Intern-tainment Camp - DEAD END DRIVE-IN

It's unnerving when dystopian cautionary tales, especially ones from 30 or more years ago, ring oddly prescient today.  Many are still comfortingly unrealized.  The government isn't repackaging poor people into food (though I avoid McDonald's, just in case), and I doubt anyone is going to turn the most expensive real estate in the country into a prison anytime soon.  But it's really bad when even the outrageous, batshit notions from Down Under can be disturbingly on the nose today.  Case in point, Brian Trenchard-Smith's 1986 gonzo Aussie satire, DEAD END DRIVE-IN.

The Capsule:

In the far flung future of 1995, the world has gone to shit.  Riots, disasters, and economic collapse have caused global unemployment and food shortages.  Ironically, Australia seems to have it better than most places.  Crabs (Ned Manning) is enjoying the good life, relatively speaking.  His brother runs a towing business and is big enough to fight off the other wreckers for the best salvage.   He takes a break from his delivery job to enjoy a movie with his honey, Carmen (Natalie McCurry), at the Star Drive-In, claiming to be unemployed to get the discount.  As things get steamy in the car, the cops steal his tires out from under him.  The management doesn’t seem to care that he’s stuck there, and Crabs slowly realizes that the drive-in is actually a government run internment camp for unemployed teens.  The listless teens, fed a steady supply of movies and junk food, don’t really care that much, but Crabs is determined to escape.  His lack of apathy gets him the attention of the local black market gang and Thompson, the drive-in manager, who just want things to run smoothly.  The cops take an even dimmer view of him, and look to shut Crabs down for good.

DEAD END DRIVE-IN is Brian Trenchard-Smith’s spiritual sequel to TURKEY SHOOT.  It continues his fascination with the semi-pocalyse, where society is circling the drain, but has not completely fallen apart.  Things are a little grungier than MAD MAX without going full-on ROAD WARRIOR.  There is talk of food shortages and revolts, but the biggest problem we see is unemployment.  Aimless youth roam the paper strewn streets looking to cause trouble.  Since this is Australia, everyone is obsessed with cars; which also seems to be the main driver of the economy.  Tow truck crews fight it out gladiator style for the choicest salvage, Carboy gangs swarm over wrecks like vultures.  Nobody, not even the cops, are too concerned with the bleeding occupants.  In this culture, the drive-in makes the perfect bait for the government to trap undesirables.  A roach motel for car freaks.  

Trenchard-Smith pushes the satire here even more than in TURKEY SHOOT.  It is a smaller movie, with fewer locations and no international stars.  There is much less action, little blood, and (sadly) absolutely no werewolves.  No one’s life is in danger once we get to the drive-in (at least until Crabs’ escape attempt), only their freedom.  The lower stakes of the story makes it more realistic and relatable, which in a way is scarier than TURKEY SHOOT’s more overt dystopian theme.  I could absolutely see a version of this scheme crossing some politician’s mind.

The world of The Star Drive-In is both hysterically over the top and a believable result of unmonitored ‘80’s teens.  Fantastic punk/new wave outfits are augmented with car parts, boomboxes, and any other crazy shit they can find around.  They have transformed themselves into the Warriors of the Teenage Wasteland.  There is fog, and fire, and neon lights all around.  Someone has a pet monkey.  Basically, the whole movie is one giant Duran Duran video.  

The punks look dangerous, but it’s mostly just for show.  Everyone has easy access to food, drugs, sex, and movies, so there is not a lot of conflict.  No one had that much to begin with.  The junk of the world is evenly distributed.  The most interesting aspect of this nightmarish future internment camp is that the government really seems to have figured it out.  The inmates could easily overpower the couple of cops on patrol and bust out anytime they wanted, but why bother?  Everything they need is provided.  For most of these losers, life inside is better than life outside.  

The manager of the drive-in, Thompson (Peter Whitford), could be considered the warden character, but he seems like just as much a prisoner as anyone else.  We never see him leave the camp, no one respects him, and he is filled with a resigned sadness that things are never going to be good again.  He sees that Crabs is more ambitious than the other knuckleheads, and tries to win him over with privileges like beer.  Ultimately though, he’s a cog in the machine, an efficient bureaucrat who only cares about doing his job and not bucking the system.  Crabs can’t get a straight answer out of him.  Every explanation is infuriatingly vague, like “that’s just the state of things.”  

Every time Crabs makes progress toward escape, Thompson is there to undo it.  When Crabs finds new wheels, Thompson steals his engine.  In a way, he is a much more insidious villain than the over the top Warden Thatcher from TURKEY SHOOT.  Thompson is only armed with a smile and a beer, reminding Crabs that it’s so much easier to just give up.

