April 8: Zoo Lover’s Day — You know what that means. Animal attack films!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adam Hursey is a pharmacist specializing in health informatics by day, but his true passion is cinema. His current favorite films are Back to the Future, Stop Making Sense, and In the Mood for Love. He has written articles for Film East and The Physical Media Advocate, primarily examining older films through the lens of contemporary perspectives. He is usually found on Letterboxd, where he mainly writes about horror and exploitation films. You can follow him on Letterboxd or Instagram at ashursey. His April Movie Thon list is here.

Louisiana has many problems, one of which is an invasive species of rat called nutria. These pests are indigenous to South America, but ended up in Louisiana in the 1930s in an attempt to cultivate a fur industry. It did not result in a profitable, lucrative market, and many of the creatures were released into the wild (along with a hurricane in the 1940s that provided an escape for the nutria). Turns out that the climate and environment of South Louisiana was ideal for the proliferation of the animal, and they began to destroy the wetlands and the overall ecosystem of the area.

As a native of Louisiana, I can tell you that there is always a solution to any vermin problem–if you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em! And that’s just what New Orleans chef Paul Prudhomme attempted to do in the 1990s. He had already basically decimated the redfish population in Louisiana’s waters by serving it blackened with a ramekin of butter on the side. Perhaps he could rebrand nutria into the next local delicasse. Slip it into a gumbo. An ètouffèe. Simply batter it and fry it. Heck, put it in the school lunches. It tastes like chicken, right? In this case, rabbit or turkey.

Turns out even people from Louisiana will not eat just anything. Or at least not pay top dollar for it in a fancy restaurant. Cajuns in South Louisiana, as put on display in the regional eco-thriller Terror in the Swamp, would have no issues catching anything that moves and finding a use for all of the animal’s parts. As two characters joke in the film, “How many Cajuns does it take to catch a possum? Two. One to catch it, and one to watch for cars”. Poor Boudreaux and Thibodeaux. Will they never learn?

In Terror in the Swamp, the thought of nutria as a food source does not really play a role in the plot. Instead, it is all about the fur. Some biologists have released something that has mutated a nutria into a Bigfoot-type monster stalking the bayou. Once a reward for the beast is posted, every redneck in the parish is ready with their shotgun and their boat. Just be sure to have the proper hunting license so you do not get into trouble with the game warden.

Unfortunately, Terror in the Swamp is not as exciting as I had hoped. Directed by Joe Catalanotto, the influence that Charles B. Pierce had on him is very evident. While Catalanotto worked on The Town That Dreaded Sundown, it is Pierce’s The Legend of Boggy Creek and springs to mind every time you see a man in a hairy suit traipsing about the Louisiana bayou. Couldn’t we have at least gotten a close up of those carrot-orange teeth nutria have?

Even as a defender of Louisiana regional horror, I cannot get too excited to recommend Terror in the Swamp to anyone. Unless you are from Louisiana I guess. It’s always nice to have some sort of representation on screen. To those who are starving, even the bitter tastes sweet. Speaking of starving, I could go for a little something. I wonder how nutria would taste in a jambalaya? Probably pretty good as long as you season it properly.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. You can listen to her podcast at https://thecinemajunction.com. 

Her latest book is Japanese Cult Cinema: Best of the Second Golden Age. She writes for Horror & Sons and Drive-in Asylum. She has also appeared on the podcasts Japan on Film, Making Tarantino, Making Scorsese, The Rad Revivalhouse and contributes to Cinemaforce. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or follow her on Instagram @jennxlondon. 

April 8: Zoo Lover’s Day — You know what that means. Animal attack films!

The artwork on the VHS cover for this hard-to-find early ‘80s thriller promises a vicious ghost monster dog. First, we get a better-than-average look at the horrors of renting a room in a shared house in the middle of the woods in Texas. 

The movie begins with the handsome Ken moving into the old stone manor and getting to know the other six tenants. Mitch Pileggi (The X-Files) plays Woody, the roommate from Hell. A “macho” guy in the attic room who delights in bullying the others and playing practical jokes. What an asshole. I would most definitely put cayenne pepper on his doorknob if I lived in this house. 

