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. 

---

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.

Study abroad

In these films the hero has a long way to go (such a long way to go). Heck, he even uses air currents to get there.

However -- unlike Christopher Cross's beloved anthem -- he "rides like the wind" not to ditch the girl and "be free again", but to win her heart and loins.

---

The Lost Jungle (1934)

Grade: D+

Now this was a weird one -- though once we discovered The Lost Jungle was actually an edited serial, things made a whole lot more sense. Even before we got into the thick of it, we knew something was up, as not every day does an animal troupe share top billing:

Yes, The Lost Jungle is an entry in that niche genre, "animal trainer as action hero". Have we seen more of these in the box? It feels like we must have, but 220+ movies later it's hard to be sure.

We don't know too much about Clyde Beatty, whose act seems to have become the template for all lion tamers and big cat performers. (He didn't originate the whole chair-as-defensive-weapon thing, but it became indelibly associated with him.)

Onscreen he's portrayed as a decent sort by the standards of the time. For one, he's a fervent supporter of animal welfare, willing to use fisticuffs against anyone who brutalizes his performers -- as we learn right away: when evil trainer Sharkey (Warner Richmond) brandishes a 2x4 and tells a tiger "Don't you start with me or I'll knock every tooth out of your head!", Beatty reminds him of the categorical imperative.

Beatty gets close-up shots, White Zombie-style, to signify the mesmeric power (animal magnetism?) that lurks in his eyes...



...though these days, it draws more attention to his hairstyle, whose meaning as a signifier has seen some changes in the last 85 years or so, from "manly man" (we guess) to "skate punk" to "Tom Villard". At least it keeps this jolly good Obergefella from being another IWGIH.

Of course you can't dedicate an entire feature, let alone a serial, to animal training and haircuts -- not even if you throw in a gang of gee-whiz kids ready to applaud Beatty's every move. Not even if one of them is Mickey Rooney!

So soon enough we get the MacGuffin, in the form of Beatty's girlfriend Ruth (Cecilia Parker). The two of them clearly love each other, no doubt bonding over their shared admiration for comically wide men's belts.

Even so Ruth, despairing of his obsession with the animals and failure to propose, decides to go on an expedition to the "South Seas" with her father (Edward LeSaint), a sea captain, and Professor Livingston (Crauford Kent). This expedition is in search of Kamor, a lost island that's allegedly the "real cradle of civilization" -- and the Professor will know it's the right place when he finds, we kid you not, "an island bearing the fauna of both Africa and Asia".

In other words: lions and tigers, in the same place. How conve-e-e-enient, as the Church Lady would say. That ol' lampshade got a real workout back then.

Back in the States, a heartbroken Clyde throws his all into a new, high-risk act that adds Ursidae to the mix. This gets his publicist pal Larry (Syd Saylor) a bit twitchy --

-- but despite Sharkey's meddling, things work out: this is a family film, after all, and could hardly bear a grisly ending for Clyde.

Condensing 12 chapters and four hours of footage into a single feature film isn't an easy task, and truth be told, the editors did a pretty good job of it. But there are inevitably weird corners in the narrative, threads that get dropped abruptly, and set-pieces that seem to have had a disproportionate amount of attention lavished upon them --

-- like Clyde's journey by dirigible in search of Ruth et al., who by this point have disappeared. Needle in a haystack, sure: but you'll never believe where he crash-lands!

Ultimately everything in The Lost Jungle is a pretext for Beatty's big-cat routines -- though apparently a couple chapters involved gorillas in some way, and we're not sorry to see those get left on the cutting-room floor.

While it doesn't end up making much sense, and the film suffers from a certain lack of charisma across the board, it has more than enough content to keep us from groaning too much as we watched.

---

Colossus and the Amazon Queen (1960)
[aka La regina delle Amazzoni]

Grade: D-

Oh, great, just what the world needed: a "funny" peplum. Right from the start, the soundtrack makes it clear that something is askew in this one. A fumbled fanfare in the opening scene sets the tone:

Next comes a massive stadium fight, set to a hyperactive big-band jazz accompaniment, wherein Glaucus (Ed Fury) emerges as the last man standing.

Alas, his victory doesn't last, as his friend Pirro (Rod Taylor) sells him out to a couple visiting merchants. They offer to pay handsomely if he can convince Glaucus to join them aboard their ship full of strong men -- a task Pirro accomplishes by clocking him on the head (we guess, since it's not shown) in the aftermath of a massive, chicken-related bar fight.

Once Glaucus regains consciousness, he raises hell again, before Pirro sabotages the boat to convince him to calm down and go with the flow. Along the way Glaucus meets Sofo, the Egyptian, with whom he hits it off -- though Sofo clearly knows something he doesn't.

When the ship lands, the men's mission is revealed: to guard a huge cache of treasure against pirates, in exchange for a share of said treasure (allegedly obtained from natives ignorant of the value of gold). First, though, let's have some food and wine!

MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Derring-Do) would approve of this message, frequently seen in peplum: it never goes well when Hercules or his progeny get into the wine. And when a squadron of armed warriors arrives, things are looking grim for the unconscious big guy.

For these first fifteen minutes, Colossus and the Amazon Queen seems like a typical peplum at heart. Sure, the gods are absent and the tone is pointedly lighthearted (how could it not be with tubas and xylophones on the soundtrack?).

Still, we expected the usual fare -- even after the arrival of that most unwelcome of filmic abominations, an overdubbed talking parrot, who chides Glaucus as he wakes from his stupor: "Shameful! Athletes taking dope these days!"



