The Future is Bleak

 In the 70's, the "scare" du jour was the overpopulation of the Earth.  Much like the "global warming" scare of today, many scientists jumped on the band wagon and shouted how the planet could not hold together if the current population trend was not curbed.  This led to Hollywood, never one to shy away from controversy (at least not since the post-Code days), to jump in the fray with multiple entries to cash in on the fears of the public.

There were two of these dystopias that managed to garner big budgets and make a huge impact on science-fiction buffs for years to come, Logan's Run & Soylent Green.  Both managed to express different views of the outcome of this overpopulation trend and make some profoundly memorable impact on the public as well.

Logan's Run (1976)

Logan's Run takes place in what is essentially a liberal's wet dream.  Society is "benevolently" governed by an unseen force, and, apparently, no one ever has to work.  Food, mostly fruit and nuts, but still food, is readily available, and all one has to do is wander around doing whatever one wants to do.

The only drawback is everyone must go through a ritual called "Carousel" at age 30.  You see, at birth everyone has a crystal embedded in the palm of their hand which changes colors at various points in their lives.  The crystal goes black on "Last Day" and all those people who have black crystals must go through the ritual, which essentially annihilates them, albeit with the promise of "renewal".

The liberal wet dream continues with the fact that there is no crime except for the crime of trying to avoid having to experience Carousel.  These criminals are called "Runners", and a police force exists called "Sandmen" whose sole job is to terminate the Runners.  Logan (Michael York)  is one of these Sandmen.  During one chase of a Runner Logan finds an unusual object, an ankh.  This leads to his being questioned by the authorities.  (Surprise!  The "authorities" in charge is actually a computer!  Another fear du jour, but one that really wouldn't come into full fruition until the '80s)

Logan is charged with discovering the secret "Sanctuary" to where Runners who have managed to elude the Sandmen have escaped.  In order to convince the underworld that he is a legitimate Runner, Logan's life crystal is changed to black.  He is then accompanied by a girl, Jessica (Jenny Agutter), on this trip.  His best friend, fellow Sandman Francis (Richard Jordan), now becomes his nemesis.  The "Run" of the title now becomes apparent.  Logan must convince everyone that even though he is a sandman who has terminated many Runners, is now himself trying to run.

At one point, a robot (of unknown origin) attempts to hold them in his icy domain.  It becomes apparent that none of the Runners who managed to escape made it any further, because the robot Box (Roscoe Lee Browne) has them all encased in ice.  But Logan and Jessica manage to escape even this obstacle and get "outside".

There they find a lush and overgrown forest (the plants have taken over, without all those annoying humans around to deforest the planet).  They also find the only person over the age of 30 that they have ever met, an eccentric old man (Peter Ustinov), who has apparently lived all this time with only a band of cats for company.

Logan's Run was box-office gold, and even inspired a short-lived TV series, thus becoming one of several TV shows that were offshoots of movies, and became part of my personal list of TV shows that I adored, but that never caught on... :-(  (see Planet of the Apes, Timecop, et. al.)

The movie was based on a book by the same name written by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson.  There are some significant differences between the book and the movie, most notably the age limit is 21 in the book, not 30 as in the movie.  And there is no hope of renewal, everyone is sent to a Sleepshop and euthanized. Also the ending was altered, but I won't spoil that in case you want to read the book.

Soylent Green (1973)

A somewhat bleaker look at the future of over-population, where the government does nothing to curtail it (for reasons that are made clear at the end of this flick), Soylent Green takes place in the year 2022 (not that far away in the future now, kiddies).  The movie begins with a montage of the history of the world (or New York, where this movie takes place).  It was created by Charles Braverman, and shows the history of population growth, with the scenes changing in ever-increasing rapidity as the opening progresses.

