THE MENU (2022) ****

If The Menu was made fifty years earlier, it would’ve starred Vincent Price.  It is kindred spirits with classic Price vehicles like The Mad Magician and (especially) Theater of Blood.  It is a story about how someone in the public eye (in this case, a world renown chef) finally snaps and goes after his critics, patrons, and the scummy rich with a vengeance.  It’s not overly horrific or anything, but it has a wicked sense of black humor that I’m sure Price would’ve appreciated. 

Ralph Fiennes stars as the chef, who lures his high-paying customers to his remote island restaurant with the promise of a meal they won’t forget.  He is clearly relishing the chance to chew the scenery (this review is going to have a lot of food puns, fair warning).  Fiennes doesn’t go over the top or anything, but the twinkle in his eye while he dishes out his revenge says it all. 

At its heart, The Menu is a movie about class warfare.  Food has always been an apt metaphor in these kinds of films.  While some of it is a bit on the nose and/or predictable, director Mark Mylod never steps false once, and serves up each shock and surprise with panache. 

Fiennes gives a delicious performance, but Anya Taylor-Joy is every bit his match as a customer who finds herself at the wrong restaurant at the wrong time.  The other assorted customers are a lot of fun to watch as well.  Nicholas Hoult is appropriately smarmy as an obsessive foodie, Janet McTeer is aces as a snobby food critic, and John Leguizamo looks to be having a blast playing a washed-up movie star.  Hon Chau is also quite intimidating as the head server who knows how to keep her customers in line.  

If you’ve ever worked in the service industry, you’ll feel some moments of painful recognition here.  As one such person, I got a kick out of seeing chefs and servers giving their annoying customers their just desserts.  I haven’t applauded during a film in a long time, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t clap when Fiennes screamed, “NO FUCKING SUBSTITUTIONS!”  

For a brief, shining moment, I felt seen.

TUBI CONTINUED… EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL (1971) ***

After spending the first couple days of this year-long column watching crap like Terror Train 2, After School Special, and Amityville Karen, I wanted to desperately switch gears and check out something by a distinguished director.  In this case, the great Werner Herzog.  That’s the beauty of Tubi.  They have just about every kind of movie imaginable at your disposal.  It’s that kind of diverse programming that I hope to feature throughout this column. 

Little people on a prison farm in the middle of nowhere stage an uprising when the warden takes an inmate hostage.  They retaliate by cutting the phone wire and proceed to overrun the place.  When they’re not busy trying to rescue their pal, the delinquent dwarfs spend their downtime stealing trucks and motorcycles, getting into food fights, holding cockfights, and generally making a ruckus. 

Only a guy like Herzog could make a movie like this.  It basically feels like a cross between Freaks and Escape from Alcatraz, with a little bit of Night of the Living Dead thrown in there for good measure.  (Or maybe The Terror of Tiny Town by way of The Shawshank Redemption, it’s hard to say.)  Herzog also gives us plenty of oddball scenes along the way.  The part where two of the dwarf ladies eat their scabs feels like something out of a John Waters flick, and the stuff with the dead animals has a Mondo movie vibe.  

Despite the general sense of unpleasantness, there still manages to be an odd sweetness about the film.   I’m specifically thinking of the scene where two dwarf lovers are unable to make love because the man can’t get into the regular-sized bed.  This kind of whiplash in tone kind of makes Even Dwarfs Started Small hard to pin down, but it definitely is a unique viewing experience.   

Herzog resists the temptation to “explain” just what’s going on.  However, he gives us plenty of scenes dripping with symbolism, so we at least know what it’s “about”.  Such shots include chickens picking maggots off the carcasses of other dead chickens, a driverless truck endlessly going around in circles, and the heartbreaking image of piglets furiously trying to suckle their dead mother.  

This is one of Herzog’s most famous works.  I don’t know if I can call it one of my favorites, but it certainly has its moments, even if it doesn’t quite work as a whole.  If anything, it’s proof there’s more on Tubi than just a bunch of fake Amityville movies.   

