Jack H. Harris Presents Schlock!

Schlock is not really a good movie except in places here and there. It's a wannabe comedy send up of monster flicks (especially the movie Trog) but it's done on a micro-budget over a long stretch of time. The director is John Landis who would eventually find fame with Animal House and American Werewolf in London among other films, but this is his first. The costume of the "Schlockthropus" is the main reason this little lowest-budget flick has a standing. Designed and constructed by Rick Baker who'd go on to work on many a feature including the 70's remake of King Kong. 

I want to say nice things about this movie and I've been curious about it for years. But seeing it, I was charmed by the gumption it took to make some of the scenes happen, but the cast is almost all amateur and the pacing of the gags is just plain too slow almost all of the time. Some of that is that while made in 1971 the movie was not released until a few years later when Jack C. Harris saw Landis on The Tonight Show with a few clips and saw a chance to make a few bucks on what seemed to be a nifty critter or something like that. A few new scenes were added for length and that's the core problem. There's not enough here, as this is essentially a ten-minute gag routine expanded into a feature.

It's worth your time for sure, especially anyone who is a fan of this genre, but adjust your settings down for sure. Some wold argue that Trog could not be parodied, but I'm a fan of Trog for all its silliness and this movie is treading a bit on holy ground for me.

We go into space next time, aboard Dark Star. 

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Jack H. Harris Presents Son Of Blob!

The Blob was a successful monster movie from the late 50's, and no one suspected it mild yield a sequel until Larry Hagman (yes THAT Larry Hagman) thought it might be a grand notion. He lived in the Malibu Colony, a high-rent collection of homes belonging to a gaggle of folks, many in the film industry. So, Hagman looking for a gig after I Dream of Jeanie came to a close chatted up his chums, which included The Blob producer Jack H. Harris, and they made a movie. Beware! The Blob or as it was otherwise known Son of Blob is a monster movie with a decided difference, a light breezy tone. 

Like the original movie, the sequel focuses its attention on two young people (Robert Walker and Gwynne Gilford) who are the first to encounter the threat, at least the to encounter it and survive. Godfrey Cambridge is the culprit who unwittingly brought back with him from the frozen north a specimen which required freezing. It of course thaws and the Blob is back to its old tricks of rolling around and absorbing animals and people. Like the original the youngsters are seen as the problem for a long time before the true threat is fully understood and the town's forces are marshaled against it.

This is a fun movie and at many junctures quite funny. It's actually more a parody of monster movies than a straight fright flick. Burgess Meredith plays one of a trio of hobos who fall victim to the Blob, and they are quite humorous (Hagman is a mute part of this trio). Shelley Berman apparently runs an all-night barbershop and that makes him vulnerable. It can easily be argued that the humor in the movie undercuts the tension, but really by 1972 monster movies needed more juice than the Blob could provide to really give folks a chill. (The later 80's remake of The Blob did find some ways to make the threat feel more palpable.) But this is still a fun movie and I'm glad to have it in my library thanks to the Kino-Lorber folks.

Make room for Schlock in our next installment. 

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Jack H. Harris Presents Equinox!

See if this plot sounds familiar.

Four teenagers head into the country for some fun and relaxation and end up at a cabin in the woods which comes under attack by the dark forces of Hell. The youngsters fall victim one by one to the various attacks which include intruding monsters and demons who invade the spirits of the kids themselves. The violence seems to be centered around a mysterious book filled with ancient lore. Eventually all the kids succumb save one who is left to tell the tale, though his ultimate fate has little doubt.

Generally speaking, that sounds a lot like Sam Raimi's Evil Dead movies. But it's not a description of those, rather it's a brief overview of the movie Equinox. This movie began as an amateur effort put together by Dennis Murren and other talented special effects "Monster Kids" and some aspiring young actors (including a future Rose Parade queen and Frank Bonner star of WKRP In Cincinnati). 

