I have no idea how to properly convey how important this movie is to me.
Directed, written, produced, co-scored, co-edited, set designed, costumed and starring Alejandro Jodorowsky, this is a film that reduces me to tears at times if I even think about it.
Words will fail to explain what this means. This is an absolute movie, one that can only be explained by those that have experienced it, meditated on it and have been changed by it.
The story comes from Ascent of Mount Carmel by John of the Cross and Mount Analogue by Rene Daumal, an unfinished book that is nearly all allegory. The end — which is not an end but a beginning — is what Jodorowsky felt was the proper way to finish the story.
I find it hard to watch all of this film in one sitting, as the bursts of images unlock such deep emotions within me that I can only fully explain months after the watch is over.
Last year, I went through a professional divorce. In an attempt at trying to mend fences and rebuild the relationship, I gave away my blu ray of this film. It was, quite honestly, my most prized possession. It was an attempt to divest myself of material objects and destroy my ego, to lay myself bare and show that I was ready to continue the journey that we had started together. “I want you to have this,” I barely choked out. “This is my heart.”
I don’t know if my former co-founder ever watched this film. The fact that it never came up again told me what I needed to know. I’ve grown past this pain, which nearly ruined my love of film.
Instead, I have decided to move on, to take my own journey. The loss of this film was just the loss of a blu ray. Its lessons have not disappeared, the power that it has over me has not grown dim. If anything, I have reflected on my own path up and down the mountain and found that I have not regretted a step.
I really tried to go all three weeks of Mexican films without a lucha libre film, but man, when it’s one this strange, I couldn’t help myself.
Before Tyler Mane played Michael Myers in two Rob Zombie films, he was known in Mexico as El Nitron. Here, he plays El Vampiro Interespacial, who is conquering the galaxy. A space prince tries to get away, which brings him, as always happens, to Earth.
Lucadores de las Estrellas has a simple premise but presents a movie perfect to run in the background of any party.
A girl from the spaceship comes to Earth and decides to take over the life of a deceased singer named Larossa. She’s played by Gloria Mayo, who was also Adriana in Santo vs. the She-Wolves and also in the baffling Vampiro, Guerrero de la Noche.
Luckily, she finds El Mistioso and El Volador(who would one day become Super Parka and whose son Volador Jr. is a big star in CMLL today), who teach her all about drinking beer and wrestling. They end up having an empty arena match with Nitron, as well as another match filled with the lucha stars of 1992, such as Satanico, Pirata Morgan, MS-1, Blue Demon Jr., Ponzoña, Bestia Salvaje, Janette, Martha Villalobos, Cynthia and more.
The evil minis that hang out with Nitron and sound like chickens are played by some major mini-luchas: Mascarita Sagrada, Aguilita Solitaria and Espectrito.
The idea for this film was a combination between Antonio Peña, who would soon leave to form AAA in the biggest Mexican wrestling news of perhaps all time, along with Ramón T. Cerro (who was also part of the team that made the Vampiro movie), Francisco Alonso Lutteroth (also known as Paco Alonso, perhaps the most powerful man in Mexican wrestling in the latter half of the 20th century) and Mayo.
This film is everything it should be: fights, a little romance, no small amount of comedy, masked men and aliens. All films should be this much fun.
If you’ve spent any amount of time at B&S About Movies, you’re sick of our waxing nostalgic for USA Network’s “Night Flight” weekend, four-hour programming block that ran on Friday and Saturday nights . . . it’s what got us through middle school and high school, and even college, from 1981 to 1988. But what more can we say about the visual-arts magazine and variety program that hasn’t already been said? Just drop “USA Night Flight” into Google or You Tube or Letterbox’d and you’ll have a good night’s nostalgic reading n’ watch.
The snack bar will be open in five minutes. . . and we don’t pee in the popcorn (you’ll get the “joke,” soon)!
The great news is that “Night Flight” is back as an online subscription service, Night Flight Plus, and as an entertainment news and information site at Night Flight.com. The greatest aspect of the new online version of “Night Flight” is their programming of a whole new batch of quirky, underground programming — such as I’m Now: The Story of Mudhoney, American Hardcore, and L7: Pretend We’re Dead — in addition to streaming all of the ’80s classics we know and love: such as the films on tonight’s Drive-In roster:Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, Liquid Sky, The Brain, and Kentucky Fried Movie.
So strap on the popcorn bucket and lite up that cathode ray tube. Let’s rock!
