Revolt of the Zombies (1936)

Revolt of the Zombies (1936)

   

Check out that forehead. That's the forehead of a Saturday Morning Cartoon supervillain. Lots of scheming going on in there.

    I'll cut to the chase and say that this movie was straight up terribad. It's almost hard to believe that three years after Orsen Wells revolutionized cinematography in Citizen Kane the creators of Revolt of the Zombies were still struggling with shot-reverse-shot. Seriously, I had a friend in high school who made betters movies than this when he was sixteen.

    To put it in perspective, this movie is even worse than the screenplay I'm working on; The Mummy 5: revenge of Tupac and Whitney Houston. 

    Here's a movie poster I made using MS Paint. The premise is that Tupac and Whitney Houston (both played by Eddie Murphy) come back as mummies who can only be laid to rest if they are defeated in America's Got Talent, and the only man who stands any chance of winning is Brenden Fraser. Unfortunately for Fraser, he'll have to stop Tupac from turning all of LA into one giant thug-mansion first. After an hour and a half of fun and excitement, Brenden Fraser finally realizes that the only real mummy is the desiccated corpse of his career. Roll credits; collect Oscars.
 
    I plan on a straight to DVD release, and I'm already in talks with TNT about syndication rights. Overall, I'm feeling rather confident about the whole project because even if I have to settle on Michael Bay as director, this film will still won't be as awful as Revolt of the Zombies.

    Speaking of Revolt of the Zombies, you're probably expecting a synopsis or something. Basically, there's this weird Asian dude who is the last weird Asian dude to know the secret of making zombies.

Yeah, him on the left. We should have known Buddhist pacifists couldn't be trusted.

Naturally, a good, trustworthy, white man steals the secret from him and starts making zombies of his own. Shortly thereafter his fiance dumps him because he can't satisfy in bed, and in his darkest hour,  his best friend gives him a speech straight out of Scarface.

"Gee Harry, awfully sorry your fiance left you and now she's sleeping with me, but here's what you need to do: 

"First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women."

    As it turns out, this isn't exactly the best thing to say to someone capable of creating an army of zombies. He goes on to zombify everyone he comes into contact with, that is, everyone except his ex-fiance who he is still obsessed with. Sadly, even after mastering the powers of life and death, a bro still cannot escape from the friend zone. His ex-fiance tells him that she likes him, just not in that way, but she still really wants to be friends. Upon hearing this he releases all the zombies under his control and in their rage at being turning into automatons they revolt against their master and kill him. The fiance, happy to have all that awkwardness with her ex finally over, promptly goes back to knocking boots with her ex's best friend (I think that guy's name was Chuggs or something) and the two of them live happily ever after. Because they're the . . . heroes?

   The moral? No one escapes the friend zone. NO ONE. All you can do is ruin countless lies and get murdered by zombies trying.

    

Maniac (1934)

MANIAC (1934)

    I'm going to preface everything by stating that Maniac made the list for the top 100 hilariously bad movies ever made. I'll also mention that literally everything written on the DVD cover is an outright lie. Maniac does not conform to any definition of the word "classic." The maniac does not menace women with his weird desires. It's not the most bizarre film ever made. And, at best, it is only loosely related to an Edgar Allan Poe story ("The Black Cat" if you were wondering, although the film also makes a reference to "Murders in the Rue Morgue").

 

Seriously, Maniac is based on a Poe story in the way that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is inspired by historical events.

    As you can see from the above image, Maniac shows some 1934 titties. It's a B-Movie even by 1930's standards, and it's actually one of the last films to get away with so much nudity, rape, and murder before the Hays Production Code of 1934 placed stringent restrictions on what could be shown on film. You see, films like Maniac used to be called "exploitation films." Exploitation films were the precursors to B-Movies and they usually contained lengthy scenes of women standing around in their underwear for no reason.  

If you spot your grandmother here, my sincerest apologies. Also, please send me your grandmother's number . . . for reasons that are totally related to film studies.

