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“Town & Country” (Peter Chelsom, 2001)

Posted on 13 September 2010 by Chris Rothbauer

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Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn in "Town & Country"

There’s a special place in hell reserved for anyone involved in the production of Town & Country. The fact that anyone can take $90,000,000 and four years to make a comedy and still come out with something of this magnitude of crap deserves what is coming to them. With a cast full of A-list actors and plenty of money to fund, you would think this would at least be a watchable film. Not true. Without a doubt, this is one of the worst films of the 2000′s.

I first heard about this film from Kevin Murphy of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax fame. It came out at the same time Murphy was completing his book, A Year at the Movies and, as a result, he dedicated an entire chapter on why no one should ever see Town & Country.

The film centers around New York architect Porter Stoddard (Warren Beatty) as he struggles to rationalize his infidelity to his wife of twenty-five years, Ellie (Diane Keaton). Through a series of extremely overacted and overdrawn scenes, we see Porter cheat on his wife with cello player Alex (Nastassja Kinski), long-time friend Mona (Goldie Hawn), random airplane encounter Eugenie (Andie McDowell), and hardware store employee Auburn (Jenna Elfman). There’s lots of sex, lots of driving, and lots of flying, not to mention an abysmal amount of unneeded profanity, including a wheelchair-bound woman who has a reference to penises in almost every one of her lines. Subplots include Mona’s husband, Griffin (Garry Shandling), being secretly gay, and the couple’s children (Josh Hartnett, Tricia Vessey) having lots of sex in the family’s luxury apartment with the non-traditional relationships within ear shot of Porter.

If it sounds boring and slow paced, that’s because it is. You could set a camera to record the Empire State Building for eight hours straight and it would have better pacing than this movie. There are times I was just completely stupefied by their lack of ability to bring together a coherent scene that makes the plot advance. At one point, I quipped that this must be an early influence for Seinfeld because NOTHING WAS HAPPENING! The characters, every last one of them, are completely unlikable. They all seem to live under the mantra, “Wah, wah wah…I’m rich. Look at how horrible my life is.”  They seem bound and determined to take what they have for granted and look for fulfillment in things and people. I want to slap them and demand an explanation of why they would possibly act the way they do.

The performances are all abysmal for such an experienced cast, but one of the worst comes from Goldie Hawn, whose shock and surprise she experiences when she realizes Griffin is gay looks stiff and practiced. There’s no way I believe she’s upset about her husband’s deception and, as a result, I find her utterly detestable. The fact that her character sleeps with Porter while remaining friends with Ellie makes her even more despicable. I have to hold out hope she was giving bad directions by the director, but I don’t hold out much hope.

Other performances are just creapy. Eugenie herself seems crazy, but her father (Charlton Heston) is creepy and almost incestuous in his desire that Porter challenge him for the affections of his daughter. In one of the most bizarre exchanges I’ve ever witnessed in the cinema, he tells Porter that he must fight a dragon for the affections of a princess. Guess who’s the dragon and who’s the princess? Yep, that’s right. The man who once played Moses on the big screen is reduced to cheap sexual innuendos that make no sense. There is no explanation why Porter would tolerate the kind of loud sex his children are engaging in just a few doors down, and his maid’s new boyfriend seems to enjoy being in as little clothing as possible despite the fact he is staying at his girlfriend’s employer and does not have the body to wear such little clothing. Anyone with any sort of ethnicity is treated almost as being below them and the stereotypes run rampant. The daughter’s boyfriend sees his origin speculated upon endlessly

Director Peter Chelsom went on to produce such quality movies as Hanna Montana: The Movie. Much of the cast were out of work for years because of the negative reception of this film. On top of that, this is a movie that is intended to be a comedy but delivers absolutely no laughs, not even unintentional ones. It’s painful to watch. Nothing about this movie, from its title to its dialogue, pacing, and “plot” (if you want to call it a plot) works. Town & Country should not be forced upon anyone. Any attempt to understand it is met with utter boredom. Kevin Murphy was right: No one should watch this film. Ever.