JANUA-RAY: THE LEMON GROVE KIDS (1968) **

Most directors start small and then work their way up.  Not Ray Dennis Steckler.  His first three movies, while still pretty cheap, had ambition, stars (well, Arch Hall, Jr. and Liz Renay, but still), and looked much bigger than their budget would imply.  By the time he made Rat Pfink a Boo Boo and The Lemon Grove Kids, he was making movies in his backyard for peanuts, using friends and family behind and in front of the camera.  That kind of handmade look is endearing.  

However, While Rat Pfink a Boo Boo is charming, inventive and fun, this is kind of a chore to sit through.  I think the whole premise of the movie started by someone stating that Steckler bore a passing resemblance to Huntz Hall from The Bowery Boys.  That must’ve sparked Ray to make his own Bowery Boys rip-off.  He also used the same basic structure of a Three Stooges short as the film is comprised of three short subjects starring “The Lemon Grove Kids”.  

“The Lemon Grove Kids”(* ½) has the Lemon Grove Kids getting into a tussle with their rival gang.  It’s decided that they should hold a race to settle their differences once and for all.  Naturally, the other gang try to sabotage the race.

From the perplexing silent movie title cards to the overdone sound effects to the painfully unfunny slapstick, The Lemon Grove Kids is pretty crummy in just about every way.  Comedies (especially cheap-o ones like this) that aren’t funny are often the hardest kinds of movies to stomach.  At least things end on a high note during the fun scene where Steckler winds up interrupting the filming of Rat Pfink a Boo Boo.  How meta!  The final bit where he is inexplicably pursued by a mummy goes on a bit too long though.

The second short is “The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Green Grasshopper and the Vampire Lady from Outer Space” (**).  In this one, the Kids get hired to clean up the brush in Coleman Francis’ backyard.  Aliens led by a vampire woman (Carolyn Brandt) abduct some of the kids.  It’s then up Slug (Mike Kannon) and Gofer (Steckler) to save them.  

The Bowery Boys met monsters and ghosts, but they never got to tangle with aliens.  I guess having The Lemon Grove Kids go toe to toe with UFOs wasn’t the worst idea in the world.  After a longwinded set-up, the finale is pretty good… well, up until everything descends into chaos.  Once again, there are no real laughs to be had, but Brandt looks sexy in her Vampira-inspired get-up.  She’s easily the most memorable part of this segment.  Steckler’s daughter, Laura, who plays the youngest member of the “Kids”, Tickles, steals scenes by just being cute as a button.  

“The Lemon Grove Kids Go Hollywood!” (**) is the final segment.  This time out, the Kids get work doing odd jobs for movie star Cee Bee Beaumont (Brandt, playing the same character she did in Rat Pfink a Boo Boo, making this a shared cinematic universe long before Marvel made it trendy).  Two bumbling criminals try to kidnap her, and the usual hijinks ensue.

This one is just sort of ho-hum.  It’s not as painfully unfunny as the first sequence, but it lacks the charm of the second one.  Once again, Tickles is the best part.  She definitely deserved her own spin-off.

Director’s Signatures:  A long chase scene, musical numbers, a bizarre mash-up of genres, and at some screenings, people dressed like monsters ran out into the audience.  

Steckler’s Stock Player Round-Up:  Mike (The Thrill Killers) Kannon, Coleman Francis, Herb Robins, producer George Morgan, Ron Haydock, Carolyn Brandt, and Kogar the Gorilla.

Co-director Ted Roter, like Steckler, later wound up working in the porn industry, and his last XXX film was the first porno I ever saw, Scandalous Simone.

AKA:  The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters.

TUBI CONTINUED… AMITYVILLE KAREN (2022) *

Karen (Lauren Francesca) is a health inspector who gets a thrill shutting down businesses that are not up to code.  Her latest target is a local winery that is trying to branch out and hold beer tastings.  During her latest inspection, she steals a bottle of their newest wine (that came from a winery in Amityville), and drinks it.  Before you can say, “I want to speak to your manager!”, she becomes possessed and starts slaying people while saying obnoxious catchphrases like, “You’re canceled!” 

