Sweet Trash (1970), by John Hayes

What a fitting title. (I've been getting a lot of those lately.) In the end, I'm not sure it's about anything--that title or the movie attached to it. The title is referenced in the film's tagline: "Some women are born to be sweet trash." And guess what, that tagline has absolutely nothing to do with the movie. Women are the opposite of sweet trash in Sweet Trash. They are usually the only good people in the entire movie. I assume then that the filmmakers were being self-aware. But really, in the end, it's the style, not the substance.

A mobster named Dan shows a beautiful redhead a good time in the sack. She extols his virtues as a lover, and then he shoots her, explaining that "the new computer" determined she knew too much, and talked too much. Then, one of the other members of his mob, Mr. Rizo, has sex with a woman who comes to his mansion. This somehow reveals to him she has information on a certain man "the computer" has them looking for. They need the services of a longshoreman of a particular personality, and the one they've found is Michael Joseph Donovan, who may as well mark down on his resume that he works a second full-time position as an alcoholic. Mike is a pretty jovial guy, but he's also got a skeezy side to him--he spends too much time staring at women, and his pits are perpetually sweaty. Presently he owes $4,000 to the mob, the same mob Dan and Rizo belong to, and he has a chance to win it at a card game. He just needs another two Gs to break out, but at the critical moment he blows it and sets himself back that extra 2,000 as well. The only thing left for him to do is to make a run for it...and his quest for freedom will take him to places and feelings he never could have expected. Meanwhile, the computer is hunting him.

Another (?) movie which is similar to Gretta. I never thought I'd say that, but I never thought I'd see a movie that tries so hard to seem like it's not deliberate. There are so many weird things going on in this movie that it becomes inscrutable at times. It is simultaneously a sexploitation movie, a surrealist art film, a mobster thriller, and a sci-fi speculation exercise. It asks too many questions at once and slathers everything over with increasingly-bizarre sex scenes, as if the real interest is meant to be all the boobers that are on screen. And yet...and yet...oh, hell, I'll just tell you some of the shit that goes down here.

So there are just some little nods here and there--that's the first layer. These are incidents that don't really lead to anything. When there's talk of breaking Mike's fingers, for instance, there happens to be a topless stripper nearby, and the mobster sets the hand he's set to break on her boob: "One last feel," he muses quietly. Then, later on, Mike is speaking to a possibly-illusory Puerto Rican woman when he suddenly imagines that his hands are full of bloody strips of flesh. These things will then form their little strings of pearls that make the movie's private architecture twisted and uncanny. Mr. Rizo keeps having sex with ladies and it keeps getting darker and darker, until we're actually freaking out when two girls are closing in on him with fake vampire teeth, chanting over and over again, "Here we come to suck the blood from your neck." The human mind doesn't function well in the surrealosphere. And it keeps getting bigger and badder.

The movie makes its transition from sleazy exploitation to pure drunken horror both slowly and starkly. There's a moment where Mike is wandering around wasted in an abandoned part of town, and the happy but overly-nostalgic music that keeps haunting him throughout the film suddenly turns into something right out of Jay Chattaway's soundtrack for Maniac. And this leads into the scene where the Puerto Rican lady and Mike walk back through Mike's timeline, visiting his earliest memories, including when he was molested by a neighborhood woman when he was ten. This quick insight back into the source of Mike's alcoholism (presumably, at least) is portrayed entirely for black comedy, like a lot of the film, actually. Mike laughs hysterically as he recounts what happened, and when the woman tries to say it wasn't his fault, he says, "Oh, I'd sinned, mama. But I had such an innocent face that they never knew it."

