The White Buffalo (USA, 1977)

Also known as Hunt to Kill, at least when it was screened on TV in the US; it took forever for the film to be released on video/DVD, whereupon it regained its original title. Interestingly enough, although both director J. Lee Thompson (1 Aug 1914 – 30 Aug 2002) and star Charles Bronson (3 Nov 1921 – 30 Aug 2003), made numerous films after this one, including many together, The White Buffalo was the last "traditional" Western that either ever made despite a common Western-heavy history. The movie is based on a novel of the same name by screenwriter/director/author Richard Sale (17 Dec 1911 – 4 Mar 1993), who also wrote the screenplay. His most noticeable prior projects are probably the novel upon which the tacky movie The Oscar (1966 / opening scene, with studmuffin Stephan Boyd) is based, and the screenplay to the Frank Sinatra-as-a-psycho film, Suddenly (1954 / trailer).

Trailer to
The White Buffalo:

The White Buffalo was the middle project of the trio of killer-animal flicks that producer by Dino De Laurentiis (8 Aug 1919 – 10 Nov 2010) made in the shadow of the success of Spielberg's Jaws (1975 / trailer), following the miserable King Kong (1976 / trailer — high point of the film: Jessica Lang's boobs) and preceding the enjoyably tacky Orca (1977 / trailer). Unlike those two films, however, The White Buffalo was not a hit and remains a kind of ignored sibling, though it has gained a bit more second-hand respect since becoming known as a fave of the Tarantino.

Inexplicably, despite how terrible the Oscar-winning animatronics of King Kong were, producer De Laurentiis rehired the man responsible, Carlo Rambaldi (15 Sept 1925 – 10 Aug 2012), for this film. During his career, Rambaldi did do some truly amazing work — see Fulci's Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971 / trailer), which features such realistic effects that the director, Fulci, almost went to jail for animal cruelty — but The White Buffalo is not necessarily Rambaldi's best work. As much as the white buffalo pants and steams, the big critter always looks stuffed; in close-ups, it looks like an angry goat; and when shown charging, it is almost impossible to overlook the tracks on the ground needed to make it move most fakefully (is that a word?) forward.

One must assume that the powers-that-be behind the film sort of realized that The White Buffalo might not be something to write home about, as it was never screened in advance for critics. Once released, it also didn't exactly reap in the bucks or garner that much praise. And, indeed, it is a deeply flawed movie, one that can hardly be described as "good". But as often the case with the ignored or less-than-perfect sibling, there's more to enjoy than one might expect. In general, it might veer more often towards the bad than the good, but there are some impressive high points and oddities about the slightly episodic fantasy horror western that makes The White Buffalo an intriguing watch. Go in expecting nothing, you might even find it enjoyable.

One thing we really enjoyed — although it does tend to take you out of the flow of the narrative — is the parade of familiar and cult faces, credited or not. The core cast is the triangle of Bronson as Wild Bill Hickok, Jack Warden (18 Sept 1920 – 19 July 2006) as Charlie Zane, and Will Simpson (27 Sept 1933 – 3 June 1987) as Crazy Horse. But in between, you have brief but notable appearances by an array of familiar faces who show up for a minute to ten and then are never seen again: Slim Pickens (26 June 1919 – 8 Dec 1983, of Dr Strangelove  [1964 / trailer], The Howling [1981 / trailer] and more), the great John Carradine (5 Feb 1906 – 27 Nov 1988, of Shock Waves [1977], The Monster Club [1981], House of Frankenstein [1944], Vampire Hookers [1978] and so much more), Stuart Whitman (1 Feb 1928 – 16 Mar 2020, of the infamous Night of the Lepus [1972 / trailer], Demonoid [1981 / trailer], Guyana: Cult of the Damned [1979 / trailer], The Girl in Black Stockings [1957] and so much more), the unforgettable face that is the unknown David Roya (of Billy Jack [1971 / trailer] and The Love Statue [1965, with Gigi Darlene]), the always good Ed Lauter (30 Oct 1938 – 16 Oct 2013, of The Prometheus Project [2010]), the Republican studmuffin of yesteryear that was Clint Walker (30 May 1927 – 21 May 2018, see Dick Miller Part II and/or Part IX), the always overlooked Martin Cove (of Seven Mummies [2006] and Soft Target [2006]) and — last but hardly least — Kim Novak (of Tales that Witness Madness [1973 / trailer] and Bell, Book and Candle [1958 / eyes below]).

