Cinema of the Damned

The President's Analyst

2011-07-15T11:55:00.000-07:00

It's hard to know when you are ahead of your times. Just ask Theodore J. Flicker. 1967 seemed like a pretty good year for an extremely satirical film about the CIA, FBI,crazy gun culture, insane politics, race relations, and the entire concept of the Cold War as a half-bogus game.

But the movie The President's Analyst came and went with barely a whisper. Too bad. Though it is not one of the major cinematic high points of the 1960s, it is certainly one of the decade's funniest and strangely accurate reflections of the era. Besides, it also had the ironic ability to tick off J. Edgar Hoover which is a greater honor than any twenty Oscars.

It's a pretty straight forward tale about a New York shrink (James Coburn) who is recruited by a government agent/hit man (Godfrey Cambridge) into becoming the personal analyst to the president. Along the way, Coburn has a nervous break down while fleeing from assassins sent after him by every nation on earth, goes on a hippie excursion through the Great Lakes region and finds himself getting a new patient courtesy of a KGB agent (Severn Darden) who discovers that he needs his doctor more than his country. He also has to keep one step ahead of the near midgets from the FBI who carries some of the biggest guns ever seen in the pre-Dirty Harry age.

Oh yeah, that was the part that especially ticked off J. Edgar. The bureau director in the movie is a diminutive and tightly wound borderline psycho who only hires agents who are shorter than himself and routinely issues orders in the name of the "as yet unborn." Hoover was not amused and placed the production under FBI surveillance.

The President's Analyst plays like a Mad Magazine parody of the social turmoil of the late 1960s. The film also contains an incredibly good performance by Cambridge who remains one of the most under appreciated performers of the period. Cambridge had originally been a dramatic actor who turned to stand up comedy as his "day job" and is able to smoothly shift between farce and seriousness without ever batting an eye. Also on display in a brief role is the young William Daniels whose skill at theater of absurdity is in full force as a liberal who will put away his guns as soon as the conservatives surrender their weapons.

As a director, Flicker is occasionally clumsy with his transition cuts and the movie has a slightly uneven sense of pacing. But Flicker was, most likely, the only filmmaker around who could follow his own crazy logic. The result is brash, often hysterically accurate, and one of the few movies that can match the warped humor of something like Dr. Strangelove.

Besides, this flick is also the definitive cinematic statement about the phone company. In some ways, the ending is more accurate now than it was then.

O. C. and Stiggs

2011-03-03T15:50:00.000-08:00

A friend once told me that he had seen this movie six times and still couldn't decide if it was any good. Actually, he wasn't even quite sure what it was even about. In all honestly, he wasn't even certain if he had actually seen it. I just thought he was being difficult until the third time I watched O. C. and Stiggs and realized that I was having the same reaction.

So it is definitely not a film for someone who is looking for a quick and easy story. Or even for people seeking clear cut characters and obvious motivations. Heck, it's not even for folks wanting some simple sex and violence. It's less a movie and more of a photographic hit off of a joint. Maybe. Originally intended (at least by the producers) to be a smart-ass teenage sex comedy, O. C. and Stiggs is low on the sex, extremely high on a very off-center sense of satire and off-beat observations, strikingly nonlinear and exceptionally weird in its tribute to the fleeting pursuit of happiness against the arid landscape of Arizona.

This was director Robert Altman's last commercial mainstream film before he bolted to Paris for his long state of exile from Hollywood. Made in 1985 and given an extremely limited (and belated) release in 1987, the movie can be partly viewed as Altman's final flipping of the bird to the American studio system. Ironically, O. C. and Stiggs was produced by MGM, the same studio that Altman aggravated years earlier with his production of Brewster McCloud (an even more odd ball fantasy that shares many features in common with O. C. and Stiggs).

