Smith was staunchly anti-capitalist, an example of art for art’s sake taken to an illogical extreme. It’s refreshing that Smith did not toil as a paste-up artist until that one “big break.” At the same time, this writer is familiar with other artists who declare that those around them have “sold out” while hiding closeted bitterness and jealousy over their contemporaries’ success. It appears that Smith had a lot in common with Screem magazine favorite Underdog Lady Suzanne Muldowney (see issue #14) and definitely falls into a category of artists whose work I admire that I wouldn’t want to meet.
Jordan is to be commended on assembling so many snippets of film, artwork, and interviews on an artist who appeared to prefer that his work be temporary if at all. There are extensive sound bites from Smith, who had a distinctive voice calling to mind Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh’s Booji Boy. One other pundit describes Smith’s voice as one “suppressing a burp.” A list of high-profile celebrities is on hand to describe Smith’s life and times, such as John Waters, Holly Woodlawn and George Kuchar. The disc also features interview segments not included in the feature film. In this section, performance artist Collette describes a frightening altercation with Smith that suggests that the artist may have actually benefitted from a trip to the Stony Lonesome.

Lovingly and artfully assembled with care, Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis joyously celebrates a man who truly may have been the earthly manifestation of Oscar Wilde’s Sphinx Without a Secret.