From Motivational Shrieker, Delirium Books Return to Mark's website
Introductory note from the translator: Last year, while vacationing
in Europe, I visited film critic, fashion designer, and international
trend-setter Minty Belasco, who was living in an apartment above a Goth
nightclub in Munich. Minty is tall, thin, pale, and extensively tattooed.
His age is anyone's guess. He is the author of seventeen books on a variety
of subjects, including menswear, ancient Egyptian mummification rituals,
bonsai trees, and his favorite topic of all, movies -- the cheaper and
trashier, the better.
His books have been published in Russia, Poland, France, India and Japan.
But not one has been published in the United States, because as Minty
said, "Most Americans don't want to know what I think. Besides, that's
where Momsy and Daddy live, and I'm not talking to them."
Minty's parents, Momsy and Daddy, are in fact multimillionaires Regina
and Cuthbert Belasco, owners of Belasco Beer, Belasco Premium Cigarettes,
Belasco Fried Chicken, and Belasco Funeral Homes.
Minty can write and speak in thirty-five different languages, but these
days he only writes in Croatian. He told me, "My new massage therapist
speaks Croatian and I'm just mad about that tongue -- that language, I
mean."
The article below, written by Minty, appeared in a Croatian film magazine
with a name that translates to Eye Feces. Fortunately, I know several
languages myself, so Minty said that if I wanted to go to the bother of
translating the article, he would give me his permission to sell it to
an American editor, making it his first publication in this country.
On behalf of America, I thank you, Minty. Some of us really do care what
you think.
- - -
Minty Belasco's Top Ten Most Hideous And/Or Splendid Movies
Of All Time
No. 10 And Stinkingly Hideous:
I Took Piano Lessons From A Zombie (1939)
Lots of folks consider this a horror classic, but I think it's a steaming
bucket of goat dung. Glubb the undead piano teacher strikes the keys at
random while staring off into space. Are we to assume that only a mindless
zombie would play the piano that way? That's just how avant-garde pianist
Feng Pao Goldstein, a visionary, a genius, used to tickle the ivories.
I once went to one of his concerts, and I loved listening to Feng as he
played the baby grand in the middle of that cattle-yard. You see, even
the locations of his concerts had to be avant-garde. He was on life support
for five months after the stampede.
- - -
No. 9 And Hideously Vile:
The Amnestyville Horridness Part XVII: Better Latte Than Never (1997)
The movie that started this series, "The Amnestyville Horridness"
(1979), was pretty much a supernatural kitchen-sink drama about a family
trying to adjust to a new house and all its nutty little quirks: creaky
floorboards, drafty hallways, faucets squirting pus and tentacles flailing
out of the refrigerator. It wasn't great, but it had interesting main
characters and some nice creepy moments, with a satisfying ending that
still left the door open for a sequel. Well, so far no one's been able
to shut that damned door.
In the first five sequels, the house changed ownership time and time again,
before the local priest wised up and burned it down in No. 6. But that
didn't end the Amnestyville curse. In this one, No. 17, a haunted coffee-maker
from the evil house is given to a perky, innocent family in a suburb of
Chicago. Soon their happy home is crawling with undead spirits, all hopped
up on caffeine. The machine is never shown making latte, so the title
is just a cutesy witticism. Actually, that's the only clever thing about
this plodding exercise in plot recycling. Elements from the previous sixteen
movies are tossed in like wild greens in a salad from Hell. To be fair,
the coffee-maker angle does deliver one nice chill -- like when we find
out that the couple's breakfast coffee was brewed from the cremated remains
of another couple that died in sequel No. 16.
There's one thing I can't understand about haunted house movies. Why don't
the people just buy another house? Houses can't cost that much -- Daddy
had dozens of them. He even had one he never told Momsy about -- that
was where he kept his lover Pasha. I can't remember if Pasha was male
or female ... probably a he/she. Daddy always had trouble making up his
mind.
- - -
No. 8 And Ridiculously Hideous:
The Legend Of Flaming Arrow (1993)
This big-screen, mainstream release was about five-thousand times worse
than most of the cult films and shoestring-budget drive-in oldies I usually
watch. Classically trained actors think they can play anything from baby
chicks to Siamese twins. Fine-boned blond British actor Basil Cheltenham
has played Hamlet and Romeo, but sorry, he is simply out of his league
as Indian warrior Flaming Arrow.
This was supposed to be a very intense film, and a bit of a dark fantasy,
with Flaming Arrow going on spirit quests in his own head and talking
with bear gods and eagle ghosts and other celestial Nature types, but
the whole effect is ruined by Cheltenham's presence. They dyed his hair
black and gave him brown contacts and slathered him with shoe polish to
darken him up, but under all that one can tell he's still just a snooty
pretty-boy. My nanny Helga raised me right: I simply will not tolerate
pretense.
- - -
No. 7, Hideous Corporate
Propaganda: Let's Learn More About Soybeans! (1993)
This wasn't ever a theatrical release. It's a trade-show videotape I watched
while spending the weekend at my friend Roger's beach house. Roger's family
is even richer than mine, if that's possible. His brother sells soybeans
and soybean-related products, whatever those are. The brother had left
the tape behind so Roger could learn more about the world of soybeans
and perhaps want to get involved in it, but Roger is doing quite well
as a butt model. That's his rear in all those Calvin Klein underwear ads.
