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| Some reviews and observations by the
author on Jerry Warren’s klutz-cult films: Man Beast SYNOPSIS: A woman and her boyfriend trek to the Himalayas, in search for the woman's brother. They encounter a scientific expedition, which is seeking the legendary Yeti, a half-man half-beast. They eventually stumble upon the dreaded creature. *** Jerry Warren's inaugural productorial/directorial effort, Man Beast, is a paradox. It is by far Warren's most straightforward and accomplished film. It has a literate screenplay, passable acting, and some impressive mise en scene. Much of the film concerns an expedition climbing through the Himalayas in search of the "Yeti", and another expedition. Contrary to what one might expect from Mr. Warren, these scenes are rich and authentic. One wonders where these impressive scenes of travelers crawling across vast snow-covered mountains were filmed. Could this be Warren's first clever use of stock footage from another, more elaborate, production? Or is the footage original? If so, it suggests a Jerry Warren we do not recognize from later, cheapjack exploitation quickies. Several of the expedition sequences utilize a contrasty, consciously arty composition, imbuing a lovely sense of "noir" in a genre that is largely lacking in such niceties. Credit is certainly due DP Victor Fisher, but one also senses that at least a part of Warren desired to make art. There are several excellent set pieces in MAN BEAST. Most of the action takes place in intimate two-shot: two people talk in a tent; two people chat on the edge of a cliff; two people huddle in blankets and converse in front of a black void. These primitive, economical scenes which further the minimalist plot are nonetheless effective in their own right. The title creature, albeit a typical '50s man-in-shaggy suit artifact, makes quite a convincing beast-thingie, neither fish nor fowl, with a largely obscured face enhancing the being's sense of sinister enigma. The plot is essentially a dime-store love triangle, with a strong female ditching a coward for a hero, and is reminiscent of many mini-budget genre films of the day, such as Bert Gordon's Serpent Island. (One wonders if "B. Arthur Cassidy", credited with the screenplay yet boasting no other credit in the history of cinema, was one of Warren's not-infrequent pseudonyms.) The woman, Virginia Maynor (aka "Asa Maynor"), is a likable 50s pre-feminist archetype: bossy, determined, but fatally romantic. Our "hero", the ludicrously-named Rock Madison, is a sort of swishy, but passable, skid-row studley. The star of the melodrama is undoubtedly George Skaff as "Varga", a creepy mountain guide with a bizarrely made-up face full of putty and grease paint. He is the operative of the "men beasts", and acts to lure curious explorers to their deaths. Varga's over-articulated speech, and his undisguised misanthropy, make for a creepy demon, one of the most effective villains in all Warren's canon. (Skaff would turn up again in Warren's equally interesting THE INCREDIBLE PETRIFIED WORLD.) There is one terrific night sequence, as Varga leads the expedition to a bleak cliff side, where they are attacked by the Man Beast. It appears that there may be more than one creature, but the staging of this scene leaves this notion ambiguous. Still, dramatic shots of men with torches shuddering in the void, as shaggy beasts leap towards them out of the inky blackness, are extremely well-done, proving that Warren knew how to film suspense when he cared to. Some of the cutting, especially in the dramatic Yeti scenes, is brisk and clever. Although the editor was James R. Sweeney, we notice that "Editorial Services" were provided by "Ashcroft Film Co.". Is it possible we see the hand of badfilm auteur Ronnie Ashcroft (The Astounding She Monster) in this dear venture? "Script Supervisor" Bri Murphy would play the teen lead in Warren's magnum opus, Teenage Zombies. Josef Zimanich provided the generic yet evocative (stock library) music score. Oddly, the true Warrenphile often dismisses Man Beast as a fluke, atypical of Warren's later, more aggressively psychotronic output. This is a shame, as MAN BEAST shows what Warren started out to achieve. Most filmmakers, as most creative artists in general, attempt to improve their craft as they progress. And the typical artist does get better as he/she perfects his craft. In this way, Warren stands out. Jerry Warren got worse. Much worse. Perhaps the quick-buck producer in him got the better of the neophyte director, but Warren's subsequent product, endearing though it is to many, falls far from the aesthetic promise of MAN BEAST, which is why MAN BEAST is an integral part of the Warren mythos. "With her, I should be able to hedge-hop two generations!" The