This is pretty some tough shit to watch, but there's enough counter-negative tone to keep things going. And all those contrasting tones never overlap each other in a way that makes it a painful sit. I don't really know what the themes of this movie are. The angle where the mobsters are helpless to obey their mostly-offscreen computer may be a comment on authority, but it may also be to help explain the corners the plot cuts on its road to surrealism (i.e. there's no reason for the characters to act this way besides the writers making them, and the computer plotline is a cover for that). The whole movie may also be a remark on alcoholism, and indeed this is probably the most realistic depiction of alcoholism I've seen based on what I've heard from former alcoholics--it can be the angry or sorrowful ruts but there's also the boisterous and embarrassing joyousness of drunkenness. Alcoholism can be quite the happy thing even if it's also agony, and that happiness is usually why the drinker stays an alcoholic. And then there is delirium tremens.

This movie is basically Delirium Tremens: The Movie. For all the depression inherent in that, that's a movie I've always wanted to see. I like being taken on a rough ride in my trash, without having to dip into the roughie flicks that the '70s would go on to produce. Sweet Trash may not have art, or even direction, but it has heart, and I can dig that. There's a lot of imagery that will haunt you long after, which coming from me is, once again, nothing short of a recommendation.

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Smoking Guns (1934), by Alan James

How much of this "joke" is predicated on prejudice? How much of my amusement is derived from the simple fact that, even after dedicating a quite a lot of words to talking about them, I'm still not used to B-Westerns completely and utterly blowing me out of the water? 2017 is a year for walking against the wind in many things--so it's healthy for me to go on insisting that these movies have some sort of value. I've encountered few fellow trashsters who have found the same sort of passion I have for digging through the tedious and repetitious tides of old '30s cowboy flicks in search of gold. But I'm gonna do my part to make it a thing, damnit! Why should '80s slashers, '70s roughies, and '60s sexploiters have all the fun? At this point I've cast aside my old superstitions. Smoking Guns cements, now and forever, that Westerns can contain the same levels of perverse oddity that afflict the weirdest movies I've featured on this site.

Ken Masters is a young man who has been accused of the murder of Hank Stone's father Silas--however, Ken knows that Hank himself is the killer. When he confronts Stone with that knowledge, he is driven out of town, and he hides himself out in the Amazon rainforest (as you do). A ranger by the name of Dick Evans tracks Ken out to the jungle and arrests him--Ken is only too happy to return to civilization, as he wanted to stay back in town and face Stone far and square. As Evans takes Ken back through the jungle, however, he contracts malaria, and is forced to let Ken shoot their handcuffs off to go find help after it transpires that he's lost the key. Fortunately, Ken is an honorable man, and not only gives the ranger his gun back, but returns with a canoe as promised. Not so fortunately, their voyage down the Amazon becomes sheer horror when Evans decides to open fire into a horde of crocodiles, which sends them after the two. Evans is bitten on the leg, leading to gangrene; Ken knows how to operate but rather than face the knife, Evans kills himself.

Then the movie gets really weird...yeah, it actually gets weirder. Somehow, Ken gets it in his head that he and the dead ranger are dead ringers for each other, despite the fact that their actors have zero resemblance. He returns to civilization disguised as Evans, and runs into the awkward fact that Evans had a girlfriend, the somewhat improbably-named Alice Adams. It doesn't take long before "Dick" reveals that he's rather ill-suited for impersonating a dead man in front of his loved ones, as he's forgotten Alice's nickname of "Kitten," and praises music the real Dick hated while disliking that which he liked. Still, she takes the truth, when he comes forth with it, surprisingly well. From there on out, Ken uses every advantage he gets to close in on his man.

Much to my dismay, the majority of Smoking Guns' goodness is packed into its first half. The second half of the film is a typical B-Western, and not one of the very good ones...long shots of people creeping around in the dark, broken up by protracted, foot-dragging gunfights--and that's saying nothing of the obligatory square dancing scene. Oh, and the racism. I really don't want to dwell on this, so I'll just say that there is a black butler named "Cinders" who Mantan Morelands the hell out of every scene he's in. And because he's in so many scenes, you'll probably want to skip most of this second half with the assurance that it's a '30s Western, and good triumphs in the end. In-universe. In out-universe terms, good did not triumph, because they forced an actor to completely demean himself for the mild amusement of the white audience. So don't be afraid to ditch the second half if you want.

