Disco Godfather

SCHLOCK!!! That's the word for Disco Godfather. It's a ridiculous piece of over-the-top blaxploitation with a heavy dose of drugsploitation and a shot of disco wrapped up with an amusing attempt at martial arts.

Rudy Ray Moore, in a bit of a turnabout from his pimpin' days as Dolemite and Petey Wheatstraw: The Devil's Son in Law here plays an ex-cop turned club owner turned D.A.R.E. booster. His disco gig provides an excuse for endless scenes of folks shaking their polyester-clad asses and, occasionally, busting out the tube socks and roller skates. ("To be a member of the disco squad at the Godfather's you have to get funky and get down.") All the while, Rudy Ray grooves around behind the decks in a variety of chest-exposing spandex jumpsuits, often hollering "Put your weight on it!" sometimes for five straight minutes. I think it's supposed to be a song.

 

"I'm fine, divine and guaranteed to blow your mind!"

But there is a serpent in Rudy Ray's funky paradise: The wack. His basketball star nephew has a run-in with angel dust, causing him to freak out on the dance floor, blow the big game and go to kooky crazy dusthead rehab.

"Bucky, what has you done to yourself?"

"No need to talk to him. He's wacked out."

So the next day Rudy Ray puts on his best silver satin newsboy cap and white carnation boutonniere and goes to dig the scene at the "PCP Unit." (Where the Head Doctor In Charge  looks like an old junkie jazzbo in ultra-dark shades and carries around a clipboard with his script on it. No! Fucking really! If you ever see this movie, look at the doctor's clipboard as he holds it and there's a script with the dialogue highlighted. Which proves that at least there was a script, because i would have sworn a good bit of this is improvised.  Definitely a chunk is dubbed in post, but whatever...)

Rudy Ray takes one look at all these bad actors in ratty wigs bugging their eyes our and jumping on the furniture and decides something must be done! So he looks up his old chief of police and cop buddies and sets out to "come down on the suckas who's producin' this shit!"

One thing we come back to incessantly during Disco Godfather is the bargain-basement surrealism of the angel dust possession scenes. Plastic skeletons, rubber masks, fright wigs, zombie makeup, giant snakes, homicidal Globetrotters, sexy demon ladeez, yo' mama... all emerge from the poorly-lit background and hover threateningly in semi-focus.

So Rudy Ray gets busy. The Godfather gives interviews to a Jayne Kennedy-knockoff lady reporter, gets the cocktail waitresses to go undercover, throws an "Attack the Wack" rally, "makes some contact with my snitch friends" and, of course, kicks butt in some of the most ridiculous "kung fu" battles ever. These are some of the most delightful moments in Disco Godfather, where the movie somehow pulls off being oblivious and self-parodying at the same time.

And, yes, that is a piece of wall art made out of carpet remnants. When it comes to craftin', Martha Stewart ain't got nothin' on Rudy Ray Moore!

The mastermind behind the wack is a local entrepreneur with an afro and a basketball team and who i swear to Christ is Dave Chapelle doing a Billy Dee Williams impression.

 

... and here we have the lab that manufactures, processes and packages all the PCP in Dolemite City. Yup, two guys could easily create "15,000 gallons" of narcotics in such expansive, high-tech facilities....

You know, all this heavy, intricate plotting and intense atmosphere is wearing me out. Let's take another disco break! With wheels! And a fetishy abundance of crotch shots!

But enough filler. Back to the action! Or maybe we'll watch some more praying and singin' over angel dust junkies. Disco Godfather is a firm believer in Jesus steppin' in when the 12 steps don't work.

"Praise the Lord, baby, you gonna be alright!"

Okay, now we're back to the action. Rudy Ray is out for vengeance! He stomps around in loud doubleknit suits and babbles overdubbed tirades about the wack. He and his buddies do a lot of bursting into rooms full of people in wigs and opening up a can of (supermarket-brand) whoop-ass on whoever is nearest the door. ("And Betty! One of the nation's most notorious shoplifters. Bitch, you know I know ya!") Allow me to again remind you that neither he nor anyone else in this film seems to have any actual martial arts skills, so the  kicking and chopping is pretty sloppy. So we've got no actual kung fu masters, but wwe do have this guy, who seems to have taken a few classes and speaks in the weird staccato diction and vaguely Asian accent of a dubbed Shaw Brothers movie.