The main film begins, as stated earlier, in the year 2022 in Manhattan.  People are wall to wall, crowded in the streets in the daytime, and sleeping wherever possible at night. (Apartments if you are lucky and have a job to pay for it, or in the stairwells and hallways of those apartment complexes if you are unemployed, which a major portion of the populous is.  This is the seamy side of the liberal wet dream of the previous movie.  Everyone is dependent on the government still, but life is bleaker)

Charlton Heston plays Thorn, a police detective, who lives in an apartment with his friend Sol (played by Edward G. Robinson is his final role.)  In the beginning a rich man (Joseph Cotten) is murdered by a man who claims he has been sent to do it by higher-ups because he, Cotten, knows too much.  Thorn is sent to investigate the murder.  He is met at the apartment by the rich man's mistress, Shirl (Leigh Taylor-Young) Apparently one of the few jobs left that women can do is to be a house whore, and they are called "furniture" and come with the apartment.

Policemen are less scrupulous in this future than one would expect.  After questioning both Shirl and the rich man's bodyguard, Tab (Chuck Connors), Thorn leaves with several trinkets of comfort and some food, as well as some interesting books.  He takes the books and food back to his apartment to share with Sol.   Sol has a job as a "book" which means he does investigative work in research for the police, Thorn in particular. Thorn sets him on the task of deciphering what information he can glean from the books he brings back.

Meanwhile, Thorn continues his investigation, but as he gets closer to the truth, pressure from those higher-ups  force his boss to close the case.  But Thorn refuses to give it up.  He talks with a priest who was the last person to talk with the rich man to find out what the rich man told him.  But the priest can only express shock from what he has heard.

As Thorn gets closer to the truth, several attempts are made on his life, including one by the bodyguard, Tab, trying to put Thorn out of commission before he can discover the truth.  Of course, none of these, can be successful or we would not have the denouement at the end.  To help him along to that end, Roth discovers the grisly truth and decides to take advantage of a government sponsored suicide program rather than live with the truth.  Thorn arrives too late to stop Roth from going through with it, but does arrive in time to hear the truth that Roth discovered.

But Thorn needs proof and so he must make his way to the Soylent factory and see the facts for himself.  Surely no one reading this blog could possibly have made it this far in life without having heard the final denouement quote, but if there be that some one, stop reading now...

Thorn is critically wounded, it is not clear whether he will live or die, but he manages to tell his boss

Soylent Green was based on a novel Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison.  There is quite a bit of difference in the book than in the movie.  For one thing, the whole soylent production is a legitimate food product made from a combination of soybeans and lentils, thus the name "Soylent".  The cannibalism theme does not appear at all in the book.  Harrison was once quoted as saying he was about "50% pleased" with the production made from his book.

The cultural after-effects of the movie still resonate today.  A recent political cartoon by someone who was apparently anti-Obamacare used the familiarity with the movie for its own purposes.

Both movies are well worth your time.  Well, that's it from the back seat of the Plymouth Fury this time.  Drive home with care, kiddies.

Quiggy

Hail, Hail, The Gang's All Here

Walter Hill is, without a doubt, the king of "guy movies".  His list of credits reads like a 'must see" list of  guy movies, action flicks with great dialogue to boot.  The Long Riders, 48 Hours & Another 48 Hours, Red Heat, Last Man Standing and of course, the two titles the subject of this review to name a few.  He also wrote the screenplays for two of the three sequels to Alien, as well as the screenplay to the remake of The Getaway.  Not only that, he was instrumentally involved as one of the producers of the Tales of the Crypt TV series, and directed three episodes of the same.  See what I mean?  Every guy movie fan should take his hat off to Walter Hill.

Hill, along with contemporary John Carpenter (the subject of a future review), rank among the list of directors of which I am a "groupie".  I wouldn't stop Tom Hanks on the street or ask to shake John Travolta's hand, but I might ask a director for an autograph while he is eating in a diner...:-)  It takes a real sensibility to direct action movies and not have them come out looking like every other action movie that came down the pike.  And that is saying a lot, because, as much as I love James Bond movies, most of them are interchangeable in plots and pacing.

