Big Bad Voodoo Mamma - SUGAR HILL

Since February is both Black History month and Women In Horror month, two themes I wholeheartedly endorse, I always feel obliged to talk about movies that intersect each.  Unfortunately, there aren’t as many great representations as there should be.  I tackled one of the best, DEMON KNIGHT (I <3 Jeryline), in the early days of Schizocinema, so I settled into a Blaxploitation horror vibe for my official February picks.  First came BLACULA, which I had seen and loved, so the next year I hit up the sequel, SCREAM,BLACULA, SCREAM (not quite as good).  While BLACULA is an excellent and surprisingly romantic film, William Marshall is such a powerful presence that Vonetta McGee’s character gets overshadowed.  Even the mighty Pam Grier plays it a little subdued in the sequel.  Both characters were well drawn and fitting to the tragic romance of BLACULA, but they weren’t the feisty asskickers I had hoped for.  So I wasn’t feeling overly optimistic about giving another Blaxploitation horror flick, Paul Maslansky’s SUGAR HILL, a first time spin.  I'm happy to say that this time, it's the leading lady that casts the biggest shadow.

The Capsule:

Diana “Sugar” Hill (Marki Bey) has a good thing going running a voodoo themed lounge with her boyfriend, Langston (Robert Quarry).  The good times end when Morgan (Richard Lawson), the local racist mob boss, gets designs for the club.  When Langston refuses to sell, Morgan’s goons beat him to death and leave him for Sugar to find.  Bad move, chumps, because Sugar uses her voodoo connections to summon Baron Samedi (Don Pedro Colley), the Lord of the Dead, in order make the gangsters pay.  Soon, Morgan’s goons are dropping like chess pieces as Sugar maneuvers the top man right where she wants him.  Will Sugar’s ex lover cop, Valentine (Richard Lawson) figure things out before Sugar gets her ultimate vengeance?

SUGAR HILL is most famous for its silver, bug eyed zombies, but what it really should be known for is its star, Marki Bey.  The fact that Bey didn’t go one to the same success as Pam Grier is more criminal than anything committed in this movie.  She’d only appeared in a handful of movies before this, and after a few years in television (Charlie’s Angels, Starsky and Hutch, and the like), she left acting altogether.  This makes me weep, because Bey is absolutely badass as Sugar Hill.  

Sugar is a force of nature right from the start.  She’s the kind of character who gets it all done with attitude, confidence, and cunning.  Plus an army of zombies, but they are only a means to an end. She is sexy without being objectified, and doesn't rely on seduction to get what she wants, a trope that was highly leaned on in Blaxplotation/Exploitation cinema at the time.  Every major character, including Barron Samedi, underestimates her, which she ruthlessly uses to her advantage.  The scenes were she boldly negotiates business with Morgan, brushing off his heavy handed intimidation and shutting him down when he extends himself too far, are delicious.  If that crew wasn’t a bunch of racist dirtbags, you would feel sorry for them.  They have no idea what they are getting into.

Sugar is a fascinating, unconventional lead.  Brimming with righteous satisfaction at every turn of the screw, she is driven less by vengeance than by a brutal social justice.  Langston's death may have set her down this path, but it feels more like an excuse than an ultimate motivation.  She certainly isn't so broken up about the loss of her lover that she can’t flirt with her ex, Valentine.  Like BLACULA’s Prince Mamuwalde, Sugar is technically the villain, making a deal with the devil to punish those who wronged her, but she always has our sympathy.  Her fury only extends to those who deserve it.  When Valentine’s investigation gets too close to the truth, Baron Samedi wants to kill him, but Sugar insists on arranging a painless “accident” to keep him out of the action.  Sugar isn't power mad, she's just pissed off.

A big part of the fun of Blaxploitation is seeing over the top bigoted villains get what’s coming to them, and SUGAR HILL does not disappoint.  The deaths of Morgan’s henchmen aren’t especially gory, but they are inventive.  Goons are hacked up with machetes, sliced up via voodoo doll, compelled to stab themselves, massaged to death by zombies, and stuffed in a casket full of snakes.  When one poor sap gets fed alive to a pack of pigs, Sugar shouts to the hungry beasts, “I hope you like white trash.”  Zing!    