But man, that first half. Was there really so much demand for movies set in the Amazon in 1934 that they needed to spend a good chunk of the story there? Was it impossible, in the days of the Old West, to contract malaria and gangrene within the confines of the United States? Maybe it's not the Amazon...maybe it's just Florida. But I'm pretty positive it is meant to be somewhere in South America. I am absolutely not complaining about any of this. The South America sequence is entirely contingent on a hilarious amount of improbably bad luck for our characters stacked on top of some of the weirdest passes of the Idiot Ball I've ever seen. Keep in mind, we go straight from Dick Evans confidently arresting Ken to his decline into malaria, with the swiftness of the dissolve implying very little time has passed. Evans spends part of this scene laughing insanely as the disease drives him out of his mind. It's an arresting composition, giving us the impression that he was able to make it all the way out here by himself just fine, but the second he joins up with Ken, he starts going insane. This is built up by the fact that he trusts Ken, a fucking outlaw, enough to hand him his gun! It's not like he really needs much persuading to go all buddy-buddy with Ken, as they speak amiably to each other upon first meeting, and he eats Ken's food, even though Ken could've easily rubbed an Amazonian frog on that meat with the intent of prying the handcuff keys off the ranger's cold corpse. Evans' fate is ultimately his own fault as he shows not a single shred of spine in the face of animals who were gonna leave him alone if he didn't fucking shoot them. It's almost impossible to believe this man was a cop. He must have traveled to the Amazon in a goddamn air-conditioned rickshaw.

Then, Ken seriously overestimates his ability to impersonate a man he barely knew. What's more, the deception generally works! People believe that he is Evans, despite having no beard, a different hairstyle, and, let's just face it, a completely different face. And poor Dick Evans, for all the suffering he went through in the course of just doing his job (well, and being an idiot), is completely forgotten, as Ken steals his identity, his horse, and, ultimately, his girlfriend. If there's a theme to Smoking Guns, it's that if you are noble, you will have a good ending, unless your name is Dick Evans. There's such a strange passion and intensity to the direction and action of all these improbabilities that it feels deliberate--almost wholly detached from the absurd cheapness that affected many of the big studios during the Great Depression. This movie was made by Universal, meaning it was one of the better Westerns out there.

And that shows. Contrast that with The Phantom Cowboy or The Irish Gringo and you'll see that there was at least a little money behind Smoking Guns. And yet, the movie had to be on the market fast, damnit. I don't what they were thinking. I just feel, somehow, that they were thinking. Consequentially, Smoking Guns is an essential B-Western, second only to The Phantom Cowboy by the depressing anti-merit of replacing Ptomaine Pete with racism. Fast-forward when you feel like it and keep your eyes peeled for the good bits.

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D.T. in 'Dawg Territory' (1988), by Chuck Schodowski

Let me see if I can even begin to name all the cash-ins and ripoffs of Spielberg's E.T. that have emerged over the years.

There are the two Turkish ones, Badi and Homoti. There are at least five or six porno spoofs. We can't forget about Pod People...or Mac and Me...and now, there is D.T. Hallelujah! D.T. in 'Dawg Territory' (because Single Quotes Are Cool) was a short video made by the Cleveland Browns alongside the barbarian fantasy epic Masters of the Gridiron, probably in a gesture of fanservice to Browns fans. Both films became something entirely else--something which man was perhaps not meant to witness. But we'll see. We'll see if our minds are ready to take the long step into the depths of Dawg Territory.

