The Cinema - "King of the Zombies" : Interesting Historical Document ...and Major Piece of Caca

King of the Zombies (1941) is a low-budget thriller with a threadbare plot about an evil German scientist on a Caribbean island with a whole mess of zombies at his disposal and a habit of kidnapping admirals.

Intelligence officer Bill, pilot Mac, and Bill's manservant Jeff fly off to investigate the admiral's disappearance, and get fooled into a crash landing 0n the doc's island.

The only reason to watch this is for the performance of Mantan Moreland, a vaudeville actor probably most widely known as Charlie Chan's chauffeur.

Here he transcends the condescending "scaredy Negro" stereotype and injects humor and dignity into the unflattering role. (I suspect he ad-libbed some of it, and the director was savvy enough to let it ride.)

So when he spots the old cook/voodoo priestess he asks the pretty young maid, "Who's that? Methuselah?"

And hypnotized by the evil doctor into thinking he is a zombie, he marches stiffly over to the others. "Move over, boys - I'm one of the gang now."

("Hup-two-three-four...Zombies, halt!")

The Jeff character, despite all the bug-eyed buffoonery expected of the role, is the only good guy who has any clue as to what's happening on the island at all. (Bill is too busy trying to make time with the inevitable young lady and Mac keeps sustaining head injuries.)

So King of the Zombies is an interesting historical piece.

It is also a piece of doo-doo, with nonsensical plot; some decent zombie action of the medium-fast, mostly- coordinated voodoo zombie type; a ludicrous voodoo ceremony; and lots of one-liners from Moreland.

And as such it deserves a solid two and a half coil rating.

NFL '07 - Thanksgiving Day (Week 12)

Another so-so week last time out at 7-6-2. Today the play is on all three favorites: Green Bay -3.5 at Detroit (Packers are 8-1-1 against the spread this season); Dallas - 14.5 vs. the New York Jets (yes, the Jets upset the Steelers last week, but the Cowboys are several notches above Pittsburgh); Indianapolis - 12.5 at Atlanta.

The Cinema - The Wrestling Women vs. The Aztec Mummy Is Better Than Citizen Kane

The Wrestling Women vs. The Aztec Mummy (1964) is quite possibly the best film ever made. It answers two questions that have always bothered large segments of humanity:

1) Can bad guys really run around on ancient Aztec pyramids in those pointy little shoes without tripping?

2) Can women in tight sweaters and Capri pants really save the world from an Ancient Evil?

In this fine film by the immortal Rene Cardona and recut and dubbed by the equally deathless K. Gordon Murray (director of Cell Block Girls and producer of Shanty Tramp and Santa's Magic Kingdom) , the Wrestling Women get on the trail of some thugs in the pay of the evil Black Dragon who have swiped the sacred Aztec breastplate. The chase goes hither and yon, with many fine wrestling sequences, some of them between the actors' lips and the dubbed dialogue.

After an enormous amount of plot and the introduction of the "Purloined Letter" theory of hidden camera placement (i.e. if you're going to spy on someone with a hidden camera just shove it in the bookcase), the breathtaking chase takes us to the Aztec pyramid, which has steps, unlike the Egyptian kind. (See, you get some archaeology with this picture too.)

And soon enough we get the answers to those questions.

The Aztec Mummy is worth the price of admission alone. He makes a heartbreaking "waaargh" sound that really makes you wonder what it's like to be locked for centuries in an airless room guarding a princess' remains when all of a sudden bad guys in ill-fitting suits and pointy shoes, and female wrestlers in tight sweaters and missile-silo brassieres come barging in, stirring up the dust and generally making nuisances of themselves.

To sum up: Bad dialogue, worse dubbing. Female wrestlers. Asian female wrestlers. Comic book villains. Unconvincing, wailing mummy. Short neckties and peak lapels. Gratuitous driving back and forth to the ancient pyramid. Capri pants. Girls in tights. The parts that aren't bizarre are idiotic. Short.

Better than Citizen Kane and a damn sight cheaper to buy, too. Plus the version I have is a two-fer, with Doctor of Doom, which is, if anything, worse.

A heartfelt four coil rating.

(Click here to read a highly academic article that requires 1000 words to reach the same conclusion)

NFL '07 - It's a Dog-Eat-Dog World, and I'm Wearing Milk Bone Underwear

I need a big week or five. Bad. Last year was my first in 16 years of doing this with a losing record. It's coming down to pride and the ability to look convincing in an Italian suit.