Posted in All Reviews, Bad Movies | 2 Comments

“The American” (Anton Corbijn, 2010)

Posted on 7 September 2010 by Chris Rothbauer

George Clooney in "The American"

George Clooney has become a solid name in Hollywood over the last couple decades. His latest film, The American, topped the box office this weekend with just over $13 million. It’s a film destined to be misunderstood, especially given the fact it’s been promoted as an action film when, in reality, action plays a very small part. What we do have is a psychological thriller about a man trying to escape his own demons and start a new life. Problem is, for most people going to the multiplexes to see a film, this kind of film won’t resonate well. It’s the reason you typically see Jean-Luc Goddard films at independent cinemas. The backlash is sure to be swift and merciless. Despite this, I found The American to be an extremely thought-provoking film that may be destined to go down as one of the greats.

Clooney plays Jack, a man with a past who is first seen in Sweden with his lover, Ingrid (Irina Björklun). The two decide to take a walk along a lake, where they’re attacked. Jack kills the attacker and his accomplice, but then also kills Ingrid. We next see Jack in Rome, where he meets an associate, Pavel (Johan Leysen). After hearing the details of the encounter, Pavel sends Jack to the countryside,warning him not to make any more friends. Jack changes the plan slightly in a sign of distrust, staying in a different, nearby town, and throwing away the phone Pavel gives him. He meets Father Benedetto (Paolo Bonacelli), an elderly priest who seems to take on tough cases. Father Benedetto tries to get Jack to confess to his past, an offer he turns down. Meanwhile, he is still working for Pavel,  constructing a gun for Mathilde (Thekla Reuten). He patronizes a prostitute, Clara (Violante Placido), whom he falls in love with.

The focus of the entire movie is on Jack. We are told very little about him and his past; he seems to not know that much about it and how he got there himself.  We’re not even sure Jack is his real name; he tells Father Benedetto his name is Edward. He craves love, but can’t seem to keep it for long. Ingrid died because she learned too much about him. The very same thing may happen to Clara if she goes with him. He is destined to live unloved and full of heartache for his own past actions. The fact that we’re not told a lot of details about Jack or who he works for adds a degree of mystery to the plot and further skews Jack’s identity in our minds and the minds of the other characters.

There is action in the film, but it’s not the main focus. It’s far from the fast paced action film touted in preview; in fact, the film maintains an extremely slow pace reminiscent of a European think piece. This causes it to drag at times in the middle, but is never a detriment to the film. In a way, the pace causes Jack’s psychological torture to be that much more pronounced. He is what he is and, as Father Benedetto points out, he is living in a hell where no one loves him. He has no past or future. We agonize with Jack; we are rooting for him but, with Swedish assassins chasing him at every turn, we don’t hold out much optimism he will be able to drag himself out of his personal hell.

Jack is each of us. There are times in every person’s life when they believe no one loves or understands us. We seem to have people thwarting our attempts at love every step of the way, and are forced to turn to non-traditional sources in an effort to receive just a little bit of love and affection. In this way, The American is not about a mysterious man who wants to get out of “the game,” but about each of us.

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“Ali: Fear Eats the Soul” (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974)

Posted on 4 September 2010 by Chris Rothbauer

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Brigitte Mira and El Hedi ben Salem in "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul"

There have been many films about mismatched relationships, from Harold and Maude to The Graduate, Hollywood has never shied away from examining what happens when two people who society would normally condemn in their love find meaning with each other. Nowhere is this more true than Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1974 film Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (German: Ali: Angst essen Seele auf), a loose remake of Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows. The premise is simple, almost too simple. A chance meeting launches the heroes into a relationship that tests the limits of their endurance. The end is equally ambiguous, and we are left to decide for ourselves whether the couple will survive heir tribulations.

