THE ANNIHILATORS (US - 1985) Directed by Charles E. Sellier Jr. Written by Brian Russell. Cast: Gerrit Graham, Lawrence Hilton- Jacobs, Paul Koslo, Christopher Stone, Andy Wood, Jim Antonio, Sid Conrad, Dennis Redfield, Bruce Evers, Millie Fisher, Becky Harris,Mimi Honce, Bruce Taylor. (R, 85 mins) After making a fortune with his Utah-based indie Sunn Classic Pictures and creating the hit TV show THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GRIZZLY ADAMS, Charles E. Sellier Jr. had other ambitions and gradually began to wean the company off speculative re-enactments like 1977's THE LINCOLN CONSPIRACY, Brad Crandall-narrated UFO and Noah's Ark "documentaries," and more faith-based fare like 1980's IN SEARCH OF HISTORIC JESUS. There was money to be made with titles like the 1980 sci-fi conspiracy thriller HANGAR 18, the 1981 horror film THE BOOGENS, and the 1983 Stephen King adaptation CUJO, the latter finding distribution with Warner Bros. Sunn Classic would be sold to Taft Enterprises in 1980, and Sellier would move into the profitable realm of drive-in exploitation with the 1984 teen comedy SNOWBALLING and the same year's SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT. The latter would prove to be a step too far--not just for Sellier's Sunn Classic faithful but for pretty much everyone--with the killer Santa slasher movie igniting a firestorm of controversy and widespread condemnation, with Siskel and Ebert calling him out by name and calling the profits from the film "blood money." Sellier continued to follow B-movie trends outside the auspices of Sunn Classic with the 1985 New World Pictures release THE ANNIHILATORS, an instantly-forgotten Namsploitation/vigilante mash-up shot in Atlanta and just out on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber, because physical media is dead. The concept was nothing new--TAXI DRIVER, ROLLING THUNDER, THE EXTERMINATOR, and FIRST BLOOD all dealt with Vietnam vets unable to function in civilian life when they came home before the subgenre went into full "the war's not over till the last man comes home!" mode--but THE ANNIHILATORS takes a more SEVEN SAMURAI-esque approach, albeit with a budget that forced them to whittle it down to four.
Paralyzed from the waist down after being shot saving his buddies in 'Nam, Joe Nace (Dennis Redfield) now owns a small grocery store in the fictional South Point neighborhood in Atlanta (the film was shot in the city's Cabbagetown district, and the market is played by Little's Food Store). The area is overrun with gang activity, with the chief menace being Roy Boy Jagger (Paul Koslo) and his "Rollers." Where most movie gangs are fearsome youths terrifying their elders, Roy Boy and his Rollers all look to be grown-ass men in their 30s and 40s, terrorizing a bunch of people in roughly the same age bracket by shaking them down for protection money and loan sharking. Joe mouths off to Roy Boy one too many times and gets his head bashed in with a meat tenderizer (Joe has one for sale in his store, just randomly hanging on a rack with numerous other unrelated items) while his lone customer--a well-dressed woman who can't possibly live in the area--is stripped naked, fondled, and gutted with a switchblade. Joe's dad Louie (Sid Conrad) decides he's had enough of Roy Boy's reign of middle-aged terror and summons Joe's old Nam buddy Bill "Sarge" Ecker (Christopher Stone) to teach the area residents to fight and help them stand up to the Rollers. Ecker tracks down the rest of their Nam crew--accountant and comic relief Ray (Gerrit Graham), family man Garrett (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, aka WELCOME BACK, KOTTER's Freddie "Boom Boom" Washington), and hopeless drunk Woody (Lou Reed lookalike Andy Wood)--to come to South Point and take out the trash.