Such as:

What the bush you lookin' at?

Gaining a game or two per week isn't cutting it; last week's dicey 7-6-1 showing pushed the deficit back a little bit, to 63-74-8, but at this rate I won't hit the .500 mark by season's end.

So let us hope that this is a gargantuan breakout Sunday of epic colossal mega-ness.

Det +3 vs. NYG: I'm sorry, but I don't know what the oddsmakers are thinking about here. The NY pass rush might give Detroit QB Jon Kitna some problems, but come on - there's nothing that makes the 6-3 Giants better than the 6-3 Lions, especially in Detroit. And after watching the bad basics from last week - the play clock comes to mind - I'm even less bullish on the Giants.

NE - 16.5 at Buf: I get burned every time by these collegiate spreads. The Bills are a decent team. They are not going to beat the Patriots. They are not going to be close to the Patriots, who might trail 7-3 at the end of the first quarter. But by the end of events Sunday night the Pats will move one step closer to the undefeated mark and post another double-digit win (with the first digit being a two).

Pit - 10 at NYJ: Kellen Clemens looks fairly good, which is very nice for the future but won't help against relentless Steeler defense.

The rest:

NO + 1.5 at Hou

GB -10 vs. Car

Jax -3 vs. SD

KC +15 at Indy

Oak +5 at Min

Cle -3 at Bal

Atl +3 vs. TB

AZ +3.5 at Cin

Mia +10 at Phi

StL -3 at SF

Sea -6 vs. Chi

Was + 11.5 at Dal

Ten +2 at Den

Awkward Insertion of Commercial Dept.

You might be wondering "Gee. I wonder who makes that fine, sophisticated-looking Eyetalian suit Sully's wearing in that crappy photo?"

And the answer is: Corneliani, an Italian house that makes some pretty good RTW suits and jackets if you like that sort of thing - three-button front, high gorge (none of your three-roll-two sack stuff here); aggressive shoulders and darting, narrow waist, ventless. Slightly out of character are the pleated trousers - those guys like the straight legs usually.

This one I found thrifting and it has less shoulder padding than others I've seen. It happens to be a good fit for my Brooks Brothers frame.

Corneliani makes garments for Ralph of Long Island, among others, and can be found in your higher-end, snooty-type department stores.

By the way, that's a Sam Hober tie I had made up in the colors of the World's Most Annoying Baseball Team, the New York Mets.

The Cinema - That Old "Black Magic" Is Horrible and Features Rice Sex

In Black Magic (1975), Xu Nuo, a cool, hip construction worker, is the not-so-obscure object of the evil, sneaky and skanky widow Luo Yin's desire.

Matter of fact, Luo Yin, who looks like a barracuda with a squint, is so darn horny she has to go hire the evil sorcerer who lives in the nasty forest, second hut on the right, past the snake pit and the rotting corpses, to cook up a love potion.

And as we find out, his love potions aren't all that different from his death potions.

This wizard guy has some terrific moves, and induces not just Luo Yin but some other lovelorn lady to part with some breast milk, in two separate scenes.

So if that's your bag, this is your flick.

The sorcerer also uses ordinary cooked rice as a sort of sex toy. Really.

So Xu Nuo is completely under the spell, but the greedy wizard keeps coming back for more money. Plus there's this other doofus who has a major thing for the widow, and while she's trying to dose Xu Nuo, the doofus, who's also been to see the wizard, doses her. They make the Sign of the Little Cardboard Container With the Metal Handle all night long, but when she wakes up the spell has worn off and it's Sayonara City for the doofus.

There's a whole lot of plot that gets nowhere until finally Xu Nuo's fiancee, Quming (played by the redundantly-named Li-Li Li) hires the Good Wizard, who looks like Wilfred Brimley with a squint.

This wizard rustles up a protective beam from heaven and presto! No more evil warlock.

This piece of chop socky is sadly lacking in kung fu, but hooters abound, and the bit with the rice was worth the $2 rental fee. The soundtrack sounds like it was recorded on a cassette player in a bathroom, and the entire mess is filmed in what the producers, the notorious Shaw Brothers, grandly call "Shaw Scope" - a narrow band of mise-en-scene that translates into roughly one-third the usable screen of a standard television.

