Brand recognition

These two films have a huge plot point in common, but revealing it would be a spoiler of colossal proportions.

So instead, we'll note another resemblance: both movies explicitly invoke and subvert stereotypes -- though one does so a hell of a lot more effectively than the other. 

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I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now? (1975) 

Grade: F

Oh, Bob Dishy. Is there any name that flows off the tongue so nicely? Seriously, just try saying it right now, aloud to yourself: Bob Dishy.

A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but Bob's moniker communicates so much in such a short time -- a model of efficiency. It connotes handsomeness à la Keeping Up Appearances's famous vicar, yet retains the down-to-earth-ness that comes with "No, not Robert, thank you, just Bob."

The improbability of his last name, why, it hints at the origin of the Semitic good looks that led him to later play a rabbi on one of Dick Wolf's endless shows about law and/or order.

And if you've only seen Bob in his mature years, you might not know that he was, as a younger man, rather good-looking. Sort of a poor man's Robert Redford, if you like, with a dash of Bob Geldof.

However, unlike the haughty likes of Redford, he's not too good-looking -- just good-looking enough. A dish, but not a high-priced entrée you can't afford. A modestly hot guy, to get you through the hard times, you know the kind. Not a throb, just Bob.

So Bob Dishy -- can I call you Bob, Mr. Dishy? -- has the lead role, you see, in this film, I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now?. How promising that it opens with an animated sequence involving gendered eyes and shoes! How intriguing that it has Angelo Rossitto, and Pat Morita "as Heshy Yamamoto": a seal of approval twice over!

And how unusual that the opening scenes show him at the grand piano, playing Chopin -- of all things! -- and quite well at that.

Except his character, Jordan Oliver, is no concert pianist, and isn't even playing. Instead, he's engaged in a bizarre pantomime while a little person -- yep, Angelo Rossitto -- is supposedly the one really playing. On a toy piano.

And now we begin to detect the first hint that I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now? will not, as we might hope, be a tale of knives into unsuspecting backs; of sweaty foreheads lit by streetlights coming through windows at night; of soft, panicked men running futilely from the pitiless, implacable hand of justice.

No, I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now? is a comedy. Or more correctly: an attempt at comedy. Or even more correctly: a really, really shitty attempt at comedy.

Take, for example, the last line of the first scene. Jordan tells his tiny pianist: "Come in through the doggie door! And watch out for the doggie doo!"

We are, one imagines, meant to laugh at this. But there is nothing to inspire laughter in the line's content, context, or delivery. Whose Line Is It Anyway? regularly improvises better material. For this, people bought a ticket?

So Peter Sellers was originally supposed to be the lead in this thing. Certainly, he would have had no trouble playing an incorrigible rogue who, faced with financial ruin, decides to kill his estranged wife for the insurance payout. (This is the plot of I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now?, more or less. But mostly less.)

But, Sellers became uninsurable after his heart attack. So they got Bob Dishy instead.

Do you remember that comedian who went to see Phantom of the Opera, and got Robert Guillaume instead of an ill Michael Crawford? Do you remember how he compared it to going to a Madonna concert, and having Tina Yothers come out on stage instead? The Umbrellahead Review remembers.

But how could we blame Bob Dishy for this? Say his name aloud and you'll find that you can't either. You'll see.

He tries gamely, throwing in bad accents and impressions (like Robin Williams on a bad day), strange tics and facial expressions (like Jim Carrey on a bad day), and himself through a window (like your local dive bar most days). None of this hits the mark, but is it really his fault?

No, the real problem is that the material is horrific. We've seen a few reviews claiming I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now? as a fine example of zany Woody Allen-esque comedy. Such a claim kicks Woody Allen in the shins, which he might well deserve, but not for this.

I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now? thinks having an art dealer walk on his knees is automatically funny. Because we mistook him for a little person, you see: silly us.

Or a Chinese restaurant with a Mexican waiter. Har-de-har-har, how incongruous.

Or a Japanese doctor (no points for guessing the actor) who "lost his contact rens". Yes.

Or a turban-wearing "Indian" conductor in bronzeface who waves a flute instead of a baton, buys lip gloss in bulk at garage sales, and says things like "Ahd you see-di-ous?"

Or an incompetent hit man who wears two different shoes.

Or an elderly barmaid draped in cobwebs, who plays a record of a loud party to deceive patrons into thinking the bar is lively.

Or "Dr. Binay's Fat Farm", run by a walking, talking Béla Lugosi impression -- Jack DeLeon in whiteface -- who transplants old women's brains into young bodies, and whips his cross-dressing assistant.