Brigitte Mira stars as Emmi Kurowski, an unskilled widow whose shame is that she works as a cleaning lady because no other line of work will have her. One night, she wants to get out of the rain and finds her way into a bar frequented by Moroccan guest workers. One of them, Ali (El Hedi ben Salem), is challenged to dance with Emmi and they soon find a fascination talking with each other. They have lost their identities: Emmi the one she formed with her late husband and Ali his Moroccan heritage. Even Ali’s name is changed to appear more German; his real name is a standard multi-name Arabic name, but few bother to learn it. Ali walks Emmi home and ends up staying the night. They become obsessed with each other, spending more and more time until they find themselves living together and get married.

The backlash is almost immediate. Emmi’s neighbors fear having a foreigner in the building and appeal to the police and the landlord for help. Her children disown her, with one of her sons kicking the screen out of her television. Her coworkers exclude her from their social circle. Even her grocer won’t serve her after she tells him off for treating Ali horribly. Emmi has become an outcast in her own society, with the assumption being that she is a whore and willing to take whatever will come to her. After all, the reasoning goes, who in Germany would want to marry a Moroccan if they weren’t desperate?

Though this particular strand of racism and xenophobia has always been present to some degree in Germany, which has a highly ethnic identity to begin with, we need not be German to understand the origin of this sort of hate. Any time a minority comes in and threatens the status quo, a certain group of people express their fear of change in the form of ostracization of the outsider. In America, we experience this in the form of fear against Arab and Hispanic communities, whose language, religion, and customs threaten to displace the “traditional” American system, which has never been as traditional as we want to believe.

The situation is not without hope, though.  Emmi trudges on and takes Ali on vacation. Upon their return, Emmi’s friends and family begin to warm up to and even accept Ali. One would think this would be the end of their trouble, but Ali is not satisfied. He begins to realize how much of an object she’s made him into in an effort to recover their lost acceptance. She even helps her coworkers ostracize a new Yugoslavian guest worker and, in a way, becomes they thing she hates the most in her relationship with Ali, others unwillingness to accept what is different. Ali finds comfort in the arms of bartender Barbara (Barbara Valentin), spending more and more nights with her and fewer and fewer nights with Emmi. She is losing her, but she seems more concerned about losing him as an object than as her love. Even her response to his cheating is lukewarm, telling him he must do what he will.

For a film that Fassbinder intended merely as an exercise in film making to give him something to do between films, he gets this film right. The performances aren’t overly sentimental but just emotional enough that we really do care about both Ali and Emmi. The story is told primarily from the perspectives of Ali and Emmi and, as a result, the narrative structure is effective in making us realize how horrible it is to have such hatred directed towards us. The ending is an open book, inviting us to ask whether the struggle is worth it.

The German title, Angst essen Seele auf, is grammatically incorrect. It literally means “fear eats up soul” or “fear consumes soul.” Ali tells Emmi it’s an Arabic phrase, and it rings true of both of them: Emmi’s fear consumes her and makes her treat Ali as a mere object. Ali’s fear of loosing his Moroccan identity makes him forget how much he appreciates Emmi and he tries to find fulfillment in the arms of Barbara. More than this, however, is the semi-autobiographical nature of the film. Salem was Fassbinder’s gay lover, and the relationship eventually made Salem to kill himself in prison. Fassbinder was not only coupled with a Moroccan like Emmi, but he was gay at a time when homosexuality was completely unacceptable in German society. Ali is a message that we must never loose ourselves in our own fear as Emmi and Ali do but, rather, we must find a comfort in those we love since, no matter who we are, society is unlikely to accept us in full. After all, alienation is a method of control of the status quo, and, if we dare live our own lives and actualize ourselves, there will be something that society just can’t accept about each of us.

Posted in All Reviews, Great Movies | 1 Comment

Riffing as an Act of Love: On the Nature of Riffing

Posted on 30 August 2010 by Chris Rothbauer

I’m sitting in the Palace Theater in Louisville on the last night of their summer Alfred Hitchcock movie series. The selection is The Birds, one of the scariest films I’ve ever seen. This is the third time I’ve seen it and it never gets old. I’m absorbed in the film, and it’s at the famous scene where Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedron find Suzanne Pleshette dead by bird attack. I’m feeling the emotions of loss for all involved, and Rod Taylor places his jacket over Pleshette’s body out of respect for the dead. Suddenly, a section of the audience erupts in laughter. Yes, someone found the placing of a jacket over a dead body to be a hilarious moment in the movie.

