PopGap Diary: Octoblur 2024

Although its melodramatic storytelling and outdated archetypes may seem quaint or even risible to today’s audience, iconic cinematic images resonate so strongly with me that I still find The Phantom of the Opera (1925) gripping despite its simplicity. The overpowering scale of its sets, the chilling command of Lon Chaney, the problematic romance of being stalked by one of literature’s greatest creeps… It’s so freeing to let go of contemporary sexual politics and just bask in the deep, destructive love of a murderous ghoul-faced theater boy. Classic for a reason, and I feel lucky to appreciate it.

Genre soapbox for the month: Hollywood 90028 (1973) is not a horror movie, despite being tagged as such on multiple websites. Yes, it contains murders, but they are too far apart, and in between is more than an hour of indie arthouse cinema navel-gazing. It’s actually quite beautifully shot and features some worthy ruminations on Hollywood’s seedier edge of the movie industry, but it’s pretty tedious if you’re in the mood for something with a more aggressive horror energy. The ending explains why this previously rare movie has been hyped up recently; it’s quite something, both narratively and technically, and I will not forget it. But do not watch this if you want a horror movie or a sleazy thriller along the lines of Vice Squad (1982). This is mostly a snooze for my current purposes.

Boobs and blood. Let’s be honest. That’s why anyone watches a movie with the title Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988). And it delivers scream queens Michelle Bauer and Linnea Quiqley topless and spattered in red-dyed corn syrup. It doesn’t really matter that director Fred Olen Ray seems to think this is a riotous comedy and very few of the gags rise to the level of mildly amusing — this movie might’ve been much better played straight. Whenever Ray becomes convinced that the script’s parody noir dialog is an asset deserving of focus, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers grinds to a halt. When it’s about hookers carving their johns into jigsaw puzzles, it’s a lot of a very specific kind of fun. Gunnar Hansen (Leatherface from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)) appears as a cult leader in a non-classic performance.

I’m not quite sure how Frank Henenlotter was not my favorite director when I was in high school. I’m certain that I watched Basket Case (1982) as a kid and have some faint memory of Frankenhooker (1990) playing at a college party in 1991 — but these movies did not figure significantly in my early horror days. Instead, I was raving about Class of Nuke ‘Em High (1986) and Psychos in Love (1986) — but now I clearly see that Henenlotter was making the vastly superior movies in that same comic horror sleaze genre space. Frankenhooker is high quality indie horror fun, with a solidly fun and funny script and a twisted but sharp vision of gender politics that includes exploding hookers and even briefly some Society (1989)-level creature designs. Look for legendary TV horror host Zacherle as a weatherman. Executive produced by the fascinating weirdo director James Glickenhaus.

For some ungodly reason, after semi-enjoying the crazy Jon Mikl Thor-nes of the admittedly awful Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare (1987), I wanted more Jon Mikl Thor in my life. I turned to another movie “starring” Thor and made with some of the same inept production team: Zombie Nightmare (1986). Thor plays a musclebound adult who lives with his mom and plays baseball at the park down the street, as if he’s a little boy and not an overgrown freak with heavy metal hair. He’s a good boy, the type to save local shopkeepers from a robbery. When he’s mowed down by a rich kid’s sports car, Thor is raised from the dead by a voodoo priestess to exact vengeance for himself. Except he’s not. Aside from the first scene with Zombie Thor — so nice, they show it twice, once as a cold open and then later in the narrative chronology — and the first time he kills, it’s clearly another actor poorly concealed under the terrible zombie make-up, as if Thor stomped off the set after learning how long it would take him to look like he was wearing poorly applied gray-green putty to his face. It’s a less convincing body swap than when Ed Wood tried to pass off his wife's chiropractor as the deceased Bela Lugosi in Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957). After that final Thor scene, Zombie Nightmare devolves from an amusing piece of shit into an outright waste of celluloid space. Adam West shows up as a superfluous character who nevertheless dominates the final half of the movie. There are no fun moments, no good effects, absolutely nothing worth considering. It's the film debut of Tia Carrere and future shitty movie director Shawn Levy appears as a douchebag. The soundtrack includes songs from Thor, Motörhead, Virgin Steele, Girlschool, Fist, and Death Mask.

