Movies: I've got "cannibals" written on one hand and "Franco" scrawled on the other.

The very idea of a Jess Franco cannibal picture called to my mind a scene from Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter. In that superlative flick, Bob Mitchum's surreally hammy psycho preacher, Harry Powell, relates a quick summary of all Christian theology using his two prison tats: the words love and hate inked across the flesh covering his metacarpals. The short review of several thousand years of religious thought involves him intertwining his fingers and physically acting out the struggle between good and evil, flipping his fists and raising and lowering his hands to show the relative strength of each concept.

For this review, you can imagine me doing pretty much the same thing, only I've got cannibals written on one hand and Franco scrawled on the other. (Though the technical details of the execution of said tattoo elude me at the moment.)

Long time readers of this blog know that I break for two subgenres of fright flick: alligator/crocdile pictures always have my attention and you can always interest me in a cannibal flick. We won't dwell on the charms of crocogator stories here, but a quick rehash of what makes cannibal films so interesting to me might be in order. Mainly, there's something pleasingly simple about the motivations of the baddies in such flicks. Sometimes a filmmaker decides to slather an ideological gloss over the whole thing - á la Cannibal Holocaust - and use people eating as a critique, but these efforts are almost universally doomed to self-parody by the extreme nature of the act they evoke.

Even in Deodato's infamous flick, perhaps the most intellectually overworked example of the subgenre, the idea that our violent, neo-colonialist filmmakers are punished for their hypocritical "civilized" mentality requires two conceptual slight of hand trick. First, the filmmakers themselves aren't deluded about themselves or human nature: they've filmed man's inhumanity to man and make no bones about violence, created and represented, being their bread and butter. They're, in a sense, cannibals. Second, the "natives" that ultimately turn the crew into brunch are, even prior to the intrusion of the filmmakers, a pretty nasty bunch: we see them delivering death-by-rape punishments to their womenfolk and, oh yeah, they think people are food. When the documentary makers and flesh-eaters finally clash, it has all the moral aspects of a dogfight: man is wolf to man, regardless of the man. It seems clear that Deodato wants to invoke some cultural relativism here, but the practical result of that is to announce that only the film crew's actions can be judged and it relegates the moral character of the natives to some sort of black box, which then transforms them into a plot device rather than characters. His effort to critique the filmmakers' inhumanity requires using humans as props.

Far better to avoid trying to make a moral case for anthropophagy and just pit a bunch of suckers against people-eatin' people. Admittedly, this is probably no less dehumanizing and racist, but then you at least avoid making an ass of yourself by flaunting your intellectual and moral superiority as you commit the same foul.

Which brings us to Jess Franco's Cannibals - a.k.a. Mondo Cannibale, White Cannibal Queen, Eaters of Men, The Goddess of the Barbarians, The Cannibal God, Mondo Cannibale 3: The Blonde Goddess (the movie is at once the original and its own sequel - this represents Franco's greatest cinematic innovation), and, of course A Girl for the Cannibals. Franco, as unconcerned about the politics of cannibalism as his is about the elements of good filmmaking, avoids tangling his slender flick in the weeds of moralizing.

Cannibals opens on an ill-fated Amazon expedition. The expedition's leader, Dr. Taylor, and his family are attacked on their boat by the oldest, least fit, whitest cannibal tribe in the Amazon. Human meat, Franco seems to be telling us, is not lean. Mrs. Taylor is killed and eaten on the boat. Like all good Euro-cinema cannibals, this tribe often takes its meat raw and on-the-go, and they think nothing of pausing in the middle of a sneak attack to grab a little person tartar appetizer. Dr. Taylor and his young daughter are taken back to the village. There the good doctor loses his arm, but manages to escape. He leaves his daughter behind.

Flash forward - crippled and emotionally scarred (but not too emotionally scarred, he's working on a new love interest in the form of his nurse), Taylor approaches the wealthy Barbara Shelton and her weirdly fey older-man toy Fenton to back a rescue expedition. They agree, but on the condition that they can come along. Why? I'm not sure. See the Amazon, shoot some cannibals, maybe find the half-chewed remains of this dude's baby girl. It'll be a lark.

As good an idea as a pleasure jaunt into cannibal country is, it all goes so very unexpectedly wrong. Socialites and local guides fall before the arrows and dental work of the flabby foe. And, to top the whole thing off, the premise of the "rescue" is compromised when Taylor discovers that his daughter has gone native: she now the White Goddess of the tribe. We know to capitalize that as her proper title because the cannibals, whenever they mention her, break out of the painfully lame ooga-booga of their native tongue to say, in English, "White Goddess."

So, which fist wins?