Incredible Petrified World SYNOPSIS: Scientists attempt to break a sea depth record in a newly-designed diving bell. Something goes wrong, and the bell is lost. The bell has actually landed in an unknown undersea cavern. The group explores the new world, and encounters a crazy old hermit who lives there. Another diving bell is sent, and the group is rescued. *** The Incredible Petrified World, like all great bad film, is truly a film about nothing. It would be unbearable to the bad film greenhorn. To the twisted, jaded Jerry Warren fanatic however, it is pure gold. In the best Warren films, there is absolutely no action whatsoever; even when action is called for, peripheral characters talk about doing something, or about how something is about to or has been done. We rarely see anyone actually doing anything. This is a pivotal point, as Warrens' films are a cinema of ideas, of potentiality as opposed to reality, of intellectual exploration and physical enervation. Perhaps even more than in his other films, much of the dialog here is extremely scientific, one might almost say cerebral. Warren managed to put more technically dense dialog into a narrative film than any other director (although one might assume he merely pulled paragraphs out of old text books just to fill time). Still, if one follows the dialog carefully, there is a sort of inherent logic there. It is as if these films were made for heroin junkies with very high IQ's, who could sit still for hours and absorb all the technical nonsense, perhaps even make sense out of it. Thus, one might call this a "scientific" film as opposed to a science-fiction film, and one might be tempted to call Warren a scientist, not a director. Yet, ironically, TIPW is also one of Warren's most theatrical of all his original narrative films. The world depicted here is stark, primal, existential, uninviting in its very dullness, symbolized by meditative shots of angry, crashing waves rolling over the main credits. The prolog shows a (stock footage) fight to the death between a shark and an octopus, a creepy bit of educational footage that shows succinctly how survival works, how savage and brutal life is. Then we cut to well-dressed scientists eating crackers in front of a most civilized fireplace. Has society progressed? Or does jungle law still rule, even at these lofty planes? Yes, the jungle still rules; this film seems cold-hearted at its core; when scientist John Carradine discusses the tragedy of the travelers lost in a diving bell mishap, he doesn't mention the people, he only talks about salvaging the machine. Science over humanity is obviously the message here. One thing is for sure; Warren captures every moment of an adventure, no matter how dull or peripheral. Any bit of pertinent dialog is recorded for posterity. Later on, the film turns purely psychotronic as a ridiculous hermit straight out of a George Melies fantasy appears. This absurd clown is a bizarre cross between Gabby Hayes and Foster Brooks. At film's finale, the hermit attacks the wonderfully bitchy villainess Phyllis Coates, in a bit of sexual aggression that is one of the typically asexual Warren's most thrilling 180-degree leaps. Other bits of out-of-place sexual tension occur as Bob Clarke starts at least 3 scenes topless, and chats as he puts his shirt back on. Sexual tension abounds as Dale attacks Laurie, and tries to launch a catfight every two seconds. There are some impressive sets for a Warren picture, including a nifty diving bell interior. The goofy-looking diving bell itself looks like a fiberglass medicine ball, and one wonders if such a thing ever existed. Much of the film takes place in some impressive cavern settings ("Colossal Caves in Tucson, Arizona"). These caverns are dark and gloomy, and perfect for the picture. A true sense of claustrophobia creeps in after awhile, and reminds one of similar "lost underground" scenes in the underrated Unknown World (1951). George Skaff, who was so effective as traitor-creep "Varga" in Warren's inaugural effort, Man Beast, is fine here too as Medini, inventor of diving bells. There is supposedly a brief shot of auteur Warren sitting in a plane seat behind John Carradine. The finale is pure schlock, and tons of fun: Dale starts another catfight, the hermit attacks Dale, the volcano erupts, a second diving bell comes to rescue the group, an avalanche kills the lusty hermit in a case of convenient poetic justice. The Incredible Petrified World is undoubtedly Warren's "best" picture, from a competency point of view. It is a threadbare but entertaining shoestring melodrama not unlike a well-mounted poverty-row adventure film of the '40s. It is the closest Warren ever came to making a normal, mainstream film that did not cheat, or pull any punches. Something Weird Video offers an excellent version of TIPW, from a crisp 235mm negative, possibly the best Warren video currently available. With the excruciatingly depressed and claustrophobic Teenage Zombies, this would be an absolutely stultifying double bill for anyone lucky enough to survive it and evolved enough to perceive its beauty. "There's nothing friendly between two females. There never was, and there never will be!" "On the other hand, some animals have no eyes at all..." "So he's a weirdo?" Teenage
