TEN LITTLE INDIANS (US - 1989) Directed by Alan Birkinshaw. Written by Jackson Hunsicker and Gerry O'Hara. Cast: Donald Pleasence, Brenda Vaccaro, Frank Stallone, Herbert Lom, Paul L. Smith, Moira Lister, Sarah Maur Thorp, Warren Berlinger, Yehuda Efroni, Neil McCarthy. (PG, 100 mins) Veteran producer Harry Alan Towers (1920-2009) already had two previous big-screen adaptations of Agatha Christie's 1939 novel And Then There Were None to his credit, with both 1965 and 1974 versions titled TEN LITTLE INDIANS, but only his 1989 version cites Christie's 1943 play Ten Little Indians as its basis. The difference is negligible, as the play had a more upbeat ending than the novel, but none of Towers' three versions stuck with the novel's bleak ending anyway. The 1989 version was the last and by far the least of Towers' takes on the material, with 1965 (directed by longtime David Lean assistant George Pollock) generally considered the best, though the 1974 (directed by Peter Collinson) has aged very well, and with its unique setting in a luxury Iranian hotel, its Bruno Nicolai score, and some surprisingly stylish murder sequences, it almost plays in retrospect like an Agatha Christie giallo. Despite Towers' obvious affinity for the material (he also scripted the 1965 and 1974 versions under his pseudonym "Peter Welbeck"), Rene Clair's 1945 version AND THEN THERE WERE NONE is still considered the definitive adaptation of this Christie work.
But this TEN LITTLE INDIANS, released by Cannon in November 1989 as they were transitioning into their life support years, is mostly lethargic and uninspired, blandly directed with little style or suspense by Alan Birkinshaw. A career D-lister who was usually brought in to clean up other people's messes, Birkinshaw replaced two fired directors on the 1984 killer Santa outing DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS, and he handled extensive uncredited reshoots on Cannon's 1985 Christie adaptation ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE when Desmond Davis (CLASH OF THE TITANS) was handed his walking papers after a disastrous Cannes screening. Birkinshaw's 1978 UK video nasty KILLER'S MOON has its admirers, but he never distinguished himself elsewhere. By 1989, he was finding steady employment with Towers, though TEN LITTLE INDIANS was the only one of their collaborations to make it into theaters: he also helmed two entries in the ill-advised Poesploitation craze of the era--THE HOUSE OF USHER and THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH--both shot in 1989 but released straight-to-video in 1991.
Like a lot of Cannon productions from this period, TEN LITTLE INDIANS '89 (like Birkinshaw's two Poesploitation movies, which were handled by Menahem Golan's post-Cannon outfit 21st Century) was shot in Towers' then-stomping grounds of apartheid-era South Africa, where production costs were low, and even though it was frowned upon by Hollywood, many actors who needed the work had to go where the work was, regardless of the ethical dilemmas inherent in such journeyman assignments (Michael Dudikoff expressed regret after shooting three Cannon films in South Africa, opting to sit out AMERICAN NINJA 3 and only returning for AMERICAN NINJA 4 after they agreed to move the production to Lesotho). Shooting in South Africa also allowed TEN LITTLE INDIANS '89 to take advantage of its location for a safari setting, and the cast of mostly familiar faces corralled by Towers is a veritable Who's Who of "Apartheid? Never heard of it!" The set-up is the same: a group of strangers have been invited to a remote location--this time an African safari in the 1930s--by a mystery host named "U.N. Owen." They have no known ties to one another, aside from all of them having a secret known only by Owen: they're all directly or indirectly culpable for at least one death, and Owen is making them pay, exposing the skeletons in their closet and offing them one by one. In no particular order, there's rugged safari guide Capt. Lombard (Frank Stallone); Judge Wargrave (Donald Pleasence); dementia-addled General Romensky (Herbert Lom, also in the 1974 version, but in a different role); boozy actress Marion Marshall (Brenda Vaccaro); former governess Vera Claythorne (Sarah Maur Thorp); Dr. Werner (Yehuda Efroni); dashing Anthony Marston (Neil McCarthy); private eye Blore (Warren Berlinger), who's been hired sight unseen by Owen to keep an eye on everyone; and Mr. and Mrs. Rodgers (Paul L. Smith, Moira Lister), who claim to have won a contest to be on the safari under the stipulation that they play a recording of Owen listing the crimes of those he's gathered.