Summary: Lactation (twice). Creative use of grains. Snakes. Gratuitous swinging cats in leisure suits. Gratuitous swinging chicks in bell bottoms and scarves. Subtitles don't match dubbed dialog. One dissolving wizard. One Beam of Protection. One Chinese Wilfred Brimley. Appalling. Utterly worthless. Three coils.

The Cinema - Instant Caca

Every so often a film comes along that is so transcendently cheese-ridden it vaults over lesser rivals and achieves instant all-time CACA Award status. Die You Zombie Bastards (2005) is such a film.

The hero, Red Toole, is a cannibal who, along with his wife Violet, eats hippies. When she is kidnapped by Baron Nefarious, who has a lab on Hell Island from which he plans to use his Zombotron to turn all humanity into his personal zombie army, Red must act.

He embarks on a quest which takes him to Pittsburgh, Sweden, and other exotic locales.

Along the way he encounters a fat old rockabilly singer, Super Inga the Nippleless Swedish Barmaid, the horrifying legend of Bermudan monster Coconut Head Face Man, Ninjas, Angry Dog Men, lovely topless Swedish farmgirls, and other perils typical of life as a super hero in the post-9/11 world.

And zombies - green, completely unconvincing zombies.

The movie careens along, bouncing from non-sequitur to absurdity like me trying to find the bathroom at 3 a.m. on any night between 1989 and New Year's Eve, 2000.

Unlike most films of this ilk (i.e. cheap), it is mostly shot on film, so it doesn't have the videotaped look.

DYZB is so stupid, in fact, that all I can do is mention the approximately 36 breasts; the nekkid fish scientists; the repeated and highly unsubtle penis imagery; the Jamaican guy in the bathtub; Pittsburgh; and Hasil Adkins, the rockabilly singer.

If you're a moron, this is your flick. Four honest-to-God coils.

The Cinema - Shiny Boots of Cheez Whiz: "Venus In Furs" is True Torture

Jess Franco's Venus in Furs (1969) is quite possibly the Worst Film Ever Made.

Regular readers of this blog know that my standards are quite high for bad cinema. I have seen hundreds of rotten flicks, and this piece of Pure-D doo-doo shoots straight to the top of the short list.

Based on an incomprehensible novelette by famous Kraut weirdo Leopold von Sacher Masoch (also the inspiration for a great song by The Velvet Underground), this film is told almost entirely in voice-over, flashback narration. This might be artistic, evoking memories of classic noir cinema like Double Indemnity, or it could be because that the actors don't have to learn any dialogue and the editor doesn't have to synch it up.

(I'm inclined to go with the latter.)

The narrator, a bad trumpet player named Jimmy, finds the nude corpse of the lovely and mysterious Wanda on the beach in Istanbul, where he has buried his horn in the sand.

You with me?

Wanda hangs out with the jet set, meaning Klaus Kinski and a couple of other fruit loops, who get ol' Wanda into some kind of sado-masochistic whip/lesbo dungeon orgy deal that ends when Klaus stabs her and gets blood all over his face.

This scene was apparently shot in the dark with old, partially exposed film, and has the punch of a 40 year old filmstrip on the presidency of William McKinley.

Then it's off to Rio, where Jimmy gets his act together a bit and hangs with Rita, a singer who performs on her back. Really.

But Wanda keeps popping up. Is she dead? Is she a figment of Jimmy's tortured imagination? Is that Manfred Mann playing piano?

The answers: Yes.

(These people are evil, but we're not sure why. They could also be dead.)

Here's a sample of the deathless narration:

She was beautiful, even though she was dead. It's like there was a connection between us.

and

Time is like the ocean - you can't hang on to it.

Uh-huh.

Franco chews up immense amounts of screen time with scenes of the jazz group playing a godawful brand of cocktail lounge music and stock footage of happy people in ethnic costumes dancing in the streets of Rio. Or is it Istanbul?

Ye gods, this movie stinks.

Summary: Eight breasts, two of them allegedly dead. Dungeon. Whipping. Statue groping. Sex with feathers from a pillow. Bad dinner jacket with notch lapels. Gratuitous slow motion. Lens smeared with Vaseline for sex scenes. Toe sucking. Low-grade pseudo-vampirism. Klaus Kinski making his eyes bug out.

Half a coil for this turkey.