Village of the Giants (1965)

Directed by Bert I Gordon
Starring Tommy Kirk, Beau Bridges, Ron Howard, Joy Harmon, Toni Basil
Rated G
USA

"I was big enough before!"

What do you get when you mash together a beach party movie and a giant-monster-run-amuck flick? You get a confusing, uneven, pseudo-star studded, sometimes-enthralling and often bewildering hot mess called Village of the Giants. A mere blip on the teen-scene radar at the time it was released, Village has (no pun intended) grown in stature over the decades, and is now considered a bonafide cult classic. It may also be the flash point for the contemporary "Giantess fetish", but that's another subject entirely. A UHF staple in the 70's and a VHS favorite in the 80's, people never seem to tire of giant ducks literally shaking their tail feathers or cowboy-kids hanging precariously from gigantic bikini straps.

Bert I. Gordon - AKA Mr. BIG - is a name most b-movie fans know quite well. He pioneered the giant man/creature genre with films like The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) and its more sinister follow-up, War of the Colossal Beast (1958), as well as Earth VS. the Spider (1958) and Food of the Gods (1976), his cinematic tribute to the HG Wells novel which Village is also (very loosely) based on. Gordon combined projection screens with over-sized props to achieve sometimes-effective (and sometimes laughable) scenes where ordinary animals - or teenagers, or scientists - are either blasted with atomic rays or accidentally ingest strange potions and grow a hundred times their normal size. These films were all created in an era when movie-going audiences were a lot more forgiving when it came to things like continuity and wonky special effects, and their ragged edges are even more obvious in these more technologically sophisticated times.

You could, for example, shoot a more realistic looking spider invasion with your webcam, a copy of Movie Maker, and that Daddy Long Legs crawling on your window sill than Bert did in 1958. Still, despite their hopelessly dated effects, BIG's films are pitch-perfect glimpses into a long-gone era in American culture when teenagers and monsters and rock n' roll were everything, and Village is one of the most hilariously eager-to-please entries in the 60's teen-movie cycle. It tries to make everybody happy: the monster kids, the nerdy pre-teens, the with-it rebels, the good-girls and nice-guys, the grumpy old what's-wrong-with-the-kids-today parents, the rock n' rollers and hot rodders. This movie quite literally has something for everybody.

The first thing you might notice about Village is the awesome title theme, a brooding bit of instrumental sleaze by Jack Nitzsche called The Last Race. Chances are, you've heard it before: Quentin Tarantino nabbed it for Death Proof's main theme. The story opens with a torrential rainstorm and a car crash. Perhaps adrenalized by their near-death experience, a group of snotty rich kids and rebels pour out of the mangled vehicle and proceed to dance, wrestle, and make-out in the mud. There's a strong implication that things eventually escalate into a full-on, everybody-in orgy; certainly, you're given the impression that these are not your average gang of good-natured kids, but rather a sinister clutch of amoral troublemakers. The clear leader of this motley crew, Fred (Beau Bridges, his blue eyes shining like electric marbles, even through the mud) suggests they all walk to the next town, Hainsville, because he knows a girl there, Nancy, who he'd like to look up. Lacking any other viable option, the filthy, sopping wet group trudge toward the sleepy town like dirty demons.

Meanwhile, in Hainsville, good-guy Mike (Tommy Kirk), is trying to make time with his best-girl Nancy (Charla Doherty), but is constantly interrupted by her precocious little brother, Genius (an 11 year old Ron Howard).

Genius has a mad-scientist lab in the basement, and is sure he's on the verge of some sort of major discovery. After hearing an explosion coming from the lab, Mike and Nancy run downstairs to witness the birth of "The Goo". They don't even know what it is at first, but when the family cat nibbles a bit of it and grows twenty times his normal size, the three kids realize they've got something major on their hands.



The experiment is repeated on the family dog and a couple ducks in the yard, all with the same results. Already, Mike's scheming about how he'll end world hunger by raising enormous cattle. It's a very exciting time for them all.

