Scavengers

Scavengers

United States - 1987

Director - Dee Mclachlan

Academy Entertainment, 1988, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 34 minutes

So, is it really fair to compare one object to another famous example? To say that my friend Chris is no Picasso doesn't tell you anything substantial about his painting talents. Using such well known and culturally iconic comparisons cheats both the compared object (Chris) and the audience, you, out of any real information or opportunity for original or critical thought. The name Picasso conjures up all sorts of ideas and previously received information; about his talent (and your opinion of it,) color, shape, personality, etc., etc. Whereas, you don't know Chris.

It also makes me lazy because then I don't have to do any descriptive work. I'm just counting on what you already know about Picasso. 

Nor does it do any credit to Chris, who might be a pretty decent rodeo clown and not a painter at all. See what I mean?

So if I were to say, compare some movie favorably to Citizen Kane, or unfavorably to Plan 9 From Outer Space, would that really tell you anything about the movie? Considering that we probably have varying opinions on things like rodeo clowns, painting and probably movies, would you feel that calling a movie "worse than Plan 9" really coveys any useful information?

Maybe you're ambivalent about Plan 9. Maybe I like it.

So, what if the movie I'm comparing was deliberately trying to copy, to capitalize on the themes and content of the more famous film? What if Scavengers is deliberately, well.... deliberately scrounging its plot from an extremely popular 1980's franchise. In that case, were I to say the Scavengers is a low-rent Indiana Jones, would you feel that I had given some objective measure of Scavengers' worth as a film in it's own right?

Afterall, it's protagonist is an academic scientist who travels to a foreign land for an adventurous comedy of errors and narrow escapes from the bungling forces of a totalitarian dictatorship. There is a coy sexual tension between he and a sharp-witted, sharp-tongued professional female secondary character. He does befriend a small ethnic boy who helps him escape certain death in a moment of crisis.

Scavengers may be a low-rent Indy, but if there had never been a Dr. Jones, would Scavengers be a high-rent Firewalker?

Is capital, that is the accumulation of power in the form of money as expressed in marketing, really all that it takes to form public opinion?

Rebel High

Rebel High

Canada - 1987

Director - Harry Jakobs

Academy Entertainment, 1988, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 32 minutes

A number of years ago I bought this tape for a few bucks. Anticipating much revelry and low budget entertainment, I was not disappointed until about 30 minutes in when the picture went staticky then black. The audio kept playing just fine, I could hear all the bad jokes and sight gags still pluggin' away. But the nature of most physical humor and prop-comedy, especially when it's bad, is that it needs to be seen. No dice. I still haven't found a VCR that will play this tape. Plus, somebody cut the box to fit a clamshell, that just adds insult to injury.

Play Dead

Play Dead
United States - 1984
Director – Peter Wittman
Academy Home Entertainment, 1986, VHS
Run time – 1 hour, 26 min.

Play Dead is part of the long tradition of evil animal films which itself is a sub-premise of the classic man vs. nature theme. Though it wasn’t the first such entry in the subgenre, Jaws ushered in a host of spinoffs in the video-era that wound down to sporadic entries featuring all nature of random animals from alligators to earthworms turning aggressive and attacking humans. Seems like the relative popularity of Cujo (1983) spawned a brief attempt to coat-tail the evil dog concept. Play Dead is an incredibly absurd case in point.

At her mothers funeral, Audrey and her boyfriend Glen have a confrontation with Audrey’s aunt Hester. She’s been at odds with the rest of the family ever since Audrey’s father rejected Hester for the deceased. Now Hester hangs around her house drinking brandy and talking to Audrey's dead father and her dog Gretta. Typically, after a few glasses Hester will break out the satanic acoutrements and chant some incantations over the dog which at these special moments refers to as “canis diabolis” and adorns with a pentagram necklace.

This time she means business, and the day after her ritual she pays a visit to Audrey and presents her with the dog, as a gift. Prior vitriol and hatred aside, apologies are quickly accepted, hands shaken and all of that and Audrey graciously accepts an unfamiliar 100 pound carnivorous gift from her mortal enemy.
That night after visiting for dinner, Audrey’s brother returns to his car where the waiting dog, having calculated the velocity and mass of an oncoming vehicle leaps from cover and startles him into the path of the car where he is killed, or anyway some blood runs from his mouth and there is a funeral. Greta has harnessed the awesome powers of geometry and physics to mastermind a series of untraceable “accidental” deaths.
Devastated by her compounding filial devastation Audrey listens to her collection of food-court ambiance records and invites Glenn over for a romp between the poorly edited shots of body doubles with different breast sizes. Her face looks a little frightened, but “her” hands eagerly ply Glen's generously bulging shorts as Greta watches patiently nearby.