Sam, the chief cook and bottlewasher at B&S About Movies (I just clean the grease pits, scub the grills, and mop up around here the best I can), loves this movie (as do I). And we’re both gobsmacked as to how acclaimed screenwriter Nancy Dowd made her debut with, of all things, the raunchy Paul Newman-starring sports comedy Slap Shot. Then to the Oscar-winning war drama Coming Home and the acclaimed prison flick Straight Time with Dustin Hoffman. Then one of the best football flicks of all time, North Dallas Forty. Then a second Oscar winner with family drama, Ordinary People . . . to end up with a movie that was only seen by a mass audience courtesy of USA’s “Night Flight” overnight-weekend hodgepodge sandwiched between rock videos and film shorts.
How?
Well, it’s because Nancy Dowd met music impresario Lou Adler. And we met her “Rob Morton” nom de plume as result. And her rock-centric statement on female empowerment — that could have ranked alongside Times Sqaure as the greatest female empowerment rock flick of all time — became, as we look back on the film all these years later, as a slightly creepy titillation fest. Could you imagine Tim Curry’s DJ Johnny LaGuardia leering endlessly at Pammy and Nicky with the same camera-lingering “male gaze” as on Corrine, Jessica, and Tracy?
True, Adler had the rock-centric Cheech and Chong’s Up In Smoke under his director’s belt, and it was a huge hit for a first-time director. But that feature film debut for the stoner comedy-duo was not so much a narrative-movie, but a series of dope-inspired skits masquerading as a movie (as is the case with our fourth flick on tonight’s program). And sure, Adler produced The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and it was a huge midnight movie. But it was also huge a box office boondoggle during its initial release. In the end, as with the equally successful film composer and arranger Richard Baskin (Nashville, Welcome to L.A., Honeysuckle Rose) taking his first step behind the camera with the disaster that was 1983’s Rock ‘N’ Roll Hotel, Alder probably should have stuck to his forte as a record producer and music svengali and shouldn’t have been directing a movie in the first place.
In then end, while our big brothers and sisters were out hitting the rock clubs and going to concerts, we, the wee-lads haunting the middle school halls and shopping malls, fell in love with Diane Lane courtesy of Nancy Dowd’s well-intentioned rock flick airing on the USA Network. It’s what geeky, socially maladjusted kids did back then. And besides: where else can you get a punk-supergroup comprised of Paul Simonon from the Clash on bass and the Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones and Paul Cook on guitar and drums (and journeyman Brit-actor Ray Winstone from the Who’s Quadrophenia) as The Looters?
Factoid: The Looters were actually . . . the Professionals, Jones and Cook’s first post-Sex Pistols band (rounded out by guitarist Ray McVeigh and bassist Paul Myers). You can listen to their one and only album, 1981’s I Didn’t See It Coming released on Virgin Records, on You Tube. “Join the Professionals” from the film eventually ended up on the 2001 CD reissue. The Professionals, sans Jones, is back in business since 2017 and you can visit them on Facebook.
Update, 2022: In addition to a second take on this film by contributor Jennifer Upton (the main link, above, takes you to Sam’s view), Imprint now offers a one-disc 2 K Blu-ray version, to be release on December 16, 2022. You can learn more at Blu-ray.com.
It goes without saying that we, the wee-lads spending our Friday and Saturday nights by a cathode ray tube’s glow, watched an edited version (as with the Mike Ness and Social Distortion-starring Another State of Mind) of this . . . well, as Sam pointed out in his review . . . we’re not really sure.
It’s a dizzying kaleidoscope of colors, music, and fashion about New York’s City’s night-life denizens falling victim to endorphin-addicted aliens extracting the “Liquid Sky” chemical from human brains during sexual orgasms — and when the human’s die happy, the aliens suck up all of that energy as well. And to what end, who knows? And who cares: it was on Variety’s top-grossing film chart for over half a year.
Star Anne Carlisle, who played both male and female roles in the film, also starred in Susan Sidelman’s (Smithereens; with Richard Hell of Blank Generation) Desperately Seeking Susan and appeared as the transvestite Gwendoline in Crocodile Dundee (You Tube). Oh, you’ll remember that “Sheila.”
INTERMISSION: The shorts Hardware Wars (1977), Recorded Live (1975), Living Dolls (1980), Arcade Attack (1982)* and Porklips Now* (1980).
Ah . . . more sinfully-quenching brain fluids courtesy of “Night Flight.”
What more can we say about this Canuxploitation shocker from writer-director Ed Hunt? If he can’t go “all in,” he just doesn’t make a movie at all: you never get run-of-the-mill storytelling with Eddie-boy. And to that not-run-of-the-mill end: you’ll root for the evil alien (we think it’s “alien”) Brain and not the dick-whiny high school hero and his screechy girlfriend. That’ll never happen in a mainstream movie and that’s what made The Brain perfect, gooey fodder for us, the wee-tween denizens of the “Night Flight” hoards.