The Warriors (1979)

 This classic movie begins with a confab being called on all the gangs of NYC to meet to hear out Cyrus (Roger Hill) the leader of the biggest gang in the city.  The Warriors (Michael Beck, et. al.) are traveling all the way from Coney Island, their home, to Van Cortlandt Park in the heart of the city.  There they hear Cyrus with the immortal beginning words

Can you count, suckahs?!!!

Cyrus tells of a plan to unite all the gangs and control the city though that unity.  But Luther (David Patrick Kelly) a member of a rival gang, shoots him.  Then, in the ensuing havoc,  Luther manages to convince everyone that it was the Warriors who were responsible.

Now begins one of the greatest chase movies ever made.  The Warriors have to get back to the security of their own territory, but have to cross numerous other gangs turf in the process.  Some of these gangs would get ripped if the appeared in the real world with their own individual markings.  One of the coolest (also one of the most unrealistic) is the Baseball Furies.  These guys wear makeup and NY Yankees-like pinstripe baseball uniforms.  And wield baseball for weapons.  (Question.  Why is the only gun used  in the whole movie the one used by Luther to kill Cyrus???)

I'll shove that bat up your ass and turn you into a popsicle!

The Warriors run into several obstructions, including a breakdown of the subway which makes them have to go off on foot through several gangs territories, and causes the band to have to split up, thus ensuring some intense moments, including one scene witn an all-girl gang called the Lizzies (insert your own prurient comment here)

Eventually most, but not all, the Warriors  end up back at Coney Island in time for a confrontation with Luther and his gang, The Rogues.  Luther comes on the scene in a car, and here again is another classic scene as Luther taunts the Warriors by clacking a couple of beer bottles together and  chanting:

Warriors!  Come out to play!  Warriors!  Come out to pla-ay!

 An interesting side note, here.  Hill sent David Patrick Kelly off to think about this scene, saying the scene  needed something.  The entire clacking bottles and chant scene was ad-libbed.

This is the first movie I ever saw at a drive-in on my own (not as a family group outing, in other words).  I still remember it well, sitting there in my car with a six pack and a pizza, entranced by the action on the screen.  Some of those guys went on to bigger stardom.  James Remar (as Ajax) has been in numerous movies over the years,  Michael Beck (as Swan) has not been near as prolific, probably due to being in a couple of duds after this one (Xanadu & Megaforce) which left him to TV roles more or less after that.  David Patrick Kelly played heavies in a number of movies throughout the 80's.

Recently, several members of the cast who portrayed the Warriors showed up for a one-day fan fest in NYC.  Wish I could have gone.  Nothing would have stopped me if I lived in New York City...(except maybe a blockade by the Baseball Furies...)

Streets of Fire (1984)

Hill returned to the gang theme again in 1984 with another great action flick, Streets of Fire.

The movie is subtitled "A Rock & Roll Fable" and that is a perfect description of  it.  Diane Lane, looking as hot as ever, is Ellen Aim, a local girl turned rock & roll goddess, doing a free show for her hometown, despite the misgivings of her manager, played with the perfect mix of sarcasm and greed by Rick Moranis.

Enter Willem Dafoe in one of his early roles as Raven, the leader of a biker gang on the bad side of town.  He kidnaps Ellen and takes her back to his nightclub and ties her up to his bed.  Deborah Van Valkenberg, as Reva writes to her brother Tom (Michael Paré) who used to be lovers with ellen to come home and rescue her.

Paré plays a perfect reluctant hero, with just the right blend of bravado and wit.  With a bit of action that enthralls even after numerous viewings, Tom rescues Ellen, and with a few sidetracks, including having to hijack the tour bus of an all-black vocal group which consists of among others Robert Townsend, they mke it back to the relative safety of the nicer part of town.  But not for long.

Raven roars into town for revenge.  Raven says he'll leave peaceably, but he wants Tom's head on a stick before he does.  Needless to say, it comes down to a knockdown drag out duking between Paré and Dafoe.

The movie ends with a final musical interlude (I forgot to mention there are several in this movie) with The Sorels getting a shot at opening the concert for Ellen.  They perform "I Can Dream About You" (which was actually sung by a guy named Dan Hartman and went to #1 on the Billboard charts in 1984.)

