The Angry Red Planet

... also known as the movie with the BatRatSpiderCrab. You know the BatRatSpiderCrab? From the cover of Walk Among Us? The Misfits album? The best Misfits album?

"20 Eyes?" "Astro Zombies?" Jeez... Anyway, that's not the only important thing about The Angry Red Planet. It's also been held up as a fine example of how low budgets and untested ideas can make films better rather than worse. The Angry Red Planet was made in 10 days for $200,000. This meant that, rather than buying the best fake monster 1959 had to offer, they designed this truly disconcerting animated creature. It also meant that, having no money for fancy locations or props, they had to use "Cinemagic" and thus wound up with the Mars scenes in a bizarre, red-tinted, semi-solarized effect.

Both things turned out to improve the film and make it unique. Other than that it's just another cheapo Cold War-era space flick with sets that look like old IBM offices (with semi-sized mainframes) and proof that wince-inducing chauvinism even applied to female astronauts.

"Hey, let's chow!"

"Coming up!" 

"You know, I can't say that I recommend spacesuits for beautiful young dolls. 

What happened to all your lovely curves?" 

The Angry Red Planet opens with a rocket crashing in the desert and accompanying extravaganza of stock footage. A bunch of guys in hazmat suits and fedoras (apparently a fedora also protects against radiation) find two dead guys, an unconscious guy with a bunch of spreading green slime on his arm and a catatonic redhead. (Must've been quite a party.) All the tapes have been erased, so no one knows what happened, what the slime is, why those guys are dead or how it all went wrong. The only way to illuminate this otherwise totally "boring, routine" trip to Mars  is to get redhead to snap out of it. And so the flashbacks begin...

So, here we have our crew: Bearded Science Guy, Blue-Collar Schlub, Dr. Redhead, and Colonel Rock Chesthair, whose spacesuits are unbuttoned halfway to the navel, the better to show off his manly pelt. Also: Behold, the slick technology of future space travel!

"Well? Shall we go out and claim the planet in the name of Brooklyn?"

And so the "rocket" lands on "Mars." Dr. Redhead sees a monster in the window and screams. The boys disregard her as a "hysterical female" and she agrees. We now are given to understand that, despite the blase attitude, it's the first trip to this unknown world. Regardless, mankind's first trip to Mars will entail less caution than used when camping in the backyard. Everyone goes outside to creepy red space landscape; Dr.  Redhead wanders off by herself and is almost immediately attacked by a giant monster space vagina. Fortunately, Col. Douche Manpelt comes to the rescue.

Yup, just walk right into the carnivorous plant. And, for an encore, take a machete to some 'tree" that turns out to be BatRatSpiderCrab legs. Because you didn't look up. Seriously, if this was the best NASA had to offer, it's a good thing we curtailed space travel. We're talking about a bunch of  "scientists" that make Shaggy from Scooby-Doo look like Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

Ummm... no, but I can make a martini.

They manage to hold off the BatRatSpiderCrab with the help of Blue Collar Schlub's freeze ray. Then the Four Stooges (Fun fact: The only other use of "Cinemagic" was in The Three Stooges in Orbit.) flee through the hostile red atmosphere and manage not to get eaten on their way back to the ship. Once there, they discover that the kooky Martian atmosphere blocks radio waves and, thus, they have no way to contact Earth and a meteor that crossed their path earlier has damaged a number of instruments.

Regardless, Col. Butch Fuzzypecs ain't even thinking about turning back. They are staying the full five days, dammit! In fact, they're gonna get on a little rubber raft and make their way across a giant still lake to a hallucinatory city. Another brilliant damn decision. I mean, given how many times during this movie they've been attacked by giant monsters and barely survived... what could possibly go wrong?

As you can imagine, they run into more monsters and those monsters start kicking some serious human ass. Col. Macho Mann and Dr. Redhead manage to return home, but with a creeping green slime and carrying one of those ominous messages superior alien races like to lay on earthlings.