And then, as they often do, the ducks waddle off somewhere, putting the entire plan into jeopardy. The oversized birds end up at a cramped club (The Whisky A Go Go!), where a red-headed, go-go dancing Toni Basil serves as DJ and the Beau Brummels perform their hits on a hilariously tiny stage.

The mud kids are all in attendance, having broken into a local theater to clean up and change, and they are, naturally, astonished to see ten foot tall ducks dancing in the middle of a club. Personally, I'd be pretty wigged-out to see regular sized ducks dancing. I have no idea how they achieved that particular part of the effect - perhaps the old hot-plate-on-the-feet, like the Tic Tac Toe Chicken they used to have at that arcade in Chinatown - but as far as the projection screen portion of the gag goes, it's pretty underwhelming.

Mike and Nancy figure out where their missing mallards have gone, and show up at the club to fetch them. Correctly assuming that there's a fortune-making potential at work here, Fred quickly gets to work on old-flame Nancy, while Fred's partner-in-grime Jean (gorgeous Tisha Sterling) flirts with Mike, hoping to crack him with kisses.

It would easily work on me, but Mike is made of sterner stuff - as is Nancy - and they take off with the giant ducks, their secret still safe. The next day, they hold a town-wide bar-b-que in the park. The ducks, naturally, are on the menu. How do you slaughter a giant duck?

While everyone else is feasting on roasted mutant and listening to Freddie Cannon sing his latest hit, Fred and the gang bust into Genius's lab and steal the goo. In one of the dumbest moves ever, instead of just bringing the stuff back to Fred's dad - the owner of a meat processing plant - they decide to cut the stuff up into slices and eat it themselves. They grow 50 feet tall (or 20, or a hundred, it's really impossible to tell) and use the curtains at the theater to make togas.

Then they stomp over to the party, first to dance, and then to make demands on the terrified townspeople. The sheriff is forced to gather up all the guns in town and hand them over to Fred - his daughter, and later Nancy, are both held hostage as leverage - and then everyone in town is put to work keeping the teen giants happy with fried chicken and many, many gallons of soda pop.

Mike will not take this lying down, however. First, he strings together a posse of hot-rodders and jalopy drivers, and they attempt to kidnap Fred via lassos. That plan is thwarted, so he comes up with an alternate one involved an enormous cotton ball full of ether. This second scheme also involves furious frugging from Toni Basil, which is always fun to watch. Some sluggish monster movie mayhem ensues, and then, in typical 50's/60's sci-fi fashion, a retarded/obvious solution to the problem is presented, and everything goes back to normal.

As mentioned, over the years, this grungy little b-movie has garnered a sizable cult following. A lot of that has to do with the remarkable cast. Ron Howard, of course, went on to fame and fortune on Happy Days and later as a director. Beau 'Son of Lloyd/brother of Jeff' Bridges has had a long and successful run in movie and television, usually playing smug bastards like Fred. Tommy Kirk was a constant presence in the beach party movies, went on a drug binge for a decade or two, and made a pretty entertaining Z-movie comeback in the past 10-15 years, appearing in shlock like (naturally) Attack of the 60Ft Centerfold (2005) and The Education of a Vampire (2001). Tim Rooney - who was one of the giant-kid gang - is Mickey Rooney's son, and looks eerily like him.
Joy Harmon, who played Merrie, the most benevolent of the giantesses, is also well-known as the sultry car-washing chick in Cool Hand Luke. She owns a bakery now. Vicki London - the short-haired enormo-chick - quit acting soon after. Tisha Sterling did a ton of 70's TV and made the odd film appearance up until the late 90's. Dunno where she is now, but I'm assuming she's still tropically hot. And speaking of still-sexy-after-all-these-years, Toni Basil looks none worse the wear, 40+ years later. It's gotta be all that dancin'.

The music is still pretty boss, too. Otherwise, you're left with a film that never really achieves its goal. It's not funny enough to be a beach party movie or menacing enough to be a giants-on-the-loose flick, and so it teeters drunkenly between the two. The girls are great-looking though, and they all dance pretty good.

