The Curator of Schlock #386: Hitch-Hike

17 Friday Jun 2022

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, The Curator of Schlock

The Curator of Schlock #386 by Jeff Shuster

Hitch-Hike

Also known as Death Drive.

The trunk popped open and three goons adorned with bandanas and torn jeans yanked me to my feet. We were in a dark alley somewhere in the dead of night. A cat meowed after knocking over a garbage can, beer bottles clinking to the asphalt. This spooked one of the goons, a lanky guy that kept twitching.

“Let’s finish him off,” he said, turning his head from right to left. “I feel like we’re being watched.”

“Relax,” said another goon grasping an aluminum bat with both hands. “Boss said we could play with him first.” — To be continued.

This week’s movie is 1978’s Hitch-Hike from director Pasquale Festa and is another in the line of Italian exploitation pictures inspired by The Last House on the Left. While this one does not follow that standard formula, it does star David Hess, the actor who played the sadistic Krug Stillo in The Last House on the Left. It also stars Franco Nero of Django and Street Law fame. And we get Corinne Cléry, who starred in Mooonraker and The Story of O. I haven’t seen The Story of O, but with a title like that I think I will have to.

Hitch-hike begins with a husband and wife on the great American road trip in southern California, camper in tow. Walter Mancini (Franco Nero) is an Italian journalist married to Eve (Corinne Cléry), an American woman from a rich family. Walter likes to drink…a lot. Walter and his wife fight…a lot. Walter falls after tripping over a tent at a campground and busts up his right hand so he can’t drive. While on the road, Eve sees a hitchhiker and picks him up despite Walter’s protests. That hitchhiker is Adam Konitz (David Hess), an escaped psychopath from a hospital for the criminally insane.

Walter attempts to be on his best behavior, but Adam keeps taunting the couple. When Adam rambles about a sexual act he’d like Eve to do for him, Walter punches him in the mouth and has Eve pull over. He forces Adam out of the car, but then Adam pulls a gun on them. Turns out Adam stole two million dollars and is on the run from the law. He needs the couple to drive him to Mexico where he can live the high life. Two members of the California Highway Patrol pull them over before they can reach the border. Walter secretly alerts the police officers to their predicament, but Adam gets wise and wastes the cops in short order.

Adam finds out Walter is a journalist and wants him to write a book about him. These plans are thrown awry when Adam’s former partners in crime, shoot him and take the Mancinis hostage. They just want the two million dollars and transportation to the Mexican border, but then a truck rams into the Mancini’s camper. Can you guess who’s driving that truck? Yes, it’s Adam and he’s not so dead after all. He has a shootout with his former heist partners, severely wounding one of them. He offers to drive them to a hospital in his truck, but then jumps out of the truck before sending it careening off the road so it can crash and explode. More twists and turns come and I have to say that I’m glad I watched this. It’s a good thriller with the right kind of shocking ending.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, and episode 496) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #383: CQ

27 Friday May 2022

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The Curator of Schlock #383 by Jeff Shuster

Roman Coppola’s love letter to cinema.

“Unhand me,” I said as two hooligans grabbed my arms and forced me to my knees. “I’m the curator of this museum.”

The punk with the mohawk leaped down off the severed concrete head of Charles Bronson, the centerpiece of the once grand Museum of Schlock. He swayed over to me like this was his domain as his goons murmured under their breath. He raised a dirty index finger to his lips, sushing me. The punk then smiled with a silver grill and said, “I’m the curator.”

This week’s movie is 2001’s CQ from director Roman Coppola. This is one of those movies within a movie within a movie movies. We start with a young, aspiring filmmaker named Paul Ballard (Jeremy Davies) living in Paris in 1969. He’s making a documentary about his daily life. The movie is shot in black and white and resembles David Holzman’s Diary, a staple for anyone who took a history of documentary film class in college. Paul lives with his French girlfriend, Marlene (Elodie Bouchez), and his constant obsession over his daily life documentary annoys her to no end.

Paul also has a day job editing a futuristic spy movie named Codename: Dragonfly, a kind of Barbarella-meets-Modesty Blaise vehicle. The movie stars the stunningly beautiful Valentine (Angela Lindvall) as Dragonfly. Gérard Depardieu plays Andrezej, the director of Code Name: Dragonfly who spotted Valentine at a political rally and became obsessed with making the movie about revolution. Andrezej talks about subverting audience expectations and how this movie’s ending is really a beginning.

