"Christianity is stupid! Communism is good!": IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU, WHAT WILL HORSES DO?

If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? (1971)
Directed by Ron Ormond
Based on the writings of Estus W. Pirkle
Starring Judy Creech, Cecil Scaife, and Gene McFall

While Ron Ormond might not be as famous as Ed Wood or Herschell Gordon Lewis, he occupies a very curious place among schlock auteurs. A hacky B-movie director in the 50s, Mr. Ormond found religion and decided to devote his "talents", such as they were to spreading the word of Jesus Christ, specifically as preached by Reverend Estus W. Pirkle. Of course, Ormond's talents did not improve despite his conversion, and, in conjunction with the very "fire and brimstone" preachings of Reverend Pirkle, produced some very odd movies aimed at the religious "market", to be shown on 16mm projectors at churches. The best way to describe If Footmen Tire You, is to imagine if Red Dawn were being done as a Christmas pageant by your local Baptist church, and the whole thing were directed by Ed Wood.

The first thing that might strike the viewer as odd is the year given as the release date: 1971. But with the exception of brief mentions of inner-city riots and campus protests (and one hilariously out-of-touch "sex education" scene), this might as well be a colorized version of INVASION USA (the 1952 propaganda film, not the 1985 Chuck Norris action film). Most of Pirkle's broadsides against youth culture are so vague, and Ormond's dramatizations so clueless, that they could be criticizing beatniks or rockers in the 1950s. And the gore effects (and yes, there are gore effects) could have come out of BLOOD FEAST... caro syrup drenched over "dead" people who are clearly still breathing.

The story, as much as there is one, is that Reverend Pirkle is giving a sermon to his flock one Sunday. Judy (played by Judy Creech), a rebellious teenager, comes to mass and realizes that her dead mother was right about believing in Jesus. And every so often, Ormond cuts away to dramatize Pirkle's vision of Communist-controlled America.

If this film has any cultural currency outside of a select film buff community, it is as the source of the sample for experimental rock group Negativland's track "Christianity is Stupid" (which is also the source of the post title). There is something absurdly thrilling about hearing a Southern Baptist preacher, in stentorian tones, yelling, "Christianity is stupid! Communism is good!" over and over again. And, if this movie has any value beyond historical footnote to Christian pop culture & exploitation cinema, it is the absurdity of a evangelical sermon that tries to scare the congregation with misunderstood facts and half-remembered anecdotes about the counter-culture and Communist countries.

On the most basic level, the movie fails because its image of a Communist take-over and its consequences are so absurd. While Pirkle, at several points, buttresses his arguments with claims that these events are inspired by true events that happened in Russia, China, and Vietnam, but without understanding the context or widespread nature of these events. Pirkle only talks about Christian persecution, but he doesn't say anything about the state-sanctioned persecution of other religious minorities, ethnic minorities, intellectuals, artists or business owners, or the starvation of millions of peasants in the name of industrialization.

Furthermore, Pirkle's vision of a Communist take-over, while barely believable in 1952, is absurd in 1971. He shies away from specifics, but the few hints he drops are big enough whoppers. He anticipates a 5th Column-esque takeover, claiming that within 15 minutes of a signal, a legion of shadowy Communists will murder the President, Congress and most state governors. Even Joseph McCarthy would have blanched at that claim!

Remember, this movie was released seven (!) years after DOCTOR STRANGELOVE,  but there is no discussion of a nuclear war of any extent. Pirkle envisions a Fifth Column takeover, which results in total subjugation of the U.S. by Communist Cuba!

That's right, not China, not Russia.

Cuba.

If Ormond was a good director, this movie would be offensive. But since he's a schlock auteur, it's hilarious.

Except for the occasional Pirkle whopper, the sermonizing is pretty static and dull. Even the extras playing congregation, which one would assume might include members of Pirkle's own congregation, look bored and on the verge of yawning throughout the film.

Where the film comes alive is in the flashbacks to Judy's (inoffensively) rebellious life and the flash-forwards (or visualizations) of the aftermath of the Communist takeover. Judy's scenes with her mother and un-named boyfriend are hilarious: watching Judy & her mother woodenly over-emote in each other's general direction as they deliver awkward dialogue is a delight, as is Ormond's depiction of Judy's whitebread rebellion, as she and Mr. Boyfriend drink beer and smoke cigarettes!'

But even better than that are the torments the Communists devise. They sound pretty gruesome:

- Soldiers sticking nails through the ears of children;
- Soldiers forcing children to lower their father onto a series of rakes stuck into the ground;
- A boy getting his head chopped off with a machete after refusing to step on a picture of Jesus.

