In recent years thanks to a glut of new properties like True Blood and (shudder) Twilight, there has been quite the renaissance of the vampire. While both titles might bring new fans into the blood sucker fold, there are plenty of long time horror fans that don't like the current popular representations of the children of the night.It stands to reason though that fanboys will always complain about whatever is the new hotness. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that the first article to ever appear in The Monster Times was one detailing this very same feeling. In 1972 when The Monster Times published this debut issue, Christopher Lee might have been the reigning Count, but as far as some were concerned, he was no Bela and certainly no Max Schreck.

If you only ever see one post World War I, supernatural, Western biker horror film that features Gary Busey getting his face eaten off by an owl, then you should definitely make it Hex (1973) [a.k.a The Shrieking and Charms]. Welcome to the penultimate installment of ‘Who the F@&k is Vernon Zimmerman?’ In the last couple of weeks I took a look at Zimmerman’s meta slasher Fade to Black and one of his writing gigs Bobbi Jo and the Outlaw starring a young Lynda Carter. Today I have another one of his screenplays, one he wrote in conjunction with the film’s director Leo Garen who would go on to write Band of the Hand (1986), Doran Cannon the writer of Otto Priminger’s 1968 film Skidoo (famously mentioned in Devil’s Rejects for featuring Graucho Marx as God), and first time writer Stephen Katz. The four cooks in the kitchen probably explains the uneven tone and madcap scenes that show up in Hex, but I can just about guarantee that it is unlike any other film out there.

The film opens on two sisters, the demure, flighty blonde Acacia (Hilary Thompson) and the raven haired, stone faced Oriole (Cristina Raines), as they make their lives in the barren west of South Dakota. Their quiet lives are disrupted when a group of bikers on World War I era bikes ride into their lives. The bikers lead by Whizzer (Keith Carradine) are on the run from an angry mob they left in the last town and on their way to California. The sisters reluctantly allow the fugitives into their farm where they have dinner and smoke the sister’s sacred wild herbs. That night one of the bikers, Giblets (Gary Busey), tries to rape Acacia, and things go downhill from there. Soon anyone who crosses the sisters comes to a grisly end, and no one knows to what extent Oriole might take her dark rituals to protect her sister.

From that synopsis, Hex may sound like a rather dark affair, and in a way, it is. At the core of the film is a Gothic style horror tale, but it is surrounded by wacky motorcycle antics and trippy scenes of drug use. Now I’m only going to defend Hex to a point. While it might be entirely different from anything that I’ve ever seen, it doesn’t always act like a cohesive unit. It never got boring, but the fact that I couldn’t predict at all what might happen one scene to the next didn’t leave me on the edge of my seat. Instead I was more pushed back in the cushions wondering what was going on in the minds of Zimmerman, Garen, and the other writers when they came up with Hex. So while I was plenty entertained, I wished the film could have a more consistently dark tone throughout.

What first attracted me to this film was the cast, and that was before I saw Gary Busey whacked by an owl. The chance to see if Busey always acted like Busey (he did) was the first thing to catch my eye, but looking deeper and seeing Keith Carradine and Scott Glenn were involved as well sealed the deal. Carradine brings to the screen all the charm that he would later bring to films like Nashville, and comes across as an interesting character though you just want to slap him each time he stays at the farm after one of his friends dies. Glenn is less of a force with a limited amount of scenes in the film, but still puts in a solid performance. Aside from the appearance of these three stars, Hex also contains appearances by Dan Haggerty (Grizzly Adams), Doria Cook (The Parallax View, The Swarm), and Robert Walker Jr. (Easy Rider, Beware!The Blob), The real stars are the two sisters, and both Thompson and Raines give their roles interesting facets. Raines has the choice role as the stony mystic wielding dark magic, but she needed to bring her performance up from the level of mere monotone delivery to really sell her evil streak.