What can I say? The fucker grows on you.

Availability: Village of the Giants is available on DVD.

Link: Seriously awesome Village of the Giants fansite!

- Ken McIntyre

Cannibal Rollerbabes (1997)

Directed by Kalman Szegvary
Starring Paul Noiles, John Sorbera, Lisa Heughan
Unrated
Canada

"But why eat him?"

Any movie with the moxie to call itself Cannibal Rollerbabes is bound to be weird. There's just no way around it. But to throw those two garish elements together - hot girls on rollerskates (or so-so girls on rollerblades, in this case) and people-eating, and then to drizzle a homey, small-town, let's-put-on-a-show vibe on top? Well, this was not cobbled together by committee. This was a singular vision realized. The awesomely named Kalman Szegvary is that starry-eyed visionary, and in 1997, he made one very nutty Canadian fever dream come-true. Shot on what looks like 16mm film stock snatched from the bottom of a stagnant pond, there is something entirely otherworldly about Cannibal Rollerbabes that belies its relatively recent vintage. It looks much more like the low-rung title on an all-night quadruple shock-show from 1975; even the evil genius's weapon of mass distraction - a jumbo transistor radio with a whirlygig glued on top - looks like a Fonz-era artifact.

The story, such as it is, is pure low-grade hokum, a confusing mash-up of Italian post-apocalyptic gangwar flicks and...I dunno, that Village People movie, maybe. Scott (John Sorbera) is a small town guy who works at a diner.

Said diner may also be a pizza joint that employs a jump-suited disco queen in a purple dunebuggy, but that might also just be a bit of random awesomeness. After a hard night of slinging hash, Scott decides to take off with his FM DJ friend Chuck (Mark Tyler) to the country for a week of fishing, rollerblading, and bromancing.

They drive out to Chuck's cabin-by-the-lake and run into some bizarrely dressed chicks that seem sorta hot to trot. But Scott, a perennial stick in the mud, wants to stay home and rest, because the ride up was too cold. Scott complains about the cold a lot, which begs a host of questions. Ostensibly, Cannibal Rollerbabes is supposed to take place in Los Angeles, but it was very obviously shot in small-town Ontario. Are Scott's near-constant complaints about the weather supposed to throw us off, to make us think that LA is experiencing an unusual cold snap? Or perhaps these are the complaints of the actor himself, miffed that he must perform underdressed during those cold Canadian nights, just to preserve this pathetic ruse about the film's true location? Regardless, it really makes Scott sound like a pain in the ass.

Meanwhile, Atman (Paul Noiles) a hair-gel slathered, bespectacled, gym-toned, spandex short-ed, open-shirted guy in a dune buggy, shows up at some underground bunker festooned with birthday party decorations, and informs his group of militant roller-disco girls that their 'guest' has escaped, and needs to be fetched. So the girls take off through the woods - on rollerskates - after some fat guy wearing a fanny pack, and not much else.

Meanwhile, Scott and Chuck go fishing and Chuck tells his friend about the abandoned old scientific lab on a deserted island near the lake. Then Scott complains about being cold again, so they go to a bar. There, Scott first sees Atman, now under his more media-friendly guise of Mayor Caplan, head-honcho in whatever awful backwater they're in. Snooping around, Scott gets the 411 on the mayor from a local: "People around here think he's God because he went to college."

Later on, Scott has a nightmare about Atman, and when he wakes up he finds a letter in the empty wine bottle he caught when he was fishing. The letter was from a beautiful blonde princess, trapped on the island. Scott had a vision about her earlier. He goes to see the sheriff to ask him about it, but the jumpy lawman tells him it's just a local myth. By the way, the sheriff has a hostile secretary named Judy (Judy Levesque) who consistently dresses in skimpy outfits that reveal her ample cleavage and womanly figure. Dunno why, but it's a bright spot in the murk, that's for sure.

The two city-boys go to see a psychic who tells Scott he's supposed to be with the message-in-a-bottle-princess, but has to go to the deserted island to get her.