What’s it all about? Hallucinations of inward-pressing walls, come-live teddy bears bleeding from the eyes, demon hands tearing through walls, and monster tentacles punching out of TV sets. It’s about mind control of the Don Coscarelli’s Phantasmand David Cronenberg’s Videodrome variety. It’s about Dr. Carl Hill from Re-Animator as a self-help guru of wayward teens. It’s about a giant-brain-with-teeth that munches on nosey lab assistants, it’s . . . oh, just watch it!!
“The popcorn you’ve just been eating has been pissed in. Film at 11.”
And with that “classic” line, disconnect your brain and just roll with the childish insanity of John Landis, Jerry and David Zucker, and Jim Abrahams — before they unleashed the likes of National Lampoon’s Animal House, The Blues Brothers, Airplane!, and The Naked Gun upon us, the wee triplex hoards (with our older ‘rents or brothers and sisters in support). This quartet of box office-bonanza writer-directors had to start somewhere . . . and Kentucky Fried Movie is it . . . and we love them for this beautiful mess of a “movie” that we watched on USA’s “Night Flight” and taped-from-cable via HBO.
Back in the day, the ‘rents let us watch Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert and NBC-TV’s The Midnight Special. But under no circumstances were we allowed to watch Saturday Night Live. It was “inappropriate” for us. It was “for the adults.” But thanks to HBO and USA, this “film” comprised of non-narrative sketches and parodies of popular films and TV commercials got by our parental guidance sensors.
This cleaned up at the Drive-Ins during its initial release, and yes, that was a night where you were stuck with a babysitter, as mom and dad went for a “night out” — without you. As I watch this all these years later — as with Midnight Cowboy with Dustin Hoffman, Shampoo with Warren Beatty, and Patty Duke in Valley of the Dolls — I fail to see what all the fuss was about.
Yeah, Kentucky Fried Movie is all about “the times” and a case of “you had to be there.” And to that end: if you’re watching this for the first time in 2020, you’ll either love it for its nostalgia, or dismissed it — the same way we then kids dismissed our elder’s variety TV series from the 1940s and 1950s — as “dorky.”
And that’s our show!
Be sure to join us for “Rock ‘n’ Roll Week” coming Sunday, June 19 and running until Saturday, June 25, as we’ll be reviewing a few more of the films we enjoyed as part of The USA Network’s “Night Flight” weekend programming block.
* While we recall watching Arcade Attack and Porklips Now on HBO, readers have told us both shorts also aired on the USA Network. It’s possible, as we recall seeing all of the above shorts on HBO, as well.
Special Thanks: To Jennifer Carroll for reminding us about Living Dolls. Great catch, Jen!It ran not only on USA’s Night Flight, but during USA’s Saturday Nightmares and Commander USA’s Groovie Movies.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes forB&S About Movies.
Benito also directedMunecos Infernales, Santo vs. the Zombiesand the astoundingly titled Frankenstein el Vampiro y Compania. This time, he’s sending his movie up north where Espiritismo will become Spiritism thanks to K. Gordon Murray.
This goes the Monkey’s Paw one better by having Satan himself grant the wishes. I mean, when the Lord of Lies is giving things away, that’s when you start questioning things.
This movie features a character so clueless that she goes to a seance for herself, which sounds like a joke I should be saving for the next time someone wants to play The Dozens against me.
Within a depressing Mexico City circus, 13-year-old Alma is a fire-breathing, trapeze-swinging young woman who is in love with her father Renato, a dying clown. She wants to give birth to the child they’ve conceived together and their sin of incest leads to her walking the streets. There, she joins a group of puppeteers who present shows that preach the word of God. However, even in this new world, Alma cannot escape the sin that she feels will never be absolved.
Once she learns that she will never be accepted in this new church, Alma becomes the despoiler and the destroyer, leaving behind only flames.
I’ve seen this compared to Santa Sangre, which I feel was a much better film. This is interesting but never seems to reach the heights of that film. That said, you should check it out and see what you think.
You may worry that you haven’t seen the first two Aztec Mummy films, but trust me, there are so many recaps here that you’ll get caught up really soon.
Somehow, Dr. Krupp has come back from a snakepit to become The Bat and lead a whole new gang. To get what he wants — that gold breastplate that has led him to battle Popoca, Dr. Eduardo Almada, Flor and Pinacate across this film series — he’s made a robot with a human brain that can deliver electronic shocks through its clawed hands.