What makes it worse is that Crabs is totally alone in his desire to escape.  Everyone thinks he’s crazy for maintaining his car, working out, and having hope.  Even Carmen can’t understand why he doesn’t want to just hang out and have sex all the time.  She puts it on herself, thinking he’s not into her anymore.

All of his resistance only attracts the attention of the local drug pushing big shot Dave and his cronies.  It might be a rough situation for Crabs, except that this is the least intimidating gang in history.   Dave is pretty much the Australian equivalent to Francis Buxton from PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE (Oi, I know you are, but what am I?).  They seem more like schoolyard bullies than a serious threat, especially after Crabs cracks Hazza, Dave's muscle (?), upside the head with a rock.  

The only real danger comes when the drive-in denizens’ kingdom is threatened by outsiders.  The government decides the drive-ins (there are nine of them around the country) are a perfect place to stash all their pesky refugees as well as unemployed hoodlums.  Everyone in the camp is worried about how this will change their idyllic existence of doing nothing all day.  The punks look at the refugees as a strange and threatening group of freaks, despite the fact they are the ones wearing all the spikes, shoulder pads, and light-up braziers.  

As usual, Crabs is the only one to step up and do the right thing.  In this case it is defending a innocent Sikh's right to use the public toilet from Dave's gang of bullies.  After this, though, Dave's gang change from harmless nitwits to something much more sinister.  They form their own White Drive-In Nationalist party.  Dave paints the refugees, mostly wide eyed Asian and Indian families, as a bunch of thieves and rapists.  The drive-in denizens are all too eager to buy into his rhetoric.  Instead of focusing their energy against the government that is illegally detaining them, the punks turn their anger on the easier targets, the people with even less power.  They live in a garbage heap, but they are determined to be at the top of that heap.

We never get to see how bad things will get.  Crabs’ last ditch escape attempt sends the whole place straight to hell.  While Crabs races around the camp trying not to get shot by the cops, the punks desperately attempt to save their sad little kingdom from burning to the ground.  In one impressive stunt, rabs launches his stolen cop car over the electrified fence, straight through the Star Drive-In sign.    

The last we see of him, Crabs is hauling ass down a desolate road, racing towards an uncertain future.  He has no idea what awaits him or if it will be any better than what he just left behind, but for that moment, he is happy as fuck to be free.  For such a depressing future, it’s a good message to end on.  Keep fighting and appreciate any success we can get.

Obviously, the events of this movie will never come to pass.  Drive-ins are obsolete and we all treat our refugees with respect and dignity.  Well, drive-ins are obsolete, at least.  So we don't have to worry about Star Drive-Ins in our near future.  I would be a little leery of the  Star Free High Speed Wi-Fi, though.

C Chaka

 

Earnest and Gallows - MOTEL HELL

It’s rare to find a truly amiable villain in horror movies.  Oh, they might seem nice... at first.  Terry O’Quinn seemed like the perfect catch at the beginning of THE STEPFATHER (if you ignore the part about him murdering his old family).   Chucky promised to be Andy’s friend to the end (slight exaggeration).  And has there ever been as swell a guy as Edward Hermann in the LOST BOYS, with his dream of a modern, blended (vampire) family?  Sooner or later, though, the facade begins to crack, and the darker motives start to bleed through.  Pleasantness gives way to crazy.  Except of course in the 1980 black comedy horror, MOTEL HELL, where pleasant and crazy are bound together in the same package.

The Capsule:

Vincent Smith (Rory Calhoun) is about the nicest guy you’ll ever meet.  He is always ready to give you a warm smile, a gracious word, and a cozy room at the Motel Hello (he really needs to get the blinking “O” on the sign fixed).  On top of that, he's the founder of Farmer Vincent’s Smoked Meats, known far and wide as the tastiest treat anyone can put in their mouth.  His sister, Ida (Nancy Parsons), might seem a little strange, what with her habit of scaring the crap out of young children while wearing a pig’s head, and his younger brother Bruce (Paul Linke) may be a complete doofus (and the local sheriff), but Vincent goes out of his way to make everyone welcome.  This is because he knows, “it takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent’s fritters.”  Critters like a Russian themed punk band, some ski bunnies, a couple of swingers, and a nosy Health Inspector.  But when one of his late night hunting trips bags the beautiful, free spirited Terry (Nina Axelrod), Vincent sees more to her than just culinary potential.  He heals her up, lets her help around the farm, and lavishes her with attention.  Terry falls hard for the kind old gentleman, but how is she going to react when she finds that Vincent is grooming her to take over the family business?

