The Curator of Schlock #369: There’s Always Vanilla

03 Friday Sep 2021

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George A. Romero, There's Always Vanilla

The Curator of Schlock #369 by Jeff Shuster

There’s Always Vanilla

No, there isn’t.

I had to bring Edwige, my kangaroo companion, to the vet. She was foaming at the mouth and acting all out of sorts. The vet asked me if she had eaten into anything strange. I told her I was feeding Edwige smarties, beef jerky, and a bit of Red Ripple to wash it all down. She threatened to call the authorities and I warned her that a small town in Saskatchewan is depending on me for survival. She gave me a diet plan for Edwige and warned me against feeding Edwige beef jerky and alcohol. I guess that means Smarties are still okay.

This week’s Arrow Home Video release is 1971’s There’s Always Vanilla from director George Romero. That’s right. This is the Night of the Living Dead guy. Anyway, he didn’t just make horror movies and There’s Always Vanilla is a little slice-of-life movie.

It’s not good.

Romero himself thought the finished movie was a disaster. I don’t like to rag on Romero. The dude directed Creepshow. Full stop.

There’s Always Vanilla is a movie about the wayward youth of the baby boomer generation. The movie begins with crowds commenting on a bizarre sculpture of a giant machine with wheels and widgets. The machine doesn’t actually do anything. Some onlookers think it’s fantastic and a great commentary on the modern world. Other onlookers think it’s a travesty and a sad commentary on the modern world.

The machine is a creation of a Vietnam vet named Chris Bradley (Raymond Laine), a directionless youth who smokes pot and pontificates on the absurdity of life. He goes to go-go bars, tries to get his dad laid at a go-go bar, smokes more pot, and crashes at the apartment of a woman named Sam who may or may not be the mother of his child. Also, Chris’s dad can still “cut the mustard.” I don’t know what that means.

Oh, and there’s a young model named Lynn (Judith Streiner) that stars in beer commercials and gets ogled by sleazy producers. She bumps into Chris at a train station and love is in the air. Chris tells Lynn that her butt is too big for TV and before you know it, the two of them are sleeping together. Lynn takes the relationship very seriously, but Chris takes nothing seriously. She wants him to go to college or get a job or something. This might have something to do with the fact that she’s pregnant.

Chris tells Lynn that he probably has a kid with some other woman. This causes Lynn to seek a back alley abortion with a seedy doctor, but she gets scared and can’t go through with the procedure. She moves out of her apartment and disappears on Chris. He visits with his dad and gets some fatherly advice. He tells him about all the ice cream flavors that are seemingly available at a Howard Johnson’s, but when all is said and done, there’s always vanilla. Huh?

Excuse me. I need to watch something that has zombies ripping the entrails out of a screaming biker gang member.

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, and 477) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #358: Season of the Witch

11 Friday Jun 2021

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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Arrow Home Video, George A. Romero, Hungry Wives, Season of the Witch

The Curator of Schlock #358 by Jeff Shuster

Season of the Witch

Also known as Hungry Wives

I think my traveling kangaroo companion, Edwige, killed a Quebecer named Lickity Split in an illegal street fight. I collected my winnings and skedaddled before the cops showed up. Apparently, kangaroos punch really hard. I’m not heading back to that bar until the heat dies down.

This week’s Arrow Home Video is 1973’s Season of the Witch from director George Romero, of Night of the Living Dead fame. Apparently, the original distributer tried to sell the flick as a softcore porno called Hungry Wives.

The film never really found an audience and didn’t gain any attention until Dawn of the Dead became a hit. Hungry Wives was then triumphantly rereleased under the title Season of the Witch.

You could file this movie under the dissatisfied-housewife-turns-to-the-occult-to-spice-things-up-in-her-life genre. The housewife in this movie is named Joan Mitchell (Jan White) and she is 39 years-old. She has a free spirited daughter named Nikki (Joedda McClain) and a workaholic husband named Jack (Bill Thunhurst).