Amityville Karen is basically a one-woman show for Lauren Francesca.  Many scenes feature her bitching aloud to no one in particular about almost every kind of Karen complaint known to man.  She really goes for it, and if the material had actually been funny, her performance might’ve been memorable.  However, without any good punchlines or one-liners, it’s all bluster and no laughs. 

Most everyone else in the cast is painfully amateurish, stumbling over their lines, and visibly sweating in front of the camera.  The biggest “star” in the cast is a slumming James Duval as an employee at the winery.  Boy, Donnie Darko was a long time ago.  Lilith Stabs is also in there briefly as a groupie, but she’s more or less wasted.

For some ungodly reason, this clocks in at a whopping 103 minutes.  There’s just barely enough of an idea here to make a movie, and one that probably could’ve and should’ve only been about 75 minutes.  I mean say what you will about all those recent Full Moon movies.  Even if they do suck, they’re only an hour long (or less).  And trust me, you feel every painful minute of this.  Note to prospective low budget filmmakers:  If you’re going to cash in on the “Amityville” franchise, please keep the running time to a bare minimum.  I mean did we need the ten full minutes of news anchors and social media videos of people talking about Karen at the end?  

Making fun of “Karens” is about the lowest hanging fruit imaginable.  Because of that, a horror comedy about a possessed Karen should’ve been a can’t-lose proposition.  Too bad the filmmakers couldn’t even wring one decent laugh out of the premise.  It’s enough to make you want to speak to the movie’s manager.

JANUA-RAY: RAT PFINK A BOO BOO (1966) ****

(Originally reviewed March 17, 2020)

Wikipedia defines an auteur as “an artist, usually a film director, who applies a highly centralized and subjective control to many aspects of a collaborative creative work; in other words, a person equivalent to an author of a novel or a play.  The term commonly refers to filmmakers or directors with a recognizable style or thematic preoccupation.”  If that doesn’t describe Ray Dennis Steckler, I don’t know what does.  He’s probably best known (and rightly so) for The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.  This, however, just might be his magnum opus.  

Rat Pfink a Boo Boo is what you get when you take a hard-hitting crime melodrama, a rock n’ roll musical, a dime-store superhero movie, and a killer ape flick, toss them in a blender, and put the setting on WTF.  Apparently, Steckler started out making the crime picture and became dissatisfied with the results.  To amuse himself (or more likely to cash in on the popularity of Batman and Robin) he had his main characters become half-assed superheroes mid-film.  He also padded out the rest of the running time with musical numbers and an attack by a guy in a (rather impressive) ape costume.  The results are Z movie heaven.

What’s interesting is that the early scenes are quite intense, given the budget and the fact that it was shot silently with the sound added in post-production.  Steckler manages to wring genuine suspense from the scenes of the trio of hoodlums mugging a woman in an alley, as well as the scenes where they verbally harass Carolyn Brandt (Steckler’s leading lady on screen and off) over the telephone.  He does a fine job on the musical sequences too (this is the guy who made Wild Guitar after all).  The editing of the performances is remarkably competent and would look right at home on MTV if it had existed in 1966.  

It’s when heartthrob singer Lonnie Lord (Ron Haydock, who also wrote the screenplay) and dim-witted gardener Titus Twimbly (Titus Moede) become their crimefighting alter egos Rat Pfink and Boo Boo does the movie really take off.  The costumes look like they came out of a dime store, but that’s kind of what makes them awesome.  The fight scenes have a filmed-in-someone’s-backyard quality to them.  What’s astonishing is that they are staged and edited with a surprising amount of panache.  You also have to give Steckler credit for staging long motorcycle chases and parade scenes with no budget and zero permits.  It’s guerilla filmmaking at its finest.  (Speaking of gorilla, the ape suit is excellent and probably ate up whatever budget Steckler was working with.)

What’s more is that the film is only 66 minutes, and it moves like greased lightning.  There’s no fat on it whatsoever.  Sure, Incredibly Strange Creatures is great and all, but it bogs down like a son-of-a-bitch in the second half.  This one is over before you know it and leaves you wanting more.  

Oh, and how about that title?  You might think it’s a weird play on “a Go-Go”, but it’s not.  The onscreen title was supposed to read “Rat Pfink AND Boo Boo”, and the person who designed the titles just forgot to add the “N” and “D”.  I wish there was a better explanation for it.  Then again, the oddball title just makes the movie that much more memorable.

