They Don’t Make Trailers Like That Anymore: I DISMEMBER MAMA and THE BLOOD-SPLATTERED BRIDE (1972)

My belief is that a trailer should be like a great pop song--it should be brief, it should have momentum, and it should leave an impression on you that makes you want more.  The absolute best trailers, like the best songs, give you an experience you’re anxious to re-experience right away.  They can use different tools to get their message across, and they can be unique in and of themselves....

....which brings us to one of my favorite trailers of all time, an artifact I saw once on a television screen at a convention party out of the corner of my eye and literally never forgot.  I did spend some time not remembering what that artifact was selling, but I remembered the elements it was using to sell it vividly. 

You might want to sit down for this one, because It. Is. Awesome.

This is a trailer for a horror double feature billed as ‘The Frenzy of Blood.’  I Dismember Mama is a thoroughly forgettable proto-slasher with a very uncomfortable pedophilia angle.  Blood Spattered Bride is a film based on Le Fanau’s Camilla that was one of a number of quirky horror films to come out of Spain in the early 70‘s and was namechecked by Quentin Tarantino.  They pretty much have nothing in common. And trying to sell a double feature of the two may seem problematic.

The genius behind this trailer--whose name, like the names of all the actors involved, is lost to antiquity (Bob Clark is rumored to have done it, but I've found no corroboration)--decided to pull a William Castle and make the trailer about the experience of seeing the films rather than the films themselves.  It’s a mock television news report about a man going insane while watching this double bill.  At no point does anyone actually tell you about the films during this four minutes.  There are super-quick cuts to scenes from both films that indicates nothing about them except they’ve got blood and boobs.  There are strange close-ups of the actors looking awkward and weird.  The characters are broad. 

Boy are they broad, but....It’s the characters that not only make this trailer watchable, but makes you interested in the double bill.  The aggressively Brooklynite couple who argue over which moment of gore triggered the man’s insanity, the attractive blonde obsessed with the ‘Up Chuck Cup’ (which was actually given out by theaters), and the cop who seems to have a sudden gas attack in the middle of doing his duty are all amusing, and all add little bits of intrigue to this pitch. 

The star of this rodeo, however is The Man Who Laughs, a frizzy-haired, bespectacled goof who shows up at the 2:20 mark and gives us this chittering, rat-like giggle that seems to go on for longer than the twenty seconds of screen time it takes up.  We have no idea who this person is (he’s definitely not Jeffrey Katzenberg, as Eli Fucking Roth would have you believe), or why he’s motivated to express himself in this way--but damn, are you curious about these movies after his appearance.  I think we needed that hippie-dippie blonde afterwards to ease us down from the creepy high we’ve just been given.

It’s a shame that this kind of out-there filmmaking is lost to time.  This is the kind of trailer that needs to be preserved for all time.  And to the forgotten director and actors who made this wonderful gem of amazement?

I salute you.  I salute you all!

Meanwhile, Over At Dread Media....#578

It’s time to get ecclesiastical on this week’s episode.  First up, I join Des to praise the awesomeness of William Freidkin...and then talk about his, ahem, ‘documentary,’ The Devil and Father Amorth.  Then Rich The Monster Movie Kid gets into the habit of telling us what he thought of the latest entry in The Conjuring Universe, The Nun.  And just for fun, here’s a trashy EuroDance video featuring three nuns being naughty....

Listen to Dread Media #578 here

They Don’t Make Trailers Like That Anymore: HELLRAISER (1987)

This week marks the anniversary of the directorial debut of Clive Barker.  Barker was not the first writer to sit himself down behind the camera to adapt his own work--ask my Dread Media pal Des Reddick about William Peter Blatty’s Exorcist II: Legion sometimes--but he may have been the most successful of these aspiring auteurs.  He only made three films, but all three are exceptional pieces of work.  While his last film, Lord of Illusions, is my personal favorite, I can’t deny that his first was a real shot across the bow of genre cinema.  Unlike some writers-turned-directors, Barker chose to make Hellraiser a relatively simple, intimate film, and that’s why I think it works--when you boil it down, it’s basically a haunted house film with some weird bits in the margins.  And because it’s so simple, Barker is able to keep control of it and make it work cinematically.