Scott mulls it over during a rollerblading trip to the park with Chuck. Things quickly go awry when Atman shows up with machete - he's also on roller blades - and they have a seriously awkward fight.

Meanwhile, Chuck gets absconded by two of the roller-chicks, who take him off to the island. Scott goes back to Chuck's place and plays video games and grills a steak, then heads off to the woods to look for his pal. He runs into a kid with pointy ears (Patrick Leggett). He's an elf named Random, and it's his job to defend the woods against Atman and his "Centurions"(two dudes dressed, vaguely, like bikers) who show up out of nowhere and do battle with our idiots/heroes. Amazingly, the two fight off the bikers, and Random gives Scott a special stick to fight Atman with.

By the way, Atman drives an evil dune buggy with a Led Zep sticker on the windshield. That was a nice touch. He also runs his operation out of what looks like an abandoned amusement park 'castle'. At any rate, Atman finds out that Scott is on his way to slay him with the magic stick, so he sends out his rollerbabes to nab him. He has to kick a balloon out of his way when he's yelling at them. There's balloons everywhere, for some reason.

Scott gets caught by the rollerbabes and gets thrown into a "cell" - clearly somebody's bedroom - where he finds his Princess (Amy Van Elle) waiting for him. She sorta explains what's going on, although all I really got was that Atman castrates all the men in town, so that he can keep control over all the women. Then Atman slips something in Scott and Princess's drinks, and they make sweet Canadian love (side-boob is shown) interspersed with Scott running over rocks down at the river while an Elton John-esque ballad plays.

Later on, Scott discovers that Chuck's been eaten - they had to justify the title somehow - and he tells Atman that "I met a little man in the woods who thinks I'm a demon", which may be the single greatest line of dialogue I've ever heard. And then he falls under Atman's spell via his 70's jumbo transistor radio. Things get weird from there.

Judging just from the celebrity skin/boner-popping factor, Cannibal Rollerbabes is a fiasco. Spike (Canadian Playboy model Lisa Heughan), the jump-suited cleavage queen from the opening scene, is Atman's sometimes-lover, but she never does unzip that thing all the way, and the other girls are either plain-Janes or shot from too faraway to really get a good look at them. Princess Anna is pleasant looking enough, but the sex scene is so weirdly choreographed that all erotic potential is thrown, forcibly, out the window. And yet, there's something so screwy, so inexplicable, so eye-abusingly 'What the what?!' about it all that Cannibal Rollerbabes retains a ragged, homemade charm, even in its draggiest, most amateur moments. There is magic in this movie. Saggy, mostly useless, highly Canadian magic, but a benign sorcery nonetheless. It's one of those things, man. You really have to see it to believe it.

Availability: Cannibal Rollerbabes is available on DVD.

- Ken McIntyre

Kiss Me Quick (1964)

Directed by Bethel Buckalew
Starring Jackie DeWitt, Claudia Banks, Althea Currier
Unrated
USA

"I have to shoot my sex bombs to the pool before they explode."

Kiss Me Quick! is often cited as the greatest nudie-cutie film ever made, but that's not saying a whole lot, considering the mind-sapping nature of this curious micro-genre. The nudie-cutie's heyday was the 1950's to the mid-60's. At the time, nudity on film was still taboo (although a thriving underground porn-loop business certainly existed), so to skirt the issue, crafty bastards like David F Friedman presented the public with "Naturist" movies, quasi-documentaries that could, if you squinted, serve as educational exposes on the nudist lifestyle. Doris Wishman was the reigning queen of naturist movies, having cranked out piles of 'em, in rapid succession: Hideout in the Sun (1960), Diary of a Nudist (1961), Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls (1962), etc. The first nudie film to break away from the naturist angle was Russ Meyer's Immoral Mister Teas. Despite being as slow as molasses, the idea of peeping on naked women for no other reason than, you know, it's fun, was such a revelation that Teas caused a veritable avalanche of similarly themed lightweight teasers. Being benign little enterprises, the "Nudie-Cutie" title soon caught on.