Andrezej’s creative excesses infuriate producer Enzo (Giancarlo Giannini), a caricature of Dino De Laurentiis. Enzo screams that Andrezej has made an action picture with no action and no ending. He fires Andrezej on the spot. This is not well received as Andrezej calls Enzo a fascist and tries to break the door down to get back into the screening room. Enzo shuts down the production down and fires the staff only to restart the picture and rehire some of the staff including Paul as editor.

Enzo’s new replacement director is Felix DeMarco (Jason Schwartzman), an American director of gothic horror movies, currently directing a vampire picture which I think is titled Blood from Satan’s Tomb. He’s all on board with the project and Enzo wants him to fix the ending. Felix employs Paul to make a trailer for Code Name: Dragonfly and Valentine stops by the studio for an ADR session. Paul becomes infatuated with Valentine after meeting her in person for the first time.

Paul’s continued work on his documentary along with his new responsibilities on Code Name: Dragonfly puts a strain on his relationship with Marlene. This pressure increases after Felix bows out of the project and Enzo selects Paul as the new director. Paul needs to come up with that new ending and I think he’s torn between a crowd pleaser or something more faithful to Andrezej’s original vision. CQ is a love letter to the European escapist cinema of the late 1960s. It’s a shame Roman Coppola hasn’t directed more feature films. This one is a gem.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

The Curator of Schlock #382: Dark Crimes

20 Friday May 2022

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The Curator of Schlock #382 by Jeff Shuster

Dark Crimes

Jim Carrey tries the darkly dramatic.

A punk with a mohawk sat perched upon the concrete head of Charles Bronson in the ransacked building that was once the Museum of Schlock. I gave him a hard stare, but he paid me no mind, sticking two fingers in his mouth and whistling. About a dozen hooligans came forth, pipes and baseball bats in their hands. Some of them were wearing the 70s sports jackets I had on display for the movie Nightmare City. I paid six figures for those props! — To be continued.

This week’s movie is 2018’s Dark Crimes from director Alexandros Avranas. It currently holds a critics score of zero percent, but what do critics know? I can make my own decisions about which movies I watch. Looks like the audience rating twenty-nine percent. What does the herd know? The Wikipedia plot synopsis consists of four sentences, making me think that no one out there cares enough to write a detailed synopsis of this movie. And I am, of course, a professional.

Dark Crimes has a running time of 92 minutes which is good. I remember reading Screenwriting: The Foundations of Screenwriting by Syd Field many years ago. In it, Syd Field commented on the difference between American movie length versus European movie length. American movies tended to run at about two hours back in the 1970s while the European movies of that era run an hour and a half. I’ve heard it said that the average attention span of a human being is an hour and a half, so perhaps the European filmmakers were right.

I also remember an Ebert & Roeper episode where Richard Roeper bemoaned the length of modern movies. Roger Ebert stated that no good movie is too long and no bad movie is too short. At the time I was on Roeper’s side because I hated how Hollywood kept pushing movies well past the two hour mark. I groan at the prospect of watching the latest Batman movie because it’s nearly three hours long. Whither, editing?

Still, Roger Ebert had a point. At 92 minutes, Dark Crimes is still one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen!

Jim Carrey plays a Polish police inspector named Tadek. We first see him brushing dead hairs out of his scruffy beard before joining his family for some breakfast. He has bacon and eggs as his wife and daughter stare at him dispassionately. We learn that Tadek was benched for a desk job after some disastrous case. Anyway, a friend in the department gives him a new case to work on, the strangulation of a businessman that was left unsolved.

His investigations lead him to suspect a writer named Kozlov (Marton Csokas), a pretentious creep that makes wild proclamations to an eager press about there being no such thing as truth. Kozlov likes to write about grotesque, underground S&M clubs where the patrons get to indulge their abusive side. Tadek gets drawn into this sick world and before the movie is over, he’ll have lost everything, agape in despair, just as Jim Carrey should be.

There’s even a scene where Tadek finds the corpse of his dead mother with a twisted expression on her face. She died alone in her apartment after Tadek promised her she wouldn’t die alone.

Good times!