Zombies SYNOPSIS: A group of teenagers stumble upon a desolate island, and are kidnapped by the mad doctor who lives there. The teens are used in secret nerve-gas experiments, until the Army is called in to rescue the kids and bust up the foreign plot to destroy America. *** Teenage Zombies is an existential film classic. It is, essentially, a lurid 1950s horror comic book story, filmed as if it were an early talkie. It is primitive and brutal and bleak and deliberate, and quite astounding in its avowed, forthright naiveté. It is an amazing film, and certainly Jerry Warren's masterpiece. Warren produced, directed, wrote and filmed this shaggy mini-epic, so it is really a one-man show. And what a show it is! From the dreary opening credits, which segue to a wistful exterior shot ("Campus House: Fine Foods"), and then to a drab, ultra-generic malt shop, we know we are not in for just another tired Hollywood wannabe, ala I Was A Teenage Werewolf. Don Sullivan, Bri Murphy and company sit around a suspiciously atypical restaurant table, braying and sputtering all manner of nonsense, portraying a perfect sketch of teenage cliché, and soon set up what is sure to be a "classic" adventure (we're going to visit a spooky island!). The next thing you know, we're on a barren island, and the film shifts from familiar suburban settings to a dark, gloomy world, with a decidedly European look, almost like a skid-row prototype for Michaelangelo Antonioni's masterwork, L'Aventura. Katherine Victor in a black evening gown watches as her army of zombie slaves parade by. As the evil Dr. Myra, Victor perfectly personifies an evil 1950's mother figure. The kids eventually end up in Myra's decidedly suburban kitchen, with an ultramodern refrigerator and an intercom system with tinny sound. Enter Ivan, Myra's "assistant", a cartoon hunchback straight out of a "Classics Illustrated" version of a Bram Stoker novel. The gang is abducted, and thrown into monster-mother hell. We are then offered the somewhat indelicate image of nubile young girls held in cages like zoo animals. This is, of course, everyone's favorite fantasy, with obvious sado-masochistic sexual implications. It is also a scene we do not see in much Fifties cinema, but we could see in any number of horror comics of the period. And the two girls are unusually cute for this type (and grade) of picture. And Warren manages to sneak in some nice shots of the girls' butts in their tight little hot pants or blue jeans. (And as the flimsy cages are constructed out of plywood and chicken wire, they may be meant to be taken as more allegorical than literal.) The scrawny kid, Maury Kims (moral kid?), and his cute girlfriend take a motorboat to the island, to search for their missing friends. When they leave the island, having failed to locate their pals (it is odd they are allowed to), they pass by two decidedly twisted men in suits, obviously Commies or worse... The next time we see Myra, she has changed her gown; what a fashionable mad doctor she is! And her living room is very nice! Myra gives a little protest against the hydrogen bomb, wearing a lovely backless evening gown. Her plan is revealed to be creating a gas, which will turn everyone in the United States into soulless zombies! And she's working for Russia! Cold War paranoia, straight from today's headlines! The whole notion of lobotomizing the masses to take over their political system is not lost on U.S. popular culture itself... Myra's secret laboratory looks an awful lot like a primitive recording studio. As Warren also fancied himself a recording star (!), this may have been his personal studio! There's a wonderful scene of two zombie goon-men behind glass, both topless and lurching, like some sexual window shopping boutique. Myra next tests her nerve gas on a crummy Gorilla, the B-movies' most beloved, and maligned, icon. A shot of drooling hunchback Ivan staring lustily at cute little Bri Murphy is a purely sexual moment, rare in Fifties cinema. The boys escape, leaving the girls behind, in order to build a raft, thus deconstructing suburban icons and revolting against their parents' bourgeois society. The boys return to the girls, and as a reward for their retroactive bravery, they all lay down together, and "pretend" to go to sleep. Get it? Other than an extreme close-up of a crimson kiss, this odd scene is about the closest one can get to seeing a sexual reward in '50s B-cinema. Soon we see a bleak, gloomy montage showing the boys walking, walking, searching for escape, beautifully