Yep, the faces rip you out of the narrative, but they generally make their appearances short and sweet and all are rather convincing, with the possible exception of Novak, who has the thankless and rather pointless role of an ex-flame of Bill's, Poker Jenny Schermerhorn. Thankless in that she really adds nothing to the story (other than possibly being an example of Wild Bill seeking closure with his past); her character, after all the build-up to her appearance, completely disappears after about five to ten minutes screen time.

Filmed at a time when the traditional American Western was making its last gasps, the mise en scene of The White Buffalo owes more to the spaghetti western than the traditional American westerns of clean-shaven and clothed wanna-be John Waynes. And for that, it is all the stronger. True, the interior scenes often look a bit too perfect to be realistic, and some of the exterior scenes (like whenever the buffalo shows up) look way too sound stage, but for that the western towns are not spic-and-span, the heroes are flawed, the outfits are great (far beyond just Wild Bill's sunglasses, which were given an obvious callback in Tarantino's entertaining if over-rated Once Upon a Time in the West there Was Django Unchained [2012 / trailer]), and some of the exterior scenes are breathtakingly beautiful. Indeed, the shootout where Wild Bill and a reluctant Charlie Zane assist Crazy Horse by joining his shootout against some enemy Injuns is set amidst a wonderfully landscape that once again testifies to the epic expanse that was once the wild west. (To what extent we tend to like to destroy nature, often pointlessly, is obliquely inferred by the mountains of bison bones piled up outside of Cheyenne.)

The White Buffalo, narratively, is an odd fish. Director J. Lee Thompson (the man behind the original Cape Fear [1962 / trailer] and the slasher oddity Happy Birthday to Me [1981 / trailer]) was prone to describe the flick as "Moby Dick of the west", a reference that might apply to Crazy Horse, who is hunting the titular beast both to revenge its killing of his daughter and to ensure that her soul can rest, and thus has a personal score to settle, but the reference is less applicable to Wild Bill. That legendary hero is introduced on a train going west, where he awakens guns a-blazing from a nightmare — a premonition, we learn later — of the white beast a-charging. We soon learn in a voiceover from a less-than-tertiary character, the train conductor Amos Bixby (an unrecognizable Douglas Fowley [30 May 1911 – 21 May 1998] of Cat-Women of the Moon [1953 / trailer], Flaxy Martin [1949] and Scared to Death [1947]), that Wild Bill has "a strange bee in his bonnet, a deadly dream that was eating out his soul. A nightmare that he had to hunt down and face up to before it turned him into a raving maniac." The why of his nightmares is never explained, they just are, and he is basically a-traveling in pursuit of something he is unsure is even real. He tries to hide his identity by calling himself "James Otis", a move that proves highly ineffectual, and thus the first half of the film is filled mostly with a number of almost generic western scenes, including two barroom shootouts and a lightly tweaked stagecoach ride. It is only after Wild Bill meets his old pal Charlie Zane and learns that the White Buffalo truly does exist that the movie really become about the hunt for the beast and, likewise, begin to obliquely tango with its nominal theme of ingrained racism. (Basically: Crazy Horse hates white people, Wild Bill hates "red n*****s", but the respect each gains for the other after they join forces makes them see beyond their hate.)

Perhaps the biggest flaw in the movie, aside from Wild Bill's questionable motivation of chasing a nightmare and all the laughable scenes involving the white buffalo (some of which are used more than once at different points in the movie), is that narrative of The White Buffalo, like this review, meanders all over the place. Way too much time is spent on the journey, with the final showdown with the buffalo coming across almost as a poorly staged afterthought. Most of the diversions along the path of the narrative might be interesting in their own way, but they also end up giving the movie a sense of disjointedness and lack of direction. And while the towns and costumes look good, whenever the white buffalo comes a-charging or is a-seen or the action moves to an obvious soundstage-set exterior, the movie suddenly looks oddly cheap and fly-by-night.

And the overall end result? A failure, perhaps, but an interesting one. Interesting enough that despite all its flaws, The White Buffalo remains a watchable film worth searching out. Watch it with the kids.

Short Film: The Frozen North (USA 1922)

"I've made a mistake... This isn't my house or my wife."

 

It's only taken us twelve years to finally get around to presenting a short by one of the greatest film comedians of all time, Buster [Joseph Frank] Keaton (4 Oct 1895 – 1 Feb 1966). Astute film fans, however, may have noticed that this blog has long featured a GIF from his film Steamboat Bill Jr (1928 / film) in the upper right of our page.