Loosely adapted from a series of stories published in the National Lampoon, O. C. and Stiggs follows the strangely meandering exploits of two Arizona teenagers who have dedicated their lives to outrageously annoying their Republican neighbor (Paul Dooley), buying liquor from their favorite wino (Melvin Van Peebles) and routinely relaying their experiences by phone to their favorite African dictator whose private number they inexplicably have on speed dial. Meanwhile, they make periodic visits to the area's craziest Vietnam vet (Dennis Hopper parodying his role from Apocalypse Now) who lives in his bunker out in the desert, waiting for the next surprise attack from the Vietcong. There is also some odd sub plot involving the mysterious death of a local mechanic named Bugs Bunny and his slutty wife who may (or may not) be acting out a few riffs from a James Cain novel.

None of these plot lines are really connected to each other and Altman is totally uninterested in making such connections. Instead, he has adopted an open ended and very free flowing narrative (somewhat like he did in Nashville) and the viewer either accepts it or not. Unlike the original stories, the movie invokes a more sympathetic and oddly gentle approach (to some of the characters) despite its own warped sensibility (and warp more than twisted may be the right word). At its best, the film is less a gross-out than a supreme weird-out as it seesaws between an amused engagement and a total WTF mindset.

So if you are in the mood for an excessive dose of hip irony, check it out. Just don't get too carried away trying to figure it out. Even the experts are still baffled. By my fourth viewing, I only knew that I think maybe I kind of like this flick but have no clues why.

Just remember what Hooper tells the kids when they question him about being in Vietnam. "Was I really in Vietnam? Does Ho Chi Minh eat Rice Krispies?"

Say no more.

My Name Is Bruce

2011-01-20T13:27:00.000-08:00

Some people are born to greatness and some people will never have to worry about that issue. Bruce Campbell will never have to worry.

Oh sure, he is a cult legend. Campbell is the king of the modern B movie. He is the heir to the throne of Dick Miller. But most of all, Campbell could use a real job. As he demonstrates in My Name Is Bruce, monster hunting just ain't all it's cracked up to be.

This crude, lewd, and oddly endearing horror/comedy is Campbell's back-handed tribute to his own bogus legend. The whole movie plays like a dinner theater crew's recreation of Plan Nine From Outer Space as it staggers (and so does the heavy drinking Campbell) through a screwy yarn that might have been written down on the back of cocktail napkins.

While working on another crappy straight-to-video production, Campbell is kidnapped by a neo-goth fan and finds himself stuck in the town of Gold Lick (population 399 and dropping fast). Seems that some local teenagers have accidentally brought to life the Chinese god Guan-Di and Guan-Di is not a happy camper. He is determined to slaughter everyone in sight for the century old death of 100 Chinese workers in a cave in.. Since Campbell is a little slow on the draw, he assumes that the whole thing is a birthday joke being staged by his lousy agent (Ted Raimi in one of several roles). Besides, he is hoping to get lucky with his fan's lonely mother.

Largely made for hardcore Bruce Campbell fans, everything bad said about My Name Is Bruce is basically true. The movie is as cheap looking as the booze Campbell keeps sneaking while preparing for the "hunt." The script is almost as stupid as the type of films it is poking fun at. The general acting level covers a range from A to...well, A.

But if you get the movie on a DVD and watch it with a good pizza and several beers, well, it actually moves along as a pretty OK fun flick. Heck, I am actually looking forward to the sequel.

Besides, Bruce Campbell does not need greatness. He is his own kind of guy.

The Big Lebowski

2010-01-24T14:44:00.000-08:00

OK, there is sometimes no predicting anything and sometimes, stuff just simply happens.

That is probably the best way to describe the strange journey of The Big Lebowski as it progressed from a quick box office death in 1998 to its current status as a modern cult classic. Quirky and unpredictable, The Big Lebowski moves about with a strangely focused sense of rambling narrative order. Along the way, the movie succeeds in turning bowling into a central metaphor for life and reminds us all that a good rug is hard to find (and keep).

