Shock Treatment.

Review #2582: Shock Treatment.

Cast:  

Jessica Harper (Janet Majors), Cliff DeYoung (Farley Flavors, Brad Majors), Richard O'Brien (Dr. Cosmo McKinley), Patricia Quinn (Dr. Nation McKinley), Ruby Wax (Betty Hapschatt), Charles Gray (Judge Oliver Wright), Barry Humphries (Bert Schnick), Manning Redwood (Harry Weiss), Darlene Johnson (Emily Weiss), Jeremy Newson (Ralph Hapschatt), Wendy Raebeck (Macy Struthers), Betsy Brantley (Neely Pritt), Christopher Malcolm (Vance Parker), Little Nell (Nurse Ansalong), Rik Mayall ("Rest Home" Ricky), Eugene Lipinski (Kirk), Barry Dennen (Irwin Lapsey), and Gary Shail (Oscar Drill) Directed by Jim Sharman (#1449 - The Rocky Horror Picture Show)

 

Review: 

Sure, why not? You may remember that The Rocky Horror Picture Show (released in 1975 as based on The Rocky Horror Show) was initially a flop, mainly because, well, some people do in fact want a supposed tribute and also parody to the "kitsch" science fiction/horror movies* of the old days to actually...be interesting besides a campy facade that did not sway me beyond the most average moments (even a double-bill campus re-release with Phantom of the Paradise [1974] didn't help). But let's be fair: an idea by a Fox executive to give a midnight run gave the movie lasting cult appeal, with a good chunk of screenings in later years being joined with a live performance by a cast of fans. Returning alongside producers Lou Adler & Michael White, Jim Sharman and Richard O'Brien collaborated with each other on the script (with Sharman as director) for what basically would be a spiritual (with most of the folks returning in different roles), although Susan Sarandon did not return due to wanting more money, Bostwick did not return due to being unavailable and Curry, well, he just said no. They wanted to film in Dallas and England but the Screen Actors Guild strike in summer 1980 scuttled those plans to where it ended up being filmed in England in the fall of 1980. Production designer Brian Thomson delivered a reworking of the story that saw the film shot in a giant studio that saw him get credited for "additional ideas" Trying to get in on how Rocky Horror got its cult appeal, Shock Treatment only played in limited engagements with midnight screenings that started around late October 1981...which flopped, but there is a small enough following (even with O'Brien once labeling it as an "abortion"). Sharman hasn't directed a theatrical film since, although he has done numerous productions in the theatre and last year was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia.

I admit to only knowing this movie because it was covered by The Cinema Snob many years ago. So it goes. An odd-looking town is now swallowed up by a TV network studio, complete with a medical facility, that's your starting point. I really did try to go with an open mind for the movie, complete with a 95 minute runtime. I suppose it is an attempt at a compliment to say the movie is roughly around the same level of curiosity of the Rocky Horror film, but I then realize that isn't saying much because good God, I still don't have a real favorite person to watch for either of these movies. For all of the singing and all of its attempts to curtail any idea of horror for straight musical comedy, I can't stand much of these bastard people and its incessant averageness. I will say it is amusing as hell that they really tried to aim at appealing to those who were already big on the Rocky Horror stuff (specifically the ones who know the stuff by heart for a midnight screening), complete with a tagline of not being a sequel or a prequel but instead an "equal"...that basically splatted right on the pavement. Harper tries her best in trying to give something to a role that is gripped in the swaying power of would-be fame, which is sometimes curious and sometimes neat, but I can't help in thinking she just had a better time with a fellow box office failure-turned-cult classic musical comedy horror with Phantom of the Paradise; it's not so much that she can't hold it together for an ensemble, it just feels like she needs a real person to actually bounce off as opposed to being in the bin with the loons. It's entirely possible I just don't have patience for certain musicals (incidentally, you could put the film and The Music Man [1962] on at the same time and have nearly enough time to see the former again). Humphries and DeYoung basically are trying to fill the hole left from no Curry to really hold the screen together in insidious elusiveness that just isn't as pronounced as you wish it was. It's middling spoof material that begs for more than being stuck in a fishbowl setting that might as well make you wish you could drill a hole in your head to escape. Some have said that it had a predictive hand at reality TV. Well, that is pretty silly, mainly because An American Family exists, complete with an eight-year headstart that even had its own spoof with Real Life [1979]; one of the people of the aforementioned Family show even once said "Television ate my family" (at any rate, if we are talking about movies with interesting perspectives on the blurring of reality and TV, The Truman Show [1998] humiliates Shock Treatment many, many, many times over*). "Influencer culture", well, argue that for yourself, and the style for certain moments within its cloying studio is sometimes interesting, but if I don't care for the scenario or the songs beyond "okay", then it doesn't really matter what "prescient" thing has been accomplished. I honestly can't get a grasp on the characters now played by DeYoung and Harper other than wanting to throw dangle them over a pit, or, alternatively, bashing my head in. I don't care about who is supposed to be the "emotional cripple" or who doesn't know what they really are with attention focused on them, but maybe you will. Maybe it becomes the movie you see again to really experience for what it really, really means in the soul. So it goes.