This was the only film that Leo Garen would direct, and I would have actually liked to see what he might have done with a second feature. Hex had plenty of promise, but there was only so much that the fine group of actors could do with such a scattered, uneven film. What’s interesting to see for me was Zimmerman being involved in a film that sort of combined moments of both Fade to Black and Bobbie Jo. I’ve long thought that the Western setting is ripe for horror tales, and the desolate Dakota Territory is a perfect setting. The problem is that Hex just can’t be happy being merely a horror film. It definitely is a curiosity that fans of cult films will probably enjoy watching, but it’s not one that you need to run out and try to find. Yet if you ever have anyone tell you that they’ve seen every kind of film there is, then Hex is a great one to bring out and blow their mind.

There's no trailer available, but instead I'm leaving a video of Gary on VH1's Celebrity Paranormal Project doing what he does best, saying some crazy ass shit.

If you’re like me and already sweltering under 100 degree temperatures, you probably feel like summertime is already here, but according to the calendar, today is the first official day of summer. So to celebrate I wanted to look at the film that most says summer to me, and that is 1985’s Ocean Drive Weekend. While most beach movies turn their eye to Florida or California, OD Weekend is a home grown flick that is set on the coast of South Carolina. More specifically, it is set in North Myrtle Beach where you will find the titular Ocean Drive. When I was a kid, we went down to Myrtle Beach every year, and we used to stay in the main part of the city, but when I was about 11ish we started staying up in North Myrtle for the wide beaches, the quiet nights, and all the great mom and pop hotels to choose from. While I have fond memories of the beach from when I was a little tyke, it was the years in North Myrtle that really stuck with me. Now when I want to drop everything to take off for the beach that is where I intend to go, but when I can’t, I sit down and drink in the beach through this low budget classic.


Ocean Drive Weekend was, once upon a time, distributed by Troma Entertainment, and if you take a look at the box art above, that probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise. If you were to judge the film by its cover, you might think it was some kind of mix of Revenge of the Nerds and Hardbodies, but the truth couldn’t be further from that. Instead you get something more like a Southern fried American Graffiti meets Porky's lite. The story opens sometime in the early sixties just as college is letting out for the summer. The Pepsi Pi’s of Leon University and the Sigma’s of A Great Southern University (Not the One You Think),as the film tells us, take off for a weekend of sun, fun, hooking up, and dancing the night away. Miller and Chuck also hit the road from University in Miller's crappy Dodge full of beer cans with a weekend at the beach and getting laid on their minds. As all the kids gather at the beach their are subplots about trying to get out of the draft, the impending drug culture of the late sixties, drinking a fifth of tequila in 60 seconds (which won’t kill you every time), and eating a raw steak then jumping off a pier to get out of the bill, just to name a few. The film culminates with Danny Van Wieden and the JV’s from Tech kidnapping Miller, and all the groups come together to save a fellow University man.

It may seem like Ocean Drive Weekend is just a collection of scenes, it's a pretty tightly wound plot where all the character's plots intermingle in a pretty smart way. To have a scene where the draft dodger is trying to shoot himself in the foot and misses but the sound scares off a date rapist, the evil Van Wieden, who loses his wallet that is later found by Miller to avoid getting arrested....whew.... yeah, but you see my point. The scripting of the film is one of it's strong points, and even though some of the acting is off, the natural tone and direction of the story seem to bring up the production quite a bit. Now I'm not saying that it's the cleverest film out there. This is not Momento we're dealing with, this is a beach movie, and compared to similar fare it's refreshing that Ocean Drive Weekend hits a good balance between real characters, good plot points, and maintains a light comic vibe.

Now, of course I wasn’t going to the beach on the early sixties (if it was about my years going it would be about reading Puzo's The Godfather on the beach, playing mini golf, and riding go karts at Grand Prix raceway), but my parents were. I don’t think that they ever had adventures quite like the ones detailed in Ocean Drive Weekend (if they did then they have some stories that I want to hear), but the film always reminds both of them of the time they spent down there in their teenage years. I think this speaks volumes about the film. While they both feel that other, more well known Carolina beach movie, Shag: The Movie, was a syrupy, inaccurate affair, OD Weekend hits the era where the innocence of the ‘50’s was waning, but the hippie culture hadn’t taken over yet, without making you wonder if they might have a pair of traveling pants around somewhere.