Skip it! Skip it! Skip it!

Photo by Leslie Salas.

The Curator of Schlock #381: The Driver

13 Friday May 2022

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The Curator of Schlock #381 by Jeff Shuster

The Driver

Not to be confused with Drive.

I had come home or so I thought. I was prepared to get my life back to normal after my misadventures across North America, ready to resume my role as curator of The Museum of Schlock, but everything had changed.

The interior of The Museum of Schlock had been ransacked! Graffiti speckled the walls, the displays were in tatters, and the head of the Charles Bronson statue had been decapitated. Atop that concrete head sat a man on his makeshift throne: mohawk, torn jeans, spiked collar. He glared at me like I was trespassing, like this was his property. — To be continued.

This week’s movie is 1978’s The Driver from director Walter Hill. If any of you have seen 2011’s Drive from director Nicolas Winding Refn, The Driver will seem familiar. Both feature a getaway driver who’s the best of the best at ferrying criminals from the hot pursuit of the police. But I don’t remember disliking the cast of characters in Drive as much of the ones in The Driver. Ryan O’Neal plays The Driver and admits in his taciturn way that nobody likes him.

All of the criminals in this movie are unpleasant and the cops aren’t much better. Bruce Darn plays The Detective that’s obsessed with catching The Driver. The movie opens with The Driver stealing a random car from a parking garage for a heist at a casino. Two robbers get into the car, but are late, allowing several bystanders to witness the getaway. What proceeds next is a tense chase scene on the mean streets of 1970s Los Angeles. There are about a dozen police cars hunting for The Driver like sharks in open water, but he manages to hide and outrun them.

There are enough witnesses that The Detective puts The Driver in a police lineup that consists of The Driver and no one else. The witnesses are unsure if he was the guy and the one witness that got a good look at him, The Player (Isabelle Adjani), says The Driver was not at the scene of the crime. Frustrated, The Detective loses his cool, goading The Driver into taking a swing at him so The Driver can get two years for assaulting a police officer, but The Driver doesn’t take the bait.

So it turns out The Player was paid off by The Driver to give false testimony. She’s a young and beautiful woman with a French accent who was once a mistress to a rich man before he bailed on her. The Detective harasses her in her apartment, alluding to her past life as a prostitute. The Detective’s obsession with capturing The Driver causes him to set up a sting operation that may be less than legal. He captures a convenience store robber named Glasses (Joseph Walsh) and makes a deal with him. Glasses needs to hire The Driver for a bank robbery and then deliver The Driver to the police.

Things don’t go as smoothly as planned as everyone in this movie is out for themselves, but I won’t spoil the rest of it for you. The Driver is worth a look, but good luck finding a copy. The Twilight Time Blu-ray goes for about $140 on Ebay.

I ain’t that rich.

Photo by Leslie Salas

The Curator of Schlock #379: Memories

29 Friday Apr 2022

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The Curator of Schlock #379 by Jeff Shuster

Memories

Three movies in one.

I was in tears when Larry, a secret agent of the Canadian government, informed me that Edwige, my kangaroo companion, would have to be transported to a kangaroo sanctuary somewhere in Gibraltar. I was allowed to ride in a truck with her to a port in Halifax. I gave her a deep hug before she was set to board a ship that would take her away from me forever. Edwige then broke from my embrace and kicked me in the face. I crashed to the ground and I could have swore Edwige was laughing at me as she hopped aboard the ship.

I’m going to wrap up Anime Month with yet another anthology movie, 1995’s Memories from directors Koji Morimoto, Tensai Okamura, and Katsuhiro Otomo. I remember hearing of this movie during the early days of my access to the Internet. I was hungry for more animated anthology movies like Robot Carnival or Heavy Metal. Somehow I learned of this movie and waited patiently for it to come stateside, but a North American release would elude until about eight years later. Sony put out a fine DVD of this feature back in 2004 and Memories has recently received the Blu-ray treatment from Discotek Media.

The first short is Magnetic Rose from director Koji Morimoto. The movie features a group of space faring salvage men in the late 21st century. They receive an SOS call from an abandoned space station. Two of the ship’s engineers, Heintz and Miguel, go to investigate the abandoned facility which we learn belonged to a famous opera singer named Eva Friedel. The entire station station has lavish furnishings and art like something you’d find in an aristocrat’s house from the 19th century.