The plot of The Big Lebowski is the shaggiest shaggy dog story ever conceived, playing like a lost tale by Raymond Chandler as re-written by Hunter S. Thompson on a whimsical day. Beginning with the Dude (Jeff Bridges finally discovering his perfect persona as the coolest loser in all of LA) being mistaken by thugs for the other Lebowski (the rich guy with the same name), the movie quickly discovers its major motif when the nitwit knee-breakers demonstrate just how pissed off they are by ruining Dude's rug (the one that ties both the room and movie all together).

Convinced by his bowling mates (John Goodman and Steve Buscemi) that the rich Lebowski owes him for a new rug, the Dude sets off on a quest that runs lazy circles around missing wives, rich pornographers, German Nihilists, and some of the more bizarre moments of male behavior traits.

Which may explain the original hostility this movie encountered from critics in 1998. Mostly, American film critics are pretty much a white male club of geeky guys who spend more time cloistered in dark rooms than even mushrooms. By in large, they hated this film. On the other hand, the film picked up a noticeable female following, despite being anything but a "chick flick."

When I finally saw the film (in 1999), I realized that the movie was sort of mocking an odd collection of distinctly innate male behavior patterns. My own reaction was something along the line of "OK, so is this, like, you know, a problem?" That is probably the real secret of the film's success. Somewhere, some how, it is directly hitting at a subconscious world that is extremely masculine and completely half-nutty. Sort of a man's man movie that isn't exactly for the average guy even while locating itself in a manly world minus all of the self-justifying heroic stuff.

Instead, we have the Dude who stumbles through a messy life by staying focused on his rug and the ever elusive prospect of the upcoming bowling championship, both of which are threatened by his pal Walter's (Goodman) sense of rigid rules, unfocused temper, and destructive sense of helpfulness. The movie kind of functions as an anti-buddy-buddy film and the Dude and Walter seems united primarily by their mutual need to defeat the Jesus (John Turturro) at the final game that never exactly happens.

Along the way, The Big Lebowski unloads enough Freudian symbols to send Freud himself running out of the theater (I never knew that bowling was so erotic). It also keeps peppering the tale with weird references to the Gulf War and David Huddleston, as the rich Lebowski, delivers a hoot of a parody of Dick Cheney.

It's a modern classic, kind of. It may even be one of the finest films yet made by the Coen brothers. It can take several viewings before you even get a clue as to what is going on.

And just remember one of the most important things we learn: "This is not Vietnam. There are rules in bowling."

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

2009-07-12T14:19:00.000-07:00

When this film first came out in 1973, I despised it. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid came across as a narrative mess of excessive shoot outs virtually playing like a parody of the worst aspects of a bloody Sam Peckinpah epic.

But over the years, several things changed. Several versions of the movie would appear on video approaching Peckinpah's original intentions. It became obvious that the rumors of studio sabotage against the movie was not only true, but they actually butchered the film into nonsensical shreds. All the scenes in which the themes of the movie took place had been cut and only the gunfights remained, reducing Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid to the level of a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

I also found myself reading more of the actual history of the Lincoln County Range War and the events surrounding Billy the Kid. In many regards, this is one of the more factual of the many movies based of these events (with some of the violence actually toned down a bit). Even the mythic embellishments in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid are minor additions that suits Peckinpah's themes.

More importantly, I became a middle aged man. Suddenly, the themes of a life betrayed (Garrett's more than Billy's) began to hit hard with a somber sense of poetic irony. For Peckinpah, Billy the Kid was simply an idealized figure of youth (the pure outlaw with his own moral code). The real tragic figure was Pat Garrett, the aging outlaw-turned-sheriff. In the film, he insists that times has changed and that he is simply adapting to the new West. By the end of the film, he has killed and betrayed virtually everyone close to him and has no one left to shoot but his own besotted reflection in the mirror.

OK, in reality Pat Garrett was a pure bred son of a bitch who seemingly had no problems betraying any body at any time at any place. He was also one of the first union-busters of the old West. It was guys like Garrett who succeeded in making Billy the Kid look so damn noble.