By the mid 1960's, the nudie-movie morphed with the exploitation film and a wave of 'roughies' hit the grindhouses. Winking burlesque girls were no match for murder, rape, drug abuse and general mayhem, so the nudie-cuties days were numbered, but not before a last-gasp clutch of 'monster-nudies' hit the screens, cleverly mixing the era's obsession with spookshows and creature features with good ol' fashioned T&A in fun, sloppy flicks like Ed Wood's Orgy of the Dead (1965), House on Bare Mountain (1962), and of course, Kiss Me Quick!.

One thing you'll notice right away about Kiss Me Quick! - it looks terrific. Seriously cheap, but terrific. Bright, vivid colors, creative camera angles, crystal clear photography. Amazingly enough, it's the work of Lazlo Kovacs (RIP), who would later go on to shoot everything from counter-culture classics like Easy Rider (1969) and Hells Angels on Wheels (1967) to Ghost Busters (1984). But at this point in his career, well, a buck's a buck. The director, Bethel Buckalew (?), had an amazing 20 year run of directing grimy sexploitation like Country Cuzzins (1970) and A Scream in the Streets (1973), capped off with the hallucinatory non-action girl-biker flock Cycle Vixens (1978), which is amazing for all the wrong reasons. It was produced by sexploitation legend Harry Novak, and the swinging, clarinet-driven surf-punk/beatnikjazz ditties were composed by The Gallstones. So, an all-star line-up behind the camera. And in front? Well, some of the finest topless magazine models the 60's had to offer. So we got that going for us, too.

In one of the more inventive cost-cutting measures I can think of, Kiss Me Quick! eschews with on-screen opening credits, instead utilizing a sexy monster-girl to purr the names of the players: Hotti Totti, Gigi String, Gertie Tassle, etc. Pretty awesome.

As with most nudie-cuties, the plot is negligible-bordering-on-non-existent. Basically a fat Stan Laurel goober with a pasta strainer on his head named Sterilox (Frank Coe) beams down from the Planet Buttless to find a perfect female specimen for the Buttless men to breed with. Naturally, he materializes in the kooky castle of one Dr. Breedlove (Max Gardens), a wise-cracking groovy-ghoul who has developed a special sex machine - or sex bombs, or sex something. Breedlove is (very) loosely based on Dr Strangelove, but he's mostly an unhinged FM radio DJ with a non-stop patter of bad puns ("You couldn't find Jayne Mansfield in Boys Town!") spat out in a pseudo-Lugosi accent.

And that's pretty much it. The bulk of the 70-minute movie is a series of pretty incredible stripteases, which will have the average full-blooded hetero-male banging on the table and howling and smacking himself in the head with a mallet like the wolf in Red Hot Riding Hood.

Kissme (Jackie DeWitt) is our first bump n' grind star. She's strapped to Breedlove's Sex Machine, which causes her to undulate suggestively while seriously low-rent mad scientist props bubble and smoke behind her.

Breedlove shows up and worries that she'll break his machine, so her sets her loose and tells her to hand a fizzing beaker to Boob-ara (Natasha), who seizes the opportunity to do a burlesque/contortionist bit. Then two other girls show up with their own beakers, and everybody shakes their tits around.

And then, sorta crazily, Frankenstein shows up.

Breedlove explains to his chubby alien friend that Frank was originally a girl, but he fouled up the experiment. That might explain why Frank joins the girls in the furious frugging.

Sterilox asks for a tour around the joint. Since the budget did not allow for more than one set, he is instead encouraged to peep through a portal, where he gets an eyeful of girls working out on primitive 60's exercise equipment, including one of those crazy vibrating belts. By the way, ass does not look good on those things, regardless of what condition said ass is in. Believe me.

Then Breedlove gets a visit from his old pal Dracula (he looks like some creaky vaudeville comedian on an off-day), who shows up to bite Sterilox's neck, but ends up breaking a tooth. Turns out our cosmic visitor is "mostly metal". Then the mummy shows up. She's Breedlove's chauffeur, apparently. By the way, all these monsters are slathered in hilariously dimestore make-up. Whenever Breedlove turns to the side, you can see where the make-up girl just gave up on him. It's pretty incredible.

