Speeding Up Time (1971)

Blaxploitation sludge made on a pathetic budget, Speeding Up Time has something to do with a young writer tracking down the crooks who killed his mother by burning down her house while she was inside. Yet it’s a struggle to parse even that simple premise, given writer/director John Evans’ inept storytelling. Either he ran out of money or simply forgot to collect important footage, but either way, this film comes across as a the rough assembly for perhaps two-thirds of a movie, with zero effort put into creating placeholders or transitions to cover the gaps. The fact that Speeding Up Time found its way not only into theaters but also onto home video speaks more to the ravenous appetites of those exhibition platforms during the ’70s and ’80s than anything else. Anyway, here’s some of the nonsense that happens. Our hero, Marcus (played by the fabulously named Winston Thrash), visits a poet who inspires Marcus to repeat the phrase “I am prepared” several times. Prepared for what? Who knows? Who cares? Later Marcus wakes from a dream (or premonition or whatever) about his mom’s house burning down, then snaps at his mother for suggesting he settle down. After that, Marcus works on his writing in the bathroom until the toilet overflows, ruining his work. Wait, all this time I haven’t stored my only copies of documents on bathroom floors? I knew I was doing something wrong! Eventually, Marcus zooms his vintage car through a drive-in lot during a tepid chase scene, gets it on with a young lady during a crudely shot sex scene, and makes aggressive remarks to gangsters. Oh, and just to create the illusion of political relevance, he also spews some vaguely revolutionary jive.

Speeding Up Time: SQUARE

The Fox Affair (1978)

If you stumble onto blurbs about this low-budget thriller set in disco-era New York City, you’ll encounter tantalizing but contradictory data—some sources describe this as blaxploitation, while others suggest a girl-power actioner. In truth, The Fox Affair tells the uninteresting story of two sleazy con artists—glorified pimps, really—who seek help from a young woman of their acquaintance after a Far East deal goes south, causing enemies to send an assassin from Hong Kong. (All the main characters are white, by the way, so it’s a mystery how the blaxploitation mislabeling originated.) The young woman from whom the con artists seek aid is Felicia Fox (Kathryn Dodd), a former beat cop now working as a meter maid but also, apparently, moonlighting as an escort. It’s all very murky, especially since Felicia doesn’t appear until the movie is halfway over. The Fox Affair is a hodgepodge of drab dialogue scenes, inept action beats, and sexploitation. One long scene comprises the main characters leering at naked women through a two-way mirror, and another involves musclemen preening for naked ladies in a steam bath. (One fellow brags about his high-protein diet: “I ate three chickens last night!”) Since the leading actors are as forgettable as their characters and the rudderless storyline, the only interesting thing about The Fox Affair is the snapshot it provides of how vulgar people with money lived in late-’70s Manhattan: chrome furniture, feathered hair, shaggy rugs, tailored suits, and way too much machismo.

The Fox Affair: SQUARE

Guess What Happened to Count Dracula? (1971)

Apparently this atrocious horror comedy was first released in 1969 as a gay porno titled Does Dracula Really Suck? (later: Dracula and the Boys). Then, in one of cinema history’s most whiplash-inducing transformations, the picture was recast as a PG-rated monster comedy for the drive-in circuit. Some traces of the original incarnation remain visible, because while the PG-rated version of Guess What Happened to Count Dracula? lacks guy-on-guy action, it has a camp sensibility. The acting is deliberately overwrought, the photography is colorful (as in scenes are lit with randomly tinted gels), and the storyline is a (dim-witted) genre spoof. For those who crave sexed-up bloodsucker comedies, even garbage flicks along the lines of Old Dracula (1974) and Nocturna (1979) are preferable to this eyesore, and it’s insulting to mention Love at First Bite (1979) in this context. Anyway, Count Adrian (Dee Roberts) runs a nightclub/restaurant called “Dracula’s Dungeon,” occasionally preying on customers even though he has a stable of concubines. Other elements of the idiotic narrative include a caged gorilla, exotic dancers, and voodoo rituals. Thanks to heinously bad performances and tacky production values, the movie gets boring fast, so it’s immaterial whether the plot is incomprehensible or just uninteresting. Watching eight minutes of this shapeless sludge is painful, much less all 80.