Holograms emit illusions of the Italian countryside and of a beautiful diva that enchants Miguel, a would-be lothario. Back on the ship, the crew informs Heintz and Miguel that Eva retreated to this station in the 2030s after her fiancé was murdered and she lost her voice and singing career. Eva left Earth for this station to drown in her memories and she now wants to draw in Heintz and Miguel. This is a creepy story and the idea that this ghost may be a combination of artificial intelligence and nanotechnology makes her no less terrifying. The score for this sequence comes from the opera Madame Butterfly and was covered by Yoko Kano of Cowboy Bebop fame.

The second short is Stink Bomb from director Tensai Okamura, a darkly humous tale of a biological weapon turned loose on the Japanese populace. Nobua Tanaka is a lab technician battling the flu when a coworker suggests he takes a couple of pills from a new experimental cold medicine left on his boss’s desk. The pills kill his cold and turn Tanaka into a walking bringer of death that kills anything that comes near him. His body produces a cloud of stink that wipes out anything that smells it. This story was inspired by the Gloria Ramirez incident, a cancer patient that had caused severe illness in the staff at a California hospital due to her self-administering dimethyl sulfoxide which her body converted into a deadly toxin that exposed the hospital workers (if I’m to believe Wikipedia).

The third and final short is Cannon Fodder from director Katsuhiro Otomo. This film is about a day in the life of a family whose entire purpose in life is to prepare cannons to be fired at the enemy nation of their society. In fact, the whole society’s purpose is to prepare and fire the many hundreds of cannons aimed at the enemy nation. Elementary school teaches the students about the essentials of gunpowder and correct trajectory. Class is based on what level you are on the cannon firing ladder. You want to be the one firing the cannon and not some loser cannon-loader. I have to marvel at how hideous and miserable the characters in this short look.

And that’s it for Memories. If you ever had an interest in anime, this might be a good place to start.

Photo by Leslie Salas

The Curator of Schlock #378: Mary and the Witch’s Flower

22 Friday Apr 2022

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The Curator of Schlock #378 by Jeff Shuster

Mary and the Witch’s Flower

Kind of like a Ghibli movie.

The nightmare was over. Operatives from the Canadian government had infiltrated a marsupial slaughterhouse in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Edwige, my kangaroo companion, and myself were saved. All of the surviving animals were to be transported to animal sanctuaries. And then Larry, the Don Knotts looking special operative, gave me some bad news that hit me straight in the gut. I had to say goodbye to Edwige.

A few weeks back I reviewed Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, an attempt by a Japanese animation company to produce a movie in the style of classic Disney animation. The critics lambasted it and I felt the need to defend the movie because, at the very least, it was pretty to look at. But looks aren’t everything and, in retrospect, Little Nemo proved to be a hollow experience as the protagonist was a bit of a floater. This brings us 2017’s Mary and the Witch’s Flower from director Hiromasa Yonebayashi.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower is the first feature film of Studio Ponoc, a company formed by Yoshiaki Nishimura, the former lead producer of Studio Ghibli, a production company said to rival the Walt Disney Studios in terms of quality animated features for children and adults, Why did he leave Ghibli? Well, the studio shutdown following Hayao Miyazaki’s retirement, Miyazaki being one of the great living legends of animation. Unfortunately, this must have left many of the animators out of a job so they went with Nishimura to form a new studio and keep the style of Studio Ghibli alive.

On the surface, Mary and the Witch’s Flower has the look and feel of a top notch Studio Ghibli production. The movie is based on the children’s novel The Little Broomstick by English author Mary Stewart. Studio Ghibli had also produced movies based on English children’s novels such as The Borrowers by Mary Norton and Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. Studio Ghibli English dubs are also known for featuring top talent and Mary and the Witch’s Flower features Ruby Barnhill, Kate Winslet, and Jim Broadbent.

With all of these elements coming together, we should have a movie set to rival any that Studio Ghibli had to offer, allowing Studio Ponco to carry on the legacy. Unfortunately, the experience left me feeling flat. Yes, the animation itself is up to the level of a Studio Ghibli production, but our heroine isn’t up to the Ghibli standard. Sheila O’Malley of RogerEbert.com is spot on when she says, “There’s no real inner conflict in the character, informing her choices (consciously or unconsciously).”