As Garrett, James Coburn delivers one of his finest performances as a spiritual deadbeat whose moral hypocrisy is almost as great as his increasingly violent and drunken state of denial. Since the movie bookends the narrative with Garrett's own murder, the futility of Garrett's actions are front and center. The real subject of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is about all the foolish ways a person can sometimes lie to himself in a vain attempt to make himself look good.

Along with The Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is one of Peckinpah's genuine master pieces. But you have to see it in the director's cut (actually, there are several, each one of which is superior to the theatrical release). Aside from engaging in an open war with his producer and studio during the making of the film, Peckinpah was also sinking fast into the booze and drug haze that would plague the rest of his career. The anger and angst that would fuel the violent poetry of The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid would soon turn into the addict delusions and unfocused rages of Cross of Iron (his last interesting movie). The remainder of his films quickly became a load of half-baked gibberish.

Oh yeah, then there is the soundtrack score by Bob Dylan. The music is fantastic. His acting appearance, uhhh, not quite so fantastic.

Winter Kills

2009-05-28T09:28:00.000-07:00

Some films are damned by nature like an ugly child, malnourished and abandoned. Other movies earn their damnation the old fashion way, they work for it. The 1979 production of Winter Kills is an example of the latter. The movie's mix of intense paranoia, Kennedy-conspiracy theories, and outrageous deadpan ironies resulted in a black satire darker than a moonless night. Odd thing, the film is also a hoot to watch - at least it is once you are clued into the joke.

Freely adapted from the novel by Richard (The Manchurian Candidate) Condon, Winter Kills presents some of the greatest bits from various Kennedy conspiracy theories. Beginning with the bizarre opening as the late President Kegan's younger half-brother (Jeff Bridges) is confronted with the dying confession of the second gun to the assassination 19 years earlier in Philadelphia, Winter Kills precedes on a wild and star-studded meander through the American political subconscious.

As Bridges' character finds himself compelled to follow one weird lead after another, he finds himself stumbling through the scandals of his own family as well as a secret political culture that is running out of control. All the while, he is dogged by a mysterious series of murders that is seemingly preceded by the appearance of a young girl and child on a bicycle, popping gum in time to the gun shots. He is egged on by his own father (John Huston in a performance that delivers new meaning to the phrase “filthy old money”) even though the investigation is bound to unlock family secrets that old man Kegan has previously killed to suppress.

Long rumored to have been railroaded by the Kennedy family during its production and release (which is actually true - check out the best article documenting this case in the March 11, 1985 edition of the London Times), Winter Kills also has the particular distinction of going through several studios during its filming, having two producers who were financing the movie with drug trade money (one of them went to prison and the other ended up with the gun, not the cannoli), and a final release that was so low key even the theater owners didn't know it was playing. I only saw the film during its brief release because I had already seen everything else that was playing.

At times, the surreal humor of Winter Kills veers close to being a Mad magazine parody. But the movie also has a strange melancholia that at the oddest moments touches a sentimental nerve. Basically, we all know that the Kennedy assassination was a conspiracy. Heck, it doesn't even require a mastermind to narrow the list down to the overwhelmingly obvious suspects. The Warren Report, and all of the rest of the official denial, is just a load of horse hockey (something that even Lyndon Johnston stated in private conversations). But this act of public murder and phony denial has been the underpinning to contemporary American history. And to be honest, the denial sort of makes us all co-conspirators.

The Crazies

2009-04-07T10:40:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I think the biggest mistake of my life was my refusal to go to Pittsburgh.

As a film student at Ohio University, I knew a pack of guys who all were from the Pittsburgh area and who spent their summers working on the crew for George A. Romero. They all insisted that it was fun, even if you had to help sort through the spare parts brought fresh every morning by a local butcher (the zombies in Dawn of the Dead were not just playing around with rubber). Actually, a couple of these guys viewed that as part of the fun.