D.T. of the Planet K9 is on his way to the Intergalactic Fetchball Championship when he is knocked off course by his rival team, the evil Zomalians! (They keep saying it as "Somalians" which makes it awkward.) If D.T.'s team has to play without him they will lose, and if they lose, the Zomalians will take control of the galaxy; "Tyranny and bloodshed shall surely follow," D.T. helpfully explains. Fortunately, the humans who found D.T., and supplied him with his trademark Hershey's Kisses, are the kindly gentlemen of the Cleveland Browns, including Bob Golic, Dan Fike, and Tim Manoa. (I love writing sentences that are meaningless to me.) It isn't long before D.T. is captured by the Zomalians, led by their Thundercats-reject Queen and her right-hand demon, Revoltar. Revoltar looks like if Jack Kirby's Etrigan decided to rob the wardrobe of Scorpion from Mortal Kombat. This leads to a training sequence of a bunch of NFL dudes grabbing camo and guns to storm the enemy ship and rescue their buddy, highlighted in great detail with a soundtrack that wouldn't seem out of place in Lady Street Fighter.

D.T. in 'Dawg Territory' is what happens if pure juvenile id vomits on the camera lens. It's a strangely sobering experience to witness these colossal beefy chaps, so typically associated with masculine seriousness, display an innocent and earnest eagerness for shooting lizard-aliens with beam-rifles. Or having lightsaber fights with cat-people. All while channeling what the '80s considered the kid's movie to end all kid's movies. Perhaps the majority of their delight comes from the prospect of this being a blast for their kid fans, but in a way, this was probably a relief from the image football players are ordinarily required to maintain. Again, all of my speculation comes from faulty understanding--I know nothing about football, outside of what I've seen in this movie and Masters of the Gridiron. There may be worlds of information encoded deep in this movie that I'll never understand unless I watch tons of '80s football reruns. All I see, from my perspective, is a bunch of guys enjoying themselves with a man dressed in a dog costume. That's all I need.

And the movie isn't badly shot, either. Director Chuck Schodowski knows what he's doing, as far as duplicating shots from other movies. I don't know where I've seen the shot of a group of camo-clad troops striding out of an orange-lit fog before, but it's generic enough where it's probably a 4th-generation ripoff of something big. Schodowski's like a junior Bruno Mattei, and it's wonderful. I think it's also appropriate that the director of this nerdy football movie is named "Schodowki." That's like the secret last name of every white person's football-loving dad. Who probably gets over-nostalgic about all the trash from the '80s, including E.T.

Running not even a full half-hour, D.T. in 'Dawg Territory' is an almost-literally one-of-a-kind movie that shows a strange side to football, even if you do happen to be familiar with The Sports. It makes a great double-feature with the similarly-short Masters of the Gridiron, a love-letter to '80s fantasy in the same way this is a tribute to '80s sci-fi. Both of them are on YouTube, too, so shoestring fans rejoice.

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Disconnected (1983), by Gorman Bechard

The most accurate title for a movie I've seen since Violent Shit!

Alicia is a young woman in the process of breaking up with her boyfriend, Mike, on charges that Mike has boinked her twin sister Barbara Ann. As this happens, we see Alicia at her day job at the local video store. A nervous but sweet guy named Franklin comes in and asks her out. They begin a relationship, and around the same time, Alicia begins getting mysterious phone calls featuring horrifying moans and a strange dial-tone sound, and all attempts to investigate this lead nowhere. Then, we find out something that Alicia doesn't know: Franklin is a serial killer. It isn't long before he kills Barbara Ann, and the rest of the film follows Alicia as she faces her demons...which, judging from the ending, may be somewhat more literal than at first glance.

Man, this year is shaping up to be the Mental Illness Nightmare Fuel Year, isn't it? No, no, not in real life--well, that too--I mean in the movies I watch. Between Alien Lover, Euridice BA, and this, I've seen an uncommon amount of movies this year which have managed to hit home as far as the ol' mental illness journey goes. Lots of scenes of women crying...but then, I know for myself that that's what going insane is like. Lots and lots and lots of crying. I felt for the women in this movie because I only recently pulled myself out of a similar rut. Thankfully, I've never had to face anything quite like what Alicia goes through in Disconnected.