The Great Stone Face, as he is also known, made numerous comic masterpieces in his life that can now easily be found online. His films from the '20s are generally considered his best, and indeed they remain visual and comic treats to this day (although one does have to occasionally look past some questionable racial and/or political attitudes). The Frozen North is one of his less-remembered projects, and is generally not considered one of his best. But then, it is perhaps also one of his meanest – his character, who in the course of the film cold-bloodedly commits murder and simply walks away, is even simply known as "The Bad Man". 

The movie is a bit of cinematic trolling: angered by statements made by cowboy star William S. Hart (6 Dec 1864 – 23 Jun 1946) against Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle (24 Mar 1887 – 29 Jun 1933) regarding the then-current Virginia Rappe (7 Jul 1895 – 9 Sept 1921) scandal, Keaton made this Western spoof as an insult to the reputed wife-beating Western star. (Later, after he saw the film himself, Hart refused to speak to Keaton for years.) 

Arbuckle, it seems, was one of Keaton's best friends, indeed, Buster's career, which began in 1917, was greatly assisted by Arbuckle: "A chance meeting with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle changed his life forever. Arbuckle had been making movie shorts with Mack Sennett and was just starting at Joseph Schenck's studio. He asked Buster to do a scene with him in The Butcher Boy (1917 / film). Buster agreed and a lifelong friendship began. Buster worked with Arbuckle until 1919, when in September of that year he began making his own films. [Find a Grave]" Keaton was one of the few Hollywood stars that publically came to Arbuckle's defense both during and after the comedian's arrest, court cases and final acquittal. 

"The Frozen North is [...] co-directed by frequent Keaton collaborator Edward. F. Cline (4 Nov 1891 – 22 May 1961). It is another of Keaton's venture into informal surrealism. Unfortunately, it is not an entirely successful effort, which may be due, in part, to its missing three minutes of footage. [...] The humor in Frozen North is atypical, with Keaton at his blackest, bleakest, and strangest. [366 Weird Movies]" And we here at a wasted life love it.

The music, of course, is not original, but at least it works... 

The Frozen North:

Peelers (Canada, 2016)

(Spoilers.) A gore-heavy zombie flick that treads some of the same grounds as Zombie Strippers (2008 / trailer) but with less "star power", less kitsch and far less panache. But for that, this Canadian indi production definitely embraces its exploitation roots and nature with greater gusto and doesn't shy away from wallowing in extremes and at times almost transgressive tastelessness to get a juggler-vein-aimed laugh. The birth scene late in the movie, with its amalgamation of gore, poignancy and ridiculousness, is perhaps the apex of the movie's transgressively funny scenes, but the credit sequence is likewise noteworthy in its total embracement of the exploitative: seldom have we seen credits proffered in a sequence that celebrates the unadulterated, uncovered beauty of hugely bulbous and immobile countertits as in the credit sequence of Peelers. (True silicone fans might be disappointed to learn, however, that the kardashian basketballs never show up anywhere in the flick itself; those in the movie appear all to be 100% natural.... Possible exception: augmented pokies?)

Trailer to

Peelers:

Despite what one might think, Peelers takes its name not from any horror-porn style peeling of skin, but from the basic idea of gals peeling off outfits while on stage. The film includes a few scenes of such, one of which cannot help but bring the video to Miley Cyrus's song BB Talk to mind until it turns all water sports, another that will definitely appeal to pokies fans, and one that appears inspired by the legendary Honeysuckle Divine (or, possibly, a specific scene in Erotic Nights of the Living Dead [1980]). None of the three performers, Baby Elaine (Nikki Wallin of Android Night Punch [2014 / full movie] and Camp Death III in 2D [2018 / trailer]) or the other ones whose name we could not figure out, ride off into the sunset — indeed, as at least one tagline used for the movie puts it, "You May Not Get The Happy Ending You Were Looking For."

Miley Cyrus's 

BB Talk (2015):

Peelers plays out over the closing night of Tittyballs, a small-town strip club run — and just sold — by the tough but responsible Blue Jean (played very well by the highly attractive Wren Walker of The Curse of Willow Song [2020 / trailer]), a strong but emotionally damaged woman obviously respected by her staff, if not even unrequitedly loved by her studmuffin doorman-with-a-heart Remy (Caz Odin Darko, a low-brow actor attractive and studly enough that it makes total sense that he has acted in a couple of David DeCoteau film, namely Evil Exhumed [2016 / trailer] and Killer Bash [2014 / trailer]). A group of local coal miners show up to celebrate the discovery of oil — as if it would make them rich instead of just their boss — but there is more to the black gold than the Mexican quintet know. Before they can eat a salad or drink a second tequila, they start spewing black guck and turn into infectious, unstoppable killer zombies.