Or a cross-dressing spy who acts out the Monty Python lumberjack sketch, but as a bricklayer.

I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now? believes these things are zany, absurdist humor. It thinks it has a memorable cast of characters that get up to endearing shenanigans. It imagines reviews that say things like "Uproarious!" and "A laugh riot!" 

It is, in short, a giant, relentless schmear of tiresome schtick, crude stereotypes, and recycled gags. It's humor, as written by a committee of people who aren't funny. It's a parade of Z-listers and Catskills has-beens who, even in their prime, only got laughs from drunk yentas and alter kakers.

It has maybe one gag that hits the mark, and that one's not even in English ("Come si dice dove in italiano?" "Dove!"). It rips off Wile E. Coyote, for God's sake, and yet it still botches the punchline.

I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now? is, in short -- let's be clear about this -- a worthless piece of shit of a movie. It makes you want to see the people who wrote and directed it punished. Or at least made to shine Mel Brooks's shoes and clean his bathtub, daily, in perpetuity.

But at least it's got Bob Dishy.

---

Savage Weekend (1976, released 1979)

Grade: B-

If Savage Weekend is basically a slasher film -- and it is -- it's also the kind of movie that benefits from multiple viewings. That's not because its plot is especially complicated, but because it takes a while to understand the relationship between its characters. In the order we meet them, there's:

• Marie (Marilyn Hamlin), an aloof divorcée with a young son.

• Shirley (Caitlin O'Heaney), her hot-to-trot sister, and
• Nicky (Christopher Allport), Shirley's gay best friend, who's very out.

• Greg (Jeff Pomerantz), Marie's ex-husband, recently hospitalized after losing his job in a political scandal, with a massive chip on his shoulder about everyone and everything.

• Robert (Jim Doerr), Marie's new boyfriend, a middle-aged stockbroker whose kindness may be a liability.

• and Jay (Devin Goldenberg), a friend of Robert's, who just split with his wife and seeks fresh furrows in which to plant his seed. He's also a boatwright, and Robert bought a boat that needs wrighting.

Minus Greg (who has the kid this weekend), the remaining five pile into a station wagon and head for a rural getaway -- upstate New York in both reality and fiction, though all the banjos on the soundtrack subtly encourage us to assume it's somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon line. Either way it's redneck country.

Along the way -- in a sequence guaranteed to come up in any review of this film -- Nicky deliberately provokes a bar fight with the local yokels, only to hand them their asses: "I wasn't brought up in the South Bronx for nothin'," he notes.

Playing against stereotypes is a recurring theme throughout Savage Weekend. Are the locals conspiring against our city slickers? It sure seems like something is brewing when the local Marlboro Man archetype, Mac Macauley (David Gale), has an exchange with one of his employees:

Employee: "Me and Ryan's got plans for that bunch."

Mac: "You ain't gonna do nothing 'til you hear from me."

Employee: "Hell we ain't."

Mac: (strikes employee in stomach) "You watch your mouth with me, you hear?"

Is Mac the incarnation of the land itself, a Deliverance-like force seeking to punish urban trespassers foolish enough to disrespect his place and his people?

For disrespect they do, talking smack about dimwitted Otis Crump (William Sanderson, later of Newhart) within his earshot, despite Mac's warning that Otis is more dangerous than he appears: "Now there's a weird one."

Otis sure spends a lot of time looking through binoculars and disapproving. What's his deal, we wonder?

Well, Mac describes Otis's revenge on a cousin he fancied, but who fancied the local lads more. When Otis found her at "that tavern they got down there on Route 22" -- aka Oasis, the very place Nicky had his bar fight (continuity!) -- mayhem and maiming ensued:

Mac: "'Whore! Whore!' he kept yellin', and branded an H right in the middle of her chest."

Robert: "Why an H?"

Mac: "For 'whore'. Otis ain't none too bright. Clear forgot the word began with a W."

Robert: (cracks up laughing)

Another recurring theme in Savage Weekend: the interaction between metal and flesh. Brands branding? Fishhooks penetrating feet? Saws cutting through limbs? Nails pounded through a bat? One character intentionally grabbing barbed wire while he watches two others have sex? It's got all these and more!

There are subtle touches to Savage Weekend that are not just easy to miss, but just about impossible not to miss on first viewing. For example, when we first meet Nicky he acts and sounds like a fairly ordinary straight man, yet in every other subsequent scene he's as out as a broken streetlight.

