Blue Monkey

Blue Monkey  aka “Insect” (1987)

Dir. William Fruet

Written by George Goldsmith (CHILDREN OF THE CORN), Chris Koseluk (nothing)

Starring Steve Railsback, Susan Anspach, Don Lake, Gwynyth Walsh, Joe Flaherty, Robin Duke, John Vernon

Sometimes --rarely, even-- a movie is exactly what you think it is. There’s a certain zen beauty in that, something oddly satisfying, even if what you thought it was wasn’t exactly life-changing art to begin with. Such is the case with BLUE MONKEY, something of the platonic ideal of cheesy Canadian Z-movie monster features. And frankly, that’s a good thing. Steve Railsback (LIFEFORCE, ED GEIN, The X-Files) and an ensemble cast of entertaining character actors (John Vernon, SCTV vets Joe Flaherty and Robin Duke, Don Lake, Gwynyth Walsh, Susan Anspach and an 8-year-old Sarah Polley) are trapped in a hospital (that used to be an insane asylum, nice touch) fighting giant bug monsters for reasons which are too convoluted to get into here. If that sounds good to you, you’re gonna have a heck of a lot of fun here. If not... what are you reading this blog for?

When you’re trying to make an exploitation movie for an incredibly small amount of money, tone is everything. Low-budget movies are almost by definition going to be fundamentally uneventful since events cost money, so the trick is to find a way to make the downtime something less than uttery life-draining. BLUE MONKEY exquisitely captures that tone you want, goofy and sometimes intentionally kind of comic, but still taking the monster part relatively seriously -- or at least seriously enough to establish a baseline of real movie, upon which to pile its increasingly ridiculous monster puppet schlock. Compare that to something like the dour white noise of THE DROWNSMAN and it’s immediately obvious why this one is so much more tolerable. It doesn’t even have anything to do with its actual genre elements -- it’s about knowing how to have a good time, keep a light touch and a quick pace, and deliver as many goods as you can.

A bunch of pretty gnarly-looking slimy giant bugs (although you can’t see them too well on this VHS copy) are a nice touch, obviously. Man, bugs are just so creepy and alien anyway, why don’t they show up in horror movies more often? For all the over-designed monsters in the countless shlocky creature features over the years, it’s hard to beat ol’ mother nature at coming up with something really nightmarish. Did the giant bugs of the 50’s sci-fi horror craze make this gauche or what? I’m starting to see this as a real missed opportunity.* But it hardly matters anyway, because the real joy here is just fooling around with Railsback and Co. in an exquisitely horror-lit hospital (man, this place gets mysteriously blue when the power goes off) and soaking in the silly 80s monster movie vibe. Giant bug puppets are always going to be welcome, but experience teaches me they’re not generally enough to carry a whole movie through on their own, especially since there are probably less than 15 minutes of actual bug footage in here. So it’s nice to have the human side of the equation hold its own.

There’s not really a ton of story, more like a series of free floating vignettes about different characters peripherally tied together over a bizarre series of circumstances wherein a foreign plant bites a nice old man, delivers him a mysterious insectoid parasite, and then that parasite gets doused with some sort of blue mystery goo (possibly the origin of the movie’s completely inexplicable title?) which mutates it, I guess, and creates a colony of giant clicking praying mantises? So in that sense, kinda like NASHVILLE if it was located in hospital beset by monsters, and also had less country music. Railsback’s there from the start but doesn’t really take over as the main character until a good way in, and for some reason Susan Anspach (FIVE EASY PIECES, PLAY IT AGAIN SAMHAIM) is set up as the female lead, and then gradually sidelined in favor or Gwynyth Walsh (tons of TV roles, including recurring roles in several Star Trek series and in the movie GENERATIONS) over the course of the movie. Why, I could not say, but they’re both fine actresses so I guess it works out OK in the end. And hey, it’s nice to see a heroic entymologist (scene-stealing Don Lake, a million bit parts in everything from TERMINATOR 2 to POLICE ACADEMY) after that asshole on from BLOOD BEAST TERROR made the profession look so skeevy. I’ll admit, I guess I have some prejudice built up after that one, because it seems like Lake is so into these bugs I figured he’d betray our fleshy heroes, or at least get eaten as punishment for his obsession. But no, he turns out to be a real nice guy who just happens to think giant bugs are awesome. We have so much in common, and yet here I was judging him. I hope we’ve all learned a little something about tolerance here today.

