7/29/15 (Part Three): Uncle Herschell’s Dirty Movies

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1960's films, adults only, auteur theory, bachelor party, bad films, Blood Feast, Bonnie Clark, casual sex, cheating fiances, cinema, Dee Howard, Ed Wood, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, flashbacks, Forman Shane, go-go dancers, Godfather of Gore, grindhouse, Herschell Gordon Lewis, houseboat, infidelity, James Brand, Jeanette Mills, lingerie salesman, lost films, Mark Hansen, Movies, non-professional actors, pseudonyms, set in 1960s, sexploitation films, Sharon Matt, soft-core, strippers, Suede Barstow, Swingers, terrible films, the 1960s, The Ecstacies of Women, The Wizard of Gore, Two Thousand Maniacs!, Victoria Bond, Vincene Wallace, Walter Camp, William Allen Castleman, William Vickers, writer-director-cinematographer, X-rated films

With some directors, you never know what you’re going to get from one production to the next: they might try out a few new techniques, opt to shoot in a completely different format, attempt a genre they’ve never tried before, move on from “popcorn movies” to “prestige films”…with some filmmakers, it’s all about shaking it up, constantly moving and evolving in order to prevent falling into a rut. The progression from the first film to the thirteenth? The difference between fish with legs and early Homo Sapiens. And then, of course, there’s Herschell Gordon Lewis.

Across a career that’s spanned over five decades, Lewis (the original “Godfather of Gore”) has been responsible for some of the most amateurish, inept and flat-out mind-boggling films to ever screen in actual theaters (grindhouses count, folks). Touching on everything from “nudie-cutie” movies and soft-core sexploitation flicks to outrageously splatterific horror films and impossibly wrong-headed treatises on social mores, Lewis has jumped genres with reckless abandon, even if he’s still most famous for his gore epics like Blood Feast (1963), Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964) and The Wizard of Gore (1970). Indeed, the only constant in his impressively broad career has been the excruciatingly bad quality of his films.

You see, for all of his passion, drive, inherent chutzpah and genuine innovations (in almost every way, shape and form, the world had never seen anything like Blood Feast, especially in the dawning of the ’60s), ol’ Herschell is a truly terrible filmmaker. To a one, his films are characterized by non-professional actors doing their best to maintain character, poverty-row sets, an inability to do anything with the camera but set it in one place and hit “record,” some of the worst sound recording in cinematic history, the appearance of lights and equipment in every other shot…you name it, Lewis has done it. As writer, director and cinematographer of his films, Lewis is a true auteur, albeit one more closely aligned with Ed Wood than, say, Orson Welles.

For all of this, however, one fact remains plainly evident: despite their endless shortcomings, Lewis’ films have another common denominator…they’re (usually) a tremendous amount of fun. As someone who grew up on his gore films (I’m not ashamed to admit that Two Thousand Maniacs! is one of the greatest horror films of all time, regardless of the quality), Lewis has been a go-to of mine for some years now. Despite this, however, I was woefully ignorant about his other films, particularly the soft-core adult films that were liberally sprinkled throughout his career. Of these films, a couple were considered “lost” to the world at large until they popped-up several years back. The Ecstacies of Women (1969) is one of those films. It is, of course, absolutely terrible.

In a nutshell, The Ecstacies of Women concerns Harry (Walter Camp) and the bachelor party thrown by his friends, Gene (William Vickers), Fred (James Brand) and Ted (Forman Shane). As the guys hang out at a strip-club and ogle the awkward dancers (there really is no other word to describe them), Harry entertains the others with “wild” stories about his numerous sexual conquests, all by way of “purging his system” for his upcoming nuptials.

The pattern is so simple that it’s basically a loop: the guys sit around, conversing in ways that could never be considered natural (everyone seems genuinely drunk, for one thing, which might explain a lot) before Harry puts his head back and seems to go into a coma. This, of course, is our cue that we’re about to move into the “adults only” portion of the program. If anyone out there thinks things get better from there, let me remove all doubt: they get much, much worse.

All-in-all, we get several different vignettes involving Harry and his random conquests. Harry picks up a woman (Jeanette Mills) in a bar, takes her back to his houseboat to “model lingerie” (he’s a traveling lingerie salesman, dontcha know) and proceeds to grope her into orgasm. Harry gets picked up by an aggressive health-freak on the beach (Vincene Wallace), takes her back to his houseboat and proceeds to grope her into orgasm. Harry gets picked up by an aggressive teenager (Sharon Matt) while parked at a stoplight, takes her back to his houseboat and proceeds to grope her to orgasm. Finally, we get the piece de resistance as Harry, Gene, Fred and Ted take a bunch of strippers back to the houseboat and proceed to grope them into orgasm. Harry decides to run away with Summer Frenzy (Bonnie Clark, who seems to be on heroin for the entirety of her performance, at least judging by her slurred speech, unfocused eyes and baffling “performance”), leaving his unlucky (very, very lucky?) future spouse in the lurch. The End.