This movie is both creepy and amusing alike. On one hand, this movie legitimately contains a scene (a dream sequence) where Mike kills Alicia and he and Barbara Ann have sex on her corpse. Trust me, that is the amusing thing, if only because that's something I thought only existed in legends as far as movie scenes go--rather like the scene in Evil Dead where one of the Deadites grabs Ash's ankles while hissing, "Join us! Join us!" But then there's the Phone Gibbering. If Euridice BA gave me nightmares, then I can rest assured that I'll have them tonight as well on account of that awful sound. I kept thinking something was going to burst out from behind a corner but, thank Christ, it didn't. The horror was preserved. As was, one might say, the disconnection.

So the editing of this movie, like everything else, is done to make that title bite you as hard as it can. It frequently feels like scenes are out of order, or dubbed improperly, but it appears to all be on purpose. Strange closeups will pop in, like the shot of the worried-looking Betty Boop clock (?), and they will appear so often that they'll haunt you as much as Alicia's calls haunt her. And finally, we're left out of things in the movie. We don't always hear the other side of phone calls--sometimes things are filmed too distantly for us to see or hear them. Occasionally, the shot will be too bright, and we can only see vague shadowy shapes as characters wander around. All of this means it's hard for us to keep track of what's happening, even if what's happening is very simple, and with a tip-off title like Disconnected it really does feel like this is intentional genius rather than blundering gone right.

It doesn't help that I was going through another, more personal layer of disconnection while watching this movie. You see, the premise for Disconnected listed at the top of its IMDB page is fucking bullshit. They have an accurate synopsis farther down the page, but at no point does anyone suspect either Alicia or Barbara Ann for the murders--not even the narrative of the film itself! Unless, of course, I'm dumber than I think, and I missed all of this. That's always possible. But man, when I was expecting what IMDB promised, you can well imagine I was at the edge of my seat waiting for Alicia to kill Mike or something. And when that didn't happen, I felt even weirder about the whole thing.

Disconnected is occasionally boring, but the sheer artistry of the whole thing will keep you focused enough to follow what can be followed. If you're not sold yet, this movie features a scene where Franklin begins to engage in tender necrophilia with one of his victims. The camera pans up to reveal a crucifix hanging on his wall. We slowly zoom in on said crucifix.

Yeah, I have no idea what the fuck that's supposed to mean, either.

Oh, and because I resisted for so long, and the situation is so very clearly asking for it...here you go.

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I Was a Teenage Serial Killer (1993), by Sarah Jacobson

At long last, the I Was a Teenage [X] series is complete. We've come a long way from I Was a Teenage Werewolf, and we've suffered long through the nuances of I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, but at long last the wait is over. Now we can finally--

I can't do it. This movie deserves better than a lame joke like that. It's just that this movie puts me in such a good mood. Which is odd, given that it's about murder. But it explores murder in a way that a lot of people can relate to, which is something I never thought I'd say. I Was a Teenage Serial Killer is Third Wave feminism pioneer Sarah Jacobson's 25-minute video essay on the history of violence against women, both "passive" and aggressive. It's a fantasy exercise in homicide and thus we can't take it overly seriously--but if you're a woman, at least one of its brief scenes will remind you of some peril in your life. It is a movie which very much panders to its audience, but the question raised then is: why is it still so compelling?

Mary comes home to spend time with her brother. She's just been with their mom, stopping by their dad's funeral. "Too bad about that accident," Mary's brother says, but she replies, "Yeah, but at least Mom got a big insurance settlement out of it." Hmm...that's odd. Are you really that surprised when moments later, Bro starts garbling poison, courtesy of sister Mary? Dude probably would've been fine if he hadn't started giving her a racism-laden talk about how she needs to settle down with a man, or she'll end up homeless and pregnant. Then, a guy on the street comments on her ass, and she shoves him into traffic; and she is forced to strangle her boyfriend to death when it is revealed he faked putting on the condom. As in Ogroff, our narrative is suddenly broken by romance, when Mary meets a man who also enjoys killing men--specifically straight white men. They enjoy brief domestic bliss, but then he decides to threaten a woman, too, and then the deal's off. We eventually learn that Mary is the way she is because she was molested by her father, tying back to the film's beginning. She is seemingly thwarted, but in the end, she vows to tell her stories, and that act will make her valid even in a society that strips her of her validation.