Marki Bey isn't the only one with a juicy role.  Don Pedro Colley gets to sink his gold capped teeth in as the flamboyant Lord of the Dead, Baron Samedi.  He gets a surprising amount of screen time, too.  When Sugar first summons Samedi, I expected him to just hand out a few zombies and only return at the end of the movie to collect his debt (noteworthy, he prefers to be paid in hoochie rather than souls).  Samedi, however, is not about to be sidelined to the netherworld and miss all the fun.  He inserts himself front and center at each of Sugar’s traps, either as a disguised bystander smiling on, or as an active participant in the vengeance.  My favorite is when he pulls up in a cab to drive one of the hoods to his impending fate, making foreboding chitchat with the unsuspecting dope the whole way.  Samedi is a hands-on boogyman.

We all know where this kind of story is going.  You can’t make a deal with the devil without eventually having to pay your due.  Karma always comes around, even to the  most justified (again, see BLACULA).  Well, surprise suckers, because Sugar skates out scot-free at the end of this one.  Once the last slimeball is crossed off Sugar’s list, the Baron does demand payment for his service.  However, instead of giving her hand to Samedi, she instead offers up Morgan’s deplorable girlfriend, Celeste (Betty Anne Rees), to be his zombie bride.   Samedi happily accepts, hauling the screaming hussy down to the underworld.  Yes, it does play into the old stereotype of the lusty black stud with an eye for the white woman, but I got the feeling Samedi was so impressed with Sugar that he was happy to let her off the hook.  I kept expecting the director to sneak in some moralistic consequence, but nope, Sugar makes it out without an ounce of comeuppance.  She even gets to keep Samedi's voodoo daddy cane.  I’d like to think she went on to be the venerated voodoo queen who wronged women seek out to balance the scales, giving the Baron a little wink whenever she summons him up for a job.

Like all Blaxploitation, especially one directed by the white dude who made the POLICE ACADEMY movies, SUGAR HILL has its share of problematic issues.  It is certainly not a realistic look at Haitian religion, but what movie was in those--or even these--days?  It is also cheap and hokey as hell (lightning and thunder effects during broad daylight was a bold choice).  However, Bey’s fierce and uncompromising leading woman and the movie’s consistently fun tone balance things out.  And sometimes, you just want to see a badass woman toss a creep’s money in his face and bury him in a coffin full of snakes. 

C Chaka

Start Making Sense – THE BEYOND

In the world of cinema, Italian Supernatural Gore films are rare and magical beasts.  They were only created during a small window, between the mid ‘70s to mid ‘80s.  Born from a heady mix of extravagant set pieces, dream logic, and excessive violence, they could simultaneously be wildly unexpected and thoroughly predictable. Plot took a backseat to atmosphere and spectacle.   Sometimes plot took a separate car altogether, and made frequent rest-stop breaks.  Concepts like continuity and coherence were afterthoughts.  Was it all an excuse to string together a bunch of gory deaths, or do you just have to be crazy to follow them?  Probably the former, but I’m concerned that after multiple viewings of Lucio Fulci’s most inexplicable masterpiece, THE BEYOND, I’m starting to make sense of it.  

The Capsule:

New York gal Liza Merril (Catriona MacColl) jumps at the chance to reinvent her life when she inherits a historic hotel in New Orleans.  Unfortunately, she finds the Seven Doors Hotel in need of a major overhaul.  The shutters need fixing, the electrical system is wonky, it was constructed on one of the seven gateways to hell, and it badly needs dusting.  Her new spooky blind friend Emily (Cinzia Monreale) tells her the hotel went downhill 60 years ago when a torch wielding mob got mad at this painter for reading a weird book and crucified him in the basement.  Liza decides to tough it out and stay, despite all the people around her having random accidents like falling from a scaffolding or having their face eaten by spiders.  Her jerky doctor pal John (David Warbeck) thinks she is going nuts when she starts having horrific visions of mutilated corpses and the Book of Eibon, but Liza fears it may already be too late to avoid a one-way ticket to The Beyond.  

Let me start by admitting THE BEYOND is my favorite Fulci, and I like a lot of Fulci.  I hold it in higher regard than ZOMBI 2, my love of which has been well documented.  The entire film is smothered in a thick, invasive atmosphere of doom.  It is filled with stunning, haunting images.  Make no mistake, though, this flick is baffling.    The sepia toned opening gives the impression this will be a straight forward cursed house movie, perhaps in the vein of Fulci's also delightful HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY (released in the same year!).  The deeper we get into the story, however, the less coherent it becomes.  Nothing ties together and more crazy elements get added as we go.  Who is this Eibon guy, and why is his book important?  Why mention seven gates to hell if you are only going to talk about one.  Did that plumber open the gate, or was it already open?  By the time we hit the surreal, elliptical ending, you could make a quilt out of all the loose threads.  

