Blood and Black Lace

I love Giallo films. Not so much because i'm a horror fan, but because i'm a sucker for aesthetic extravagance. I wish i could flounce around in the minidesses and go-go boots of All the Colors of the Dark, listen to The Bird With the Crystal Plumage's avant-garde groove soundtrack, live in Suspiria's pop art deco nouveau sets (through i'd redo the razor-wire closet). Cosmopolitan Italy in the late sixties/early seventies was a post-La Dolce Vita world of luxury, fashion and rancid decadence and, ultimately, Blood and Black Lace is more gorgeous than it is gross.

It is 1964, somewhere in Italy, a world in which everyone has beehives for hairdos, cat eyes for maquillage, works in a palazzo and lives in a penthouse. We quickly find ourselves in that old "serial killer who only whacks models" trope. Somehow her battered and rain-soaked corpse makes it back into a (seventeenth-century antique French provincial) wardrobe, from which it falls at the feet of her (astonishingly coiffed and chicly attired in a little black dress) employer. Stoic detective soon rounds up the usual suspects in the murder of any model -- her boyfriend, her agent, her best friend and her coke dealer.

Then dead model's diary shows up backstage at a fashion show -- a scene in which all the eurosleazy fashion folk alternately eye each other and The Purse in portentious closeup is glamorous and hilarious at the same time. (The don't want it because it's part of the auto-inspired Prada spring collection, but because it contains the incriminating diary. Although, given this crowd, i figure they also hope there's an eightball stuck in the lining somewhere.) The entire fashion show is a masterpiece orchestrated shots and multiple fields of activity, as well as a full-on vintage haute couture experience.

Other models soon meet their deaths is more elaborate set-ups -- such as a cat-and-mouse in an exqusitely labrynthine antique store, soaked in red and blue light and a mounting sense of dread, leading up to facial impalement via historic torture instrument. Stoic Detective decides to arrest all of the male characters, who react with everything from disdain (silly mustache) to dismay (the dead ringer for Peter Lorre) to shrieking "Look at his face! He hates women! He's the murderer!" and collapsing into an epileptic fit (shiny suit and bad pompadour). The models pose about the fashion house, equally fastidious and frightened (and rather distressed that all their menfolk are gone).

Yet the murders keep on happening! Not that the models don't help. As in: When a serial killer is on the loose and you are too afraid to even go home, when you find that multillated corpse in the trunk of your car, don't drag it inside, hide it and send all the other people in the building away. Do not add insult to stupidity by stripping down to a black slip to make your inevitable demise sexaaay. The killer is eventually outed with Scotch and stopped by architecture (so much for Stoic Detective). There's a theoretical reason why all the models were killed but, as we all know, it was mostly because they were models and the killer was a killer.

Again, the appeal of Blood and Black Lace is definitely more style than substace or perhaps style as substance. The fashion is more than simple (window) dressing, but forwards the plot -- no one wants to wear the black lace dress that the first dead model was supposed to wear in the fashion show. Even in ominous moments, i find myself more fascinated by a near-her-expiration-date mannequin's rose satin sheath dress under a raspberry wool swing coat than the fact that she's about to die or i'm  focused on the Henry Clarke-like tableaux instead of the plot points being hit.But, well, i'm enjoying myself and what other point could there possibly be...

Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter

I know what you're thinking: With a title like that, how can it miss? Well, it can. It can miss like the proverbial country mile. It can miss like John Starks in Game 7 of the 1994 NBA Finals. There's good crap and there's bad crap. We are mostly devoted to the good crap but, every now and then, I come not to praise but to warn. So let it be with Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter.

So, we're somewhere in the southwest, where Frankenstein's Daughter has set up in some castle because apparently the lightning is better there. And, as so often happens when the Frankensteins move into the neighborhood, people start disappearing -- or so we are told by "Juanita," a fair young maiden who lives in a pequeno pueblo, or so they tell us, since she seems to be in her late thirties and from somewhere in the Valley.

Cut to a big lunkhead bare-knuckle boxing. He's not Billy the Kid -- the guy in the mustache is Billy the Kid. Hank is the name of his muscular and frequently shirtless companion. Hank boxes, Billy shoots someone. The two somehow wind up enmeshed in a bank robbery but then not in a bank robbery and now some guy wants to turn them in for reward money. The villagers near the castle in Alburquerque or wherever bitch more about lost relatives. Frankenstein's Daughter rants about her grandfather's creation. Yak yak yak yak. Yup, cheesy exploitation movie that suddenly bogs down into a dull talkathon. It's like the Tarantino part of Grindhouse, but worse.

Somehow Lunkhead gets shot and so Jesse James comes to town. Somehow Lunkhead goes to Miss Frankenstein for medical treatment. Both Frankenstein's Daughter and the Hollywood Carhop Senorita are deeply enamored of Jesse James. Usually, when a lady meets a man with a large mustache who always wears a suit and is devoted to his muscular and frequently shirtless companion -- especially when said companion is significantly younger and quite stupid-- she knows better than to be come enamored but, hey, hope springs eternal. And Frankenstein's Daughter does have a classic, Frankensteinian use for a giant, musclebround, brainless guy. She even changes his name from Hank to Igor. In fact, that kind of seems the part of creating a monster she's most adamant about: The name. Well, and the killing. I suppose it's a good thing all the old Frankenstein movies were in black and white -- it spared us knowing that rainbow-striped plastic helmets of the type worn by a metally deficent pre-teen on his birthday we crucial to the "creating new life" process.

Listen, I know it sounds appetizing. But, trust me, it's not. It is a very, very bad film. And not in the Run D.M.C. sense of "bad meaning good," but in the sense of bad meaning just plain shitty. Not even a case of Spanish absinthe and a brick of sour diesel chronic could make Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter bearable. And that's saying a hell of a lot.