It wouldn't be until a few years later (when I finally got to see most of Romero's movies) that I realized that I should have gone. Romero is, quite simply, one of the major artists of the contemporary American cinema. An extremely individualistic filmmaker, Romero has followed his own vision with much of the same lonely sense of dedication as was pursued by Ed Harris' character in Romero's production of Knightriders (a movie that is Romero's key statement on his own work).

Unfortunately, Romero's artistic gift has been far greater than his ability to find a good distributor. The vast majority of his movies have either gone barely released or basically unreleased thanks to a long string of really bad distribution companies. Even when his production of Martin garnered a surprisingly strong amount of critical reviews during a brief run in New York, the distributor merely deep-sixed the movie into some Southern drive-ins where it vanished from view.

Which may explain why Romero is now making his living by selling the rights to his movie for modern re-makes. The original Dawn of the Dead may be infinitely superior in every way to the recent re-do, but the second version is the one that got widely distributed. The same will undoubtedly be true of the new version of his 1973 masterpiece The Crazies. But if you really want a strong gory taste of total paranoia, I strongly recommend locating a copy of Romero's movie.

In some ways, The Crazies can be viewed as a re-working of The Night of the Living Dead with the zombies replaced by the crazed victims of a military biological warfare weapon that has been accidentally discharged into their water supply. Add in a hefty dose of Nixon-era political paranoia (in which the president would just as soon nuke the town as admit to doing anything wrong) and seasoned with a strong critique of the military (largely taking place within the military's own rank and file as they try to deal with the situation), simmered with a nicely raw presentation of small-town USA values and you get a potent witch's brew of a movie.

So see it before you see the new version.

Fiend Without a Face

2009-03-23T08:43:00.000-07:00

There is a long standing debate within the horror genre between the effect of what is shown and what is simply implied. The old RKO producer Val Lewton was the master of suggestion, while the more modern maestro George Romero is an expert of forcing viewers to confront the unbearable.

But the 1958 production of Fiend Without a Face achieves the odd distinction of doing both. If the greatest terror is conceived in one's own head, then why not have brain-sucking critters who are just that, brains (well, brains with the spinal cord still attached).

The movie gets tremendous effect out of a few simple sound-effects, basic stop-motion animation, and a story line just whacked out enough to be a weirdly chilling pipeline into urban folk lore. But the most inspired idea in Fiend Without a Face is the basic realization that you can really freak people out by attacking them with the most critical core component to human anatomy.

Set near a secret U.S. Air base in Canada (though everything was actually filmed in England), Fiend Without a Face starts with a pretty routine military investigation into a series of odd murders among the rural population. The air force major in charge of the investigation (Marshall Thompson) divides his time between re-assuring the locals (a task that he sucks at), noticing strange details at the crime scene (a job that he is half-baked at) and trying to score with the one available woman in the whole town (a job he is successful at for no obvious reasons).

Meanwhile, the farmers are worried that all of the jets flying in and out are having a bad effect on the cows. Also, the possibility of radiation from the base's hush-hush experiment is becoming noticeable. Then there is the slight problem of people turning up dead with their brains sucked out. Fortunately for the U.S. Military, most of the farmers are more concerned about the cows.

What really works in Fiend Without a Face is pure primal fear. That and a hefty dose of Cold War paranoia which under lies most of the movie. The brain-suckers of the story presents a near perfect pulp summation of 1950s' anxieties. Once they become visible, the nasty creepy-crawlies also tap deep into a well-served sense of the gross. These are just some of the reasons why Fiend Without a Face remains a cockamamie classic.

Invasion of the Saucer Men

2009-02-04T15:16:00.000-08:00

A good archaeologist often learns more about a lost civilization from its trash than from its art. That is why the typical B-movie from the 1950s tell us more about the Golden Age of Eisenhower than any twenty epic productions of that period.

Which is also why Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957) is a trash treasure-trove of the period. Cheaply produced and incredibly dumb, Invasion of the Saucer Men is also effectively spooky and indescribably fun. The movie is both god-awful and divinely inspired as it reveals the frayed threads behind the button-down minds of the period.