Rudy Ray gets serious enough to change his three-piece threads and bedazzled jumpsuits for a down-to-business tracksuit with matching knit cap.

 Actually, all the good guys wear sweatsuits. Bad guys wear bellbottoms.

"Hey, what's happenin' man? You need some help?

"This is an angel dust factory!"

"An angel dust factory! Well, let's kick ass then!"

"I can dig it."

A nice touch is that the credits open with "Assistants to Mr. Moore." Because what else are these folks doing but help the creative visions of Rudy Ray Moore take corporeal form? 'Tis truly a great mission indeed. If you're seeking a nice chunk of cray-cray that will put a (disbelieving, indulgent) smile on your face, look no further than Disco Godfather.

Kung Fu, Zombies & Explosions: An Interview

The Our Las Vegas project recently ran an interview with me, mostly about this blog, but also about other stuff...

Pompeii

I wrote up this Gladiator-meets-Titanic 3D big-budget B-movie for the Aspect Ratio film blog.

Staying Alive

So, the sequel to Saturday Night Live is, well, absolutely nothing like the original. Except there is still a John Travolta. Remember that dark period in his career between Grease and Pulp Fiction? This is it. The nadir. Even more than Two of a Kind. Remember when Sylvester Stallone was riding high on Rocky and Rambo? Then he directed this and that was that. Staying Alive makes Over the Top look like Fellini's 8 1/2. Last big-budget shit that motherfucker was allowed to touch for a long time as well...

Tony Manero gets a job on the world's worst Broadway musical. He rises from the chorus to become lead dancer in "Satan's Alley" as two soap opera actresses catfight over his affections. (A dull little sideplot. He did a better job of feigning interest in Donna Pescow.) Did i mention that all the music is by Frank Stallone? Director Sylvester also keeps things in the family way by plopping Mama Jackie Stallone headbands on every friggin' chick in the film. The musical seems to involve a lot of dancers writhing about in "hell" (Drowning in dry ice, wearing 80's headbands and listening to Brutha Frank discosynthchurntinkle -- yeah, that certainly could be the land of the damned.) Hell is a place where the women wear red leotards and have crimped hair and grind against random pipes and scaffolds.They also baste Tony in baby oil and tear at his loincloth. (Sort of the opposite of the SNF polyester mooseknuckle, Travolta's crotch is liberally padded to convexity here.) There's also some dudes in vinyl unitards and school carnival facepaint and a few pyrotechnic effects obviously acquired at the fireworks stand in the parking lot of the 7-11.

This awful flailing and gyrating goes on non-stop for about the last 20 minutes, except for the moment when the tragic-ass faux-Fosse "director" comes backstage waving his scarf at Tony and hollering "What is going on out there?" (Yeah, man, I was wondering too.) It is rather interesting that Broadway star Tony is a far worse dancer and has infinitely less charisma than outer-borough disco dayjob Tony. Still, if you're a fan of Travolta in his liberally greased and half-naked physical prime, you might derive a modicum of enjoyment from Staying Alive. (I didn't. My mom did.)

Screaming Mimi

The black-and-white B-movies of the 50's and early 60's have always been dear to my heart. There's something about the glossy monochrome cinematography and high heels/maquillage style that breathes class, yet the plotline and characters often exude sleaze. They bridge the time between noir's slightly sordid grace and exploitation's vaguely glamorous seediness. And so we have Screaming Mimi.

Strippers! Serial killers! Weird overtones of bondage, bestiality, dominance and voyeurism, not to mention all manner of insanity and a whole lesbian sideplot they don't even try to obscure. And if the glorious pulchritude of Anita Ekberg isn't enough to provoke you, there's also the wit and glitz of Gypsy Rose Lee and the swingin' sounds of the Red Norvo Trio. 

Screaming Mimi is based on the pulp novel of the same name by Frederic Brown.

So the film opens with our heroine, Virginia (Ekberg) rising up out of the ocean like Venus, hair streaming, bosom heaving. She immediately takes a shower in a nearby outdoor stall when -- BAM! -- an escapee from the local Hospital for the Criminally Insane jumps outta nowhere waving a knife. (Exactly the thing that you always fear will happen when you take an outdoor shower. And, yes, this does pre-date Psycho.) She screams until her brother (stepbrother, actually) rushes out of the house and shotguns the lunatic. Just like Joe Biden would.

