BLUE MONKEY (Canada - 1987) Directed by William Fruet. Written by George Goldsmith. Cast: Steve Railsback, Gwynyth Walsh, John Vernon, Susan Anspach, Joe Flaherty, Robin Duke, Don Lake, Helen Hughes, Sandy Webster, Joy Coghill, Stuart Stone, Sarah Polley, Peter Van Wart, Cynthia Belliveau, Philip Akin, Dan Lett, Michael J. Reynolds, Ivan E. Roth. (R, 96 mins) A cult classic due almost entirely to its ridiculous title, 1987's BLUE MONKEY is a low-budget Canadian monster movie that's a blatant response to the previous year's box-office smash ALIENS and, to a lesser extent, David Cronenberg's remake of THE FLY. A staple of any self-respecting video store back in the day, BLUE MONKEY has been MIA in the modern era but has just resurfaced on Blu-ray from Code Red offshoot Dark Force (the print used has the alternate title INSECT), because physical media is dead. It's moderately entertaining trash if approached with realistic expectations, with plenty of slime, ooze, and general grossness to go along with some generally well-done practical creature FX. It's got an eclectic mix of American and Canadian faces and an energetic score by Patrick Coleman and Paul Novotny that would be right at home in something from Empire Pictures. And it boasts a fine cult B-movie pedigree with a script by FORCE: FIVE and CHILDREN OF THE CORN screenwriter George Goldsmith and reliable Canuxploitation director William Fruet (THE HOUSE BY THE LAKE, FUNERAL HOME, SPASMS, BEDROOM EYES) at the helm, guided by executive producer Sandy Howard, a noted purveyor of '80s exploitation who bankrolled hits like VICE SQUAD and ANGEL.
Released in the fall of 1987 by the short-lived Spectrafilm, BLUE MONKEY opens with elderly handyman Fred (Sandy Webster) flirting with sweet old Marwella (Helen Hughes) before being bitten by an insect hiding in one of her plants. He's rushed to the local hospital where he loses consciousness just as a worm-like parasite slithers out of his mouth. At the same time, intense, on-the-edge cop Bishop (intense, on-the-edge Steve Railsback) arrives with his partner (Peter Van Wart), who's just been shot during a stakeout. Soon, the paramedics who brought in Fred fall ill and the parasite is moved to a lab while the ER's Dr. Carson (Gwynyth Walsh) and Dr. Glass (Susan Anspach) wait for the arrival of renowned entomologist Dr. Jacobs (Don Lake). When horny nurse Alice (Cynthia Belliveau) is left in charge of watching the secured parasite but sneaks off with douchebag orderly Ted (Dan Lett), a quartet of adorable ragamuffins from the pediatric ward (including an eight-year-old Sarah Polley in one of her earliest credits) sneak into the lab and pour a chemical on the parasite that causes it to grow and mutate, escaping from the lab and hiding in the basement boiler room. With the parasitic virus infecting the hospital, the health department orders the entire building closed and the people in it quarantined, much to the chagrin of bloviating hospital director Levering (John Vernon, cast radically against type as "John Vernon"). This also makes for a long night, as the growing and rapidly spawning, hermaphrodite creature (played by Ivan E. Roth) periodically pops up to snatch victims to use as incubators for its asexually-produced eggs, with Jacobs predicting there could be an untold number of these creatures in the hospital by morning.
Originally set to be released as GREEN MONKEY, as if that makes a difference, BLUE MONKEY has an OK set-up and third act, but the midsection is filled with an awful lot of ass-dragging, with people endlessly wandering around dark corridors or heading to the boiler room to watch the creature lay its eggs. The kids run around the hospital and cause trouble, and unfunny comic relief is provided by usually reliable SCTV stars Joe Flaherty and Robin Duke (also an SNL vet) as the Bakers, dorky expectant parents who show up to deliver the baby even though she isn't in labor yet, but obnoxious Mr. Baker's scientific calculations have determined that today is the day. Anspach's promising early '70s career (FIVE EASY PIECES, BLUME IN LOVE) had pretty much flamed out by the time she was turning up in stuff like BLUE MONKEY, and neither she nor Vernon have very much to do as both vanish for long stretches, perhaps pleading with their respective agents to get them some more reputable gigs.
Railsback is typically Railsbackian, a quirky actor who was briefly the Nicolas Cage of his day after his mesmerizing performance as Charles Manson in the hugely popular 1976 CBS miniseries HELTER SKELTER. That led to the title role opposite Peter O'Toole in 1980's highly-acclaimed, Oscar-nominated THE STUNT MAN, but beyond that, 1980s Hollywood never really could figure out what to do with him. Railsback was a promising actor who just came off as too twitchy and weird to make it as an A-list leading man, like a Christopher Walken or a Jeff Goldblum minus the eccentric sense of humor and the winking self-awareness. Even when he's playing the hero in BLUE MONKEY, he manages to look like a creep in physical pain when he's goofing off with the kids. Railsback had a long run in cult movies throughout the '80s--Brian Trenchard-Smith's ESCAPE 2000 and Tobe Hooper's LIFEFORCE being the standouts--and he did manage one more critically-acclaimed performance in the 1985 cocaine addiction drama TORCHLIGHT, but by 1987, BLUE MONKEY was typical of the kind of B-movie and straight-to-video gigs he was getting. In the '90s, he would occasionally land supporting roles in major releases like IN THE LINE OF FIRE, BARB WIRE, and DISTURBING BEHAVIOR, and managed to channel some of that Manson insanity when he landed the title role in the barely-released 2001 indie ED GEIN. Now 74, Railsback works much less frequently these days, most recently appearing in an apparently unreleased 2019 horror movie called IT WANTS BLOOD! with such convention luminaries as Eric Roberts, Felissa Rose, Ola Ray, Tuesday Knight, and Brinke Stevens.
Directed by Denis Heroux. Written by Michel Parry. Cast: Peter Cushing, Samantha Eggar, Ray Milland, Susan Penhaligon, Donald Pleasence, Alexandra Stewart, John Vernon, Joan Greenwood, Catherine Begin, Roland Culver, Chloe Franks, Renee Girard, Katrina Holden, Jean Leclerc, Sean McCann, Donald Pilon, Simon Williams. (Unrated, 89 mins) Pioneered by 1945's DEAD OF NIGHT, the portmanteau horror anthology format became a durable subgenre in the 1960s with TV shows like ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, THE TWILIGHT ZONE, and THRILLER, and on the big screen with Roger Corman's 1962 Poe entry TALES OF TERROR and Mario Bava's 1964 classic BLACK SABBATH. The UK's Amicus Productions went all-in on the trend with titles like 1965's DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS, 1967's TORTURE GARDEN, 1970's THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD, 1972's ASYLUM and TALES FROM THE CRYPT, 1973's VAULT OF HORROR, and 1974's FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE. Horror's game-changer came with the release of 1973's THE EXORCIST, and despite attempts to stay current by upping the gore and T&A factor, the anthology, as well as the other kinds of more classically-oriented fare from Amicus and its more renowned contemporary Hammer, began to fall out of favor with audiences. The 1973 anthology TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS--with one segment devoted to a man's sexual obsession with an erotically-shaped tree stump--is easily the worst of the British portmanteau offerings, and the subgenre more or less faded away. The work of Stephen King would help revive the movement in America with 1982's CREEPSHOW and 1985's CAT'S EYE, but in the meantime, Amicus closed up shop in 1977 but co-chair Milton Subotsky kept the faith with a couple of tangential, Amicus-style stragglers. The wave of British horror anthologies dating back to 1965 came to a quiet end with 1981's generally lighthearted, Vincent Price-headlined THE MONSTER CLUB, which featured an obnoxious movie producer character named "Lintom Busotsky." Made at a time when slasher movies and innovative special effects were dominating the genre, THE MONSTER CLUB didn't even hit US theaters, instead going straight to syndicated TV.