Village of the Giants

Ohhh... where to begin with this one. The recently concluded extended vacation of Turner Classic Movies' Robert Osborne was traumatic for many of us. I can't help think that it was TCM's month-long "Drive-In Cinema" program that sent him 'round the bend. A man who's had dinner with Bette Davis more times than he can recall, called upon to introduce films like Village of the Giants.

So, roll call! Leading our cast, Beau Bridges, brother of Jeff son of Lloyd. Tisha Sterling, better-known as Ann Sothern's daughter and the Edie Sedgwick knockoff in Clint Eastwood's Coogan's Bluff (I was told by a friend who seems to know everything that "she taught Cloris Leachman everything she knew about shooting up," but i can find no documentation for that, although it is a great thing to have on your resume...) Toni Basil, choreographer to stars like David Bowie and Bette Midler as well as singer of 80's one-hit "Mickey." Throw in former Disney child star Tommy Kirk and, oh, did I mention Ron Howard, Lil' Opie Cunningham himself?

It is said Opie Cunningham who sets this sci-fi beach party gigantism epic in motion. As "Genius," he invents a substance called "goo," that causes creatures to become very, very large. The goo grows two ducks to giant size, where they waddle into the local disco and begin dancing with the kids. Only the guitarist for the Beau Brummels seems to react to the human-sized ducks with appropriate chagrin, if not the even more appropriate fit of shreiking hysterics. A pack of passing juvenile delinquents -- led by that master of menace, Bridges -- see the ducks and plot to steal the goo and sell it for big bucks. There's also an unrelated attack by a big fake spider.

But then after the world's least menacing gang fight (Disney teen idol, Reagan-era one-hit wonder and Opie Cunningham vs. the world's least-imposing Bridges and two go-go dancers), the bad kids steal the goo from the good kids, ingest said goo, become huge and proceed to "take over the town," as is said. The giant teens terrorize the populace by ordering lots of tapas and every now and then gyrating in slow-motion to a repetitive, bass-heavy groove. During which Tisha Sterling stuffs one of the tiny little villagers into her cleavage, offering seemingly endless closeups of an underpaid actor clinging to a giant pair of fake plastic boobs. And not like they usuallly do in Hollywood: I'm talking really big plastic tits. However, no one uses the annoying little pompadoured guy for a butt plug. Also, the weird thing about Opie Cunningham's dope is that it makes people 15 feet tall, then 50 feet tall, then 25 feet tall....

They also have Toni Basil do the epileptic watusi for them in a Bozo the Clown wig and sequined pantsuit. The villagers try to stop the giants with the help of some boss Ed  Roth hot rods, but fail. Finally, Tommy Kirk in dolphin shorts and loafers faces off against giant Beau Bridges in his brocade toga (As Mr. Diva asks: "How is it that Bridges is 20 feet tall and still has no basket?"' Answer: Because he's Bridges.) Disney may have dumped Kirk for being gay, but the fact that the man could seem like a square even next to Beau Bridges might have had something to do with the lack of heavy interest elsewhere. Finally, Opie Cunningham rolls through with his little bicycle full of antidote and saves the day. I have no idea whether it was bad taste or some kind of female giganticism fetish that blinded them, but someone on that set had to know just how ludicrous Village of the Giants is...

Sugar Hill

Let's begin with one that everyone loves: Sugar Hill. A blaxploitation masterpiece. With zombies.

In short, glamorous photographer Sugar Hill has a boyfriend who runs a hip voodoo-themed nightclub. Who gets shaken down by the mob. Who says no. Who gets whacked by said mob, causing Sugar to go one a one-woman spree of vengeance. Well, not quite. Sugar calls voodoo priestess Mama Maitresse, who calls Baron Samedi, who calls a bunch of zombies up out of their graves to whack the mob -- the whole mob -- for Miss Sugar. The zombies themeselves are dead slaves, who shed their shackles as they rise from the swamps. Their blue skin/reflective eyeballs look is an intrguing/aesthetically pleasing departure from the usual shredded leisure suits over rotting flesh. And the cracker-killings are quite spectacular, usually with a fabulously attired Sugar luring her prey, who accmmodatingly throw down some racist remarks before being given the kiss-off by Sugar, then some cryptic verses and malevolent grinning from Baron Samedi, then the zombie gang dump you in quicksand or shut you in a coffin full of poisonous snakes or suchlike. Beats being eaten by a pack of starving hogs, another face of death dealt out by the lovely Sugar Hill.

Leading lady Marki Bey isn't Pam Grier -- Who is? The "vengeance for my man" routine is straight outta Foxy Brown (hell, her fashion photographer gig could be a crib from Friday Foster if you want to go there) Bey is more petite and baby-faced than the Amazonian Pam and the presence of many undead heanchmen means she doesn't have to actually do a lot of ass-kicking herself, just set it up and toss off a few deadpan one-liners in her white Elvis jumpsuit while the zombie horde does what zombie hordes do. Yes, i said white Elvis jumpsuit. Inexplicably, when her machinations are about to lead to gruesome death of some low-level mobster, Sugar is suddenly wearing a white jumpsuit similar to that donned by Mr. Presely during his Vegas years. And her hair goes afro. Seriously, though, if you were leading an army of the undead on a mission of vengeance, wouldn't you wear the white Elvis jumpsuit with the Julius Erving wig? It also helps Sugar have a fighting chance against the scenery-chomping of Don Pedro Colley as Baron Samedi (basically the role Geoffrey Holder played in Live and Let Die a year earlier). Glamour, girl power, zombies, voodoo, race-baiting and Elvis references: Sugar Hill truly has something for everyone.