Try as I might, I can find out absolutely nothing about writer/director Brian Jones. I have long theorized that OD Weekend was made as a student film, but I‘ve got nothing to back that up. All I really know comes from the VHS tape; it was put out on Vestron Video, a Troma film with a 1984 copyright by L.A. Productions. In a way this film is a mystery all over. Most of the stars haven’t appeared in anything else with one or two exceptions. Della Cole (billed here as Konya Dee) who plays one of the Pepsi Pi’s appeared as “Stake Out Prostitute” in 1987’s Dead Aim starring Isaac Hayes as well as a few other productions, and she was probably the best actress in the film. Robert Peacock who played the film’s hero, Chuck, would later he appear in 2003’s Prison A Go Go!, a low budget women in prison film that coincidentally was also released through Troma as well as 2005’s A Texas Tale.

The last cast member with other credits was John Kohler who was so entertaining as computer geek/druggie Kurt. From his opening moments where he wakes up screaming about killer spinach to his monolog about sex, drugs, and rock and roll taking over the world, he really makes the most of what could have been a tiny and rather silly role.He has appeared in several films over the years including Freejack and Gordy, and more recently he made a couple of appearances on Important Things with Demetri Martin.

Some of the best actors in Ocean Drive Weekend never appeared in a film again. The best example of this is Charles Redmond who plays the beer swilling, ignorant, horndog Miller. Sure, he looks much older than the rest of the cast (who already look beyond college age), but it adds to the idea that Miller has been in college for quite some time. By all rights and reason, Redmond should be a character actor with a laundry list of credits, but it didn’t happen. I mean what other character could deliver a line like “Cooked… I don’t want my steak cooked, woman. Cooked steaks are for fags, I want it raw.” and still maintain an imbecilic lovability? Though I’m sure some of that is due to the fact that two scenes later Miller finds out that having steak tartare at a restaurant on a fishing pier might not have been the best plan. Needless to say, Miller is no PC character, but this is still an '80's film no matter the setting.

I can’t believe how far I am into this review, and I really feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of this film. Not only are there so many questions I have about the productions, but there are so many scenes I’d love to tell you about. I haven’t even touched on the nerds who get turned on by classical music and vector analysis, the romance between Chuck and Jeanie (P.J. Greene), or all the great music in the film. Not only do Carolina Beach music band The Rivieras appear in the film (also looking much older than they should have for the sixties), but they perform great songs like “Showdown” and “Be Young Be Foolish and Be Happy”. They also perform “Double Shot” in the film, but when it is heard on the radio it is clearly the Swinging Medallions version of the song even though it is not credited as such.

Everything about Ocean Drive Weekend makes me long for a trip to the beach, and in fact, I have one planned for the beginning of August over my birthday. While the beach in OD Weekend is not what I grew up with, it is still closer to what North Myrtle beach is becoming. I’m actually going down this year to see what is left before everything I remember is gone. While the film may be about the era of my parents’ youth, it has long been a part of my ritual of getting ready to go to the beach. For this reason, and because I hail from South Carolina, I think that I have a very different perspective on the film. I’ve seen the two or three reviews online that rate the film at a 1 or 1.5, and I have to disagree with those folks. Ocean Drive Weekend is a very original, different kind of beach film that focuses on a particularly Southern type of story that may not hit home with everyone, but for anyone who counts Myrtle Beach as part of their youth and cult films as one of their hobbies, this is a great film to sit down with and enjoy. The only bad thing is that its a bit hard to come by. I have a beloved VHS copy, and I see that Amazon has them for sale for under 3 bucks. So if I've succeeded in making Ocean Drive Weekend sound like something you might like, pick one up and you'll feel like you've still got a little sand in your shoes for sure.

Sadly no trailer exists, but here's one of the best Carolina beach music songs of all times, The Tams with "Be Young, Be Foolish, but Be Happy". A great sentiment to start off the summer.

