SCARY STORIES (2019) **

Like many, I grew up reading Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books.  I was already a young horror fan and a big reader when I discovered the books, but I credit the series for helping cement my love for both reading and horror.  Schwartz and his books were a big inspiration to people my age, so this should’ve been a can’t-miss combination of informative documentary and childhood nostalgia.  Too bad its focus is so scattershot that it fails on both counts. 

Early in the film, we learn Schwartz died thirty years ago, and that illustrator Stephen Gammell only ever gave one interview.  So, up front we know that whatever insight into the creation of the books we get is going to be very slim.  Schwartz’s son, Peter is interviewed, but he didn’t have the best relationship with his dad, so he winds up not being much help either. 

Coming to the realization you can’t get blood from a stone; the filmmakers should’ve turned this into a short subject and moved on.  Instead, they keep going.  They then turn their focus on the books being banned, which isn’t the worst angle to work with.  Even then, the info on that is somewhat limited, so they start focusing on how the books inspired another generation of artists to paint, sculpt, and photograph their interpretations of the books’ illustrations. 

I did like the little animations that were inspired by the illustrations that are used occasionally as segue ways or recreations.  However, there are not enough of them to make up for the dull talking head interviews.  Heck, info on the books is so skimpy that we wind up learning just as much about the creation of Goosebumps from interviewee R.L. Stein as we do the Scary Stories series! 

The ending is weak too.  The face-to-face sit down between Schwartz’s son and the woman who tried to ban the books decades ago is awkwardly staged, uncomfortably forced, and rings hollow and false.  Most of the Scary Stories had some kind of twist ending.  I guess the twist to this ending is that it’s completely unsatisfying.

Do yourself a favor and skip this lifeless documentary and stick with the books (or even the 2019 movie) instead. 

GIRL FROM TOBACCO ROW (1966) * ½

After thoroughly enjoying Ron Ormond’s White Lightnin’ Road, I figured I’d give another one of his Hicksploitation flicks a chance.  I was excited to see Girl from Tobacco Row because it features much of the same cast as White Lightnin’ Road.  Some actors even play characters that have the same name (or close to it), although they don’t seem to be playing the same exact character.  Whereas that minor classic was heavily padded with genuinely exciting stock car racing scenes, all this one has to offer is some boring gospel tunes, slow country numbers, and lethargic fiddling to tie the thin narrative together.

Snake (Earl “Snake” Richards) escapes from a chain gang and goes on the lam.  Tim (Tim Ormond, Ron’s son) is a young boy who urges his preacher papa (former cowboy star and father of John, Tex Ritter) to take Snake in.  After some churching up, Snake starts taking a shine to the preacher man’s daughter (Rachel Romen).  Little does the family know, Snake is only sniffing around to get a suitcase full of loot that one of his late compatriots hid on the premises.  After being privy to a loving home for the first time in probably forever, the question soon arises, will Snake take the money and run, or will he try to make a fresh start with his new makeshift family unit?

Girl from Tobacco Row has some of the same kind of overcooked southern melodrama White Lightnin’ Road had, but the difference is that this one is deadly dull.  Although the opening escape sequence isn’t too bad, things quickly bog down once the preacher character is introduced.  His endless sermonizing ensures the movie will stop on a dime every time he opens his pie hole.  Without a strong hook (like the stock car racing angle), it all just sort of dies on the vine. 

The performances also lack the spark of White Lightnin’ Road.  Snake (who also performs a rather tepid number) isn’t too bad in this, but he did a much better job when cast as the antagonist.  Only young Tim Ormond seems to retain his enthusiasm from film to film.  Fans of the old Nashville Network will get a kick out of seeing Ralph Emery as a hitman, although that’s hardly a ringing endorsement.    

Ormond made this the year before White Lightnin’ Road and the difference is night and day.  (It almost feels like a dry run for that movie.)  Instead of the plot threads coming to a head at the big stock car race, it climaxes at the annual “Tobacco Festival” where a bunch of shitty country and western acts play.  While there are some thematically similar sequences (like Snake getting caught making time with a hot to trot southern belle), everything Ormond tried to do here is pretty much a bust, especially compared to White Lightnin’ Road. 

Things improve somewhat when the flick starts heading into the homestretch.  The performance by a couple who do not one, not two, but THREE harmonica solos are an unintentional laugh riot.  They’re easily the best part of the movie, but for all the wrong reasons.  I mean get a load of the guy playing the oversized harmonica.  He looks positively batty, and the faces he makes while watching Snake’s big fistfight while not missing a beat on his harmonica provides the second biggest laugh in the film. 

The biggest laugh, it should be said, comes when the preacher’s horny daughter lusts after an older man and says, “When you see snow on the mountaintop, there’s always fire in the furnace!”