 

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

*For something that wants to be campy and fun, I found more fun in actually just watching 1950s horror movies. You get more out of something like I Married a Monster from Outer Space than Rocky Horror Picture Show in entertainment value, and I will die on that hill. Besides, the former doesn't go on the "cinematic experience" of catcalls and toilet-paper throwing to get its kicks. Are you fucking kidding me?

*Okay that last film was mentioned because O'Brien apparently argued that The Truman Show certainly had some inspiration from Shock Treatment (as stated here or here). I'm....trying not to laugh.

Incidentally, here's a quote from an LA Times article about An American Family in 2003 upon the airing of a look back on the family from two of the original film crew: 

The Raymonds, whose most recent work is the HBO documentary “Children in War,” find it a “mixed honor” to be credited, as they often are, with the creation of modern-day reality television. “We don’t do shows for MTV. I don’t care to take credit for ‘The Real World,’ ‘The Osbournes,’ or [the] ‘Anna Nicole [Show],’ ” said Alan Raymond. “They’re terrible.”

Or, alternatively, a 2011 New York Times article.

 Mr. Gilbert and the Raymonds do agree on at least one thing: that “An American Family” has been unfairly credited with — or blamed — for starting reality television. The immersive, leisurely rhythms of the series are a stark contrast from the artificial situations (lab-rat housemates, gladiatorial contests) that dominate today’s reality programs. With its grainy look and distanced camerawork, it resembles an art film more than any reality show.

The Lords of Salem.

Review #2311: The Lords of Salem.

Cast: 

Sheri Moon Zombie (Heidi LaRoc / Adelaide Hawthorne), Bruce Davison (Francis Matthias), Jeff Daniel Phillips (Herman "Whitey" Salvador), Judy Geeson (Lacy Doyle), Meg Foster (Margaret Morgan), Patricia Quinn (Megan), Dee Wallace (Sonny), Ken Foree (Herman "Munster" Jackson), María Conchita Alonso (Alice Matthias), Andrew Prine (Reverend Jonathan Hawthorne), Richard Fancy (A.J. Kennedy), Camille Keaton (Doris Von Fux), Bonita Friedericy (Abigail Hennessey), and Nancy Linehan Charles (Clovis Hales) Written and Directed by Rob Zombie (#743 - Halloween (2007), #1590 - House of 1000 Corpses, #1751 - Halloween II (2009), #1756 - The Devil's Rejects, #1920 - 3 from Hell, #2090 - The Munsters)

Review: 

"50% of you will think this is the greatest thing ever, and 50% will hate it...I think I wanted to let everyone there know that it's OK to feel that way about a film like Lords. It's meant to make you unsure about what you just saw. That's the way the things that I like are—they're not for everybody. People have this delusion that everything has to be for everybody at all times. Every album must be liked by everybody, and every TV show must be liked by everybody, and every movie must be liked by everybody. Everything then becomes bland."