Welcome everyone to another brand new feature here at the Lair. One of my favorite bloggers is Ms. Emily of The Deadly Doll’s House of Horror Nonsense, and she has agreed to swap films with me once a month. This time out I chose for her the 1976 wormy feature Squirm, and in return she chose for me the 1989 French film Baxter. I had heard tell of this movie before, but I didn’t know what to make of it. Often I saw it listed as a horror movie, but I’ve seen discussions of it in art film circles as well. So I didn’t really know what to expect. I knew it was about a dog with a bad disposition, but I wasn’t expecting the French version of Cujo to bound across my screen. So I put my faith in the judgment of Emily and watched the film with no expectations, and Baxter rewarded me by being a complex and wholly original film.

It would be almost impossible to synopsize the film without first saying that a great deal of the action is told from the point of view of a Bull Terrier named Baxter. Born in a kennel, he knows nothing but his longing to be with humans, and that longing takes Baxter on a strange journey though a series of owners. Baxter‘s first owner is a widowed woman who has never owned a dog. She finally warms to the dog, but Baxter is unhappy with her and obsessed with the young couple who live across the street. Feeling like the widow doesn’t treat him respect, he causes the old woman to fall down the stairs to her death. The disgruntled canine then finds himself adopted by the couple that he watched from the window for so long. Baxter feels like he has found happiness, but when the young couple has a child things change too much for Baxter. Soon he meets his final owner, a young boy named Charles (Francois Driancourt) who is obsessed with Hitler’s final days with Eva Braun (including building his own bunker). The budding sociopath and Baxter becomes quite a pair, but eventually they are set at odds where only one of them may survive.

I don’t want anyone to make the mistake and think this is a talking dog movie. The bull terrier never has any conversations with anyone, but instead narrates the film like a demented version of The Incredible Journey. As a dog owner, I’ve often wondered what my dog was thinking, but I’m not so sure I want to know anymore. While Baxter was clearly a troubled mutt, it was easy to see how his worldview could be a product of instinctual desires. The bull terrier breed is feared in Europe due to a number of vicious attacks (similar to the pit bull which is more popular in the U.S.), but I think many American viewers will take one look at Baxter and think “Spuds McKenzie”. Younger readers may not recall Bud Light’s #1 Party Dog, but it was the first thing that sprang to my mind. While I might have thought that “Spuds” might have a drinking problem, I never assumed that he would have a mean streak to him.

When it comes to talking about the acting in the film, it seems a bit strange to discuss. Baxter was voiced by French actor Maxime Laroux who also appeared in the 1990 Jeff Goldblum film Mr. Frost. Laroux gives the dog a voice that contains equal parts menace and innocence that perfectly fits the troubled dog. If we are to understand Baxter, then the voiceover has to hit a certain tone, and it fit perfectly giving the dog an aggressiveness while still illustrating that there is a certain sense that he doesn’t really understand why he acts or feels the way he does. The human actors in the film are not really the main focus of the film, and while the widow and the young couple are both interesting, we get to know very little about them. They are there for Baxter to react to rather than be fully formed characters. The same can’t be said of Charlie, played by Francois Driancourt. The young actor does a great job creating a character that is more frightening than the canine that becomes his companion. At first Charlie seems like a kid with some strange interests, but as the film progresses the cruelty and callousness of the young man becomes clearer. In some ways, the film poses an important question as to which of them, the boy or the dog, was the real vicious beast.

Baxter is not going to be a film that will appeal to everyone. Its mix of horror, black comedy, and art film combines to make a film that kept me attentive throughout. It is a challenging film that makes one reconsider what is going on in the mind of man’s best friend. So I can’t thank Ms. Emily enough for picking this one for me this month, and I encourage everyone to go check out her great review of Squirm. Next month we’ll be back again with another film swap, and I’ll be waiting to see what Emily has in store for me. For now, I think I’m going to watch Milo & Otis and regain my faith in the inner thoughts of dogs.