SAMOA, QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE (1968) **

Clint (Roger Browne) is a rugged adventurer who leads an expedition into the jungles of Borneo in search of diamonds.  There, they encounter a lot of nature stock footage and scenes from other movies.  After a headhunter attack, the party is led to safety by the beautiful jungle girl Samoa (Edwige Fenech) who gives them shelter in her neighboring village.  Eventually Clint learns the natives use diamonds as offerings in their secret shrine and he soon makes a plan to pillage the village. 

Samoa, Queen of the Jungle is a (oh so) slightly better than average jungle picture that’s not too far removed from the genre pics of the ‘30s and ‘40s.  All the usual cliches still apply.  There’s a white jungle queen, a love triangle subplot, the asshole who butts heads with the hero every step of the way, and of course, a lot of stock footage.  

The big difference is the stock footage is a lot more graphic.  The longest bit involves Browne standing around watching a snake swallowing another snake whole.  The funniest attempt to blend old stock footage with the new movie comes when the tribeswomen bathe in the river.  The camera keeps cutting back and forth from grainy shots of real topless natives to pristine shots of sexy topless movie stars in a completely different river. 

Samoa, Queen of the Jungle starts off well enough, but it loses its way in the third act once it becomes a barrage of interchangeable, repetitive scenes of the explorers gunning down spear-wielding and/or poison dart-blowing natives.  The scenes of the group turning on one another, though inevitable, feel rushed too.  Because it occurs so late in the game, the betrayals and backstabbing don’t land like they should.  (Treasure of the Sierra Madre this is not.)  We do get a decent death by quicksand scene though, so it’s not a complete wash. 

Although the bare bones for a solid jungle adventure were here, it really needed a heavier concentration on exploitation elements to be a winner.  Edwige looks great in her native tube top and all, but she only gets one sex scene, and even then, most of her anatomy is obscured by a stupid flower montage that is superimposed over the action.  (I think it’s supposed to signify her being deflowered... I guess.)  In fact, there’s more nudity in the stock footage scenes of the native women than there is in the “real” movie, which is pretty telling.

Edwige fans will be curious enough to sit through it once.  Jungle movie fanatics will find some merit here as well.  Anybody else will likely find Samoa, Queen of the Jungle to be a royal pain.

WHITE LIGHTNIN’ ROAD (1967) ***

Joe is a thoroughly square, honest, and upstanding race car driver who has a rivalry on and off the track with an asshole racer named Snake.  Something of a love triangle breaks out between the two when Snake’s best gal Ruby starts making a play for Joe.  Joe’s in hot water though on account of him getting mixed up with some gangsters who trick him into unwittingly riding along on a heist, which results in the death of a nightwatchman.  Naturally, it all comes to a head at the big stock car race.

White Lightnin’ Road is a good old-fashioned Hicksploitation melodrama courtesy of Ron Ormond, director of Mesa of Lost Women.  It features fast cars, loose women, and country crackers.  What more can one ask for from the genre? 

What separates White Lightnin’ Road from the rest of the pack are the racing scenes.  They are genuinely entertaining, and dare I say, exciting.  Ormond (who also has a supporting role as the head gangster “Slick”) gets a lot of mileage (no pun intended) out of these sequences, which is a good thing because rest of the plot is a bit all over the place. 

Yes, there’s probably a few too many characters and unnecessary subplots, but a few of the detours are amusing.  I especially liked the part where Ruby’s father catches Snake messing around with her and instigates an impromptu shotgun wedding.  It helps that Arline Hunter is spectacularly easy on the eyes as the southern sexpot Ruby.  She comes off like a white trash Marilyn Monroe and her seductive scenes give the movie a shot in the arm whenever it goes off the track (pun intended.)  In fact, her best scene occurs in the third act during the big race when someone says an unkind word about her man, which leads to a blouse-ripping catfight in the grandstands.  The action is so fast and furious that it manages to overshadow the action on the track, which is really saying something.

In short, White Lightnin’ Road is sure to get your engine revving.

SIXTEEN (1972) **

 

A poor white trash family come into a bit of money.  To celebrate, they put on their Sunday best and go to the state fair.  Sixteen-year-old Naomi (Simone Griffeth) and her brother named… uh… Bruvver (John Lozier) wander off and wind up having a wild night.  Naomi ends up bedding a motorcycle daredevil (Peter Greene) and Bruvver becomes a mark for a grifting stripper (Beverly Powers) who gets him drunk and tries to chisel him out of the family fortune. 

Sixteen looks like it should be more lurid than it is.  However, there’s a naivety about it that deflates any sort of notion that this is going to be a down and dirty Hicksploitation flick.  The trouble the two cracker siblings get into is downright quaint, and the repercussions of their tomfoolery wind up feeling like something that came out of a sitcom version of The Waltons.

Griffeth (who was just a few years away from her memorable turn in Death Race 2000) is far and away the best thing about the movie.  She is perfectly cast as the innocent southern waif who winds up losing her virginity to a grubby carny.  Her nude scenes help to make up for the film’s many shortcomings, although they’re not plentiful enough to make it recommended. 