The Angry Red Planet is a little annoying with that ham-handed "Look, its that little woman thinkin' she's all science-y" stuff we saw in Queen of Outer Space. It think it's some kind of overcompensation for the idea of women doctors and scientists, even in a future fantasy world. (Archaic and antiquated i know, but also part of the 2014 Republican platform.) In other realistically-set movies of the era -- Butterfield 8, His Kind of Woman, to name two that will link you back to my site -- you don't hear the constant reminders that women are emotional and not good at thinking stuff.

Still, The Angry Red Planet has what you want in a 50's sci-fi flick: Cheesy "space" sets, wooden dialogue, a bachelor-pad soundtrack and, of course, monsters.

AHHHH!!! HAUNT MY NIGHTMARES FOREVER!!! AHHHH!!!

Olga's Girls

Olga's Girls is a sexploitation classic that played 42nd Street back when 42nd Street had real entertainment. It's a vintage black-and-white roughie obviously shot in someone's suburban home, starring a motley assortment of B-girls and strippers. It's got writing, direction and production values that make Doris Wishman look like Steven Spielberg. The post-dubbed soundtrack features some of the most hilarious lurid-yet-deadpan narration in bad movie history and the visuals are tawdry ladies in tacky lingerie being menaced by the cartoonish sadist, Olga. "Olga's prime business was narcotics and vice."

Olga is a sort of trainer/madam/enforcer for the mob -- whatever job title goes with keeping a half-dozen junkie hookers in your basement and doling out various forms of "discipline." Whenever any of the girls gives backtalk or steals or snitches or spills tea, Olga puts on her "cape of persuasion," which is a sort of pleather hairdresser's smock and heads for the dungeon. Which is just the basement. But they've got a kitchen chair and some stuff from the toolbench in the garage -- vises, pliers, wire brushes.

Yup, I think that even may be some boxes of Christmas decorations and old rug piled up in the background.

Olga will remind underground film fans of the legendary Mary Woronov (of Chelsea Girls and  Rock n' Roll High School), who clearly nicked some of her schtick from Olga. The lead domme is played in fittingly fierce style by Audrey Campbell, an icy, imperious diva who likes putting the hurt on people. The rest of the cast are a random bunch of decal-eyed skanks with collapsing beehives and dope habits. A pimp in a navy blue suit sells her the hussies in pairs. (Olga's Girls has plenty of girl-on-girl action, both in catfight and softcore forms.) Apparently you can buy a hooker for $250. And that's not rental: That's outright ownership. Seems like a deal even at 1964 prices.

 "Last names are seldom used in the business of white slavery."

And so we begin a rather dreary round of shooting up and bondage, shooting up and bondage, shooting up and bondage. Without the narration, it would be utterly unbearable. With the narration, it's kind of funny.

 

"Susie wanted to go main line and asked Colette to give her the needle. Susie was well-liked."

"I've run other houses for prostitutes before and I've handled narcotics,
but I've never had this type of trouble before."

"It'll take a little time, but I'll teach them! Tramps, lousy tramps, every one!"

"Dope cannot be manufactured locally. It is imported, smuggled in its raw state.
The wholesalers must get their supplies from their headquarters, either in Moscow or Peking."

"She had to find out who the informer was.
The Syndicate was beginning to put pressure on her and the set-up."

"Approximately 43% of all narcotics users in the United States
are located here in New York City...."

"...the FBI is convinced beyond doubt that the spread of narcotics addiction is in line
with the spread and growth of Communism here in  New York and elsewhere in the United States. Dope addiction is on the rise and can be definitely traced to Soviet Russia and
Chinese Communist agents working underground here."

Olga's Girls is not the kind of film one actually sits down and watches. You put it on in the background for the visual weirdness, or make snarky comments about it, or go to the kitchen and shift trays of cupcakes in and out of the oven. But it is, if nothing else, an excellent example of vintage fetish and sleaze, exactly the kind of thing that made the Deuce the Deuce..

Butterfield 8

Ah, Butterfield 8. Much as Bette Davis was ashamed of Beyond the Forest, Elizabeth Taylor was embarrassed by this movie. Even though it won her an Oscar. (Although the tracheotomy and the widow-ing and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof helped.) And, really, she's made worse films than this -- Butterfield 8 is just an over-the-top melodrama that she carries on beauty and star power.