Then there’s Eisenhower or “Ike.” A war-obsessed whiny postal worker with a vicious dog who looks like a young Howard Stern. Ike is carrying a torch for Sharon – one of two unfortunate women who live in the house. We also have Jerry. A nice, young guy who indexes books for a living. The most horrifying job in all of publishing.  Jerry is terrified of dogs, having been bit by one as a child. He’s nervous and prone to nightmares so naturally, he’s the first character to sense when something supernatural is going on. Of course, no one believes him. 

Woody shoots Ike’s dog when it bites someone. He later digs it up and puts in Ken’s bed as a practical joke when Sharon starts giving Ken attention. 

The joke goes awry and Ken is accidentally electrocuted by an old lamp introduced as a clear health and safety violation in the first scene. 

The next night, Woody’s new puppy is disemboweled by an invisible growling entity. It also kills Ike. 

When a detective comes to take statements, Landlord Aldo Ray bursts through the door in all his Aldo glory demanding to know “What have these people done this time?” Ray’s commitment to playing his character with utter contempt toward his tenants is part of the reason why I enjoyed this movie immensely. 

We’ve all had a slumlord like this, right? The kind that doesn’t replace faulty lamps and then gets pissed off when people get electrocuted because, “It’ll give me a bad name!” Later, he bursts out of the bushes with a flashlight under his face at 4:30 am and summarily evicts everyone with no paperwork. No notice? “My shotgun’s all the notice I need!” I seriously love watching older actors portraying grumpy characters later in their careers. Ray Milland, are you listening? Aldo is giving you a run for your money in this film. 

The finale features a nice twist ending where there’s no ghost dog at all. It’s Jerry who turns out to be the worst kind of roommate a person can possibly have. He’s not a werewolf. He’s a feral maniac. Aldo dispatches Jerry with his boomstick, saves Sharon and the credits roll. Landlord Aldo was right. All he needed was his shotgun. We should have listened. 

There’s very little gore here. The movie functions best when it’s simply showing us the characters interact. All the actors are fully onboard with this movie. It’s a shame Robert A. Burns didn’t write or direct another feature-length project. Its dark, dry humor struck the perfect tone. Fingers crossed a boutique label puts this one out someday! 

You can watch it here, complete with a set of great trailers from the original VHS: https://www.facebook.com/TCSMFilmLocations/videos/robert-a-burns-mongrel-1982/1647824725372338/

April 8: Zoo Lover’s Day — You know what that means. Animal attack films!

Mai (Sombat Metanee) was once on the side of the law but is now a mercenary and the leader of a gang that uses rampaging elephants to get their way. But when his pregnant wife Shu (Aranya Namwong) is taken by an even more evil criminal (keep in mind they have stolen her back and forth throughout this movie), he must work with corrupt cop Ching Ming (Yodchai Meksuwan) to rescue her.

This is kind of a Western. While most Westerns give you horse chases, this movie gives you elephants flipping cars like they’re made of cardboard and stomping goons into the dirt. In the most did I really just see that moment of the film, one unlucky stuntman gets slapped across the face with — and there’s no polite way to put this — elephant cock. It’s the kind of practical effect you just don’t get in Hollywood.

I usually associate huts exploding with the Filipino action boom of the 80s, but Thailand was light-years ahead in the blowing up grass-roofed real estate department, if this movie is to be believed. 

The version floating around on Tubi is dubbed by a single voice actor who sounds like he’s reading a grocery list while recovering from a mild sedative. He provides the voices for the hero, the villain and possibly the elephants. He was likely dubbing five other features that afternoon and had a bus to catch, so we have to cut him some slack.

Also known as Rumbling the Elephant and Kill for the Truth, this has proved what I have always believed. Elephants make everything better. Whether they are being used as tactical assault vehicles, just hanging out in the background of a shootout or just standing still while a man runs face-first into their veiny pricks, they bring a dignity to the screen that the human actors just can’t match.

You can watch this on Tubi.

April 7: Jackie Day — Celebrate Jackie Chan’s birthday!

While the world celebrates the man, the myth, and the jumping-off-buildings legend, there’s no better way to honor Jackie Chan than by revisiting the high-octane, bone-crunching sequel that defined his Golden Era: Police Story 2.