This wretched little trade-show video is narrated by some fat, awkward
soybean executive with a triple chin and sideburns. It seems that soybeans
can be made into anything -- cattle feed, protein shakes, plastic, medicine,
cars, buildings, you name it. Roger and I got drunk on rum-and-cokes and
made fun of the tape from beginning to end.
It's funny, though. I look around at things now and think: Is this made
out of soybeans? Is that made out of soybeans? Exactly how much of my
world is made out of soybeans? Ten percent? Fifteen? Fifty? More? The
mind boggles. For all I know, I might be surrounded by the damned things.
So hurray for soybeans, I guess.
- - -
No. 6 And Hideously Nauseating:
Sidewinder Sally (1954)
Usually I hate big, lush Hollywood musicals, especially ones set in the
Old West -- crusty geriatric campfire cooks and square-jawed ranch-hands
bursting into song over sunsets, sycamore trees and newborn calves staggering
toward their loving moo-cow mommies. Yes, usually I hate them, but there's
something I hate even more: big, lush Old West Hollywood musicals starring
Marla Malone.
Saccharine-sweet girl-next-door leading lady Marla stars as Sidewinder
Sally, a scruffy Nebraska tomgirl who cleans up right purty. In fact,
she's gosh-darned glamorous, with straight white teeth, shining golden
hair and perfect skin in a wild-and-wooly frontier without toothpaste,
shampoo or astringent.
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Minty, don't you usually
critique movies with monsters and killers and aliens in them? Sidewinder
Sally is just some cornfed cowboy chick." To which I reply: "Whole
generations of women grew up feeling woefully inadequate because they
weren't as perfect, as winsome, as talented, as zit-free as Marla Malone.
Men loved her, but they all knew they she was too good for them. Why would
the flawless Marla want some loser with a potbelly, a bald spot, halitosis
and a dead-end job? So doesn't all that make Marla a bit of a monster,
making male and female victims alike feel like crap, spreading a loathsome
epidemic of low self-esteem?" If that ain't a monster, I don't know
what is.
It is amusing, though, to see Marla strutting around in buckskin pants,
shooting rifles and punching varmints. Sidewinder Sally's more of a man
than my weak-chinned, drunken Daddy ever was.
- - -
No. 5 And Directed By A
Hideous Moron: Baby Schnookums Of Arabia (1998)
I wasn't sure what to make of this one... I'm not much of a history buff,
but I'm vaguely aware of the existence of some soldier or diplomat or
whatnot named Lawrence of Arabia, who used to have real-life intrigues
somewhere in the Middle East. Arabia, I imagine. But why make a kid's
movie -- a feature-length cartoon with an orchestral score and everything
-- about his baby brother? And by baby, we're talking diaper, pacifier,
the works. Baby Schnookums toddles off into the desert to have hee-haw-larious
adventures with asps and mummies and guys with swords. He eventually joins
up with a talking flying carpet named Ruggles and a baby camel named Humphrey.
Momsy used to ride camels on her safaris. Elephants, too. Momsy was quite
the hunter. I once went with her on one of her hunting trips and she bagged
three lions and some kind of enormous pig. She'd hunted in that part of
Africa before -- the local guides call her Insane Death Goddess.'
But back to the movie. All the symbols on the walls in the pyramid scenes
were wrong. I know a bit about hieroglyphics, and the curse above the
entrance of the tomb in the movie was supposed to say: HE WHO ENTERS THIS
TOMB MUST PAY THE TERRIBLE PRICE. But actually it said: BEETLE BIRD BEETLE,
GUY-POINTING-LEFT, BIRD BIRD, BEWARE OF CROCODILES, BEETLE BEETLE BIRD,
PHARAOH STINKS.
- - -
No. 4, Hideous And
Slightly Splendid: Don't Look In The Crawlspace (1972)
Why do some houses even have crawlspaces? Like any normal kid, I grew
up in a lovely big mansion, with occasional trips to the summer house,
and neither of those places had any dark old smelly crawlspaces, as far
as I know. People were meant to live in airy, palacial surroundings, not
stuffy burrows. To my notion, a house without pillars just isn't a house.
It's a shack. I have no idea why some people live in trailers. A house
on wheels? That's just wrong. I refuse to set foot in a house on wheels.
It could roll off a cliff or something. The house in this movie doesn't
have wheels, but it does have cannibals living in its dark, wet hidey-holes.
And they cook their victims in a cave below the house -- they don't just
eat them raw. So they do have some class, though they don't bother with
a recipe. Ideally, human flesh should be served dotted with cloves, slow-roasted
and generously brushed with either a ginger glaze or plum sauce. Or so I hear.