Guess What Happened to Count Dracula?: SQUARE

Pacific Inferno (1979)

The challenge when discussing this abysmal WWII saga isn’t explaining why it’s a bad movie, but picking the best examples to illustrate how it’s a bad movie. Perhaps it’s the way the first seven minutes of this brief action flick almost exclusively comprise stock footage. Or perhaps it’s the way the filmmakers regularly disrupt any sense of 1940s verisimilitude by awkwardly interjecting ’70s soul music, such as Edwin Starr’s furious anthem “War.” Or perhaps it’s the way star Jim Brown frequently slips into anachronistic dialogue straight out of a low-rent blaxploitation joint, as when his enlisted-man character berates a racist superior officer thusly: “Now you wait a minute, my man—you do whatever you want to me when we get outta here, but until then, don’t mess with my life!” Set and shot in the Philippines, the discombobulated and dull Pacific Inferno concerns a group of American POWs forced by Japanese captors to dive for sunken treasure. Among many galling logical lapses, the captors somehow have extensive personnel files on their prisoners, hence their discovery that characters played by Brown, Richard Jaeckel, and others are experienced divers. One would laugh at this degree of cinematic ineptitude if Pacific Inferno were sufficiently interesting to provoke any reaction beyond boredom. Better to keep a safe distance and ignore that fact that Brown did this to himself, seeing as how he’s listed as an executive producer. Hopefully he enjoyed some pleasant time in the sun between takes.

Pacific Inferno: SQUARE

The Body Shop (1973)

At some point during this mindless gorefest, a local cop knocks on the door of the castle-like mansion where a mad scientist performs unholy surgery. The scientist answers the door politely, so the cop makes an inquiry: “You’re not doing anything illegal, are you?” “No,” the scientist says, “I’m a doctor.” Inexplicably satisfied with that answer, the cop says, “Well, I hope I didn’t bother you.” Huh? As goes that idiotic scene, so goes the rest of this unwatchable movie, which is sometimes known as Doctor Gore. Written and directed by J.D. Patterson Jr., who also plays the leading role, the picture concerns a medical man determined to replace his deceased wife with a simulacrum. Aided by his hunchbacked assistant (yes, really), the doctor seduces and murders young women, then cuts up their bodies with the intention of building a new bride for himself. Variations on the same ridiculous presence are nearly as old as Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (1818), in which the monster demands a mate, so Patterson doesn’t get any points for originality. Nor does he deserve praise for anything else—from acting to directing to writing, everything he does here is inept. For instance, what’s with periodically cutting to portly country singer Bill Hicks, who repeatedly croons the song “A Heart Dies Every Minute”? And what’s with those dull montages of Patterson, as the doctor, making out with curvy young women? Excepting some quasi-realistic gore, this flick runs the gamut from incompetent to indulgent. Luckily, Patterson only made one more movie, The Electric Chair (1976).

The Body Shop: SQUARE

Meatcleaver Massacre (1977)