Of course, in 1987, Clive Barker was still something of a cult writer.  His name was not on the lips of the mainstream, so the trailer begins with a narrative ‘crawl’ displaying a quote from the Most Famous Horror Writer Alive Today declaring Barker the ‘future of horror.’  I like how the editor timed the reveal of Stephen King’s name to the sound of bells pealing.  Then...

Well, all chaos breaks loose.  It is obvious to me that whoever put together this trailer wanted to a) emphasize the mood over the plot and b) really liked Pinhead and that closet monster.  The narration is very vague--the only hint of a plot is letting us know this film happens in a house---over very quick cuts, mostly of the actors.  There’s no dialogue save for a quick ‘Oh my God’ from Claire Higgins and the stinger of Pinhead promising to tear our soul apart.  And what’s remarkable is what this editor chooses to keep in.  It seems that New World Pictures wanted us to see the Cenobites--who only appear in the film briefly--more than the actual villains of the piece.  Shots of these demons and the aforementioned closet monster compete with shots of Ashley Laurence (who, let’s be honest, gives Good Scairt) for the most screen time.  I wouldn’t say the trailer is lying, but I have to be honest and say the editor was leaving a few facts out.

That didn’t stop it from working, though.

Trailer courtesy Forever Cinematic Trailers

Raiders of The Lost Record Crate: DOG POLICE by Dog Police (1984)

The boys in blue had my baby on the floor,
They were asking her if she wanted some more.
They pulled out a net, they pulled out a leash,
They said they were the…Dog Police!

One of the earliest attempts at original programming from MTV was The Basement Tapes.  The network invited unsigned bands to send in their homemade music videos.  Those videos would be broadcast, and the audience got to vote via a 1-800 number on which was the best.  The Memphis-based Tony Thomas Trio, inspired by synth-based experimental bands like Devo, decided to create a novelty-based side project named ‘Dog Police’ and made a video at the local Antenna Club to send off to MTV.  The weird video, which I am about to inflict on you, had such a slick look to it that it was very successful--it kept itself in the running and ended up coming in second.  That meant the video was put into rotation for a while--I do have memories of seeing it at least once during my Hunter College tenure--and trickled its way down to other video outlets like USA Network’s NightFlight (from which most of this information on the band comes from).  It sort of drifted around the public consciousness for a few month, then disappeared....

Until 1990.  Apparently someone remembered this video in Hollywood, because someone, somewhere, put together an eight and a half minute sizzle reel for a proposed television show.  I think it was meant to be a kid’s show, judging from the way Bowser mentions Saturdays in his pitch at the end.  You will notice that Dog Police changed the chorus of their song, and with good reason, as the chorus of the original version cribbed more than a bit from The Electric Company’s Spider-Man theme.  It’s a strange watch, and not just because Adam Sandler and Jeremy Piven show up in it.  Judging from the two scenes in the sizzle reel, I don’t think I would have watched this program; it just seems like the ‘hey, they’re detectives, but they’re dogs’ is the whole extent of the humor.

Video courtesy Ang Bishop
Sizzle Reel courtesy Melslife.com

Meanwhile, Over At Dread Media....#577

It’s Continental Creepiness this week as the Dread Media crew looks at European Horror, past and present! First Darryl joins Des to look at the extreme Teutonic anthology German Angst!  Then Rich The Monster Movie Kid drops in on some French vampires of Daughters of Darkness for a little 70‘s erotic atmosphere.  The trailers are below, as is a video for Halestorm’s song ‘Daughters of Darkness.’

Listen to Dread Media #577 here.

They Don’t Make Trailers Like That Anymore: DOLEMITE (1975)

In the past, I’ve discussed the art of trailer narration.  I’ve looked at several trailers where the director goes onstage to help sell you on the picture. 