The best villains are the ones who do not think they are villains.  Some, like The Walking Dead’s Negan, believe they have to do a little (or a lot of) bad to insure the safety of their people.  Some, like SEVEN’s John Doe, think they are on a righteous mission of vengeance.  Then there’s Vincent, the sweetest little cannibal ever.  His cognitive dissidence is so strong that he thinks his worst crime is adding preservatives to his smoked meats.  Rory Calhoun, best known from that Simpsons episode where Mr. Burns describes a puppy as “standing there like a little Rory Calhoun,” plays Vincent like the grampa you always wished you had.  He is always smiling, a little cornball, and never irritated.  It’s not just an act, either.  Vincent is a absolute sweetheart.  If this were a normal horror movie, he would be the first one killed.

It’s just an unfortunate fact that strangers are the secret ingredient to his widely loved meat products.  The movie never mentions how Vincent discovered the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup style mix-up.  All we need to know is this is a man dedicated to supplying the tastiest smoked meats humanly possible


 
(and helping ease overpopulation as a bonus).  In his mind, depriving the public of his goods is a worse crime than some innocent kidnapping, murder, and enabling mass cannibalism.  He even tries to be humane to his livestock.  He plays soothing New Age music after planting them up to their neck in his secret garden.  Sure, he slices their vocal cords to keep the noise down, but it’s done with anesthetic and the sure hand of his sister Ida.  Even when it is time for slaughter, he uses some psychedelic gizmos to put everyone in a trance before snapping their necks.

Ida is a little more of the traditional psycho, though she too seems more reasonable than you would expect—when not lurking behind walls with a meat cleaver.  Nancy Parsons had a very imposing presence (she would go on to portray Ms. Ballbriker in the PORKY’S films), and she gives Ida a certain childlike quality that makes her unpredictable and unnerving.  Aside from a few flashes of jealousy towards Terry,   though, Parsons plays Ida on a fairly even keel.  She is just as dedicated as Vincent when it comes to their life’s calling.  After force feeding the gargling heads in the secret garden, she genuinely asks Vincent if he thinks people will appreciate what they are doing someday.  It’s as if they are trying to cure a disease rather than providing a salty man meat treat.  

She also has some disgusting eating habits, which is saying something for a cannibal.

Vincent’s earnest and upbeat attitude makes it somewhat more believable when Terry doesn’t complain about the MISERY treatment she gets from her caretakers after her accident (which he caused).  He’s so nice to her that she doesn’t want to leave the farm.  Not that she has anywhere to go.  She’s kind of lived out of her motorcycle, and her biker boyfriend is (supposedly) dead.  It’s sweet how they develop a father/daughter bond.

Until things get weird.  Not on Vincent’s part, on Terry’s.  When she (wisely) spurns Bruce’s ham fisted attempts at romance, it seems to be just because he is a horrible, bumbling slimeball.  Then we find out she has more mature taste in men.  The father/daughter thing goes out the window when Terry asks Vincent to become her (literal) Old Man.  I can see why Vincent thought she might be up for being his culinary apprentice.  If she’s ready to marry a 57 year old man she just met a couple of weeks ago, she’s up for anything.

Incidentally, the whole motel angle is kind of irrelevant to the plot.  Vincent acquires most of his victims from traps on the road.  The one exception is the swinger couple, who misidentify Motel Hello as being on their map of “Hot Spots”.  Like Vincent, these two are highly dedicated to their lifestyle.  Once they get into their room, the woman gets into a dominatrix outfit (with whip) and the guy comes out in a leotard, bra, and transparent skirt.  They are actually excited when Vincent and Ida ominously show up to snatch them (“Ooow, you’re into bondage!”).

Another colorful batch of victims is the punk band, Ivan and the Terribles.  The lead singer is the only one really sticking with the Russian motif.  Everyone else is wearing standard late ‘70s punk/new wave outfits, he had an long stringy Rasputin beard glued to his face (not sure if it’s bad stage makeup or bad movie makeup).  I don’t recognize that dude, but I do recognize the drummer, played by Cheers’ John Ratzenberger.  So before he was Hamm in TOY STORY, he was turned into ham in MOTEL HELL.

All of the victims have some sort of mildly questionable moral trait, but that has nothing to do with why they are chosen.  Vincent is purely opportunistic.  It doesn’t matter if they are rude, nosy, or promiscuous.  Vincent doesn’t judge.  He just needs them healthy, and dumb enough to fall for his traps.  One trap involves blocking the road with a line of cardboard cutout cows, so he clearly isn’t culling our brightest minds.