An almost identical fate befell 1977's THE UNCANNY, which would be unseen in the US until it premiered on CBS in 1980. It establishes its British anthology bona fides by being co-produced by Subotsky and starring the ubiquitous Peter Cushing, but it's actually more a part of the Canadian tax shelter craze of the period. Shot and set in Montreal, THE UNCANNY is a triptych of unsolved, feline-related mysteries told in a framing device by nervous, paranoid writer Wilbur Gray (Cushing) to incredulous publisher Frank Richards (Ray Milland), who's having a hard time buying Gray's thesis that cats have a supernatural hold on their human owners. "London 1912" has wealthy, elderly spinster Miss Malkin (Joan Greenwood) cutting off her family and deciding to leave her vast fortune to her horde of cats, much to the chagrin of her scheming nephew Michael (Simon Williams) and her greedy housekeeper Janet (Susan Penhaligon). Janet manages to distract Miss Malkin's attorney (Roland Culver) and swipe the original copy of the new will from his briefcase and must get the other copy from her wall safe...but the cats have other ideas.
"Quebec Province 1975" has nine-year-old orphan Lucy (Katrina Holden, who would become an orphan herself a few years later and be adopted by her mother's friends Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland) and her cat Wellington sent to live with her aunt (Alexandra Stewart) and uncle (Donald Pilon) after her parents are killed in a plane crash. Her aunt takes an instant dislike to Wellington, but that's nothing compared to the scorn heaped on Lucy by her bratty, bitchy older cousin Angela (Chloe Franks), who resents no longer being the sole center of attention and sets out to make Lucy's life hell. Unfortunately for Angela, it seems that Lucy has been studying up on books belonging to her witchcraft-enthusiast mother. And "Hollywood 1936" has ludicrously-toupeed ham actor Valentine De'ath (Donald Pleasence) orchestrating the "accidental" death of his more famous wife Madeleine (Catherine Begin) on the set of his latest film DUNGEON OF HORROR. After a grieving period of a few minutes, De'ath insists to the producer (John Vernon) that the show must go on and suggests his wife's role be recast with his younger mistress Edina (Samantha Eggar), a woefully untalented ingenue who immediately moves into the De'ath mansion, much to the disapproval of Madeleine's beloved cats.
Director Denis Heroux and Samantha Eggar on the set of THE UNCANNY.
Written by Michel Parry (XTRO) and directed by Denis Heroux (JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS), THE UNCANNY has a few trips and stumbles along the way--while the grisliest segment by far, "London 1912" drags on too long, and there's some really bad dubbing of some of the supporting cast for no apparent reason, particularly Holden and Franks--but looking at it now on Severin's new Blu-ray (because physical media is dead), it's somewhat of an unsung gem from the waning, life-support days of the British portmanteau. It's always great to see Cushing in these things, and it's fun watching him be regarded with the kind of sneering, pompous derision that was late-career Milland's bread-and-butter. Anthology horror fans will also get a kick out of seeing a teenage Franks getting her just desserts several years after her unforgettable turn as Christopher Lee's witchcraft-practicing young daughter in the "Sweets to the Sweet" segment of THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD. Like any decent film of this sort should do, they save the best segment for last, with some absolutely terrific work by Pleasence and Eggar, both of whom get to show off rarely-utilized comedic skills as, respectively, the hapless Valentine De'ath--known as "V.D." to industry insiders--and his unbelievably dim mistress. Seemingly patterning her performance on Judy Holliday in BORN YESTERDAY, Eggar's scream queen screech is even worse than that terrible actress at the beginning of Brian De Palma's BLOW OUT, and is prone to obliviously saying things like, "Oh, V.D., I love you!" Lost in the shuffle thanks to a drastically changing genre landscape following the demonic horrors of THE EXORCIST and THE OMEN, THE UNCANNY probably seemed hopelessly antiquated in 1977, and it's little wonder why it completely bypassed American theaters. But time has been kind to it, and looking at it now reveals a surprisingly enjoyable mix of horror and inspired humor that's deserving of some appreciation. And of course, it doesn't miss the opportunity to deploy "What's the matter...cat got your tongue?" as an EC Comics-worthy punchline.
THE BLACK WINDMILL (US - 1974) Directed by Don Siegel. Written by Leigh Vance. Cast: Michael Caine, Donald Pleasence, Delphine Seyrig, Clive Revill, Janet Suzman, John Vernon, Joss Ackland, Catherine Schell, Joseph O'Conor, Denis Quilley, Derek Newark, Edward Hardwicke, Maureen Pryor, Molly Urquhart, Hermione Baddeley, Paul Moss, John Rhys-Davies. (PG, 106 mins) "If there are things about me that you hate, Alex...be grateful for them now." After setting up shop at Universal in the early 1970s, the producing team of Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown immediately knocked it out of the park by shepherding the Oscar-winning 1973 hit THE STING. The same year, they also produced the cult horror film SSSSSSS, and in 1974, gave the green light to Steven Spielberg's big-screen directing debut THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS. Impressed with the young director, they also produced his next film, JAWS, which set new standards for nationwide release strategies and defined the concept of the "summer blockbuster." In the midst of all this massive success for the Zanuck/Brown duo was 1974's THE BLACK WINDMILL, a kidnapping thriller that completely bombed with critics and audiences. Directed by the great Don Siegel (best known for the original 1956 version of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS and 1971's DIRTY HARRY), THE BLACK WINDMILL was based on Clive Egleton's 1973 novel Seven Days to a Killing, and was adapted by Leigh Vance, a veteran TV writer and producer whose credits included THE SAINT, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, MANNIX, CANNON, BARETTA, FANTASY ISLAND, and HART TO HART.