My friends, in this trailer, the man behind the movie gives us a narration in character to sell us on this cheap blaxploitation thriller.  And brothers, it is glorious.

This may rank as one of the best trailers in the history of film.  And I’m not being ironic.

(This entry is definitely Not Safe For Work, by the way.  So if you’re at work, wait ‘til you get home, foo’!)

Dolemite was the first film starring comedian Rudy Ray Moore.  Moore was known for ‘Party Albums,’ underground records that specialized in smutty humor--in his case, a number of rowdy rhyming monologues, two of which he recites in the movie itself.  When the blaxploitation craze spilled into the public consciousness, Moore decided he wanted a piece of that action.  Thus began a parade of films with him at their center that made him into an icon of hip hop culture...and it all started here.

And Moore wants you to know that this picture ain’t playing. He’s front and center all the time.  First he’s being fawned over by his women, then he’s proudly pronouncing that ‘fucking up muthafuckas is my game!’, then he’s mowing down a group of white killers.  There is profanity four times in the first thirty seconds!  Once he’s got our attention, Moore begins his narration, which is in rhyme like his stand-up routines...and for the most part, that narration is in character, as he boasts of how he ‘put his finger in the ground and turn the whole world around,’ and ‘had  the elephants roosting in trees and all the ants wearing BVDs.’  Because it’s in rhyme, there’s a hypnotic quality to the pitch that sucks you in.  You might not even realize that Moore is in practically every scene used, and when he’s not they’re either real brief or feature people talking about him.  When he repeats the name of the film, there’s always a jump cut to his face before flashing the title.  And the only other person who gets mentioned in the trailer is D’Urville Martin (since he directed the film, probably for peanuts judging on how cheap the production looks, I suspect being mentioned was in his contract).  The results of Moore’s spiel and the succession of punching, shooting, kicking and otherwise Messing Shit Up is that yes, you want to Watch This Flick!  In the last few days, I have watched this trailer repeatedly over the last few days, and I have yet to come away without feeling pumped about Dolemite....

This is how you do an effective trailer, people.  And it is the kind of trailer that they literally don’t make any more--singular, full of personality and unique in and of itself.  We will never see its like again.

Trailer courtesy of Xenon Pictures

Raiders of The Lost Record Crate: ELECTRIC AVENUE by Eddy Grant (1983)

Workin' so hard like a soldier
Can't afford a thing on TV
Deep in my heart I'm a warrior
Can't get food for them kid, good God

One of the pivotal moments in the history of MTV involved the second single from Michael Jackson’s Thriller, “Billie Jean.”  While MTV had a black VJ in the late J.J. Jackson, they considered black music not ‘rock’ enough for their 'rock' video channel.  This didn’t sit well with the music industry--both Rick James and David Bowie were vocal in their criticism during 1982--and CBS Records President Walter Yetnikoff threatened to pull all CBS artists from the network if they didn’t run Jackson’s video.  MTV blinked, the video was put on heavy rotation, and history was made.

Of course, the immediate aftershock of “Billie Jean”’s phenomenal reception was that MTV was hungry for black artists who fit into their mold....which is why a Barbados-based reggae singer became a one-hit wonder in the United States, based probably on a rather engaging video.

Eddy Grant was a veteran of the music scene, and probably would have had a place in music history by being a member of The Equals, one of the first racially integrated pop bands in the UK.  You know that Clash hit “Police On My Back?” He wrote that.  In 1982, his sixth album, Killer on The Rampage, netted him two hits in England, “I Don’t Wanna Dance” and this track.  Looking at the success of “Billie Jean” on MTV and already having a great video for the song, CBS decided to release “Electric Avenue” here in the States...and ended up being number two on Billboard’s Hot 100 for five weeks.