Y'know, this story is sort of like Robin Hood, but with murder instead of robbery. This is about someone who slaughters the "rich" in the name of the "poor"--Mary refuses to kill people who aren't privileged, apparently refusing to kill men of color or queer men, despite the fact that both can be misogynistic. This is a joke I make only hesitantly--because it's ground already fatally overtrodden--but this is the sort of thing that modern day Tumblr users could identify with. It really is interesting to see a reflection of "Internet feminism" in a movie that's almost twenty-five years old...this really does feel like the sort of movie my friends and I would make if we were feeling particularly bitchy about men on a summer afternoon. I don't know how I feel about the impression I'm left with, however, that Third Wave feminism has gone on relatively unchanged in all those years. Has it been sufficient for us, I wonder, or will our future be tasked with making a fourth wave? I'm just glad that we were concerned with queer issues in the early '90s. This movie doesn't namedrop trans people, so that's one change at least between and now. Trans rights as a thing seem so comparatively new--especially when you're trans.

Speaking, then, as someone with the double whammy of being trans and female, I can tell you now why there's this anger in the air, that's been lurking for at least twenty-five years...once, I would have thought it unnecessary to share my beliefs on the world, but my experiences with the privileged have taught me otherwise. I believe, in essence, that we have never fully left the Dark Ages--and that's a statement I make often, however pompous and windbaggy it makes me sound. It's true. Having spent the first chunk of my life identifying as a white straight cis man, followed by a second chunk as I am today, I've felt the difference firsthand. I know that nostalgia tints all, but even in my worst moments, the world seemed a sunnier place than how I see it today. For women, for queer people, for people of color, there is a second world, and it is prioritized second. And it is subject to frequent violent incursion from the world that exiled its inhabitants to its surface. Sometimes, that violence gets to be too much. Some people do kill. Others--like Sarah Jacobson--make movies. They change the shape of that beautiful crystalline world, the third continuum: fiction. And in doing so, they change both worlds, both privileged and oppressed. Encoding your scream in fiction is always a way to get it heard.

Reflecting on that anger: the last scene of this movie, I think, is one of the best, because it shows one of the most insidious ways that men commit social violence against women. An irritatingly-voiced douchebag plops himself down next to Mary as she tries to console herself after murdering her boyfriend. He refuses to leave her alone, and then he decides to make it all about himself, telling a rambling, incredibly tedious story about he and his loser friends hitchhiking down to this city. Nothing that this man indicates that he's halfway as interesting as he thinks he is. When she does open up to him and tells him about her father, he says that she was probably molested because she's so beautiful..."he just couldn't resist." I have heard people tell molestation victims this in real life. It would have been cathartic to see her kill him, but her proclamation that she'll conquer her trauma by telling her stories to people is more satisfying than murder would have been.

Now, like I said, this is a movie which definitely panders. It seemingly cements one of those age-old arguments that liberalism's ideology is only effective if you're already a liberal. Here, children think murder is cool, there are no police authorities, and people don't try to stand up or move when they're thrown in front of a moving truck. Plus, if you're a sexist pig, you probably will hate a movie which shows a woman killing you for your sexism. Yet this movie, I'm sure, is the very story which Mary vows to tell at the end of it, save perhaps for all the death (maybe Sarah Jacobson killed a buncha dudes, I dunno). It is catharsis; self-serving, as catharsis usually is, but no less necessary. And, possibly, no less genuine.