In other words, the basic plotline of an untold number of zombie movies, just this time it is bubbling crude (oil that is, black gold, Texas tea) that carries the easy-to-transfer contagion.

Written by Lisa DeVita, who shows up to play a cop whose head goes splat, and director Sevé Schelenz, Peelers is a relatively well-made sophomore directorial project — Skew (2011 / trailer) being his first feature-length project — with some interesting visual flourishes and a definite love of gore and fluids. Nevertheless, the movie ends up seeming a lot longer than its 1:35 min running time. The first third of the flick, which includes way too much character development, could have easily been condensed or trimmed and, in turn, the opening hospital scene seems oddly tagged on and out of place, as it doesn't seem to truly relate to the rest of the strip-club set movie. A shorter running time would have probably been an improvement, although one must also give credit that the film doesn't really show its low-budget origins at its seams.

Once Peelers moves to the strip club, Schelenz suddenly whets the viewers' expectations by incorporating a relatively long (and probably technically difficult) moving camera shot in which he introduces a variety of key, secondary and tertiary characters. There is probably no other shot in the movie as seductive as this one, though he does manage some nice framing and edits and disgusting projectile puking and gruesome deaths later on. Unluckily, at least in the version we watched, many scenes are excessively dark, which makes sense seeing that they play out in a dimly lit club that later loses its electricity, but as a result the events are bit difficult to follow as they happen. And, really, who came up with the idiotic concept of having characters move and hide dead bodies for no real logical reason — other than to have an added way to have the infection spread.

The spewing fluids and gore, when seen, are impressive, while the acting spans from good (Wren Walker and the strippers) to passable (Caz Odin Darko and Cameron Dent, who plays the bartender) to fun (Jason Asuncion, of Killers in the Forrest [2012 / trailer], seen as the choleric kitchen cook) to downright unprofessional (Madison J. Loos, of The Tooth Fairy [2006 / trailer], as Logan, the poorly cast tertiary lead hero).

The one plot flaw that annoyed us is also the film's signature element: the spewing black fluids. While fun to watch and totally gross and a nice change to spewing red, the fluids projectile in such abundance that basically no one in the movie should be able to avoid simple skin contact with it, but such contact also guarantees infection. Thus, to enjoy the movie one has to accept that yes, some future fodder simply don't get promptly infected so that Peelers can have some prospective (and eventual) bodycount.

On the whole, Peelers is entertaining enough for what it is, particularly since it does have the occasional flash of brilliance (i.e., the opening credits, the birthing scene, the puking, the closing scene). In the end, however, it is above all little more than a solid (if slow-starting) zombie splatter flick with a flawed script that never really transcends its genre. As such, it is worth watching but, unless you're a fan of the genre, not really worth searching out. (If you're a fan, go for it.)

The Corpse Vanishes (USA, 1942)

 

"Why do you beat my son so hard?"

Fagah (Minerva Urecal)

"Because he's at best an animal, and some day I shall have to destroy him."

Dr. Lorenz (Bela Lugosi)

"My poor son!... Why was he ever born?"

Fagah

 

In retrospect, by 1942, eleven years after his career-defining role in Tod Browning's rather static Dracula (1931 / trailer), it had long become pretty clear that Bela Lugosi (20 Oct 1882 – 16 Aug 1956) would never be an A-lining star. True, in 1939, eight years after Dracula  (and seven after White Zombie [1932 / trailer] and Island of Lost Souls [1932]), he was billed fourth in what was perhaps his most "respectable" English-language project, the Greta Garbo vehicle Ninotchka (1939 / trailer), but by three years later he was once again neck deep in his normal, rent-paying fare: B-films and second-feature filler like this movie here. 