If you learn anything from this film, maybe you shouldn’t. Aztecs never practiced mummification and used hieroglyphic writing, instead using cremation or simple burial, as well as pictographs. Maybe the filmmakers meant the Incans and the Mayans? Well, they buried Popoca as if he were an Egyptian style mummy, but one thinks that they based that knowledge on Universal horror movies and not any textbook.
K. Gordon Murray seems like the perfect person — if Jerry Warren wasn’t going to do it — to bring this movie to the U.S. as The Curse of the Aztec Mummy. None of the voices seem like they fit the characters — which if you know the world of Murray’s films — makes perfect sense.
The evil gangster Dr. Krupp escapes from the police and hypnotizes Flor into telling him where the mummy’s tomb is. But didn’t the tomb and the mummy himself get blown up real good in the last movie? Why should we let common sense get in the way of things when there’s a masked wrestler named The Angel showing up to help the forces of good?
You know what Krupp gets for his trouble? Popoca comes back, kills every one of his men and then throws the baddy into a pit of snakes. Watching that, Flor and her leading man say, “Let’s get married.” That seems to make sense after you’ve seen an undead version of your past life lover kill everyone and everything just. to get a gold breastplate back.
Across three movies all shot at the same time, Popoca the Aztec Mummy wreaked havoc across Mexico before his adventures were remixed by — you guessed it — Jerry Warren and retitled Attack of the Mayan Mummy. His version ends with the mummy killed by a car off-camera in one of the most anti-climactic scenes I’ve seen in a horror film.
Popoca was buried alive after being caught having an affair with Xochitl, who was put to death for her sin. Popoca must forever guard her remains within the Great Pyramid of Yucatán for his sins.
As we move into modern times, Dr. Eduardo Almada uses hypnosis to get his fiancee Flor Sepúlveda to go back to her past lives. You guessed it, she’s really Xochitl. They use her memories to find the pyramid and take a gold breastplate, which brings Popoca back from the dead. As things happen, some gangsters get involved as well, as they want the treasures protected by the mummy.
Obviously, this movie is incredibly influenced by the Universal series of films, down to the lighting and music.
This film is 80 minutes, but the net two films are much shorter while filled with flashbacks to this movie.
This Arturo Martinez-directed film — he also made Macabre Legends of the Colonyand The Mummies of San Angel — is quite literally an all-star team-up of two of Mexico’s most well-known horror actors.
He must deal with German Robles character, who is the dark leader of a Satanic church. Robles is perhaps best known for playing Count Karol de Lavud in El Vampiro and Nostradamus in the serial that gave birth to four different vampire films. He also played Satan in 1970’s El Pistolera Fantasma.
It doesn’t help that Robles’ character can help the blind see and the lame walk. How can the church keep up with that? Well, this being Mexican film, the Satanic priest also starts making his way through the wives and daughters of the village of San Andres, who are left mumbling, “The word of the envoy has penetrated my mind.”
After a Black Mass where Robles eats a girl’s heart and then nearly kills the older priest, there’s only one way to fix everything. Cordero must put on a crown of thrones and carrying a cross through the streets of his city.
My favorite part of this movie that was even after reducing the evil priest to a quivering mass of guts and bones, he keeps laughing. If you ever wanted to see the Mexican version of Needful Things mixed with the right parts of The Devil’s Rain!, this movie is the spicy recipe you’re after.
The title of this film is The Throne of Hell and madre de dios do I have a story to tell you about it. This movie is quite literally everything you want a 1994 cheaply made Mexican movie about possession to be, and by that, I mean it’s packed with gore and bad taste. That’s pretty much the description for nearly every movie that I love.
A group of archeologists excavating some Aztec ruins in Mexico City uncover a bizarre jar that has fumes that come out of it and before you can say Pazuzu, the main one has been possessed and begins wiping out people in all sorts of creative ways, like crucifying a woman upside down with a crown of thorns.
If you wonder, “Will they slowly take the nails out and have blood spray everywhere?” you have been watching too many Mexican horror films just like me.
A Catholic bishop figures out the solution: call for the Angel, who can walk on water and already has a demon-killing sword which may be Excalibur and the Seven Seals. Luckily, they also have a giant attache case with a gleaming gold shield, too. He’s some kind of Templar Knight. The big bad turns into a rubber-suited monster and they do battle.
This movie moves slowly in points and at other times, it rewards you with scenes of priests being launched out of windows and cops exploding. There’s also a solar eclipse and an earthquake, if you’re into those kinds of things.
Sergio Goyri plays both the knight and directed this, so I’m kind of hoping that it was some kind of crazy passion project. Every time I was ready to check out, this movie would reward me with something off the wall.
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