But when all the depictions are as inept as the one below...


Next they made him wear a headband with an arrow on other side.

Well, you can't help but laugh.

Adding to the hilarious incompetence is the fact that all the Communists wear costumes that were made by a high school theatre department that can't do a hammer-and-sickle, while the actors playing the Commisar (Cecil Scaife) and the Deputy Commisar (Gene McFall) seesaw between a broad Russian accent and a Deep Southern accent, sometimes within the same word!


Oh, and the Commisar looks like he should be coaching the Sweathogs.


If you're someone who actually suffered under Soviet totalitarianism, this movie would make you want to pound nails into the makers' eardrums. But if you think evangelical Christianity and fear-mongering are absurd, well, this movie might prove rewarding.

Why I hate MEN WHO HATE WOMEN

I've been blogging a lot more at the Tumblr. I just posted a pretty in-depth thing about David Fincher's THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO.

I should say, I think David Fincher is a talented director. But not only does this movie have an awful attitude about sex and feminism (while pretending to be progressive), it's a long and rather boring movie.

THE PETRIFIED FOREST plus Nazis should really be more exciting, shouldn't it?

ESCAPE IN THE DESERT (1945)
d. Edward A. Blatt
Starring: Phillip Dorn, Jean Sullivan, Irene Manning and Alan Hale (yes, the father of the Skipper from Gilligan's Island)

While I don't really count myself as nostalgic for long-gone ages in most respects (no contact lenses, lots of diseases, and racism and sexism out the wazoo), I usually have a rather rose-colored vision of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Whatever the faults of the system itself, it certainly produced some classics, and even the more mediocre efforts of the era usually have a professional sheen and charm that help them go down easy. On the other hand, this vision of the Golden Age of Hollywood escapes Sturgeon's Law (that 90% of everything is crap) by grading on a curve. After all, while a select few masterworks are lost to time, a lot of the material that Hollywood put out in those days that is still missing is lost or locked in a vault for good reason. It's just not that good. 

But every now and then, while trawling TCM's listings, I'll come across something that reminds me of that. In this case, I watched an obscure film called Escape in the Desert. Directed by a man whose main credits on IMDB are as dialogue director, and starring actors and actresses with few other credits, there's very little of that professional sheen or charm to make up the weight.

The story is about Phillip Artveld (Phillip Dorn), a Free Dutch soldier who is hitchhiking across the US on his way to San Diego. Unfortunately, his journey across the American Southwest happens to coincide with an escape by Nazi POWs, and a crotchety old man (Samuel S. Hinds) makes a citizen's arrest after picking him up. The misunderstanding is soon cleared up, but the upshot is that he's stuck at the old man's gas-station, which is run by his grand-daughter Jane, who wants nothing more than to escape the desert (Jean Sullivan), and Jane's suitor/sometimes-boyfriend/all-around idiot Hank Albright (Bill Kennedy). Oh, and then the real escaped Nazis show up.

Now, you probably couldn't guess from the plot description alone, but this is a rewrite/remake of The Petrified Forest. You know, that little picture that starred Leslie Howard and Bette Davis. The same film that gave Humphrey Bogart his start as the Golden Age's number one bad-ass in the role he originated on Broadway as Duke Mantee. Oh, and a play whose ending suggests that the brutish, violent thug and the disillusioned humanist are two sides of the same coin?

As you can imagine, the film is, to put it lightly, problematic. The people behind the cameras are straining to twist the story into something it isn't, and there's no one on either side of the camera to make it work. Certainly Hollywood has completely changed the message of a story while adapting it it, with Key Largo also making an odd ideological transformation from a reactionary stage play response to the Spanish Civil War to a cinematic defense of intervention in the Second World War (with an ending stolen from To Have And To Have Not). The difference is, John Huston, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Edward G Robinson all worked to sell it. 

When you have an ersatz dialogue director running the show with the rather inexpressive Phillip Dorn and the blandly pretty Jean Sullivan as your leads, the odds are against you.

And I'm not even a big fan of The Petrified Forest. While I rather enjoy Bogie's gangster, the script is pretentious, Leslie Howard comes off as the annoying dandy the Nazis in 49th Parallel accused him of being, and I can see Bette Davis still trying to figure out her technique. But still, it's Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart. And the script, for all it's faults, at least follows someone who is having a crisis of faith and comes to a big decision at the end.