Now, he's helping to care for his best friend's nephew, so it makes perfect sense that he'd keep things under wraps. If anything he butches it up à la Charles Nelson Reilly, saying things like "C'mon, bustah, let's get it into geah!" and "C'mon, tiger, let's finish up".

But only in retrospect does this become clear: we don't know Nicky yet, so how can we appreciate the significance of his restraint?

In another scene, Jay and Shirley -- who have already had coitus al fresco once on the trip -- head off into the weeds for another assignation, whereupon Jay rips off Shirley's top and makes the following proposition to his bare-breasted companion:

"Listen, why don't we do somethin', uh...filthy? I mean something really...dirty and revolting?"

Then in their next scene together, they have this exchange:

Shirley: "I'm doing my nails."

Jay: "C'mon, you know you loved it."

Shirley: "Leave me alone."

Jay: "What'd I do? C'mon, tell me what I did!"

Shirley: "You're a real pig! I'm not surprised your wife left you."

Jay: "What's the matter with you all of a sudden?"

Shirley: "I'm surprised she stuck with you for three years. I'll tell you what's the matter. When you came to me in the woods, I thought, wow. Here's a man with some ima-a-agination. Later I realized you were just a silly jerk who gets all his ideas from girlie magazines." (storms off)

Jay: "Is that so?"

Let's analyze this: Jay proposes a sexual act he describes as "filthy" and "dirty". He does so spontaneously, while outdoors, and therefore without any...supplemental resources. And afterward, Shirley is repulsed by him, either because things didn't go well or because she can't believe what she did.

To paraphrase John Davidson on Hollywood Squares, "It must be...some part of the body. I wonder where it could be?"

Finally, there's the connection between the film's ending and its beginning. Start the movie over, and you immediately realize what was done and what's being said, or implied -- but watching it straight through, we lacked the context to make sense of it.

Does it reflect badly on us that this clever finesse went over our heads? Maybe, but it also underscores the chief flaw in Savage Weekend: the editing. It's competent, but a better editor might have ensured that certain key elements of plot and characterization were emphasized.

Or that we understood who the hell all the characters were.

Then again, speaking of editing, it's always possible something is missing from Mill Creek's copy, which runs about 86 minutes vs. IMDb's listed running time of 88 minutes. The sex all seems to be present -- just about every female character bares her breasts at some point, including a cow that very nearly becomes a prop in a sex scene. (No, we're not joking.)

However, one or two of the more violent sequences seem like they could be cut short. And who knows, the saga of Jay and Shirley might be clarified in an unedited copy. (There's a Blu-Ray out there, maybe we'll see it sometime.)

On the other hand Mill Creek's copy adds something, namely a whole lot of boom mic thanks to incorrectly matted shots. No way the makers of Savage Weekend intended these to be seen, as it's too pervasive.

Savage Weekend doesn't quite live up to its ambitions, and probably crosses the line from "leaving some things implied" to "not bothering to fill in important details". Its denouement isn't really satisfying, and it squanders its best character, Nicky, by not giving us enough to understand his psyche. Is he in love with Shirley? Attracted to Jay? Vice versa? Both?

We're left to wonder, and his long campy dance sequence with Shirley does nothing to clarify matters.

Still, Savage Weekend also crosses the line from "routine genre exercise" to "distinctive film well worth seeing". It has enough psychological insight to give bite to its observations, and avoids the trap of giving us warmed-over Deliverance or, especially, Straw Dogs (perhaps the film's real ancestor).

If ultimately the locals are hardly less opaque than the city slickers in their motivations, at least the soundtrack attempts to do right by them:

You can't blame upstate folks from getting crazy in the mind

You buy some land, you scratch the earth 'til midnight, moonlight makes you blind

You miss one payment on the farm, you watch the bank foreclose

You sell it to some city guy who needs help to blow his nose

An upstate man got ain't much for his time in this life

Little pride, little property, sometimes a little wife

To keep that little, he fights a lot of temptation and strife

And the pride's more important to him than life

A bit on the nose -- especially since we hear it twice -- but it ensures we get the point.

Tales of Bacchus and Uranus

It's no revelation that peplum films recycle a lot of the same props, actors, plots, and so forth. Still, it was kind of astonishing how much these two had in common -- and we're not just talking about the usual stuff, e.g.:

• the evil queen who falls in love with Hercules after he survives a test of strength;
• the soldier who reports a failed mission and is summarily executed;
• the natural disaster that overtakes the kingdom once Hercules inevitably wins.