Heya, folks. It’s Thursday, and the weekend is bearing down upon us hard and fast. That means its prime movie watching time. For some that will mean a trip to the theater to see Jonah Hex, and for others it will mean cracking open a dusty VHS cassette case to watch a vintage spot of cheese. On my weekends, I often find myself turning to the magic of Netflix, but not the red envelopes that denote something worth going to the mailbox for. I’m talking about Netflix’s streaming demons, the “Watch Instantly” selections.  This week I’m going to start it off with a trio of my favorites that I’ve reviewed in the past.

First off, there’s Hide and Creep. Chance Shirley’s 2004 zombie comedy is still one of my favorite zombie films of all time. Not only does it spin an interesting and frequently hilarious tale, it also pegs a portion of southern culture that carefully balances caricature with reality. What Shirley did right was set his film with the culture as a backdrop and not the main joke which is where so many Southern fried films go wrong. So against the backdrop of Thornby, Alabama, you get a cast of great characters that will keep you chuckling while delivering quite a few head shots. I'm still waiting on his second film Interplanetary to make its way to DVD so I recommend you folks see that. Until then, check out how we deal with the zombie menace below the Mason-Dixon line.


For the next film, I’ve picked another favorite of mine, 2002’s Project: Valkyrie. For my money there’s never been a better low budget, retro inspired, robot vs. Nazi film ever made. Jeff Waltrowski. While I still await his effects laden second film, It Came from Yesterday, I still find myself going back time and time again to this film. Inspired partially by classic science fiction of the ’40’s and ’50’s, the film follows the relationship between the sensitive, ass kicking robot Valkyrie and Jack, the creator of the robot’s loser grandson. When skinheads shoot themselves up with experimental Nazi drug, it’s time for Valkyrie to kick some Fourth Reich butt, and he’s going to need Jack’s help.


My last selection for this weekend takes a decidedly darker turn. Stepping away from comedy for a moment, I want to recommend Fay Dunaway in The Eyes of Laura Mars. This American film has more than a faint trace of the Italian giallo in it, and with great performances by Dunaway, Tommy Lee Jones, Brad Dourif, and Raul Julia, it’s a hard one to pass up. Dunaway plays Laura Mars, a fashion photographer, who somehow begins to have visions of a serial killer on the prowl and killing. Combining an interesting plot with the visuals of cinematographer Victor Kemper (Dog Day Afternoon, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure), it’s a fascinating watch that will leave you in suspense until the final surprising reveal.



So there you have it, a trio of ideas for what to call up for some instant viewing this weekend. After all, who wants to go out in all this heat when you can sit inside, crank up the A/C, crack open a beer, and check out a film with just the touch of a button!

I can say with some confidence that if you’re mid-thirties or older you know Linda Carter from her years as Wonder Woman. There’s probably a good many of you who know Marjoe Gortner, the child evangelist who grew up and starred in B-movies like Starcrash and Mausoleum. Some of you may even know director Mark L. Lester from his more prominent films like Commando and Firestarter. Of course, I’m going to talk a bit about all of those folks today, but what we’re really here to find out is who the F@&k is Vernon Zimmerman? That’s right; I’m back again with my second week in the series that shines the spotlight on the strange, the obscure, and the forgotten figures in genre film. Last week I looked at Fade to Black, one of Zimmerman’s directorial efforts, but this week I turn my eye to a film that he wrote, Bobbie Joe and the Outlaw.

Take a piece of Crazy Mary, Dirty Larry, a smidge of Bonnie and Clyde, and add in a dash of Linda Carter topless, and you’ve got yourself Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw. The story follows Bobbi Joe (Carter), a waitress with dreams to be a star in Nashville, and Lyle Wheeler (Gortner), a drifter and thief who aspires to be like his Western outlaw heroes. One day Lyle comes by the diner Bobbi Jo works in and whisks her away from her small town life. The pair soon runs out of money, and they hook up with Bobbi Jo’s sister Pearl (Merrie Lynn Ross) and her boyfriend Slick (Jesse Vint). The foursome decides to step it up a notch and begin to knock off banks, but a life on the run might not be as romantic as either of them thought. With the cops nipping at their heels, they have to keep running if they want to stay together.