Most of us feminists wouldn't actually kill men. Feminism's about dismantling patriarchy's effects on men, too. But movies like this--an affirmation of the validity of outrage--are satisfying despite their faults, and they will keep on being so, until the problem is finally over. I love low-budget feminist exploitation movies, and I will keep seeking them out till the day I die. And I'll keep fighting for my sisters until the day I die, too. Movies like this help remind me of the complexity of our struggle and the long roads we all have ahead of us.

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The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? (1964), by Ray Dennis Steckler

Before we begin this review of The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?, I want to say that this review will refer to the movie in question, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?, by its full title on a consistent basis. Why should I dishonor the movie's writer, director, and star, Ray Dennis Steckler, by abbreviating the title when he put so much hard work into it? And indeed, he put as much work as he could muster into producing The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?, another movie which I spent years hating until I was traumatized into liking it.

We open with a scene in the tent of the fortune teller Madame Estrella. She decides to come on to her--customer? boyfriend?--who rejects her in favor of alcohol. She calls him a "dahrty, feelthy peeg" and summons her enforcer, Ortega. Estrella and Ortega then disfigure him with acid and lock him in a closet. We then cut to our main plot, involving Jerry, his girlfriend, his friend(s?), and a few other nondescript individuals as their visit to Estrella's carnival results in Jerry being snared by Estrella's sexy sister Carmelita and her hypnotic dance routine. The process begins for Jerry to become a Mixed-Up Zombie--I don't know why Estrella is converting Jerry into such a thing, but maybe he turned down fucking her as well. Jerry begins a career as a murderer under Estrella's control, until he is put to a sorry end.

I have seen other Ray Dennis Steckler movies, particular The Thrill Killers, and I'd say I'm a fan of his--he's considered one of the quintessential trash directors, and while I never found as compelling as James Bryan or Nick Millard, I like popping in a Steckler when the mood strikes me. I think my issue was that I, like many, watched The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? exclusively in its MST3K format. The beaten-up toilet-paper print that appears in the MST3K version has been replaced by a cleaner edition on new releases, which still leaves the film looking like the gasoline-soaked asshole of every after-the-end movie ever, but which at points makes the film a pop-art masterpiece. That's a good thing, given how psychedelically surreal this movie is.

The process of turning an Incredibly Strange Creature into a Mixed-Up Zombie involving a lot of colored lights and turning wheels. It gets a little nauseating after a while, making it perhaps one of the most authentic psychedelic movies out there. Nausea is the name of the game as far as aesthetics go, and this movie takes that idea farther than any movie I've seen before. The carnival is seemingly located in a barren desert. The roller coasters, tents, advertisements, and employees all look fifty years too old, except for the "old hag" Estrella, who looks about thirty. We never get enough significant shots to establish that anyone is having any fun here. The opening scenes, where Ortega bursts out and manhandles Estrella's victim, are so disgusting to look at that they become genuinely terrifying. No one has any sort of fun in this movie, except for, on occasion, the audience. It is like Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty in action, but there is no point or cause for the Cruelty to lead to us to. And this bounces off the bright colors we can see in newer prints to leave the whole thing feeling like the most feverish of fever dreams.

Jerry relays to us some philosophical gibberish, which I can never remember the content of. I just remember it's depressing and nihilistic. Look at that excuse for a title card--did you really expect anything that wasn't bleak and dull? Yet, as befits Steckler, the movie is also weirdly comical, beginning with that lovably goofy title. There's a slant to this that suggests its entertaining qualities are intentional. I don't know how Steckler wanted us to react to Ortega, for example. His oft-remarked-on resemblance to Torgo is very striking, and it's amusing to imagine Ortega as Torgo's awkward cousin--someone who always somehow ends up on the far side of the table from Torgo at Thanksgiving. I always cheer when Ortega bursts through his curtain, ready to fuck shit up (even as I cringe). I wish I knew why, aside from the fact that I have become so drastically mutated by these films that a crusty chain-smoking freak with a propensity towards acid attacks named Ortega of all things is just a perfect fit for my sensibilities. Ortega, you and your cigar are why I wrote this review. He is a strange paradox, this man, a thing of mirth and nightmares alike.

