Short Film: Wild Oysters (USA, 1941)

Charles R. Bowers is a name mostly forgotten in his native homeland, the USA, seldom found in any tract on the history of US American live-action or cartoon comedy shorts of the silent era and early talkies. In France, on the other hand, he always enjoyed a (very, very) limited amount of recognition, if only because he was championed by Surrealists such as the painter André Breton. As of recent, Bowers has slowly begun gaining belayed recognition as an inventive if forgotten “before his time” filmmaker; his known surviving films can now even purchased as an extremely expensive DVD collection from 2004 and can also be found on diverse other compilations.
Born Jun. 6, 1887, in Cresco, Iowa, Bowers claimed to have spent two years in a circus when kidnapped by one as a child; this—along with such other alleged temporary jobs as bronco busting and performing vaudeville—would, perhaps, explain the nimble acrobatic abilities he occasionally displays in some of his few surviving live films done for R-C Pictures and Educational Pictures.
Called by some "a poor man's Buster Keaton", the inferred insult is unjust: aside from the fact that Keaton had a totally different screen presence and was less coarsely slapstick, Keaton's films, while notable better produced and poetic, never featured such outrageous surrealism as seen in the outtakes of the short silent There It Is found here. (Due to its "cultural, aesthetic, or historical significance", There It Is was named to the National Film Registry by the Librarian of Congress in 2004.)Prior to his one-of-a-kind slapstick shorts combining live action and stop-motion animation, Bowers also made an untold number of animation films while he was in charge of the Mutt & Jeff animated shorts for Barré Studios, where Bowers’ creative book-keeping eventually resulted in the studio’s closure. The excellent website Bright Lights Film Journal suggests that “Bowers's own personality—his loose relationship with truth, and the cruelty evident in some of his practical jokes—may have helped sabotage his film career, as they did his earlier career as an animator.” (Full BLFJ article on Bowers here.)
In any event, by the early 30s, Bowers was pretty much out of the film business, living in Wayne, New Jersey as a newspaper cartoonist for The Newark News (amongst others) and, allegedly, writer/illustrator of children’s books. Prior to becoming seriously ill in 1941, he did only three more films, all stop-motion. On Nov 26, 1946, Charles R. Bowers died in Paterson, New Jersey, where he was laid to rest in the city’s Cedar Lawn Cemetery.
Of the Bowers films found on the web, the best to be found in its complete form is his last, Wild Oysters (1941). Like many of his films, it is hard to really say that Wild Oysters is funny. It is technically amazing and visually astounding, but the laughs are few and light and mostly of a mean streak. But for all its faults as a less-than-amusing “comic short”, even today, 69 years after it was made, Wild Oysters is a visual mind blower.

Zombie Strippers! (USA, 2008)

"Badgers? Badgers? We don't need no stinking badgers!"

Paco (Joey Medina)

No artsy-fartsy and oblique title here—this exploitation flick says what it offers and offers exactly what it says: Zombie Strippers! So, if you're into strippers and like zombies movies, this is the film for you—but if either ain't your bag, you should leave this film on the DVD store shelf.
Zombie Strippers! was written and directed by Jay Lee, a relatively unknown name but one that seems to hold promise. In 2006 he offered the world The Slaughter (2006 / trailer), a low budget B-film that took one of the world’s oldest plots—the same one, essentially, as found in The Hazing (2004 / trailer), Hell Night (1981 / trailer), Demon Slayer (2003 / trailer) and thousands of other films—and added enough cheap gore, humor and breasts to make the film fun. He more or less does the same thing in Zombie Strippers! and once again the final product is a well-shot and relatively well-acted (in a campy way) B-flick with no pretensions that never overstays its welcome and offers a lot of laughs, gore and plastic tits. Camus it ain't, but fun it is…
OK, the flick's opening is a bit dated already, but it is nonetheless still good for a giggle. In the not so distant future—or in a parallel universe, take your pick—President Bush has just been elected for the fourth time (with Arnie as the Vice Pee) and the USA is at war with, well, about everyone who ain't a Republican, and some who are (Alaska, for example). The ever-increasing number of soldiers needed to protect the American Way of Life is excelled only be the ever-decreasing numbers of soldiers available, so in the conservative nest of Sartre, Nebraska, a secret government labia—I mean, lab—is developing a "chemo-virus" to reanimate the dead so as to have a never-ending supply of patriots for the fronts. Of course, as to be expected in a government project, things go S.N.A.F.U. and the Z Squad, special military unit, is called in to clean the mess. When the odd-man-out of the unit, Byrdflough (Zak Kilberg of Sweet Insanity [2006 / trailer]), is bitten, he goes on the run so as not to be terminated and takes refuge in an illegal, underground strip joint run by Ian (Robert Englund, slumming it and having fun). After turning, he bites the star stripper Kat (Jenna Jameson, so lifted and shifted and full of plastic that she almost looks like a zombie before she puts on the make-up) and before you can say "lap dance" the place is full of super zombie strippers pulling in the cash (and filling the basement with zombified customers). One by one the remaining strippers are confronted with the decision of whether to go with the flow or not, but then inter-zombie stripper rivalry results in the release of the imprisoned dead males and the shit hits the fan…
The story, like the film, is hardly intelligent, but then Zombie Strippers! isn't aiming at the intellect. Jay Lee uses his slim plot as an excuse for a never-ending flow of laughs, gore of variable quality and dancing naked babes with bodaciously bulbous but mostly stationary boobs—and in all three aspects, he deals a Straight Royal Flush. The concept of "thinking" zombies might be blasphemy within the realm of the traditional zombie flick, but it fits logically when the early explanation of the development of the virus as explained by the woman scientist is kept in mind (at least it does all the way up to the big climax, when some zombies that should be able to "think" don't and one who shouldn't does).
Love that donkey, by the way—but not as much as the babe who plays Berenge (Jeannette Sousa), whose unnecessary demise does end the film on a bad note.