An American production shot in the UK and France, THE BLACK WINDMILL stars Michael Caine in GET CARTER mode as John Tarrant, a British intelligence agent working undercover to nail a crew of arms smugglers selling weapons to the IRA. Led by McKee (John Vernon) and Ceil (Delphine Seyrig), the smugglers seem to be on to Tarrant, since they kidnap his young son David (Paul Moss) and hold him for a specific ransom of $500,000 in uncut diamonds, which just happens to be the exact amount procured by Tarrant's boss Cedric Harper (Donald Pleasence) to fund a different covert mercenary operation. Suspicious about the timing and the ransom amount, Harper orders around-the-clock surveillance on Tarrant, who's having some financial problems in the wake of a pending divorce from his estranged wife Alex (Janet Suzman), even having Scotland Yard inspector Alf Chestermann (Clive Revill) bug his apartment at the request of MI-6 head Sir Edward Julyan (Joseph O'Conor). Harper, convinced Tarrant is secretly working with the arms smugglers and staged his son's kidnapping, refuses to authorize the ransom, while Tarrant can clearly see someone among his colleagues is setting him up to take a fall for their own purposes. Of course, this can only mean one thing: Tarrant disobeys his bosses and goes rogue, stealing Harper's stash of diamonds and chasing McKee and Ceil to France in an effort find his son.
Just out on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber (because physical media is dead), the fairly obscure THE BLACK WINDMILL sets up the pieces for a crackerjack thriller that would seem upon a cursory glance to be a 1970s TAKEN (there's also a really good action sequence with a foot chase through the London Underground), and while it moves fairly briskly and has a fine cast in support of a quietly enraged Caine, it never quite comes together like it should. Perhaps Siegel is just out of his element with an international thriller (though he did fine with 1977's TELEFON), but he can't seem to settle on a tone. Indeed, not all of the actors appear to be on the same page when it comes to exactly what kind of movie they're in. Caine is all steely gravitas, as one might expect (except in one inspired bit where he does an amazing impression of Pleasence that has to be seen to be believed), and while he loves his son, Tarrant displays a detached, matter-of-fact coldness with Alex over the very real possibility that David is already dead, which serves as a reminder about why she hates his job and how it's driven them apart. Likewise, Vernon plays it straight as the chief villain, but Pleasence seems to be acting like he's in a spy spoof, breaking out every nervous tic in his repertoire to play a clueless oaf of a boss who has no business overseeing secret government operations and heading something called "The Department of Subversive Warfare," which itself sounds like something out of DR. STRANGELOVE. Pleasence is an undeniable hoot throughout--whether his Harper is getting mocked by his superiors for mistakenly referring to an agent named "Sean Kelly" as "Sean Connery," dismissing Tarrant's story about his kidnapped son when he's giddily distracted by a Q-like gadget man demonstrating an exploding duffel bag, refusing to put a phone all the way up to his ear, or constantly tugging on his mustache--but he seems to have wandered in from a completely different movie.
I suppose it's feasible that Siegel is using Pleasence's character to make some kind of commentary on inept and unqualified idiots falling upwards in life (a common refrain in DIRTY HARRY and its sequels, where Clint Eastwood is constantly disgusted with his incompetent superiors and bureaucratic pencil-pushers), but Pleasence is playing it far too broadly. Revill, too, seems to think he's in something more comedic with the way he works a simmering slow burn as events unfold. There's a terrific ensemble here and they're all good, but their clashing approaches and wildly divergent acting styles, and the erratic tone in the context of the film make THE BLACK WINDMILL seem like a quirky JANUARY MAN of its day, and "quirky" is not a word you'd imagine using to describe an ostensibly gritty early 1970s kidnapping thriller directed by Don Siegel and starring Michael Caine. It's not difficult to see why it tanked and is largely forgotten today, and while it's a minor footnote in the storied careers of Siegel, Caine, and Zanuck/Brown, it has its moments and is worth seeing for completists. And if you're a Donald Pleasence fan, well, you've definitely been deprived of something special with his work here.
MCQ (US - 1974) Directed by John Sturges. Written by Lawrence Roman. Cast: John Wayne, Eddie Albert, Diana Muldaur, Colleen Dewhurst, Clu Gulager, David Huddleston, Al Lettieri, Jim Watkins (Julian Christopher), Roger E. Mosley, William Bryant. (PG, 111 mins) 67-year-old John Wayne tried to belatedly hop on the post-BULLITT/DIRTY HARRY bandwagon with this cop thriller from MAGNIFICENT SEVEN and GREAT ESCAPE director John Sturges, the first of two such contemporary departures for the screen icon. The Duke moves a little slow and his rug is terrible, but he's a lot of fun as Lon McQ, a plays-by-his-own-rules Seattle detective out to nail drug kingpin Santiago (Al Lettieri, best known as the treacherous Sollozzo in THE GODFATHER) after his partner (William Bryant) gets ambushed and later dies. What follows is a pretty standard cop movie material, with corrupt cops, McQ getting info from a Huggy Bear-like informant named Rosey (Roger E. Mosley), and eventually quitting the force in disgust when he's busted down to desk duty by his boss (Eddie Albert).
A couple of great car chases (with one spectacular wreck performed by future Burt Reynolds BFF Hal Needham), and a lively performance by a machine-gunning Duke help get you by the more mechanical elements of the story and a midsection that drags a bit. And it's the only time you'll see the Duke about to close the deal on his second lay of the movie only to be cockblocked by Clu Gulager. Also with Diana Muldaur, Colleen Dewhurst, Julie Adams, Julian Christopher (billed as "Jim Watkins"), and David "The Big Lebowski" Huddleston. MCQ was only a moderate success for Wayne, who had the similar BRANNIGAN in theaters a year later.
BRANNIGAN
(UK - 1975)
Directed by Douglas Hickox. Written by Christopher Trumbo, Michael Butler, William P. McGivern and William Norton. Cast: John Wayne, Richard Attenborough, Judy Geeson, Mel Ferrer, John Vernon, Ralph Meeker, Daniel Pilon, Lesley-Anne Down, John Stride, James Booth, Barry Dennen, Arthur Batenides, Brian Glover. (PG, 111 mins)
A year after MCQ, John Wayne starred in another contemporary cop actioner, the British-made BRANNIGAN, directed by Douglas Hickox (SITTING TARGET, THEATRE OF BLOOD) and written by an eclectic committee of screenwriters including Dalton Trumbo's son Christopher, Michael Butler (THE GAUNTLET, CODE OF SILENCE, PALE RIDER), William P. McGivern (THE BIG HEAT, I SAW WHAT YOU DID), and William Norton (BIG BAD MAMA, NIGHT OF THE JUGGLER). Brannigan isn't all that different from Lon McQ, other than he's in Chicago instead of Seattle. Sent to London to extradite mobster Larkin (John Vernon), who's hired a deadly assassin (Daniel Pilon as a second-string Helmut Berger) to off him, Brannigan has some good-natured culture-clashing with Scotland Yard's affable but uptight Cmdr. Swann (Richard Attenborough). But the pair have to work together--if they don't kill each other first!--when Larkin is kidnapped and his shady attorney (Mel Ferrer, cast radically against type as a smirking, duplicitous prick) arranges a ransom.