Catriona MacColl plays a perfect surrogate for the audience, a woman destined to be overwhelmed.  Liza starts off cool and in control, determined to make a go of restoring this hotel she’s inherited.  We never find out who she inherited the place from, but that’s the least pressing question in the movie.  A lifetime New Yorker (despite her hybrid British/Southern accent), she thinks she is prepared for anything.  She takes the first few accidents in stride.  Painters occasionally fall from their scaffolding, plumbers sometimes get their eyes gouged out while fixing a pipe.  Things like that can happen in any restoration.  

The tale really starts to get strange when Liza meets the mysterious Emily.  If there is a face of THE BEYOND, it’s Cinzia Monreale (credited as Sarah Keller).   The former model had an ethereal quality even before donning the most painful looking contact lenses ever made (seriously, they look like broken china plates covering her eyeballs).  In full makeup, Emily looks like a vision out of place and time.  She’s introduced just as dramatically, standing in the middle of the 24-mile-long Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, with her seeing eye dog, right in the path of Liza’s car.  That seeing eye dog is terrible at its job, in my opinion.  Emily fills Liza in on the sordid events that happened in the hotel 60 years ago, though she doesn’t mention the part about her being there when it happened.  It’s never made clear what Emily is supposed to be (ghost? witch? ghost witch?) or exactly why she is there.   She is like the personification of the film, an unknowable beauty. 

Emily also warns her never to go into Room 36, the crucified painter’s old room.  Naturally, the next scene is of Liza busting open the door to Room 36.  From then on, she is tormented by visions of the painter’s corpse and other inexplicable sights.  She gets no support from her studly love interest, John.  Dr. Condescending practically pats her on the head when she tells him about the clearly supernatural events happening around her.  At one point, he even accuses her of setting the whole thing up just to mess with his head.  There’s an open gateway to hell to deal with, John, it’s not all about you.

THE BEYOND shares several similarities with Dario Argento’s gorgeously bizarre INFERNO.  Both are about haunted high occupancy dwellings.  Both have prominent mysterious books that don’t really amount to anything.  Most of all, both are relentlessly confounding, emphasizing the parts over the whole.  Specifically, they are all about the fantastical set pieces.  Fulci never had Argento’s eye for striking composition and color, though.  His magic comes in the form of inventive, unconventional, and profoundly excessive gore effects.  Fulci doesn’t film death scenes, he creates blood operas.  They are so elaborate and audaciously staged that it doesn’t matter if they are utter nonsense.  

Many of the deaths in THE BEYOND are from supernatural happenstance, along the lines of THE OMEN.  This gives Fulci the excuse to really go wild.  Take the unfortunate demise of Liza’s interior designer.  He is high up on a library ladder when he makes a startling discovery about the hotel’s floorplans.  We never find out what he discovered, since a sudden crash of thunder makes him fall to the floor.  The fall seems to have paralyzed him, so there is nothing he can do when a swarm of Louisiana Squeaking Tarantulas noisily crawl over him and—in exactly the way spiders don’t—chew his face off.  They don’t just eat it, though, they slice his mug to pieces with their pincers (?) like a retiree cutting coupons from the Sunday paper.  The camera lingers on the dissection in close-up, paying special squirm inducing attention to the eyeball (eye trauma is the Fulci calling card) and the tongue.  There is no part of this sequence that is not insane.  In that sense, the obvious cheapness of the effects (a prominent spider appears to be a windup toy) only enhances the spectacle.  

My favorite set piece is less absurd and more beautifully grotesque.  A mourning wife of one of the hotel’s victims goes into the stark white hospital morgue while the doctors are away and finds her husband’s body on the slab.  Clearly under a tight timeline, she starts dressing the corpse—mid-autopsy—in his funeral suit.  Something (again, we never get to see what) frightens her so much she either passes out or dies.  Hopefully she died, because her body hitting the floor sets off my all time favorite preposterous horror gag, the uncovered container of acid perched precariously on a high shelf.  The container tips, and her creepy daughter (by law, all children in Italian horror are creepy) walks in just in time to see her mother drenched by acid.  It must be a deceptively large container, since the acid flows in an unending stream until the woman’s entire head has melted.  If that wasn’t disturbing enough, the frothy blood puddle expands across the whole floor as the little girl desperately tries to avoid getting her mom’s face on her shoes.  For such a horrendously violent scene, it is strangely serene, like really gross performance art.  

Don’t worry, that scene does not involve any physical harm to the child.  Fulci saves that for the climax.