Sadly, Franco is not a spice. The genre pleasures of the cannibal flick evaporate in the face of the limitless indifference of Franco's rigorous commitment half-assed filmmaking. Slackly paced, barely acted, peopled with the worst blackface tribe this side of a Dan Rice show, and hobbled by a laughably crappy script, the whole thing is a testament to the career of a man who famously claimed that he's never made a movie he liked. I hear you loud and clear, Jessie.

Really, the only thing worth pondering about the film is whether or not Jess Franco hated the idea of making a cannibal so much that he botched it on purpose. I don't propose the possibility to be flip. In an interview in the special features, Franco makes his contempt for the cannibal features his flick apes (perhaps satirizes poorly?) clear. He refers to them as "stupid," which appears to be Franco's go-to condemnation (for example, he expresses his contempt for Sabrina Siani by calling her the Queen of the Stupid People). He especially mocks them for their extended bouts of viscera eating and claims that the longer a flick lingers on such things, the stupider it becomes. Then why, we're then forced to ask, is Cannibals punctuated with repeated close-up, slow-mo scenes of Franco's un-natives gumming raw steak? In fact, these endless scene that are so extremely shot that they nearly become abstract cinema are the film's most distinctive visual feature. Franco made sure to pack his flick with what he states is the stupidest part of any cannibal flick. Is it a mistake? Or did he do it on purpose?

Music: Werewolves! Lesbians! Vampires! Nuns! Monday!

A tribute to the trashy and incomprehensible Euro-sleaze subgenre of film horror, the video for the Blues Explosion's (no longer prefacing their collective moniker with the name of front man Jon Spencer) "She Said" is a bizarre mash-up of werewolves, naked nun flesh, and lesbian vampires, all shot in the awkward, cheapo, washed-out style of Jess Franco.

WARNING: This is NOT work safe. If you decide to play it in your cube and are later forced to explain what a group of half-naked nuns were doing writhing across your monitor, you brought the trouble on yourself. Don't tell human resources to call me, 'cause I won't help.



Scare-sounds fans might note that "She Said" is a cut off the Blues Explosion's Plastic Fangs album. Though it isn't really a unified concept album, the cover art and several of the songs have an overt Creepy/EC horror-comic vibe going on. Devotees of musical monstrousness might want to take it home and let it haunt their iPods for a bit.

Movies: The good, the bad, and the ugly.

Hello, Screamers and Screamettes, welcome to a special edition of this humble horror blog. Today we cover three – count 'em: one, two, three – horror flicks in one entry. Within a single entry, your headstrong horror host will try to cover the 1980 creature feature B-flick classic Alligator, the Masters of Horror episode "Homecoming," and Jess Franco's Dracula.

We've discussed somewhat peripherally the idea that some cats botch their perfectly serviceable horror flick ideas by loading so high with ideological baggage that the flick collapses under the weight. The first two flicks on the docket today are perfect case studies in the do's and don’ts of adding political commentary to your horror flicks.

Alligator is – truth in advertising – about a big ol' gator. But, instead of sitting around in some swamp, gobbling up small mammals and harassing retirees, this ambitious descendant of the dinosaurs terrorizes a city. The plot riffs off the classic urban legend: A pet alligator gets flushed down the toilet and takes up residence in the sewers. This would be fun enough, but a local chemical research firm sweetens the pot by dumping the corpses of illegally-obtained and growth-hormone besotted test animals down the drink. These become gator chow and, after a couple decades of such treatment, we've got an angry gator the size of a car. After a local reporter definitively proves the existence of the giant lizard, the police swarm the sewers to exterminate the beast. Fortunately for viewers, this just flushes the beast up into the city where wacky high-jinks ensue.

Now, admittedly, there's a lot horror fans could dismiss about Alligator: the goofy plot, the no longer all that special effects, and the unfortunate efforts the filmmakers made at representing African American street culture. These elements haven't aged all that well. But, I say that people who can't look past that stuff just hate life and joy and I'm glad – GLAD, I sez – that the pleasures of such top quality cinema-cheese are lost on them. Seriously. Alligator is a freakin' hoot. The script, which is much better than it needed to be, was one of the earlier efforts from later indie icon John Sayles. Lewis Teague, who helmed the pic, is one of those sadly underused bastards who just never got the chance to direct real flicks. He learned his craft as the second unit director for The Big Red One, a production manager on the Woodstock documentary, and as editor on Monte Hellman's Cockfighter. Together Sayles and Teague manage a narrative efficiency and flashes of ruthlessness that echo the (superior) Jaws. An excellent performance by Robert Forster (speaking of sadly underused bastards) as the cop who knows the truth, but gets hushed up by the powerful interests pulling the department's strings, is the cherry on top. Dean Jagger also turns in a wonderful performance as Slade, the "great white hunter" character who comes to the city to hunt the out-sized reptile.

