We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
Joe Bob, melt movies, and Vivian Schilling.
FUTURE SHOCK (1994)
October of 1994 was called “Attack of the Queen Bs Month” on the Movie Channel show Joe Bob's Drive-in Theater, which was hosted by drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs, as each of the weekly double features on the show was a salute to the most fascinating leading women working in B movies at the time. In the middle of the month, Joe Bob was joined by special guest Vivian Schilling to discuss a double feature of her work – and I have to be honest, until I started working on catching up on the Joe Bob's Drive-in Theater archives, I was not familiar with the career of Vivian Schilling. Even though I’ve always been very interested in B movies, she somehow slipped under my radar.
But, as it turns out, Schilling was a B movie actress who wasn’t willing to just wait to land her next job, she took it upon herself to make movies happen. She would write the screenplays, search for the funding, and star in the films. Asked why she took on all these other jobs on movies in addition to starring in them, she told Joe Bob it was “funner that way.”
The Schilling double feature got started with the anthology film Future Shock, which Joe Bob gave a perfect 4 star rating... but as you watch the movie, it quickly becomes clear that the three separate segments that make up this film were not originally meant to be assembled together. Schilling and director Eric Parkinson made a short film called Jenny Porter, then they reached out to other filmmakers, selecting existing short films that they could pair with Jenny Porter to create an anthology. So, while Jenny Porter was made specifically as part of this project and sets up the wraparound segments that were used to integrate the other shorts into the film, the second segment, titled The Roommate, was something director Oley Sassone had made in 1988 and the third segment, Mr. Petrified Forest, was writer/director Matt Reeves’ U.S.C. Masters Thesis film in 1992.
These stories were not intended to be told together, but Schilling and Parkinson found a way to slot them together through the addition of scenes in which Martin Kove plays psychiatrist Dr. Langdon. That way, each one of them became a story about Langdon using a virtual reality device to help people face their phobias.
Jenny Porter stars Schilling as the title character, a woman who gets unreasonably scared every time her husband Jack (Brion James) goes out of town on business – which is quite often. Most of the short involves her wandering around her house by herself, finding ways to freak herself out and things to get scared about. Oddly, the greatest threat presented in this short isn’t that someone might break into the house and harm Jenny. Instead, it’s a pack of wild dogs that are roaming around the neighborhood, outside her locked doors and windows. It’s a bit clunky, but still ended up being my favorite section of the movie.
Scripted by Sassone and David DuBos, The Roommate stars Scott Thomson as the frustratingly meek Georgie, who needs a roommate to help pay the rent on his apartment because he’s in danger of being evicted for falling behind on payments. Unfortunately for him, the person who forces his way into Georgie’s life is Vince, played by the great Bill Paxton. Paxton does his usual awesome work here, playing a total douchebag who runs all over Georgie and quickly manages to ruin his life. Georgie is so annoyingly meek and incapable of standing up for himself, this one can be a bit irritating to watch.
Still, my least favorite segment was Mr. Petrified Forest (mistakenly listed as Mr. Petrified Forrest in the credits), which I just didn’t find to be very interesting. It follows a man named Steven Forest (Sam Clay), who is basically afraid of everything, with the possibility of death looming over him every second of every day. He doesn’t let that stop him from attempting to pursue a relationship with Paula (Amanda Foreman), but his fears certainly cause some issues.
Future Shock is an interesting curiosity, especially now that Matt Reeves and his collaborators have done well for themselves and because it’s worth seeing every Bill Paxton performance in existence, but it’s not an anthology I’ll feel compelled to revisit very often.
SOULTAKER (1990)
After getting Vivian Schilling to confess that Future Shock was a trio of random short films that she managed to string together, and after discussing her experiences working on other projects (like a thriller that was shot in Poland and a Mickey Rooney movie), it’s time to get to the second half of the double feature, the supernatural horror film Soultaker – which was a Sci-Fi Channel premiere and exclusive, but the Sci-Fi Channel, which had just launched in the last months of 1992, loaned the movie to The Movie Channel for the purposes of this special Schilling event in ‘94.
Directed by Michael Rissi from a screenplay Schilling crafted with Eric Parkinson, Soultaker was inspired by something that actually happened to Schilling when she was just out of high school. She got into car with guy not realizing he was drunk, and he proceeded to drive crazily, as you would expect. This resulted in a crash, with the car smashing into a tree. The dashboard was pushed in on Schilling and she was trapped in the car for a long time, thinking she was going to die. Eventually, first responders extracted her from the wreck with the Jaws of Life... and years later, she used that experience as the starting point for this horror story.