The hero of the movie is in some ways worse that the villain.  Bruce is a complete hayseed goofball and an attempted date rapist to boot.  It’s painfully obvious why Terry would choose Vincent over him.  He spends most of the movie being petulant and jealous of his (much) older brother.  Bruce is the only person in the movie Vincent gets annoyed with.  He even fumbles his way through the climactic chainsaw fight.  It’s hard not to look badass when in a chainsaw fight, but Bruce somehow manages.  

Director Kevin Connor, who’s done a ton of TV movies you’ve never heard of, nails the tone.  It is much more of a black comedy than horror, but it does have just enough of the ‘70s exploitation grit to keep things feeling a little queasy.  While it rarely gets scary, the climax is a 100% handcrafted nightmare.  [SPOILER FOR SOMETHING SHOWN ON THE BLU RAY COVER] Bruce finally pieces together what has been happening (for the last twenty years) and confronts Vincent in the smoke house.  As he is untying Terry (who it turns out does not want to be in cannibal food service) Vincent bursta out of the back room wearing a bloody pig head and holding a huge chainsaw.  

Confession: when I was a little boy, I saw the pig head image on the cover of Fangoria and it scared the shit out of me (the MANIAC poster did the same thing).  So yes, this scene might have had more impact on me than a normal person, but that scene is insane.  It takes the whole movie for Vincent to crack, but when he does, he cracks big.  Immediately after the pig head comes off, though, I’m back to feeling sorry for him.  I can’t remember if Rory Calhoun was nominated for an Oscar that year, but if he wasn’t, he deserved it.  Marlon Brando never elicited that kind of sympathy while half cut in two by a chainsaw.  And isn't that the real test of an actor's craft?

C Chaka

Time To Put On The Sunglasses - THEY LIVE

Like horror movies, I like to have an appropriate theme when the holidays roll around.  While Inauguration Day isn’t exactly a holiday, it is an important event, so I wanted to pick a movie that exemplifies the specific mood.  My first thought was to go with something apocalyptic,  but I didn’t want to be so pessimistic.  Instead, I wanted something that more accurately reflected the challenges this new administration presents.  So I settled on John Carpenter’s 1988 political dissertation, THEY LIVE.  

Note: I try to be subtle with my opinions of our new President (except for here, and here, and here), but I must confess, this one isn’t going to be subtle.  If you are not a fan of heartfelt, half-baked commentary… why are you on this site?  That’s kind of my thing. If you are specifically not a fan of heartfelt, half-baked political commentary, you may only want to read the first half.  Go ahead and read the second half too, though.  You’re tough, you can take it.

The Capsule:

Nada (Roddy Piper), a down on his luck drifter, discovers that powerful forces in the government are deceiving and exploiting the American people for their own selfish gains.  Without realizing it, citizens are being bombarded with messages promoting apathy, social division, and unquestioning support of the traditional status quo.  Elite white businessmen and the super wealthy collaborate with the evil forces, getting richer while the middle class shrinks and the disadvantaged suffer.  Nada and his friend Frank (Keith David) join a grassroots resistance organization that has developed a way of seeing though the illusions and exposing the evil forces for what they are.  They have their work cut out for them, though, because the evil forces use their media platforms to publicly discredit the resistance and sanction an excessive police response to silence their enemies.  Nada and Frank have to fight their way to the highest levels of power if they have any hope of revealing the insidious plot against the American people.  Oh, did I mention that forces of evil are disgusting skull faced aliens with poofy ‘80s hair?

THEY LIVE is one of those movies that gets better with maturity.  I liked it when I first saw it in 1988, but I didn’t love it.  My favorite Carpenter movies at that point, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, THE THING, and BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, all got the action started immediately out of the gate.  THEY LIVE takes its time.  The lengthy opening is all about setting a dreary atmosphere of hopelessness and socio-economic disparity.  Carpenter waits a full thirty minutes before showing the first alien.  That’s a long while to wait when you're a kid, especially when the trailer is wall to wall with crazy ghoul faces.  

Coming back to it more than 20 years later, though, I found the opening to be dead-on perfect, right down to its bluesy, haunting soundtrack.  Carpenter gives us time to not only invest in the plight of the lead characters, but of everyone struggling to get along in the world.  Being an adult having to worry about money and a familyvcompletely changes everything.  Not all of us can relate to the kind of poverty and hardship faced by the squatter camp where Nada and Frank are staying, but we can at least imagine it.  Unless you are one of those snooty and condescending rich bastards like in the movie.  But fuck those guys, they aren’t the intended audience.  I doubt this is a very popular film with venture capitalists and hedge fund managers, anyway.  