TEN LITTLE INDIANS opening in Toledo, OH on 1/5/1990
Christie's novel is pretty much the gold standard in classic mysteries, one that's so good that it's difficult to screw it up, but TEN LITTLE INDIANS '89 is like lukewarm leftovers. The setting is unique in theory but doesn't make sense in execution, since they're at a small, cramped camp and it becomes increasingly difficult to believe that the killer can move about undetected in such a limited space. And of course, the more people are bumped off, the more the remaining survivors continue to split up instead of stick together. No one here is at their career pinnacle (well, except for maybe Maur Thorp, whose entire film career consisted of three Towers productions--this, EDGE OF SANITY, and RIVER OF DEATH--all released in 1989), but most of them seem to be acting with a sense of apathy rather than urgency. They're all suspects at one time or another and of the ensemble, Lom has a couple of Commissioner Dreyfus-esque harumphs and seems like the only one who brought his almost-A-game, but he's taken out fairly early. Vaccaro looks like a past Oscar-nominee who knows this is junk. Berlinger does a lot of Charles Durning/Brian Dennehy blustering but little else. Pleasence can always be relied upon to ham it up but he seems uncharacteristically bored and half-asleep (though the goofy grin on his face during a croquet scene is amusing). Smith does the same stink-eye squint that he perfected in MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, PIECES, and however many others, but it just seems stale here. And Stallone is just terrible. Just out on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber (because physical media is dead), TEN LITTLE INDIANS '89 has some beautiful exteriors when you get to see them, but this third time out for Towers just drags along and is of little interest to anyone but the most die-hard Cannon completists or Frank Stallone stalkers. Birkinshaw also worked with Pleasence on THE HOUSE OF USHER, and with Stallone, Vaccaro, and Lom on THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, and I'm surprised neither of those have surfaced on Blu-ray yet.
THE SALAMANDER (UK - 1981; US release 1983) Directed by Peter Zinner. Written by Robert Katz and Rod Serling. Cast: Franco Nero, Anthony Quinn, Eli Wallach, Martin Balsam, Claudia Cardinale, Sybil Danning, Christopher Lee, Cleavon Little, Paul Smith, John Steiner, Renzo Palmer, Anita Strindberg, Jacques Herlin, Marino Mase, Fortunato Arena, John Stacy, Andre Esterhazy, Nello Pazzafini, Tom Felleghy, Gitte Lee. (R, 101 mins) Based on the 1973 novel by Morris West, the long-in-the-works conspiracy thriller THE SALAMANDER began life as a screenplay adaptation by TWILIGHT ZONE and NIGHT GALLERY creator Rod Serling, left unfinished following his death in 1975. It languished for several years until Robert Katz (THE CASSANDRA CROSSING, THE SKIN) reworked and completed it. The film finally went into production in 1980, with veteran editor Peter Zinner making his directing debut at 62, fresh off his Oscar win for editing 1978's THE DEER HUNTER. Zinner was a late-blooming hot commodity at the time, as his other credits included 1967's IN COLD BLOOD, 1972's THE GODFATHER and 1974's THE GODFATHER PART II, but he really was a hired gun at heart, as his work on THE DEER HUNTER was sandwiched between esteemed prestige projects like 1977's TINTORERA and 1979's THE FISH THAT SAVED PITTSBURGH. Shot entirely in scenic locations throughout Italy and featuring an all-star cast, THE SALAMANDER should've been a hit but was a DOA dud worldwide. It was another in a string of flops from Sir Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment, the British company that produced THE MUPPET SHOW and had some hits like THE MUPPET MOVIE, ON GOLDEN POND, and THE GREAT MUPPET CAPER, but lost a ton of money over 1980-81 on expensive bombs like the Village People's CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC, the Farrah Fawcett-pursued-by-horny-robot-in-space sci-fi dud SATURN 3, the Clive Cussler adaptation RAISE THE TITANIC!, and the ill-fated THE LEGEND OF THE LONE RANGER. ITC had distribution through various means, whether it was their own Associated Film Distribution or major studios like Universal and 20th Century Fox, but after being released in Europe in 1981, THE SALAMANDER remained unseen in the US until it turned up in one theater in NYC in May 1983 before being bum-rushed off to television and a belated VHS release in 1986. Pathfinder released it on DVD with no fanfare in 2002 but otherwise, it's spent 30 years in relative obscurity despite a cast packed with cult icons and big-screen legends and it's just been resurrected on Blu-ray courtesy of Scorpion Releasing. It's nice that it's available again and in a quality presentation, but it should come as no surprise that THE SALAMANDER isn't exactly an unsung classic waiting for its day in the sun.
