Movie Poster Spotlight :: Wait ... Where Was that Raw Violence and Naked Fury Again? :: Eddie L. Cahn's Flesh and the Spur (1957)

Whether it be Joseph E. Levine (-- or was that Robert Lippert?) offering to buy just the promotional materials for The Beast with a Million Eyes, with every intention of scrapping the [somnolent] finished film that, at the time, didn't even have the sock-puppet monster yet and starting over, to several critics and exhibitors bemoaning a wish that their posters had sprocket holes so they could be hooked up to the projector instead of the films they represented, the boys at American International Pictures learned early that a good poster campaign and press-kit could go a long, long way toward box-office success, especially since most of their features were financed by pre-selling them to the chains based on those materials alone.

Flesh and the Spur, a simple but overall effective western, was more of the same old bait-and-switch shenanigans. On film, we have John Agar's Matt Random searching for the man who killed his brother, with the only clue to the killer's identity being a discarded gun found at the scene of the crime. Along the way he hooks up with another desperado (Connors), an Indian maid (English), and the drunken comedy relief (Hatton). And though heavy on the telling and not showing, as most of these old AIP flicks were, I still dug it quite a bit, especially a quite spectacular barroom brawl where those spurs are put to deadly use.

Garnering his nickname on the basketball court, Mike "Touch" Connors had already starred in several flicks for AIP (Day the World Ended, Swamp Diamonds) before using some family connections to raise the scratch to shoot his own western. Turning to low-budget wunderkind Alex Gordon and fast shooting Eddie L. Cahn to maximize those Armenian dollars for him, Connors, through Gordon, then struck a deal with American International to distribute Flesh and the Spur.

And as the story goes, Connors first meeting with the AIP brass included a look at Al Kallis' provocative artwork, which focused on the flesh of the ravaged female lead, Marla English, being staked out on an anthill, with her breasts about [-this-] close to being exposed for all to see, menaced by the giant, prickly spur of one of the two desperate desperadoes encircling her.

When a confused Connors mentioned there was no such scene in Chuck Griffith's script, one can almost see James Nicholson and Sam Arkoff cock their heads a bit and smile at each other, then one of them patting the poor executive producer on the head while the other said simply "Now there is..."

Thus, despite some reluctant ants and an impatient starlet lashed to an impromptu stake, the scene was shoe-horned into the climax, where Cahn and Gordon actually did the poster one better, having the hostiles strip the captive bare (mostly implied) before leaving the victim to her ghastly fate until thee eventual rescue by our hero. Hurray! And if nothing else, at least as late as 1957, we can take some comfort in that American International was at least trying to be somewhat earnest with their product.

Other Points of Interest:

Full poster campaign for Flesh and the Spur at the Archive.

Newspaper ads for Flesh and the Spur at the Morgue.

Flesh and the Spur (1957) Hy Productions :: American International / EP: Mike Connors, Charles J. Lyons Jr. / P: Alex Gordon / D: Edward L. Cahn / W: Charles B. Griffith, Mark Hanna, Lou Rusoff / C: Frederick E. West / E: Robert S. Eisen / M: Ronald Stein / S: John Agar, Marla English, Mike Connors, Joyce Meadows, Raymond Hatton

Favorites :: Vintage VHS :: SEE! The Vengeful Fury of an Inflatable Pool Toy!

About the only Larry Buchanan flick that I haven't seen yet, this beauty was part of Monterey Home Video's Midnight Madness line that also included the likes of Planet on the Prowl, Terror Beneath the Sea and The Creation of the Humanoids.

The XYZ's of a Criminally Overlooked Misfire :: Sam Raimi's Crimewave (1985)

"I'm the Captain of this elevator.

And we're stopping on every floor!"

 

Aside from being one of the most unrepentantly ferocious horror films ever made, and inspiring the greatest psycho-billy song ever recorded, The Evil Dead (1981) should also be noted for bringing Sam Raimi and Joel and Ethan Coen into the same cinematic orbit.

As the legend goes, after a grueling shoot, with their opus at long last in the can, the Renaissance Film trio -- director Raimi, producer Rob Tapert and star Bruce Campbell -- took their raw footage to New York, where editor Edna Ruth Paul and her assistant, Joel Coen, awaited to hack and splice it all together.

At the time, brother Ethan was an accountant for Macys, but as the film began to take shape, Raimi and the brothers Coen hit it off after Paul insisted he take a look at one of their scripts, which would eventually be filmed as Blood Simple (1984), where the Coens stopped being known as Joel and Ethan and officially became the Coen Brothers.

