The Scoop: Hollywood just can't make good voodoo movies. With one lone exception (Val Lewton's wonderful "I Walked With a Zombie"), they all just come off as contrived and hokey. "The Serpent and the Rainbow" is no different.
This stab at voodoo credibility is a bunch of zombie silliness that Bill Pullman would probably rather leave off his resume. He plays Dennis Allen, a research scientist who travels to Haiti for a pharmaceutical company to investigate a drug that may create zombies. Before long, he gets caught up in a web of intrigue, sex, hallucinogens and bad acting. It was directed by the otherwise talented Wes Craven, who is clearly working outside of his comfort zone a bit and straining from the effort. The film is a very loose adaptation of the book by Wade Davis, which in turn was based on an allegedly true story.
"The Serpent and the Rainbow" actually has a pretty vocal legion of devoted fans, but it's kind of hard to see what the fuss is all about. This pile of voodoo hoodoo tries to be mystical and creepy, but instead is just horrible. If this thing was being made today, you just know Nicolas Cage would be starring in it. Stay far away.
Best Line: "Don't let them bury me! I'm not dead!"
Side Note: Avant garde singer Diamanda Galas makes an uncredited appearance as one of the voices of the dead.
The Scoop: Can a society ruled entirely by women still be misogynistic? It can when it comes to hilarious '50s sci-fi.
The first manned expedition to Venus crash lands, and the three thoroughly condescending men aboard (Eric Fleming, Dave Willock, Patrick Waltz) find themselves captive in a miniskirted all-woman society ruled by Queen Yllana (Laurie Mitchell), who has a severe hatred for men (turns out it's all their fault she's not pretty anymore) and wants to destroy the Earth. Zsa Zsa Gabor is on hand to camp it up as Talleah, the planet's chief scientist, but even she is not immune to the charms of our three space studs and helps them escape. Who needs a career when you can marry the first guy to come along?
Like a beer commercial fantasy stretched out to 80 minutes, the supporting cast is populated by a slew of beauty queens who look great but act horribly. The production design in great, though -- the epitome of what you'd expect from 1950s cardboard movie cheese. It's all just a goofy, campy hoot.
Best Line: "Why don't you girls knock off all this Gestapo stuff and try to be a little friendly."
Side Note: Most of the costumes are recycled from "Forbidden Planet" (1956) while many of the models and effects are taken from "World Without End" (1956) and "Paris Playboys" (1954).
Companion Viewing: "Fire Maidens of Outer Space" (1956), "Cat Women of the Moon" (1953) and "Vegas in Space" (1991).
The Scoop: Looked at the right way, this mishmash from director Jack Arnold can be seen as a template for early Marvel Comics. College science professor Dr. Donald Blake (a name that was later used as the secret identity of the Mighty Thor) gets injured while examining a gamma-irradiated coelocanth and turns into a creature on a kill-crazy rampage (just one step away from the Hulk's backstory).
Trying to picture the film that way is just about the only way to get through it, because you certainly can't take it seriously. Besides Arthur Franz (who plays Blake), the cast includes Joanna Moore, Judson Pratt, Nancy Walters, teen heartthrob Troy Donahue and the ubiquitous Whit Bissell.
"Monster on the Campus" was produced by Universal in an attempt to compete at the drive-ins with AIP and the other teen-centric B-grade studios. And when a major tries to stoop to compete with the little guys on their own terms, the results are almost never good. In this case, the effects are bad, the monster is more hilarious than terrifying and the plot holes are enormous -- which is enough to make this a campy B-movie delight.
Best Bit: This wonderfully witty exchange: "Did you know your dog's a throwback?" "A throwback? He's a German Shepherd!"
Side Note: The silly looking monster makeup was designed by Bud Westmore, who had a long career in Hollywood working on much better fare, including "The Incredible Shrinking Man" (1957), "The Andromeda Strain" (1971), "Soylent Green" (1973) and the "Dragnet" television series.
Companion Viewing: "I Was a Teenage Werewolf" (1957), which gets this formula right.
The Scoop: This descendant of the '50s road racing movies plays more like a beach party film on wheels, right down to the casting of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello look-alikes James Darren and Pamela Tiffin. There's some wacky comedy, a little music, and lots of innocent flirtation between the boys and the girls -- with the action transplanted from the beach to the race track.
The movie's primary purpose seems to be to spread the good news about Chrysler's then-new Turbine Car, which promised to be the wave of the future (and we all know how well that turned out). Here's the plot, not that it matters: Casey (Darren) and his buddy Chuck (Doug McClure) are whiz kid mechanics who are hired by snobby playboy Stanford (Peter Mann) to build a super-fast car for the Big Race. Casey and Chuck come up with a jet car powered by a turbine engine of their own design (played by the Chrysler engine), but when a test run fails, Stanford fires them. So, they fix up the engine and use it to race against Stanford in the Big Race. Meanwhile Chuck's sister Eadie (Tiffin) hangs around and makes google eyes at Casey.
This film also features appearances by racing stars, such as Mickey Thompson and Bill Krause. There are worse places to find mindless fun, I suppose...
Best Bit: Casey's recitation of drag racing rules as foreplay. What's more, it works.
Side Note: One song, "Look at Me," was written by Oscar-winning composer Randy Newman and another, "Boss Barracuda," is performed by the Surfaris -- both feature lead vocals by future game show host Wink Martindale.
Companion Viewing: "The Roadracers" (1959) and the original "Speed Racer" TV cartoon series.