Those with a familiarity with history involving witches or Salem might know that people accused of being witches were not actually burned at the stake. In fact, of the hundreds accused of doing witchcraft in 1692-1693, the thirty that were found guilty suffered the hands of hanging or for the small few, torture (one was pressed until they succumbed to their wounds...and was an 81-year-old man) or death by filthy prisons. Naturally, there have been dozens of books and films that have used the trials as a key topic, whether that involves comedy such as I Married a Witch (1942) or allegories such as The Crucible (play or film). But I suppose it makes sense that one would go and make a film that plays around with the idea that yes, witches really could just be as real as you or me through the old tricks. It was reported in 2010 that Zombie, fresh off the debacle of Halloween II (2009) would get around to writing and directing this film while on his concert tour circuit for shooting in 2011. He apparently had came up with the premise a few years beforehand, but it eventually was tinkered with by Zombie in order to make a "strange, dreamlike movie" (as noted in interviews here, he took inspiration more so from European trials of witches than Salem, which he was misinformed about). He did the film in collaboration with Haunted Movies (so basically, Blumhouse), which at the time had done Insidious and The Bay, particularly because he had total control over the script and casting for a fairly low budget movie. The next Zombie production would come across with 31 (2016), which would go through crowdfunding for certain financing.

I sometimes wonder if I give Zombie a bit too much slack as a filmmaker for all of the fairly average stuff he does. What we have here is a slow burn movie that shows fascination with what Zombie finds interesting about both witchcraft and in "Satanic Panic" that is grim and unforgiving. It may be disjointed; it may not be all that one might think when it comes to the previous Zombie films in terms of stark strangeness in the unfinished cycle of violence but "mixed bag" seems aptly appropriate to try out once if you know what you are getting into. Some might find it basically cribbing from Rosemary's Baby (1968), but given how "fine" that movie was, sometimes you really can just crib from fine movies as long as you don't insult my patience with attempts at simplicity. As before, S.Zombie headlines a R.Zombie film. This time around, there is a passive nature to a character with such a strange and stunted job (it's a radio gig where they hang out about the same level as a couple of inebriated folks) before one eventually sees the logical conclusion of a downward withdrawn spiral. She handles the affair with subdued grace that is probably her most compelling performance for the films I've seen of her. Geeson, Wallace, Quinn play along in weird neighborly charm that is fun to see play out from scene to scene that has fun with self-help in the name of a certain kind of worship. Interestingly, Davison had previously been featured in The Crucible (1996); he was cast when Bruce Dern dropped out of this film due to scheduling conflicts. His curiosity (which went from being a shill for himself to actual curiosity) in the face of impending dread is entertaining to see play out, needless to say. Rounding out the cast is folks such as an unnerving Quinn along with understated presences in Phillips and Foree, who work out fine. The movie has some interesting imagery eventually play out through its trek of dread (such as strange visions or priests) that at least looks like the kind of movie Zombie wanted to just go out and do in having cruelty and uncertainty (for the audience) be the point. As a whole, it might not play well for everyone, but there is promise shown by Zombie in terms of odd duck dread that has a worthy enough cast to carry the waters for a cruel experience that might just work for those that know where to go with a director interested in making a movie to leave you unsure of what you just saw. I ended up going with it enough to say it is fine for one patient viewing, which is more than enough when trying to branch out for horror movies down the road.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Next up: We close out our sixth week after Halloween with John Carpenter's The Fog.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Review #1449: The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Cast: 
Tim Curry (Dr. Frank-N-Furter), Susan Sarandon (Janet Weiss, a heroine), Barry Bostwick (Brad Majors, a hero), Richard O'Brien (Riff Raff, a handyman), Patricia Quinn (Magenta, a domestic), Nell Campbell (Columbia, a groupie), Jonathan Adams (Dr. Everett V. Scott, a rival scientist), Peter Hinwood (Rocky Horror, a creation, with Trevor White as singing voice), Meat Loaf (Eddie, an ex-delivery boy), and Charles Gray (The Criminologist) Directed by Jim Sharman.

Review: 
"For me it was, I think, the most joyous time of my life. You know, I was still very young, it took me to Hollywood and to Broadway and into a kind of very peculiar immortality, and I'm very grateful for that."