Today’s bloated big-budget superhero movies could take a page from Ray Dennis Steckler’s playbook.  There’s more ingenuity on display here than in a dozen MCU films.  Do you think the Russo Brothers could make something this good if they had a Ray Dennis Steckler budget?  Who knows?  I’d rather imagine what Ray could’ve done had he been given just a tenth of a budget as those guys had when they did Avengers:  Endgame.

AKA:  The Adventures of Rat Pfink and Boo Boo.

JANUA-RAY NOTES:  

1) The opening in which a trio of hoodlums attack a woman in an alley has a very Thrill Killers vibe to it, as do the scenes where they terrorize Carolyn Brandt.  

2) Director Signatures:  The opening title sequence uses the same font and grainy art style of The Incredibly Strange Creatures, there’s some odd narration in the beginning (“This is Lonnie Lord… his fans are legion!”), scenic shots of Hollywood Boulevard, lots of musical numbers, and a LONG chase scene in the third act. 

3) Steckler’s Stock Player Round-Up:  Carolyn Brandt, Ron Haydock, Titus Moede, and James (the nightclub comedian from Incredibly Strange Creatures) Bowie. 

4) Shameless Self-Promotion:  During the “Rat Pfink” musical number, one of the dancers wears one of the zombie masks from Incredibly Strange Creatures.

5) Like Incredibly Strange Creatures, this is an odd mash-up of genres (in this case, crime thriller, musical, and superhero movie) that should NOT work, but it’s so damned charming that you (or at least I) just have to love it.  

6) I like that Rat Pfink and Boo Boo’s alter egos have alliterative names, just like all the best superheroes.  

7) The scene where Haydock and Moede emerge from the closet in their Rat Pfink and Boo Boo garb is one of my favorite scenes in cinema history.  Very few movies turn on a dime so sharply midway through and manage to make it work.  Rat Pfink a Boo Boo is one of those movies.  Only a guy like Steckler could pull off something like that.

8) The Severin Blu-Ray only contains the black and white version, so I guess that means I won’t be parting with my Media Blasters DVD of the tinted version any time soon.  It’s still a fun movie either way, but I personally prefer the cheesy color sequences from the DVD.

TUBI CONTINUED… VIRGIN SACRIFICE (1960) **

A big game hunter named Samson (David DaLie) goes into the jungle to fill an order for a travelling circus.  His professor buddy has a house in the middle of the jungle, and he invites Samson to stay with him while on his hunt.  When some natives kill his friend and kidnap his hot daughter (Angelica Morales), it’s up to Samson to save her before she can become their virgin sacrifice.  

Jungle movies were big in the ‘30s, all the way through to the ‘50s.  By the time the ‘60s rolled around, filmmakers had to do something to spice up the sagging genre, and nudity was a surefire way to do just that.  Now, there had been nudity in jungle pictures prior to Virgin Sacrifice, but these scenes were mostly in the anthropological vein of topless tribal dancing or mundane scenes of native women going about their day wearing only a skirt.  

What makes Virgin Sacrifice different is that the nudity occurs during the titular ritual where a virgin is tied up and has her blouse ripped off before she is killed by a witch doctor in a weird mask.  Another thing that makes it different is that this scene occurs right up front as our big game hunter has a flashback to seeing the ritual the last time he was in the jungle.  Most of these vintage exploitation numbers usually make you wait till the end to see the T & A.  This one hooks you right away.  (There’s also a tantalizing skinny-dipping scene later on in the flick, although nothing is explicitly shown.)  

Notice I said the nudity makes Virgin Sacrifice “different”, not “better”.  After the opening instance of sacrificial skin, things bog down in a hurry.  Once our hero finally gets to the jungle, we get all the requisite scenes of him (or more precisely, his stunt double) wrestling with wildcats, receiving ominous native warnings, and shit like that.  All of this isn’t too terrible or anything, but the long scenes of native dancing to monotonous rhythmic drumming started to lull me to sleep after a while.  