I’ve had these kinds of experiences before. Last time I saw The Birds in public, the audience thought it was hilarious when the school children were getting their eyes pecked out by the birds. A similar thing happened at a public exhibition of Psycho, in the scene where we find out the true nature of Norman Bates’ mother. The audience was moved to laughter in this scene as well. Public displays of ignorance like this usually anger me. These are two of Hitchcock’s finest films and are truly frightening pieces of film, if you’re paying attention. I wanted to stand up and lecture the audience on how to use decorum when attending a movie in the cinema.

It got me to thinking, though, what is the difference between these people’s reactions and riffing? I steadily defend anyone’s right to riff a movie, even a great movie, as sometimes riffing reveals more to us about the film than just a straight viewing ever could. For instance, when I’ve produced iRiffs for the Rifftrax website, I’m often forced to notice details I wouldn’t otherwise notice: why is Tony Danza in canted angle for half of this movie? Why is a prop missing in this cut that was there before? And it certainly isn’t the fact that Psycho and The Birds are great movies while the movies that the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew choose to riff are horrible ones. After all, as Michael Adams once said, no one consciously chooses to make a bad film, not even Hal Warren or Coleman Francis or Ed Wood. And many classic movies have been successfully riffed: the MST3K crew successfully riffed the Sci-fi cult classic This Island Earth for the film adaptation of their series, and the Rifftrax provide a very funny commentary for George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, arguably the best zombie film ever made.

I have considered the possibility I am simply a film snob in the vein of Armond White, the contrarian film critic who trashed movies that were almost universally praised like Inception (too morally ambiguous) and Toy Story 3 (too consumeristic) while praising movies almost universally panned, most notably Transformers 2 (the special effects were great). White believes it is the job of a film critic to tell the people what they should like in film, which naturally puts him against critics like Roger Ebert, who believe their job is to review the films people are likely to see. (In fact, White has claimed that Ebert and his former partner, the late Gene Siskel, single handedly destroyed film criticism in this country.) Am I like White when I condemn laughter at a Hitchcock film but condone it at an Ed Wood film?

I don’t believe so. You see, there’s an essential difference between the laughter associated with riffing and the laughter of the people at The Birds. When I laugh at MST3K‘s riff of Manos: The Hands of Fate, I am doing so not out of an unkindness towards anyone involved in the production. Yes, Hal Warren created what is arguably the worst film ever made. He didn’t set out to, though. What MST3K helps me do is sort out my emotions towards Manos and examine why I think the film is so bad. I have read much on the history of the production of Manos and know that it was a genuine attempt on the part of Warren to create a marketable film on an extremely limited budget, to prove anyone could make a film. I laugh not at Warren and his efforts to make a film, but at the result, which was horribly flawed and forms a guidebook for aspiring filmmakers as to what not to do when making a film. However, at the same time, I maintain a certain respect for Warren: here was a guy with guts who may not have known what the hell he was doing, but at least was willing to put his name on the line in an attempt to make a film. From all accounts I’ve read, what Warren lacked in talent and technical know-how, he made up for with heart. Unfortunately, heart is not enough to make a good film. The same with the riff for Night of the Living Dead. Mike Nelson is not saying the film is bad when he makes fun of it but rather maintains a sort of respect for the movie by poking fun at some elements that haven’t aged as well as we could wish. We still have a deep respect for Romero’s film in the end.

This respect is the difference between riffs and the reaction of the audience at The Birds. No attempt is made to understand the significance of the scenes in Hitchcock’s film. These people do not respect the film Hitchcock made and do not understand it for what it is: a very innovative horror film. They are deriding it and trying not to understand by laughing at scenes that were clearly not meant to be laughed at for no reason other than their own amusement.  They don’t care about nor respect the film or the filmmaker. They only want to tear down and deride it.