Oh, I almost forgot - there's a super-hot striptease with a busty chick in a sweater, too. But still, Sterilox is not swayed. And then he sees it, behind yet another gyrating nubile: "The Instant Butler." It's actually a piece of cardboard taped to the wall, but it's supposed to be a machine that will do you every bidding. Sterilox falls instantly in love with it, and asks Breedlove if he can have it. The kindly doctor agrees, but knowing that the blundering Sterilox is going to be in hot water if he returns home without a female, Breelove insists that Kissme go with him, so that she can maintain the complicated machine. So, off they fuckin' go.

You'd figure this might make Breedlove a little sad - Kissme was his Girl Friday - but then he gets a whole new shipment of girls to experiment on. They arrive on his ass-first on his conveyor belt. He tags them with stickers, like cuts of meat. The end.

Sexist? Sure, but 1964 sexist. They didn't know any better back then, man. Funny? Yep. Breedlove's gag-heavy monologues are endlessly quotable, and Coe's nutty Stan Laurel routine is pretty dead-on. Sexy? Way sexy. Boner City USA. The girls are all drop-dead gorgeous in that ethereal 60's-sex-goddess way, all crazy-curves and easy smiles. Of course, an hour's worth of hip-shaking and booby-twirling might be a bit much for modern bird-watchers, but for fans of tease n' tickle, this is top-notch stuff, and the monster angle makes it a compelling and really sorta-wonderful time capsule. The world this was made in - a world of cigarette smoking, whiskey gulping, red meat eating cads and lady-killers - is long gone, but this is a great way to live the Manly Life vicariously for a good 70 minutes. They most definitely do not make them like this anymore.

Availability: Kiss Me Quick! is available from Something Weird Video.

- Ken McIntyre

Crazy Animal (2007)

Directed by John Birmingham
Starring John Birmingham, Brinke Stevens, Ron Jeremy, Lloyd Kaufman
Unrated
USA

"I thought she was just, uh...slutted out, or something."

Crazy Animal is not a teen sex comedy, even though it gives you every implication that it is. It does, after all, have tits, cheap gags, hot Euro-chicks, asshole jocks, cheeseball music, and a misunderstood nerdy protagonist. However, its also got rape, murder, cross-dressing, and slaughterhouse footage. By the end, you will be entirely unsure whether you've just watched John Waters directing Revenge of the Nerds, or a gay-themed glam-metal musical. Shot in 2005 for $80,000 by then-film student John Birmingham, this genre-mashing, acid-dipped revenge-flick baits you with classic teenage hijinks up front, and then drags you into a very dark alley and pummels you for a good hour or so. But hey, there's a happy ending!

Crazy Animal opens with Ron Jeremy having a heart attack. So that's a good sign. Jeremy is Ricky's sweaty dad, who offers his young son a little advice before shuffles off to the hereafter: find love, or you'll be living like a crazy animal. And then he dies. That's the first black and white flashback.

The second one involves Troma boss Lloyd Kaufman. Lloyd is Jeff's dad, a banjo-picking evangelical weirdo who's always telling his son to kill people and fuck them in the ass. Troma eventually picked this one up for distribution, so Lloyd must have really enjoyed his spittle-spewing scenes.

So, that stuff happened in the old-timey black and white days. Now we flash-forward to the present, where Henry (Atom Gorelick) finds himself in the middle of a frathouse sex orgy. Henry doesn't actively partake in any of the now-snoozing nookie on display, but he does slip on a condom and masturbate furiously to the scene. Unfortunately the phone rings and wakes up the sex-revelers before he can complete his mission.

We then get to meet Jeff (the dramatically named Steven McClosky II), the frathouse's resident lady-slayer. He looks and sounds as gay as Paul Lynde, but whatever, this is not my universe. Jeff rises from this pile of semi-nude girls on his bed and announces to Henry and their other buddy Chris(Anthony Mongiello) that they have a mission-to-party at some spring break hot spot. And then we get to look at his naked ass for awhile. And not in a comedic Apatow-esque way, either. More of a gay porn-y, Jeff Stryker-eseque way. So that was weird. Especially after all the tits and girl-parts a minute ago.