The plot is pretty straight forward. Invading aliens with large bubble heads attack teenagers at a lovers' lane in their attempt to conquer the earth. Pretty simple, very short, and extremely nonsensical. While the fate of the planet hangs in the balance, two teens (Steven Terrill and Gloria Castillo) are able to stop necking long enough to save the world. Meanwhile, a secret task force from the U.S. Army (two officers in search of the clue bus) ponders the defense implications of the whole incident.

Added to the mix is a pre-Batman Frank Gorshin as a booze-hound of a traveling salesman whose liquor consumption defies the alien menace (the short bulb-heads kill by using needles in their fingers to inject victims with massive amounts of pure alcohol). The more they inject him, the more he needs a chaser.

The movie offers a predictable mix of randy kids and fumbling adults. But it also offers a low-key but surprisingly more seamy view of small-town USA. The setting is largely a vast wasteland of sleazy bars and rambling corn fields, barely enlivened by the local drive-in. It weirdly prefigures The Last Picture Show in its latent sense of impending decay.

Invasion of the Saucer Men was directed by Edward L. Cahn, a man whose career never left the bottom of the barrel. Ironically, he would also directed the 1958 horror film It! The Terror From Beyond Space which ultimately served as the direct inspiration for the movie Alien. Cahn remains a curious but notable footnote in Sci Fi history.

With a running time of 69 minutes, Invasion of the Saucer Men manages to not wear out its welcome. Instead, it remains a genuinely scary delight.

Journey to the Seventh Planet

2008-09-09T11:00:00.000-07:00

There are lost motion picture classics, and then there are films that are simply lost. Until its recent re-release on DVD courtesy of MGM and its B-movie collection, Journey to the Seventh Planet was considered pretty much long gone and totally abandoned. Like an unwanted cat left in the woods, it has once again found a home among the budget discs at the back of the rack.

Which is a profoundly appropriate spot for this classic piece of bad cinema which is both artless and almost provocative; beyond shoddy and oddly half-memorable. Though it has a supremely stupid story line delivered at a snail's pace and conveyed by mediocre performances by a cast largely composed of obscure European players, Journey to the Seventh Planet manages to hit the occasional Jung spot in the arrested adolescent brain.

The plot is simple enough: five incredibly horny astronauts are sent on a discovery mission to Uranus (carefully pronounced yuu-ray-nus, not yoor-a-nuis) where they encounter an insanely hostile alien brain-like thing-a-ma-bob that loots their subconscious as part of its plan to destroy humanity. Since these guys mostly think about girls, they are routinely tempted by a parade of large-bosomed women. The fate of the Earth would hang in the balance, except that the brain-thing is stuck in a cave on yuu-ray-nus and there is no rational way it could threaten much. Occasionally, the astronauts are threatened by a gigantic one-eyed mutant rat and stock footage from another movie.

Journey to the Seventh Planet may be one of the worst lit color films of 1962 with a sense of photography that would have looked better in black and white. Since the only known member of the cast is John Agar (who was well on his way to a special place in the Cinema of the Damned), it is a safe bet that the producers did not worry about profit sharing. To round out the cost-cutting aesthetics, the movie was shot in Denmark in order to save money and at least one cast member swears that he was sick at the time and actually was never in the film.

But the one thing that is important about this film is the screenwriter, Ib Melchior. During his long career as a screenwriter and occasional director, Melchior combined the best and the worst in a giddy display of B-movie cliches, grade zilch narratives, and - often at the damnest moments - provocative commentary. In his screenplay for Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964), he succeeded in a surprisingly intelligent updating of the Defoe novel. With his original story for Death Race 2000, he predicted the social policies of the Bush administration. When Melchior was good, he was very scary good. That is one of the main reasons why Melchior is one of the great unsung heroes of pulp science-fiction.

Journey to the Seventh Planet (which has a bizarre resemblance to the novel Solaris) is neither goofy enough nor smart enough to be Melchior at his best. But it is the only one of his key films to receive a decent release on DVD. It is also available via Movies Found Online (http://www.moviesfoundonline.com/journey_to_the_seventh_planet.php).