Instead, though, we get a tired role-reversal sex comedy, as Glaucus et al. find themselves in the clutches of the Amazons, a society where women are warriors and men are worriers. Do you like tall skinny dudes in drag, chirping in effete voices about how they "just can't understand [why] I never seem to get my wash as dazzling as yours"? Does that prospect make you laugh your sides out? If so, this is the film for you.

For the rest of us, Colossus and the Amazon Queen doesn't really have a reason to exist. It's certain to offend some, and won't amuse the others, so who's left? People who like to watch sexually frustrated queens lounge around and drink wine? We suppose it's cheaper than doing the same thing at a Caribbean resort.

And now, since you're not depressed enough, have a screenshot of a couple of starved-looking bears tied up outside a cave. Score one for Mr. Beatty, who would never tolerate this.

But hey, at least the parrot almost gets it. Almost.

---

Laser Mission (1989)

Grade: C-

OK, first of all, check out this title card, which couldn't be more of its time if it tried. We only wish we could show you the way it "lasers" onto the screen.

Setting aside the question of how the hell a film from 1989 ended up on a Mill Creek set -- is it licensed? Public domain? Was it even possible to screw up your copyright in 1989? -- the first thing that caught our eye about Laser Mission was the presence of Brandon Lee.

Thanks to some combination of half-remembered advertising for The Crow and a couple viewings of his father's films, we had the impression Brandon was some sort of 1990s emo kid, perennially brooding and fey, like Edward Scissorhands meets Robert Smith meets that international student who dresses like an anime character.

Well, not exactly:

There is a dash of Depp in there, sure, as well as his father who (how did we not know this?) had a significant amount of European ancestry. But we were reminded above all of the strong-jawed presence of Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell -- maybe with a dash of Hwil Hweaton in there too, especially around the eyes (and certain line readings). Plus, of course, dude is jacked.

Laser Mission is quintessential late-1980s straight-to-video trash, and Lee is determined to have a hell of a lot of fun making it. Unfortunately, he doesn't get much in the way of good lines: when he falls through a ceiling and lands on someone's dinner table, he notes how he "just dropped in to say bon appetit!", if that gives you a sense of the caliber of writing we're dealing with here.

The other "name" actor is Ernest Borgnine, who sports a threadbare Russian accent, doesn't get much screen time, and seems happy just to be there. That said, if you'd told us there was also a cameo by Michael J. Fox --

-- we might have believed you.

The makers of Laser Mission seem to have taken "cheap name recognition" as their watchword, as they hired David Knopfler -- the other Dire Strait -- to compose the music, but apparently didn't pay him for more than one song.

So if you somehow fail to pick up on what Lee's character Michael Gold does for a living, the soundtrack is happy to fill you in, as almost anytime there's music in Laser Mission, you've got Knopfler's strained, Señor Cardgage-esque voice, chuntering away:

He's a mercenary man
Mercenary man
Mercenary man
Yeah, mercenary man

It's another earworm, but only through sheer repetition, from opening credits to ending credits. We even hear the little, faux-flamenco nylon-string guitar interlude multiple times.

The MacGuffin in Laser Mission is a huge diamond that can be used to build a superweapon, and if your brain hasn't been taken over by "Mercenary man..." you can probably guess why Borgnine has a Russian accent, and why Gold's pursuing him. Like many MMs, Gold is a master of disguise, transforming himself into Latin American stereotypes on a moment's notice:

He soon joins forces with Alissa (Debi Monahan), an animal sanctuary worker who's unexpectedly competent with firearms and vehicles -- a fact not lost on Gold, who asks the natural question: "You carry a gun and you're not afraid to use it. You can outdrive the best of them...Who are you and who are you working for?"

The response he gets -- "I'm hot, I'm tired, I'm hungry and I'm thirsty and I'm walking around in these high heels all day and I have blisters on my feet!" -- is petulant and defensive. Hardly the reply of a secret agent, right? (Right?)

But the bad feelings don't last, and their brief love scene later on (oh, c'mon, that's hardly a spoiler) is, blessedly, one of the few times we hear music other than "Mercenary Man" in this film.

Gold's merry chase takes him to Cuba -- where he nearly gets guillotined -- and ultimately to the fictional African country of Kabango, which we presume to be a stand-in for Angola. Logically enough most of Laser Mission was filmed right next door, in Namibia and South Africa. This leads to some absurd scenes in which Michael and Alissa get dumped in (we're guessing) the Namib desert without food or water --

-- and somehow manage to amble their way to safety. One can only imagine the smell, especially since, as we assume you've noticed, Alissa wears the same blue dress from start to finish.

Comic relief is provided by a wacky pair of conscripts, Manuel (Pierre Knoesen) and Roberta (Maureen Lahoud), who stay on Gold's trail throughout the film but never quite seem to want to pull the trigger. Roberta also has a seriously revealing wet T-shirt scene, leaving us to wonder whether Monahan refused and Lahoud was drafted to fulfill the first half of the T&A requirement.

What's left to say? The bad guys are evil, the hero invulnerable, and the actual Africans are relegated to cannon fodder status or, at best, given brief cameos (including Ken Gampu of The Gods Must Be Crazy, as a concierge who bitterly complains about freeloading foreigners).

It's all what you'd expect, doesn't make that much sense, and we can only hope Brandon Lee had a great time in Namibia, since he didn't get much time to begin with. Who would've thought Ernest Borgnine would outlive him by nearly two decades?