Whereas Escape in the Desert has Phillip believing in the war but being slightly tired of fighting it. The narrative is explicitly set after the liberation of Holland, so he's not even chickening out of fighting, he's just doubting the wisdom of liberating colonial possessions that the Dutch really wouldn't get to keep anyhow (or at least, how you can cynically argue it in retrospect). There's not even a sense of conflict between Phillip as a warrior being mistreated by the people he's fought for. The guy gets kidnapped, held at gunpoint and punched because he's not like them. Hank, who might be shirking military service (the point is never quite made clear), even calls him a coward. But he never shows any resentment over that. I'm not expecting Stallone in First Blood-type reactions, but still... heck, go back to Key Largo, where there's a tension between Bogie's returning warrior and the people on the home front whose comfort and groundedness he resents.

So the only conflict is basically, will Phillip capture the Nazis? And we already know he'll survive since the story is a flashback. And the Nazis aren't really worthwhile villains. I never expected to type that phrase, but there's never even a two-dimensional level of characterization like the Nazis in 49th Parallel had. 



At least it's reassuring to know ours is not the only age that has a problem with ill-conceived remakes of popular films.

"What does katana mean?" "It means 'Japanese sword'."

SAMURAI COP (1989)
d.  Amir Shervan
Starring Robert Z'Dar, Matt Hannon, Matt Frazer and Gerald Okamura


Now let me start off by saying: I like bad movies. Some people think the "so bad it's good" designation for some movies is a snobbish thing, born out of some cruel, classist impulse to mock people whose artistic values are not your own. That bad movie fans just get a kick out of seeing stuff they're "better" than.

Now, in all fairness, as Rob Schrab said at the Cinefamily screening of Samurai Cop, sometimes seeing a deliriously crappy film is a reminder that, if you just remembered to properly light a scene, you're a friggin' modern-day Orson Welles compared to the guy who made Birdemic.

But at the same time, these movies certainly bring me joy, and 9 times out of 10, they make me laugh harder than almost any Hollywood (intentional) comedy has in years. I certainly have fond and grateful memories of Timechasers and The Apple and those other treasures of the cinematic trash dump. I could tell you more about those films than something like Atonement or On Golden Pond.

Of course, there are any number of bad films that have one delirious moment of "holy s**t, is this actually happening", and another hour of ho-hum mediocrity. Even Ed Wood produced some clunkers that are merely dull. So when the movie gods (or Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theatre, who are like unto a god) hand me something like Samurai Cop, I have to tell you all about it.

Because, even among crappy movies, this is a wonderfully crappy movie. It is slightly more technically competent than Manos: Hands of Fate, in that there actually is a story and the right equipment seems to have been purchased and utilized in filming. But beyond that, this is the kind of film that instills in you a respect for the most basic elements of film-making.

This character, here, for example, must have inspired Dean Lerner on Garth Marenghi's Darkplace.

For example, I've called a film visually uninteresting before, but even the most static, talky actor-turned-director piece looks like a Pressburger/Powell film compared to Samurai Cop, which seems to forget that you can do something other than medium shots on a camera. Not to mention that those medium shots often have people half in frame, half out of frame. 

And we've all seen ropey special effects work, but how often do you see gunfights where the squibs go off five seconds AFTER people duck? It's a wonder that anyone gets shot in this universe, since you clearly have to wait for the bullets to hit you.

But this is a film that fails on every single level. From a conceptual failure to follow-through on the title (he's really more of a karate cop who can use a sword, not a samurai), to deathless dialogue (like the quote in the title) to sex scenes that appear to be choreographed by middle school boys, there's a lot to enjoy and laugh about.

And, sure, I know that sounds condescending, but this is a bad film that rewards re-watching, as every new viewing gives you an appreciation of how much it fundamentally misses the mark.

Even the most jaded bad movie watchers will have to admit Samurai Cop hits that sweet spot of 'so bad it's good" for every minute of viewing. This is a film where Robert Z'Dar comes across as an understated and subtle actor compared to the wooden mannequins and strippers inhabiting the other roles. 

This is not even the most disturbing image of Robert Z'Dar you will take away from this film. Trust me.

Anyway, I don't want to spoil for you all the amazing badness. Just trust me and check it out. 


Or, just watch this clip for a taste.


 

John Brown's Body is Moldering in the Grave...

Watched Santa Fe Trail (d. Michael Curtiz, 1940) last night and was very disappointed. It's one of those Errol Flynn/Olivia de Havilland swashbucklers, but here Flynn is JEB Stuart, doing his best to restore order to "Bleeding" Kansas and defeat John Brown.