Here’s the most striking scene in this atrocious horror flick—for several anguished moments, a young man contemplates suicide while holding a straight razor over his wrist, then abruptly says, “Oh, Jesus, I’m late for work,” sets the razor down, and zooms off to start his day. Need it even be mentioned that he’s alone in his apartment, so it’s unclear to whom he directed that line? Finding a morbidly funny non sequitur is about the only enjoyment one can derive from watching Meatcleaver Massacre, a supernatural-themed revenge saga that not only lacks any scenes featuring meatcleavers, but also lacks any scenes featuring demons, even though characters talk endlessly about them. The plot is simple enough: After several college students beat up a professor who teaches classes in the occult, the professor summons a demon to menace his attackers. Alas, the plot accounts for only a portion of what appears onscreen. In some scenes, characters run around as if they’re being pursued, and in other scenes, characters experience psychological freakouts that are presented like acid trips. None of what happens is interesting, very little of it makes sense, and none of it is scary. Basically incoherent beyond the opening scenes that set up the relationship between the professor and his tormenters, Meatcleaver Massacre offers just one familiar actor, horror-cinema icon Christopher Lee. But don’t get your hopes up—he appears only briefly at the beginning and end, sitting in an office while reciting eerie mumbo-jumbo factoids. Apparently Lee shot the footage for a separate movie, and the producer of that never-completed flick sold Lee’s clips to the folks behind Meatcleaver Massacre, prompting Lee to explore litigation. If only he’d successfully injoined the film from being shown anywhere.

Meatcleaver Massacre: SQUARE

Satan War (1979)

Years after his minor career as a TV actor sputtered, Bart La Rue directed his first and only fictional feature. It’s beyond terrible. Satan War, which is padded with long vignettes at the beginning and end, largely concerns a couple enduring torments after moving into a new house that appears to be haunted. Said torments manifest in silly ways, as when brown goop oozes from the stove or the cross on the wall spins upside down as if moved by invisible hands. Through it all, the idiotic residents act as if the haunting problem will solve itself. Or at least that’s how they behave until hooded cultists enter the house with knives. Where the story goes from there is . . . well, for lack of a better word, it’s stupid, but that’s par for the course in Satan War, among the dullest movies ever to invoke the Prince of Darkness in a title. Even those who relish rotten cinema are likely to get bored waiting for things to happen during the main storyline, since most of Satan War’s train-wreck appeal resides in the prologue and epilogue. The prologue is a cheaply filmed black mass that for reasons beyond comprehension includes lots of interpretive dance, and the epilogue—basically the same shot played on an interminable loop for about 10 minutes—features a voodoo priestess gyrating to the rhythm of tribal music. Fair warning: You may start the picture loving the John Carpenter-ish score, but by the time you’ve heard the same three or four abrasive cues several times each, you’ll be ready to scream, and not because you’re frightened.

Satan War: SQUARE

Maxie (1973)

Whatever happened behind the scenes of this oddity must be more interesting than what happens onscreen. Writer-director Paulmichel Mielche, who never made another fiction film, attracted some of the folks from Francis Ford Coppola’s filmmaking collective to work on his crew, and three respectable actors—Talia Shire, Vic Tayback, and Robert Walden—appear in the picture. Perhaps Mielche talked a good game about the picture he intended to make. Or perhaps some in the American Zoetrope crowd dug the idea of playing with exploitation-film elements. Whatever the case, Maxie—later sensationally but not inaccurately renamed The Butchers—is interminable. The story revolves around Maxie (K.T. Baumann), a young girl who cannot speak but helps make money for her small family by delivering newspapers. One day, she spots neighborhood butcher Smedke (Tayback) and his simple assistant, Finn (Walden), taking delivery of human corpses. Finn and Smedke spend the rest of the movie debating whether they should be worried about what Maxie saw. In a subplot, Shire plays a social worker eager to get Maxie into a speech-therapy program. Riddled with confusing transitions and pointless scenes, Maxie trudges along so slowly that it’s incorrect to describe the film as badly paced—it has no pace whatsoever. Shire and Walden play a few moments sincerely, and Tayback incarnates a stereotype loudly. But by the zillionth time Mielche cuts to weird shots of chickens and meat grinders, you’ll be more than ready for Maxie to end—that is, if you haven’t taken the wiser course of avoiding the movie entirely.