Several things to note:  One. This movie has some of the coolest wipes I have ever seen in a movie.  If you don't know what a "wipe", it's a transition from one scene to another with the screen changing in motion (as opposed to just an abrupt scene change.

Two.  If you are a big Meat Loaf fan, you may think a couple of the songs sound like Loaf songs.  In fact, Jim Steinman who wrote a lot of Meat Loaf's hits, wrote two of the songs that Ellen aim sings (Tonight is What It Means to Be Young & Nowhere Fast).  If the music doesn't have you humming for a couple of days after watching it, you haven't got the soul for rock & roll.

Three.  And this is just an opinion, but I would bet that not even ½ of the people who made I Can Dream About You a number one song even heard about this movie much less saw it.  It failed to make a profit.  But it is still a fantastic movie.

Well that's it from the backseat of the Plymouth Fury this time.  Drive home safely.

Quiggy

Heavy Metal Thunder

Motorcycles!  Be there any young virile man (or even some women) who hasn't dreamed of flying down the highway on a chopper, the wind flowing through his (or her hair) and experiencing the thrill that generations before have experienced, that of the feeling of total freedom?  Marlon Brando, leather-jacketed and brimming with machismo asking the response to "What are you rebelling against, Johnny?"... "What'ya got?"

Hollywood has always had a love affair with motorcycles, but in the early days the riders were mostly outcasts and delinquents.  Occasionally some good guy hero would appear on the scene who was also a biker, but the norm was to have the motorcycle seen as a threat to the staid community.  One of the weirdest of these was one called Werewolves on Wheels in which a motorcycle gang is cursed by a satanic cult.

The Wild Angels (1966)

A movie from the King of the Drive-In, Roger Corman, The Wild Angels apparently had the blessing of Hell's Angels MC because they are acknowledged in the opening credits.  Which may or may not be surprising, since the motorcycle club in the movie is not cast in a particularly good light.  The movie begins with Peter Fonda (named "Blues" in the movie) arrives at the work place of a fellow biker "The Loser (Bruce Dern) to tell him they have figured out where his, Dern's, stolen bike ended up.

The biker gang, a fictional club of the real Hell's Angels, all ride out to the town where a group of Mexicans are running a chopper shop.  Apparently an illegal "chop shop", to boot, because the gang finds evidence of The Loser's chopped bike and proceed to kick some culo.  But the police arrive en masse so the gang makes their getaway.  But Loser hijacks one of the police motorcycles.  In the ensuing chase he is shot in the back by a cop and is captured.

Meanwhile back at the club, everyone is worried about the Loser.  Some of the worry is over his health, but a majority is over what will happen to him when he is back to health and then prosecuted for his crimes.  So an elaborate plan is hatched to rescue Loser from the hospital.  But not being doctors, or even halfway aware of the negative consequences, they only manage to get him free to watch him die.

An all-out party happens again at the funeral when the preacher at the church decides to use the format to preach a half-hearted sermon, which of course is not well-received by the gang members.  They knock out the preacher and break out the liquor and destroy the church.  After which they go to bury the Loser in the cemetery.  But the locals cause a ruckus, and the Angels being what they are join in a melee.

Roger Corman delivers a very exciting piece here, like most of his movies on a rather limited budget. (He made this one for about $350K).  There's not much plot, but there is some decent Corman violence, and Fonda shows some promise in one of his early film roles.  This role is a bit edgier than that of Wyatt/Captain America in Easy Rider (reviewed below) but Fonda still shines through.  Diane Ladd, who was Bruce Dern's real life wife is good as the Loser's wife here.  And it's easy to see why Nancy Sinatra didn't go very far as an actress.  A mannequin could have been her stand-in and no one would have noticed.

Easy Rider (1969)

This is it folks.  The iconic movie that made Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and even Jack Nicholson stars.  It was also a turning point in film, moving away from the syrupy movies that preceded it to the harder edged stuff that came after.  The film has been called a touchstone of the counter culture.  It shows a contrast between the staid old school outlook of the 50's and before to the new oncoming viewpoint that the 60's produced, both on the news and life scene as well as in the movies.