The thing I love about this song (Hope you like solarization!) is that it’s true to its reggae roots but is its own thing.  It’s got a great riff, an even greater hook, and decent lyrics.  And it rocks.  It’s danceable, but has a grimy, almost punkish edge.  It is alien to mainstream pop ears--but it’s not so alien as to be a novelty, as Nena‘s “99 Luftballons” or Falco‘s “Rock Me, Amadeus” were.  It works as a thing all its own, which is pretty amazing, especially in a mainstream culture that wasn’t ready to embrace other genres.

Video courtesy of Hot Videos.

Meanwhile, Over At Dread Media....#576

For this week’s Cannon-tastic episode, Des and Darryll dive into the mysterious world of the 80‘s Ninja Craze with two landmark films featuring Sho Kosugi!  First up, Franco Nero and Susan George* fight for new school martial arts against Sho Kosugi’s traditionalist fanatic in Enter The Ninja! (...because when I think of martial arts action, I automatically think of Franco Nero and Susan George...).  Then Sho comes to America to retire from ninja-ing only to find an evil silver-faced Ninja interfering with his life in Revenge of The Ninja!  Find the trailers below and, just because it has the same name as one of the movies, enjoy Die Antwoord’s ‘Enter The Ninja!’

Listen to Dread Media #576 here 

*--mmmm, Susan George....

They Don’t Make Trailers Like That Anymore: SUSPIRIA (1977 and 2018)

September 7th marks the birthday of one of my favorite directors, albeit one whose prestige has fallen in my eyes in the last couple of decades, Dario Argento.  He’s a...divisive figure.  He’s certainly the one man I’m grateful got to be a director, because I shudder to think what he would have ended up doing otherwise.  Some people like me really dig on his hallucinogenic, dream-like storytelling (I am convinced Argento begins making a movie by coming up with a few images and sequences, and builds the script around those things), and some people just think it’s a bunch of bullshit.  But most people on both sides agree that Suspiria is one of his masterpieces.

I wanted to include both the International and American trailer, but I could only find a version of the International one with a commentary by Edgar Wright playing over it.  Luckily, the international trailer is composed exclusively of tinted and altered photos from the film with Goblin’s soundtrack playing over it, so nothing is really lost.  It’s very impressionistic, with the camera zooming in and out of the stills, the colors muting and swirling in front of them.  The emphasis is primarily on faces, as we get to look at the various emotions of the various actresses (okay, so most of them are ‘fear’, but...).  There’s only one glimpse of violence in the whole thing!  And yet there’s this sense of peculiar unease that plays over the entire clip that draws us in.

The American trailer...well, it took a different tack.  The American distributor, International Classics, chose to shoot a short sequence involving a woman brushing her hair while reciting a rhyme, placing a flower in her hair--and turning to reveal her fleshless skull face.  Looking at this bit now, it looks really dumb...but I confess, seeing this on a staticy old black and white TV freaked young me out so much that I ran out of the room when it started playing in 1977.  We then get a narration that’s really game--this guy gets into his copy, reading it in a weird whisper that threatens to be over the top.  The trailer only presents clips from three sequences, but the clips they choose do hint at the oversaturated horrorscape Argento has constructed.  Not satisfied with intriguing us with these shots of Jessica Harper wandering down weirdly lit hallways and oddly tinted murders, International Classics brings back their skull-in-a-turtleneck and flashes her image over the title card, then gives us this deathless promise: “The only thing more terrifying than the last twelve minutes of Suspiria...are the first ninety two.”*

Now that's just silly.  Especially since the original American cut was only ninety-two minutes.

Anyway....if you’ve not seen Suspiria, I recommend that you do because it is such a bizarre, not-quite-coherent experience.  It’s kind of pointless trying to describe it, which is why I always would have bet that this film would be impossible to remake.