illustrating a generation shipwrecked at the end of an era. The sense of despair is palpable, and highly unusual for this type of picture. Back on the mainland, Maury and chick get the sheriff in on it, and they all go out to the island. The sheriff, who looks like an old cowboy star, turns out to be a commie! Thus the plot, with its total paranoia toward all authority figures, mirrors William Cameron Menzies' great Invasion From Mars (1953). All hell breaks loose in a patented Warren free-for-all. The ensuing long-winded fight sequence looks like a cross between a gay wrestling match and an avant-garde ballet, a Warren trademark, which he revisits in The Wild World Of Batwoman and Frankenstein Island. There is an amazing overhead shot of a teen girl wrestling with Myra, evoking imagery of erotic female wrestling. Warren has sense enough to throw in the gorilla at the last minute, to add a sense of the surreal to the finale. The gorilla eats the antidote, becomes wild again, embodying a common Warren theme: is man being turned into a beast, or is he already the beast? The epilog is another virtuoso performance by all, with another long dialogue sequence lasting about two minutes at the sheriff's office. As Major Coleman elaborates the thwarted plot against the United States, we realize the significance of our heroes' act: this bunch of average US teens has single-handedly won the Cold War! The heroic youths drive off in their big boat-mobile, their hands flailing in the air in a crude mockery of youthful glee. We now realize that Teenage Zombies has been educational in nature. Firstly, curiosity kills the cat. Secondly, the goal of maturity is to forgo childish recreation in the pursuit of higher knowledge, that is, truth. Additionally, the political message in Teenage Zombies is profound, and subversive in nature: when you are healthy, you think straight. In a neurotic, totalitarian society, this can be painful. It may be better, that is more comfortable, to be in ill health, and slightly befuddled, AKA a "Teenage Zombie". Like all Warrenfilm, Teenage Zombies has a stagy, theatrical quality, with many long, complicated takes, set in an under-lit, under-miked netherworld, like an overly-ambitious early talkie from Poland. You can bet anything this claustrophobic drawing-room nightmare was filmed in Warren's own domicile, or the house of a neighbor. Some scenes take place in a netherland of flats, some sheet rock, some brick, some who knows? Where are we? Lost in suburbia, in a horror house of ticky-tacky! Teenage Zombies also showcases several fine examples of what would become another Warren trademark: the long dialogue scene. Filmed in one take, with several actors, some of these scenes are breathtaking achievements in low-rent cinema. In TZ, for example, one sequence between Maury, his girl, and the Sheriff runs over 3 minutes without a cut! This shows Warren to be a highly "theatrical" director, with long, self-written passages carefully preserved, as if filming a stage play. The sheer preposterousness of the plot suggests an E. C. horror comic of the mid-Fifties; monster adults terrorize American teens. The naiveté of this absurdly simple plot, combined with its bleak, almost brutal neo-realist filming, makes Teenage Zombies a genre classic that is as profound as it is simplistic, and as impossible as it is dear. "My deal was, I supply you with drunks and prisoners, but is going too far!" "I swear, you remind me of a walking comic book!" "Their minds are gone, just like the rest!" Invasion
Of The Animal People SYNOPSIS: In a remote part of Lapland, an alien spaceship lands. Its inhabitants explore the nearby area, with the help of their giant bigfoot monster, until they are drive away by torch-bearing locals. *** Invasion Of The Animal People is probably Jerry Warren's most familiar hybrid film. It has something of a reputation. The source film, Terror In The Midnight Sun, was filmed in Lapland as an English-language production, and had a limited world theatrical release in the late '50s, before picked up by Warren, to be resurrected as one of his exploitation stews. Cult film fans hate Jerry Warren most of all for what he did to Terror In The Midnight Sun, the source film in this case. While Terror has some impressive fotog and a few passable suspense scenes, it is strictly second-tier, and boasts a romantic subplot that is brutally vapid, and some excruciating expositional scenes. Penned by hack auteur Arthur C. Pierce, and directed in somnambulistic fashion by Virgil Vogel (The Mole People), Terror is nothing to rave about. But for Warren buffs, it's a treat. we start off with a bang: John Carradine spouting scientific gibberish in a 90-second pre-credits prolog! Shades of The Incredible Petrified World! After the credits, we get another 90 second science lecture from Mr. Carradine, who stands near a globe, and