The movie begins with a drug deal.  We are introduced to the two main characters Billy (Hopper) and Wyatt aka "Captain America" (Fonda).  Fonda is called Captain America at points in the movie mostly because of his American flag inspired helmet and motorcycle.  The two complete the deal with the Mexican drug dealer and the scene shifts to them selling the same stash to a limo-driven big wig.  Having made the sale, they stuff the money in a tube and hide it in Wyatt's gas tank.

THe movie shifts at this point to their journey to go see Mardi Gras in New Orleans.  Along the way, they pick up a hitchhiker who is going to his commune.  The two stay for a day in the commune, and we get to see life as it was attempted by uneducated hippies who had an ideal but no clue how to achieve it.   The hippies are barely surviving, but most of them seem to accept the consequences of their fate.  As Billy and Wyatt are leaving, the hitchhiker gives them some LSD telling them to use it when the time is right.

Back on the road, the two are going through a town which appears to be having a parade.  Billy and Wyatt goofily join the parade but are arrested for "parading without a permit", which sounds to my ears like being arrested for having long hair, but they end up in jail, anyway.

They end up in a jail cell with George (Nicholson), who is in there because he is basically the town drunk.  George offers his help in getting them out of jasil and asks them if he can go with them "You got a helmet?" "Oh, I got a helmet"

They continue on their journey, but in another town encounter hostility and ridicule when they try to eat at a diner.  They leave and camp out, but some of those hostile townfolks drop by for "batting practice", beating them with baseball bats. Wyatt and Billy come away with a few injuries, but George is killed. They vow to take George's stuff to his folks.

The Mardi Gras scene is very unusual for the time, although not so much today.  The two go to a brothel that George had mentioned   They get a couple of girls, but instead of making hay, they decide to go out to Mardi Gras.

In a cemetery, they share the LSD given to them by the hitchhiker earlier.  This leads to the bizarre scenes that highlight the buzz/trip on which the LSD takes them.

After Mardi Gras, Billy and Wyatt hit the road.  ///Spoiler Alert!  If you haven't seen or heard how this movie ends, you might want to stop reading.///

On the road, the two encounter a pickup with a couple of rednecks.  One of them points a rifle at Billy, threatening him, and, as Billy shoots them the finger, ends up shooting him.  The truck takes off at Wyatt turns back.  Finding Billy still alive, he tells Billy he will go for help and races off.  Meanwhile the rednecks turn back and shoot Wyatt, exploding his gas tank, as the credits roll.

There is much about this movie that is worthy of watching.  As a looking glass look into the counter culture of the 60's and how society perceived them, it is excellent. It may even have something profound to reveal to today's counter culture movement.  If nothing else, it's worth a look to see Fonda and Hopper and Nicholson in the early stages of their careers.

That's it from the backseat of the Plymouth Fury this time, folks.  Be sure to buckle up when you leave the theater.

Quiggy

Out of this World with Bugs Bunny

This is my entry in MovieMovieBlogBlog's One of My All-Time Favorite Cartoons Blog-a-thon!

My absolute favorite Bugs Bunny cartoon (my favorite cartoon period) is "Hare-way to the Stars".  In my younger days I used to relate the plot to this one scene-by-scene to friends (or any captive audience who would listen...)  It still remains fresh today as it did when I first saw it on the Saturday morning cartoon show, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show.  (I'm old, but not old enough to have seen it at the theater)

The story is done by the great combination of Chuck Jones as director and Michael Maltese as writer, the same duo who gave us such other gems as  "Rabbit of Seville" , "Rabbit Fire", "Beanstalk Bunny" and even the Daffy Duck classic "Duck Amuck", any one of which could have been on this "all-time favorite" list for me.