- - -
No. 3, Equally Hideous And Splendid:
Living Dead In The Horror Museum of Wax (1988)
I found this Franco-Italian horror opus altogether intriguing. True, they
set it in a fictional town -- Hellwich, which sounds like a terrible sandwich
-- in Massachusetts, and it was painfully clear that the writers and director
had never been to America, let alone New England. Nights in Massachusetts
don't echo with the chatter of monkeys and the snarls of lions. Men in
bars don't cry out, "More ale, serving wench!" But still, the
movie makes up for those weensy flubs by being wonderfully energetic and
creepy. The zombies prowl the town by night, then just before dawn, they
go back into the museum, dip themselves in a vat of molten wax, and then
stumble to their displays and harden into encased figures to be on show
during the day. Then at the end of the day, they break out of their wax
and the hunchbacked museum janitor cleans up all the broken wax and throws
the chunks back into the vat.
One thing I don't understand is this: molten wax is pretty hot, right?
And the zombies immerse themselves in it. Wouldn't the zombies be cooked
by now? But then, maybe evil supernatural creatures are more heat-resistant.
They're built to endure the flames of Hell -- so what's a little molten wax?
- - -
No. 2, Hideous With Lots
Of Prehistoric Splendor: Dracula, 10,000 B.C. (1964)
A vampire caveman! It sounds like a stupid idea, but I loved it. Plus,
the part of Drah-Ku-Lah is played by Tony Carpelli, a very handsome Italian
actor with just a touch of a lazy eye, and I've always thought there was
something really sexy about a lazy eye. Years and years ago, my sister
Taffy had a boyfriend with a lazy eye. He was German, a foreign exchange
student named Klaus, and he and I used to spend entire afternoons taking
nature walks in the timber behind the summer house. Well, we told people
they were nature walks. Last I heard, Klaus became a spy, but not a very
good one, because he was caught and he's in a Siberian prison now.
Cave-vampire Drah-Ku-Lah terrorizes a bunch of Neanderthals and it's up
to Von-Hel-Sing, the really smart caveman who's a little higher on the
evolutionary scale, to save the day. The dinosaurs look pretty fake, and
I really don't think dinosaurs and cavemen lived at the same time, but
still, you really can't have a caveman movie without a few dinosaurs.
I mean, the prehistoric world without dinosaurs would be pretty boring.
Just a bunch of cavemen fighting pigs and monkeys and big rats. Who wants
to see that? My favorite part is when Drah-Ku-Lah bites the pterodactyl
and then the pterodactyl turns into a vampire. A few minutes later, it
flies into a big tree and a branch spears it through the heart, so it
doesn't have time to turn any of the other dinosaurs into vampires. I
wonder how Klaus is doing in Siberia? I'd send him a sweater, but that
would just make the other prisoners jealous.
- - -
No. 1, Tremendously Hideous
And Deliciously Splendid: Horror In Der Haus (2003)
This direct-to-video horror movie is a complete mish-mash. A sixtyish
voodoo queen living in a ghetto befriends an extremely old German guy
living by himself in a big spooky house surrounded by an electrified fence.
In the house is a locked door with the metal letters K.K. nailed to it,
and the doorknob always has an icicle hanging from it. That may seem like
an especially odd detail, but trust me, it works into the plot eventually.
The old guy turns out to be a mad Nazi scientist doing experiments in
longevity, and he's about a hundred and twenty years old. He has a lock
of Hitler's hair in a little jar, and he keeps trying to clone it into
a full-grown Adolf, but the hair-guck that Hitler used had corrupted the
DNA. So he tricks the voodoo queen into turning the hair into the person
it used to be, telling her that it was a precious lock from his dear departed
wife. The voodoo queen takes pity, whips out her big book of spells and
works some magic on that evil snip of hair.
So, Adolf Hitler is born again, and not just as a baby -- he's all grown
up, moustache and all, and speaking English with a thick German accent,
so I guess the voodoo queen must have thrown in a linguistic spell. From
this point on, the movie just gets more and more ridiculous. Eventually
Hitler becomes a rapper, Big H, who sets his rants to a hip-hop beat.
Did Hitler have any sort of musical talent? I guess the voodoo queen threw
in a music spell, too. Big H makes everybody in the hood think he's their
friend, but needless to say, that's all one big lie. He steals the voodoo
queen's book of spells and raises all his old Nazi buddies from Hell,
and soon they're goose-stepping through the streets, up to all their old
nastiness again.
Then the director tries to play a tune on our heart-strings. By this time,
the elderly Nazi has fallen in love with the voodoo queen. He sees the
error of his ways, so he decides to become a good guy and stop reborn
Hitler. In a movie this stupid, anything can happen, and while I don't
want to give away the ending, I will tell you that the K.K. on that door
stands for Kris Kringle -- yes, even jolly old Santa Claus gets caught
up in the whole confusing, catastrophic brouhaha. This movie is like a
massive ten-car accident: it's not pretty, but you really do need to have
a peek, just to see how sickening it was.
The world is full of great movies, good movies, mediocre movies and poorly
made movies. But truly bad movies are like two-headed calves: rare, strange,
loathsome and miraculous. So visit your local video store, rent some of
these tapes and feast your eyes upon their hideous splendor. If you are
like me, I am sure they will make you vomit with rapture.
- End -
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