Bog (1979)

I’ve long wondered why so many zero-budget filmmakers botch their attempts at creature features, given that the formula for these pictures is so well-established. Sure, lack of production resources makes it challenging to build convincing onscreen monsters, but inventive people have found ways to convey diverting narratives while minimizing critter footage. But I suppose the answer to this conundrum is obvious—filmmakers with greater aptitude also have greater ambition, meaning the folks who make anemic monster movies often lack the drive to attempt anything else. All of which is a lugubrious path toward discussing Bog, a thoroughly uninteresting horror flick about a supernatural creature issuing from a murky lake to bedevil locals and tourists. Think Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) except set in America and bereft of everything that made Creature from the Black Lagoon exciting. Bog begins with a rural dimwit using dynamite to fish in a remote lake. Naturally, this activity rouses something deadly from down below. As the movie progresses, more people fall victim to the monster until the requisite duo of a policeman and a scientist join forces to tackle the crisis. These drab characters are played by actors late in their long careers, Gloria DeHaven and Aldo Ray, though it’s a stretch to say their participation gives Bog any patina of Hollywood gloss. While the narrative is coherent in an idiotic sort of way, everything about the movie is depressingly awful. The production values are weak, the thrills are nonexistent, and the monster suit is a joke—the costume is crowned by a giant fish head. The only novelty in Bog arises from DeHaven’s presence. Not only does she spew pseudoscientific gobbledygook about the creature’s reproductive habits, but she plays the second role of an aging backwoods mystic who may or may not have enjoyed relations with the creature. I suppose if you’re going to appear in a terrible movie, you might as well commit to the endeavor.

Bog: LAME

Mission to Glory: A True Story (1977)

          Bad news first—this low-budget biopic about a 17th-century Jesuit missionary who served a parish spreading from northwestern Mexico to southern Arizona and Baja California assumes the moral certainty of his crusade, meaning that all the natives whom the leading character encounters are depicted as savages in desperate need of Christian salvation. Worse, Mission to Glory: A True Story suffers from atrocious storytelling by writer-director Ken Kennedy, who employs clunky blocking and inert camerawork while steering a cast heavy with Hollywood C-listers through their paces. So in addition to being culturally dubious, the film is about as cinematically lifeless as anything you’ll ever encounter. And now the good news—for all of its faults, Mission to Glory: A True Story conveys an interesting narrative, albeit one very likely exaggerated and twisted from the historical events depicted onscreen. Surely it must have taken a unique individual to endure craven political machinations, internal strife among indigenous populations, and near-constant physical danger while trying to better the lives of others. Taken as a tribute to the man whom Kennedy imagines the real Father Kino might have been, the picture feels almost noble.

          According to voiceover at the beginning of the picture, Father Kino spent more than two decades building 19 ranches and 24 missions, suggesting he was spectacularly effective at spreading the gospel while traveling across desert terrain on horseback. At various times Kino clashes with the church, hostile tribes, and violent Spanish soldiers, meeting all adversaries with humility and resolve. Does the hagiographic portrayal stretch credulity? Of course. And does the parade of familiar character actors (Michal Ansara, Aldo Ray, Cesar Romero) add to the overall sense of fakery? Sure. (Playing the leading role, in an inconsequential performance, is 1950s Hollywood stud Richard Egan, quite a bit past his prime.) Yet Mission to Glory has a few vivid-ish moments amid the hokey music, one-dimensional characterizations, and predictable plot twists. Ricardo Montalban, of all people, gives the film’s best performance, an entertaining cameo as a savvy military official. Presumably persons of faith were and are the target audience for this piece, meaning they’re the folks most likely to overlook the picture’s massive shortcomings. For others, Mission to Glory might work best as well-meaning kitsch.