Last Man on Earth

2008-07-18T08:28:00.000-07:00

There are movies and there are films, each separated by rifts in elitist attitudes and adolescent obsessions. Then there is the cinema of the damned, a vast skid-row of Jungian shadows and Freudian dreams. Like a flee market held at an abandoned drive-in, this is a place stocked with life's most tawdry and potent fragments from the collective sub-conscious. Here, and here alone, we find the poetry of the lost and doomed.

If there is a barker stationed at this particular gate of Hell, he will look like Vincent Price. In a career that see-sawed from second string respectability to senior citizen camp parody, Price rose and fell and rose again. He went from being a simple servant within the back lots of RKO and Universal Studios to his late career as master of the Edgar Allan Poe genre in the dingy back alleys of American International Pictures. Though his career turned into a lemon, Price successfully took over the entire lemonade stand. He became the unchallenged King of Horror.

When reporters would ask him how he would rate his films, Price simply quipped “It's all art.” He was actually a well-heeled connoisseur who collected a wide range of Pre-Columbian and Asian artifacts and, as I discovered from first-hand experience, had his own limits where his films were concerned. When programming a retrospective of his career, I had wanted to do a double-feature of The Last Man on Earth (1964) and Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962). Price had his agent tell me that if I did, don't expect Mr. Price to come anywhere near the theater. I got the hint.

Largely ignored and critically cursed, these two cheap-jack, grainy, slipshod movies were about as low as Price's career could go. The Last Man on Earth even has the peculiar distinction of being disowned by the author of the original novel despite the fact that he was one of the main writers of the screenplay.

In Hell, even reels of safety stock burns.

But deep in the sub-basement of history, both films have a quirky and well deserved reputation as they each closely approximate what might have happened if Carl Jung had suffered a nervous breakdown, turned to drink, and then decided to become a screenwriter (the reverse of the usual career path).

The Last Man on Earth was the first film version of the seminal horror novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson in which Price finds himself to be the only source of blood available to a city full of vampires. Shot quick and dirty in Italy (standing in for Los Angeles) with an obscure director (Ubaldo Ragona, though the U.S. version credits the B-movie director Sidney Salkow whose actual involvement was minor) and lots of people speaking anything but English, the film is a weird hodge-podge of conflicting techniques. Even the English dubbing appears to have been supervised by non-English speakers. For Price, the true nightmare would have been in the making, not the viewing.

But The Last Man on Earth works on its own terms as a surprisingly gritty, extremely irrational nightmare in which both logic and sentiment are confined to the ash heap (along with a sizable chunk of the local population). Far superior to the two later versions (The Omega Man and the recent I Am Legend), it is no wonder that the film is offered as a “classic” on the Surfing the Apocalypse web site (go to http://www.surfingtheapocalypse.tv/scifi.php).

As for Confessions of an Opium Eater, it manages the seemingly impossible by looking even cheaper than a cut-rate Italian knock-off while simultaneously converting a literary classic into a murky pulp adventure on sex slave trafficking, drug smuggling and deliriously incoherent narrative structure. The movie converts the 19^th Century English journalist (and opium drug addict) Thomas de Quincey into a hop-headed solider of fortune working his way through a byzantine Tong war in old San Francisco.

The fact that the film makes no flaming sense is a testament to the accidental power of the movie. Like a bad dream, Confessions of an Opium Eater jerks its way from one implausible moment to the next with the self-serious, glassy-eyed look of a full blown stoner. If Luis Buñuel had ever directed a B-movie, this would be it.

Even the movie's trailer (go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dcQNdw_j5o) brings up the age old question: Does this world really exist? The rest of the movie delivers a resounding: Nayh. Duplicity, hallucinations, and some messy deaths rounds out the drive-in metaphysics of this lost masterpiece.

And as Price's own agent might remind us: Success has a thousand fathers, but these movies don't even have a star who would go near them.