Nothing defines my deep admiration of this movie more than Nada and Frank’s epic, five minute long back alley brawl.  Nada’s eyes have literally been opened to the aliens’ hidden messages of conformity by a special pair of illusion dispelling sunglasses.  The conflict comes when Nada, who has reacted violently to this new reality, wants Frank to put on the sunglasses, too.  Frank does not.  Being stubborn, stoic men, they begin a discourse with their fists.  It is a clumsy, unglamorous fight that looks very authentic (it mostly was, the actors only faked the face and groin shots) and goes on until both men are completely exhausted.  Even though I appreciated fisticuffs when I was younger, I remember wondering why Frank didn’t just put on the stupid glasses and get on with it.  

Watching it now, I totally get it.  Frank’s resistance isn’t just sheer stubbornness.  Nada is wanted for mass murder (according to the news) and he is going on about aliens that only he can see.  By all accounts, he is a complete nutjob.  In addition to not turning him in, Frank actually gives Nada money so he can leave town.  He’s gone far out of his way for a friend he just met a few days ago, now all he wants is to be out of it.  If Frank humors this lunatic, even for a second, he risks getting entangled in Nada’s delusions.  At best, it could get him in trouble with the cops, at worst it could get him killed.  The most sensible thing he can do is make a clean break.  If it has to be across Nada’s face, so be it. 

I would have done the same thing as Frank.  Except that the fight would have lasted about twenty seconds before I woke up with a pair of sunglasses over my eyes.  Keith David has a few pounds on me.

Once Nada realizes what is really happening, he says, “Figures it’d be something like this.”  It’s a great line, because, yes, that would explain a lot about why society is in such bad shape.  It also lets humanity off the hook...kind of. Greed still compels some assholes to willingly sell out their species.  It  offers up a convenient excuse why the rest of us accept the state of the world, though.  The reality is that we don’t need aliens with subliminal messages to dupe us down the wrong path.  

John Carpenter wrote the screenplay (adapted from a short story by Beat Generation writer Ray Nelson) as a comment on Reagan era politics.  In some ways, THEY LIVE is an inverse of politics today.   In other ways, it is sickeningly accurate.  In the movie, the working class sees through the lies of an organization that works against their interest.  In reality, the working class elects a con man working only for his interests.  It’s funny that Frank cynically explains the Golden Rule, “He who has the gold, makes the rules.”  This is a quote that Donald Trump has actually said (source: his Facebook page).  He’s wasn’t being cynical.  

Trump’s secret message isn’t “Don’t Question Authority”, it’s “Don’t Question What You Want to Hear”.  He is an absolute master of manipulating the confirmation bias, when people tend to put more weight on statements that match what they believe while ignoring contradictory information.  We are all susceptible to it, but even in the political world, it’s rarely used with such blunt, calculating, and effortless impact as with Trump.  He is so good at it that he can make an indisputable lie, like “No one respects women more than I do,” (said on national television after his “grab them by the pussy” scandal) seem reasonable to his most ardent supporters, even when everyone else is rolling on the floor laughing or trying to force down the vomit.   

If I looked hard enough, I bet I could match up the THEY LIVE subliminal messages with actual Trump quotes.  In fact, it probably wouldn’t take that long.  It took me 0.5 seconds to find these on Google just now.

The greatest irony is that Trump convinced people that he was standing with common, blue collar Americans against the elite. Never mind the fact that Trump, living in a fucking golden tower, is the definition of elite.  Pack all of his unqualified billionaire Cabinet picks into a ball room and I imagine it would look exactly like when Nada and Frank stumble into a celebration for the aliens’ human conspirators, drinking Champagne and applauding the 39% gain to their portfolios.  

The only difference in that scenario is there is no way Trump would let a sellout bum like George “Buck” Flowers join the inner circle.  The most he would get for his collusion would be a hat.  Of course, given that Flowers just assumed Nada and Frank were fellow sellouts and gave them a full tour of the aliens’ secret command center, it might be the wiser policy.   

Luckily, there are a lot more people whose eyes are opened to Trump’s lies than there were to the THEY LIVE aliens (though not enough).  And the people who did vote for Trump aren’t stupid.  They were just looking for change and got caught up by a brash, unorthodox, and entirely unique campaign (although anyone who agrees with his racist, misogynist, bullying viewpoints can totally suck it).  Once Trump fails to magically bring back the obsolete manufacturing jobs he promised, or to be the most job producing president God has ever created, more eyes will open.  America will see him for what he is.  The realization will be gradual; we don’t have Nada to destroy the signal that clouds everyone’s perception.  It’s not going to be like the last scene where the woman suddenly sees that she is having sex with a decay-faced monster.  Unless her name is Melania.

C Chaka