Anyway, irony of ironies Anita herself gets locked up in the same mental hospital. She spends some time sedated and straitjacketed (That actually sounds kind of relaxing...) and then having a little talky therpy with her doctor, who insists through glassy eyes that he'll "do anything for" her.

In what is obviously a commonly accepted theraputic move, the not-so-good-doctor is now "managing" his patient in her new gig dancing in Gypsy Rose Lee's club, one of those fabulous clubs with cabaret acts and a happening band that only exists in old movies of a certain era. Not only do they have the Red  Norvo Trio, vibes and drums a-clangin', but they have singing bartenders and dancing waiters, but in a way that isn't annoying. Gypsy Rose Lee barrels though, looking svelte in sequins, boisterously exhorting customers to "Drink up! You're on an expense account and my rent is due!" Hell, make it a round for the house and doubles to boot!

 

Our heroine, now calling herself "Yolanda Lang" is headlining doing a sort of fetishy sleepwalk with manacles and ropes. Despite her bodacious dimensions, Ekberg is easily dominated by her Buscemi-esque Headshrinker/Svengali, who won't let her talk to anybody, but is happy to take the cash she makes writhing in front of strangers. Fucking typical. 

Here we meet our sorta hero, a reporter who covers nightlife and, as such, is quite interested in nightclub dancers. He's especially interested in Anita....

"How tall are you?"
"With heels?"
"With anybody."

Walking home after this obviously Pulitzer-quality interview, Anita is attacked by (yet another) knife-wielding psycho, but this time her loyal, giant, vicious dog runs the guy off. Then Ace Reporter fortunately shows up (he happened to be riding along with the cops, Weegee style) to handle the dog. And point out to us that there's a "ripper" slashing blonde burley dancers. Blonde burley dancers who all seem to own the same tchotchke of a screaming woman, the "Screaming Mimi" of the title.

 Ace Reporter chases the statue around for a while, as we drum our fingers on the armrest and wonder when someone's going to remember that Joe Biden Stepbrother is a sculptor. So we watch him dick around, groping toward the obvious. The highlight of this is a visit to Gypsy Rose Lee's sleek mid-century pad, where she drinks cocktails in a fur-trimmed hostess gown while the teenage cigarette girl she obviously keeps dances around in ponytail and fishnets. If that wasn't wild enough, it's made pretty clear that Gypsy and Jailbait have been not just banging, but kicking the gong around as well, as indicated by Ace Reporter's comment on the smell and Gypy's blase, "A maiden lady aunt of mine just visited San Francisco, brought me some incense. From Chinatown."

"How's your psychosis today?"
"I just came up for a little gin and... sympathy."

Gypsy Rose Lee dons her beaded fringe gown (the one Dita Von Teese recently bought at auction) and shimmies through a rather tepid "But the Blame on Mame." One sees a flash of what made her great during the vibe solo, when she forgets the "singing" and displays her flair for flipping her fringe and her fox fur. Afterward this bunch of gorgeous swingers in their posh club have a party with cake and barbershop quartets. Ekberg ducks out, later to hook up with Ace Reporter -- their love scene, lit by the alternating brilliance and darkness of a neon sign is a clever and stylish, yet touching piece of cinematography. Creepy obsessive Ace Reporter is marginally better than creepy, obsessive Headshrinker but, either way, the amount of hairgrease that these guys wear alone should have set off red flags for even a chick playing with a half a deck.

Headshrinker keeps menacing Anita -- "You want to go back to being locked in a cell?!... You're nothing without me!" Little tchotchke statues come and go, various story twists and gaping plot holes, disconcerting moments and lovely tableaux. Ekberg isn't the best actress, but she is supposed to be foreign and somewhat out of it, which neatly covers her shortcomings. This is apparently the film that Fellini saw that inspired him to cast her in La Dolce Vita and one can see why: She has the lauded "flesh impact" of other movie bombshells, although on a slightly larger scale. As Dashiell Hammett said in Red Harvest, "it was like someone set out to paint a picture of a beautiful woman and ended up with a mural."

The high-contrast black-and-white cinematography (photographed by four-time Oscar nominee Burnett Guffey) and hip, vibe-heavy jazz soundtrack give Screaming Mimi a polish that other sexploitation flicks lack. But while the gloss on top may have a bit of the A, the confusing plot, seedy milieu, sleazy menfolk and erratic performances place it firmly among the Bs. Screaming Mimi is a throwback to glamorous, subtext-heavy noir that also looks forward to the psychological exploitation flicks and Giallos of the next decade.