Christopher Stone (1942-1995)
With a bigger budget and a better director, THE ANNIHILATORS could've been an acceptably entertaining garbage action movie. But it's so inept and cheaply-made that it's really surprising New World actually rolled it out across the country (regionally; it opened in the summer of 1985 but didn't hit my hometown of Toledo, OH until January 1986). The cops--led by Lt. Hawkins (Jim Antonio)--are no help and rank among cinema's most pathetically useless. The training montage lasts all of two minutes before all of the residents are taking charge and kung-fu fighting. And in his own way, Koslo's mulleted Roy Boy is as cartoonish as Gavan O'Herlihy's Fraker in the somewhat similar DEATH WISH 3, which would be out later in the year. But despite the occasional amusement, THE ANNIHILATORS is never as entertaining--even in a bad way--as you want it to be. The title crew is likable enough (except for annoying sad sack Woody), and while he was never a star, Graham (USED CARS) seemed to be doing OK enough with comedic supporting roles in higher-profile projects (THE RATINGS GAME, THE MAN WITH ONE RED SHOE) that a gig like this seems a bit beneath him. If THE ANNIHILATORS deserves credit for anything, it's giving a tough-guy lead to Stone, a TV vet best known for co-starring with his wife Dee Wallace in THE HOWLING and CUJO (they were married from 1980 until his death from a heart attack at just 53 in 1995). Though he stayed busy until the end, Stone never really broke out and became the second-string Tom Selleck that he could've been, so even though it's pretty terrible, THE ANNIHILATORS does get somewhat of a boost from his presence. It would be the last film Sellier directed before his death in 2011 at 67. Following THE ANNIHILATORS, he switched to producing TV-movies and later replicated the Sunn Classic ethos for the post-2000 DTV era with various DA VINCI CODE and SECRET-inspired "documentaries," as well as pandering, faithsploitation drivel like END TIMES: HOW CLOSE ARE WE? and GEORGE W. BUSH: FAITH IN THE WHITE HOUSE.
THE ANNIHILATORS opening in Toledo, OH on 1/10/1986
31 (US - 2016) Written and directed by Rob Zombie. Cast: Sheri Moon Zombie, Malcolm McDowell, Judy Geeson, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Meg Foster, Kevin Jackson, Jane Carr, Richard Brake, Lew Temple, Daniel Roebuck, Pancho Moler, David Ury, Torsten Voges, E.G. Daily, Esperanza America, Andrea Dora, Michael "Redbone" Alcott, Tracey Walter, Ginger Lynn Allen, Devin Sidell. (R, 103 mins) Earlier this year, critic/blogger Jason Coffman wrote a fascinating piece about horror fandom that went viral and quite frankly deserves a Pulitzer. It was filled with things that needed to be said, such as, in no uncertain terms, that horror fans are the worst. Of course, that's a gross generalization on my part that wasn't exactly Coffman's central thesis, but he questioned why a very vocal contingent of horror fans--he called them the "gatekeepers"--had such vehemently negative reactions to thoughtful, serious horror films that received significant accolades from critics outside of horror circles. The piece was written specifically in response to audiences turning on THE WITCH, but it also referenced similarly acclaimed offerings like THE BABADOOK and IT FOLLOWS. To reject original, thought-provoking films that fall in the horror realm, to question their genre validity because they've been praised by those outside the insulated horror bubble, Coffman posited, is to "reinforce the image of the 'horror fan' as a slack-jawed dullard whose only interests are sex and gore."
Well, he's right. And you can thank the gatekeepers for 31, the latest film from horror/metal icon Rob Zombie. Financed in large part by crowdfunding, 31 is Zombie's gift to his fans, the gatekeepers who adore him. To criticize Zombie--to even question him--is verboten in horror gatekeeper circles. Zombie is a guy who knows and loves horror movies. It showed in his days fronting the band White Zombie, itself named after the 1932 Bela Lugosi classic. But after 16 years and with six feature films under his belt, shouldn't there be some kind of progress by now? I'll give Zombie props where it's due: his second film, THE DEVIL'S REJECTS, is his masterpiece, a definitive mission statement that melded the '70s aesthetic of Tobe Hooper and hillbilly horror with the operatically bloody ferocity of Sam Peckinpah. It's foul, it's vile, it's difficult to watch--and it's incredibly powerful and an unforgettable experience. And Zombie's never come close to it since. His entire filmmaking career seems to be an endless, circle-jerking tribute to 1986's THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2. His 2007 remake of HALLOWEEN is a disjointed fusion of his usual hicksploitation horror before shifting gears to became a condensed, pointless remake of the 1978 original, while the less said about his 2009 HALLOWEEN II, the better. 2013's THE LORDS OF SALEM was ultimately a misfire that lost its way as it devolved into sub-Jodorowsky shock imagery, but it had a weird '70s Satanism vibe going on, like 1973's MESSIAH OF EVIL if directed by Stanley Kubrick. It wasn't a success, but Zombie was at least making a concerted effort to work outside of his comfort zone for the majority of the film.