   As for the plot of the film, it starts out like your typical mad scientist story: lab full of vials and beakers, Eastern European Doctor, mentally unsound assistant to said doctor, human heart pumping in a jar of fluids, all the standard stuff. It turns out the mad doctor is trying to prolong human life by . . . transplanting a beating heart from one person to another! GASP! SHOCK! HORROR! Luckily, the world is spared the abomination of a human heart transplant when the mentally unsound assistant guns down the doctor before he can complete the surgery.

Sadly, it wasn't much longer before another madman started playing God by swapping human hearts from body to body . . . the sick bastard.

   After the assistant offs the evil heart surgeon and bricks his body up in the basement wall, he decides that the best way to get away with murder is to impersonate his victim for the rest of his life. Because, hey, why not? So he dresses up like the doctor and starts going around injecting people with random syringes and taking liberties with his female patients. He begins to fear that he will be discovered, and eventually he grows so paranoid that he is convinced two women are trying to kill him. He then tricks the women into a one-on-one hypodermic needle fight in his corpse-hiding basement. At which point the neighbors finally have enough and they call the cops. I'm not sure why they chose that particular night to call the cops seeing as their neighbor had already released a raving lunatic out into the streets, stolen a corpse, and shot somebody. Maybe none of those earlier antics registered as suspicious, I dunno.

    But, perhaps the weirdest thing about this movie is Dwain Esper's bizarre cat obsession. Cats are all over this movie, even interspersed with scenes that have nothing to do with cats. The next door neighbor has thousands of cats in cages, the maniac walls a black cat up with the corpse of the doctor, and the doctor owns a cat named Satan (make of that what you will. It doesn't make any sense to me). There are also these quick shots of cats fighting that don't seem to serve any purpose in the film until the two women fight at the end in the same place and positions as the cats. The symbolism here isn't very subtle. It's clear that the cats are supposed to represent women, and the way men control and cage up cats is echoed in the way the maniac controls the women he is pretending to treat. It's really not a very positive portrayal of females. But hey, when you're making a film to exploit women for their bodies, you might as well fill it with thematic undertones that dehumanize women too. No reason to leave a job half done, right?

    And there you have it, the moral of Maniac: Kill heart doctors; cage women.

The World Gone Mad (1933)

The World Gone Mad (1933)

"I found this in the dumpster with the serial number filed off. Do you think I should have reported it to somebody?"

     I didn't really expect much going into this movie, which was good because it doesn't deliver much. I almost want to take some of these movies off the blog because, like A Shriek in the Night, this is in no way a horror movie.

    

    The plot revolves around a series of contract killings done to protect some pyramid schemers. The filmmakers sell it as "A World Gone Mad," but by today's standards it's just run of the mill corruption. Really, after watching The Wolf of Wallstreet, Breaking Bad, and Rob Ford everything these crooks do feels like small potatoes.

   The movie starts off with this dude talking into a phone that looks like something an astronaut would piss into, and from there it's all downhill. The urinal phone was the highlight of the movie. Perhaps the biggest problem with it is that the protagonist is a reporter who talks like an auctioneer. I seriously understood about half of what the guy said the whole movie. The only sentence I was certain I heard correctly was "You've got about a thousand dicks looking for you right now." I only picked out that sentence because I said the exact same thing in a letter to Betty White. Of course, using "dicks" as a slang for "detectives" isn't the only super old-timey detail in World Gone Mad; there's also the overt racism.

Why does this thing always smell like asparagus?

   

    The 1930's were a simpler time: a time when you could hear the sound of newspaper boys calling in the street, a time when you could smell fruit pies baking in the afternoon, a time when you could just refer to people as "that chinaman" or "the spic" and never have to bother learning their actual names. That's just what the writers of World Gone Mad do. There is actually a character named "The Spic." It even reads that way in the opening credits. Not only is he named "The Spic," but when the police finally catch up to the bad guys at the end of the movie they immediately gun down The Spic and then all the white people, good and bad, have a hearty laugh about it.