Yes, those things are present, but so are more idiosyncratic things like:

• hidden sanctums harboring glowing objects that serve as centers of occult power and empower the evil queen -- at a severe price;
• drugged wine that Hercules is, for once (or twice!), too smart to imbibe;
• close female relatives of the evil queen whom she sacrifices to preserve her power;
• giant gongs whose beater Hercules briefly uses as a weapon;
• scenes where almost everything onscreen is blotted out by dust, wind, and storms;
• soundtracks heavy on electronic sound effects;
• ...and long strings of dialogue involving "Uranus" that, after some initial resistance, eventually had us in stitches.

(Yes, we're twelve.)

---

Hercules Against the Moon Men (1964)
[aka Maciste e la regina di Samar]

Grade: C-

This is one of those titles that immediately makes you think "camp". Hercules Against the Moon Men? How can this be anything other than a ridiculous mash-up of cheap fantasy and cheap sci-fi, a contrivance that makes Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla seem like the most natural thing in the world?

(Note: we haven't actually seen Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, at least not yet. We're sure it's lovely.)

Well, the narration sets it up for us:

"That fatal night, a fiery mass dropped from the sky onto Earth, causing the mountain of Samar to erupt and burn everything around it, leaving nothing but a wasteland. Within the bowels of the mountain, a new and monstrous life was formed. From that day on the people of Samar, in order to survive, were forced to offer their children as a sacrifice to the hungry Mountain of Death."

Heavy duty.

From that prologue -- and ours at the start of this post -- you already know the deal, and can safely assume that evil Queen Samara (Jany Clair) is just fine with the status quo. Actually, that's not quite so: she wants to go further, and establish complete dominion over the world (the same thing we do every night, Pinky).

We find out early on that Samara is in touch with a weird alien apparition that, above all, wants her to kill Hercules (Sergio Ciani). Could this have anything to do with the mysterious mountain of death? Will Samara somehow capture Hercules and put him through a test of...?

OK, that's a yes. And will she become smitten with...?

Huh, OK, that's kinda kinky, but whatever. (Whatever she says, Jany's not done with Sergio -- and given how she guides his hands to her neck, apparently the ragdoll thing is her kink.)

And will she spike his wine with...?

...OK, then.

So it's not the basic plot of Moon Men where the interest lies, but one thing we really liked is that every time we had a suggestion for Hercules, he went and did it. For example, we asked: why bend two bars at once when you could focus on pulling one bar to the side with both hands?

"Done," says Sergio Ciani. Or, when confronted by a linebackers' wall of slow-moving golems, we said aloud "Why not just wait for an opening and dive between them?" And what do you know, the clever li'l cuss went and did that too!

One liability in Hercules Against the Moon Men is love interest Agar (Anna Maria Polani), daughter of the nobleman Gladius who was pictured a few screenshots back (and who gets Britney'd in the early going).

If you're playing the love interest of a man who can have any woman he wants, you'd better bring some serious charisma to the table. But Ms. Polani just doesn't have enough to pull it off --

-- which is a genteel way of saying that one of us was really bothered by her chin cleft, and the other wasn't exactly smitten either. Alas, we just couldn't get AMPed for this young woman.

Still, the movie hums along nicely until the final act, where the inevitable assault is mounted against the Mountain of Death -- and we suddenly get bogged down in shot after shot of windswept wastelands. The color gel lighting and dry ice fog look cool in still shots, but -- we're not exaggerating here -- ten minutes of people shouting unheard dialogue and stumbling around aimlessly? That doesn't make for an exciting climax.

Also, this is one of those movies where Hercules never seems to kill anyone. Whenever he's attacked by multiple enemies, they obligingly clasp hands with him and get thrown into the air, like some sort of pre-game ritual gone wrong.

Maybe they should just shoot him with an arrow for a change?

By the way, we liked the cool zodiac graphic that comes in about two-thirds of the way through the movie -- and we weren't above a chuckle at the line about coming under "the evil influence of Uranus". (Paging James Seay!)

One wonders why Queen Samara would take part in a plan designed to make the Earth unfit for human life. OK, "the fairest of them all" is just as applicable with a sample size of one, but then why is she devoting her energies to reviving Selene, Queen of the Moon Men? None of this really computes.

In conclusion, here's a screenshot of Sergio Ciani having a lie-down.

Speaking of which...