Anyway, this one’s quite competent in a goofy B-movie sort of way. Not a lot of whammy, but a cheerful tone goes a surprisingly long way and some big bug puppets go the rest. Really ought to be better known, or at least available on DVD. There’s no fucking reason in the world WEREWOLF WOMAN has a handsome DVD debut from RaroVideo and BLUE MONKEY has to go begging on VHS. And yet not a single presidential candidate from either side of the aisle has yet make this part of his or her campaign. For shame, democracy.

Director William Fruet didn’t make another movie til 2008, but at least he went on to a rich career in TV, including episodes of The Outer Limits, Goosebumps, and Poltergeist: Legacy. That sounds about right. He did direct a bunch of other horror movies before this, though, including SPASMS, FUNERAL HOME, KILLER PARTY, and THE HOUSE BY THE LAKE. All officially on my list now. While I can’t realistically hope any modern filmmaker could make an ALIEN ripoff with giant bugs set in a hospital this ingratiatingly daffy, at least the 80’s was prolific enough that we’re not likely to go wanting anytime soon.

*Or maybe I’m just giant bug phobic. I think the two scariest X-files (Travelers and Folie A Duex) are both about giant bugs, so maybe it’s just me.

PS: This is apropos of nothing, but did you know that Steve Railsback made a movie called ANGELA (1978) which is a loose modern-day version of Oedipus Rex with Sophia Loren, John Vernon, and John Huston? I don't want to steal BLUE MONKEY's thunder or anything, but that seems like some information you can't really sit on without sharing.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2015 CHECKLIST!

Play it Again, Samhain

• LITERARY ADAPTATION: No
• SEQUEL: No
• REMAKE: No
• DEADLY IMPORT FROM: Canada
• FOUND-FOOTAGE CLUSTERFUCK: No
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: Maybe Susan Anspach, who was in 5 EASY PIECES and PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM. Interestingly, she was originally going to be in NASHVILLE, but wanted too much money.
• BELOVED HORROR ICON: Steve Railsback. John Vernon is really more of an equal opportunity B-movie actor, but he was in THE UNCANNY, CURTAINS, and KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE, so we're gonna count him anyway.
• BOOBIES: No
• MULLETS: I admit I have no specific memory of this, but it was Canada in 1987, so I'm going to say yeah.
• SEXUAL ASSAULT: No
• DISMEMBERMENT PLAN: Head removed!
• HAUNTED HOUSE: No.
• MONSTER: Giant Bugs!!
• THE UNDEAD: No
• POSSESSION: No
• SLASHER/GIALLO: No
• PSYCHO KILLERS (Non-slasher variety): No
• EVIL CULT: None
• (UNCANNY) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS: None
• EGYPTO-CRYPTO: None
• TRANSMOGRIFICATION: Yeah, the bug gets all mutate-y
• VOYEURISM: Nah
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: Exceedingly high
• MORAL OF THE STORY: Don't leave blue mystery goo around where someone, maybe a bunch of precocious children, might spill it on a mysterious parasitic insect. In fact, put a child cap on that bad boy just in case.
• TITLE ACCURACY: Utterly baffling. There is no monkey whatsoever, blue or otherwise.
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: She did not, but really it was THE DROWNSMAN's fault.