The film opens in Rome with the assassination of beloved Gen. Panteleone (Fortunato Arena), a beloved statesman, WWII hero, and champion of democracy in his younger, post-war years. The truth behind his murder is buried and "natural causes" is the reason given to the public. Carabinieri officer Col. Dante Matucci (Franco Nero) is assigned to investigate, along with his big brotherly mentor Capt. Stefanelli (Martin Balsam). Both are stonewalled by everyone, from Panteleone's heir apparent Gen. Leporello (Eli Wallach) to Italy's counterintelligence chief Prince Baldasar (Christopher Lee), and the body count rises as anyone Matucci questions or is about to question turns up dead. After tying Panteleone's death to a decades-long string of assassinations of war criminals staged to look like suicides--pulled off by a hit man known as "The Salamander," the long-retired alter ego of billionaire industrialist Bruno Manzini (Anthony Quinn)--Matucci uncovers a plot to orchestrate a coup d'etat by a renegade group of military officials and high-powered politicos attempting a Make Italy Great Again move by taking the country back to the Mussolini glory days.
Matucci's investigation also involves a momentum-killing romance with Polish spy Lili Anders (Sybil Danning, who had just co-starred with Nero in Enzo G. Castellari's THE DAY OF THE COBRA), some ballbusting with his NATO-based USMC buddy Malinowski (Cleavon Little), and a sadistic and profusely sweaty torturer known as "The Surgeon" (Paul Smith, doing his usual MIDNIGHT EXPRESS stink-eye side-glancing act). Even with the cast and the potentially intriguing story, THE SALAMANDER just never catches fire despite the heroic efforts of a typically excellent score by Jerry Goldsmith that belongs in a more exciting movie. It gets bogged down in sequence after sequence of Matucci going to see someone, interviewing them, and then moving on to the next person. Zinner offers one low-energy car chase in which both cars crash through oddly-placed fruit stands right on cue. Intermittently-deployed voiceover narration by Nero is a clear indication of Zinner scrambling to cover gaps in the narrative, and most of the big names--Quinn, Lee, Little, Wallach, Claudia Cardinale (as Leporello's wife)--have little more than extended cameos. Balsam has one great bit where the camera slowly moves in on his aging face as he delivers a devastating monologue about how he, as a young man during WWII, stepped out for cigars and returned home to find his entire family massacred, but then Zinner ruins it, breaking the spell by inexplicably cutting to a reaction shot from a cat. There's a little oomph offered by some third-act sleaze, with Mrs. Leporello having a torrid affair with her husband's aide-de-camp Roditi (John Steiner, dubbed by Larry Dolgin) and the discovery that Gen. Leporello has a thing for very young girls, plus some unintended hilarity with a torture scene leading to a Franco Nero/Paul Smith brawl, with a hirsute Nero sporting nothing but a jockstrap with his bare ass flailing all over the place and nearly giving Smith a faceful of his taint. THE SALAMANDER is an interesting curio if for no other reason than that cast, all of whom are fine and do what's expected of them (Lee's smug, sinister Baldasur allows him to pull out almost every move in his "pompous prick" arsenal), but it proved to be one-and-done for Zinner as a director. After the film's failure, he returned to his regular job, earning an Oscar nomination for editing 1982's AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN and several Emmy nominations for various TV gigs, including the epic 1983 ABC miniseries THE WINDS OF WAR and its 1988 sequel WAR AND REMEMBRANCE, winning for the latter. Zinner died in 2007 at 88.