---

Hercules and the Captive Women (1964)
[aka Hercules Conquers Atlantis, Ercole alla conquista di Atlantide]

Grade: B-

"Please don't be a comedy, please don't be a comedy, please don't be a comedy," we said to ourselves as the opening minutes of Hercules and the Captive Women unspooled. After our traumatic experience with the utter garbage that was Colossus and the Amazon Queen, we simply couldn't stomach a repeat of that experience.

And disturbingly enough, the beginning of Hercules and the Captive Women bears no small resemblance to Colossus and the Amazon Queen. We've got a bar fight, followed by a betrayal from someone close to the big guy (Reg Park), who ends up unconscious aboard a ship bound for distant lands.

For all his might, Hercules spends one hell of a lot of time in this movie lying down, reclining, or otherwise in a state of repose. Whether he's listening to speeches about a mysterious threat to his homeland...

...or getting lectured by his comrade, King Androcles of Thebes (Ettore Manni)...

...or chilling out after a shipwreck...

...or hanging out with the treacherous Queen Antinea (Fay Spain)...

...or cleverly spitting out drugged wine...

...he often takes it lying down, literally.

Of course, like a male lion, he can easily rise to the occasion when necessary -- as when he drags an entire shipload of convicts back to shore after they try to strand him and Androcles on an island (once again, with echoes of Colossus and the Amazon Queen).

In fact, Androcles's expedition is astonishingly half-assed. Inflamed by a prophetic vision from the heavens -- depicted with the aid of a red filter that almost completely obliterates the onscreen visuals --

-- he goes on a voyage to confront the threat to Greece. Not only does he force Hercules to come with him, he secretly brings Hercules's son Illus (Luciano Marin), specifically against the big guy's wishes. 

But Androcles seems to have no idea who or what they're looking for, or even where they're going: as far as we can tell, he just sets sail and hopes for the best.

How serendipitous that when they inevitably shipwreck, Hercules just happens to wash up on the lost continent of Atlantis -- after receiving a vision of Androcles, begging for rescue.

On arrival, Hercules discovers a young girl (Laura Efrikian) half-embedded in rock. She's midway through the process of being sacrificed to Proteus, the shape-changing protector of Atlantis.

Naturally, Hercules can't stand for this, and defeats Proteus in lizard form by ripping off his horn (which really does look rather painful).

The young girl turns out to be Ismene, daughter of Queen Antinea, and her sacrifice is meant to forestall a prophecy of the "Birnam Wood to Dunsinane" variety. In fact, Ismene seems to spend half the film getting sacrificed in one way or another.

This also explains the inclusion of Illus, as Hercules is just too old -- and too married -- to consort with this puellam nubilem. (One of us thinks she's kinda hot, the other doesn't; we can't imagine Ms. Efrikian is too heartbroken about it either way.)

You can guess much of the rest of what happens, especially if you know about the secret glowing temple of Uranus where men are transformed into mighty warriors -- or leper-like untouchables.

And speaking of Zeus's dad, this is where we really lost our shit, because once Hercules reaches his temple, the inadvertently double-entendre one-liners just kept coming nonstop:

• "Uranus! Betrayed by his own son, Uranus was struck down." (twitch)
• "Only a few drops fell on Atlantis, making us the heirs to all the powers of Uranus." (smile)
• "Now, after much searching, Antinea has found the missing secrets of Uranus." (snicker)
• "I was the last high priest dedicated to Uranus, and I still worship here at his sacred shrine." (this is about where one of us lost it)
• "Uranus was a just god, not a god of revenge!" (struggling to hold on...)
• "The blood of Uranus can never be destroyed!" (...aaaaand, now we both lost it completely)
• "Only the rays of the sun can destroy the rock of Uranus." (trying to catch our breath, you're not helping!)

Like we said before, we're twelve.

None of this makes Hercules and the Captive Women (that title is bullshit, BTW) sound like anything more than a run-of-the-mill peplum. Yet, despite the familiar themes (and poor print), this was probably the most engaging Hercules film we've seen so far. Why? Well, it's not for nothing that Arnold Schwarzenegger holds Reg Park in such high esteem: this Hercules is perfectly suited for the role.

Add to that a plot with genuine momentum (and several subplots), a solid supporting cast, and stronger-than-average production values, and we're doing well. Maybe above all, Hercules and the Captive Women maintains a balanced tone that keeps things light and brisk, with moments of seriousness and of comic relief, but never taking itself too seriously or drifting into an unfunny schtick.

And that's not easy to do in a movie that drops a pile of Uranus jokes -- or in which the ultimate adversary is an army of albino Amish clones. (Seriously.)