Mission to Glory: A True Story: FUNKY

The Centerfold Girls (1974)

High and low narrative instincts collide with dismaying results in The Centerfold Girls, a misogynistic thriller about a psychopath preying on women who appear in nude magazine pictorials. The picture has a somewhat arty story structure, and the closing credits divide the film into “The First Story,” “The Second Story,” and “The Third Story.” Presumably this was the filmmakers’ workaround for the problem of killing off a protagonist every 30 minutes, since the psychopath (Andrew Prine) is mostly shown ogling nudie pictures and terrorizing his intended victims with phone calls prior to killing them. There’s even a touch of artiness to some of the actual filming, and The Centerfold Girls contains one very stylish kill—when the psychopath swipes a razor blade across a woman’s throat with terrific force, the resulting blood spray splatters across a windowpane positioned between the victim and the camera. Throughout its running time, The Centerfold Girls has a high level of technical polish, at least compared the usual woman-hating grindhouse fare. Having said all that, the movie is, at its core, clunky and ugly. The scenes with Prine create a modicum of continuity, but otherwise the picture flops from one meandering sequence to the next, burning screen time until the stalker music kicks in and the razor blade emerges again. At its most directionless, the picture drifts into a wholly separate storyline, with a nurse taking refuge in a mountain cabin only to get menaced by hippie cultists who rape her. Yet another unpleasant narrative detour involves a character played by B-movie regular Aldo Ray. Introduced as a Good Samaritan, the fellow is revealed as a would-be rapist who gets frustrated because his intended victim doesn’t put up enough of a fight. Ugh. Loaded with excessive bloodshed and gratuitous nudity, The Centerfold Girls is among the better-made films of its type—but there’s not much glory in being the best of a bad bunch.

The Centerfold Girls: LAME

Haunted (1977)

          Time for another so-bad-it’s-good wonderment. The misguided horror picture Haunted begins in the Old West, when corrupt palefaces sentence a Native American woman to death on charges of witchcraft. A century later, a weird family resides in a ghost town. Leading the family is loutish stepfather Andrew (Aldo Ray). He’s married to Michelle (Virginia Mayo), a blind widower who spends her time playing the same song over and over again on an organ—that is, whenever she’s not vividly describing memories of the first time she had sex. Even though she’s only in her 50s, she’s portrayed as suffering from dementia, a source of great sadness for her two young-adult sons. Meanwhile, the phone company inexplicably installs a phone booth in the cemetery occupying the center of the ghost town. Andrew gets calls on this phone that transform him into a psychopath. Eventually, a mysterious redhead named Jennifer (Anne Michelle) wanders into town, and she may or may not be the reincarnation of the Native American witch from the prologue. Strange and unpleasant things happen, but life, more or less, goes on—Michelle’s sons proceed with plans to put her in an asylum, and her oldest son enjoys a sudden romance with Jennifer. Sort of. When he falters during a makeout session, she asks if he’s gay and he says he’s not sure.
          Virtually nothing in Haunted makes sense, but the movie is so catastrophically bad that it’s compelling to watch. For instance, the opening-credits scene features the Native American woman riding topless through the desert while Billy Vera over-emphatically sings the ridiculous song “Indian Woman” on the soundtrack (“She rides the waves of the curse she lives! Her hate keeps her going! She’ll never forgive!”). Throughout the movie, writer-director Michael A. DeGaetano’s dialogue is awkward, stilted, and weird, so the chatter regularly slips into self-parody. Upon Jennifer’s arrival, Michelle remarks, “We haven’t had any visitors since yesterday—it’s been years!” Even though the film’s production values are borderline adequate, nearly every scene has a massive flaw in continuity, dramaturgy, logic, or storytelling, if not all of the above. The music is especially egregious, with upbeat numbers during gruesome scenes and laughably rotten lyrics decorating original songs. (Brace yourself for the picture’s noxious love theme, “A Distant Time.”) Unsurprisingly, Haunted is a washout in terms of horror, because it’s too difficult to follow what’s happening to actually find any of the onscreen events frightening.

Haunted: LAME