The Scoop: Thie original adaptation of Vincent Bugliosi's book about prosecuting members of the Manson Family for the Tate-LaBianca murders of 1969 goes light on the crime and heavy on the investigation.
Originally a TV miniseries, part one details the gathering of evidence in the wake of the murders, and part two covers the trial. Not only is it incredibly self-serving to Bugliosi (played by George DiCenzo), but the voice-over narration of passages from the book make this sound as stiff as an episode of "Dragnet." And, even worse, second rate cover versions (by the band Silverspoon) are used instead of the original Beatles songs that fueled Manson's bizarre philosophy.
But on the plus side, Steve Railsbeck gives a definitive performance as Charles Manson. That alone makes it still worth a look after all these years.
Best Bit: During a courtroom sidebar, Bugliosi stops the proceedings to remind the defense attorney how to pronounce his name: "No, the 'G' is silent. It's pronounced 'Boo-lee-oh-see.'"
Side Note: The LaBianca murder sequence was shot on location at the crime scene, in the actual LaBianca house.
The Scoop: Let the monster mash begin! By the 1940s Universal Studios, which had built its empire with its classic monster movies of the previous decade, was in dire straits as it saw its box office returns declining. Fans just weren't buying into all those new Frankenstein, Dracula, Mummy, etc. movies like they used to. So with this film, Universal tried to up the ante and began blending all it monster franchises into one -- this is at once the fifth in the fading Frankenstein series and the second in the more popular Wolf Man series. And with each new entry, it just kept getting worse and worse.
Since this was all about selling youngsters on the fight scenes between the Wolf Man and the Frankenstein monster, the plot is pretty incidental. But here's what happens -- some graverobbers inadvertently awaken Larry Talbot, a.k.a. the Wolf Man (played again by Lon Chaney, Jr., who also played the monster in the previous Frankenstein picture, "The Ghost of Frankenstein"), who seeks out yet another descendent of Dr. Frankenstein to cure his condition. That descendent is played by Ilona Massey this time around, although she doesn't actually do anything here because, apparently, girls don't do science. Meanwhile, Bela Lugosi finally gets his chance to play the reawakened monster (after appearing as Ygor in the two previous Frankenstein films and a gypsy werewolf in the first Wolf Man film) and completely sucks at it. In fact, Lugosi's is arguably the worst Frankenstein monster on celluloid. And to round out the déja vu among the cast, Lionel Atwill returns as his third different character in his third Frankenstein movie, this time playing the local mayor.
This is not just a monster mash, but a mish-mash, and the film's exciting poster art in no way prepares the viewer for the actually mediocrity it is promoting.
Pitting two previously popular movie monsters against each other is a pretty desperate move, really, and "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" was the first film to go down to that well -- and in the process, proving that the well was dry before any of the later imitators even got there. This particular monster mash series would continue for a few more films, eventually incorporating Dracula and even Abbott and Costello into the mix. It also set the stage for other stabs at the genre, including the more recent "Freddy vs. Jason" and "Alien vs. Predator" flicks.
Best Line: "He is not insane. He simply wants to die."
Side Note: Lugosi was the studio's first choice to play the monster in the first Frankenstein film in 1931, but he turned them down because his star's vanity (newly-found after the success of "Dracula") was offended by playing a part with no dialogue and heavy make-up. A dozen years later, with his career on the skids and jealous of Boris Karloff's career success with the monster, Lugosi finally agreed to play the role.
Companion Viewing: "House of Frankenstein" (1944), "House of Dracula" (1945) and "Young Frankenstein" (1974).
The Scoop: In the proud tradition of such roadside exploitation pulp as "Reefer Madness" comes this similar cautionary tale about the evils of narcotics. The subject this time is cocaine, which is much less benign than marijuana, but the cinematic results are just as goofy. The genre's full capacity for breathless hysteria is brought to bear on this story of a small-town brother and sister who are led to The Big City by a taste for the nose candy, where they fall into crime, prostitution, racketeering and -- worst of all -- swearing.
Obviously, this is another classic. It hasn't attained the legendary cult status of "Reefer Madness," probably for the simple fact that it wasn't embraced by the '60s counterculture the way that film was. If the hippies' drug of choice had been coke instead of pot, "The Cocaine Fiends" might have wound up being a much bigger part of our cultural history. (Of course, you could argue that if coke had been their drug of choice, Woodstock would have looked like something out of a Hunter S. Thompson novel instead of simply being a mud-caked lovefest.)
This film, like "Reefer Madness," "Slaves in Bondage," "Marihuana" and others, was born out of the roadshow circuit that flourished across rural America between the two world wars. Most often made by churches or morality groups, these films purported to offer education and advice on how to deal with many of the problems facing young people -- mainly drugs, sex and white slavery. The reels were driven from town to town by showmen who would often set up tents to show the films if the small towns they were visiting did not have movie theaters.
These movies tended to draw big crowds, not only because they were the only show in town, but also because audiences got to see a little titillation on the way to the film's spoon-fed moral message. It was this last fact that was seized on my many cheapie exploitation producers who found that they could get audiences for their sex-and-violence stories and skirt the mainstream film industry's production codes by appending ham-fisted moral messages to their work.
The genre was eventually killed off, first by World War II, and then later by the wave of postwar prosperity that brought urban entertainment to every corner of the country. But the films live on as high camp relics of a very different age.
Best Line: "Tonight I'm gonna take you on a sleigh ride with some snow birds."
Side Note: This is a remake of an earlier film called "The Pace That Kills" (1928) and footage from this was later edited into "Confessions of a Vice Baron" (1942) -- all three films were directed by William A. O'Connor.