Ed Gein

Ed Gein (2000) aka In the Light of the Moon

Dir. Chuck Parello

Written by Stephen Johnson

Starring Steve Railsback, Carrie Snodgress, Carol Mansell

This is one of those low-budget, more-or-less straight-to-video (yes, video) serial killer movies they were doing for a while in the early 2000’s, and like most of those it’s pretty shoddily made and artlessly executed. But while a lot of those turn out to be just kind of cliched and dull, this one actually manages --probably through incompetence more than intent-- to stumble onto something mildly interesting, a genuinely different take on this sort of hokum. I mean, it’s not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, and in some ways its a good deal less focused and more awkward than most. But that’s kinda why I like it.

See, either through unusual strength of purpose or, more likely, through naive amateurishness, this movie ends up not really feeling very much like most serial killer movies. Though I’m sure it’s not their intent, most serial killer movies end up somewhat glamorizing, or at least romanticizing, the real-life killer involved. And it’s hardly a surprise, I mean, we’re interested in serial killers. They’re frightening and compelling, alien and unknowable, real-life monsters out there in the dark, lurking, putting on a facade of normalcy but hiding a disturbing secret. See something like Fincher’s excellent ZODIAC for an example; the Zodiac (though he’s never definitively seen in the movie) motivates the entire enterprise; as long as he stays mysterious and dangerous he holds enormous power over our minds and imaginations. We’re both repulsed and powerfully fascinated by mysteries like this, especially when there’s so much lurid detail in the acts.

I’m fairly sure that was what ED GEIN was going for, too, but in this case director Chuck Parello (THE HILLSIDE STRANGLER, HENRY 2: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER*) and writer Stephen Johnson (also HILLSIDE STRANGLER, BUNDY) didn’t approach the story in a way which would play to those ends at all. Instead of letting the killer be enigmatic and mysterious, they immerse us entirely within his world from the first frame, robbing him of every bit of gothic urban legend and leaving him probably a lot closer to what he actually was: a pathetic, kinda tragic and not-very-smart hick who did what he did for reasons utterly prosaic: he suffered from an undiagnosed mental illness and was so isolated and ignored that no one realized it. That’s it, there’s no great mystery, no sense of a monster hiding behind the face of normalcy. Just one dumb, inbred hillbilly with a demanding mother, a shitty religion, and nothing better to do with his time.

Derp.

If the movie works at all, it’s because of how much Steve Railsback (THE STUNT MAN, Duane Berry from the X-Files) commits to this vision of the character. He apparently spent months preparing for the part by exhaustively researching Gein (good thing he decided not to go method, though) and the result is sort of predictable: once you really learn about somebody, no matter how awful they are, you’re bound to humanize them in some way. I think Railsback genuinely sees Gein as a tragic character, more pathetic victim than legendary villain. He plays him as deeply awkward, aggressively stupid, a social misfit and outcast who probably doesn’t really mean any harm but has mentally degenerated to the point where he barely even knows where he is anymore, allowing some of his worst impulses and his anger at the world which has rejected him to bubble up and find an outlet.

He’s the main character here, so we see things through his eyes and see the way all his day-to-day interactions are filtered through his memory of his abusive father and demanding, ultra-religious mother (Carrie Snodgress, hamming it up like they’re paying her by decibel), both dead for years by the time the movie begins. He can barely hold a conversation without saying something bizarre and inappropriate, so it’s little wonder that people avoid him as much as possible and he simply spends more and more time in his own head, gradually reinforcing strange ideas and building up a greater and greater resistance to reality. At one point he hallucinates reading a minor and incredibly uninteresting local newspaper article. That’s definitely a sign that you gotta get out more. But the point is, there’s nothing epic and gothic about his troubled inner world; it feels more like the barely-articulate ramblings of a troubled child who is desperately lonely but too uncomfortable in their own skin to reach out to others.

I'm gonna go ahead and guess that this is the Bible. it's always the Bible. How come you never get psycho serial killing nutcases who are obsessed with Kant's Critique of Pure Reason or something?