BRANNIGAN is much more lighthearted than MCQ, with a mid-film pub brawl that's played completely as a comedy set piece. Wayne, sporting a toupee that's somehow worse than the one he had in MCQ, is once again enjoying himself and has a terrific camaraderie with Attenborough and with Judy Geeson as a young female officer charged with driving Brannigan around and keeping him out of trouble. BRANNIGAN was a box-office disappointment as the Duke's fans made it clear they didn't like seeing him doing this geriatric DIRTY HARRY routine, even with a requisite smartass catchphrase ("Knock knock!"). Wayne returned later in 1975 with the western ROOSTER COGBURN, where he reprised his Oscar-winning TRUE GRIT character, and finished his career with 1976's THE SHOOTIST before retiring from the screen. He died in 1979. A few decades removed from the shock of seeing an aged, slow-moving Wayne try to be Steve McQueen or Clint Eastwood, MCQ and BRANNIGAN aren't Duke classics by any means, but they're entertaining departures that are well worth seeing, particularly BRANNIGAN, which is much better than its reputation.
JUNGLE WARRIORS (West Germany/Mexico - 1984) Directed by Ernst R. von Theumer. Written by Robert Collector and Ernst R. von Theumer. Cast: Nina Van Pallandt, Paul L. Smith, John Vernon, Alex Cord, Sybil Danning, Marjoe Gortner, Woody Strode, Dana Elcar, Kai Wulff, Louisa Moritz, Suzi Horne, Mindy Iden, Kari Lloyd, Ava Cadell, Myra Chason, Angela Robinson, Isabel "Chichimeca" Vazquez. (R, 95 mins) From the producers of 1983's legendary women-in-prison masterpiece CHAINED HEAT comes this similarly sleazy actioner packed with slumming big names, including returning co-stars John Vernon, Sybil Danning, and Louisa Moritz. The ludicrous plot involves a group of fashion models managed by coke-snorting asshole Larry (Marjoe Gortner) heading to a shoot in the Amazon and getting caught in the middle of a war between South American drug lord Cesar Santiago (Paul L. Smith) and gregarious mob kingpin Vittorio Mastranga (Vernon). Mastranga and a few of his goons, including his nephew/lawyer Nick Spilotro (Alex Cord), are trying to muscle in on Santiago's turf, but things get complicated when Santiago shoots down the models' plane and takes them prisoner. Of course, this leads to an extended and distasteful sequence where Santiago's slobbering underlings take turns raping all of the women before they revolt--one of them (Mindi Iden) is actually an undercover FBI agent, which begs the question "What would the point of her going undercover as a model be if the plane didn't get shot down?"--and become the titular ass-kickers. JUNGLE WARRIORS also provides ample space for Vernon to overact and for Smith to do his patented glowering stink-eye routine, but there's also some additional trashy enjoyment to be had from Cesar's obviously incestuous relationship with his sultry, psycho-bitch sister Angel (Danning), who instigates the models' gang rape and gets a nude oil rubdown from her brother, though the lighting of the scene suggests neither Danning nor Smith were directly involved with it.
Greatest grindhouse group shot ever?
You also get Woody Strode as Luther, Santiago's top henchman, top-billed Nina Van Pallandt (a former model and one-time Robert Altman muse) as Joanna, the producer of the photo shoot, German actor Kai Wulff as a pilot and brief love interest for Joanna, and Dana Elcar (MACGYVER) as irate FBI agent D'Antoni, who seems to exist in another movie altogether (Elcar shares no scenes with any other main cast members and is always shown stewing and yelling in an office). The primary reason anyone remembers JUNGLE WARRIORS today is because of who wasn't in it: Dennis Hopper was originally set to co-star when the film went into production in early 1983, and he arrived at the remote Mexican location with his legendary drug and alcohol problems at their apex, working for a couple of days before fleeing the set when he was convinced people were trying to kill him. He was discovered in a small village 20 miles away, where he was picked up by local police after stripping nude and wandering around in a daze shouting "Kill me naked!" He was fired and put on the first flight to Los Angeles, where he had to be restrained when he tried to open the plane's emergency exit. Hopper would tell this story many times over the years, and the details only came from those who witnessed it--he had no memories of being in Mexico or even working on the movie before his dismissal. After years of escalating and ultimately out-of-control alcoholism (he was drinking over a case of beer and a nearly a gallon of rum a day) and substance abuse ("I'd do a few grams of coke to sober up"), Hopper hit bottom with his JUNGLE WARRIORS meltdown, and it proved to be the wake-up call that got him into rehab upon his return home, after which he remained clean and sober and within a few years, rebuilt his career with his triumphant comeback that began in 1986 with BLUE VELVET and an Oscar-nominated supporting turn in HOOSIERS. The common belief is that Hopper was cast as Larry and replaced by Gortner, which makes sense given some of Larry's behavior and Gortner's very Hopper-like performance. But an early trade ad in Variety that ran when the film started production (thanks to Video Junkie's William Wilson for that bit of history seen below) shows that both Hopper and Gortner were in the cast. That same trade ad makes no mention of Kai Wulff, so it's possible--and this is pure hypothesis on my part--that Hopper was cast as Larry and Gortner as the pilot/Joanna love interest, and when Hopper was canned, Gortner was shifted over to the more showy Larry role. It doesn't seem likely that Hopper would've played the heroic love interest to the main heroine, and since both Larry and the pilot are killed off before the midpoint (Larry by booby-trap impalement, the pilot by one of the least-convincing decapitations ever), Gortner wouldn't have had to stick around any longer in order to play Larry instead.
"and Marjoe Gortner as Larry"
Distributed in the US by 42nd Street mainstay Terry Levene's Aquarius Releasing in November 1984, JUNGLE WARRIORS is a mostly crummy grindhouse affair that's prime guilty pleasure material thanks to the bewildered-looking cast and some splattery shootouts, not to mention one killing involving the rotor blades of a chopper that probably sounded better in concept that it plays in execution. And you really haven't lived until you've experienced Marina Arcangeli's incredible JUNGLE WARRIORS theme, quite possibly the worst song ever recorded. In addition to the headaches involving Hopper, the film also switched directors early in the shoot, with veteran German producer Ernst R. von Theumer giving Billy Fine the axe and taking over direction himself. Fine was also a producer on CHAINED HEAT and 1982's THE CONCRETE JUNGLE, and JUNGLE WARRIORS was set to be his debut behind the camera. Von Theumer had been a journeyman in German B-movies going back to the late 1950s (he also directed the 1972 Roger Corman pick-up THE BIG BUST-OUT under the pseudonym "Richard Jackson") and carved a brief niche for himself in the 1980s women-in-prison/jungle action explosion: he would later produce and co-write (and do some uncredited directing) on 1985's RED HEAT, a CHAINED HEAT semi-sequel that reunited Danning and Linda Blair, and he'd direct 1986's HELL HUNTERS, a typically sleazy jungle exploitationer that brought together the seen-better-days likes of Maud Adams, George Lazenby, William Berger, and Stewart Granger as a former Nazi hiding in Paraguay and working on a spider venom-based mind control drug.