The movie tells the story of penetrating a barrier to Hell. They even got Frtiz Leiber, the famous science fiction and fantasy author and creator of Fafhrd and Grey Mouser, to do some acting work in this one. Forry Ackerman shows up in a voice cameo.

The movie was completed on weekends with minimal equipment and rough stop-motion effects and then sold to a local producer named Jack Harris who got the cast together again and shot new material to make the film a bit longer for release. This resulted in two versions of the movie, the later one with more overt sexual content. The movie got released into the theaters and has since become a cult favorite.

Some years ago Criterion Collections put together a somewhat pricey but a very entertaining package with both versions of the movie and lots of background information including interviews with the many of the cast members and the creators. It's a very nice collection and it might will be well worth the investment, especially for anyone interested in horror movies, stop-motion animation, or cult movies. This one has something for everyone who is not afraid to watch less than slick Hollywood production.

Next time Harris returns to his roots with Beware! The Blob.    

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Jack H. Harris Presents Some Nudie Cuties!

I rather doubt that many people have gone bankrupt betting on whether men like looking at naked dames. Hugh Hefner got so rich doing it, that he only ever had to wear pajamas the rest of his life. Hefner's success was the envy of many a young hustler in the 60's and I have no doubt that Jack H. Harris was among them. He made his stab at filling that niche with 1962's Paradisio, the first of his "Nudie Cuties". 

Nudie Cuties were films featuring looks at naked flesh minus the offbeat and strained rationale of the practice of Nudism or Nudist Colonies. Russ Meyer's The Immortal Mr. Teas from 1959 is considered the first installment of this kind of movie. Ed Wood's Orgy of the Dead is also a later addition. Jack Harris entered the arena in 1962 with Paradisio, a movie about a professor chap who gets hold of some x-ray glasses and then gets swept up in a spy plot. When he's looking through his glasses it generates a 3-D quality to the nudity, and we are to use our own glasses for full effect. For more details check out this TCM link. To watch the movie, follow this link. At two hours it's pretty slow.

A later installment in the form was Playmates which as you can see from the poster above was presented in something suggesting "Deep Vision 3-D". 
 

With the movie Without a Stitch Harris movie into full-blown soft pornography. There was clearly money to be made in those days with this kind of faire. This one features a young girl who seeks sexual gratification and ends up in hands of a sadist. Now Harris had no creative hand in this one, he just arranged its distribution. 

Harris found product from overseas. France was a supplier for a few of the movies he distributed. The two titles I've found at the forefront of that are Les Biches and Erotique. 

Harris scored a real coup when he got his mitts on a softer core movie title The Oldest Profession. One of the stars of this bit of cinema was Raquel Welch herself, which came the after her breakout performances in Fantastic Voyage and One Million B.C. It's a weird movie with six directors each telling a separate tale of prostitution through the ages. Welch shows up in the section about the Gay Nineties. She was the sole American actress in the film.

Raquel was a stunning beauty, that's for certain. Now for a couple of movies of a different kind. 

Bone is a movie written and directed by Larry Cohen (the creator of The Invaders and Branded for TV and many other movies). For some reason Harris got involved with the distribution of his movie starring Yaphet Kotto. It's a pretty stunning movie for its time about a loveless couple who are set upon by a cruel drifter. Here's the trailer under a different name. 

In his book Harris indicated he was involved with the American distribution of My Son the Vampire, an English movie featuring Bela Lugosi originally titled Mother Riley Meets The Vampire. Allen Sherman created a daffy song to help promote this offbeat horror-comedy in the weird tradition of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. 

To listen to Allen Sherman's kooky song and get a glimpse of the movie check out this YouTube link. 

These are the kinds of films which Harris used to make his living through the 60's but things were about to change when even weirder monsters come to call. Next time we visit the Equinox. 

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The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe!