Now, there's certainly a lot to discuss about how the picture gets history wrong (we're talking National Treasure 2 levels of inaccuracy) but what's most disappointing is that the movie just isn't very good. It's Flynn/de Havilland, but they keep getting pushed aside by the need to plug more historical b.s. in. They Died With Their Boots On is incredibly inaccurate, but it manages to give us plenty of romance and derring-do for Flynn. Instead, Flynn barely does anything in the finale of Santa Fe Trail.

Overall, the film is as mediocre as Ronald Reagan's performance as George Armstrong Custer. The movie is at its' most interesting when it totally rewrites history, because then it allows the mind to occupy itself with thoughts of what it changed and why did they change it?

This might make an interesting acid test, though, because anyone defending it as a great movie, from whatever side of the political spectrum, clearly has no love for cinema, only propaganda.

Sci-fi tropes that need to be banned for 50 years...

I had a serious post half-written about how I'm somewhat tired of the sci-fi genre. And then I realized it would probably be more helpful/fun to make a post of sci-fi tropes/plot devices that need to be banned for at least the next 50 years.

Clearly I'm not a governing body with any kind of authority, so, think of it this way. If you are writing something in which any of the following things are used, just think twice about it. Are you really writing something that original?

1. Despite being the distant future, America still exists pretty much like it does now, both geographically and sociologically.
2. Despite being the distant future, America's main political/military rivals are still exactly the same as they are today.
3. Despite being the future, the one world government is run suspiciously like a US-style democracy, and most of the leaders seem to be white and/or male.
4.  Despite being the distant future with high technological advancement, the roles of men and women are exactly the same. If they are being disputed, it is in the same way they are currently being disputed.
5. Mankind has encountered only one alien race, and they are monolithically united in fighting us.
6. The morality of totally wiping out a sentient race is never questioned, or only by a straw man.
7. Mankind is technologically set back by a disaster. It responds by adapting SCA/medieval political units, with no alterations.
8. When mankind loses technology and forms a quasi-utopian pre-Industrial society, no one ever requires internal medicine or modern pharmaceuticals.
9. Despite major technical advances, including mass teleportation, mankind still relies on 19th/early 20th naval tactics for warfare. Especially in space.
10. The Nazis/Confederates win World War II/the Civil War.
11. The Nazis/Confederates win World War II/the Civil War with the aid of time travelers/aliens/dragons.
12. A quasi-fascist strong man is the only one who can save the Future US/Earth from a major threat. Anyone who questions him is completely wrong.
13. Except for uniforms that look like Iron Man joining a SWAT team, average soldiers are completely the same as the stock types from a World War II movie.
14. Sexual relations and mores are exactly the same as they are currently.

Ok, this is just a start. If you have more suggestions, leave them in the comments.

UFA versus Hollywood: or, what Archie Hickox was talking about...

I'm reading Klaus Kreimeier's The UFA Story: A History of Germany's Greatest Film Company 1918-1945, because I've been very interested in Nazi Germany art and culture for a while and the way the state interacted with artists beyond mere censorship. Watching Inglourious Basterds again, which briefly touched on the way UFA tried to be both a branch of the entertainment industry and of the propaganda industry, definitely piqued that interest, but there have been other factors as well.

Spotts' Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics already touched on the visual arts in Nazi Germany and Richard Evans' The Third Reich at War touched on the performing arts, though Evans is most interested in statistics of consumption, production and attendance. It wasn't until I recently watched the fascinating Goebbels Experiment on Netflix Instant Viewing and heard some of Goebbels' attempts at film criticism that I got an idea of how seriously the party (or Goebbels, at least) took the integration of art and propaganda in the film industry.

[A side note: only after watching The Goebbels Experiment did I get an idea of how unrepresentative of UFA's work Nation's Pride is. For the sake of the film, I understand why it ends up being a weird Samuel Fuller-esque shoot-out, but, at least judging from the clips of Uncle Krueger and Kolberg the documentary displays, UFA's directors seemed capable of some expressionism, but never such frenetic usage of editing and montage.]

I'm probably going to be blogging about it as I read, but right off the bat, what is most striking is how the early German film industry came down to a fight between big industrial interests and the military. Heaven knows Hollywood ended up being a giant collectivist trust, but it was never so heavily tied to the government and the corporatist state as the early German film industry was.  On top of that, both sides of that fight are conservative or right-wing, but in different ways.

More to come...

Three views of Yogi Bear

(Inspired by this FunnyorDie video. With apologies to Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy and Alan Moore)

1.