Trailer to

The Corpse Vanishes:

The Corpse Vanishes, the second movie Lugosi was to make with everyone's favorite vertically-challenged genre film character actor Angelo Rossitto (see Scared to Death [1947]), is the third — possibly fourth, as sources vary — in a series of nine films Lugosi made for Poverty Row's Monogram Pictures, produced by the legendary Sam Katzman (7 July 1901 – 4 Aug 1973; producer of The Giant Claw [1957], amongst many films), that have become infamous as the "Monogram Nine".*

* "Between 1941 and 1944, Bela Lugosi starred in a series of low-budget films released by Monogram Pictures. To many viewers at the time and during the decades that followed, the 'Monogram Nine' were overacted and underproduced, illogical and incoherent. But their increasing age has recast such condemnations into appropriate praise: in the 21st century, they seem so different not only from modern cinema, but also from Classical Hollywood, enough so as to make the aforementioned deficits into advantages. The entries in the Monogram Nine are bizarre and strange, populated by crazy, larger-than-life characters who exist in wacky, alternative worlds. In nine films, the improbable chases the impossible. [Rhodes & Guffey]"

The Corpse Vanishes is perhaps the pinnacle of everything that makes the Monogram Nine so infamous. Cheaply made, poorly directed and illogically scripted, it literally screams "No Budget Production" and shines as an explanation for why its Oklahoma-born director, Wallace Fox (9 Mar 1895 – 30 June 1958), who directed 84 films between 1927 and 1953, has been so utterly forgotten: the man had absolutely no noticeable directorial talent. (It might sound like a joke, but one of his best films is probably the sixth and last Inner Sanctum Mystery, terrifyingly entitled The Pillow of Death [1945 / trailer].)

But to simply dismiss The Corpse Vanishes as a threadbare Lugosi vehicle that pulls out a cheap version of every cliché ever found in any other Lugosi film and barely manages to string them together to make a less-than-coherent and extremely ridiculous plot actually does the movie great disfavor. For one, no matter how bad a Lugosi film might be — see, for example, Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla (1952) — the basic fact is that age has made all of his films enjoyable in one way or another, if not simply as a notable and generally enjoyable bad-movie experience. (Admittedly, with some films, sometimes the memory of the viewing becomes fonder with age. Re.: Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla.) And for another, well, The Corpse Vanishes is truly a surreal experience, a film not even as bad as it is simply and thoroughly ridiculously incoherent and non-sequiturial in narrative, reasoning and dialogue. As scripted by Hawaii-born Harvey Gates (19 Jan 1889 – 4 Nov 1948), from an idea/story definitely not thought through by an apparently drug-addled Sam Robins (21 Oct 1910 – 2 Sept 1995) & Garald Schnitzer (27 Mar 1917 – 2016), there is nothing about The Corpse Vanishes that indicates anybody possibly took the project seriously as a horror film, Poverty Row or not.

 

"I've been up all night with dead people."

Patricia Hunter (Luana Walters)

 

Let's start with the basic plot: Lugosi plays the typically mad Dr. George Lorenz, who uses a specially bred orchid to induce a comatose, death-like state on brides, the "bodies" of which he then steals so as to remove glandular fluids from the young virgins — after all, all brides are still virgins, as we all know — that he subsequently injects in his 80-odd-year old wife, Countess Lorenz (Elizabeth Russell [2 Aug 1919 – 4 May 2002] of, among others, Cat People [1942 / trailer], Hitler's Madman [1943 / trailer], The Curse of the Cat People [1944 / trailer], The Uninvited [1944 / trailer], Weird Woman [1944 / trailer] and more), so as to restore her youthful beauty. Spunky journalist Patricia Hunter (Luana Walters [22 Jul 1912-19 May 1963], cheesecake photo below not from the film, of the reefer-mad flick Assassin of Youth [1938 / trailer / full film] and the syphilis-warning that is No Greater Sin [1941 / full film]**), who actually seems happy when she witnesses the "death" of the first bride (What a career-making opportunity!), follows the clues to the Lorenz house. There, she meets the small town doctor Dr Foster (Tris Coffin [13 Aug 1909 – 26 Mar 1990] of Man with Two Lives [1942 / full movie], The Brute Man [1946 / fan trailer], Creature with the Atom Brain [1955 / trailer], Ma Barker's Killer Brood [1960 / full film], The Crawling Hand [1963 / trailer], Night Call Nurses [1972, see Dick Miller Part III] and more) experiences all sorts of "scary" things — including the murder of one of Lorenz's henchmen,  Angel (Frank Moran [18 Marc 1887 – 14 Dec 1967] of Lady of Burlesque [1943 / Take It Off the E String] and Return of the Ape Man [1944 / full film]) and the discovery of a secret lab with all the "dead" brides. Needless to say, she skedaddles the next morning. With the help of her boss Keenan (Kenneth Harlan [26 July 1895-6 Mar 1967] of The Walking Dead [1936 / trailer] and The Penalty [1920 / full film], who in real life married a grand total of nine times), Patricia and her now-beau Dr Foster set up a fake marriage to trap Lorenz...