So is their a little bit of Armond White inside me? Possibly. What I’m beginning to understand, however, is the deep respect I have for films, all films, whether they be good or bad. I can sit here and tell you why She’s Out of Control is a piece of crap while Citizen Kane is the best film ever made, but, in the end, I still come out with a respect for the crew of both films. I propose that to riff is an act of love. We riff because we want to understand a film, not because we want to tear it down a notch. Nothing we could possibly do in the riff can make the film any better or worse. Instead, it simply makes us laugh at the process itself. Maybe I’m completely wrong and off, though. The philosophy of riffing is certainly a new field and almost wholly uninvestigated, I would love to revisit this topic again. What do you think?

Addendum: It occurs to me after posting this that Mike Nelson and Kevin Murphy stated in an interview after MST3K ended that there were movies worse than any of those shown on MST3K that they could not, in good conscious, show. Could this be the difference? That there is redeeming value to every film MST3K ever riffed but there are simply some films even they considered too despicable to riff?

Posted in Commentary, Riffing | 1 Comment

“Freaky Friday” (Mark Waters, 2003)

Posted on 28 August 2010 by Chris Rothbauer

Buy “Freaky Friday” at Amazon.com

Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan in "Freaky Friday."

It’s hard to call Freak Friday a truly bad movie. I’ve seen much worse many times over and, as a result, would rather watch this a thousand times over than a marathon of Monster A Go-Go. The film, however, is a remake of a remake, and smells of mediocrity. There’s only one real reason any director should consider making a remake: if she can bring something original to bear on the original material. In the case of Freaky Friday, I fear the original material has been gone over so much there’s not much left as a result.

The film stars Jamie Lee Curtis as Dr. Tess Coleman, a single psychiatrist raising her two children, Anna (Lindsay Lohan), a “rebel” in the vein of Kirk Cameron’s Growing Pains days whose truly worst sin is playing bad rock music over and over and over again in her garage, and Harry (Ryan Malgarini), whose one purpose in the movie seems to be to function as the cliched “I love you but I like torturing you too” little brother we’ve seen a thousand times in movies past. Tess is getting married to Ryan (Mark Harmon), a man who seems to be doing well for himself. Along the way, her father (Harold Gould) inexplicably drops in. When Tess and Anna have an all too public fight at an Asian restaurant, an elderly stereotypical Asian woman (Lucille Soong) gives them a pair of fortune cookies that have the effect of forcing the two of them to switch bodies. For the next twenty-four hours, they must live the life of the other while keeping up appearances of a woman about to be married the next day and a teen “rebel” trying to get by at school.

The message is supposed to be the classic “Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked a day in his shoes.” What we have have, instead, is a bizarre mesh of subplots that never come together and are mostly only addressed superficially. Tesh is getting married the next day, yet she has a root canal scheduled on the eve of her wedding. Anna is attracted to Jake (Chad Michael Murray), whose two characterizations seem to be that he enjoys riding motorcycles and that he’s old enough to be working at the school. Yet, Tess is consistently more concerned about the former than the latter, ignoring the very real possibility of a relationship blossoming between Jake and her daughter. Characterization of Harry, Ryan, and Grandpa are, likewise, extremely one dimensional: we never even really find out what Harry does for a living or if Grandpa even lives in the same city.

What we have is a remake that really is only superficially a remake and has nothing new to offer. In fact, it insults our intelligence at every opportunity with such one dimensional characters and performances that make Ed Wood look Oscar worthy.  There is nothing appealing about Tess and Anna as focal characters: both are extremely selfish and short sighted. Their “revelations” could just as well have come about had they simply took a minute to think beyond their own lives. Even while they are learning more about each other, they are completely oblivious to the supporting characters around them, treating them as disposable fodder in the simplistic yet overly-complicated plot we’re expected to buy.

No, there are worse ways to spend a Saturday night, to be sure. Yet, I can’t think of a single reason to watch this version of Freaky Friday verses the now-classic 1976 version with Jodie Foster. There isn’t a hint of originality in this version. Based on this film, one wonders whether there’s a hint of originality left at Disney.