CURTAINS (Canada - 1983) Directed by Jonathan Stryker (Richard Ciupka and Peter R. Simpson). Written by Robert Guza Jr. Cast: John Vernon, Samantha Eggar, Linda Thorson, Anne Ditchburn, Lynne Griffin, Sandra Warren, Lesleh Donaldson, Deborah Burgess, Michael Wincott, Maury Chaykin, Kate Lynch, Calvin Butler. (R, 89 mins)
"Fans have made this movie a lot more intricate than it is. Because there's nothing to understand" - Paul Zaza, CURTAINS score composer "It's such a mishmash and such a mess that it's endearing somehow? They love it for the idea of what it could've been" - CURTAINS co-star Lesleh Donaldson
"I started getting e-mails from people wanting to interview me about CURTAINS, telling me it's a big cult movie now, and I'm like, 'This is a cult movie? Really? CURTAINS?'" - Richard Ciupka, uncredited co-director of CURTAINS
Those are just some of the sentiments of the participants in "The Ultimate Nightmare: The Making of CURTAINS" on Synapse Films' just-released Blu-ray and DVD edition of the 1983 Canadian cult classic CURTAINS. It's a bluntness usually not heard in such supplements, which typically resemble pleasant puff pieces about how great everyone was and what a great time they had. But there's a bit of an incredulous streak running through some of the cast/crew comments on CURTAINS that borders on the legendary SNL sketch where host William Shatner yells "Get a life, will you people?" to a room filled with Trekkies at a STAR TREK convention. CURTAINS is a perfect example of a completely forgotten film that bombed upon its initial release inexplicably taking on a life of its own long after the people involved in its creation have put the experience behind them and gotten on with their lives and careers.
Synapse's Blu-ray goes a long way toward making the case that CURTAINS is a film worthy of study, but it's mostly surface and cosmetic. Zaza's right--there's nothing to understand, and it's probably the ultimate in revisionist nostalgia among children of the '80s who now label every 1980s movie a classic. I don't throw this stone with a dismissive tone from a glass house, either--hell, I bought the CURTAINS Blu-ray. Nostalgia's fun, and it's nice to look back at a time when movies like this were opening in theaters every Friday, but the notion of CURTAINS being a "classic" is absurd. I first took note of just how big this particular facet of '80s nostalgia was becoming back in 2009 when fans were outraged over Lionsgate's DVD release of the 1986 slasher film SLAUGHTER HIGH just being a port of the old VHS transfer, right down to the Vestron Video logo at the end of the movie. First of all, it is outrageous that they'd release a VHS transfer on DVD as late as 2009, but secondly, I thought "People give a shit about SLAUGHTER HIGH?" The story of a persecuted nerd named Marty Rantzen getting revenge on his tormentors at their ten-year reunion was barely a blip on the radar and was in and out of theaters in a week in 1986, and whatever attention it got from Fangoria at the time was due to actor Simon Scuddamore, who played Marty, committing suicide shortly after filming ended in late 1984. SLAUGHTER HIGH was the actor's only film and there was an air of mystery surrounding him and his short life and to this day, very little is known about him. So there's the Scuddamore factor but beyond that, SLAUGHTER HIGH is not particularly interesting and certainly not an exemplary film in its genre. It's good for some laughs and it's got some gore, but it's really nothing special at all.
CURTAINS falls under that same category: it's not a great movie or even a good one, though admittedly, its infamously troubled ordeal of a production and its lengthy journey into theaters make it an interesting curio. Synapse's Blu-ray is a case where the supplemental features are actually more interesting than the film itself, though in this beautiful, newly-restored 1.78 transfer, it does play a lot better than it did on the murky old Vestron VHS at 1.33:1, which was the source for CURTAINS' appearance on a 2010 Echo Bridge four-film bargain bin DVD set and on free cable VOD services like Verizon's ViewNow. Donaldson has a good point in that fans love CURTAINS for what it could've been, but it's probably more of a love for the time that it was released. It takes us back to our formative years as horror movie fans, when everything was new and every trip to the video store in that golden age was an adventure. It didn't even matter if the movies were good. It was the thrill of discovery...of directors, actors, subgenres, styles, etc. Home video was a revolution whose impact is easy to forget now and it just isn't understood by younger people who've only known a world where everything is a click away. You can't explain to them the hours spent browsing the shelves of video stores. That's why there's the whole VHS nostalgia craze. It's certainly not for the picture quality, although that's what the hipsters might try to tell you. The nostalgia is for the boxes themselves. Cable exposed us to a lot of new things, but video stores offered a seemingly bottomless treasure trove of choices when we were used to whatever was on late-night TV or Saturday afternoon Creature Features. For example, my favorite Lucio Fulci film is CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980), which was released in the US in 1983 as THE GATES OF HELL. CITY is one of his essential films, but it's probably not his best. I suspect the reason CITY (which I still find myself calling THE GATES OF HELL, even though no one refers to it as that anymore) still resonates so strongly with me is that when my dad got a video store membership, the first movie I picked was THE GATES OF HELL, in that old Paragon big box. I was ten years old and it was the most gloriously disgusting movie I'd ever seen. From that moment on, I was hooked. I knew the old Universal horrors of the 1930s and the Hammer and Amicus titles of the 1960s and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and JAWS and HALLOWEEN and ALIEN and FRIDAY THE 13TH, but this was something else entirely. To an impressionable ten-year-old, those other films were merely gateway drugs and now there was no turning back. For me, it was THE GATES OF HELL, but someone else's cult movie epiphany might very well have been SLAUGHTER HIGH or CURTAINS. The point is, this kind of nostalgia is like comfort food. The key is avoiding the hyperbole and the tendency to anoint everything "classic." I love the era of CURTAINS as much as anyone, but that doesn't make CURTAINS good. Let's not pretend this is a brilliant film awaiting critical reassessment. It's not without its effective moments, which seem like happy accidents considering how chaotic the shoot was--including one legitimately terrifying scene that's usually the only thing anyone remembers from it--but let's not kid ourselves about this being a good movie. The people involved in it don't even have your back on that claim.