The novel by John O'Hara is actually an interesting work, the heroine is something of a cross between a female Gatsby and a self-sufficent Sister Carrie. It was based on the true story of Starr Faithfull, a socialite who committed suicide (or didn't) in 1931.

The movie pulls the story out of it's jazz age/Depression milieu and sets it vaguely in the fifties, which removes the context and relevance to its times but does provide some lovely Helen Rose sheath dresses and fabulous Hollywood Regency interiors.

The opening is classic -- a hungover Liz awakens in a strange apartment, hollers for the man who's just leaving, then rolls out of bed to pour herself a Scotch and figure out what to do next. It's just like the beginning of a Bukowski novel, except the apartment is a palatial six-bedroom on the Upper East Side, the man is walking into his private elevator, the Scotch is in a Baccarat crystal decanter and the drunk is Elizabeth Taylor in her prime, lush curves packed into a silk satin slip, hair tousled but eye makeup flawless.

La Liz discovers her gown torn in half on the floor, but this does not bother her in the least. but then she finds a note with a check for $250 and flies into a rage. This makes no sense for two reasons. One, i'd consider it payment to replace my trashed frock, plus a little something for my trouble in the form of accessories. Two, even if Liz -- here called Gloria Wandrous -- is taking it as payment for services rendered, she is a freaking callgirl fer chrissake. Hence the generous amount of ennui that accompanies her glamor. She tears up the check, yanks a mink coat from a closet full of furs and struts out into the New York City morning. Attagirl!

She goes to see Eddie Fisher. Liz was married to him at the time and insisted he be cast in the film. He can't act for shit -- turn off the cameras and he's jacked up on speed, playing Vegas and banging Elizabeth Taylor, turn on the cameras and he's boring. But he's just the best friend anyway.

Liz is hung up on the dress-tearing check writer, whose name is Weston Liggett and who is played by Laurence Harvey in the most uptight style possible. He is a selfish jerk and her attraction to him is inexplicable.

He's a lawyer married to a wealthy socialite. How wealthy? Well, one, he's her trophy husband and this is her Fifth Avenue penthouse. (And that was her mink.) Two, look at the bitch's fucking closets! Rows of shoes! Aqua-upholstered hatboxes to match the walls! Why do i not live here!?

Poor Liz. It's always dangerous to think that you've finally met the man who'll save you, who's your reward for your years of loneliness, of being misunderstood, of knowing everyone and knowing that not one of them cares if you live or die. Because Mr. "Right" will indeed ditch you cold and the pain or rejection will be augmented by the pain of being a damn deluded fool. (Or, as the truly great band, ... And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead put it, "every inch of hope becomes a wall of shame.") If you're the heroine of Butterfield 8, he will call you nasty names, get drunk and fuck you in roadside motels before going back to his wife.

Seriously, this guy is an asshole and i have no idea why his calling her a tramp and banging her on the side is so much special than anyone else's doing so. Especially since Harvey and Taylor have zero chemistry.

Much is made of the fact that Harvey's wife has the money, wifey's dad owns the company he works for. But the story never makes the connection that Taylor and Harvey are both pretty pieces that have been bought and paid for, except she's rented and he's owned. But i guess back in the 50's the idea of the manwhore was still something one did not discuss. When a movie needs the viewer to bring their own subtext, it's a problem. Actually, nothing reads -- all of the players seem to be pretty much sleepwalking through this film, save for occasional actorly outbursts.

Ultimately, Butterfield 8 is a pretty dull movie. (Compare it to Breakfast at Tiffany's, which also does the NYC party/call-girl story a year later, and infinitely better. The characters have actual depth, the dialogue is actually clever and there's even a few laughs -- intentional laughs.) It's fun to ogle the costumes and sets. The opening worldess scene is a classic for the La Taylor highlight reel -- as well as an object lesson to every woman that she looks far more alluring wandering around the house in a slip than sweats -- and there's some hilarious dialogue, but that's about it. I'll leave it to the star to pass judgement...

"I still think it's a piece of shit."