The problem is the film often times forgets she even exists.  The stuff with Bruvver and the con woman stripper is a lot less enjoyable, and more than a little grating.  The scenes where she has to contend with Bruvver’s wild child younger brother as he attacks her immobilized mobile home are especially annoying and juvenile.  Then again, I guess you have to expect a little immaturity out of a movie called Sixteen.

AKA:  The Young Prey.  AKA:  Carnival Tramp.  AKA:  Like a Crow on a June Bug. 

THE NIGHT OF THE CAT (1973) **

Bev (Kathy Allen) comes to a small town to identify the body of her sister.  She soon learns from a local reporter her sister was killed by some seedy underworld types while trying to escape a life of prostitution.  These unsavory characters get their kicks by luring unsuspecting women, getting them hooked on drugs and forcing them to turn tricks.  Bev then zips up her form-fitting black suit, dons a black wig, and sets out for revenge. 

Like the similarly titled Night of 1000 Cats, The Night of the Cat features a villain who has an acute fear of cats.  (It also unfortunately contains some seemingly unfaked scenes of cat abuse, just like that movie.)  We learn this information very early on, and it’s stated so obviously and over the top that you just know he’s going to wind up being killed and/or defeated by a bunch of frisky felines… Right? 

WRONG!  After all that build-up with the villain hating cats, there is absolutely no cat-related payoff at the end of the movie.  Instead, Bev just punches and kicks him until he (SPOILER) falls off a balcony and dies.  WHAT A RIP-OFF!  Why the fuck did they call this The Night of the Cat if the cat never gets his night?  Say what you will about Night of 1000 Cats, but at least the villain got his cat-centric just desserts in that one.

It’s a shame too because the opening scenes have a kick to them.  The scenes where Bev reminisces about her sister, practices Kung Fu, and plots her revenge work.  Unfortunately, there’s just way too much extraneous stuff that gets in the way.  The scenes with the mobsters running their organization particularly eat up a lot of screen time.  (Although I didn’t mind it when they cut to the villain’s gentleman’s club where we get to see some gratuitous topless dancing.)

It also takes an inordinate amount of time for heroine to finally go out for revenge.  Even when she finally gets her act together, the action is underwhelming.  I know they were working on a low budget, but the fights are slipshod (even the big fight with the fat henchmen is a bust) and the car chase scene goes on way too long.  The film does have some good ideas, namely “The Clinic” where girls are held and doped up, but the execution is shoddy.

Still, I have a soft spot in my heart for ‘70s regional low budget drive-in fare like this.  For all its frustrations, the movie at the very least is an OK vehicle for Kathy Allen.  Her performance is winning enough to keep you invested in her quest for vengeance.  Too bad this was her one and only starring role.  With a better movie at her disposal, she might’ve had a career as a drive-in queen. 

MUSICAL MUTINY (1970) * ½

A pirate wanders out of the sea and tells a Hell’s Angel to spread the word that “It’s a mutiny!”  He then goes around to the various hippies, dopers, rockers, and dune buggy enthusiasts to round up everyone they know to meet at the Pirates World amusement park for a free concert.  Woodstock it is not.

Then again, what do you expect when you hire the man who made Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny to make a rock concert movie?

The first half of this movie is slow going, mostly because it’s so repetitive.  People are seen milling about, listening to rock bands, or going on and on about some special formula in their lab when someone bursts in and says, “It’s a mutiny!”  This leads to long scenes of people riding around on garbage trucks, dune buggies driving cautiously through beaches, and parkgoers milling about Pirates World (which was also the setting for Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny).  Once the music finally kicks in, it’s nothing to write home about.  One singer sounds like Janis Joplin and another sounds like Joni Mitchell, but neither of them are very good. 

In the last twenty minutes, things perk up with Iron Butterfly does their big hit “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”.  I say in the last twenty minutes because that’s just about how long the song goes on.  I like the song as much as the next guy, but there’s a reason why they cut it down when it’s played on the radio.

The ending is especially infuriating.  A blond kid, who’s spent the entire movie trying to chase down the pirate to give him a letter just misses him when he disappears into the sea.  Frustrated, he opens up the letter, which reads, “THE END”.  If that asshole opened it about seventy minutes sooner, it would’ve saved us all a lot of trouble.

Some fun can be derived from the dated fashions, and some of the odd non-musical moments are semi-amusing.  That's not nearly enough to justify its existence though.  If I had to guess, I’d say director Barry Mahon filmed a bunch of concert scenes and didn’t know what to do with them.  He added the half-assed pirate narrative and released it, hoping it would simultaneously be a Woodstock-esque concert film AND a advertisement for Pirates World.  Ultimately, Musical Mutiny, like the pirate character, is better off in the middle of the ocean.