Posted in All Reviews, Bad Movies | 1 Comment

“The Man Who Knew Too Much” (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956)

Posted on 21 August 2010 by Chris Rothbauer

Buy “The Man Who Knew Too Much” at Amazon.com

Jo McKenna (Dorris Day) waits on edge for the fate of the prime minister in "The Man Who Knew Too Much".

In Hitchcock’s long and illustrious career, there are numerous scenes that could be cited to prove he truly was the master of suspense: the shower scene in Psycho, the Mount Rushmore scene in North by Northwest, the confrontation with the murderer in Rear Window, or the church scene in Vertigo. My personal favorite, however, remains one of Hitchcock’s lesser appreciated masterpieces, the Royal Albert Hall scene in his remake of his own film, 1956′s The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Jo McKenna (Dorris Day) arrives at Royal Albert Hall shortly before the commencement of a concert that evening, hoping to find Inspector Buchanon (Ralph Truman) and seek his assistance in locating her husband, Ben (James Stewart), who she last saw in a crowded church that emptied in the time it took her to make a phone call. Instead, she finds Rein (Reggie Nalder), a man she recognizes from the day before when he arrived at her hotel door in Morocco searching for Louis Bernard (Daniel Gélin), a mysterious Frenchman who died shortly after confiding in Ben that a politician was about to be murdered in London. Rein recognizes Jo, too, and warns her that the safety of her son, Hank (Christopher Olsen), depended on her actions that evening. See, Hank was kidnapped in Morocco by Rein’s employers, the Draytons (Edward Miles, Brenda De Banzie), a couple who befriended Ben and Jo in Morocco to get close to Bernard. The Draytons hope that, by keeping Hank captive, they will ensure Ben does not go to the authorities with what he knows.

Jo sees a crowd gathering around to one side and realizes there is indeed a politician there that night, the British prime minister himself, and she realizes what is about to happen. She enters the hall and watches as, on the left side balcony, the prime minister and his party seat themselves, while Rein and his companion seat themselves on the right side. Dead in the center, we focus on only two sets: Jo, whose indecision over what to do could threaten the life of Britain’s leader, and the orchestra, whose music is to be the signal for Rein to shoot across the hall and kill the prime minister. When the orchestra plays the cymbals, Rein is to shoot as no one will be able to hear his gun discharge.

For the next several minutes, we flash back and forth between the four scenes as the music plays on agonizingly. How long do we have until the cymbals play? Will Jo stand firm or will she flee in the door behind her to search for Hank? Will Rein be successful in the assassination?

Suddenly, in comes Ben, who has freed himself from his trap in the locked church. We don’t hear them talk but we know Jo is telling him of Rein’s plan. Ben rushes upstairs and tries to convince the police around the prime minister, to no avail. He rushes, room by room, looking for the would-be assassin. Meanwhile, the music plays on and we agonize with Jo as we wonder if Ben could possibly be successful and save the life of Britain’s leader.

We see the cymbal player sitting idle. We see Rein and his companion preparing. We see Rein disappear into the shadows behind the curtain of his box. The cymbalist stands. It seems a life is left to chance now because Ben still has not located the correct box. Jo is in horror, as are we all, and, as Rein’s gun emerges from the shadows and the cymbalist prepares to strike, she does the only thing she can do, the thing we all want to do: scream. Her scream attracts the attention of the prime minister, who stands to look, causing Rein to only hit the leader in his arm.

It was a shot worthy of Hitchcock and, without a single word of dialogue audible, achieved all that needed to be done in putting us in complete suspense. Anyone studying the master’s style should be required to watch it over and over again. It is this scene that makes The Man Who Knew Too Much one of my personal favorite of Hitchcock’s films. It also solidified Doris Day as my personal favorite of all Hitchcock’s leading ladies.