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe buy C.S. Lewis was first published in 1950. It begins what is now known as The Narnia Chronicles. According to a note at the beginning of the book Lewis intended this story for one particular young person but the complexity of making it, meant that she was no longer within the target range of the audience. It tuns out that Lewis was wrong in that estimation, in that the novel has resonance for children of all ages. That's certainly helped by the charming illustrations by Pauline Baynes. This story and the ones that followed have been reprinted time and again over the decades. 

The story is set during World War II when children were evacuated from London due to the dangers associated with the German Blitz attacks on the city. The four siblings -- Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie find themselves welcomed by an old professor into his large home. To pass the time they play the game of hide and seek and Lucy, the youngest hides in a big wooden wardrobe isolated in an upstairs room.  She discovers to her dismay and delight that it offers access to Narnia, a land frozen in ever-present snow. She is found by a faun named Mr. Tumnus who explains to her that she should go back to her home. She does and tells her siblings who don't believe her. Then one day she goes into the wardrobe again and the mischievous Edmund follows her. His meeting with the evil Queen really kicks off things. 

This is a story of sin and redemption. Edmund is a greedy and selfish boy who finds himself slave to his wicked impulses. To save him from paying the price for his sins, a great sacrifice must be made, but that sacrifice must made by free will. In the first novel, The Magician's Nephew we saw Aslan create the entire world of Narnia. In this adventure he functions as another aspect of the Trinity -- Jesus Christ. He is willing to lay down his life for another, someone who is far from hardly innocent. 

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the first Narnia book to be written and published but is regarded as the second installment in The Narnia Chronicles, the first being The Magician's Nephew. I suspect Lewis had little idea he was creating an epic in children's literature, but this series has endured now for three quarters of a century. 

Next time we go out of publication order again to look at The Horse and His Boy. 

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When Tomatoes Attack!

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes from 1978 is a delightful romp in movie making by folks who knew only some of what they need to know to make it a fully professional show and didn't have the money to do it anyway.  The show is a send-up of most every invasion and monster movie you've ever seen while taking time to potshot then recent hits like Jaws and Superman. The movie has three sequels, the first in 1987 and sadly by that time despite an earnestness of purpose and talented folks, the movie looks a whole lot like most other ironic monster movies which filled the VHS racks to supply the endless need of the home video user. There is a abundant use of sex to sell a show that is essentially cynical about its subject. That's not the case with the original. There is a genuine exhilaration at just making a movie which keeps this cheap little number from falling into the same ditch so many of its kind discover in the end.

The premise is pretty simple -- mutated tomatoes of our own making have attacked their creators and it's up to a few brave public servants to discover the full nature of the threat and stop it. The film has pros in it like Jack Riley and Eric Christmas, but the bulk of the story is carried forward by essentially amateurs. One of those amateurs is Stephen Peace who goes on to appear in other of the Tomato movies and who became a  California legislator for a time.

The show's biggest moment comes early when a helicopter crashes with a stunning realism. The reason it was real, a helicopter did crash in the middle of a scene and the camera kept rolling. No one was hurt, but it was hard to watch it and not thing someone did. The filmmakers just used it and it became a famous enough scene to get Jack Riley onto the Tonight Show and got Attack of the Killer Tomatoes some free publicity it could have never afforded otherwise. I imagine most folks have seen this one. But if you've only ever seen one of the sequels, I beseech you to seek out and enjoy the original. It's shoddy but filled with enthusiasm and more than a few laughs. It, unlike its descendants has a heart, a great big juicy red heart.

In 1988, the same team that created the first movie attempted a sequel titled Return of the Killer Tomatoes, and this time they had money. They also unwittingly had a budding superstar in George Clooney, who doesn't even play the romantic lead but his sidekick. 

The movie shows a world reeling still from the tomato wars and tomatoes are forbidden. But John Astin is a mad scientist named "Professor Mortimer Gangreen" who was at least in part responsible for the first attack. He's at it again, but this time he can make tomatoes into a people, or at least imitations. 