Flash forward some forty years, and it turns out someone took that bet.  Luca Guadignino, fresh off of the Oscar nominated Call Me By Your Name, decided to do an updated version.  To say I was skeptical was an understatement.  But as the trailers started leaking out, my skepticism has been slowly diminishing.  It seems Guadignino is doing a tonal, rather than literal, remake.  He’s taking the elements and telling a new story with them that has the feel of Argento without trying to mimic him.  The trailer, like a lot of modern trailers, is more linear in construction, trying to give us a Cliff Notes version of the plot without giving too much away.  I’m a little annoyed that it looks like the mythology of the Three Mothers is going to be more rigidly codified, but other than that I am intrigued.  I still have my skepticism, but I also have a hint of optimism that this film may scratch my itch for surreal horror that Dario himself scratched back in the 70‘s and 80‘s with a run of truly amazing horror films.

*--I know that the last few seconds of the American Trailer is cut off--it’s the only version of it I could find save for another Edgar Wright commentary from Trailers From Hell, and since the narration is so important to the overall clip, I chose to accept this truncated version.  Just trust me on how silly the tagline is....

1977 International trailer courtesy of Trailers From Hell

1977 American trailer courtesy of RareCult Cinema

2018 trailer courtesy of Amazon Studios

They Don’t Make Trailers Like That Anymore: SHARKY’S MACHINE (1981) and STICK (1985)

By now you’ve heard the news that Burt Reynolds passed away today.  To those of us who are, shall we say, gracefully entering late Late Middle Age, Burt Reynolds was a Big Deal Movie Star.  Don’t get me wrong--he could act, as witnessed in films like Deliverance, but he was also one of the last Old School Stars, where he could make any movie better just be being himself.  Arguably Reynolds’ best performance is his iconic turn as The Bandit in the best redneck romance ever, Smokey and The Bandit, and there’s very little difference between Bandit (they never give him a proper name in the three feature films, and that’s the way it should be) and the man playing him.

Probably less known was Reynolds’ career as a director.  He was interested in expanding to behind the camera as early as 1966, where he helmed an episode of his TV series Hawk.  His star power allowed him to make a couple of theatrical features, including our two subjects this time out.  While he was having the most success in comedy, Reynolds was trying hard to keep his action cred high, which resulted in three of his four theatricals. 

Sharky’s Machine, one of two films presented by Burt’s short lived production company Deliverance, became a film by Reynolds when original director John Boorman bowed out.  It was based on a book by William Diehl (who was so sure Burt would be perfect, he sent the actor a copy), and was supposedly a reaction by Reynolds to Clint Eastwood’s success in Every Which Way But Loose.  I like the fact that up front, the trailer defines the title and shows us what is one of the film’s biggest draws, namely the allure of Rachel Ward.  This was only her second feature, and she actually seems to dominate the first forty seconds of the piece with as many glamour shots as Reynolds himself!  The pitch gets a little muddled after telling us Sharky’s Machine refers to the cops the titular Sharky works with, and a rhythm emerges with a dialogue bit followed with an action beat repeated over and over again.  The focus is mainly on Burt, although the film has an impressive cast--I was shocked by the sudden appearance of a shouting, firearm-weilding Henry Silva jumping into one scene.  And then it gets to The One Big Hook.

We’ve not discussed this trope before, but a lot of trailers lead up to a brief sequence that the producer hopes will be The Big Draw, the One Thing You Have To See.  In Sharky’s Machine, it’s the long fall from an Atlanta skyscraper.  It looks like a real person did this stunt, and the trailer times its reveal of the fall with an extended riff that emphasizes the coolness while easing up into the title card.  It’s certainly one of the most memorable shots in the two minutes this pitch takes.