Jo is allowed to demonstrate just enough emotion to show she’s feminine. She’s single-minded, however: how can she get Hank back? All her actions to this point revolve in some way around that. She could have fled through the door behind her and we probably wouldn’t have blamed for it. We simply would have called her weak. After all, all this political assassination business was no help to her finding Hank. She didn’t, though, even when things looked their worst. Her actions, not those of Ben, save the prime minister’s life. She does what she had to do, what any of us in that situation would have had to do, and this is why we love her, even more than Jimmy Stewart.

The biggest tragedy of this is that The Man Who Knew Too Much was the only film Day ever did with Hitchcock.

This  film deserves to be studied alongside Vertigo or Psycho or Rear Window as a specimen of what Hitchcock was capable of at his best: an engaging, suspenseful story that makes us feel every emotion the heroes feel and then some. Never mind it’s a remake; as Hitchcock once told François Truffaut, the earlier version was the work of a talented amateur, the remake the work of a master.

Indeed.

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Rifftrax Live featuring “Reefer Madness” (Louis Gasnier, 1938)

Posted on 20 August 2010 by Chris Rothbauer

Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett in a promotion for "Reefer Madness."

I first discovered Mystery Science Theater 3000 when I was in high school and it may have been the single defining moment in my history as a film lover. Before Joel, Mike, and the bots showed me the joys of riffing on bad films, movies were a passive experience for me, one that you occasionally got some joy out of but, more often than not, disappointed you. My house didn’t have cable when I was in high school so I had to rely on what I could find on VHS, and I ate it up From Pod People to Mitchell to Manos: The Hands of Fate I found myself in stitches while the crew of the Satellite of Love made fun of the worst films I’d ever seen. If films could be that bad, there had to be instances where they were equally good, right?

Mystery Science Theater was, perhaps, never destined to have a large audience (it was on Comedy Central during that network’s pre-South Park/Daily Show success and then Sci-Fi), but it endeared me and saddened me greatly when they were canceled in 1999. Eleven years later, almost every person who ever starred on the show is in one of two new riffing projects (the other being Joel Hodgson’s Cinematic Titanic). For Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett, they found a home in Rifftrax.

Originally conceived as a way to create audio-only riffing commentaries for more popular films such as the Star Wars prequels and Twilight, Rifftrax has grown into an internet phenomenon. On August 19, 2010, Nelson, Murphy, and Corbett did a “live” version of Rifftrax where they did their usual riffing but in a real theater in San Diego in front of a live studio audience and broadcast the result, goofs and all, to theaters across the nation.

They started the evening with three shorts, one of the most popular features of the old Mystery Science Theater. The first was the 1941 short “More Dangerous than Dynamite” which seemed to be about the dangers of housewives doing their laundry at home with gasoline. The second was an odd, odd little short from the ’70s called “At Your Fingertips…Grass!” about all the wonderful things kids with too much time on their hands can make out of grass. The third was an animated short from 1930 featuring strange animals at the North Pole. At the theater I was in, all three shorts were a huge success and had everyone, myself included, laughing hilariously, probably making the pensioners in Eat, Pray, Love in the other theater wonder what was going on.

It was my first time seeing the feature, Reefer Madness. This is one I’ve heard about more than once, but just never gotten around to seeing. It’s an exploitation film, territory not unfamiliar to the Rifftrax crew since they did I Accuse My Parents and Ed Wood’s The Sinister Urge during their Mystery Science Theater days. Reefer Madness is all about the dangers of, well, smoking “marihuana” (it’s really spelled that way throughout the movie!). Jack (Carleton Young) and his lover Mae (Thelma White) are selling dope to the local high schoolers. Good old American boys Bill (Kenneth Craig) and Jack (Warren McCollum) get involved and end in bad situations, with Bill being framed for the murder of his girlfriend, Mary (Dorothy Short) and Jack committing a hit and run in Mary’s car. The entire thing is convoluted and goes downhill from there.

As with most exploitation films, the dangers are highly exaggerated and I have a hard time, even for a minute, believing a jury would convict Bill of murder. Even if he did commit the crime, he was under the influence of a narcotic, which bumps the crime down to manslaughter, a crime that does not merit capital punishment (which, it seems, the jury is all too eager to give, as we watch their deliberations in the jury room). I’ve also never seen anyone commit suicide under the influence of marijuana but the filmmakers, apparently, had. What’s funny about all these exploitation films, too, is the fact there always seems to be an evil syndicate behind the scenes peddling smut to our kids. I guess this was before we had COPS.