, 
I think in order to appreciate Bugs Bunny, you have to have a sarcastic streak in yourself, and be a person who has to be on the winning side of the argument, both of which describe me to a T.  Bugs almost always ended up with the winning poker hand, so to speak, and that has more to do with his personality than it does with pure luck.  When most cartoon characters (and most people) would concede and just go home, Bugs still has some fight left in him.

Hare-way to the Stars starts off with a rocket being moved into position to be blasted off into space.  The rocket ends up over Bugs Bunny's hole.  Meanwhile, below, Bugs is waking up from a "hangover" after a night of mixing carrot juice with radish juice.  Grabbing a towel, with a wistful " I hope the lake is warmed up" he begins the ascent out of the hole.  As he climbs, he ends up in the bowels of the rocket.  "Boy the hole seems long this morning!"  He gets to the top of the rocket and exclaims "Hey...who plugged up the hole".  Meanwhile the rocket has blasted off and is now deep in space.  Bugs unscrews the top of the rocket and is surprised to see the Earth rapidly moving way from him, but before he can react he is knocked off the rocket by an errant satellite and is deposited on a space station.

Bugs first encounters Marvin, the helmeted nemesis of the cartoon, scurrying along with his Illudium Phew-32 Explosive Space Modulator which,he, Marvin, has finally perfected.  The device is essentially a stick of dynamite, but that's just the MacGuffin of the story.  After being told that the Earth will not be in existence much longer because Marvin is going to blow it up (it obstructs his view of Venus), Bugs steals the modulator. An exasperated Marvin shouts "That creature has stolen" the modulator and immediately gives chase.  But he needs help.

Enter instant martians (just add water).  Marvin grows a few of these and sends them off to capture Bugs and return the modulator to him.  However, Bugs is a bit more quick-witted than any instant martian (who probably could have used a little more water on the brain...).  Through a series of pratfalls and comic twist Bugs manages to defeat all of the Martians, including one scene on space scooters that is absolutely hilarious.

At the end, Bugs manages to find a saucer, and while erratically trying to get it under control, manages to switch the Illudium Phew-32 Explosive Space Modulator, now lit, with the bottle of instant Martians, about the same time that Marvin is going to get more Martians to stop Bugs.  Marvin finds himself holding the modulator and is ecstatic to have it back, but the modulator explodes, destroying the space station and roughing up Marvin, who sighs "Well, back to the old drawing board..."

Meanwhile Bugs has made it back to Earth, crash landing into a sewer.  The earth rumbles and Bugs comes up in a panic, as little Martian heads start popping up in the cracks.  He runs off, exclaiming to the audience "Run for the hills folks, or you'll be up to your armpits in Martians!"

The cartoon was released on March 29, 1958.  An interesting thing to note:  The satellite that bumps Bugs off the rocket is, apparently, supposed to be Sputnik, the Russian satellite, the first one to be put into orbit.  Sputnik had been launched just a few months earlier in October of 1957.  But it would have decayed to nothing by January of 1958, so if Bugs actually went into space in March, it couldn't really have been Sputnik that bumped him off the rocket, could it?  (You weren't expecting a history lesson, were you?  Don't worry, it won't be on the test.)


Quiggy

Dead Men Walking

The recent fascination with zombies is not new, but the current fascination with zombies who are obsessed with "getting head", so to speak, is not the same as the zombies of old.  Zombies of the 30's-50's are as different from the current zombie as Klingons from Star Trek:TOS are from the more recent permutations of Klingons. 

The first zombie movie is generally agreed to be Bela Lugosi's White Zombie.  My personal opinion is that early zombies were indistinguishable from someone in a hypnotic trance.  They certainly weren't the lumbering, brain-seeking undead creatures from Night of the Living Dead.  And they weren't nearly as frightening as the CGI enhanced virus sufferers of I am Legend.

Nonetheless a few good (and many not so good)  zombie movies were made in pre-Living Dead era.  (I arbitrarily choose Night of the Living Dead as the transition point, although you are free to disagree.)  One of the better movies of this period is King of the Zombies.  And one of the worst is Teenage Zombies.