Maxie: SQUARE

Invasion from Inner Earth (1974)

In recent years, producer Jason Blum has made a fortune with so-called “contained horror” movies, stories that often unfold within the confines of a single location. When it works, the formula is ingenious, reflecting universal fears about the dangers of the outside world visiting us where we feel safest. Yet before the term “contained horror” came into being, lesser filmmakers than Blum tried similar maneuvers, often with disastrous results. Hence garbage on the order of Invasion from Inner Earth, a no-budget regional production about dudes hiding in the Canadian woods while signs indicate that some sort of supernatural disaster is unfolding elsewhere. Things get off to a rocky start with confusing scenes introducing several interchangeable characters, but eventually one half-decent scene happens—while in a tiny plane approaching a remote airstrip, characters receive radio warnings not to land because some terrible plague is killing people at the airstrip. This being a bad horror movie, the folks in the plane land anyway, and vague intimations of carnage ensue. The team behind this schlocky venture didn’t put much cash into special effects, so we never really see monsters—just lots of colorful lights and repetitive music indicating the presence of monsters—and the characters are so witless that most of the movie comprises people wandering around the same handful of locations and muttering, “What’s going on?” Even patrons of bad cinema are encouraged to avoid Invasion from Inner Earth, since there’s so little to grasp here it’s difficult to muster ironic amusement.

Invasion from Inner Earth: SQUARE

Criminally Insane (1975) & Satan’s Black Wedding (1976)

          Had its creator been able to express irony onscreen, the trash-cinema oddity Criminally Insane might have become a whimsical shocker bridging, say, the grotesque gore of Tobe Hooper and the wicked wit of John Waters. After all, the story concerns a morbidly obese killer whose victims’ only crime is getting between the killer and food—call it the ultimate snack attack. Despite warnings that Ethel (Priscilla Alden) still isn’t right in the head, her mother brings Ethel home to a small apartment after a stretch inside a mental institution. Then Mom makes the mistake of locking a pantry, the better to curb Ethel’s bingeing. To get the key to the pantry, Ethel stabs her mother to death with a kitchen knife. And so it goes from there. By the end of the story, Ethel has a guest room filled with rotting corpses, and in between murders she gorges herself on whole cakes and other huge servings of food. Considering he spent most of his career making porn, writer-director Nick Millard (billed here as “Nick Phillps”) does a fairly competent job of storytelling, even though his camerawork is ghastly and the performances by his no-name cast are mostly terrible. That said, Alden is so completely bereft of affect that she’s believable as a mindless eating/killing machine. Criminally Insane is cheap and and dull and short (running just 61 minutes), but the perverse premise helps explain why the movie has attracted a small cult following. Director and star reunited for Criminally Insane 2 (1987), and a new team generated the remake Crazy Fat Ethel (2016).

          Alas, any promise Millard showed of becoming a quirky schlock auteur dissipated with his next project after Criminal Insane, the wretched Satan’s Black Wedding. An incoherent supernatural thriller featuring exactly one passable scene, Satan’s Black Wedding follows Mark (Greg Braddock) through a quest to determine whether his sister committed suicide, as authorities suggest. We, the audience, know that she was compelled to slash her own wrists by a creepy priest, Father Daken (Ray Myles), who is also a Satanist and a vampire. As the movie progresses, Daken and those in his sway commit various gruesome murders while Mark learns that his late sister and a friend were writing a book about Satanism. How all the pieces hang together is never especially clear, since Millard’s discombobulated storytelling resembles a sleep-deprived stream of consciousness, and the way composer Roger Stein randomly plays piano, as if his hands intermittently spasm near the keyboard, doesn’t help. Eventually things resolve to that one competent scene, a finale during which Daken explains his twisted master plan. Too little, too late.

          FYI, Millard’s last ’70s effort, .357 Magnum, is purported to be a crime thriller; although the movie couldn’t be tracked down for this survey, reviews suggest it’s incrementally more palatable than the director’s other ’70s fare.