Schilling stars as Natalie McMillan, a young woman who goes to fair and then catches a ride with Zach (Gregg Thomsen), Tommy (Chuck Williams), Candice (Cinda Lou Freeman), and Brad (David Shark Fralick). Not only does Brad have an unfortunate mixture of thinning blonde hair and a long mullet, he has also been swilling booze and sniffing cocaine – and he happens to be the driver. So the car smashes into a tree... and the Angel of Death, played by Maniac Cop himself Robert Z’Dar informs us that all five of the car’s occupants were meant to die in the crash. Instead, most of their souls have been displaced and now they’re roaming around their hometown of Mobile, Alabama, thinking they’re still alive and unharmed. Yet, oddly, the people they cross paths with don’t seem to be able to see or hear them.
Sent to collect the wandering souls is a character simply credited as The Man, played by Joe Estevez – and even though he’s a supernatural character, he must “abide by the rules of time and space” as he pursues his prey. Meaning this poor dude has to walk from location to location, only using his powers to collect souls or to change his appearance in different attempts to trick the dying youths. His mission is further complicated by the fact that The Man was once human and Natalie reminds him of the woman he loved during his time among the living.
Soultaker is an entertaining low budget movie with some interesting ideas in it, but it has difficulty sustaining its 94 minute running time and ends up overstaying its welcome. If it could have been cut down a bit so it could move along a little more quickly, it would make for a better viewing experience. Instead, it starts to feel like it’s dragging when there’s still around 20 minutes left to go.
Joe Bob obviously didn’t mind the pacing, because this is another movie that he gave a perfect 4 star rating to. The movie also seemed to go over well with viewers in the early ‘90s, as it even bested the likes of Scanners II: The New Order, the killer baby movie The Unborn, Full Moon’s The Pit and the Pendulum, the vampire movie Pale Blood, and the Gary Busey classic Hider in the House to win the Best Genre Video Release award at the 18th Saturn Awards in 1992. The Silence of the Lambs and Terminator 2: Judgment Day were also big winners at that ceremony, and Schilling got to interact with Arnold Schwarzenegger there.
The interview ends with Joe Bob promoting Schilling’s novel Sacred Prey, which she wrote so she could have complete control over the story. This was in response to people telling her she should get into directing. She didn’t want to direct, she didn’t have time for it, so she wrote a novel instead. We hear there’s a sequel to Soultaker in the works, but that never ended up happening, and that Schilling was working on a second novel called Dark World, but that was eventually published under the title Quietus. Schilling took a few more acting roles before the ‘90s came to an end and has acted a couple more times since, but she wouldn’t write or produce anything else until 2008. So this Joe Bob interview sort of seems like it was an end of an era for her, in some ways.
THE STUFF (1985) - Hosted by Joe Bob Briggs on The Last Drive-in
Seventeen years after his TNT show MonsterVision was cancelled, the Shudder streaming service brought drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs back onto the airwaves to host a dusk-to-dawn-to-dusk marathon, which was so popular that they had him come back for more: a Thanksgiving special, a Christmas special, and then a weekly show with a first season that consisted of nine double features. For week eight of the season’s nine-week run, he hosted an ooey, gooey double feature of the ‘80s cult classics The Stuff and Street Trash.
But first, the episode begins with Joe Bob sitting outside a real drive-in theatre, stating that he is proud to be a Texan... but admitting that the state of Texas is an ugly place to drive through. I have only been through the state once, back in the late ‘90s, and don’t remember much about it other than the fact that there were a lot more hills in the Austin area than I expected there to be (I had always heard that Texas was a very flat state), so I’ll leave it up to Joe Bob to debate whether or not it’s nice to look at.
Once that short comedic bit is over, we get to see Joe Bob sitting outside the trailer home set, starting to talk about The Stuff, which was written and directed by Larry Cohen. While he enjoys the unique style of Cohen’s work, he thinks The Stuff is the worst of Cohen’s movies – although he notes that the worst Larry Cohen movie would still be better than 50% of the movies shown on The Last Drive-in. It’s a love it or hate it movie, as he sees it, although his own opinion comes pretty much in the middle, as he gives it 2.5 stars out of a possible 4. He notes that all Cohen movies are satires, with this one being his statement on American consumerism, skewering the cigarette, alcohol, soft drink, fast food, and advertising industries, as well as the media and the FDA. Which brings to mind the fact that The Last Drive-in was being filmed about one mile from the Kimberly Clark Corporation – and then Joe Bob goes off on a lengthy rant, inspired by KCC’s decision to no longer marketing “man-sized” Kleenex, which originated as a replacement for the handkerchiefs men used to carry around in their pockets. The “man-sized Kleenex” was being renamed the “Extra Large Kleenex,” and Joe Bob was none too happy about the change.