pontificates ad nauseum about who-knows-what! Cut to the first scenes from Terror: a woman leaps out of bed in her nightie, and runs down the highway, trying to escape an ear piercing scream in the night. At 08:00, an amazing 9-minute Warren insert: an uncredited Katherine Victor plays the mother of Diane Wilson, the sick girl in the source film and talks to a shrink (an uncredited George. B. Mitchell). Soon, three doctors discuss the effects of sound waves on human psychology in a whopping 3-minute take. Back to Lapland: a fairly cool spaceship lands, with an absurd, high-collar baldie alien inside. A goodly chunk of the source film, replete with its original dialogue, follows, as well as lots of flying scenes, which were notoriously lampooned by Mystery Science Theater 3000. After ten minutes of lame romance twixt the skating niece of one of the scientists and his young, cad associate, we are thrilled when they start searching for the downed UFO. It's odd to note, that the source film has a lot of stagy dialogue scenes, so the Warren inserts don't stick out like they do in the other hybrids. In fact, many of the scenes in the Terror are as boring and uninspired as the Warren inserts; fans who rave about Terror haven't really watched the movie. At 47 minutes, Warren strikes again: three guys in front of a world map try to reach the expedition by radio. 1 minute total. Back in Lapland, our boring couple goes skiing, and the girl breaks a leg. At 50 minutes, more radio men from Warren. 2 minutes total. At 55 minutes, the shaggy alien giant (the "Animal People" of the great rip-off title), appears for the first time. The beast, a cross between a Yeti and a Kong-like creature, is fairly impressive, especially in some creepy up-angle shots. The hooded, pasty-faced aliens (who look a lot like "Death" from Igmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal) surround and harass the girl. The monster kidnaps the girl of course, until rescued by a band of torch-bearing Lapp-skiers. There is a humorous shot of the burning monster (an obvious rag doll), tumbling awkwardly off a cliff. So, we suffer the balance of TERROR without any help (hurt?) from Mr. Warren. Invasion leaves one feeling oddly incomplete, as if we have just watched the outtakes of a movie, and not the film itself. Interestingly, none of the Warren actors are credited except Carradine. Invasion Of The Animal People was released on a theatrical double bill with the original Warren production, Terror Of The Bloodhunters. "Memories are diminished as the passing of time provides a past, and equally brings to us the future, and without a future, there would be no present!" Terror
Of The Blood Hunters SYNOPSIS: Near desolate St. Laurent is the infamous prison, "Devil's Island". Political author Steve Duvall is sentenced to be sent there for views traitorous to his country. He befriends the commandant's daughter, and they plan an escape. They are hunted down by Cabot, the main security officer. Nearby natives cause a ruckus. Cabot eventually catches up with the couple, and after seeing how much they love each other, decides to let them go. *** Terror Of The Blood Hunters, created as the bottom of a double bill with Invasion Of The Animal People, is by far the more interesting of the two pictures. Terror Of The Blood Hunters is largely an original Warren production, and although there is a liberal sprinkling of stock footage, it is used to enhance Warren's mini-opus, as opposed to being the bulk of the film as in Warren's infamous hybrids. Like Man Beast, the stock footage in Terror Of The Blood Hunters is used to create a separate picture, and the segues between Warren and source footage work exceedingly well for the most part. One sees here that Warren was able to match disparate scenes well when he cared to, a talent not evident in brutal, absurdist hack jobs like Face Of The Screaming Werewolf or Curse Of The Stone Hand. Of course, to any normal audience, the film that masquerades as Terror Of The Blood Hunters would comes across as either a huge mistake, or a cruel rip-off. It is a talky, thoughtful, even contemplative picture, a bona fide melodrama from a source most unlikely. It is not, however, a thrilling action-adventure about bloodthirsty natives, as the mouth-watering title suggests. Only the lonely, twisted soul who actually likes to be disappointed, tricked, seduced and abandoned, will find Terror Of The Blood Hunters a cult film gem--only the Jerry Warren fan! Terror Of The Blood Hunters starts out in true Warren fashion, with a couple of men smoking cigarettes and talking gibberish, at what appears to be Warren's back porch, in a lame expositional scene sure to clear the theatre of philistines and poseurs. For those who are thrilled by such things, however, one might be enchanted by one of Warren's notorious 3-minute takes, the longest time on