Both of these I acquired through a company called Synergy Entertainment which put out about a dozen or so public domain movies accompanied with a t-shirt emblazoned with a movie poster of that movie.  I reasoned that even if the movie sucked I still got a decent t-shirt.  LOL.  And a few of them did suck, but I still wear the t-shirts.

King of the Zombies (1941)

This movie is called a horror comedy (less emphasis on the horror and more on the comedy).  The movie stars Dick Purcell as the pilot "Mac", John Archer as Mr. Bill, and Mantan Moreland in an early comedic role as Jeff.  The movie starts out with a plane carrying the three lost over the Caribbean.  One of the men mentions its the same area where Admiral Wainwright was lost the week before (remember that because it becomes important).  The three crash land on a remote island.

They find a mansion on the island and are made guests by the head of the mansion, Dr. Sangre.  The two white men are made comfortable in the guest room, but Jeff is sent down to the servants' quarters.  Much of the humor by the way, politically incorrect as it may be viewed today, centers around Jeff (Mantan Moreland) and his jittery reaction to the zombies he sees but which the two white men think is just his imagination.

Jeff has a brief conversation with the maid (Marguerite Whitten) who introduces him to the zombies, but feigns ignorance when later questioned by Mac and Bill.  Meanwhile they all become suspicious of this Dr. Sangre and the fact that he claims there is no radio to contact the outside world, but both hear one in their bedroom.

They snoop around and come upon a discovery.  Dr. Sangre has taken Admiral Wainwright, who had crashed on the same island, prisoner, and is using a combination of voodoo and hypnotism to try to get secret information out of him.  So it turns out, as I stated earlier, that some of the zombies are only hypnotized human beings... Still there is some voodoo and some of the zombies are real, even if they do look like hypnotized live humans.

Oh, an interesting side note:  Believe it or not King of the Zombies was nominated for an Academy Award.  True! Along with the likes of Citizen Kane, Sergeant York, Suspicion, and the eventual winner, All That Money Can Buy, King of the Zombies was nominated for an Oscar in the category of Music (Best Score of a Dramatic Picture).

Teenage Zombies (1960)


This second movie, Teenage Zombies, is on many lists as being among the worst movies of all time.  Although I think its a stretch calling it a movie.  It's only 70 minutes long.  If you took all the purloined stock footage out of it.  It would be about 65 minutes long.  And then there are 3 separate scenes involving a search (the teenagers on the island searching for their boat...twice and the sheriff and one of the other teenagers searching for the rest of the teenagers) each of which is about 3-5 minutes long.  Now we are talking about a 45 minute film.  That's like an hour long TV show with commercials.  Except the commercials would be more interesting than the show...

The movie starts with some teenagers in a malt shoppe discussing what they want to do for the afternoon.  Two couples want to go water-skiing, while the third couple has committed to horseback riding.  After agreeing to meet later the couples go their separate ways.  The two couples who went water-skiing  find a strange island they want to investigate.  Upon seeing a strange woman with a bunch of lumbering men who freak them out they go back to where their boat was, but its not there.  Thus instigating one of those interminable search scenes.

The girls get tired, so they stop to reast while the boys continue the search.  But the girls disappear.  The boys find a house operated by the woman they saw earlier, and shortly become prisoners of the woman, along with the girls who were captured earlier.  The other pair, who went horseback riding decide to go looking for their friends and find the same island and same woman who tells them "nobody comes to the island" but as theyleave they see two strange men pull up to the island.

There's very little more to this bizarre but trivial movie.  The woman is in cahoots with the men (from the East, probably Russia) who are trying to develop a pill or a gas to turn everyone in the United States into docile zombie slaves.  More or less, a hypnotic trance from which they can never be brought out of.  Its up to the teenagers to foil the plot.

This movie is so bad, I couldn't even locate any stills from the movie to augment this section of the review.  It won't petrify your brain to watch it, but you'll wonder later what happened to that lost hour.  Fast forward through the search scenes and it will only seem like an hour, though...

That's it from the backseat of the Plymouth Fury, this time, kiddies.  Drive safely going home.

Quiggy