Once he’s done complaining, he gets around to the proper introduction of The Stuff, which he says is “a lot like The Blob, but with no Michael Landon.” Well, The Blob didn’t have Michael Landon in it, either. So is The Stuff exactly The Blob? Joe Bob obviously got Steve McQueen in The Blob mixed up with Michael Landon’s performance in another ‘50s horror movie, I Was a Teenage Werewolf.
So then we get to watch The Stuff with Joe Bob. The film is about a white substance that seeps out of the ground and quickly becomes the new dessert sensation, with people (and marketing) proclaiming that it's even better than ice cream. Problem is, it's also the most unhealthy substance you could possibly put in your body. But the issue here isn't that it will cause disease and weight gain if you consume too much of it. This sweet and creamy dessert is actually a living, moving, Blob-like being, and by eating it people are unwittingly making themselves Stuff junkies. They become addicted to The Stuff, which alters their minds and makes them dedicated servants of this white ooze. Sometimes their bodies will even split open and start spewing the stuff. Soon, it comes down to the team of FBI agent turned industrial spy Mo Rutherford (Cohen's Q: The Winged Serpent star Michael Moriarity), advertising mastermind Nicole (Andrea Marcovicci), former cookie factory owner Chocolate Chip Charlie (Garrett Morris), a young boy named Jason (Scott Bloom), and a militia leader played by Paul Sorvino to put The Stuff out of business.
During his hosting segments, Joe Bob points out that Cohen always had a cast that was too good for the budget of his movies, as you can tell from the names I just listed. He feels that either Q: The Winged Serpent or It’s Alive are the best Cohen film, and The Stuff doesn’t rank highly for him because it seems like an unfinished idea. The various plots in Cohen films usually blend together better than the ones in this movie do, the stuff itself is not scary (and should have been a more interesting color than marshmallow white), the kid gets annoying, the story goes to crazy town, there’s not enough explanation for what the stuff is, the rules of the stuff change throughout the movie, and the whole thing is weakened by the fact that there’s no specific villain other than the goo for most of the running time. Joe Bob isn’t high on the film, but actor Rupert Grint has revealed that it’s one of his favorites, and Joe Bob suspects the makers of the film Body Melt were ripping off this Cohen movie.
As usual, he covers the careers of various cast members, and he also digs into Cohen’s career, with a particular focus on the work he did on shows like Branded and The Defenders early in his career. He mentions that someone wrote an academic book on the works of Cohen, where the author went so far as to say that the script Cohen wrote for an episode of the TV show Espionage was more complex and creative than Schindler’s List. This is not an opinion Joe Bob is ready to go along with.
Joe Bob does say that Cohen was the master of the double twist ending: you think you know where his stories are going, but you never do. His movies are sort of like life in that way.
I’ve never been a big fan of The Stuff, but it is a uniquely goofball movie that I have fun watching every time I go back to it. It’s not my favorite Larry Cohen movie, but it’s certainly not my least favorite of his works.
After the movie, Darcy the Mail Girl comes out in Stuff-inspired cosplay to say that she likes the movie a lot more than Joe Bob does, and that she had a crush on Scott Bloom when she was a child. She has a prop Stuff container with it, and actually gets Joe Bob to try a taste of the (vegan friendly!) stuff before she reads two pieces of fan mail. One letter is just a bit of information: the Blue Öyster Cult song “Godzilla” was written in Dallas. Then a fan asks what two horror movies Tom Hanks watches in The ‘Burbs, but Joe Bob has no idea. He also doesn’t know what movie Hanks, who played Mister Rogers in a movie, watched an episode of Mister Roger’s Neighborhood in.
Having been stumped, Joe Bob wraps things up with a joke.
STREET TRASH (1987) - Hosted by Joe Bob Briggs on The Last Drive-in
I have pointed out before that I have issues with how some of the double features on The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs are set up, because I feel that the slower, more prestigious movies should come first, with the wild and crazy movie to follow as the B picture. Having Deathgasm be followed by The Changeling rather than vice versa is nuts, as far as I’m concerned. Same for having The House of the Devil follow Demon Wind, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer follow WolfCop, and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night follow Contamination. What I really enjoy is when both movies are kind of wild and crazy, so it doesn’t matter so much which movie comes first or second. Such is the case when you have a double feature of The Stuff and Street Trash – although I do actually agree with the choice to show Street Trash second, because it is the wilder and crazier of the two.