It was inevitable to cover a film like this at some point. Some movies are born to be cult favorites, and this sure has proven to have a life of its own 45 years after release. It wasn't a big hit with initial releases, but it proved a winner with midnight showings, and the lingering success of doing these screenings have meant that it has not completely left the theater, the longest-running release in film history. When it comes to screenings nowadays, audiences usually are encouraged to say certain lines and practices for scenes or engaging in dressing up as the characters. It was based on The Rocky Horror Show, a stage play written by Richard O'Brien that was first performed in London in 1973. He wrote it as a combination of the unintended comedy of B-horror films with fifties rock and roll alongside his love of science fiction that hit in a time where glam rock was a hit within the United Kingdom. Curry, O'Brien, Quinn, and Campbell reprise their roles from the play into the film. 20th Century Fox wanted to make the film on a bigger budget with contemporary musicians of the day, but a compromise was made to use American leads with a cheaper budget instead. A follow-up film (of sorts) was made six years later in Shock Treatment, which retained Sharman as director/writer alongside O'Brien as writer again while retaining actors such as Campbell and Gray but without Curry, Bostwick, or Sarandon. Funny enough, it was a bigger failure at the box office than the first film (complete with being a midnight movie flop) although it has a small cult following of its own.

Perhaps I wasn't in the right mindset when I watched the film. How many horror and musicals can you watch before they all seem familiar? Of course how many films have a DVD that offer numerous versions to watch involving audience participation? Is it really something to make a film where you can exclaim a reference? The answer to these questions for me is simple: I don't care. Seriously though, while I can acknowledge that it may be an interesting film deserving of some sort of following with an audience (there are many mocking things one can say about encouraging yelling at the screen, but I'll let my bile pass), I cannot say that this was a winning film to enjoy wholeheartedly. Maybe it is the manner of its parody of horror and comedy, where making a hodgepodge of the two with mediocre songs is meant to be something to really laugh at as some sort of camp. You know that song "Science Fiction, Double Feature"? Most, if not all of those films mentioned in that song are probably better than this film. "Sweet Transvestite" may very well work as a song, but that don't help slop like "Dammit Janet" get much better. It proves exhausting to try and keep up with the film's supposed charms, where it proves to be one of the most infuriatingly mediocre films to ever run under two hours at 100 minutes. It may prove iconic for its era, but that sure doesn't mean it is any sort of high-end achievement either. There are basically five simple zones of defining a film's quality: awful, bad, average, good, and great to me, with no substitution or weaseling out of. Simply put, this falls completely in the average pile, with a sort of refusal to ever move towards being good or bad at any point where Curry isn't there.

If anyone proves to be a great highlight, it is surely Curry. A 1968 graduate of the University of Birmingham (studying English and Drama), he debuted on the stage (alongside television) the same year he graduated with the London production of Hair, where he met O'Brien. It isn't hard to see why this was the role that helped him to prominence, since one never really seems to take their eyes off such a daring performance, filled plenty of strange allure of grisly reality and parody. In a more-improved mediocre movie, one might actually just let the Curry performance sweep the other flaws aside and make it truly enjoyable. Bostwick and Sarandon nearly get lost in the entire shuffle, although the latter seems more suited for songs (of sorts, at least with that high voice). O'Brien and Quinn make some sort of duo, while Meat Loaf is sorely wasted here. The straight-laced Gray works only to deliver redundant explanations at times and occasional lyric contributions, which I guess is fine. Of course we are dealing a campy film filled with quietly ridiculous fellow acting, where everything is obvious for the sake of being obvious, where one is almost tempted to spray them with a water bottle to stop it. Patience wears thin when you start to grimace at the idea of yet another song, as if the true horror is actually how many times they can do a string of songs, since the horror-sci-fi pastiches only can so far. If anybody is going to claim the title of affectionate tribute to horror with comedy for the 1970s, it sure isn't going to be this film, since Young Frankenstein (1974) did every aspect with better style and better execution, whereas this just falls short of really resonating with me as a film (perhaps it just worked better on stage). Perhaps another time of watching it could provide some levity, but there are simply too many films to go forth and watch once before even thinking about revisiting stuff that didn't quite click the first time around. No sir, I will not in fact do the Time Warp again any time soon. It may not be a winner enough to make me like it, but it has its own following for a reason and it may prove just fine for those into what it tries to do in camp value.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.