Blackenstein

During the blaxploitation craze of the 1970s there was a sub-genre of blaxploitation horror films.  Blacula kicked it off and was soon followed by Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde, Voodoo Black Exorcist, Abby, Scream Blacula Scream, and Blackenstein.  I remember hearing rumors they were making Black Creature from the White Lagoon, but apparently that was just a rumor.  Unfortunately the same cannot be said about Blackenstein.

Blackenstein concerns a black man who has returned from Viet Nam after losing both arms and both legs.  His girlfriend (Ivory Stone) studied under Dr. Stein (John Hart), who has done some remarkable work with limb replacement using a secret DNA formula.  She asks the doctor to help her boyfriend, Eddie (Joe De Sue) and he agrees.  Eddie begins receiving treatments and has new limbs attached.  Everything appears to be going fine until the doctor’s servant Malcomb (Roosevelt Jackson) confesses his feelings for the girl and is spurned for Eddie.  He switches the DNA serum and Eddie begins to change.  He develops a high forehead and soon is reduced to grunting like the Frankenstein monster.  His mind and head may have changed for the worse, but the new arms and legs work out nicely, allowing him to begin a killing spree that leaves three people and a dog murdered on the first night.  Unlike Universal’s Frankenstein, Eddie doesn’t just stop with strangling his victims.  He rips them open and plays with their intestines for some reason.  As the body count rises, the doctor and the girlfriend remain clueless as to Eddie’s other activities.  As the film gets closer to the end, the filmmakers decide to up the score by having the female victims get their blouses torn open to expose their bare breasts before Eddie kills them.  Eventually the police track him down and attack him with Dobermans that tear him open, leaving him laying with his intestines hanging out and one of his new limbs ripped off.

This is not the film to watch if you want good acting (or even competent acting).  This is not the film to watch if you want any sort of editing skill displayed or a semblance of intelligence in the script.  This is the film that you pop in when your friends are over, they’re all half drunk (or further), and you want a good laugh.  If Ed Wood had made this film, even he might have been ashamed of it.  It is that bad. 

As a movie, I give Blackenstein 1 1/2 stars.  As trash cinema at its finest, this would rate a 9 1/2 on the Night Flight scale.

Plan 9 From Outer Space

Plan 9 From Outer Space was probably the first movie to be officially recognized as “the worst movie ever made”.  It’s also a fairly safe bet that up until Ed Wood’s classic sci-fi horror fiasco was given this infamous title, it was not a household name.  I don’t think I had ever heard of Plan 9 until I saw it listed in The Golden Turkey Awards as the worst of the worst.  From that point on however, all of the film’s flaws became classic movie moments.  From the inane dialogue to the continuity errors to Lugosi being replaced after his death by the director’s wife’s chiropractor, Plan 9 is a bounty of badness.  And I think that might be the problem with viewing it now.

When Psycho came out audiences were shocked.  There were several elements in Psycho that had never been done before.  It was unheard of to kill off the leading lady so early in the film, it was unexpected that Norman would be his own mother (so to speak), and it was unnerving when a toilet was flushed on screen for the first time in history.  Viewing the film today, an audience can still enjoy the movie and some members might still be scared by certain scenes, but that feeling of confronting something new, something unexpected, and something that you had no way of being prepared for is lost on the modern audience that grew up with Scream killing Drew Barrymore in its opening act and Archie Bunker flushing a toilet on family friendly TVLand.  Plus since Psycho is a classic, everyone in the audience pretty well knows going in that Janet Leigh needs to stay away from the shower and that Norman is a true momma’s boy.  These shocks are dulled for the modern audience because they aren’t surprises.  Any person that sits down to watch Plan 9 these days isn’t sitting down to be chilled by the story of grave robbers from outer space.  They are sitting there waiting to laugh at the awfulness of the film.

Once you know the cockpit door is a shower curtain, there is no sense of discovery when you see how cheap the sets are.  Once you have heard the “stupid earthlings” speech delivered by Dudley Manlove’s character Eros in half a dozen clip shows or the “out there, up there, in there” assurance from Mona McKinnon’s Paula Trent, you aren’t truly laughing at the atrocious dialogue and poor delivery as much as you are eating up the greatest hits of bad movie dialogue.  But like a joke that has been told over and over and over and over, the original humor that could be found in the line is long gone.  It’s not that the dialogue is any better, it’s just the cinematic equivalent of hearing Larry the Cable Guy say “Git Er Done” for the ten thousandth time.  It’s not really all that funny any more.

I was lucky enough to see Orgy of the Dead and Glen Or Glenda at the start of the Ed Wood appreciation movement.  I watched as bad movies played out with day for night continuity gaffes and the ridiculous Angora sweater monologue and stock footage of buffalo herds, but it left me amused and thinking WTF.  I was too jaded by the time I sat down to watch Plan 9.  It’s a bad movie, but I expected a howl a minute bad movie.  What I got was more of a snoozefest.  Yes, Plan 9 bored me.  Now to be fair, there may have been other factors at play as well.  The DVD release I have chooses to use a bug or video watermark that reads PIP in the bottom right hand corner of the screen like an errant TV channel identifier.  I didn’t pay for 80 minutes of company advertising, and I found it very distracting.  I was also having problems with the heat and my legs last night while trying to watch Plan 9.  This made me extremely uncomfortable and could have influenced my inability to revel in Plan 9’s craptacularness.  I was also completely sober, which is likely another strike when it comes to enjoying this film.  Maybe some day I’ll try to watch Plan 9 again, but I can assure you of three things; one, it will not be the Passport DVD edition despite the fact it can be had on Amazon for $3.19 and less; two, I will not watch it on such an incredibly hot day with aching legs unless I am in an air-conditioned hotel room sitting in an in room whirlpool tub; and three, I will not watch it without companionship, and by that I mean Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, Captain Morgan or some of their ilk.  I give Plan 9 From Outer Space a dismal (and deservedly so) 1/2 star.  When it comes to cheesy so bad it’s funny movie watching, I think I’ll stick with Absolute Zero and the wind that could flip an SUV but couldn’t pick up an 8-year-old girl or close an open car door.  That’s some good bad movie making.