THIS SILLY MOVIE SHOULD GIVE YOU A BUZZ

This film was released in 1973, the year I graduated high school, but I didn't learn of its existence till Roger Ebert mentioned it on a "Guilty Pleasures" edition of Siskel and Ebert many years later. I made a point of tracking it down then, and found it to be every bit the hoot he'd said it was.

Neil Agar (William Smith) of State Department Security is sent to a small town called Peckham to investigate the death of Dr. Grabowski, a prominent scientist conducting government-sponsored research at Brandt University. Grabowski died of a coronary during sexual intercourse at a local motel. The problem is, he's not the only one. 8 local men die the same way within 3 days, 2 of them other scientists at Brandt. Among the others are a 21 year old boy, a cop, and a cannery worker, all apparently healthy with no history of heart trouble.

The jokes that start going around are exactly the kind you'd think. One of Grabowski's colleagues says, "I'd sure like to meet the girl he was with -- just think about it, boys: coming and going at the same time!" At a town meeting held to discuss the "epidemic," Dr. Murger from Brandt (Wright King) suggests it may be a virulent new venereal disease, with sexual abstinence as a possible solution. The crowd scorns him and he is murdered shortly thereafter. But later we see the following exchange between a local couple in their bedroom: the man looks at his wife and says, "abstinence isn't going to be anything new around here," and she retorts, "If I thought it would kill you, I'd do it."

The killers are a cult of "Bee Girls," local women who have mutated into creatures with black compound eyes who are compelled to mate frantically over and over, though the mutation has made them sterile. Except for their weird eyes, which they hide behind shades, these are voluptuous babes who have no problem seducing the leering, panting local men, who keep thinking with their nether regions even though their peers are dropping like flies. Their bitter, frustrated wives are also easy to recruit for the growing Bee Girl brigade; the transformation involves being exposed to radiation, covered with white goo and then live bees, and then peeled-- and welcomed in a soft-core lesbian orgy.

The prime suspect as the Bee Girl leader is Doctor Susan Harris (Anitra Ford), an entomology professor at Brandt. It's up to Agar and college librarian Julie Zorn (Victoria Vetri) to figure out exactly what's happening and how to stop it. (BTW, another suspect is a gay man, and it's handled inoffensivley -- and not made into one of the film's many jokes.)

The movie is about as funny as the jokes quoted above, with lots of nudge-nudge-wink-wink dialogue and some very silly special effects (the scenes from the mating bee girl's compound-eyes viewpoint are amusingly ludicrous). The 70s outfits and hairdos will provoke some chuckles too. There are lots of exposed female breasts and butts, some full frontal female nudity, and a number of very brief soft-core sex scenes. (It was rated R). But it all has a giggly "isn't-this-naughty" innocence about it that defuses the eroticism. You'll have some laughs, but in the literal sense.

It's light, cheesy 70s science fiction -- not at all plausible, but fun. Directed by Denis Sanders, it runs 85 minutes. It is available as a DVD (amusingly, one recently released disc bears the totally inaccurate title "Graveyard Tramps.")

THE GAY BED AND BREAKFAST OF TERROR

The Gay Bed And Breakfast Of Terror, which had a limited 2007 theatrical release, is a spoof of “setting” slasher movies like Sleepaway Camp. This time the setting is a “gay friendly” bed and breakfast run by lunatic Helen (Mari Marks) and her spastic nerd daughter Louella (Georgia Jean). For the first forty minutes we meet their victims, five gay and lesbian couples going to attend a big commercial party who couldn’t find accommodations any closer or better. They don’t know Helen is a fanatical fundamentalist who intends to convert or kill them – and to imprison one of their men as a husband for Louella. Or that Helen has another offspring she keeps hidden – cannibal mutant Manfred (Noah Taylor), the “love child” resulting from her once being gang-banged by delegates at the Republican Convention.

Once the killings start, the film becomes a lot funnier (and quite gory). The dialogue is full of catty one-liners, and the plot is full of outrageous twists and revelations that have you thinking, “don’t tell me they’re going to go there” (and then, of course, they do). The gore effects aren’t bad, but Manfred’s “monster suit” is intentionally laughable; he’s supposed to be half man, half maggot, but he looks like he’s just swaddled from the waist down in shiny trash bags.

Sadly, intentionally bad doesn’t have the amusingly naïve charm of sincerely bad. If the flick worked better, I’d say, “Imagine John Waters making a horror film.” But John Waters has the instincts and energy these folks lack, though they do seem to take the same perverse glee in their work.

One big problem is that the film has no sense of pace at all; it ambles, lurches and drags. The acting ranges from wooden to competent with an occasional inspired moment. Director/writer Jaymes Thompson really needs to go to film school (or to go to a better film school).

The violence is gross, but not scary, because we don’t like any of the characters – we share their cynical, sarcastic view of each other, just as we would if they were snotty teenagers in a summer camp massacre flick, and we want to see them “get it.” There’s some gratuitous nudity and very mild softcore “sex” scenes (again, at about the same level of those in slasher flicks). The movie has its moments, but the script’s ideas are often a lot more entertaining than their (pardon the expression) execution.

Plenty Lurid, Little Karloff in SNAKE PEOPLE

(Chickens need a stronger union on Korbai in The Snake People)

Director Juan Ibanez’s curious 90-minute Mexican flick The Snake People (1975), starred, among other folks, Boris Karloff and the dwarf Santanon. It had suggestive snake dances, zombies, lesbian makeout action, gangs of cannibal women rampaging in the streets, voodoo ceremonies, surreal Freudian dream sequences, and two scenes of necrophilia interruptus -- not to mention wild avante-garde music and hallucinatory camera angles. It sure wasn't boring. It kind of reminded me of the Brazilian Coffin Joe movies.

Karloff plays a plantation owner on a South Seas island called Korbai, which is governed by France. His niece Anabella (one-name actress Julissa), a Prohibitionist, comes to stay with him. She quickly falls for hedonist army officer Wilhelm (hairy chested Charles East), who works for Captain Pierre Labiche (Ralph Bertram), a pompous ass determined to repress native voodoo practices by identifying and capturing the local religion’s “ringleader,” Damballah. (Damballah is actually the name of a snake god in Voudun, but it seems like script writer Jack Hill doesn’t know that). Girls are being killed in order to be brought back as zombie sex slaves, but then they get crazed and run around the streets in mobs killing and eating luckless pedestrians (especially soldiers).

The film spends lot of time gawking at lurid ceremonies presided over by a half-naked priestess (exotic Yolanda Montes), who rubs big live snakes on her breasts and even sucks on their heads. Snaggle-toothed dwarf Santanon sacrifices chickens and laughs maniacally for no apparent reason.

The story makes little sense and the dubbing is awful, but the camera movement and music are involving, and the action is more than weird enough to hold one’s interest. It’s interesting that there are some substantially long sequences without dialogue, where the story is told purely visually. There’s a good bit of nudity and some gore (mild by today’s standards). Karloff, sadly, doesn’t have much screen time and is mostly in the film for his name and for the sake of one implausible plot twist. But I got caught up in it, and found some of its imagery haunting.