I remember in Kiki’s Delivery Service how Kiki loses faith in herself or how Chihiro breaks down after surviving her first night in the bath house of the spirits in Spirited Away. I’ve heard that Hayou Miyazaki has come out of retirement to make one final movie, How Do You Live? After that, it may be the end of an era for this style of animated movie, much how classic Disney animation has faded away; so too may Ghibli.

Photo by Leslie Salas

The Curator of Schlock #377: Short Peace

15 Friday Apr 2022

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The Curator of Schlock #377 by Jeff Shuster

Short Peace

Don’t ask about the title.

I had collapsed in shock after witnessing a security guard get mauled to death by Tasmanian devils while trapped in a cage with a female kangaroo named Edwige. The devils ignored us, choosing to go after the other factory workers in the distance. Maybe it was a kinship toward Edwige and the other marsupials in this slaughterhouse for black market meats. Hours later, a team of soldiers led by Larry, a secret agent of the Canadian government bearing a striking resemblance to Don Knots, freed Edwige and myself from our cage. — To be continued.

This week’s anime extravaganza is 2013’s Short Peace, another animated anthology of short films from directors Koji Morimoto, Shuhei Morita, Katsuhiro Otomo, Hiroaki Ando, and Hajime Katoki. One of these shorts, Possessions, was even nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short. The movie begins with a little girl following a rabbit into a chamber filled with wondrous delights that serves as a hub for the different worlds that await the audience.

The first short is the aforementioned Possessions. It begins in old Japan. A traveler caught in a forest during a raging storm. He enters a shrine to escape the rain, apologizes to whichever spirits reside on the sacred ground. Before he knows it, he’s in a room surrounded by fancy umbrellas, all complaining about their state of decay. The traveler marvels at their craftsmanship and proceeds to repair them with materials made available to him. He repairs garments as well, but then requests that the spirits let him out, but the spirits of the abandoned items turn violent. Will he survive the night?

The next short is titled Combustible, and as you can tell from the title, it’s about fire. The short begins with an illustrated scroll rolling out. The images spring to life and we get a tale of a bride wanting a man other than her betrothed. She’s in love with a member of the town’s fire brigade. In her despair, she accidentally starts a fire, infighting her home and the entire neighborhood.

The third short is Gambo, a tale of a bear and an ogre. The short begins with a defeated samurai asking the big, white bear Gambo if he’s a messenger from God or something to that effect. In a nearby village, a giant red ogre with a twisted face and sharp horns attacks the villagers and makes off with one of the young maidens to impregnate her with his devil spawn. Later, Gambo meets the daughter of the emperor who conveys her despair and gets him to destroy the ogre’s lair. A brutal fight between bear and ogre ensues. The samurai from the beginning of the film rushed to Gambo’s aid.

The final short is titled A Farewell to Weapons and is about a group of scavengers looking for valuables in an abandoned city after a future World War. An artificially intelligent super tank wakes up and gives chase. Realizing how deadly this weapon is, the men vow to destroy it. And that about sums up Short Peace. I liked how some of the shorts were cel animated while others incorporated CG into the traditional look of cel animation. For fans of animated anthologies, this one is not to be missed.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

The Curator of Schlock #376: Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland

08 Friday Apr 2022

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The Curator of Schlock #376 by Jeff Shuster

Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland

Is it anime?

You ever watch a man get eaten alive by Tasmanian devils? I have. You ever watch a man get eaten alive by Tasmanian devils while trapped inside a cage with a kangaroo named Edwige? I have. You ever watch a man get eaten alive by Tasmanian devils while trapped in a cage with a kangaroo named Edwige while blowing bubbles with sour apple flavored Bubblicious bubble gum? I have.

Jealous much?

This week’s movie is 1992’s Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland from directors Masami Hate and William Hurtz. At some point, I hope they make a documentary on the making of this motion picture as it had been stuck in development hell for about fifteen years. Producer Yutaka Fujioka wanted to enter the U.S. market with a feature length adaptation of a classic American comic strip by Winsor McCay. Names attached to this production include Ray Bradbury, Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, Brad Bird, and Chris Columbus to name a few.