Yogi and Boo-Boo returned from the woods and stood over the ditch, looking down at the grandmother who half sat and half lay in a puddle of blood with her legs crossed under her like a child's and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky.
Without his fedora, Yogi's eyes were red-rimmed and pale and defenseless-looking. "Take her off and thow her where you thrown the others," he said, picking up the cat that was rubbing itself against his leg.
"She was a talker, wasn't she?" Boo-Boo said, sliding down the ditch with a chuckle.
"She would of been a good woman," Yogi said, "if it had been somebody there to maul her every minute of her life."
"Some fun!" Boo-Boo said.
"Shut up, a-Boo-Boo," Yogi said. "It's no real pleasure in life. Just pic-a-nic baskets."

2.
And they are picnicking, the ground slamming under their jackboots and the rangers grinning hideously under their canted hats. Towering over them all is Yogi and he is naked dancing, his small feet lively and quick and now in doubletime and bowing to the ladies, huge and dark and hairy, like an enormous teddy-bear. He never sleeps, he says. He says he'll never die. He bows to the fiddlers and sashays backwards and throws back his head and laughs deep in his throat and he is a great favorite, the Bear. He wafts his fedora and the furry dome of his skull passes under the lamps and he swings about and takes possession of one of the pic-a-nic baskets and he pirouettes and makes a pass, two passes, dancing and eating at once. His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He picnics in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He says he is smarter than the average bear.  He is picnicking, picnicking. He says that he will never die.

3.
"Hello, Smith. I was hoping we'd have the chance to talk.... I know people think me callous, but I've made myself feel every picnic. By day I imagine endless sandwiches. By night... Well, I dream about walking past the same cave... no, never mind. I'd hoped you'd understand, unlike Boo-Boo..."
"Yes, I understand, without condoning or condemning. Ursine affairs cannot be my concern. I'm leaving this park for one less complicated. Goodbye, Yogi."
"Ranger, wait, before you leave... I did the right thing, didn't I? It all worked out in the end."
"Nothing ever ends, Yogi. Especially not a Hanna-Barbera cartoon."

I hated, hated, hated this movie...

Tim over at Antagony & Ecstasy just posted a review of Song of the South that was calmly reasoned, yet empathetic, dealing with the complexities and problems of race in film in Hollywood's Golden Age. I think he's right about the hypocrisies and blind spots in how and why people decide to whitewash history, and I don't doubt he's right.

However, I had an interesting experience when I sat down to watch The Mask of Fu Manchu, the 1932 version starring Boris Karloff and Myrna Loy. It was just so hateful I just couldn't finish it.

Now, I've watched some films that are notoriously hard to watch (such as Cannibal Holocaust) and I've watched films with bad racial politics (Gone With the Wind). But despite beautiful production design and a wonderfully campy performance by Boris Karloff, I just couldn't watch more than 30 minutes.

Because, in contrast to Song of the South, this is a film bound up in racist ideology, without any sense that anyone involved was trying to do something other than insulting. It is a film that sees miscegenation as more horrifying than any type of torture, that dismisses a variety of cultures and nations as one monolithic evil entity, and indulges in some of the worst "yellowface" casting ever. As far as I watched, there was not one single Asian person in the cast.

And meanwhile, the white "heroes" are such awful assholes and idiots, with no sense that anyone involved thought they are anything but justified. They talk about their servants in the most insulting terms and treat them brutally, and are surprised that they are betrayed! They are aghast at the idea that the Chinese might want Genghis Khan's artifacts for their own use instead of stuck thousands of miles away in the British Museum! They wonder at the glory of an "unplundered tomb" right before they set to destroying and plundering it! There is no irony, no nuance, nothing to betray even a hint that these behaviors are not the white man's right as a superior being.

I certainly don't want it banned, but I'm shocked that this can show on TCM (a channel I admire and watch religiously) without a hint of controversy, while Song of the South remains in limbo. And the next time someone goes on about how we need more movies like in the old days, when men were men and women were women, etc., I'll remember that the era they speak so fondly of also produced filth like this.

I think Netflix is broken...

because the under-rated Anthony Mann western The Last Frontier, starring James Whitmore, Victor Mature, Anne Bancroft & Robert Preston and shot in Cinemascope (!) is garnering the same rating of three and a half stars as Saw & Death Sentence.

I know there's no accounting for taste, but this has to be a technical problem with the site, not that people actually like Saw or Death Sentence that much, right?

Dept. of Loathsome Movies...

So, are there actually people who think Falling Down is a good movie? I think Glenn Beck must have seen this movie, and thought it was a documentary....