Suddenly a good-ol’-boy detective is investigating the death of her brother, squeezing out homely anecdotes all the while. Audrey’s neighbor is electrocuted by Greta who opens the bathroom door in effusive and unnecessary slow-motion, picks up the hot curling iron and drops it into the tub. Waiting long enough for the convulsions to stop, she then carefully removes it from the tub.

Next it’s Glen’s turn. After a totally exhausting tennis game with Audrey he sits down next to a tree and promptly falls asleep with Greta leashed to his wrist. The dog quickly runs around the tree and Glen wakes just in time to be choked to death by the leash. But is in the coroners report where the crescendo of logically and visually dissonant scripting comes to a head. The coroner and detectives assessment is that someone choked Glen to death with one incredibly strong hand, and that Glen fought back with one hand, while the dog stood idly by. The nature of film requires the suspension of disbelief, but really, that’s your theory? When the detective finally starts to suspect the dog, it's too damned late and she quickly dispatches him with a quick dose of lye powder in his alka-seltzer (Greta is also comfortable with basic chemistry). Hester suddenly decides that her work is done, and leaves her initial victim Audrey alive to cry about her mullet.

Rather than a clever script or a good idea for one, it’s clear that the backers for this movie just found a well-trained dog and decided to build a movie on that premise alone. And it’s abundantly clear why Troma, in an effort to build their reputation picked up this film for distribution.

This box art is from Horror Playground.com in case you couldn't tell. There also exists another alternate non-Troma video sleeve which I am hoping to track down soon.

One British and two French and VHS covers courtesy of the generous Agressions Animales.

Flesh Eating Mothers

Forbes Video doesn't want you to forget who the tape belongs to.

Flesh Eating Mothers

United States - 1988

Director – James Aviles Martin

Academy Entertainment, 1989, VHS

Run time – 1 hour 30 minutes

Preceded by trailers for One Man Force, and Murder Story, Flesh Eating Mothers benefits from a great name, but the inclusion of action movie trailers makes me think the distributor wasn’t sure what to do with this movie, which usually means the film itself is every bit as confused.

The opening scene is good though. A hunter running through the woods notices some blood dripping into the snow and looks down to find only the ragged stump of an arm. No explanation is given, so I guess that was the expository question that will be answered by the remaining plot.

Several average lookin’ middle-agers breathe heavily and congratulate each other after a particularly sweaty adultery session. The guy, Roddy runs off home to make an appearance but soon leaves his unsuspecting wife at the house for a jog over to another lonely waiting housewife. This guy must have some serious coital trapeze act because he’s ugly as sin but all the married ladies in the neighborhood are tripping over eachother to ride the Rod. Checking up on the health of the ol’ rod, Roddy stops at the wood-paneled VD clinic to ogle the assistant and exchange lurid sex tales with the doctor who posts various amusing VD related signs on the wood paneled wall behind his desk.

In one of the few creepy scenes in the film one of the adulterous moms discusses the production of veal with her son while trying to force him to drink more milk. I turned to my companion and said, “Hey, maybe this is a metaphor for women’s liberation from the domestic prison” or something just as wishful.
“This film is barely a single entendre” my comrade in pain replied.
How right he was.

But honestly there are a few satisfying moments, like when the mom eats her baby, and when the battered wife splits her face open into a giant toothy jaw and eats her alcoholic husbands arm off. It’s badly shot and badly edited, but it’s fulfilling, really it is. They are just housewives (and amateur actresses,) and it loses it’s novelty really quick, particularly with the addition of forehead slappingly tedious “comedic” dialogue. The addition of the mother’s various high-school aged children banding together to fight the epidemic was supposed to add some sympathetic protagonists and action/tension I reckon, but the closest it got was the cryptozoological spectacle of one lovesick hydrocephalic girl and her extremely greasy sleazoid boyfriend.

Fortunately the 3 foot tall mortician adds a little comedic interest. He isn’t convinced by the asshole VD doctor’s dismissal, and after doing an autopsy on one of the mothers, discovers some unusual virus in “the vaginal passageway”. This guys dialogue is moderately funny, and it helps that most of it is delivered alongside the 7 foot tall VD docs hot assistant, but it’s not enough to save the movie. The physical effects had a lot of potential for menace, and if you really pushed it, maybe some humor since the mothers looked like Killer Klowns. The feel good ending, chock full of hugs as it is belies an inability (lack of budget?) to explore the possibilities of the film. It’s like a domesticated cannibal snow globe where most of the real flesh eating occurs off-screen and the wink at the end lets everyone off the hook.

This British VHS box art is hilarious thanks to use of the word "mum" in the synopsis.

I don't remember seeing DVD's available when I bought my tape, but there are at least three variations of the same cover art.

And finally, the defunct Austrian rock band Flesh Eating Mothers.