From what I can gather, this movie was an attempt by a Japanese animation studio to create a feature in the American style of animation, something akin to what the Walt Disney Studios would make. Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland had an estimated budget of $35 million dollars, but only made $14 million at the box office. I have to say, growing up I’d never heard anyone talk about this movie. It most likely was overshadowed by the recent Disney offerings of The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast.

I did a little digging and found an old Siskel & Ebert clip where they were not too kind to this movie. In Roger Ebert’s review, he states “Nemo himself has the IQ of an eggplant, but at least he doesn’t talk much.” Who is Nemo? He’s a 7 or 8-year-old boy with a wild imagination. When he goes to sleep, he dreams of piloting his bed through the summer sky and getting chased down by choo choo trains. Nemo also has a pet flying squirrel named Icarus because why not.

The circus is coming to town and Nemo begs his dad to take him, but Nemo’s dad is too concerned with grown up stuff like working and putting food on the table and a roof over their heads. I’m also not sure that Nemo deserves to go to the circus as he tries to steal a piece of his mother’s pie after promising not to. Nemo falls asleep and is awakened by a Professor Genius and his troop of circus performers. He presents Nemo with a gift from the Princess Camille of Slumberland, a box of fancy cookies she baked herself.

Professor Genius tells Nemo that he’s to become Princess Camille’s new playmate so off to Slumberland they go, in a dirigible no less. Slumberland is an amazing place with tall buildings and fireworks and fireworks shaped like buildings. He meets King Morpheus, a rotund fellow who makes him his heir and gives him a special key that can open any door in the kingdom. Nemo is told not to open the door with a dragon symbol on it. A grifter named Flip (voiced by Mickey Rooney) convinces Nemo to open the door and, wouldn’t you know it, the evil Nightmare gets out and kidnaps King Morpheus.

So Nemo makes stupid decisions while in Slumberland, but how many of us make smart decisions while in a dream? I didn’t like the main character. I didn’t hate him. Nemo is just kind of along for the ride along with the audience. Apparently, this movie was released in Japan three years prior to the American release and I’m curious as to whether the Japanese version had a different script. You can catch the English release on Amazon Prime streaming.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

The Curator of Schlock #375: Robot Carnival

01 Friday Apr 2022

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The Curator of Schlock #375 by Jeff Shuster

Robot Carnival

Nine animators, One vision.

An army of rabid Tasmanian devils rushed the security guard and myself. I did what any sane person would do and ran for my life. Edwige, my kangaroo companion and two other kangaroos were locked away in cages. I slid the latch off of Edwige’s cage and crammed myself inside. I watched in horror as the Tasmanian devils lunged at the security guard, sinking their jaws into him. — To be continued.

This month is Anime Month on this humble schlock blog. I’ll begin with the feature that got me Japanese animation in the first place, 1991’s Robot Carnival. I don’t list a director as this an anthology film made of up many directors that includes a who’s who of the Japanese animation industry of the time such as Koji Morimoto, Hidetoshi Ōmori, Yasuomi Umetsu, Hiroyuki Kitazume, Manabu Ōhashi, Hiroyuki Kitakubo, Takashi Nakamura, and Katsuhiro Otomo. Each of these directors was given a task: create a short film involving robots.

Robot Carnival might be the closest you’re ever going to get to an anime version of Walt Disney’s Fantasia. No classical music here, but you do get an excellent electronic score by Isaku Fujita and Joe Hisaishi, the latter best known for composing the scores for the films of the great Hayao Miyazaki. Like Fantasia, most of these shorts have no dialogue, In fact, the short Nightmare is a direct homage to Night on Bald Mountain segment from Fantasia.

I first caught this movie on the Sci-Fi channel back in the fall of 1993. We were visiting a family friend over the Thanksgiving holidays and they had this wondrous device called a satellite dish that gave me access to channels I had never seen before. One of these channels was the Sci-Fi channel and they were showing a movie called Robot Carnival during an anime marathon. I would sneak watch when no one was around, absorbed in the state of the art animation I was seeing on screen. I wouldn’t get another opportunity to watch Robot Carnival until I got regular access to the Sci-Fi channel years later.

I picked up the VHS at a Suncoast Video in 1996. I watched repeatedly and worried about wearing the tape out, a common problem back the days before DVD. I was an early adopter, picking up my first player in 1998. I waited patiently for Robot Carnival to make its DVD debut in North America, but it would not get an official release until about seventeen years later. And when it did come out on DVD, the shorts were in the wrong order!