record for this marathon-take director. (Fred Olen Ray professes that Warren used to shoot 10-minute takes, but these have yet to be spotted, and may turn out to be apocryphal. In Warrenland, 3 minutes can certainly SEEM like 10 minutes!) Anyhoo, Terror Of The Blood Hunters is an interesting and sincere picture. Robert Clarke is surprisingly passionate as philosopher/scientist Duvall. His nemesis, Cabot, is well-played by Warren favorite Steve Conte. Dorothy Haney, as the commandant's daughter, is an angry, frustrated super-bitch who we first see carrying an immense white purse (lots of emotional luggage, perhaps?). There are some strange jungle scenes which look like they were shot by Warren, featuring wild natives girl dancing around hastily-placed skulls. If we look closely, and we can see that one of the native drums is a small trash can lined with fur! Still, the girls are cute and the dancing is lively. In another cool dancing scene, the native chicks are wearing bikinis! On the audio, an endless, and quite silly, drum loop. These scenes represent Warren at his most poetic; at least he was trying! A scene where a new batch of prisoners, Duvall included, arrive by ship and are indoctrinated by Cabot, is powerful, and well mounted. It involves an orchestration not usually seen in a Warren production. All the clichés of the typical jungle picture are here, albeit in microcosm, showing that Warren could really "sketch" a genre with ease, if he cared to. Still, we are dealing with a Jerry Warren production, so we are not surprised when we spot familiar suburban landmarks. We previously mentioned Warren's back porch, which opens the picture. The Commandant's comfy house is obviously Warren's. Scenes of our heroes walking through the "jungle" look more like they are walking through the woods in Warren's back yard, with a few obvious stock shots of zoo animals and snakes thrown in for good measure. Yet there are scenes which juggle original footage with stock footage quite well. In a scene where Cabot and his assistant are in a boat being rowed by natives, we see ample stock footage of the boat in the distance going downriver, intercut with close-ups of the two lawmen huddled together under a thatched roof. Cheesy, but effective. Also, the (stock footage) finale, where a native village is burnt to the ground, is pretty cool; one wonders what film this was taken from? Terror Of The Blood Hunters’s script is quite thoughtful, and ruminates on such heady subjects as political freedom in a democracy, sexual freedom in relationships, artistic censorship and freedom of speech. (Apparently, Duvall had written that future generations will see the present one as Barbaric, and he has been jailed for this!) In addition, Duvall is a famous painter who became disillusioned with the hypocrisy of the world. This isn't your average hero in your average jungle caper! The perspective on women is interesting too. The strong female lead is a woman trapped on a island with men, in fact imprisoned by her father. In addition, at one point, prison guard Cabot voices strong, misogynist opinions about the sanctity of a male-dominated marriage. This suggests that, at heart, Warren himself may have been an equal rights-kind of guy. In a way, Terror Of The Blood Hunters is not so much a tale about man-woman seduction and personal freedom, as it is a tale about intellectual seduction and philosophical freedom. At any rate, Terror Of The Blood Hunters is likely Warren's most personal film. In it, the hero is an artist who is molded, manipulated, censored and finally punished by society, as well as economic reality, just as the director in Warren is harnessed, trampled, even reprimanded by the producer. Thus, Terror Of The Blood Hunters offers a vivid allegory of Warren's personal artistic dilemma. One might even be tempted to apply the auteur theory to Warren at this point, but his output is so uneven, his successes are either atypical, or else planned at a terribly obscure level. Still, it seems likely that Terror Of The Blood Hunters is Warren's most accomplished and integral melodrama, a mini-epic full of promise, passion, and heart. "You know women, they're about as unpredictable as the winds in a hurricane! You never know which way they're liable to turn, but when they do, ya better be ready!" "I always heard that clean clothes is the first rule of the jungle." "When a man needs help, he usually winds up alone..." "When I say blood, I don't men elderberry wine!" "Convention is a great narcotic." Attack