It should come as no surprise to fans of ‘70’s cinema that Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw was a fine production from American International Pictures. The film has the low budget hallmarks of AIP all over it. This was the second AIP film for director Mark L. Lester following the 1974 Claudia Jennings film Truck Stop Women. Lester does a solid job with the quiet moments in the film, but the action and driving sequences left something to be desired. He would work out the kinks in filming action over the next nine years before filming 1985’s Commando. Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw is not really a film about the set pieces though. It really has much more to do with films that followed the path of Easy Rider. It is a road movie in which the characters are trying to find themselves and meaning in their lives. Unfortunately, I don’t think they ever really find out much.

That brings me around to the man of the hour Vernon Zimmerman. After writing and directing two films, 1972’s Deadhead Miles and Unholy Rollers, this was the second script that Zimmerman had seen produced by another director (I’ll be looking at the first, the 1973 supernatural biker flick Hex, next week.) It’s always hard to say what changes might have been made between the script and the screen, but while the characters that Zimmerman created seem very interesting, they also feel lost. Not lost in the existential sense, but rather in the way that they don’t seem to have much to do. They wander across the country, floating in and out of small towns and communes, but the film doesn’t really seem to have much focus until they get around to robbing banks. Then the film takes the predictable spiral that Warren Betty and Faye Dunaway had followed years earlier.

Now what first attracted me to this film was the appearance of Linda Carter. I have to admit that I’ve spent most of my life with a huge crush on Ms. Carter (A fortune telling machine said she was my perfect mate when I was about 10 and you’ve got to trust fortune telling machines.) I used to watch the Wonder Woman show religiously, and I have to admit that more than once I wondered what was under that red, white and blue outfit. Well, Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw is the only place you can find out (though it has been long rumored that Hugh Hefner has some pictures locked away in the Playboy vaults) . The scene is question if brief, but after a lifetime of wondering (pun intended), it was worth the wait. Carter looks gorgeous throughout the film, and if you’re a fan of hers like I am, then I recommend looking past the film’s shortcomings. I don’t want to shortchange her acting either, along with the charismatic Marjoe Gortner, she turns in a solid performance that carries the film though the slower spots.

Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw is not the greatest film. From script to direction, it meanders along, but if you’re a fan of ‘70’s drive in cinema, Mr. Gortner, or the lovely Ms. Carter, then you should check this one out. It’s kind of hard to get your hands on this one, but I happen to know that the Lair’s good friends over at Cinema de Bizarre have this one in stock. Don’t get your expectations up to high, and you should enjoy what you see. Plus it is one more step toward knowing who the F@&k is Vernon Zimmerman. Next week, we’ll take a look at another of the movies he penned, Hex starring a young Gary Busey, Keith Carradine, and Scott Glenn.

When the fellows over at Radiation Scarred Reviews announced they would be doing a special Shark Week, I knew two things instantly. The first was that I had to get in on that, and the second being the perfect movie. I knew there would be posts on Jaws and Jaws rip-offs because they are bountiful and extremely fun to watch, but I had something different in mind, Sam Fuller’s 1969 film Shark starring Burt Reynolds. While I had never seen the film before, I was very familiar with Sam Fuller. A while back Mr. Fuller came into my life when I reviewed a film called Pickup on South Street, and it instantly became one of m favorite films of all time. Since then I’ve seen a couple of Sam’s other films, the non-traditional Western 40 Guns, the neo-noir classic Underworld U.S.A., and one of the best war films ever made The Big Red One. Sam’s films were more often than not artistic triumphs rather than box office gold, but anytime I looked over his catalog one film captured my attention because of how odd it seemed. That film was Shark.

When Shark was filmed six years before Spielberg’s Jaws, Sam Fuller was just returning from several years in France where his last couple of films, The Naked Kiss and Shock Corridor, had been great successes in Europe. They were both artistically challenging films dealing with issues such as race and prostitution respectively. Upon his return to America, he found that no studio would give him the financing to get a film off the ground. He was finally approached by some low budget producers to adapt Victor Canning’s novel His Bones Are Coral. (Canning also penned the novel on which Hitchcock's last film Family Plot was based.) With no other prospects looming, he accepted the job. Shark, alternately titled Caine or Man-Eater, would become one of the most controversial films of Fuller’s career. Not because of content or themes as was usually the case with his films, but rather it was because of the knock down drag out fight that this film spurred between Sam and the producers.

Shark stars Burt Reynolds (pre-mustache and pre-household name) as Caine, a gunrunner whose shipment is destroyed in the Sudan. On the run with no prospects, he slips into a port city and soon takes on work with Professor Dan Mallare (Barry Sullivan) who claims to be doing scientific research on the oceans. Caine, of course, didn’t join up because of a love of science. He had two other reasons, the Professor’s beautiful confidant Anna (Silvia Pinal) and money. Caine soon discovers that money is on the Professor’s mind as well. It seems that the academic is actually out for a treasure in lost gold on the ocean floors, but with the waters infested with man-eating sharks, he wants someone else to go get it for him. That someone else just happens to be Caine.

While most Sam Fuller films are released in stunning collections or bonus laden Criterion editions, it is quite telling that the release of Shark that I watched was put out by Troma Entertainment. I would venture to say that this is the only Sam Fuller movie that comes with an introduction by Lloyd Kaufman. Granted, it was one of the most reserved intros I’ve ever seen by the notorious huckmeister. However, something tells me that Sam Fuller, the maverick filmmaker, and Lloyd Kaufman, the guru of D.I.Y film, might have been cut from similar cloth. Shark has never, to my knowledge, been given a restoration or any of the other niceties that Fuller’s other films enjoy. The reason for this is quite simple. After the production, Sam all but disavowed the film, and never spoke of the experience of making the movie any other way than in a negative light.

Throughout the filming, Fuller was at odds with his producers. They claimed to want a “Sam Fuller film” with all the character and camera work that make his films so stunning, but they constantly tried to get involved in his process. After the film was finished, Sam retired to L.A. to edit the picture, but unbeknownst to him, the producers were busy making their own cut. When Sam got a look at the hack job they had done to his film, he hit the roof. As the story goes, director Peter Bogdanovich was there that day and had to physically restrain Sam from going after the producers. Fuller filed a petition with the Director’s guild asking for his name to be taken off the picture, and even though it was approved, the producers refused, as they wanted the gravitas of distributing a Sam Fuller picture, with or without Sam’s blessing.

There was also the matter of the shark attack. A stuntman was killed during the filming of Shark due to an actual attack by the titular creature. When the movie was released, the producers marketed the film as containing the actual footage of the man being killed by a shark. Fuller was outraged and railed against the producers for such a cheap and disrespectful gimmick.   While the film does contain one brutal looking shark attack, apparently it was all just a scheme to gain some notoriety. In fact, the film does not contain the footage in question though the producers did slap a dedication on the beginning of the film to all the brave stunt men who worked in the shark-infested waters.

Now I’ve gotten six paragraphs in and I haven’t said a word about the acting or direction of this film. The reason for that is that neither is very good. Burt Reynolds had very little film experience at the time, and though he has a natural charisma that shows through, this is surely not the Burt we all know and love from Smokey and the Bandit or Cannonball Run.  He performs serviceably, but that’s about all I can say about that. Mexican beauty Silvia Pinal and American actor Barry Sullivan perform at about the same level. The character work by Arthur Kennedy as a drunken doctor and Carlos Beriochoa as the young boy that Caine befriends stand out above the lead actors as very Fuller-esque characters. Sam Fuller’s direction is harder to talk about because there is no telling what parts or shots in the film he actually intended to put on the screen. Some of the film looks pretty rough, but there are a few moments when Fuller’s fluid camerawork does appear, and it greatly enhances those portions of Shark.

In the end, Shark may be a film that has a better story about it than in it. The trials and tribulations of Sam Fuller against the producers make for a fascinating story that is unlike anything else the respected director ever had to face. As he would say later, “I don’t want to have anything to do with sharks. Not the ones in the water or the ones in slick suits.” To the end of his life, Fuller was bitter over the experience. So if you’ve never seen a Sam Fuller film before, this is not the place to start, but if you love shark films or you’re a Fuller completist, then this is an oddity that I encourage you to check out. I hope you folks had a good time reading this, and I hope you check out lots of the posts that the fellows over at Radiation Scarred Reviews have corralled for the Shark Week Blogathon.

Exodus 8:21 says in part “I will send swarms of flies on you and your officials, on your people and into your houses.” You might be wondering why I would bring that up. If I were you, I would be. Well, there are just not that many instances of instances where flies are used in a threatening way. You can turn to the Bible for a good ole fashioned plague of flies or you could sit down as I did and watch Island of the Dead. I know what you’re saying. It sounds like a zombie movie. It sure as hell does. Intrigued by the promise of Mos Def and Malcolm McDowell sharing the screen in a zombie film, I snatched it up recently at one of my favorite DVD scavenging grounds. Imagine my surprise when no dead came shambling forth, and instead I was greeted by the terror of Sarcophagidae a.k.a. the Flesh Fly.

Since 1869, New York has been burying the unknown or unwanted in Hart’s Island, a small island off the Long Island Sound, but now real estate tycoon Rupert King (Malcolm McDowell) wants to change all that. He wants to build a low-income housing development on the island called “Hope City”. Accompanied by his assistant, a cop looking for a missing child, and some inmates whose job it is to bury the dead, King takes the ferry to the island for a groundbreaking ceremony. As night falls, King’s assistant goes missing after being attacked by a swarm of flies. When he is found later, his body is badly decomposed and riddled with maggots. As King’s true plans for the island come to light, the flies become even more aggressive, and the chances are that they will all join the dead buried on the island.

Even the set up to the film with Hart’s Island and its ground full of the neglected dead seem to point to a zombie film. This is really the major weakness of the film, the bait and switch. Everything about the film points to the rise of flesh eaters, but instead we get a problem that could be solved with a screen door, a can of Raid, and a fly swatter. No matter how aggressive or vicious they show the flies being, it’s kind of impossible for the little buggers to instill much fear. If it had taken the zombie route, it would have been a much better movie. Even though the film was made for TV, it still has a good look to it thanks to cinematographer Daniel Jobin and director Tim Southam. Island of the Dead was the first movie in the horror genre for Southam, and he nailed the feeling and the atmosphere. The big problem was his script based on Peter Koper’s story. The characters were there, but the drama and thrills got left back on shore somewhere.

Saying the characters were there might be a stretch, but at least a few of them showed up. Some people have talked down on Mos Def as an actor, but from 16 Blocks to Hitchhiker’s Guide, and now Island of the Dead, I’ve found that Def is able to bring a special kind of slyness to his roles. There’s always a twinkle in his character’s eye that makes them interesting to watch. Malcolm McDowell on the other hand is great at playing huge bastards, and this time is no exception. McDowell and Def both seem to be having a good time in their respective roles. However, the rest of the cast quickly fades into the background and that is unfortunate because neither Def nor McDowell is the main character in Island of the Dead. I don’t really have anything much to say about the other actors except for the lead Talisa Soto. The former Bond Girl (License to Kill), Mortal Kombat star (Princess Kitana), and Vampriella (the abysmal 1996 film co-starring Roger Daltrey of The Who) is a fine looking woman, but the fact remains that she just can’t act her way out of a paper bag. It is really no wonder that her career came to a grinding halt after only two more films.

All in all, Island of the Dead is a mess of a horror film. It had some interesting characters thanks to the two big name actors, some decent direction, and a solid title. Unfortunately, the title totally misses the mark of what the film is about, the other actors are either bad or uninteresting, and the threat in the film could be stopped by clever use of sticky paper hanging from the ceiling. While I had a great time watching the former Black Star rapper and former Clockwork Orange star do some verbal sparring, that is really the only thing that drew me into the film. The rest of the movie seemed like something SyFy would have turned down even when they spelled their name with enough letters. So beware the Island of the Dead, but not for the reasons that the film would like you to believe.

There's no trailer for me to embed, but anyone interested can go HERE to IMDB to see the trailer. Instead, I will leave you folks with a little tune from Mr. Def.