If the first film was a lightning bolt, the sequel is a sustained thunderstorm of choreography and pyrotechnics. Here is a deeper look into the chaos, the comedy, and the literal blood, sweat, and tears that went into this masterpiece.

Chan Ka-kui (Jackie) is back in a film directed and co-written by Jackie. After Police Story, he’s been demoted to highway patrol, a change that delights his girlfriend May (Maggie Cheung), who is thrilled. No more death-defying stunts, just speeding tickets. But peace is short-lived. The man he arrested, Chu Tu (Chor Yuen) and his henchman John Ko (Charlie Cho) have already been released from prison, as Chu Tu claims that he only has months to live. During that time, he plans to ruin Chan Ka-Kui’s life.

After they keep trying to get him to snap, he finally does once John Ko and some bad guys beat up May and her aunt (Lisa Chiao Chiao). He finds them in a restaurant and gets revenge, but is so embarrassed that he resigns from the police. He and May plan a vacation, but he can’t even go to a travel agency without a bomb threat calling him back to duty, just in time for the mall to blow up. At least he’s seen as a hero and welcomed back to the Royal Hong Kong police.

Now he has four new enemies —  Tall Pau Hung (Ben Lam), Ken (Yun-Kin Chow) and two bomb experts, one who is both deaf and mute (Benny Lai) — and by the end of the movie, they’ve kidnapped May and forced Jackie to wear a vest covered with explosives. 

Jackie learned to put bloopers at the end of the movie after making Cannonball Run. He didn’t really understand that these bloopers shouldn’t be life-threatening. In a terrifying sequence involving falling metal frames, a stunt went sideways. Maggie Cheung suffered a massive scalp laceration. The injury was so severe that she couldn’t finish filming her close-ups, which is why, in the final act, May is often seen from behind or with her face obscured. That’s actually Crystal Kwok filling in.

Jackie himself didn’t escape unscathed. During a stunt in which he was supposed to jump through a pane of glass, he accidentally aimed for the wrong one. Unlike the sugar glass used in Hollywood, this was real, thick glass, resulting in severe cuts across his body.

While Jackie is the face of the franchise, the Jackie Chan Stunt Team is the backbone. Mars (Cheung Wing-fat), Jackie’s long-time friend and stunt double, is the MVP here. Not only does he play a fellow officer, but he also stepped in for some of the most dangerous physical impacts. That iconic, wince-inducing moment where a character is kicked through a bus windshield? That’s all Mars.

Man, they could have made twenty of these movies and I would have seen every one of them. Police Story 2 perfectly balances Jackie’s signature slapstick with stakes humor and some of the most intricate playground-style fighting ever put to film (the playground fight itself is a masterclass in using the environment as a weapon).

It’s a reminder that back in the late 80s, Jackie Chan wasn’t just making movies. He was barely surviving them. Happy birthday, Jackie!

April 6: Independent-International: Write about a movie by Sam Sherman. Here’s a list.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adam Hursey is a pharmacist specializing in health informatics by day, but his true passion is cinema. His current favorite films are Back to the Future, Stop Making Sense, and In the Mood for Love. He has written articles for Film East and The Physical Media Advocate, primarily examining older films through the lens of contemporary perspectives. He is usually found on Letterboxd, where he mainly writes about horror and exploitation films. You can follow him on Letterboxd or Instagram at ashursey. His April Movie Thon list is here.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I love that Adam did the same movie as me!

Why make an entirely new film when you can just add some sleaze to an existing one?

This philosophy was one avenue Independent-International Pictures travelled when releasing motion pictures in the 1960s and 70s. Led by director Al Adamson and producer Sam Sherman, the production company released many profitable films to the drive-in circuit. One method the duo used would be to acquire European films that perhaps did not provide financial success upon initial release and shoot some additional footage that could be inserted into it for a more sensational experience.

