Affectionate comic
tribute to Roger Corman and those like him who labored in the
prehistoric era of independent filmmaking. (That would be the
fifties.) Fred Ballard plays a Corman type who decides to stop
production on "Monster from the Mine Shaft" and fill in the
missing scenes with footage he's bought from Russia. Instead, he
tells the crew, he wants to use the remaining three days he's
paid for at the rock quarry--obviously modeled after Hollywood's
Bronson Canyon--to shoot another monster movie, even though he
has no script, no star, and no monster. (This is pretty close to
the true story of how LITTLE SHOP OF
HORRORS was made.) Michael
Dalmon is the earnest young assistant director who heads for the
beatnik coffeehouse where Rob Bassetti plays a "way gone" pill-
popping writer (modeled after Charles Griffith) who agrees to
stay up all night writing 30 pages a day, turning them in at
dawn. Ryan Wickerham is the grip/actor who finds a boozed-up
horror-film actor, Larry "The Cat Creature" Meeker Jr., in a
hilarious performance by Douglas Taylor. And Dalmon seeks out
special effects monster-maker Bill Wise to do a quick-and-dirty
bat monster, even though he's still seething at Ballard for the
"Snake Woman" fiasco of two years before. As the tiny crew tries
to finish the film in three days, writing as they go, improvising
as they go, talking love interest scream queen Casie Waller into
a nude scene ("just for the European print"), and fighting off
the unionized extras in Roman centurion costumes who want to shut
them down, the film races along with some truly funny set pieces
(like the tribal dancing girls using gaffer's tape to prop up
their fur-bikini bosoms, only to end up with painfully ripped
flesh) and a fairly accurate portrayal of what it was like to
work cheap and fast in the anything-goes fifties. Some of the
acting is a little amateurish, but especially fine performances
are turned in by Waller, who instructs the extras on the fine
points of "ankle sprain fundamentals" and the three-note
screaming method; Dalmon as the assistant director who turns out
to be the engine that keeps the picture alive; Glen Zoch as the
veteran cameraman; Bassetti as the beatnik sleep-deprived writer;
and especially Robert Graham as the old Shakespearean actor
Arthur Considine (hired to play "the scientist," of course). The
picture moves back and forth between black-and-white scenes of
the movie-within-the-movie and color scenes of the making of the
movie, and the effect works. This is a must-see for anyone
interested in the period. I could complain about some
anachronisms (the term "scream queen" hadn't been invented in
1959, for example), but on the whole it's pretty accurate. Three
dead bodies. Two breasts. Furry-monster hissy fit. Coke-snorting.
Gaffer-tape breast carnage. Tribal bimbo dancing. Blood-spewing.
One mutated bat monster, destroyed by carbonated-beverage-based
acid. Gratuitous Method acting. Great jazz score.  |