Now, as to the political content of Alligator, Sayles' script manages to get clever little ideological digs in without letting any of them overwhelm the central issue of the film: the fact that a big, hungry gator is stomping its way through the city. We get to see how corporate interests influence the politics of the city, we get some scenes which reflect the racial tensions in the city, and we get a strong environmental message. The film is at its most political in the depiction of how the police react to the gator. After an initial embarrassing show of force, they "play by the book" and make showy, but ineffective, efforts (such as hiring Slade, a more violent version of the late Steve Irwin). So long as the gator is chewing its way through the ghettos, the cops don't sweat it too much. Once it starts eating its way through the white suburbs, people start taking it seriously. Finally, when it threatens the mansions outside town, the cops have no problem throwing out the rulebook and trying anything at their disposal. What's great about Alligator is that all this is thoroughly integrated into the plot without some character, standing in for the conscience of the filmmakers, patting themselves on the back over its inclusion. We understand how ingrained these issues are by watching them play out. We never get a speech in which somebody bemoans that fact that our own environmental negligence has caused this crisis. We never get the hero cop lecturing viewers on how institutional racism has made the gator problem worse. The political content is, in the advice of writing classes everywhere, shown and not told. We don't get a lecture on the ills of the modern city; we just see those ills.

In almost perfect contrast, "Homecoming" is a political lecture thinly disguised a zombie flick. Helmed by Joe "Gremlins" Dante, this episode of the Masters of Horror is the weakest of the series I've seen so far. The plot is about as satisfying as a pundit's talking points. Mired in a war overseas – a war launched on with the justification of non-existent WMDs, natch – the President (clearly Bush) makes a public statement to the effect that he wishes the soldiers who have died in the war could come back so they could express how deeply they believed in the cause they died for. Soon thereafter, dead vets start digging themselves out of graves in order to vote against the simulacrum Bush. Along they way we get a faux-Rove and a not-a-Coulter (interestingly, we get no analogs to Powell or Rice, two of the most important players in the lead up to the Iraq War – one wonders if the filmmakers hesitated to create African American villains out of fear of offending the PC sensibilities of fellow travelers). Lest we miss the too-naked political content, we even get a helpful first person narration that explains things like "We'd said we’d count their votes and we hadn't" and "Our lives are precious." To steal a phrase from Raymond Chandler, the whole flick's about "as subtle as a tarantula on a wedding cake." The film feels like some sort of bizarre loyalty oath for modern liberals: a lopsided with-us-or-against-us history of the contemporary political scene as written by the gents who used to crank out EC's horror comics. It isn't enough to believe the current administration is dishonest (which it is), but the flick needs you to believe that it would kidnap and torture Cindy Sheenan into supporting the war (which they obviously didn't). In his brilliant essay "Paul, Horror Comics, and Doctor Wertham," Robert Warshow brilliantly described the cartoonishly simple-minded morality of this thinking:

The assumption that human beings will always follow out the logic of their characters to the limit is one of the worst elements in comic books, and is pretty widespread in them. If a man is a burglar, he will not hesitate to commit murder; and if he is going to commit murder, he is often likely to think of boiling his victim in oil as of shooting him.

Warshow mentions how poachers illegally trapping beaver in the Mark Trail radio serial would unhesitatingly shoot any game wardens they came across, as if the moral flexibility that made one hunt game off season would also, obviously, mean you were cool with capping officers of the law. Often we're smart enough to recognize the stupidity of this moral logic. When an old "educational film" suggests that the first puff of a joint inevitably leads to a life of prostitution and a death in the gutter, we call it camp. When, however, the Village Voice sees the same level of thinking in "Homecoming," it declares the flick "one of the most important political films of the era." What was good enough for the narrative logic of Mark Trail comics is now good enough for political rhetoric. What's remarkable about Bush is not his stupidity, but how he's made all of his critics stoop down to his level.

Alligator is a fun horror movie with a clever social consciousness that elevates the project rather than swamps it. "Homecoming" is an embarrassing indicator of how much the modern left has lost by capitulating to a organized disingenuousness that replaces engaged moral and intellectual effort with a vulgar irony that auto-excuses our own lack of commitment to our ideals. The former is today's good; the latter is today's bad.

Today's ugly is Jess Franco's Dracula. In a misguided bid for credibility, Franco shot a straitlaced version of the famed Stoker novel, eschewing his trademarked sleaze while failing to improve on his lackluster visual style or his lazy grasp of filmmaking basics. Imagine a porno flick that's got all the actual sex cut out of it and you'll have a good idea of what watching Franco's film is like. Let's never ever discuss this movie again.