Of The Mayan Mummy SYNOPSIS: A scientist visits his friend, editor of a major metropolitan newspaper, and tells him a strange tale of ancient pyramids, fortunes in gold, and mummies come back to life! *** Attack Of The Mayan Mummy is one of the most atrocious abominations in cinema history. It is neither fish nor fowl, neither good nor funny-bad. Many find it excruciating, and unwatchable. Some have run screaming in terror from the mind-boggling numbness of Attack Of The Mayan Mummy; others have suffered permanent brain damage trying to follow its meandering pseudo-logic. Attack Of The Mayan Mummy is likely one of the most subversive films in the world, as it rejects normal cinematic convention, and defies all attempts to be coherent or entertaining (at least in the traditional sense). For the true Warrenfilm buff, however (as well as the certifiable "torturefilm" lunatic), Attack Of The Mayan Mummy is a rare treat, a film so unerringly bad and consistently screwy, it actually DARES you to sit through it, and challenges you to follow the story. Nevertheless, Attack Of The Mayan Mummy is undoubtedly Warren's most effective hybrid, taking source footage from an exciting Mexican film called La Momia Azteca (The Aztec Mummy), and adding substantial, original, expositional footage. Several of the added scenes are unusually well-mounted for a Warren production; the discotheque scene especially is a classic example of '60s Grade-Z cinema at its apex. After a glorious color Medallion TV logo (on the Rhino video anyway), we start off with an anti-bang: a classic Warren expositional scenario twixt a newsman (an uncredited Bruno Ve Sota) and scientist Dr. Munson (George B. Mitchell) As Munson rambles on ad nauseum about Dr. Janney, Cowan Research, his sister married to arch-rival Edmund Redding, his nephew Timmy, and "hypnotic subject Ann Taylor," in a convoluted soap opera which few would care about, we soon realize that the film is going to be a story told in flashback, in the third person. Mitchell gives an astounding 2 minute, twenty-second monologue in this opening sequence. We finally stumble onto some Mexican footage, and much to our horror, Munson narrates! No dubbing! This scene is a great example of Warren's infamous cheating methods. More dreary, convoluted exposition, over boring footage of a scientific meeting; a true slap in the face to anyone expecting an actual movie. This isn't a movie; its an anti-movie! Those who survive this first aesthetic assault will discover, at 12 minutes, another Warren segment, with Munson and his colleague John, sitting in front of a fireplace, chatting about a plan to invade a pyramid and steal the gold. In one back-breaking 3-minute take twixt the two men, we learn of a somewhat mercenary plot to discover gold in the Mayan pyramid, and discover that the holier-than-thou Munson is actually quite unscrupulous. We also learn that Munson has a spy in Cowan Research, privy to secrets in enemy Redding's lab; his nephew Timmy! We then see Timmy, a small Mexican boy, about 8 or 9 years old. This observation is important, considering what hack Warren next pulls out of his hat... At 21:45 comes Warren's finest moment: the discotheque scene. A group of teenagers dance in a barren clubhouse setting, amidst horribly mismatched furniture, and with magazine pages pasted on the wall for "ambience". Dr. Munson sits at a table, waiting for Timmy to meet him with more news of his enemy Redding. As Munson waits uncomfortably, teenage girls grind their butts inches away from his sweating face. Shortly, Timmy's girlfriend, and her pal "Liz" arrive. As the girls spill the beans to Munson, a waitress brings the teens two cokes. Munson is so nervous in this youth setting, he calls Timmy "Jimmy" a couple of times. On the soundtrack plays an endless loop R&B track, by none other than "Jerry Warren and the Pets", actually the backing track for Warren's 1959 pop hit, "Monkey Walk!" In what has to be Warren's greatest single shot, the two girls talk with Munson, while six teens cavort in the background, and a waitress pops in briefly. This breathtaking scene, probably Warren's greatest single sequence, lasts a whopping 2 1/2 minutes, and is something of a Z-film masterpiece, which specifically prophecies '60s minimalist art film gurus like Andy Warhol and Paul Morrisey. And the final revelation which makes the discotheque scene a true marvel; we realize that 9 year-old Mexican Timmy's "girlfriend" is a busty American teen of seventeen! You go, boy! At 25 minutes, we finally get to some interesting footage from La Momia Azteca, wherein hypno-chick Ann Taylor gets put under the spell of Dr. Redding's whirly-twirly machine, and we segue into some great footage of Aztec pyramids, ancient rituals, and well-choreographed dances. These evocative scenes are so familiar to cult film buffs, they evoke a creepy sense of deja vu, and its no wonder; these scenes were used in no less than FIVE DIFFERENT MOVIES seen on US TV in the Sixties (Attack Of The Mayan Mummy, Face Of The Screaming Werewolf, Curse Of The Aztec Mummy, The Robot Versus The Aztec Mummy, and The Wrestling Women Versus The Aztec Mummy)! At 32 minutes, a Warren-sponsored news broadcast, giving more