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.
Directed by Robert Martin Carroll. Written by Graeme Whifler and Peter Desberg, Ph.D. Cast: David Carradine, Paul L. Smith, Brad Dourif, Conrad Janis, Sydney Lassick, Savina Gersak, Alexandra Powers, Michael Griffin, Steve Carlisle, Steve Ingrassia, Robert Broyles, Jeff Bergquist. (R, 97 mins)
There's genuine heart and a feeling of twisted love deep within the sick horrors contained in SONNY BOY, a one-of-a-kind exploitation film whose cult status seems to be gaining momentum with each passing year and each subsequent late-night "TCM Underground" airing on Turner Classic Movies. Alternately grim, horrifying, and hilarious, SONNY BOY is indebted to the '70s drive-in horrors of Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven and along with those films, probably influenced the hillbilly horror of Rob Zombie's HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES (2003) and THE DEVIL'S REJECTS (2005). SONNY BOY just came out at the wrong time--a decade earlier or later and it probably would've gotten more attention from fans. Filmed in 1987 but--for a variety of reasons--unreleased until 1990, the film had an extremely troubled production that seems to be the norm with Egyptian-born, Italy-based producer Ovidio G. Assonitis (BEYOND THE DOOR, TENTACLES, THE VISITOR). In the late '80s, Assonitis had a co-production deal with Trans-World Entertainment that produced films like David Keith's THE CURSE (1987), Alfonso Brescia's fake-ATOR entry IRON WARRIOR (1987), Ruggero Deodato's LONE RUNNER (1988), and Federico Prosperi's THE BITE (1989), rechristened CURSE II: THE BITE though it's completely unrelated to THE CURSE but is likely the only film that will ever contain both radioactive snakes and Jamie Farr getting laid. SONNY BOY was part of that same deal, but proved a much bigger headache than the others, most of which got small releases on their way to video stores, except for THE CURSE, which actually made some money thanks to a post-STAND BY ME Wil Wheaton, who has blogged about what a terrible experience he had making it (from wilwheaton.net):
"Well, at the time, your Uncle Willie was just a young'un, and some really evil producers from a scary foreign country came to him and said, 'We have this movie for you to be in, and we want to give you lots of money to be in it.' And Uncle Willie didn't have the best advisors at the time, and nobody told him that this big pile of shit would be around forever. Consider it the very expensive lesson. At least I didn't get a tattoo."
Equal parts Tobe Hooper, Wes Craven, Sam Peckinpah, and John Waters, with bonus Christ and Frankenstein metaphors, SONNY BOY opens in Harmony, New Mexico in 1970, with Weasel (Brad Dourif) killing a couple outside a cheap motel and making off with their car and a black & white TV from the motel room. Weasel delivers the goods to his boss Slue (Paul L. Smith), a hulking, intimidating brute who lords over the town from his desert junkyard base which also includes a bargain-basement recreation of the Louvre. Slue isn't happy with Weasel's take, especially since he had to kill the couple and that he took the TV (Slue: "What the fuck am I supposed to watch on black & white? DRAGNET?" Weasel: "OK, I'll take it back to the motel!" Slue: "I own the fucking motel!") Slue really loses his shit when he finds a baby in the backseat, which Weasel somehow missed. Wanting no evidence of his crimes, Slue makes a quick decision to feed the baby to some wild hogs, but that plan is thwarted by his lover Pearl, played by David Carradine in drag. Pearl wants to keep the baby and raise him as her own, and Slue agrees under duress. Years pass--at age 6, Sonny Boy is given "the gift of silence" by Slue, who removes the boy's tongue. Sonny Boy is kept locked in a shed and fed live chickens. By 17 (now played by Michael Griffin), he's a feral beast despite the unconditional love of Pearl, and he's only brought out to off Slue's enemies or clean up the messes left by the incompetence of Slue's flunkies Weasel and Charlie P. (Sydney Lassick). Eventually, Sonny Boy manages to escape and finds caring souls in Rose (Alexandra Powers, who went on to DEAD POETS SOCIETY) and disgraced, drunken local doc Bender (Conrad Janis of MORK & MINDY), who lost his medical license in a scandal involving transplanted monkey organs. But the folks of Harmony, egged on by white-trash barfly Sandy (Assonitis' then-girlfriend Savina Gersak, a regular in his late '80 productions, here sporting teeth that look like she just re-enacted a pivotal moment in SALO) are turning on Slue and all but break out the torches and pitchforks in pursuit of Sonny Boy, leading to an explosive, Peckinpah/WILD BUNCH-style showdown at Slue's desert fortress.