This unspectacular, but well-acted and tense, low-budget thriller pits a gang of rowdy punks against a deranged park ranger in a remote mountain setting. Director Jenn Wexler – who I just this moment learned also directed one of my favorite unknown horror movies of last year, The Sacrifice Game (2023) — does a nice job of mostly avoiding the aesthetic pitfalls of shooting on digital video. Her colors really pop and there aren’t many scenes that look like badly lit 1990’s TV. The real stars of The Ranger, however, are its actual stars: Chloë Levine, as a young woman haunted by her previous experience on this mountain as a girl, and Jeremy Holm, as the title character. Levine is extremely empathetic (in contrast with the douchebag friends she brings to the mountain) and has the kind of movie star eyes that are always flooding with conflicting emotions. It’s an uncomfortable irony that this same quality is what attracts trouble to her beleaguered character. Holm manages to play a stock character — crazed authority figure — with additional dimensions that make him a little pitiable in addition to his requisite villainous hatability. The Ranger also features some good, gruesome gore effects, with not much detectable CGI, and a vibey synth score. Nice work, everyone!

It can’t be said that Grotesque (1988) is not a movie of surprises. What looks like it should be merely a squalid little sleazy thriller is really operating outside of the normal movie rules and seems to think it is some kind of prankster’s delight. A lot of its surprises may be terrible in either form or execution, but credit for trying something different — and the final utterly insane twist is surely one I will never forget or fail to remember without a bewildered chuckle. “Did a movie really do that? Yes, Grotesque did, and what in the world were they thinking?” Surprises aside, Linda Blair stars in Grotesque as a young woman who brings a friend (Donna Wilkes of Angel (1984)) to her family’s remote mountain cabin just in time for a gang of deranged “punkers” to launch a home invasion.  There’s not only a twist in that plot, but a couple of dire and sort of daring narrative moves, and then whatever you want to call what happens at the very end, which is both enraging and then mystifying. This is not a good movie — and it doesn't qualify for the Rocktober! theme; despite the presence of some classic 1980s movie punks, there may not be any diegetic music to speak of — but it’s likely one of the more interesting 'not good' movies I will watch this month.

Right from the start, Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare (1987) is not your ordinary bad horror movie. The opening scene is clearly the work of people who have both zero talent at narrative filmmaking and a love for goopy puppets. After that opening scene — and about an hour of the most aimless and glacially edited throwaway plot about a metal band rehearsing new material at a rural studio retreat — Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare takes a daring leap into one of the most enjoyably WTF endings I can think of. The self-aggrandizing incoherence of it all is dazzling. I can’t say I liked Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare — it’s incredibly dull in between its mostly incompetent and always puzzling horror moments (were those penis puppets made to look like relatives of the Muppet Beaker?) — but the guts of star and writer Jon Mikl Thor to look like he does, sing like he does, act like he does, and write like he does, and then try to package that comically toxic combination into a horror tale that is both hopelessly mundane and haphazardly epic is baffling in the best way. Director John Fasano would go on to direct, the next year, another seminal 1980s horror rock extravaganza, Black Roses (1988), which I will surely rewatch later this month.

Was my Rocktober! theme this year just an elaborate excuse to watch my very first GWAR video? I’ll never tell. What I will tell you is that this inane and gross hour-long collection of skits and music videos was somehow nominated for a Grammy even though it looks like it was shot with a VHS-era home video camera as operated by 7-year-old and edited on the Amiga Video Toaster. There’s a detailed summary of the plot on Wikipedia, but I can't remember half of it and I watched it last night. To make myself sound like an old fogey, I barely understood anything that was happening or anything anyone was saying. It was all very... noisy and manic. Certainly this is exactly what GWAR fans wanted. When GWAR: Phallus in Wonderland (1992) does quiet down just a little it seems like there is a fun sense of humor and some actual musical ability behind it, but it’s all written in a secret code that can only be deciphered by stoned 20-year-olds with face tattoos. I'm glad that they have something just for them.

This is the second appearance of Freaks (1932) in an Octoblur Marathon, with it last rearing its misshapen head during the inaugural Octoblur of 2014!  This year, I will be taking a break from the Rocktober! theme and watching at least one classic horror movie each Sunday.

I stand by what wrote about Freaks 10 years ago: 

Freaks is a very simple melodrama about greed and revenge, as a scheming trapeze artist elicits the affections of Hans — a wealthy little person — with plans to murder him and inherit his fortune. When Cleo's nefarious plan is discovered, Hans' fellow "freaks" serve-up some vicious carnival justice.

Notable mainly for its famous "One of us!" scene which still resonates through pop culture 80 years later, and its chilling final minutes, Freaks has remained both controversial and a potent curiosity to this day despite having its most shocking content removed and lost prior to its premiere.