I always thought THE BEYOND was best enjoyed by simply surrendering to the madness of the story, just float along and take in the sights.  Imagine my surprise this time, on probably my sixth watch, things suddenly started to fall into place.  That place is still Crazytown, and it is filled with gaps and mysteries, but I think there might be a (semi) rational story under all the blood, fog, and cobwebs.  

I won't go into my theories here (you're welcome).  There is no way of knowing if my interpretation is what Fulci had in mind.  It's highly likely he just said, "Let's make a movie where some spiders eat a guy's face."  That's fine, too.  THE BEYOND is wholly unique and wondrous any way you slice it.

 But seriously, does anybody know the deal with this Eibon guy?

C Chaka

Stars Misaligned - NIGHT OF THE COMET

I start this post on my way down to see the first total solar eclipse in America since 1918, along with potentially millions of other astronomic sightseers. America has gone eclipse crazy. Well, as crazy as people get over science these days. It’s going to be the most observed, documented, and analyzed total eclipse in our history. That's a long stretch from the days when superstitious simpletons viewed eclipses as a sign of the end times. Nowadays, science has dispelled all the myths and mumbo jumbo, allowing millions of us to experience the phenomenon without worry. But… as I make my way down South to join the excited crowds of onlookers, I can't help but think of a similar stellar celebration back in the ‘80s that ended poorly for just about everyone except a couple of Valley girls. I'm speaking, of course, about Thom Eberharte’s NIGHT OF THE COMET. 

The Capsule:

A 65 million year old comet is about to pass directly in front of the planet, and it’s going to be the viewing party of the century. Two sisters are going to miss out on all the fun, though.  Regina (Catherine Mary Stewart) is stuck at work and Samantha (Kelli Maroney) spends the night in a lawn shed after running away from her abusive stepmom.  Turns out it was for the best, since the comet’s tail turns everyone not protected under steel into a pile of red dust. Free from adults, Reg and Sam hit the deserted streets of L.A. for shenanigans and shopping sprees. After running into a hunky fellow survivor, Hector (Robert Beltran), the apocalypse seems to be working out pretty well for them. The only drawback to this brave new world is all those pesky comet zombies running around, hungry for Valley girl flesh. On top of that, a mysterious band of scientists are constantly watching them, and not with the best of intentions.  Reg and Sam may have survived the night, but can they live through what follows?

NIGHT OF THE COMET is a beloved ‘80s horror classic.  It appears often on top cult movie lists.  Many people bring it up as an influence.  Just looking at the poster, with its machine-gun toting cheerleader, brings out the nostalgic love.  The shameful fact is… I don’t really like NIGHT OF THE COMET.

That might come as a shock to those of you familiar with my cinematic tastes.  Given my appreciation for things like SPIDER-MAN 3 and NIGHTMARE WEEKEND, some might be surprised I ever dislike anything.  No one is more surprised than I am.  On paper, NOTC hits all the marks.  Cute, confident female leads who know how to handle themselves, zombies, crazy science, oddball characters, a sly sense of humor, it really should be in my wheelhouse.  Yet, somehow it just doesn’t gel for me.  Oh, I want it to; so much so that I fool myself.  Somehow the more time passes after my last disappointing watch, a revisionist fog settles over my memory.  Someone will bring the movie up, a few cool scenes will flash in my head, and I’ll think, “Yeah, NIGHT OF THE COMET really grew on me.”  Then I’ll watch it again and think, “Goddamn it.”

That selective memory is why I’m writing about it now.  I don’t bother writing about movies I don’t like, but the bastard got me again.  I’m not about to waste a good lead-in hook like the Great Eclipse, and I’m too late [lazy] to review SUNSHINE.  It's okay, I'll make it work.

I’m not totally blind to the movie’s charms, the biggest of which is the cast.  Reg and Sam are fantastic characters, perfectly played by Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney.  They are both tough, confident women who know how to take care of themselves.  They may be a little ditzy at times, but they are clever when it counts.  Both keep their shit together remarkably well, given their situation.  They do have a few introspective moments about the dusting of humanity, but since it is established that pretty much all adults suck, the moment passes quickly.  I like the juxtaposition of these SoCal mallrats being so into firearms.  How many movies have a bubbly cheerleader complaining about the inferiority of the Mac 10 compared to an Uzi while she shoots up a car?  Not very many.  Plus, they are a stunning pair, Stewart with her smoky eyes and casual Billy Idol video outfit, Maroney nailing the bratty but adorable kid sister look.

Here’s an artifact from the ‘80s I didn’t notice until this watch.  Maroney, who is supposed to be 16, is the one showing all the skin.  She was really 24 at the time, and it was just a couple of underwear shots, but something about the intent felt a little pervy to me.  It was a simpler time, I suppose.