The Tracker (USA, 2000)

Also (un)known under its Japanese title Blood Chase, The Tracker is pretty much what you might expect of the directorial debut of Jeff Schechter, the man who penned such thrilling, violent direct-to-video films as Dennis the Menace Strikes Again! (1998 / trailer), Care Bears: Journey to Joke-a-Lot (2004 / trailer) and Care Bears: Big Wish Movie (2005 / trailer)—in other words, it ain’t all that good. The Tracker is predictable and by-the-numbers, with a narrative that is less a story than a series of predictable, generic scenes with predictable, generic characters strung together so as to have a start, middle and finish. The film is, perhaps, comparable to a scentless fart: you might know that it’s there, but you won’t really notice it. Obviously inspired by Rush Hour (trailer), which hit the screens two years earlier in '98 (and in turn was simply a rehash of any number of thousands of mismatched buddy films), The Tracker tells the tale of two mismatched dudes that can’t stand each other but slowly gain respect for one another and end the film as deep-throating lovers. (Na, not really, but the last bit might have made the film a tad more interesting.) In truth, the two never even kiss, and they don't gain respect for each other as much as they do re-gain respect: the two are former best-buds long estranged.
The ex-buds are played by Casper van Dien, "the biggest named B-movie star that you've almost certainly never heard of" (according to The Unknown Movies Page) as Connie Spears, a former NY cop and current LA tracker, and Russell Wong as Rick Tsung, the brother of Kim Chang (Lexa Doig of Jason X [2001 / trailer]), the babe who broke Connie's heart by moving to New York and marrying the Paul Chang (George Chiang), the son of a Chinese Mafioso named, appropriately enough, Mr. Chang (Zenhu Han). When Paul is deflated by machine-gun-wielding killers and Kim kidnapped, Rick convinces his reluctant ex-pal to fly back to NYC to help him find his sister. In NYC the constantly squabbling pair hire Carmen (Françoise Robertson), a spirited Yellow Cab driver who has a hard punch and good aim with machine guns but can't use a Zippo as their driver, and begin to investigate amidst the gang war that the killing/kidnapping has ignited between the local Russian and Chinese mafias. Along the way Jack 'Chick' Cicollini (Jason Blicker), a wheelchair-bound cop and Connie’s former partner, joins the team; and as love blossoms between Chick and Carmen, Connie tracks the bad guys down….
That the film is as uninteresting as it is, is almost odd, for the guy who wrote The Tracker, Robert Geoffrion, is not incapable of taking generic plots and making them entertaining. He helped pen the generic but entertaining Dolph Lundgren flick The Peacekeeper in 1997 (trailer), and in 1996 he spit out the wonderfully deadpan and funny take on the stereotypical mismatched male-female buddy flick, Hollow Point (trailer). It would seem that by The Tracker he was drying up... which might explain why he doesn’t have a credit listed on imdb after 2001.
As mentioned earlier, The Tracker is comparable to silent, scentless fart. As such, one must add, it doesn't totally stink. True, it is generic from start to end, and Van Dien is an oddly repulsive and unlikeable actor this time around for someone that looks so much like a living, moving, blond-haired Ken doll, but the film is in focus and relatively well edited and shot, so even if every twist of the plot can be seen miles away—including the “big” one at the end—The Tracker manages to fly by without being too painful, no matter how much of the supposed humor falls flat. But even if this scentless fart is not a stinking turd, there is no real reason to watch it voluntarily when there are so many better (or far more entertainingly worse) films out there.
The Tracker is simply unmemorable, from start to finish, and as such really deserves to remain as unknown as it is.