Case in point: Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In 1965, German director Gèza von Radvànyi adapted Harriet Beecher Stowe’s iconic novel of American slavery, turning it into a 170 minute epic that did not catch on with audiences, despite premiering at the Cannes Film Festival. Rights to the film were sold to Kroger Babb, one of the most famous exploitation producers who might be best known for his “sex hygiene” film Mom and Dad. Babb cut the film down to 110 minutes and released it in 1975 under the title Cassy (a minor yet important character in the film), but the movie again failed to attract an audience. By the time Sam Sherman and Al Adamson got involved, the year was 1977, and “slavesploitation” was suddenly a hot commodity thanks to Mandingo and Roots. But the content would need to be beefed up for tickets to be sold. No problem. Adamson shot some scenes of rape, interracial love, and torture, and these scenes were (pretty seamlessly) added into the original picture.

I would love to set my eyes on Radvànyi’s original film. Starring Herbert Lom as slave trader Simon Legree, Uncle Tom’s Cabin pulls no punches in showing the struggles of individuals at the hands of such a merciless individual. Uncle Tom, along with other slaves, is sold to Legree to help settle some debts of his owner. Legree is a memorable villain, and Lom’s performance, behind his scarred face, is just the type of person viewers would love to hate. 

Is it possible that the exploitative scenes added by Adamson and Sherman actually do improve the film? Perhaps. There is no doubt as to which scenes were added. And these scenes definitely made me sit up in my chair a bit straighter. As someone who has never read the novel, the film made me research the differences between Stowe’s tome and adaptations over the years. In this version, after attempting to flood the cotton crop, the runaway slaves run into the welcoming arms of the saintly men of a Catholic mission. This ending might have been added to cater to European sensibilities.

But what about the stereotype of the Uncle Tom character himself? In this film, Uncle Tom lays down his life protecting others, a far cry from how Uncle Tom is discussed today as a man who would do anything to please his masters for self-preservation. Turns out the character in this film is closer to the one created by Stowe. Uncle Tom is a Christ-like figure, intentionally written this way to appeal to Christian readers in an attempt to convert them to the abolitionist cause. It worked. As the film announces via a title card at the beginning of the picture, Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped propel Abraham Lincoln’s desire to end the practice of slavery in the United States.

It is amazing to think that an exploitation version of a German film about America’s darkest period in history can actually educate. Will I now read the book I’ve put off reading for so long? Maybe. Of course, I have too many movies to watch to actually read a novel. And many more Al Adamson films to see–Uncle Tom’s Cabin is only the second of his films I’ve seen. I have so much work to do.

April 6: Independent-International: Write about a movie by Sam Sherman. Here’s a list.

The source material for this movie is Géza von Radványi’s 1965 epic, a massive, $5 million European co-production that featured Herbert Lom (yes, Chief Inspector Dreyfus himself) and Gert Fröbe (Goldfinger!). It was meant to be a prestigious, sweeping adaptation of the Stowe classic.

It had already been released by none other than Kroger Babb in 1969 (thanks, Good Efficient Butchery) with an hour chopped off. He re-released it under the name Cassy, and it bombed again.

Enter Sam Sherman. He looked at this three-hour prestige piece and saw a void where the commercial elements should be.

Needing money, Babb sold it to him, and Sherman had Al Adamson cut forty more minutes off the already-trimmed-down Babb cut. When Napoleon (Aziz Saad) is killed by an alligator, he cut that part and has an entirely different actor, Prentiss Moulden, take over. Napoleon makes it to a plantation where the widow Melissa (Mary Ann Jenson) is, well, inserted into the Herman Lom villain-led film. As she nurses him back to health, she also ends up asking him to hold her, and then that gives us a whole bunch of lovemaking, which only ends when three bounty hunters catch him, sexually assault him and then pour burning oil all over him while we watch. Marilyn Joi also shows up as a runaway slave who also gets raped, because that’s what audiences were looking for in 1977, said no one other than raincoaters.

In the original, Uncle Tom (John Kitzmiller) dies and forgives the whites for how they treated his people. In this one, well, everyone who had been impacted by the slavers gets some revenge, including castration. We close on the bad guys getting lynched, which is exactly the kind of revenge Southern whites feared. 

This was re-released yet again three years later as White Trash Woman. RIP Sam Sherman. I can only assume that they cremated you, because after watching this, I have no idea what size coffin could contain balls as big as yours.