As CURTAINS opens, famous actress Samantha Sherwood (Samantha Eggar) feigns a breakdown in order to get admitted to a mental hospital to research the title role in AUDRA, the next film by famous director Jonathan Stryker (John Vernon). She ends up escaping when she reads in Variety--which is apparently delivered to the asylum--that Stryker is casting for AUDRA and has no intention of having her released from the institution. Samantha shows up at Stryker's mansion, where he's auditioning five actresses for AUDRA: aspiring stand-up comedian Patti (Lynne Griffin), ice skater Christie (Donaldson), dancer Laurian (Anne Ditchburn), party girl Tara (Sandra Warren), and embittered Brooke Parsons (Linda Thorson, best known for replacing Diana Rigg on THE AVENGERS), a veteran actress on the outs in the industry and desperate for a comeback. A sixth actress, Amanda (Deborah Burgess) is killed before she even gets to Stryker's house, and that same killer, wearing a horrific hag mask, starts offing the actresses one by one. Is it one of the actresses eliminating the competition? Is it Stryker? Is it red herring caretaker and Tara's hot-tub buddy Michael (Michael Wincott)? It's doubtful even the filmmakers knew until the footage was assembled.
CURTAINS began shooting in Toronto in October 1980. Producer Peter R. Simpson just had a big hit with the HALLOWEEN knockoff PROM NIGHT and was finishing production on the child-custody drama MELANIE, which was eventually released in 1982. Simpson fired MELANIE director Rex Bromfield and assigned the film's cinematographer Richard Ciupka to handle some post-production reshoots involving a character played by Guess Who frontman Burton Cummings. The Belgian-born Ciupka was making a name for himself in the Canadian film industry with numerous Canadian/French co-productions: he was the chief camera operator on two Claude Chabrol films (BLOOD RELATIVES and VIOLETTE, both 1978) and was promoted to director of photography on Nicolas Gessner's IT RAINED ALL NIGHT THE DAY I LEFT (1980) and, most importantly, Louis Malle's ATLANTIC CITY (1980). After agreeing to finish MELANIE for Simpson, Ciupka was rewarded with what was to be his official directorial debut with the $4 million CURTAINS. Working from a script by Robert Guza Jr, who would go on to be the head writer on GENERAL HOSPITAL from 1984 to 2011, Ciupka shot CURTAINS, with Simpson frequently checking in but more or less leaving him alone to work, as he was a businessman who had other projects going on at the same time and Ciupka knew what was expected of him. When shooting was finished and Simpson asked to see Ciupka's rough cut, their relationship quickly soured. According to editor Michael MacLaverty in the "Ultimate Nightmare" supplemental feature, Ciupka made an art film when Simpson wanted a slasher thriller, and on top of that, "it was only 45 minutes long and it was boring."
Simpson immediately shelved the film and it was over a year before he reassembled the necessary cast members for reshoots--without Ciupka--in March 1982, taking over the direction of CURTAINS himself. He completely overhauled and restructured the story, adding the slasher/gore elements that Ciupka didn't include, and it was Simpson who directed the film's most famous sequence: Christie's ice-skating encounter with the killer. Donaldson says that Simpson shot an entire subplot about her character that was ultimately not used, but all told, in its final cut that was finally released in US theaters on March 4, 1983, Ciupka and Simpson each directed about half of the 89-minute film, which was credited to one "Jonathan Stryker," after Vernon's character, when a disgruntled Ciupka refused to sign off on the paperwork required by the Director's Guild. Simpson basically took the 45 minutes that Ciupka assembled and created a beginning and ending around it, plus the ice-skating sequence, which happens around the 40-minute mark. Ciupka is interviewed for the Blu-ray, and states that his work is mostly confined to the middle of the film (he doesn't claim to have directed the ice-skating sequence here, but he has in the past; Donaldson says it was part of the 1982 reshoots, when Ciupka was no longer around), and that nothing in it is his until roughly 21 minutes in, when Amanda finds the doll in the middle of the road during a storm, a sequence that Simpson re-edited to appear as a dream. Though he added a beginning and an ending, Simpson's final cut of CURTAINS has haphazard seams and stitching showing all over the place, not just in terms of hairstyle changes from 1980 to 1982 and other continuity mishaps, but with Simpson completely forgetting about the Michael character, who has no dialogue and disappears until he turns up dead (on the commentary track with Griffin and Donaldson, Griffin has a vague recollection of Michael being Samantha's son in the script, but it's never mentioned in the film). Elsewhere, most of Ditchburn's scenes were cut as she has no dialogue in the released version, but she does get a memorable death scene as Ciupka slowly, almost hypnotically, moves in on her wonderfully expressive face, accompanied by Zaza's haunting piano theme, before the killer's black-gloved hand enters the frame and covers her mouth--it's another example of a powerful moment indicating what could've been. There's another scene where Samantha is burning photographs of the other actresses and talking to a woman who helped her escape. We only see this other woman's legs and hear her voice. This mystery woman is neither seen nor mentioned again (Griffin on the commentary: "Who is this woman supposed to be?"). Simpson's closing scene is an effective reveal that works well, but still feels like a last-minute decision on who the killer should be.
Synapse's Blu-ray presents CURTAINS in a way you've never seen it before, finally making it watchable and proving that, yes, it is at least a visually competent film. The muddy-looking VHS that everyone's been watching for 30 years was so dark at times that it was hard to tell what was going on and which characters were alive or dead. In this HD remastering, the film plays a lot like a Canadian giallo, particularly in some of Ciupka's very atmospheric framings and willingness to let things play out slowly. Simpson mimics that to a degree in his initial set-up of the ice-skating scene, which lasts about eight minutes, though the finishes of his kill scenes have an aggression to them that Ciupka's do not. It works both ways, as demonstrated by Laurian's murder as she rehearses, dancing for several minutes as Ciupka very deliberately moves the camera in. Some of Ciupka's decisions have an understandably European feel to them in a way that was at odds with the in-your-face slasher movies of the sort Simpson was expecting. The end result is a confused mix of styles, but at least as far Ciupka's work is concerned, there's an argument that CURTAINS attempts the now in-vogue "slow burn" horror a few decades before Ti West made it hip, and maybe Ciupka's contributions influenced that to some degree. Again...the film that could've been... And that's not even taking into account all of the footage--Christie's subplot, a completely different ending, and more--that Simpson shot and never used. All of that material--various rough cuts, alternate takes, scenes shot with Quebec actress Celine Lomez before she was fired and replaced by Thorson early into shooting, any unused footage--was destroyed by the rights holders during a vault-cleaning in 2009. As Synapse head Don May posted online at the time: "All gone...destroyed by someone who had no idea what they were getting rid of."