** "By 1942, Luana Walters's career had all but dissipated and the abrupt death of her actor/husband Max Hoffman Jr. in 1945 at age 42 proved too much for her. She subsequently turned to drink and despair. [...] Other than a few obscure parts here and there in the 50s [her last roles were background filler in the anti-classics The She-Creature (1956 / trailer) and Girls in Prison (1956 / trailer)], she was little seen although she remained in the Los Angeles area for the remainder of her life. On May 19, 1963, at the age of 50, she became another tragic, barely-reported Hollywood statistic when she died from the effects of her alcoholism. [imdb]" Trivia: Walters was the first actress to portray Superman's biological mother, Lara, on screen, in Superman Comes to Earth, the first chapter of the 1948 Superman movie serial starring Kirk Alyn (8 Oct 1910 – 14 Mar 1999) as Superman. Of greater interest, perhaps, is her starring role as Elinor Gordon in the unfortunately lost 1934 exploiter The Third Sex, aka Children of Loneliness and The Un-natural Sin, a film of historical importance in LGBTQ film studies once advertised as "The 'Queerest' Picture Ever Made". Plot: "Elinor Gordon, who was frightened sexually by a man while an infant, confides in her psychoanalyst (Wayne Lamont) that she is contemplating yielding to the advances of her overly attentive and affectionate female roommate, Bobby Allen (Jean Carmen). The psychoanalyst advises the woman to dispossess her roommate, who works in the same law office as she, and to marry a football player. After the young woman rebuffs her roommate, she accompanies her lawyer employer, Dave Warren (Allan Jarvis), to the country home of the firm's senior partner, John Grant (John Elliott). While Elinor falls in love with Dave, the senior partner's socialite daughter, Judy (Sheila Loren), yearns for Paul (Morgan Wallace), an artist, who, unknown to her, is a homosexual. [Letterboxd]" Supposedly (but doubtfully) based on Radclyffe Hall's 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness, "one of the first serious works of fiction on the subject of homosexuality".

The plot description makes the movie sound far more logical than it is, assuming that the concept of a mad doctor conducting extremely high-profile crimes ("killing" and kidnapping the bodies of brides at their weddings) for his secret nefarious actions seems logical to you. And, of course, as no mad doctor is complete without his loyal henchmen, he has three: Fagah (the often uncredited but always active character actress Minerva Urecal [22 Sept 1894 – 26 Feb 1966]) and her two sons, Toby (Angelo Rossitto) and the unlucky Angel — all of whom Lorenz treats like shit (as in whips and even kills or leaves to die). And after it's seen, who can possibly ever forget the scene in which Angel follows Patricia around a gloomy dungeon while eating a huge turkey drumstick? And lest we forget, as Mad Scientists and their wives are apt to do, both Dr. and Countess Lorenz like to sleep in matching coffins.

 

"Why don't you try to go back to sleep? No one's going to harm you. I'm sure it was just a nightmare."

Dr. Foster (Tris Coffin)

"I think this whole place is a nightmare. Professor Lorenz and his wife were actually sleeping in coffins, I saw them!"

Patricia Hunter

"We often find it difficult to explain the peculiarities of some people."

Dr. Foster

"I guess so." 

Patricia Hunter

 

As enjoyable as the nonsensical narrative and disjointedly connected scenes are, the dialogue is truly the icing on the cake. The level of irony and humor is too high for anyone to ever think that it was even meant to be taken seriously, and often one can only wonder how everyone involved was capable of saying their lines without laughing. Indeed, the dialogue tends to make the film's comic-relief character, the photographer Sandy (Vince Barnett [4 July 1902 – 10] of Scarface [1932 / trailer], The 9th Guest [1934 / full film], Captive Wild Woman [1943 / Trailer from Hell], The Killers [1946], Crazy Mama [1975, see Dick Miller Part IV], Summer School Teachers [1975, see Dick Miller Part IV] and so much more), totally superfluous.

 

"Aww, now wait a minute. Are you trying to tell me that this Professor Lorenz is a hypnotist as well as a horticulturist?" 

Keenan (Kenneth Harlan)

 

The Corpse Vanishes is one of those films so out there, so beyond everything that can be considered "wrong" when it comes to moviemaking, that it becomes almost a template of dream logic, which elevates the movie into a realm of otherworldliness that makes the movie truly enjoyable. Here at a wasted life, we give the movie a hearty recommendation.

The full film —

The Corpse Vanishes: