Slight disruption to this week's schedule as I was very busy yesterday attending a meeting in London for my actual day-job stuff and didn't get home till late last night, but that's ok because I'm back today and since Spooky Season is now done, I've got to move away from the Halloween themed stuff and back on to the regular schedule: working my way through the list of movies considered the worst ever made. And I'm moving into the 60's with this week's pick which, even by worst movies standards is considered to genuinely be the worst of the worst. And that must be a pretty fucking deep low to sink to. Because I've watched Terror of Tiny Town and Maniac and they were both fucking horrendous so this, this must be really, really bad.
The movie sets the tone immediately with a (now infamous) strangulation and necrophilia scene of Lanell Cado. Classy movie, really classy... before moving on to a very poorly filmed shoot out and car chase scene between our leading frontman: Joseph Javorsky (Tor Johnson) who is in the process of rendezvousing with American agents at Nuclear Testing range; Yucca Flats after defecting from the Soviet Union with all it's secrets seemingly contained in a single briefcase, and 2 Soviet agents (Anthony Cardoza and John Morrsion) trying to assassinate him. I was going to make a joke about them having infinite bullets but they genuinely run out of bullets at one point which allows Joseph to just... calmly walk away... as they reload, but before they can briskly walk to catch up to him, we cut to stock footage of atomic bomb explosion that would have otherwise vaporized anything within it's blast radius but Joseph and his briefcase seemingly survive the blast, as his burning ragged coat sleeved hand reaches for a burning briefcase... Later Joseph appears the emerge from the desert and goes about strangling a young couple, seemingly for no reason... who stop to change a tyre after their car breaks down, and these people just sort of fall asleep in his hands... that's not how strangulation works?... before making off with the woman slung over his back. The couple's car and dead body of the man are discovered by Desert Patrolman; Joe Dobson (Larry Aten) who races and picks up his Partner, Jim Archer (Bing Stafford) which for some reason necessitated a drawn out scene of his wife getting out of bed in a revealing nightdress, to then get back into bed as he shouts "see you later, honey" out of shot... Jim and Joe somehow manage to follow the footprints into the desert and directly up a "1,000 foot" high cliff into a cave... somehow... where they discover the body of the strangled woman and I was just going to make a joke about her still breathing, but then Jim remarks that she is "still breathing," so, ok, you can have that one, but then immediately after they imply that she's dead?! So which one is it?! The following day, after briefly introducing us to a vacationing family with 2 small boys, the movie cuts to Jim and Joe scaling that same cliff again in a hunt of the killer, but struggling to scale to the top of the plateau they ultimately decide to paradrop from a plane onto it instead, which actually isn't as illogical as it might sound. All of this, of course, is revealed to us by an omniscient narrator who for the last 20 minutes has been talking over the top of the movie, telling us what is actually going on because every line of dialogue in this movie was so obviously pasted in post production. This is never more obvious than in the following scene where, after our vacationing couple break down, their 2 lads go missing and the couple ask each other what they should do, with the camera cleverly positioned so that you can't actually see their heads... but just their bodies through a car window... hilariously bad. Anyway, getting back to the plot; Hank (Douglas Mellor) the boys father, proceeds to wander off into the desert looking for the lads, as the 2 boys wander off deeper and deeper into the wasteland, for some reason... Lois (Barbara Francis), Hank's wife chooses to stay with the car. Meanwhile Jim, an "ex-Paratropper" by the way, is now airborne and spotting Hank sprinting across the desert, mistakes him for the killer and, after about 15 attempts at shooting at him, from an airplane, with a sniper rifle, as he crosses a barren wasteland of nothingness, finally nails his target and hits Hank. Believing he has bagged his kill Jim paradrops from the plane which is seemingly three times higher now than it was in the previous scene... whilst Hank struggles to his feet, and on discovering Hank survived the shot Jim proceeds to follow his tracks. Meanwhile Hank makes it back to his wife who is seemingly fucking oblivious to the fact that a twin engine bi-plane was just ducking and weaving across the desert not less than 10 minutes away, whilst a man with a fucking sniper rifle shot at someone on the ground... but she gets left behind when Hank jumps in the car and tells her to stay there?! What kind of fucking Husband is he?! Meanwhile Jim and Joe catch up with each other and press on with their search for the killer, whilst Hank drives somewhere, flaps around a bit and drives off. I don't know why? The boys, stop to drink from an almost definitely nuclear irradiated pool of water, bad luck kids, before Joseph finally catches up with them and reminds everyone he's still in this movie and waddles after them like some kind of oversized penguin as they run away. Seemingly getting away from him though, the boys take refuge in that same cave from the beginning, but it isn't long before Joseph returns and then freaks out when he discovers the strangled lady from earlier has disappeared. Hank returns with some neighbours and they run off in every direction across the wasteland, again leaving poor Lois behind, as the boys emerge from the cave over a sleeping Joseph, everything gets a bit confusing for a moment as the cut a scene of him freaking out and then he's immediately on top of the boys chasing them, despite them being over a mile a way literally just a moment ago... anyway he catches up with the boys but Jim and Joe, spotting him shoot him. And as they stand over his lifeless body, suddenly Joseph springs to life and swats Joe away before getting Jim in some kid of stranglehold but as Joe recovers and unloads his gun into Joseph, finally the "beast" is dead, or seemingly as he very obviously rolls on to his front as the scene comes to a close... In the final scene Lois is reunited with her boys and Joseph has a little cuddle with a bunny, potentially not dead after all? OR IS HE?!
Boy OH FUCKING BOY this was a stinker. Everything about this was poor. Poor was written through it like a stick of rock. Poor production, poor storyline, poor cinematography, poor... acting really what there was of any actual acting... poor conceptualization, poor soundtracking, poor editing. Everything about it, every process step in it's creation serves as a lesson on where to not go wrong with making a movie. It was as if it was put together for film students to review afterwards and their Tutor to go: "right class! I want you to put together a comprehensive list of everything they did wrong whilst making this movie." You know those 'spot the difference' puzzles where they have 2 pictures side by side? This movie was the opposite sided picture with all the things missing or different.
SO! A Comprehensive list huh? Let's start with the most glaringly obvious part; the entire movie is vocal tracked by this condescending narrator who sometimes gives you a play-by-play of what's going on, but also serves to sort-of introduce the characters. He uses the phrase "noted scientist" to describe Joseph, I think, about 4 times. And his entire tone of voice has the under current of reluctance about it. Like he'd already watched the movie from start to finish and was like "no fuck that. I'm not narrating that." but he had somehow been blackmailed or reluctantly coerced into actually doing it.
Secondly; everything in this movie was just so fucking dark. I appreciate trying to convey that events being played out in the movie are happening at like dusk, or in the afternoon or whatever, but half the movie I couldn't tell what was going on because the shot had been composed so as to not blow out the ultra-highlighted sections, which is fine, but you then can't see what's going on in the shadowy parts which, incidentally, was where half the fucking movie took place!?
Thirdly; irrelevant scenes. I counted five; the opening scene which A) made no sense in context if Joseph is dead at the end. B) was completely unexplained, or elaborated on later. C) was generally in poor taste anyway, and has since become infamous. The following scene later with Jim's wife in her revealing nightdress. Why. The repeated scene of Jim in the airplane. We know he's in a plane. We watched him climb in. You don't need to show us him looking out the plane window four fucking times. The boys drinking from the lake. Absolutely no reason whatsoever for it to be in the movie. When Joseph confronts them, there's no lake in the background? The closing scene; with him cuddling up to a rabbit. Why. You could have just ended it with him dead after the Patrol guys shot him.
Forthly... is that the right way of putting it? Forthly?... Anyway the soundtrack: I hope you like that one orchestral song because it last THE WHOLE HOUR. The whole 56 odd minutes and on more than occasion it suddenly gets very loud, very dramatic and reached a crescendo for seemingly no reason. No reason. Like I swear they did it for one scene where Lois is just looking around?! It was amateur at best. The movie was so obviously not soundtracked to the musical accompaniment, and in the rare moments it was, it was so choppy and jerky that it bordered on unprofessional. Actually fuck, no, it didn't even border on it. It was unprofessional.
Fifthly, fuck it I'm all in now, fifthly - let's address the dialogue issue. The "script" so far as dialogue exchanged between characters in this film could have fit neatly on one side of A4 with room to spare. And the reason for that is, presumably, because it was pasted in post production as I mentioned earlier. This presented a minor problem; in that any scenes where characters exchange dialogue, and I think there was about 4, need to be shot in a fashion so as to cloak the fact that they aren't actually talking to each other during filming. This was accomplished mostly by characters talking to each other with their backs facing the camera, or shot from fucking miles away so you couldn't see their faces properly, or - in potentially the most creative, yet ultimately terrible, scene I think I've watched; a scene where Lois and Hank are talking to each other but their heads are cut off the shot which is being filmed from inside the car! Outstanding! Look:
Mother of Pearl... I could go on. These are just the things I can think of as I furiously bash this out on my laptop keyboard. There's probably more. We could be here all night as I dissect the various ways this movie ultimately failed. I fully understand why, even on a list of "worst movies" that this takes the crap-cake. Undoubtedly, in terms of production, at least, this movie is where movies become the most creatively bankrupt. If you ignore the necrophilia scene at the beginning it's not the most morally corrupt and derisory film to wind up on the worst films list, but it's certainly on par with some of the lowest efforts in terms of production that I've covered here. Think Hercules in New York, Almighty Thor, levels of non-effort.
Utterly atrocious. Zero stars.