Liking what he read, and finding that they had similar sensibilities, Raimi then dusted off an old script of his own about a pair of bumbling killers called Relentless; and together, Raimi and the Coens fleshed it out considerably, with a hope that it would be a possible follow up once The Evil Dead was completed and released.

Sam Raimi

Ethan and Joel Coen

Now, it was while touring the finished film in Europe that Raimi and Tapert found a champion in producer Edward Pressmen -- Badlands (1973), Phantom of the Paradise (1974), Conan the Barbarian (1982), who liked the cut of their gib so much he helped them shepherd that follow up -- now under the title of The XYZ Murders -- into production by securing them financing through AVCO Embassy.

Turns out, however, that that would be the last bit of luck the soon-to-be-troubled production would encounter.

“At the time we had no idea how good of an experience Evil Dead was,” said Campbell (If Chins Could Kill, 2001). “Sure, we burned off four years of our lives and didn’t pocket a cent, but we had total creative control. Jumping into the big time meant dealing with the excruciatingly specific and alternately vague demands of a studio -- unlike Michigan dentists, Hollywood executives took an interest in EVERYTHING.”

It began with the casting, where the AVCO Embassy suits demanded that Campbell be replaced by a more bankable star. (Hell. I know when I think of a bankable star, I think of Reed Birney. Sheesh.)

Couple that with a grossly underestimated budget (-- as the novice filmmakers did not take into account union fees and other incidentals with their original proposal), resulting in a shoot that ran both over time and over budget, leaving neither camp very happy with each other; and conditions did not improve when a rough-cut was finally screened.

Upset with the overblown antics and nonsensical story-line, the studio basically seized the film and shooed Raimi and company out the door. After wrenching it away, AVCO Embassy then re-cut the film and redid the score, making the thing even more convoluted and nonsensical, slapped it with a new and -- staying with the theme -- nonsensical title, and then, by now having lost all faith in the project, quietly released Crimewave (1985), which just as quietly disappeared soon after.

Ever since the film has been treated like a red-headed step-child by its creators, loathed by their fans over the way they were treated by the studio hacks, and basically unheard of by everyone else. To that end, Crimewave has few defenders, but, despite all of its problems and flaws, and there are many, I’m here to tell you that I am an unabashed fan. 

Also, it’s nowhere near as bad as you’ve heard and, I think, the film is rather brilliant if you can look at it with an un-jaded eye. And the central plot isn’t all that convoluted to my eye, but tends to get lost in the thunder of the utter chaos surrounding it.

Basically, a security expert hires a couple of hitmen -- one a brutish thug (Smith), the other a weasel personified with a thing for electricity (James) -- to bump off his business partner. Things go staggeringly awry from there and a farcical comedy of errors follows as more and more bodies start piling up. See, the assassins have to keep catching and bumping off witness after witness; the toughest catch being the victim’s wife (Lasser).

Meanwhile, a hapless dope (Birney) becomes an unwitting dupe as he tries to protect his dame (Wilson) from becoming the next victim. Bedlam and an astounding amount of property damage ensue, which all culminates in one helluva car chase (-- with an extended cameo by The Classic).

Often described by the few who have seen it as a feature length tribute to the The Three Stooges, I think Raimi and the Coens had a loftier model in mind and were inspired, instead, by the screwball comedies of Preston Sturges -- Sullivan’s Travels (1941), The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944), with the usual trademark “Shemping” thrown in to fill in the gaps.

You don’t have to squint too hard to see Eddie Bracken and Betty Hutton running through a lot of these slapstick set-ups and gob-smacking gags -- especially that elevator gag. (Anyone else notice how much Butch’s dad looks like Joe E. Brown?) This notion was then cross-pollinated with the Looney Tunes, allowing these characters to inflict and sustain an inordinate amount of hit-damage, exemplified by the extended game of cat and mouse between Faron and Mrs. Trend:

The scene where Faron sinks his fingers into the carpet and pulls the hysterical woman and the whole room, en masse, toward him is right out of the Tex Avery / Chuck Jones playbook. 

But that’s just a teaser to the truly inspired scene as the chase continues through a security door display, with Faron plowing through each door just as fast as his victim can close them.

Honestly, I think your reaction to that kind of humor will gauge whether you’d like this film or not. Would I have loved to see Campbell in the lead? Absolutely (-- and he’s great as the heel, Renaldo). 

To be fair, Reed Birney isn’t that bad as our hero, Vic Ajax, but the part was geared for and would have been better served by the guy he replaced.