Web of Death / Wu du tian luo (Hong Kong, 1976)

Many, many years ago in LaLa Land (that’s LA, for those of you who don’t know), back in the days of spiked hair, pointy shoes, padded shoulders and torn sweatshirts worn inside-out (early to mid 1980s, in other words), it was still possible to go to the real grindhouse theaters where the films being shown inside weren’t always the ones up on the marquee outside. The Casino on Broadway (R.I.P.) did that occasionally, as did all the grimy Asian-run porno holes on Main Street the few times I checked them out, but the place where I went the most often and that did it most often was a now long-gone hole in the wall a few doors down from Langer’s Deli on Alvarado between 7th and 8th Streets in the Westlake district.
The films, usually with Spanish subtitles, seldom matched the names outside, and one had as good of a chance to see some second-run exploitation film as an obscure Bavarian lederhosen comedy or a scratchy Chinese costume flick. (Probably the oddest combo I caught there was Pyun’s The Sword and the Sorcerer [1982 / trailer] with, I think, Beim Jodeln juckt die Lederhose [1974].) It was there that I was introduced to the wonders of the Shaw Brothers, in copies so scratched and torn that they remained un-understandable no matter what language they were in. In all truth, I was less than impressed by them and for years they stood alongside Bavarian lederhosen films as my least favorite film genre.
But whereas the lederhosen films still leave me cold, over the years, through the experience of the later Hong Kong costume classics of the late 80s/early 90s—Chinese Ghost Story I (1987 / trailer) & II (1990 / trailer), Bride with White Hair (1993 / trailer), etc.—and the occasional incredibly strange oddity—Miracle Fighters (1982), Mr Vampire (1985 / trailer)—I have warmed up substantially to Hong Kong Chop-Chop Suey and, in turn, the Shaw Brothers. Particularly now that so many of their films have been digitally cleaned and made available on DVD, I have to say, the Shaw Brothers are awesome.
Take The Web of Death, for example, currently available as a digitally remastered DVD. Little did I know that in 1976 Mario Bava did a job for hire for the Shaw Brothers…. OK, maybe he didn’t, but director Chu Yuan, a man well-known to Shaw Brothers and classic Wuxia film fans, does a damn fine imitation of the Italian master in this film, filling the screen with wonderful shades of vibrant, deep color (mostly reds and greens) and wafts of fog. The colors and wonderfully intricate artificial sets of the film also bring to mind the films of Hammer, for the interiors of The Web of Death have a richness of detail and scope found in the best studio-bound set pieces of the great house of horror (far more so than the Shaw Brothers & Hammer joint production of 1974, the cheesy but fun Seven Brothers Meet Dracula [trailer]). Sure, the special effects of The Web of Death are often cheap and tacky, particularly whenever the spider with its elephant roar shows up, but for that there are some cool acid-bath deaths, spurting blood, fun (but too few and too short) fight scenes and enough plot twists and intrigue for a dozen films. Indeed, the plot of the film is almost Shakespearean in its intricacies, side tangents and sheer breadth of characters. There are dozens of characters of differing importance that show up just long enough to move the plot (and plot tangents) forward and then disappear again until needed again later—or to die. Good and bad characters come and go, as do clans and clan leaders and disciples, not to mention identities and loyalties and love and betrayal; for much of the film one can’t help but wonder how all the narrative strands are ever going to mesh together into a coherent whole—but they do.
The Web of Death starts in the middle of a fight in what must be somewhere in the distant past; this brief scene serves to show just how deadly the "Five Venom Spider" is in full Ed-Wood-like glory. Then the film moves forward to some other time in still-ancient China, to a meeting of the five clans of the Five Poison Web, headed by Wang Hsieh (Ku Feng), the clan leader of the Scorpion Clan. Liu Shen (Lo Lieh, who taught Dr. Evil how to laugh diabolically), the leader of the Snake Sect, wants to regain the respect of all other clans by using the Five Venom Spider to win the next boxing meeting, but Wang Hsieh refuses to bring the deadly, virtually unstoppable weapon out of its hiding place of the past centuries. Little does he know that Liu Shen is bonking his concubine (Angela Yu Chien) and that the two plan to dispose him. Liu Shen spreads the rumor that the Five Venom Spider has reappeared, upon which the other clans send out the young disciple , Fei Ying-hsiung (played by Yueh Hua) to find it. He crosses paths with a martial-arts-gifted bum who, unknown to him, is the daughter of Wang Hsieh (Ching Li). Before long, as clans die and drop along the way, both his brother (Wong Chung) and a female co-clan member (Lily Li) who’s hot for him are also on the trail of the Spider. A spider’s web of love, death, betrayal, death, marriage, death, loyalty, death and tragedy follows…
The Web of Death is a fanciful wuxia film with shades of horror, complicated and over the top, both fun and tragic in its narrative developments. It is not the most action-packed of the genre, but it is nonetheless often thrilling and enthralling. The occasional unintentional giggle is instigated—particularly the bit about an obvious girl dressed as a boy that no one notices is a girl and whenever the spider goes into action—but the film never bores, and it has far more highlights than low points. The camera work is often startlingly fluid and stylized (and, once or twice, amazingly unfocused), as are some of the finer set pieces (such as the Indiana Jones like episode in the Five Venom Tomb), and while some out there say the film is not the best the Golden Age of Flying Chinese sock-em chop-em costume “dramas”, it is nonetheless one of the better ones easily available.
The Web of Death gets a hearty recommendation from us as yet another fine film to waste your life watching.