Criminally Insane: LAME

Satan’s Black Wedding: SQUARE

Another Son of Sam (1977)

Like most unspeakably bad exploitation movies with elements of sex and violence, Another Son of Sam has its defenders among the psychotronic set, some of whom wax poetic about the movie’s spellbinding incompetence. If that’s your cinematic intoxicant of choice, imbibe freely and Another Son of Sam will likely take you where you want to go. However, if you hope for something more closely resembling a coherent and purposeful viewing experience, this one’s not for you. The sole directorial effort by one Dave A. Adams—who also served as the picture’s writer, producer, casting director, stunt coordinator, and editor—this grungy, zero-budget regional production tells the dull story of an escaped lunatic and the policeman who is determined to recapture him. In referencing David Berkowitz, the notorious “Son of Sam” serial killer, the title of this flick is a shameless come-on suggesting that innocents will get slaughtered in capricious ways. That more or less happens, but because Another Son of Sam is rated PG, it’s not as if the shock value hits high levels. The closest Adams gets to real tension is when he lingers on grimy POV shots, but even that device is underserved because Adams’ cutting is so bewilderingly choppy. Scenes start and stop with no discernible reason, post-production audio emerges from mysterious sources in discombobulating ways, and trainwreck performances by nearly the entire cast add to a generalized air of people stumbling around aimlessly while the camera rolls for arbitrarily chosen periods of time.

Another Son of Sam: SQUARE

The Worm Eaters (1977)

From a cinema-studies perspective, jack-of-all-trades filmmakers are inherently interesting, since there’s something pure about artists who write, direct, and act in their own stories. That is, unless the stories are idiotic crap along the lines of The Worm Eaters, a cheaply produced comedy/horror hybrid featuring characters who do exactly what the title suggests, albeit not voluntarily. The flick’s protagonist is Herman Umgar (played by director Herb Robins), a middle-aged backwoods dullard who inherits lakeside property. The local mayor and his nefarious cronies conspire to steal the land from Herman, incorrectly assuming that Herman lacks both a paper deed to prove his ownership and the will to fight for his property. After some getting-to-know-you scenes during which we learn that Herman’s best friends are his pet worms, who are radioactive or supernatural or whatever, the movie gets down to business. Herman slips worms into food that enemies eat, and thereafter the victims become were-worms. Before long, Herman has a basement full of people stuck in mid-transformation. To achieve this effect, Robins has actors tuck their abdomens and legs into slimy sheathes, then wriggle on the floor while covered in goo. Accentuating these unpleasant images are the weird textures of bargain-basement electronic music. Meanwhile, the picture’s “humor” ranges from the scatological (lots of belching, an onscreen nasal discharge) to the stereotypical (Robins speaks in a bizarre quasi-Cajun accent). It’s all quite wretched to behold, and if there’s a seed of a viable satirical idea buried in here somewhere, it never took root. The Worm Eaters is to be avoided at all costs, unless you desperately need to see closeup shots of worms wriggling in the mouths of actors committed to helping Robins realize his dopey vision.

The Worm Eaters: SQUARE

Horror of the Blood Monsters (1970)

Original movies directed by Al Adamson are bad enough, but his hodgepodge flicks, assembled from pieces of films for which Adamson bought the rights, are even worse. Sci-fi/horror embarrassment Horror of the Blood Monsters demonstrates why. To repurpose scenes from a black-and-white Filipino movie about cavemen fighting supernatural monsters, Adamson shot some new material and contrived an incoherent story about Earth sending a space vessel to a distant planet as a means of combating extraterrestrial vampires, or something like that. The picture opens with a lame vampire attack shot in a soundstage, then transitions to ground-control scenes featuring black curtains as backdrops, and eventually to spaceship sequences with the production values (and performance quality) of a high school musical. To mask the monochromatic nature of the Filipino footage, Adamson provides dialogue about mysterious radiation that changes the color spectrum, and the black-and-white stuff appears tinted green or red or whatever. The monsters in the recycled scenes are ridiculous, flying bat-winged little people, real lizards photographed in forced perspective, underwater crab creatures, and vampires whose fangs look like pieces of chalk. Adamson’s new scenes aren’t any better. John Carradine spews pointless exposition, a buxom blonde looks confused while, thanks to iffy dubbing, another actress’ voice emanates from her mouth, and so on. At one point, the technicians at ground control stop supervising the emergency space mission so they can make out and play with a color-spectrum gun, resulting in yet more tinted shots. Alternate titles for this crapfest include Creatures of the Prehistoric Planet, The Flesh Creatures, and Vampire Men of the Lost Planet.