    It's funny how times change though. In World Gone Mad, The Spic is clearly supposed a bad guy. However, the romantic interest is a woman dressed like Cruela DeVile, and she's supposed to represent innocence or some crap. I've never really thought of myself as one of those "fur is murder" people, but this isn't one of those innocuous, Disney-style fur coats. This is one of those articles of clothing that has the faces of actual dead minks draping over the shoulders. Cause that's just what I want in a coat, a lifeless animal head staring at me with eyeless sockets. Ya know, just as like a casual reminded of the omnipresence of death. That'll really keep you warm on cold winter nights.

...or shelter you from the cold realization that even impossible wealth and endless hedonism aren't making you happy.

    So, there you have it, a little taste of the flavor of life in the 1930's---bigotry, dirty cops, fur coats, daytime drinking in the office, and a cigarette to smoke in bed right before you fall asleep. Basically, 1930's America is modern day Russia.

A Shriek in the Night (1933)

A Shriek in the Night (1933)

    A Shriek in the Night starts off strong with a crash test dummy being thrown off a roof. It's supposed to be some chump plummeting to his death, but the special effects look about as real as your Game of Thrones cosplay.

I am Kyle the Yellow, sworn knight to Beerion Lannister and rightful heir to the porcelain throne.

    This senseless waste of a perfectly good department store mannequin is about the most terrifying thing that happens in the movie. After that, it's more of a hard boiled detective story than a horror flick. The plot revolves around a female reporter (Ginger Rogers) covering a series of murders in her apartment building. There are a couple detectives involved in the plot and they use the classic buddy cop dynamic of cigar puffing jackass and gay version of Mr. Magoo. Needless to say, that duo isn't going to solve the crime without help.

    Naturally, Ginger Rogers steps in to close the case. Now, if you're anything like me you are probably wondering a couple things. First, who the hell names their kid Ginger? The answer, someone who hates their child for stealing their youth. Second, Ginger Rogers sounds kinda familiar, what else has she been in? The answer, a whole bunch of stuff. Ginger Roger was sort of like the 1930's Katherine Heigl. 

    There's just one small difference between Rogers and Heigl . . . every one of Ginger Roger's movies sounds like a porno. Here's a short list:

Swing Time

The Gay Divorcee

The Gold Diggers of 1933

Once Upon a Honeymoon

Monkey Business

Weekend at the Waldorf

Tom, Dick, and Harry

5th Ave Girl

We're Not Married!

Oh, Men! Oh, Women!

You Said a Mouthful?

Tight Spot

Lady in the Dark

Perfect Strangers

Lucky Partners

Two Flappers, One Bootleg Cup

    I could go on, but I think you got the point. And, believe it or not, I only made up one of those titles from comic effect.

By the way, Rogers won an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1940 for Kitty Foyle. Mark this blog down as fun and educational!

    But going back to Shriek in the Night . . . Perhaps the film's best feature is the abundance of 1930's catchphrases. The dialog is rife with exchanges like:

 "that reporter pinched my story! So I told him to go soak his head. So he told me that my mother sucked eggs, and I told him 'say that again and I'll butter your necktie, bub!'"

    I'm not sure exactly what it means to "butter a necktie," but it sounds like it would leave a stain at the very least. Also it was the 1930's. They didn't know about trans-fats then, so why not butter a necktie? You butter everything else. 

 
    There was one phrase I actually had to rewind and write down. It was simply too absurd not to. I dare you to make sense of this shit. I dare you! Here goes:

  This is what cigar-puffing detective says to Ginger Rogers.

    "I got four kids and a wife who could lick her weight in wild cats."

    Lick her weight . . . in wild cats

I just . . . I can't even . . . 

    I really wanted to make a joke about this phrase, but I can't even do it. I mean, what the hell does that even mean?! Did the 1930's have some sort of secret counterculture that revolved around wild cats? How many wild cats does it take to equal the weight of his wife? And how did he come by this information? Is it just a reference to some run-of-the-mill wildcat fetish? I guess we'll never know.
 
    What I do know is that Ginger Rogers is fun to watch. She has charisma. Whether she's tampering with evidence, stealing scotch from a dead man's apartment, or just passing out in the boiler room; she's got a magnetism that makes us root for her, even if it is just a half-assed detective story.