Lest it seem from the above description that there’s an overwhelming sense of repetition to what we see, let me clarify it: the whole film is, essentially, the very same scene played out, multiple times, with slightly different people. Each of the “dream sequences” lasts for about 20 minutes (most of which are awkward dialogue scenes that don’t seem improvised so much as dropped from the sky, like bird shit) and features Harry dry-humping and pawing his nude conquests. For variety, Harry sometimes wears his tighty-whities during the “action,” while other scenes give us glorious shots of his pale, pimply ass. There’s never any sense of “realism” to the scenes, which mostly involve Harry fondling bare breasts until over-dubbed heavy breathing indicates a sprint to the finish-line.

There’s absolutely nothing sexy, titillating or, to be honest, particularly interesting about anything that happens. In fact, The Ecstacies of Women might be the single dullest film that I’ve ever had the misfortune to sit through, regardless of the “adults only” designation. As with all of Lewis’ films, the camera-work is as basic as it comes, the non-professional actors constantly flub their lines and talk over each other (one amazing scene features the guys trying their damnedest not to crack up as one “actor” manages to call everyone by the wrong name, several times) and the whole thing looks about as ugly as could be expected.

We could talk about the film’s representations of women, the sex-positive natures of the encounters (at the very least, everyone seems to be having fun, although I’m not quite sure how) or the ridiculously “groovy” catchphrases that must have made this hopelessly dated the week after it came out. We could put a little thought into it but, really: who the hell would we be kidding? The Ecstacies of Women is pure crap, through and through, the kind of oddity that no one could possibly take seriously. In certain ways, the film is absolutely critic-proof: who goes into a Herschell Gordon Lewis film (especially one of his skin flicks) expecting anything more than what’s been presented here?

While I can usually find at least something to recommend in a film (satisfying curiosity, if nothing else), I find myself at a complete loss here: unless you’re a Herschell Gordon Lewis completist (or Mark Hansen, as his pseudonym reads here) or the kind of person who prizes non-acting, tone-deaf dialogue and unattractive people pretending to have sex…well, friend…there’s just not much for ya here.

To quote Harry’s immortal final words: “Gang, goodbye. Goodbye, gang.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

 

3/19/14: A Real Simple Man

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auteur theory, beached boat, boat up a tree, broken families, character dramas, cinema, coming of age, David Cronenberg, drama, Ellis, eponymous characters, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, houseboat, Jacob Lofland, Jeff Nichols, Joe Don Baker, love story, man with a secret, Matthew McConaughey, Michael Shannon, Movies, Mud, Neckbone, Paul Sparks, Ray McKinnon, Reese Witherspoon, river, riverboats, romance, Sam Shepard, Sarah Paulson, scrappy kids, small town life, teenagers, townies, Tye Sheridan, writer-director

Fun is fun, when it comes to movies. There’s nothing wrong with mindless action shoot-em-ups or faceless slashers: those are usually more fun than being night watchman in a bubble-wrap factory. Lots of adrenaline, some snappy dialogue and some rousing set pieces…that’s been a sure thing for quite some time. Likewise, mega-budget “event” pictures can be mighty entertaining, in the right doses. Throw a bakers’ dozen of the biggest actors in town into the cinematic equivalent of making your He-Man figures fight your GI Joes? Don’t bother to call: I’m already out in the lobby. That being said, there’s a lot to be said for a good old-fashioned, low-budget, character-driven drama. Sometimes, there’s nothing finer in life than getting a bunch of talented actors together and letting them do what people have been doing since the dawn of time: live. Jeff Nichols’ Mud may not be flashy but it’s a mighty fine coming-of-age film and an intriguing peek into the human condition.