Horror of the Blood Monsters: SQUARE

Black Lolita (1975)

Excepting the novelty of sketchy 3D photography, Black Lolita—sometimes known as Wildcat Women—is vile junk bordering on porn. An uninteresting woman billed as “Yolanda Love” stars as Lolita, a lounge singer who launches a war on crime after thugs involved with a protection racket murder her uncle, a kindly shopkeeper. Calling upon her martial-arts skills and sexual wiles, Lolita builds a squad of shapely ladies, including a yoga enthusiast and a prostitute, while also forging alliances with police officers. What ensues is a dull cavalcade of fight scenes and sex scenes, with the smutty elements getting most of the attention. At regular intervals, cowriter-director Stephen Gibson stops the movie dead to linger on some carnal encounter that unfolds in real time, very nearly in full view of the camera. (Although nothing crosses the line into hardcore, some bits suggest that actors, ahem, committed to their roles during filming.) The acting is atrocious, the characterizations are threadbare, the dialogue is dumb, the filming style is ugly, and the story presents clichés lifelessly. The picture also relishes in the exploitation and/or abuse of women, as during a long torture scene featuring a villain extinguishing his cigarette on a young lady’s skin. Thankfully, Gibson doesn’t overuse stereoscopic photography during sex scenes. Instead, 3D effects are mostly employed in the corny old way of characters poking random objects toward the camera, such as a two-by-four that a thug brandishes while attacking Lolita.

Black Lolita: SQUARE

Invasion of the Blood Farmers (1972)

Incompetent sludge of interest only to bad-movie addicts, Invasion of the Blood Farmers was filmed somewhere in the wilds of downstate New York on a reported budget of less than $25,000, and it’s fair to say that cowriter, producer, and director Ed Adlum overspent. For while this painfully boring and stupid excuse for a horror picture has almost certainly delivered a return on the original investment thanks to its inexplicably long life on home video, the film itself looks as if it cost $25, not 1,000 times that amount. Continuity is virtually nonexistent, editing mistakes are rampant, the storyline is nearly incoherent, and the acting ranges from bad to nonexistent, which is to say that some players simply stand in place and recite dialogue without anything resembling intention or intonation. Online remarks suggest that some of the cast members were paid in beer, and it’s not difficult to imagine they imbibed their paychecks before appearing on camera. At least then the performers would have legitimate excuses for their embarrassing work. In any event, as the title suggests, Invasion of the Blood Farmers concerns a cult whose members kidnap people, hook them up to homemade intravenous tubes, and drain the victims’ blood for nefarious purposes. Maybe they’re aliens or maybe they’re Satanists, but it doesn’t really matter. The characters are so dippy that you won’t care who survives, and you won’t care why the killings are happening in the first place. Hell, good luck even staying awake while the main villain, a queeny young guy wearing ridiculous gray flourishes in his hair to appear wizened, gives campy monologues about the principles of his cult, the “Sangroids.” Whatever. Thanks to its PG rating, Invasion of the Blood Farmers doesn’t have much blood, so even those seeking a straight shot of no-budget gore are likely to be disappointed.