The cast is further elevated by cult movie legend Mary Woronov, who appeared in many Roger Corman films through the ‘70s and ‘80s.  Woronov stands out in any movie, thanks to her Amazonian height, stunning face, and wry, deadpan humor.  Here she plays Audrey, one of the mysterious scientists who are harvesting the blood of survivors, hoping to find a cure for comet zombification.  Not only is she the only adult in the film who is not an asshole, she is the only person who really seems bothered by the sudden 99.9% extinction of humanity.  

Geoffrey Lewis, playing the head scientist Dr. Carter, doesn’t come off as sympathetically.  He’s got no qualms about draining the blood from a couple of darling (?) little kids to extend his life, all in the name of science, of course.  The mysterious think tank of evil scientists is one of my favorite parts of the movie, if just for the absurdity.  These guys managed to discover exactly why everyone went to dust, what protected the survivors, the exact symptoms of partial comet exposure, and at what rate the condition accelerates, all within about 12 hours. They are the most brilliant scientists ever!  They still get outsmarted by a few teens, though.  

The movie is filled with bits of weirdness.  Some can be attributed to its essential Eighties-ness, like the bunker that inexplicably fills with fog and neon pink backlighting, or Reg calling someone a nerd because he didn’t know Superman couldn’t see through lead.  These bits are lovely.  Other times, though, the weirdness comes from the inconsistent tone, which is harder to enjoy.  Hector (a character that never worked for me) goes back to his family’s house to check for survivors, of which there are none.  As he’s stuffing a few keepsakes into a pillow case (not a fan of suitcases, I guess), he hears someone at the door.  He opens it to find a fully zombified little boy.  The scene leading up to this had a somber mood, and zombie children are always visual code for the cruel unfairness of life, but here it is basically played for laughs.  Sort of like the zombie version of BETTER OFF DEAD’s relentless newspaper delivery boy, but not as funny.

It doesn’t help the tone when Hector rolls up in the next scene dressed in a Santa Claus suit.  It’s nice to get a visual reminder that the movie occurs during Christmas (the weather is no help), but it seems a little insensitive for a guy who was just stepping in his mom’s dust pile.

I could live with the clunky tone and pacing.  My big problem is that it feels too wholesome for an apocalyptic zombie movie.  Director Thom Eberhardt, who previously did the haunting SOLE SURVIVOR and later, um, CAPTAIN RON, pulls back when he should be going all in.  It is frustrating that two such great female leads never really do anything.  

The mall fight scene is a perfect example.  It’s a promising setup.  Reg and Sam are having a shopping montage in a department store as some creepy, gun toting goons leer at them on the surveillance cameras.  There is an instant feeling of menace, mostly provided by Ivan E. Roth, playing the lead goon, Willy.  He’s an actor with the kind of long, gaunt face and wide, expressive mouth that makes him perfect for desiccated corpse roles, although here he’s more unsettling without the make-up (his irritating game show announcer voice nearly blows the effect, though).  It’s clear these guys are scumbags even before we find out they are going zombie as well.  Once the fighting starts, the action is elaborate and well-staged.  Reg doesn’t hesitate to light the place up, and Sam gets in some good kickboxing hits, but they don’t bag a single baddie.  I can understand not wanting to make the girls too bloodthirsty, but zombies are the most guilt free kills around.  It’s practically an act of mercy.  Even Gandhi could off a zombie without looking bad.  

The escape from the scientist’s bunker is a little more satisfying.  Sam and Hector sneak in to save Reg, but she’s already knocked out her guard and is on the way out when they find her.  Zombie Dr. Carter does get a fiery death, but I was really hoping Eberhardt would take a dark twist and make the two annoying child survivors they rescue become zombies at the end.  Alas, no.  Worse, the last scene has Reg and Hector adopting the little bastards (orphans, technically), while Sam rides off with some yuppie in a Mercedes.  Hector even tosses all the guns in the trash, like there's no reason they would ever need them again (um, apocalypse?).  That has to be the worst ending ever.  I don’t want to see Reg and Sam settling down into a cute family unit, I want to see them roaming California in a tricked-out Rolls-Royce, mowing down zombies.  With so much potential, it’s disappointing that it couldn’t come together.

Speaking of disappointing, the Great Eclipse came and went without creating a single eclipse zombie or pile of dust.  Now that I think about it, it´s probably for the best.  In any event, there is another one happening seven years from now.  That’s plenty of time for me to convince myself that deep down, I really like this movie.  

Psych.

C Chaka