In addition to "The Ultimate Nightmare," there's also two commentary tracks, though one consists of a 45-minute phone interview with Simpson from 2004 (he died in 2007), and a ten-minute audio interview with Samantha Eggar by CURTAINS superfan Todd Garbarini, where she talks mostly about her past career and doesn't recall much about CURTAINS. The actual 2014 commentary features Griffin and Donaldson and is moderated by Edwin Samuelson, a regular fixture in the world of Blu-ray/DVD supplements. Samuelson was a last-minute replacement for planned moderator Garbarini who, for unspecified reasons, couldn't make it to the recording. Samuelson uses some of Garbarini's prepared notes and obviously knows the movie, and he does a decent job considering he probably woke up that morning with no idea he'd be recording a CURTAINS commentary before the day's end. He asks the expected questions of the actresses, and sometimes it goes nowhere--Samuelson brings up future makeup effects guru Greg Cannom, who worked on the movie, and Griffin and Donaldson have no clue who he is--but the actresses are entertaining to listen to and come off like two old friends shooting the breeze. Samuelson tries to keep them on subject, but he doesn't really have to--the two have a natural chemistry together and sometimes their asides and wanderings have an emotional, real-world resonance to them, as when Griffin, having not seen the film in many years, is surprised to see her late mother in a background bit part ("That's my mom! Hi, Mom!"), and Donaldson being able to pinpoint exactly when a particular scene was shot because "we were working on this when we heard that John Lennon was killed."
Exclusive to the Synapse Blu-ray edition is a 1980 short film about Ciupka, then a hot commodity after his ATLANTIC CITY cinematography accolades, and his debut effort with CURTAINS. There's some great behind the scenes footage of Ciupka directing Vernon and some of the cast during the dinner scene. What's most fascinating is that even during production, Ciupka is already openly questioning and pretty much regretting his decision to become a director, saying he was much happier as a D.P. and misses working with his crew and that sense of collaboration, feeling more like a manager now that he has to oversee everything on the set as director. He's clearly not happy (one shot catches him sitting alone, thumbing through a copy of the script and looking almost longingly at the camera crew as they adjust some lighting) even though, at least according to Donaldson, the cast was behind him and they were disappointed when shooting reconvened in 1982 and Ciupka was no longer their director. It's no surprise that he went back to being a D.P. after CURTAINS, waiting another decade to direct again and even then, only very sporadically and, aside from one episode of the late '90s Showtime erotic horror anthology series THE HUNGER, all French-language, Quebec-shot productions that never got US exposure. CURTAINS rarely works or makes any sense, but Synapse's stunning presentation of it and its informative extras come dangerously close to making a believer out of even the most ardent detractor.
Directed by Paul Nicolas. Written by Vincent Mongol and Paul Nicolas. Cast: Linda Blair, John Vernon, Sybil Danning, Tamara Dobson, Stella Stevens, Henry Silva, Sharon Hughes, Kendall Kaldwell, Robert Miano, Dee Biederbeck, Greta Blackburn, Nita Talbot, Louisa Moritz, Jennifer Ashley, Jody Medford, Mae Campbell, Monique Gabrielle, Edy Williams, Marcia Karr, Carol White, Susan Meschner, Michael Callan, Leila Chrystie, Martha Gallub, Aaron Butler, Irwin Keyes. (R, 98 mins)
The women-in-prison (WIP) genre existed as far back as the 1930s but with the dawn of a new era and the freedoms allowed by an R rating, it blew up as an exploitation staple in the early 1970s thanks to Roger Corman producing a string of sleazy gems for his New World Pictures like THE BIG DOLL HOUSE (1971), WOMEN IN CAGES (1971), THE BIG BIRD CAGE (1972), BLACK MAMA, WHITE MAMA (1973), and Jonathan Demme's directorial debut CAGED HEAT (1974). The ever-reliable Jess Franco really kicked things off with 1969's 99 WOMEN, but the popularity of Corman's New World releases begat European imitations like THE BIG BUST OUT (1973) and Jess Franco's ILSA, THE WICKED WARDEN. With their hammy acting, gratuitous nudity, prison-yard catfights, lecherous guards, sadistic wardens, and mandatory lesbian shower seductions, these became fixtures in drive-ins and grindhouses for the rest of the decade before winding up in regular rotation on late-night cable in the early '80s, which is also when the Australian soap PRISONER: CELL BLOCK H started running in syndication on American television. A second wave of WIP films took off with THE CONCRETE JUNGLE (1982), and led to HELLHOLE (1985), THE NAKED CAGE (1986), and the spoofy REFORM SCHOOL GIRLS (1986), along with the requisite Italian knockoffs like CAGED WOMEN (1982, released in the US in 1984), and the utterly bonkers WOMEN'S PRISON MASSACRE (1983, US release 1985), with the focus almost entirely on the exploitative elements and lacking even the cursory allusions to social commentary that existed in some of the more ambitious Corman productions. The '80s WIP films enjoyed much popularity on video store shelves and on cable, but there was one film from this second wave that has managed to tower over its contemporaries and is largely considered the ultimate WIP epic: CHAINED HEAT, released in theaters May 27, 1983.
Producer Billy Fine brought a lot of the ladies from THE CONCRETE JUNGLE back for CHAINED HEAT, but while that film's slumming big-name value was limited to Jill St. John as the bitchy warden, CHAINED HEAT boasted a ridiculous cast of actors either in a career lull or on their way down, almost all of them well aware of what kind of movie they're in and just rolling with it. Journeyman types like John Vernon and Henry Silva were still regularly appearing an A-list fare, but never turned down a gig if the pay was right, especially, in Vernon's case, if most of your screen time was spent in a hot tub filming and fooling around with topless co-stars. Yes, CHAINED HEAT is the infamous "the warden has a jacuzzi in his office" movie, and judging from his over-the-top performance, I'm confident Vernon at no point mistook this for a serious project. Sure, he'd worked with the likes of John Boorman, Lee Marvin, Alfred Hitchcock, Clint Eastwood, and Dusan Makavejev in the past, and cemented his place in comedy history as Dean Wormer in ANIMAL HOUSE (1978), but when you get a chance to spend almost the entire movie surrounded by naked women and sinking your teeth into dialogue like "Don't call me Warden...call me Fellini!" then you don't pass it up.
In what was publicized at the time as her first "grown-up" role, Oscar-nominated EXORCIST star Linda Blair, her career already bogged down by bad movies, hard partying, and a late '70s drug bust, is naïve "prison virgin" Carol Henderson, sentenced to 18 months for accidental vehicular manslaughter. The terrified Carol isn't sure where to turn or who to trust, and finds herself in the middle of a prison turf war between rival gangs led by Ericka (Sybil Danning) and Duchess (Tamara Dobson). Also not helping matters is sleazy warden Bacman (Vernon), who entertains the sexier inmates in his hot tub and keeps them supplied with heroin from his side business, which is being cut in on by his chief guard Capt. Taylor (Stella Stevens) and her slimy pimp boyfriend Lester (Silva), who are running their own drug smuggling operation on the inside with Ericka. After Ericka kills his snitch Debbie (Monique Gabrielle), Bacman tries to talk Carol into replacing her as his eyes and ears and she trusts Bacman until he rapes her in a drugged rage. Eventually, Ericka and Duchess set aside their differences and unite to fight the oppressive rule of the sadistic Taylor and her crew of guards, who frequently abuse and sexually assault the inmates. Taylor is also preoccupied with getting the venal Bacman out of the picture so she and Lester can run both the prison and the drug trade within.