Nelson, Murphy, and Corbett successfully take this very bad film and make some jokes at its expense. I especially like their “looks like” jokes. The narrator looks just like the dad on Alf, a dope addict playing the piano looks like Kramer from Seinfeld, and the judge looks like Dick Cheney. For 68 minutes, there were very few times the audience here in Louisville was not laughing.

If you missed the show tonight, they are doing an encore presentation on August 24. They also plan a Halloween show, The House on Haunted Hill, on October 28.

Posted in All Reviews, Bad Movies, Rifftrax | Tagged | 4 Comments

“She’s Out of Control” (Stan Dragoti, 1989)

Posted on 19 August 2010 by Chris Rothbauer

Buy “She’s Out of Control” at Amazon.com

Tony Danza and Ami Dolenz in "She's Out of Control"

It’s hard to believe, but there was a time in the ancient days of the 1970s and 1980s when Tony Danza was a major star in television. What She’s Out of Control represents is an attempt to take Danza’s small screen popularity and translate it to the big screen. The results were disastrous and, as one critic at the time commented, this should have remained the made-for-tv movie it was meant to be.

To fully understand Danza’s character, the overprotective Doug Simpson, you have to understand that he played an almost identical character for eight years on Who’s the Boss? Though much of the appeal of the latter was the chemistry between Danza and co-star Judith Light, Danza’s character on Who’s the Boss? was also a single, overprotective father raising his teenage daughter. What She’s Out of Control seems determined to do is to take that part of Danza’s television show, exaggerate it beyond belief, and translate it to a feature length film. What results is disturbing and creepy to say the least.

The plot, if you want to call it that, is as follows. Doug Simpson (Danza) is a single father raising his two daughters, Katie (Ami Dolenz) and Bonnie (Laura Mooney). While Doug is out of town at a radio convention that is never mentioned again in the movie (read: convenient plot point), his girlfriend, Janet (Catherine Hicks) takes Katie to get a full makeover and turn her from ugly ducking to pretty girl. What follows when Doug finds out is a series of ever-more-ridiculous subplots that show daddy try to keep full control over his daughter’s life, including asking her on a date, exhibiting racist tendencies when he believes a black man is trying to date Katie, following her to the prom after party, and seeking advice from a creepy psychologist (Wallace Shawn). In true ’80s sitcom fashion, everything works itself out in the end and everybody loves each other.

The entire plot is full of holes: at one point, Doug asks Katie’s boyfriend if he saw his car outside, even though Doug just pulled up in it and no one was looking outside! After Doug’s car is smashed by a train, it is miraculously brought back to life by the best body shop in the world since it is seen outside his house in the last scene. On top of that, the entire story is supposedly being told to the police, who are interviewing Doug about an incident that occurred at his radio station.  Never mind that Doug is telling the police certain details such as the fact he stole a car and a porter’s uniform and chased a couple preteens around the beach.

The cinematographer of this film was hell bent on using as many canted angles as possible, shooting at least sixty percent of the film in them and making the entire experience seem just completely eerie. On top of that, Doug’s tendencies towards the creepy with his daughter and the fact that he proposes to Janet for no other reason than he believes it will help Katie do not endure the character to me at all. Doug is a creep and an underachiever and thwarts sexual advances from Janet so he can go home and make sure Katie is remaining a virgin flower.

I don’t recommend this movie for anyone who wants to see a good film. It ranks up there with Leonard, Pt. 6 for bad sitcom-esque films from ’80s television stars but has surprisingly not been as hated as Leonard. If you must watch it, you should do so only with the aid of this iRiff, cowritten and performed by yours truly. Otherwise, simply watch an episode of Who’s the Boss? on cable to relive the painful experience.

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Copyright 2010 Christopher A. Rothbauer. All rights reserved.