SONNY BOY was written by music-video director Graeme Whifler, who went on to script DR. GIGGLES (1992) and direct segments of the 2000-2002 Dean Cain-hosted revival of RIPLEY'S BELIEVE IT OR NOT. Whifler was hoping to direct SONNY BOY but was ousted from the project right after selling the script to Assonitis. The producer instead went with Robert Martin Carroll, whose only prior credit was a 1980 short film (there was a rumor that "Robert Martin Carroll" was a pseudonym for CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST and Assonitis' LONE RUNNER director Deodato, but Carroll is indeed a real person; his only other credit is the 2005 indie BABIES FOR SALE, which was shot five years earlier as BABY LUV). Much of Whifler's script was altered by Assonitis and Carroll (Sonny Boy was originally written as a disfigured monstrosity instead of an animalistic teenage boy), and someone going by "Peter Desberg, Ph.D" is credited with "additional dialogue" (Carroll has said that Whifler's original script was even more extreme and bizarre than what was filmed). Whifler remained bitter about SONNY BOY and for a long time, there was no love lost between him and Carroll, though in recent years as the film's cult has slowly grown, they've made peace with one another and, in a classic "enemy of my enemy is my friend" development, seem to have come together and found some common ground in their mutual loathing of Assonitis. Assonitis has long had a reputation as a meddling producer who hires rookie directors just to fire them--most infamously, he gave James Cameron his first directing gig on 1982's PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING and butted heads with the future King of the World throughout the production, kicking him out of the editing room and eventually firing him altogether, infuriating the young Cameron enough that he was finally inspired to devote all of his energies to finishing his script for THE TERMINATOR (cue the PRICE IS RIGHT losing horn for Assonitis). Carroll got a taste of the Cameron experience during SONNY BOY's post-production in Rome as Assonitis--I hope you're sitting down for this--locked him out of the editing room and fired him.
SONNY BOY had to undergo a few cuts in the US to secure an R rating and the choppiness shows, especially in a scene where Sonny Boy is confronted by an angry mob and somehow escapes. The escape is never shown in the US cut, but in the version released overseas, which runs about seven minutes longer, he's shown clawing and biting his way through the crowd, with blood and flesh dripping from his mouth. In the US cut, someone runs into the bar and simply tells the sheriff that Sonny Boy escaped. Another pivotal moment cut from the US release is a shot of milk dripping from a mechanism on Pearl's breast as Slue walks in on her feeding an infant Sonny Boy. Carradine as Pearl is a bit of inspired and jaw-dropping stunt casting that, for some reason, the filmmakers never really exploit, at least not in the truncated American cut. Despite being granted a grand entrance and with top and above-the-title billing, Carradine is a supporting actor in SONNY BOY and absent for long stretches (presumably, they only had him for a limited time), though he was involved enough to sing the theme song "Maybe It Ain't." The central characters in SONNY BOY are Sonny Boy and Slue, and the film gives the great character actor Paul L. Smith perhaps the showiest role of his career. Dourif has said in interviews and at conventions that Smith and Carroll didn't get along at all, so perhaps some of that frustration helped fuel his performance. The Massachusetts-born Smith (1936-2012) was a former bouncer and bodyguard with a degree in Philosophy who got his start as the Bud Spencer fill-in in a series of low-grade Italian buddy movies with Terence Hill wannabe "Michael Coby" (actually Italian actor Antonio Cantafora) in the mid '70s. He's best known for his burly, leering, sneering presence in films like 1978's MIDNIGHT EXPRESS (as the brutal head prison guard Hamidou), 1980's POPEYE (as Bluto), 1983's chainsaw classic PIECES (as the stink-eyed, red herring handyman Willard), and 1984's DUNE (as The Beast Rabban). SONNY BOY gave Smith a rare starring role and he runs with it, glowering, glaring, and sweating through the entire film with a masterful slow burn. Smith retired from acting in the late 1990s and left Hollywood to recommit to his Jewish faith, changing his name to Adam Eden and relocating with his wife to Israel where he spent his last years. The folks at Grindhouse Releasing tracked him down and visited him at his home in Ra'anana for a candid and gregarious career-spanning interview on their PIECES DVD in 2008.