Allow me to explain. Depending on which version of Robot Carnival you watch, the shorts are presented in a different order. There is the Japanese original, the North American theatrical, and the North American laserdisc. When Carl Macek released the movie in theaters, he wanted the reel changes to occur in-between the shorts so as not to disrupt them. The Japanese producers allowed him to do this. I figure the laserdisc order was changed so as to disrupt the movie as little as possible when you needed to flip the disc. Yes, you needed to flip LaserDiscs over to watch the second half of the movie.

I learned all of this from the wonderful supplements on Blu-ray release from Discotek Media. And the great thing about the Blu-ray is that you have the option of watching the shorts in the original Japanese order, North American theatrical, or North American LaserDisc. The North American LaserDisc order even has a fake LaserDisc load screen. Obviously, great care was taken to make sure the fans of this movie can watch their preferred version.

I guess I haven’t said much about this motion picture because you need to just experience Robot Carnival for yourself. It is available to stream for free through several apps such as Tubi, Vudu, and Pluto TV. Jonathan Greenall of CBR calls Robot Carnival an “unsung anime masterpiece.” He’s not wrong so check out what was for the longest time my favorite movie.

Photo by Leslie Salas

The Curator of Schlock #374: Leprechaun 4: In Space

25 Friday Mar 2022

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Leprechaun 4: In Space

That is not how you title a movie!

Bad things were going down in a marsupial slaughtering factory in the Canadian Province of Saskatchewan. A bloodied factory worker had screamed about “devils on the loose” before breathing his last. Then came the howls from a shifting black mass of doom creeping in my direction. Dozens if not hundreds of rabid Tasmanian devils were headed toward me.

— To be continued.

This week’s movie is 1997’s Leprechaun 4: In Space from director Brian Trenchard-Smith. This is the one we’ve been waiting for, folks. I can’t think of any movie series that couldn’t be improved by sending it into outer space. This marks the last movie of the 90s era Leprechaun movies and the final movie in The Leprechaun Cycle. I remember catching this movie during its original IMAX run. Wow. You could count every whisker on Warwick Davis’s face!

Leprechaun 4: In Space begins with the Leprechaun (Warwick Davis) trying to coax the lovely Princess Zarina (Rebekah Carlton) into marriage. This isn’t taking place on Earth and Princess Zarina is not an Earthling. The year is 2096 and the Leprechaun is now living on a planet of gold. He wants to marry the princess and murder her father so he can become king of her homeward. Zarina’s on board when he promises to make her rich.

On a starship, we have a group of space marines on a mission to kill the Leprechaun. If you cynically think this movie is going to be like Aliens, but with the Leprechaun instead of the Xenomorph, you would be right. The Leprechaun manages to fall on a grenade and explode. A marine named Private Kowalski pees on his corpse, which allows the Leprechaun’s evil spirit to swim up the urine stream into the marine’s twig and berries.

Meanwhile, there’s a deformed cyborg named Dr. Mittenhand (Guy Siner) that wants to use the DNA from the princess to grow himself a new body, Princess Zarina has blue blood with regenerative properties. Mixed with Dr. Mittenhand’s DNA, this will give him a new lease on life. He is the real villain of the movie, a mad scientist complete with German accent.

Meanwhile, Kowalski is getting hot and heavy with his girlfriend. The Leprechaun manages to crawl out of Kowalski the same way he went in, revoking Kowalski’s membership in the process. With the Leprechaun on the loose, it’s open season on space marines. There’s one scene where two marines enter a room where a special bacteria devours every living thing it comes into contact with. Naturally, the Leprechaun tears a hole in one of the marine’s hazmat suits, leaving him to get eaten alive until there’s nothing left but bones.

What else? The Leprechaun and Princess Zarina manage to mess with the DNA cocktail meant to restore Dr. Mittenhand. They combine it with some tarantula and scorpion DNA, turning Dr. Mittenhand into a freakish monster. Also, the Leprechaun gets hit with a growth ray that turns him into a giant. What will the marines do? This is the last movie in my Leprechaun box set. Do I spring for more? Let me sit on that one for a while.

Photo by Leslie Salas.