Jennifer's Body (2009) has gained quite a cult following in the last decade-and-a-half, as the generation of girls who first saw it as teens are now on Letterboxd and Film Twitter. Diablo Cody’s script tones down the hyperactive slang that made her debut, Juno (2007), both charming and borderline unbearable, in this tale of a nice high school semi-wallflower (Amanda Seyfried) whose sexy friend Jennifer (Megan Fox) becomes a boy-eating demon. I’m not even sure what Jennifer's Body is trying to say about teenage girl psychology with regard to their bodies, their friends, boys, and sex. It’s pretty muddled — but maybe that's better than being too obvious? Karyn Kusama’s direction is flat and dull, so the moments that seem like they should pop just kind of droop. It’s safe to say that it wasn’t made for me — an adult man now in his 50s — and my lukewarm reaction to first seeing it all those years ago hasn’t changed: It’s a movie of promising moments that consistently fall short of their potential, but there’s nothing unlikeable about it (except for the CGI, which is trash, and that Megan Fox is a void with an irritating voice). Jennifer's Body wants to be a “pick me” but it’s just kind of there, blending into the wallpaper. Features in small roles Adam Brody, Chris Pratt, and Kyle Gallner. The soundtrack is decent if you like heavier late-00s alt emo stuff, and it closes with the best Hole song.

Vamp (1986) starts like an ‘80s teen sex comedy but throws those characters into a weird urban wasteland that's in the thrall of an ancient vampire stripper played by iconic weirdo Grace Jones. Do you ever wonder what Grace Jones is like as a person? Is she ever casual? Does she like jokes? Because in Vamp it doesn’t seem at all like a stretch that she plays an intense non-verbal bloodsucker with a performance art fetish. Writer/Director Richard Wenk – who has an odd, varied career, later co-writing several undistinguished mainstream action movies, including the upcoming Kraven the Hunter (2024) – brings a strong, specific, appealing style to Vamp with an aesthetic I like to call “Neon Vibes.” It’s also an entry into one of my favorite subgenres, “One Crazy Night.” The quirky cast is filled out by a rag-tag mix of likable familiar faces, including Chris Makepeace, Sandy Baron, Robert Rusler, Dedee Pfeiffer, Gedde Watanabe, and Billy Drago.

The sort of freaks (me) who would’ve been snatching a title like Rocktober Blood (1984) from the horror section of their mid-1980s video store probably had a modest handful of requirements for such a rental: Boobs, blood, wailing guitars, and a little of that screaming falsetto that defined early ‘80s metal bands like Iron Maiden and Dio (I want to coin a term for this vocal style — ballsetto — so please help me make this catch on. Thanks.) Fortunately for us deranged pervs, Rocktober Blood satisfies each of these disreputable requirements in spades, and hits them all within the first 15 minutes. Make no mistake: this is a scuzzy little low-budget project produced with a minimum of class and talent — but it delivers. Sure, the middle 40 minutes are bit slow, and it’s arguably 15 minutes too long at 100 minutes, but it’s never anything but pure video store trash, and its finale is glorious within those constraints. Production team Beverly and Ferd Sebastian were also responsible for the guiltiest pleasure of all video store trash, Gator ‘Bait (1973), so be warned that this is not for sleaze dilettantes; this is the real thing. There’s also a lot of gratuitous 1980s ephemera packed into Rocktober Blood — jazzercise, video arcades, breakdancing – so it’s hard to hold it to any other temporal standard. It is what it is and what it can only be with a title like Rocktober Blood (1984). None of the actors are notable (or notably good), except for Nigel Benjamin, who played with Nikki Sixx just prior to the formation of Motley Crue and provided vocal dubbing for many of the movie’s songs.

In between the launch of the stage and film versions of Rocky Horror in 1973 and 1975, respectively, a young Brian De Palma wrote and directed his own glam musical drawing on many of the same influences, and came out with the superior product. Phantom of the Paradise (1974) is a messy but glorious mish-mash of gothic and rock influences, including Faust, Phantom of the Opera, Frankenstein, Hitchcock, German Expressionism, The Twilight Zone, The Godfather, Dorian Gray, and Alice Cooper, and flirts with doo-wop and beach pop music styles on either side of its theatrical glitter rock spine. Although its manic hops from one spazzy melodramatic beat to another are sometimes incoherent and often overload, there’s no denying the giddy creative energy from start to glorious finish. The cast is fantastic, with Jessica Harper and her adorable dance moves flanked by a deranged William Findley as a deformed songwriter and an arch Paul Williams (who also wrote the movie’s songs) as a ruthless music producer with a Faustian business model. Gerrit Graham upstages them all as Beef, in what might be the best rock horror performance of all-time. In many ways, Phantom of the Paradise (1974) is a sloppy effort by a master director who had not yet figured out his craft, but in the best ways, it’s a masterpiece of the possibilities inherent in the glam-rock horror combo.