Griffin, who soon started going by Michael Boston, but has done nothing of note in the years since SONNY BOY, turns in a very credible and often haunting performance as the tortured Sonny Boy, and what's most interesting about the characters in SONNY BOY is how the actors don't ham it up and go over the top. Sure, Smith glares and yells, Dourif acts twitchy and sketchy, and Lassick does his patented Cheswick whining (this is probably not the ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST reunion either envisioned in 1975), but there's an oddly natural and lived-in feeling to their performances that makes the film that much more unsettling. No one is outraged by anything that goes on. No one seems to notice that Pearl is hideous and has chest hair. And even the townspeople are bunch of hatemongering yahoos. The straight performances of the cast--even Carradine is restrained, despite his garb--heighten the outrage factor when something completely batshit happens, whether Sonny Boy bites off Weasel's thumb or an irate Slue fires a cannon and blows up a snooping deputy sheriff who's not on board with how things operate in Harmony. Even Janis' quack doctor is portrayed as a noble guy who was just trying to do the right thing with what he had available, even if it invites endless derision from the residents (after he tells Weasel to get his severed thumb looked at, Weasel scoffs "What? And let you put a monkey dick on it?"). The film has a surprising conflict and depth to it in terms of its depiction of abuse and Sonny Boy's continued love of Slue despite everything he's put him through. Though it never justifies Slue's despicable actions, the film makes it clear that in his own way, he loves Sonny Boy. Yes, it's an often nightmarish freakshow, but it touches upon some difficult and complex topics and what's most surprising is that it retained these elements even with all the behind-the-scenes battles and Assonitis pulling rank and commandeering the editing process.
SONNY BOY languished on the shelf for a couple of years before Trans-World's financial issues--no doubt brought on by their expansion from home video into mostly unsuccessful theatrical exhibition--resulted in it being handed off to Triumph Releasing, a small Sony subsidiary. Triumph obviously didn't have much faith in the box office potential and only released it to a handful of theaters and it vanished after a week. It was released on VHS by Media Home Entertainment, and that's the blurry source of the print that TCM runs--they even forgot to remove the pre-film FBI and Interpol warnings. SONNY BOY was shot by Assonitis' usual cinematographer Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli in 2.35 widescreen, which is extremely compromised on the cropped 1.33 VHS print. The film has never been released on R1 DVD or on Blu-ray and is largely a forgotten obscurity, though it has had a few scattered midnight movie showings in recent years. For the most part, SONNY BOY's cult is a quiet one. It's growing thanks to the TCM exposure, but this is a film that demands a proper restoration to both its uncensored European version and to its proper aspect ratio. Somebody needs to make this happen, preferably with a commentary track that gets Assonitis, Carroll, and Whifler in the same room together. It manages to find an ideal balance, walking the line between gloriously unrepentant, offensive trash and surprisingly heartfelt drama with real, albeit twisted, emotion. Often sloppy and haphazardly-assembled, especially in the last half hour, SONNY BOY is nevertheless the kind of film that will have you laughing and cringing in equal measures, one where even the most jaded cult-movie cineastes who think they've seen it all will have to admire its audacity and forgive its flaws. There's never been anything else quite like it.
UPDATE (1/30/2016): On January 26, 2016, Shout! Factory released SONNY BOY on Blu-ray in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio and in its uncut 103-minute version, with all the missing scenes reinstated, and two commentary tracks, one with Carroll and the other with Whifler.