Invasion of the Blood Farmers: SQUARE

Massage Parlor Murders (1973)

Massage Parlor Murders is actually fairly restrained, given what sort of images its moniker calls to mind, but that’s not to say the picture is made with any skill. The combination of bad acting, skuzzy locations, and ugly photography gives the vibe of a cheap porno movie, and the plot is a tiresome loop—nude scene, murder, boring interlude featuring police detectives, another nude scene, another murder, and so on. Yet the movie provides a minor cinema-history footnote because it features the screen debut of the fine character actor George Dzunda, who is also credited as the project’s assistant director. It should also be noted that some might find Massage Parlor Murders interesting as a time capsule, thanks to ample location photography throughout the grungier parts of New York. What’s more, the movie is edited so badly as to generate a certain traffic-accident allure, especially when the story devolves into chaos during the finale. The highlight of the picture, at least from a so-bad-it’s-good perspective, is the moment when the cop investigating the murders goes undercover in a massage parlor, then races out of the parlor to chase a suspect—while still wearing only a powder-blue modesty towel roughly the size of a dinner napkin. One can’t help but wonder if some TV writer encountered this scene and later channeled the image into the infamous Starsky & Hutch sequence featuring the studly detectives wearing just towels and shoulder holsters. (The scene was reprised in Ben Stiller’s 2004 Starsky & Hutch movie.) Anyway, you get the idea—talking about a silly scene that Massage Parlor Murders might have inspired is infinitely more interesting than talking about Massage Parlor Murders itself.

Massage Parlor Murders: SQUARE

Brother, Cry for Me (1970)

Ostensibly telling a story about three brothers battling each other for control of an inheritance, Brother, Cry for Me is an incoherent mess. The first 15 minutes of the picture comprise a pointless scene of brawling and debauchery at a pool party. Things don’t improve from there. Michael (Richard Davatos) and his conniving wife, Jenny (Leslie Parrish), travel to Boca Raton after Michael receives a letter stating he’s the sole heir of—well, depending on which scene, it’s either a coffee plantation or a fortune in Aztec treasure. Upon arriving in Florida, Michael encounters his estranged brother, Geoffrey (Steve Drexel). Their other sibling, Jim (Larry Pennell), isn’t far behind. On land and in various rinky-dink boats, the brothers try to kill each other, with Geoffrey and Jim pursuing the additional motive of wooing Jenny away from Michael. Tracking the movie in any greater detail would require exhaustive rewinding, because the storytelling is disastrous. Bad actors share the screen with performers who are merely mediocre, but horrible filmmaking levels the playing field—with scripting and direction this bad, everyone comes off poorly. Worse, the film’s Floridian locations make every frame look cheap and oversaturated and ugly. The amateurism infusing the picture even taints simple transitional bits; in a particularly galling touch, the same hissing sound effect is used to accompany separate cutaway shots of an alligator and a snake. Really? Every reptile in the Everglades makes the exact same sound? By the time subplots about a larcenous youth and a police inspector enter the mix, Brother, Cry for Me has become hopelessly confused, and nothing prior to that point makes the trouble of figuring out what’s happening seem worthwhile.

Brother, Cry for Me: SQUARE

Mule Feathers (1977)

A ghastly attempt at post-Blazing Saddles frontier hilarity, Mule Feathers compounds incoherence with insanity. The incoherence stems from the main storyline, which concerns a Wild West con man (Rory Calhoun) drifting into a gold-crazed town while dressed as a preacher. One suspects the picture was filmed hastily and slapped together carelessly, because the narrative is virtually incomprehensible, the protagonist disappears for long stretches of screen time, transitions are almost nonexistent, and the weak visuals are juiced with stupid audio flourishes (cartoony FX, overwrought music, sloppy dubbing, etc.). The filmmakers can’t decide whether they’re making a squeaky-clean family farce or a raunchy oater for the Mel Brooks crowd (note the jokes about a whore who “can’t even give it away”). Either way, everything looks cheap, from the drab sets to the terrible fake beards to the ugly cinematography. And now we reach the insane aspect of Mule Feathers. The picture opens with an animated vignette of a jackass, voiced by Don Knotts, roaming through the desert. Afterward, the film segues to a live-action scene in which Knotts’ voice emanates from the protagonist’s donkey companion. The animal’s lips don’t move, and nobody else can hear the creature talk, so is Calhoun’s character deranged? Even more disturbing questions are raised when Knotts says things like, “Oh, the tenderness that a man and his mule can feel for each other.” And when Calhoun’s character meets a woman, the donkey whines, “She can never be what I’ve been to you!” Yikes. Fair warning to curious Knotts fans: He never appears on camera, and his voice is featured in perhaps 20 of the movie’s 79 atrocious minutes.