"Mr. Silva's wardrobe provided by Henry Silva"
With the plot stripped down to its basics, CHAINED HEAT sounds like any other WiP flick of its era. But where this stands out from the crowd is its cast, their bug-eyed histrionics, and the rampant trashiness of the entire project. Even Blair engages in some much-ballyhooed topless shots, including a lathering up by Danning in the shower. Bacman's private hot tub is a constant source of amusement. Stevens' late-film outburst of "Slimy pig shit!" while beating Danning has to be seen to believed. Silva is a blast as the Cosby sweater-sporting pimp, who's always hanging out at the prison but it's never really clear what his job is (is he some sort of supplies delivery person?), other than sneaking some of the girls out of prison to pimp them out to rich gangsters like the one played by busy TV actor Michael Callan, 1961's Golden Globe winner for Most Promising Newcomer. The imposing Dobson spends the entire film in a pained, jaw-clenched grimace, and her confrontation with Danning is one for the ages. And remember: "No Spitting."
The German-produced CHAINED HEAT was shot in Los Angeles at the shuttered Lincoln Heights Jail, which closed in 1965 but frequently functioned as a location for film shoots (it can also be seen in CAGED HEAT and Jamaa Fanaka's 1979 hit PENITENTIARY, and the Freddy Krueger boiler room sequences in 1984's A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET were also shot there). The film was directed by Paul Nicolas, a pseudonym for German writer/director Lutz Schaarwachter, a minor-league exploitation vet whose credits included scripting the softcore, young Nastassja Kinski late-night cable favorite BOARDING SCHOOL (1978) and directing Danning in the "disturbed teenage daughter has the hots for her dad and tries to kill her stepmother" erotic thriller JULIE DARLING (1983). The very sporadic Schaarwachter/"Nicolas" would return to the WIP genre with THE NAKED CAGE for Cannon, and he's only made two films since then, the most recent being the 2000 Vegas-set drama LUCKYTOWN, with Kirsten Dunst and James Caan. Nicolas never really became a prominent B-movie figure, but CHAINED HEAT is enough to ensure his bona fides as an exploitation legend. Let's face it: no matter how many forgettable-to-shitty movies you may have directed, helming CHAINED HEAT gets you a lifetime pass.
CHAINED HEAT opened on Memorial Day weekend in 1983 and landed in 7th place at the box office--not a bad finish considering the only other wide release that weekend was RETURN OF THE JEDI (Video Junkie's William Wilson on CHAINED HEAT: "Only one movie had the balls to open up against RETURN OF THE JEDI!"). Budgeted at just $1 million, it stayed in the top ten for two weeks and grossed a little over $6 million--not a blockbuster by most standards, but it made a huge profit for the producers and for small-time distributor Jensen-Farley Pictures before it hit video stores courtesy of the legendary Vestron Video, a company whose logo preceded many great exploitation films of the '70s and '80s and seems to perfectly epitomize the 1980s video store experience. The full-frame 1.33 VHS transfer of CHAINED HEAT inadvertently added to its cult status as a Bad Movie classic: it was improperly framed from the 1.78 theatrical image, leaving the top of the frame visible, leading to the unsteady boom mic being in the film nearly as much as Linda Blair. For years, people who missed CHAINED HEAT theatrically were under the impression that the film was simply shot this incompetently. When viewed in its proper widescreen aspect ratio, the boom mic is never seen.
CHAINED HEAT still gets shown in semi-regular rotation on Showtime and Flix's late-night schedule, but avoid that version at all costs, as it's misframed (black bars slapped on a 1.33 image to create the illusion of letterboxing, causing the tops of heads to be awkwardly cut out of the frame) and missing about 12 minutes of footage, including Vernon's death scene and most of the footage involving Edy Williams' nympho inmate. In 2011, Panik House released the complete CHAINED HEAT in a impressive anamorphic transfer as part of a triple feature Women in Prison set, along with 1984's JUNGLE WARRIORS (from the same producers and also featuring Vernon and Danning) and 1985's RED HEAT, "presented" by cinema nudity expert Mr. Skin. RED HEAT was sold as a semi-sequel of sorts, again with Blair as a naïve innocent thrown into a cruel prison, this time in East Germany. It's a very grim film that focuses more on brutality, and while it's unusually serious for the genre, it's ugly, downbeat, and not much fun at all. CHAINED HEAT did spawn two in-name-only, Czech Republic-shot straight-to-video sequels: CHAINED HEAT 2 (1993), with Brigitte Nielsen, and the post-apocalyptic sci-fi outing CHAINED HEAT 3: HELL MOUNTAIN (1998), with Jack Scalia and Sarah Douglas. Neither of these films have anything to do with the iconic original. An additional sequel of sorts came from CHAINED HEAT 2 director Lloyd Simandl, whose RAGE OF THE INNOCENTS (2001) was released in the UK as CHAINED HEAT 2001: SLAVE LOVERS.
CHAINED HEAT didn't really do anything to boost anyone's career, be they a young starlet or a check-cashing veteran, though on the DVD's accompanying documentary, Danning (who's introduced the film at some midnight screenings in recent years) has a great sense of humor about it, while Stevens, whose career had certainly seen better days (like 1963's THE NUTTY PROFESSOR), seems to have taken it very seriously. To the surprise of no one, the film got almost unanimously negative reviews from critics, and Danning was rewarded with a Razzie for Worst Supporting Actress for both this and the Lou Ferrigno version of HERCULES, which would open at the end of the summer of 1983, a busy one for the actress that also saw her on the cover of the August 1983 issue of Playboy.
What hype CHAINED HEAT did receive at the time was centered on Blair, and the film did nothing to further her cause of tackling serious adult roles. She was back playing a high school student-turned-vigilante in 1984's SAVAGE STREETS, which co-starred Vernon (who was really slumming in the grindhouse during this period, between the films mentioned here as well as 1983's CURTAINS) and gave the veteran actor one of the most nonsensically quotable lines of his career. Blair stayed busy in the world of straight-to-video for the rest of the 1980s and through the 1990s, even spoofing THE EXORCIST by teaming up with Leslie Nielsen for the dismal 1990 comedy REPOSSESSED, as well as a cameo in Wes Craven's 1996 blockbuster SCREAM. Now 54, Blair acts infrequently (she recently finished shooting an indie comedy called WHOA! and it was her first acting gig in five years), is a regular guest at fan conventions and a prominent PETA and Feed the Children activist and spends most of her time focusing on animal rescue work with The Linda Blair WorldHeart Foundation.
As far as bad movies go, CHAINED HEAT is a gift that never stops giving. From the lewd and crude plot to the hilarious dialogue to Henry Silva rockin' a pimp sweater like no one before or since, CHAINED HEAT is not only the last word in Women in Prison flicks, it's also an essential grindhouse exploitation classic of the early 1980s glory days when something this phenomenally trashy could actually open nationwide on a holiday weekend. They just don't make 'em like this anymore.