And I’m embarrassed to admit but it wasn’t until I screened it again for this write-up that I realized Vic’s love-interest, Nancy, was played by Sheree Wilson, destined to play Chuck Norris’ main squeeze in Walker, Texas Ranger (1993-2001).

Meanwhile, known for being one of the former Mrs. Woody Allens and the star of the short-lived but fondly remembered Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (19876-1977), Louise Lasser holds her own in a role that required her to drop her neurotic shtick to scream and run around like a chicken with its head chopped off. And as our cartoonish killers, Paul Smith and Brion James are damned near pitch-perfect.

Thus, with all that (burgeoning) clout behind the camera and a game cast, one can’t help but wonder what went so wrong to cause that big of a knee-jerk reaction from the studio? 

As is, one of Crimewave’s biggest problems is that if you take a step back you can easily see that its parts are better than the whole. Kinda like how certain cars are more valuable if they’re chopped up and sold for parts.

I would love to see a DVD release of it someday; preferably a director’s cut to see if maybe all those parts gelled better. But I don’t think that will ever happen, from what I’ve read, as all involved want nothing to do with it.

And I guess one good thing did come out of Crimewave. After the film landed with thunderous thud, Raimi and his collective head of knuckle needed a fast rebound or their viability might have been shot forever. And that rebound turned out to be a sequel all involved thought they’d never (have to) do. 

Take that, haters.

This here post is part of The Raimifest Blogathon, which originated over at the S-Mart Smart Things that Don't Suck. Thanks to Bryce for throwing out such a wide net for contributions, and now all you Primitive Screw-Heads, Darkmen, and slightly Radio-Active Do-Gooders click on over and check out the other well worth your while entries.

Crimewave (1985) Renaissance Pictures-AVCO Embassy / D: Sam Raimi / W: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Sam Raimi / C: Robert Primes / E: Michael Kelly, Kathie Weaver / M: Arlon Ober / P: Edward R. Pressman, Irvin Shapiro, Rob Tapert / S: Reed Birney, Sheree J. Wilson, Louise Lasser, Brion James, Paul L. Smith, Bruce Campbell

No Nukes is Good Nukes :: A Vid-Cap Review of Frank and Eleanor Perry's Ladybug Ladybug (1963)

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"Until further notice they've advised me to treat the alert as real."

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As a cautionary Fairy Tale, Frank and Eleanor Perry's melancholy ode to mutual self-destruction, Ladybug Ladybug, is a fascinating piece that is most effective in its quiet and disquieting moments but tends to unravel a bit when it tries to be as subtle as the nuclear bombs it's railing against. Kind of like Stanley Kramer's On the Beach, another effective anti-nuke think piece that is ultimately undone by just one (or two or three or forty) too many repeating choruses of Waltzing Matilda and too heavy of a hand in spots when it would have been better to take the foot off the gas pedal and let the message slowly coast and wash over you and settle instead of having it hammered into you with a ten-pound sledgehammer. Here, when a malfunctioning Civil Defense alarm indicates an atomic attack within the hour, a grade-school principal sends his students home, most on foot with a chaperon. Is it just another drill? Or is it really happening this time? No one can get a straight answer until it is too late for some as fear turns into hysteria, which can only lead to tragedy. And then there's that ending, two endings, really. The first focusing on a frightened girl, the other on a hysterical boy that serves as a microcosm on the whole subtle and not so subtle way of getting your message across. Sadly, the Perry's should have quit while they were ahead.
















Littered with many familiar faces and aided and abetted greatly by a soundtrack that muddies the waters between sweet and menacing, the film's biggest debt is probably owed to some great camerawork by Leonard Hirschfield, who turns a simple walk home to something akin to the Bataan Death March, and leaves several indelible images like the cardboard silhouettes on the school's windows, bringing to mind a perverse twist on the permanent shadows left in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (illustrated above). Add it all up and Ladybug Ladybug probably deserves to be better known than it is and appreciated more for what it is than just what it was.

Currently available for streaming on Netfilx.

Ladybug Ladybug (1963) Francis Productions Inc :: United Artists / P: Frank Perry, Stephen F. Kesten / D: Frank Perry / W: Eleanor Perry / C: Leonard Hirschfield / E: Armond Lebowitz / M: Bob Cobert / S: Jane Connell, William Daniels, Nancy Marchand, Jane Hoffman, James Frawley

Vintage Tuneage :: It all Sounds Fine to Me. Hehehehehheh...

Turn the volume up.
Push play.
And then hang on.

Trust me.

The Staggers:

Ryan McCoy (Drums), Billy Blitz (Guitar),
The Matt (Bass), Joe Blow (Vocals, Guitar).