Before Joe Bob gets around to properly introducing this one, he does a comedic monologue advising viewers on “how to keep your instrument clean,” giving us a walk through his wellness day so we can, like him, have glowing skin after a three-day drunk and abs over a beer belly. With that done, we can get to the movie where Joe Bob says the entire cast looks like they just crawled out of a sewer full of raw meat that’s been left out in the sun for two weeks. It’s part of a sparse sub-genre called “melt movies,” and makes you feel like sleaze is dripping out of your TV and making your shoes stick to the floor. Joe Bob gives it 2 stars.
Directed by J. Michael Muro from a screenplay that was written byRoy Frumkes, based on a short film Muro made previously, Street Trash shows what happens when a bad batch of 60-year-old wine called Tenafly Viper is distributed among hobos living in an auto salvage yard along the creek that separates Brooklyn from Queens. What happens is that anyone who drinks this rotgut will proceed to melt and/or explode into psychedelic colored slime. This movie is insane, and for most of its running time I don’t enjoy it very much, because it mostly just consists of very unpleasant, often vulgar interactions between unlikable characters. But then somebody will melt or get violently killed, and for the moments when the special effects are on the screen, Street Trash is pretty cool. Cut it down to nothing but the special effects sequences and I would absolutely love it.
During his hosting segments, Joe Bob says this is one of those movies where, after you watch it, you need a shower, because you’re let feeling like your skin has turned to goo and any moment your head could start pulsating and yellow glopola could start seeping out of your ears. He says it could even disgust serial killers who chop up bodies, eat human toes, and feed the rest to wolves. Filmed in 1984, it was made because Frumkes was a film professor at the School of Visual Arts and liked to make movies to teach his students about indie film production, as he knew they weren’t likely to be hired for the Hollywood gigs of their dreams. That’s how his Dawn of the Dead documentary Document of the Dead came about, and how Street Trash came into existence.
As mentioned, Muro had made short film called Street Trash with many of the same characters. Whe he inherited some money from an uncle, he went to Frumkes and said he wanted to expand his short into a feature, but he wasn’t a writer, so he asked Frumkes to write the script. Not only did Frumkes write the script, apparently drawing inspiration from the Akira Kurosawa film The Lower Depths in the process, but he also managed to raise $850,000 from investors. Muro used his inheritance money to buy a Steadicam, which he put to great use during the production of Street Trash, training himself to become one of the great Steadicam operators in the business. He was, for a long time, James Cameron’s Steadicam operator of choice.
Many of the actors in the film had no other acting experience, but Joe Bob still manages to give some background and updates on them – and is awed by the fact that Muro got the whole cast to act like over-the-top lunatics. He points out that the movie has the least sympathetic portrayal of the homeless of any movie ever made, that there’s no apparent reason for some characters to be in the movie at all, and that it was made in a time when New York was presented as an epic wasteland and there were two thousand homicides per year, back in the days before Times Square was cleaned up. He discusses the “squeegee guys” that used to “wash windshields” at stop lights in New York, names “What do you think you’re doing with all that chicken in your pants?” as one of the great lines in cinema, observes that the movie treats anything kinky, gross, disgusting, or torture porny as comedy, quotes a tagline (“Prepare for a molten hobo holocaust”), and says the word “Fuck” is reportedly used in the film 128 times. He was also troubled to learn that the “drunken wench” that gets attacked by a gang of men in the film was attacked by a gang in real life, which made the filming of the scene understandably disturbing for her. He confirms that Bryan Singer was a Production Assistant on the set. And when there’s an extended sequence where characters toss around a severed penis, Joe Bob calls Sleepaway Camp star Felissa Rose, who serves as this show’s “mangled dick expert.”
Street Trash may not be great (although plenty of fans believe it is), but it does have six things that were never seen in cinema before and might never be seen again: A scene where a cop intentionally throws up on someone, a conversation about “layers of semen” being found inside an assault victim, moments where brothers clobber each other with mailing cylinders, a car muffler being used as a weapon in a fight, a strangely vulgar exchange in a liquor store, and the sight of man sawing the feet off of Vietnamese villagers while weeping.
Once the movie is over, Joe Bob is joined by Darcy the Mail Girl, who thinks Street Trash is “a hoot” due to the gross-out gags. Darcy delivers a letter from a fan who enjoys watching Joe Bob with his son, then Joe Bob ends the episode with a joke.