Fortunately, it’s only an hour long.  Despite the short running time, it’s still heavily padded with long scenes of people traipsing through the jungle.  Even then, I was somehow able to power through it.  I have to admit, the nudity (however brief) did help make it all go down a little smoother.  

AKA:  Fury of the Jungle.

JANUA-RAY: THE THRILL KILLERS (1964) **

(Originally posted July 17th, 2007)

Ray Dennis (The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies) Steckler directs and stars (under his usual pseudonym “Cash Flagg”) as Mort “Mad Dog” Click, a vicious killer.  A prostitute calls him a “weirdo” and he replies, “You don’t say!” and kills her.  Meanwhile a trio of madmen escapes from the nuthouse and terrorize a couple.  One guy uses an axe to decapitate people.  In the film’s best scene, he picks the dandruff off his axe after he uses it to cut a guy’s head off.  They then terrorize a movie star and his wife in a diner.  When the couple fights off the psychos, Click then shows up and stalks them.  Click kills a bunch of cops and escapes on horseback but is gunned down.  The black and white photography is great, but the movie’s not in the same league as Steckler’s other classics like Incredibly Strange Creatures…, Rat Pfink a Boo-Boo, and The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher.  With Liz (Desperate Living) Renay and the usual Steckler stock players Carolyn Brandt, Titus Moede, and Atlas King.  I think the narrator was Coleman (Beast of Yucca Flats) Francis.

AKA:  The Maniacs are Loose!  AKA:  Mad Dog Click.  AKA:  The Monsters are Loose.

JANUA-RAY NOTES:

1) My assumption in my original review was correct, that is Coleman Francis as the narrator.  You have to wonder if he wrote his own narration as lines like, “Joe is caught in a world of ‘non-reality’” sounds like something right out of The Beast of Yucca Flats.

2) As with the other films in the box set I’ve seen so far, the print looks excellent.  

3) Director Signatures:  Like Wild Guitar, this starts out with some great footage of Hollywood Boulevard at the time.  The opening credits sequence uses the same typeface as The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? and similarly ends with a zoom-in on Cash Flagg’s eye.  As in The Incredibly Strange Creatures, it also has a long, drawn-out chase scene in the third act.

4) Steckler’s Stock Player Round-Up:  Atlas (The Incredibly Stranges Creatures) King, Arch Hall, Sr. (playing himself!), Titus Moede, Carolyn Brandt, producer George Morgan, and of course, the ever-present Cash Flagg.  

5) Shameless Self-Promotion:  A poster for The Incredibly Strange Creatures can be seen hanging in the diner.

6) Gangster moll-turned-B-Movie actress Liz Renay went on to work with Steckler’s Wild Guitar co-star Arch Hall, Jr. in The Nasty Rabbit and Deadwood ’76.

7) The main problem with The Thrill Killers is that it feels like parts of two movies Frankensteined together to make an uneven whole.  It wouldn’t be a big issue had the two sections been equally entertaining.  As it is, the scenes of Steckler stalking his victims are a lot more entertaining than the ho-hum stuff with the trio of escaped axe murderers.  (That, and the final chase scene goes on FOREVER.)  Steckler did a much better job bridging two separate stories and styles later on with the immortal Rat Pfink a Boo-Boo.

8) Don’t get me wrong.  There is some good stuff here.  The sequence where Flagg smacks the prostitute around in time to the flashing lights outside his hotel room is well done.  It’s a shame that kind of snappy editing is largely absent elsewhere in the film.  

9) The Blu-Ray contains an alternate cut called “The Maniacs are Loose”.  It’s basically the same movie, but with a “maniacs are in the theater” gimmick similar to Incredibly Strange Creatures where people in masks would run into the audience at certain times.  This version has a color opening sequence starring “The Amazing Ormond” (from Ron Ormond’s Please Don’t Touch Me) who uses a Hypno-Wheel (again, similar to Incredibly Strange Creatures) to hypnotize the audience into thinking they will see maniacs among them in the theater.  Then, at certain times of the movie, the Hypno-Wheel will flash on screen, signaling when the maniacs will terrorize the audience.  Ultimately, The Thrill Killers isn’t much with or without the gimmick.