Anyway, we then meet out protagonist, Ricky (director Birminham). A razor-sideburned, pink-skinned goth-boy with a serious case of the miseries, Ricky flashes-back to happier times with his equally gothy old girlfriend Veronica (Jessel) who was raped one evening by Jeff, and killed herself shortly afterwards. Rocky goes down to the beach and watches the dolphins frolic while a Jesus and Mary Chain-y tune plays on the soundtrack.


Cut to: four girls goofing around, singing into bananas, and plotting revenge on Jeff, who we have now established as a serial rapist. The quartet of lovelies include: Jen (Anise Fuller), Jeff's former girlfriend and accuser; Meese (Danica DeCosta), a happy-go-lucky militant vegan, and Katia (Lene Pedersen, Miss Norway 1991) and Svlena (Maria Zyrianova) the awesomely-accented Eurochicks. I'm not sure how they figure into things, but I am glad they're there.

So Jeff and his gang of creeps show up at the house. The girls, at this point, have staged a mock murder-scene, with Jen brandishing a sword and the slashed Euro-girls hanging from nooses. This freaks the boys out, but only for a minute. I assume there was some reason for this hoodwink, but I think it got lost in translation somewhere.

Anyway, we now cut to Ricky, who is dressed like one of those Steel Panther guys. You know, like a guy satirizing Vince Neil, or something. Ricky slathers on some make-up and rocks out while Jeff and Chris peep in on him. Jen explains at some point that he's dressed this way because jock-rapist types respond to rock n' roll singers in some significant way. Anyway, he's part of the plan.

First though, there's a party to be had. Chris takes a champagne n' tits bath with the Euros. Meese - I'm not sure what happens, but she has some sort of flashback or something that involves really gruesome and heart-rending footage of pigs being slaughtered. Honestly, what the fuck? There's also a subplot about Henry's dad, Peebody (Bryan Kimmel), a high-rolling Hollywood producer who now lives on Whiskey Beach, mourning the death of his wife (Brinke Stevens, who shows up via flashback in a Koala bear costume). So that's going on.

Utilizing spandex-rock to confuse Jeff and Chris, Ricky shoots them with tranquilizers and drags them back to his black-walled hideout. Jen and Meese are there as well, as is half a drugstore's worth of cheap Halloween props. And then everybody tells bits and pieces of their goofy life stories.

Meanwhile, back at the beach house, the Eurochicks have Henry tied to the bed. They have a camera trained on him and are attempted to coerce him into a rape confession. He is not a rapist, however. He's a guy that masturbates into condoms. He does remember that terrible night with Jen and Jeff though, and recounts it for them. And then Svlena tells a puzzling non-story about a fly, and it strikes you that she's so attractive, you'll listen to her drone on about anything in that weird accent of hers, even some dumb fuckin' story about a fly.

And then everything goes wrong at the Halloween house. Blood, murder, insanity, and a surprise guest.

And then there's a Scooby Doo ending, complete with a homeless guy doing the hotdog-in-a-donut thing.

Bizarre by anyone's standards, Crazy Animal's oddball blenderizing of horror, black comedy, slapstick and performance art reminds me a lot of Stephen Sayadian's 1989 Dr. Caligari remake. It might also fit nicely on a bill of Kuchar Brothers flicks. But Troma? Sure, some of the elements are there, but Crazy Animal in no Terror Firmer. Despite the outrageous trappings, this is less of an exploitation movie than it is an experimental film. There is very little logic involved, and the characters all seem as if they drifted in from different movies entirely. I think Birmingham might have a Dali fixation or something. Still, despite its arthouse inclinations, Crazy Animal does have its charms. And they both speak in broken English.


Availability: Crazy Animal is available on DVD.

Link: Crazy Animal official site.

- Ken McIntyre