31 finds Zombie back in his comfort zone and on total autopilot. His 2003 debut, HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES (shot in 2000 and left in distribution limbo for three years), is a terrible movie but it at least has the excuse of being a debut. What's his excuse for 31? It's like an "extreme" version of his already "extreme" schtick, but his abilities seem to be regressing. He's so reliant on in-your-face shaky-cam and garish lighting (including a strobe-lit sequence) that a good chunk of the film is visually incoherent. And the plot? The same shit. It's set on Halloween 1976 and a bunch of hard-partying carnival workers who say "fuck" a lot are lured into the middle of nowhere to take part in "31." It's a MOST DANGEROUS GAME-type contest overseen by a trio of foppish Brits, dressed as grotesque aristocrats in powdered wigs and pancake makeup like they're going to a midnight showing of BARRY LYNDON: Father Murder (Malcolm McDowell), Sister Dragon (Judy Geeson), and Sister Serpent (Jane Carr). The five carnies--headed by Zombie's usual star, wife Sheri Moon Zombie as Charly--have to overcome unbeatable odds to survive the night as they face off against their opponents hellbent on slaughtering them. The killers are an increasingly ludicrous collection of ROAD WARRIOR rejects in clown makeup: Sick-Head (Pancho Moler), a demented little person in a Hitler stache and with a swastika painted on his chest; Psycho-Head (Lew Temple) and Schizo-Head (David Ury), a pair of chainsaw-wielding brothers; and the cartoonishly Germanic Death-Head (Torsten Voges) and the fetishist Sex-Head (E.G. Daily). Not all of the carnies make it, but once that initial lineup is defeated, Father Murder calls in his ace closer Doom-Head, a maniac prone to pretentious, philosophical Quentin Tarantino-esque monologues and played in a grating, headache-inducing fashion by Richard Brake in what might be 2016's most unbearable performance that will nonetheless inspire countless insufferable cosplayers at horror cons for the next decade.
Like Tarantino, Zombie has favorite cult actors he likes to use repeatedly--McDowell, Geeson, Daily, Meg Foster, Daniel Roebuck, and former porn star Ginger Lynn Allen have been in past Zombie films (Geeson came out of a decade-long retirement to co-star in THE LORDS OF SALEM)--and here he even gives us a prominent role for Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, best known as Sweathog Freddie "Boom Boom" Washington on WELCOME BACK KOTTER 40 years ago, here playing Panda, one of the doomed carnies. It's nice to see Hilton-Jacobs again, but it's too bad he's using an overdone Jamaican accent that renders most of his dialogue unintelligible. You'll wish more of the dialogue was unintelligible when you see Foster (as carny Venus Virgo) gesticulating around her crotch and saying "fucky fucky fucky, juicy juicy juicy, money money money" and witness this enlightening conversation between carny Levon (Kevin Jackson) and a cackling Sick-Head (note: transcription double-checked for accuracy):
A louder and somehow even more obnoxious HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES peppered with shout-outs to Tobe Hooper's THE FUNHOUSE, 31 is obviously intended for the Rob Zombie superfans and is more or less a greatest hits package, from the splattery violence to the endless vulgarity to resemblance of the "Heads" to Captain Spaulding and the Firefly clan to the ersatz Peckinpah WILD BUNCH freeze-frames and the opening credits featuring a Southern rock favorite (in this case, the James Gang's "Walk Away"). If you're one of the Rob Zombie gatekeepers, then you decided this "fuckin' ruled" before he even started filming. 31 is for you. Go enjoy yourself. You've seen it all before--and better--but hey, this is what you wanted.