Joan is plagued by bad dreams usually revolving around her being locked in a dog cage by her husband or, more disturbingly, being given a sales pitch on the wonders of suburban life by her husband. Making matters worse, she regularly sees a psychiatrist who can’t distinguish shit from Shinola. And worse still, she’s joined by an insufferable gaggle of the other housewives and weekend parties with Mad Libs games. If I were her, I’d be bereft, too.

While talking to her friends, Joan hears about a new neighbor rumored to be a witch, a practitioner of the forbidden art of spells and magic. Apparently, this was a trend in the late 1960s America, according to the commentary by Travis Crawford on this superb Arrow Home Video release. Joan and her friend Shirley (Anne Muffley) visit this neighbor and Joan receives a beginners guide to witchcraft book. The two of them go back to Joan’s house where they run into her daughter and this obnoxious college professor she’s dating named Gregg. You get the whole Silent Generation versus Baby Boomer showdown between Joan and Gregg when he plays some head games with her friend Shirley. On the ride back to Shirley’s house, Joan has to listen to Shirley complaining about how she’s old and over the hill and that Joan will be there soon enough.

Joan returns home earlier that she should have because she overhears Nikki and Gregg having sex. When her daughter realizes she’s home, she storms off and moves out the next day without telling anyone. Joan’s husband slaps her around for not doing anything. The police get involved, but no one knows where Nikki is. I think it’s around this point that Joan goes all in on the witchcraft stuff, gathering up occult items and casting spells. She casts a spell on Gregg so that they can have an affair. All is going well, but then Joan starts having vivid nightmares about a demon masked stranger trying to break into her house. She then gets the bright idea of trying to conjure something. I won’t spoil the rest, but this is an interesting lost movie of George Romero’s.

Check it out.

Photo by Leslie Salas

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

The Lists #16: Notable Zombie Movies

29 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Horror, The Lists

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28 Days Later, Bill Murray, Dan O’Bannon, Dawn of the Dead, Don Calfa, George A. Romero, Jesse Eisenberg, Linnea Quigley, Night of the Living Dead, Night of the Living Dead 3D, Nightmare City, Planet Terror, Rachel McAdams, Return of the Living Dead, Rose McGowan, Ryan Gosling, Shaun of the Dead, Sig Haig, The Notebook, Woody Harrelson, Zombieland

The Lists #16 by John King

Notable Zombie Movies

Night of the Living Dead (1968):George A. Romero basically invents the genre in a low budget masterpiece that used actually news reporters to report on the zombie apocalypse in the film and used actual real entrails as props. A little zombie girl who looks like she’s having a bad acid trip kills and eats her parents. A black man is not monster-fodder, but in fact the chief hero of the film. This movie still rocks.

Dawn of the Dead (1978): Zombies invent mall-walking.

Nightmare City (1980): Zombies have machine guns. Cf. The Curator of Schlock.

Return of the Living Dead (1985): Don Calfa has an awesome supporting role as the woebegone mortician, Ernie. Linnea Quigley plays the punk girl Trash, who spontaneously gets naked and later will be the hottest zombie you’ve ever seen devour someone’s brains. The zombies can talk. The zombies can talk. They will tell you that they want: “Braiiiinsss!” Dan O’Bannon, auteur, thank you.

28 Days Later (2002): Zombies can run.

Shaun of the Dead (2004): Very British. For the first half-hour, Shaun doesn’t notice that the zombie apocalypse is happening.

The Notebook (2004): A sultry prole zombie (Ryan Gosling) is enamored of a hottie among the upper-class undead (Rachel McAdams) when the entire world is consumed with boredom and the wet dreaming of bad ideas.

Night of the Living Dead 3D (2006): This quasi-reboot of Night of the Living Dead is awfully blasé except for one thing: Sid Haig as Gerald Tovar, Jr., a funeral home director with both a sensitive side and a rather dark secret.

Planet Terror (2007): On Rose McGowan, a machine gun prosthetic leg looks sexy—so sexy I don’t even feel that stupid for saying so. I think there were zombies, too.

Zombieland (2009): The greatest date movie ever. Jesse Eisenberg gives a primer on post-apocalyptic survival, Woody Harrelson reminds us of the glory of Deliverance, and Bill Murray seems like a really nice guy.