Mule Feathers: SQUARE

Psyched by the 4D Witch (A Tale of Demonology) (1973)

Cinematic explorers who get their kicks finding the worst movies ever made will dig the supernatural-themed sex flick Psyched by the 4D Witch. The movie comprises an 80-minute hallucination, because filmmaker Victor Luminera—who never made another movie—employs so many acid-trip superimpositions, in-camera visual FX, and swirling colors that the picture resembles the background images from a Pink Floyd concert, only with nudie shots thrown in every so often. Had Luminera provided a soundtrack as bizarre as the visuals, Psyched by the 4D Witch might have become a minor landmark in experimental filmmaking. Alas, the voiceover-driven audio tells a linear story that grounds the images in dimwitted salaciousness. Protagonist Cindy, a girl-next-door blonde wearing Mary Pickford curls, complains about sexual hangups until she discovers a magical connection to Abigail, a witch from the fourth dimension who manifests as a pair of free-floating eyes. Abigail explains that she’ll take Cindy into extrasensory realms of carnal satisfaction, with each trip to the fourth dimension triggered by the command, “Let’s fantasy-fuck now!” At first, Cindy is reluctant, hence a line of dialogue that’s disturbing on many levels: “And I’ll still remain a virgin for my daddy?” The fourth-dimension humping scenes feature grody shots of Cindy stripping, guys (and girls) grinding away, and lots of visual noise layered atop the basic imagery, the better to accompany freaky sound collages. Luminera also subjects viewers to several iterations of the film’s atrocious fuzz-rock theme song. Offering an interminable hybrid of smut and trippiness, Psyched by the 4D Witch is nothing but tarted-up sleaze or an amateur film exercise gone horribly wrong, if not both.

Psyched by the 4D Witch (A Tale of Demonology): SQUARE

Bad, Black & Beautiful (1975)

If nothing else, this inept blaxploitation flick has an accurate title: Leading lady Gwynn Barbee is black and beautiful, while the movie around her is bad. The basic premise is fine, because Barbee plays a hotshot attorney who uses her seemingly endless set of skills to help clear a man’s name when he’s accused of murder. Myriad Pam Grier films were made from narrative fabric of this sort. Yet Gwynn Barbee, for all her loveliness, is no Grier, and Bad, Black & Beautiful writer-director Bobby Davis is no Jack Hill, the dude behind Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974). Davis’ shortcomings manifest in a discombobulated script and sloppy direction, problems exacerbated by a meager budget. For instance, when Eva (Barbee) hears a description of the accused man’s experiences in Vietnam, Davis cuts to grainy stock footage of generic soldiers in Southeast Asia, rather than a properly filmed narrative flashback. Sometimes the film’s flaws result in accidental humor. At one point, a thug working for the movie’s main villain approaches a drunk whom the villain wants dead, shakes the drunk’s shoulders, and walks away, after which the drunk has a seizure of some sort and dies. Say what? Although Bad, Black & Beautiful has the production values of a first-year student film, Davis unwisely tried to emulate the big-canvas style of better-financed blaxploitation flicks. Eva displays her skill as a pilot, a racecar driver, a singer, and, of course, a trial attorney, but each of these sequences looks cheaper than the preceding. Additionally, Davis’ seeming aversion to creating transitions means that the movie regularly cuts to random characters and events, with viewers left scratching their heads as to what X scene has to do with Y scene. Good luck figuring out why Davis spends so much time following a white reporter whose bedazzled denim ensemble makes him look like he should be Stevie Nicks’ Rumours-era coke dealer instead of an ink-stained wretch.

Bad, Black & Beautiful: SQUARE