Four years later, Reynolds played the titular character in Stick, based on the Elmore Leonard novel.  The narrative in this trailer is pretty clean, and what’s interesting is that Burt shares emphasis time during the first half minute of this ninety second pitch with stuntman Dar Robinson, who plays Moke, one of the main bad guys--and it’s a wise move, because Robinson both has a unique look (his character seems to be an albino) and a compelling presence in the few quick shots we see of him.  Then we get not one, but two Big Draws.  First, before the narrator runs down the cast (check out Charles Durning with his red wig!), we see Robinson do the beginning of another great fall stunt that takes up seven seconds of screen time.  Then, after the cast role call, we get the final twenty seconds devoted to a sequence where a tuxedoed Burt fills a brandy snifter with gasoline, splashes said gasoline on a goon...and fires up his lighter.  That last sequence is so vividly effective it took me a number of viewings to realize it was a music sting, and not the man’s screams, that play over the title card.  You can tell that while both trailers are similar, Stick’s is better paced and constructed.  Even though the film is pretty lame (the film keeps forcing Burt-style humor into Leonard’s hardcore narrative), this pitch is A plus! If I had seen this trailer in the theaters, I would have wanted to see the movie right away.

Sharky’s Machine trailer courtesy Movie Clips Classic Trailers
Stick trailer courtesy Video Detective

They Don’t Make Trailers Like That Anymore: BUG (1975 and 2006)

Okay--what do the subjects of my last two trailer articles had in common...besides the fact they both were named ‘William’?

Both William Freidkin and William Castle presented a film called Bug late in their careers.  Granted, they’re two vastly different films, but still...

In the case of Castle, Bug was the last film he had a hand in.  He produced, as well as wrote the script with Thomas Page, writer of the book the film was based on (The Hephaestus Plague, which I actually read!).  It tells the story of a prehistoric breed of insects that burns things up to, and including, people so they can eat the ashes.  It’s not the greatest movie ever made, but it’s heartening to see Castle still had the heart of a showman when it comes to the trailer.  In this film, the gimmick is the titular bugs...played by actual Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches, which we see lots of in the two minutes of this pitch.  Keep in mind most people didn’t know what a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach was in 1975, so it might as well be an alien.  The editor of this piece of film hits all the high points of cockroach-ness this little exploitation number has--although I don’t know what it says about me that I was more upset about the cat scene than the ones with actual human beings finding bugs in their ears or hair.

You’ll notice that even at this late date, Castle has his name plastered all over this movie.  It’s displayed more than the name of  director Jeannot Szwarc.  Even two years from his death, the man was branding away.

Flash forward two decades or so, and we have Freidkin directing a small movie based on a stage play about a mentally ill woman who feeds off the madness of an equally mentally ill man her friend fixed her up with to create an alternate shared reality that doesn’t end well for either of them.  It was a one set piece which relied on the performances of its two leads, Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon.  If you haven’t seen it, you should because it’s an intense little number, and in my mind one of Freidkin’s best films.

But how do you sell a movie about two people retreating into an irrational world they’ve put together?  This trailer does it by setting up the story, then allowing Shannon and Judd’s increasingly extreme behavior to speak for itself.  There are only four lines of narration in this trailer, two of which touts Freidkin’s reputation and a positive review.  The other two lines, well...they never out and out lie about the titular ‘bug,’ but they don’t exactly tell the truth, either.  It does serve to hint at the shared delusion of these two broken people while not telling us explicitly the extent of it.  And in that case, this trailer works to intrigue you, to draw you in by raising a couple of questions while promising something remarkable from a remarkable director.

These two movies couldn’t be further apart, but they share more than their name--they share being advertised by dangling a big name before us to sell tickets.

Meanwhile, Over At Dread Media....#575

Today on the show, Desmond Reddick and Darryl cover The Endless, the latest thriller from Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead.  It’s about two brothers returning to the UFO Death Cult they abandoned to seek closure.  Apparently, it takes place in the same universe as the directors’ previous film Resolution!  The trailer is below.

Then Des reviews two books: I Am Providence by Nick Mamatas and Shatnerquake by Jeff Burk.  To supplement the segment, here’s a video of Nick reading ‘Slice of Life’ at Ellen Datlow’s reading series at KGB in New York City and an episode of Giant Super Monster Time, a game show hosted by Burk where contestants wreck havoc Godzilla-style on a miniature city.

Jeff Burk’s an...interesting person.

Listen to Dread Media #575 here