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? is legendarily dull as fuck, and I can confirm this. You will probably end up ditching long chunks of it, and that will make the experience more upsetting because you will understand less of the plot. To be honest, I think I understand this movie less the more I watch it. Which means I recommend it. It is another unforgettable experience in the radical deconstruction of a movie, and in extreme experimental sleaze beyond the limits of general sanity. To witness it at least once is a must. Three cheers for Madame Estrella! Five cheers for Ortega!

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Dragon Fury (1995), by David Heavener

I'm not gonna lie, guys, I have trouble reviewing action movies for some reason. Especially post-apocalyptic ones. I love myself plenty of post-apocalyptic action movies, but they make me feel so passive. I can't find the words to describe them. Yet, all the same, I know people out there wanna read about strange action movies, especially ones which might got mutants in 'em. Unfortunately there are no mutants here, just weird pseudo-albinos. Despite the severe lack of disfigured rubbery creatures, Dragon Fury is still a pretty good time, a minor time-travel epic that only the '90s could produce.

Mason is a dragon warrior in the year 2099, in a world ravaged by "the Plague." He saves a woman and her daughter from the evil ninjas who have murdered her husband. They are pursued by a pasty-faced dude in black robes named Vestor, and Mason has reached the end of his patience as far as this whole post-apocalyptic thing. With the help of his scientist friend he and his wife Regina travel back in time to 1999 to find a scientist who once created a cure for the Plague. The Plague, it seems, was the creation of an evil corporation, which Vestor may work for (?). In any case, Vestor sends some of his minions back in time to stop Mason and Regina. And they're on a time limit, too--the time portal can only stay open for 36 hours!

This is the exactly the sort of movie I would love to see on TV if I had a time machine to take me back to 1999. Resembling an unholy blend of The Terminator, Time Chasers, Games of Survival, Jack Kirby's OMAC and Kamandi comics, a Deathstalker/Ator-style adventure film, and a lot of other stuff ripped off that I couldn't even begin to mention, the movie is a perfect artifact of the era it was created in. Everyone has horrible hair and wears leather in places where leather shouldn't go, and the villain is a grungy middle-aged guy in a doofy costume. Just a few degrees in a certain direction and I would hate this movie as well as I love it in its present form.

What helps make this movie a treat is its weird balance between grungy '90s edginess and low-budget '90s comic relief. You can imagine my surprise when we snapped suddenly to a hotel room on a 30ish couple's wedding night. "C'mon, babycakes, daddy's waitin' for you!" coaxes the husband. Suddenly, Regina falls back through the time portal, only half-clothed for...reasons. The wife, of course, assumes that he is already cheating on her. If only they'd had the tact to include wah-wah music.

But then, we have the scene where Vestor's minions arrive from the future. They are confronted by a gang of punks who assume that they are shirtless and passed out because they have just gotten done having gay sex--never mind that they still have their pants on, and they're in the middle of the dirtiest alley I've seen in a movie. After shouting a bunch of homophobic slurs, they threaten to gang-rape them, leading to them getting their asses kicked. I'm always happy to see homophobic rapists get their asses handed to them. Bonus points if it's by shirtless barbarians from the future.

And then there's just the strange stuff, which may not be meant to be funny. For example, time travel gives you amnesia, but don't worry! Regina went along on the trip because she knows that time travel amnesia is curable by sex. The scene leading into their big sex scene is astonishingly scripted, and it's amusing to note that this movie even went so far as to crib the lighting and shadow from The Terminator's sex scene in their desperation to rip off The Terminator.

I don't know what else I can add to that, aside from the possible fact that one of the fight scenes has graffiti in the background of Marvel's Green Goblin. That's pretty fucking cool. So is the rest of Dragon Fury--I'm always happy to have a post-apocalyptic time travel action movie, especially when it involves a metric shitton of samurai swords. May the spirit of the dragon never die.

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