The fact that the movie is kind of ugly and style-less actually accentuates the point -- even the disturbing stuff he does seems kind of lame. Yes, they recreate his famous bedroom with the skulls on the bedposts and flayed-human-skin masks on the wall… but the camera doesn’t shoot it as though it’s mythic and larger than life, it shoots it so matter-of-factly that it just seems pitiful and mundane. There’s nothing gothic or grand about it, it’s just kind of desperate and gross, more the work of an uncomfortable mentally ill guy who collects gross trinkets than the lurid trophies of a nightmare come to life. Even the fabled “woman-suit” scene plays differently than you expect; even wearing the skin of a recent victim, Gein awkwardly dancing and yelping into the night, beer belly bouncing under his false breasts, is closer to a comical child than a fearful monster. I’m not sure, it’s even possible that this sequence is intentionally comical, with Gein’s nervous giggling and howling at the moon.

Does that make this a good movie? Hell no, it’s as low-rent and amateurish as these things come. But if you can get past the fact that it’s not good in a techincal sense, it does have a certain offbeat charm in its poorly-considered portrayal of this legendary monster. Hats off to Railsback for taking on this low-budget cynical cash-grab and really going all out in a performance which is never remotely cool or likable, but does have a certain desperate, pathetic kind of tragedy to it. Poor Ed would really like to be sane, it’s just that it’s not really in the cards for him anymore, if indeed it was ever an option from the start. So the only direction to go in down, exactly where the movie takes him. That it does so without much technical skill is lamentable, but that it depicts this story without aggrandizing it is actually somewhat commendable. At the very least, it’s a nice balance for the other, much better serial killer movies I watched this month. Here’s a good reminder that horror as an artform is about exaggeration, about using the tools of cinema to heighten fear, terror, unease. But in real life, murder is usually a lot lamer, stupider, and more pitiable. So is the movie, but oh well, at least it’s different.

*This exists!!? Possible subtitles include HENRY 2: FASTER PORTRAIT CAT KILL KILL and HENRY 2: PORTRAIT OF THE SERIAL KILLER AS A YOUNG MAN. Hopefully they can make a series out of this so when people google "Henry V" they get a DTV serial killer knockoff instead of the Shakespeare cliff notes.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2014 CHECKLIST!

The Hunt For Dread October

• LITERARY ADAPTATION: No
• SEQUEL: None, though part of the loose series of serial killer movies they had back then, like BUNDY or DAHMER or THE HILLSIDE STRANGLER or HELTER SKELTER (which also has Railsback as Manson!)
• REMAKE: There've been about a million movies loosely based on Gein, from PSYCHO to TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE to DERANGED. But no direct remakes of this one.
• FOREIGNER: Spanish/Portuguese production, but in English with an American cast.
• FOUND-FOOTAGE CLUSTERFUCK: No, there is some newsreel footage though.
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: None
• BELOVED HORROR ICON: I guess Railsback doesn't quite qualify, but he was in LIFEFORCE.
• BOOBIES: Not in a way you'd want to see.
• SEXUAL ASSAULT: No
• DISMEMBERMENT PLAN: Heads removed, skin removed, limbs removed.
• HAUNTED HOUSE: No, Gein keeps seeing his mom, but it's pretty clear it's in his head and not due to any supernatural shenanigans.
• MONSTER: No
• THE UNDEAD: No
• POSSESSION: No
• SLASHER/GIALLO: No
• PSYCHO KILLERS (Non-slasher variety): Abso-fuckin-lutely
• EVIL CULT: No
• (UNCANNY) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS: No
• TRANSMOGRIFICATION: Gein's obsession is definitely with changing himself physically into something else, I'm gonna say that counts.
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: Pretty high. Tiny theatrical release notwithstanding, this is early millennial DTV.
• MORAL OF THE STORY: If you think it might be a good idea to murder women and wear their skin... don't.
• TITLE ACCURACY: 100%
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: She did!

And barely that... only Railsback's performance keeps it from being completely unwatchable.