Our film begins on the waterways of Arkansas, as we’re quickly introduced to our young protagonists, Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland). They’re a couple of precocious teen boys, best friends and the products of rather fractured homes: Ellis’ mother and father (Sarah Paulson and Ray McKinnon) are at each other’s throats, the harshness of the country and the financial uncertainty of their riverboat existence tearing the family apart, while Neckbone is being raised by his uncle Galen (Michael Shannon) and never knew his parents. One day, while exploring a nearby island, the boys come across a busted-up houseboat, inexplicably beached atop a tree. Boys being boys, they decide to poke around the abandoned boat and discover evidence that it might not be so abandoned: bread, cans of beans and a few nudie magazines. In short order, the lads are introduced to the boat’s current “resident,” a scruffy hobo who calls himself Mud (Matthew McConaughey). According to Mud, he’s waiting for his girlfriend, who he describes to the dubious boys as “long blonde hair, long legs…beautiful…nightingales tattooed on her hands.”

Ellis and Neckbone doubt Mud’s story almost absolutely, right up until the point where they notice that a mysterious young woman (Reece Witherspoon) has just showed up in town, a woman who happens to be blonde and have nightingales tattooed on her hands. She looks an awful lot like Mud’s description, leading the friends to believe that the hobo might be telling the truth, after all. As the trio get friendlier, Mud reveals more and more about his backstory, including the fact that he’s on the run from some pretty bad people. As the boys help Mud get the houseboat up and running and serve as messenger between him and Juniper, they also contact an old friend of his, Tom (Sam Shepard), a mysterious older man who seems to know an awful lot about Mud’s past. As these disparate elements come crashing together, the boys must also maintain their home lives and deal with the conflicting emotions of adolescence: in Ellis’ case, this means falling in love with a high school girl (Bonnie Sturdivant) and navigating the pitfalls of young hormones, while Neckbone must balance his own need to become an independent man with his desire to help his uncle. Everything comes to a head as malevolent forces descend on the small town, intent on making Mud atone for his past as the boys are forced into the first throes of adulthood.

Despite some latter-half action elements that move the film more in the direction of Straw Dogs (minus the rape) than a Boy’s Story, Mud is most certainly a coming-of-age drama. Although the film, ostensibly, is about Mud and his quest for love and redemption, these aspects are always balanced against the larger picture of Ellis and Neckbone growing up. In fact, the more explicitly action-oriented elements (despite being decidedly audience-amping) have an unfortunate tendency to drown out the more mature dramatic aspects that precede them. While it’s certainly rousing to watch McConaughey whup ass righteously, the finale ends up seeming a bit reductive, almost as if the romantic/dramatic elements were a sort of smoke-screen for the more standard action beats. This is doubly unfortunate since, up to that point, Mud as a slow, meditative feel that lends itself more to contemplation than to increased adrenaline.

Acting-wise, the film features an embarrassment of riches, not the least of which is another rock-solid, dependable performance from good ol’ Matthew McC. Sheridan and Lofland are outstanding as the teenage protagonists and there’s never a moment where their friendship feels anything less than genuine. While Sheridan has to do a bit more of the emotional heavy-lifting than Lofland does, owing to Ellis’ slightly more central position in the narrative, neither actor is a slouch: I predict really good things for both of these actors. On the more established, old-guard end, we have excellent turns from Sarah Paulson as Ellis’ mother Mary Lee: she really makes the terrible conflict between what she wants and what her family wants a concrete thing and her interactions with Ray McKinnon frequently have a heartbreaking sense of authenticity. Nichols’ regular Michael Shannon is typically sturdy as Neckbone’s uncle, leading me to reiterate the same thing I always say whenever he’s in a film: get this guy more roles. Joe Don Baker shows up in a small but pivotal role as the grieving father/unrepentant killer and Paul Sparks oozes real menace as his second-in-command.

Writer/director Jeff Nichols has, very quietly, begun to build up quite the impressive resume. His debut, 2007’s Shotgun Stories, was a gut-punch about the special hell that only family members can put each other through and featured a scorching lead turn from Michael Shannon. Nichols followed this up with Take Shelter (2011), another Michael Shannon-starrer, about an average, everyday, Midwest man confronting the dubious possibility that he’s either envisioning the end of the world or is going completely bonkers. Across his three full-length features, Nichols has proven especially adept at examining the ways in which small-town folks are torn asunder by extraordinary circumstances. Some are able to regroup and rebuild…others are completely and utterly washed from the face of the earth. Even though Nichols may not have many films under his belt, he’s revealed himself to be an extraordinary filmmaker with a keen, razor-sharp edge and a knack for upending the stone of Middle American life and examining the squishy bugs beneath. In many ways, Nichols is like a softer-edged, more humanistic version of modern-day Cronenberg: they both plumb the rural interstates and byways of America, looking for the reasons behind the madness. Their America might not look like a Rockwell painting but it’s home, nonetheless.