One such creation is "Tara Boumdeay" who rebels and takes her little tomato buddy F.T. (for Fuzzy Tomato) with her when she escapes. She finds comfort in the arms of "Chad Finletter", the nephew of the hero of the first tomato war. They fall in love and the rest is madness. The movie breaks the fourth wall often and even stops at one point to fund raise by using product placement. Clooney is Chad's best bud Matt, who is a lady killer of the first order. The old team from the first movie return as well to foil the schemes of Gangreen. 

In 1991 we are treated to the third installment in the series titles Killer Tomatoes Strike Back. The absurdity is dialed up even more, if that's possible. I really enjoyed this one as the story got weirder and the performances got broader in response. By the climax of the movie, the story has reached Warner Brothers cartoon parameters with logic giving way to visual gags over and over again. The story starts in a world again threatened by tomatoes, but this time they are rather like the Gremlins in that movie series, the size of softballs and hungry. 

Our hero is a cop played by Rick Rockwell who is a fool from the beginning, and he eventually teams up with a "Tomatologist" played by Crystal Carson. They are battling Professor Gangreen yet again, but this time he is using television to hypnotize the world to follow his orders. To do that he has created the identity of "Geronahew" ( Geraldo and Donahue blended to together) to take control by using a daytime talk show to spread his message. It's a crazy movie, but I have to say I enjoyed it, especially the after-movie reports. 

Professor Gangreen (John Astin again) and his assistant Igor (Steve Lundquist who has played the role in all three sequels) are up to no good again in 1992's Killer Tomatoes Eat France! This time they are assisted by tomatoes the size of soccer balls, each with a malicious look on his mug. The biggest difference is that the tomatoes can talk this time and have distinct personalities, all bad save for the F.T. who is once again on the side of right. Zolton, Viper and Ketchuk are the three main baddie tomatoes and according to sources are largely borrowed from the cartoon series derived from the movies at this point. 

The plot draws from the barest outlines of Alexander Dumas' The Man in the Iron Mask. Our hero is an American named Michael (Marc Price), and a French young woman named Marie (Angel Visser). As much as they try to recreate manic madness of the previous movie they fall short, though it does quite hectic. This is my least favorite of the four movies in the "Killer Tomato Trilogy". 

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Jack H. Harris Presents Mother Goose A-Go-Go!

Mother Goose A-Go-Go is also known by the title Unkissed Bride. The former title fits it better. This movie was the only one not only produced by Jack H. Harris but also written and directed by him. In a nutshell - it's terrible. But terrible in that weird way in which it's not totally unwatchable. It stars a Kentucky boy, Tommy Kirk, going by "Tom Kirk" in this one. It's necessarily boring, but it is wildly goofy -- a blend of Benny Hill and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (which also starred Kirk), but it seems to have been filmed almost totally in a single hotel, possibly the Sands in Las Vegas. It's based on an idea Harris got from a Las Vegas act at the Sands. 

The premise is pretty straight-forward. On their wedding night a couple discover that the groom swoons when he hears any reference to a fairy tale. (It should be noted almost none of them have anything to do with Mother Goose.) He seeks psychiatric help and his psychiatrist, a busty blonde played Danica d'Hondt, agrees to come to the hotel and give him help. Of course, confusion ensues. Jacques Bergerac plays the uncle of the bride played by Anne Helm (pregnant during shooting) and he's often distracted by pretty women, especially their backsides.  Add to the mix a daffy house detective played in full-blown Fawlty Towers mode by Robert Hall, and you have the sense of what this one is all about. It's well and truly zany. 

Henny Youngman shows up for a cameo at a drive-in theater and Joe Pyne is seen a few times, invariably taking calls from frustrated ladies. The movie uses fast movement, frozen screen images and even breaks the fourth wall several times. It's a product of its time. You can watch it in all its vintage glory at this link. 

Next time Harris goes nude. 

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