Movies: Crust for Frankenstein.

Here's the scene: 1997, a mountainous seaside resort town in Spain. There's a small villa on the hillside facing the sea – a white tangle of stucco cubes, irregularly punctuated with balconies and windows. On one of those balconies sits infamous Spanish schlock-horror director Jess Franco (in flick reviewed today he's billed under his Christian name, no pun intended: Jesus Franco). He sips a cappuccino. It's his second of the morning. A newspaper, perhaps the local rag, sits folded on the small table to the right of his wicker chair. He holds the rich, bitter coffee in his mouth a moment. Then breaths in slightly through pursed lips, noticing how the sea air changes the flavor of the drink. Normally, small details like this would please Mr. Franco. But not this morning.

See, Jess has a problem. He's got something like 170 directing credits to his name (names actually, he's helmed flick under nearly thirty different identities) and he's not proud of a single thing he's done. In fact, he's made it a matter of public record that he hates every single one of his films and, as far as he's concerned, he's never made even a halfway decent flick.

But he wants to. He wants to make a Citizen Kane or a Grapes of Wrath. Something enduring, something profound. A film, at last, to be proud of.

Then suddenly, it dawns on him: "I'll make a Frankenstein movie – except it'll be Frankenstein's daughter and the monster will be a woman with a sort of penis stub for a clit and they'll have lots of sex."

And the very next year – taa-daa – the world gets "treated" to Franco's Lust for Frankenstein. This is actually the second film this month that puts a kinky twist on the Frankenstein story. The first was the B-grade Italian production Lady Frankenstein. Weirdly, there's a strange Orson Welles connection between the two. The later starred Joseph Cotton who worked with Welles in Kane. The former was directed by Franco who assisted Welles during his on-again, off-again Don Quixote shoot and who later "finished" the film for Welles. This simply a coincidence and has no really impact on the film in question. I bring it up only because that minor detail is about 1,000 times more interesting than anything that happens in the film.

A plot description will, unfortunately, make this dog of a flick sound more interesting that it is. Frankenstein had a daughter, Moira (played by Lina Romey – hot stuff when she started working in flicks back in 1973). Shortly after her birth, Frankenstein's wife passed away. The doctor then remarried, but his new wife turned out to be an a-class superfreak who not only slept with the good doctor, but the help, passing strangers, human-sized housewares – you get the idea. She also, frequently, turned her attentions on young Moira (though, later, Moira in flashbacks will clearly be played by her older self – perhaps lesbian incest prematurely ages one). Then the doctor passed on. Moira married and moved out of the home. Her marriage was a lousy one and Frankenstein, from beyond the grave, decides to visit his daughter and lead her his last creation. This, we learn, he does because he wants to teach her "lust." That's right. Dad doesn't think his little girl gets her nasty groove on so he's going to hook her up with a monster. We learn all this in voice over narration. When the film starts, an older, somewhat saggy Moira is visited, Hamlet-like, by her father's ghost. He sets her on a mission to find his last monster.

Mercifully, his last monster was stashed in a glass display case in Moira's old room, in the closet. The monster is a beefy woman with sockets in her neck and several lines of baseball-grade stitches running across her body. She tells Moira that if she revives her, she'll initiate frumpy Moira into the ways of ecstasy. Personally, from this woman, I would have taken that as a threat. But Moira must be lonelier than we thought because she promptly uses the life of one of her stepmom's many young bucks to bring the creature to life.

After some creaky-on-chunky action, Moira ends up going out to a stip-club and bringing back a young dancer to fuel her monster butch. Shortly after that, Moira's hubby shows up and gets dispatched. In between, Moira catches her monster top humping a tree and she has several nonsensical flashbacks to what I guess is her childhood (though, since the same actress plays her in these scenes, Moira appears to have been in her early 50s all her life).

This movie was crap. It had visual effects that would have been considered embarrassing in the first year of MTV music videos. I've had plates of linguini with more structure than this film had. Finally, and perhaps most damning, the only time this film was scary was when it was trying to be sexy. Watching this film feels like catching your parents fumble through something they thought was sexy, but is really just embarrassing. The combination of limply clumsy un-erotic pawing and utter humiliation makes the whole misadventure doubly scarring. Dusting off my Noteworthy Canadian News Events of 1998 Film Rating System I'm giving this flick an abysmal Crash of Swissair 111, and it is only getting that because it did consist of moving pictures and, therefore, qualifies on some minimal level as a film.