info nobody cares about. Then its back to La Momia Azteca, for some more excellent pyramid-romping. The "Redding" expedition, replete with Timmy, venture into the pyramid and encounter the title mummy. Luckily, Warren knew enough to leave the initial mummy attack intact; it occurs at 49 minutes, and gives the film its only viable horror "moment". At 50 minutes, another newscast, this time with scientist Munson telling us all about what we just saw. At 51 minutes, Warren bothers to show us a hand-painted sign that says "Cowan Research". Two cops try to talk to someone at the front door, but no luck. At 52 minutes, John and Munson share some coffee in a scene that's as interesting as cardboard, an astounding three-minute take which includes camera panning, character entrance, character exit, and a phone call! This scene shows Warren as pure dinner-theatre wannabe! At 58 minutes, the film takes a weird 180-degree turn: Steve Conte plays a thug named Seth, who receives an unusual assignment: steal the Mayan Mummy! Next, Munson tries to clear himself with the cops, another excuse for a time-killing explanational segment. At 64 minutes, an hilarious scene; Seth the thug, clearly a Mexican actor now, goes into "Cowan Research" to steal the Mayan Mummy. We switch back and forth from Warren's Seth to the Mexican Seth, until we think we're hallucinating. The mummy escapes, and heads straight for pretty, vulnerable, pliable Ann Taylor; who wouldn't? And for the first time, we see Ann Taylor's "sister", who we have heretofore merely heard about, via Munson's rambling monologues. The Mummy finally accosts Ms. Taylor, who remains oddly mute during her entire abduction sequence. As the film edges towards its schizo climax, we find the mummy walking the road, with Ms. Taylor in tow. Quick insert of thug Seth, driving off and hitting the mummy with his car! Cut to a newspaper, which blares: "Ann Taylor Killed! Mummy Destroyed!" (Is this perhaps the only film in which the climax is revealed via a newspaper headline?) Even as we are reeling from the traumatic cheat-climax, we encounter the final scene, again in Warren-land, which throws us a shocking curve-ball: newsman VeSota tells Munson that he made up the whole damn nonsense! He cancels the story, and throws his notes into the trash! As we ponder this dizzying, nihilistic ending, VeSota waxes philosophical about salvaging and reusing material, a subject surely close to author Warren's heart. Munson stares into space, dumbfounded, his expression saying, "I've just wasted my time telling you this?" And we, the duped audience, are forced to contemplate as well: "Have we just wasted our precious time being swindled by this slovenly tripe?" One might likewise become philosophical and assert that any film which ends with a close-up of a trash can can't be all good, and Attack Of The Mayan Mummy might be a case of that rare film that is, from any perspective, all bad! It is unknown whether Attack Of The Mayan Mummy had any theatrical release; no advertising or promotional material for it has surfaced. Along with its likely co-feature, Creature Of The Walking Dead, this would have made an excruciating couple of hours for any unlucky drive-in patron! Also questionable are some of the cast credits, which seem to be fake: John Burton, Peter Mills, Bill White and Fred Hoffman all seem to be made-up names, and it was certainly poetic of Warren to rename Rosa Arenas as "Nina Knight! At any rate, Attack Of The Mayan Mummy is assuredly Warren's most unusual and convoluted hybrid, with a whopping 38 minutes of original footage, much of it unbearable and unnecessary. It also features some of his most imaginative sequences, and a most enticing source film. It is a bona fide enigma, and a landmark in bad film history. "Dr. Redding was one of the few who dropped everything else to plunge into regression on a full-time basis!" "I smell something rotten in Jamaica!" Next month: Six more Warren cult non-hits! |
Amongst the small, select group of God-awful genre filmmakers, Jerry Warren stands alone. He was totally mercenary, seemed not to care a whit for even minimally acceptable cinematic standards, took competent films and made them incomprehensible, and generally was a blot on the filmic landscape. Yet, was his output truly all bad? Judge for yourself as we tour...
By ROB CRAIG (Note: This is the first installment of a two-part series about the renown cheapjack hack of the genre film world, Jerry Warren. The series concludes in next month's issue.) Jerry Warren is one of cult film's most frustrating and maligned members. Hated and decried by many for reworking beloved foreign films into incomprehensible hybrids, he comes across to most fan as more of a businessman or opportunist than a filmmaker or artist. Yet upon closer inspection, one finds a certain logic and integrity to Warren's films, especially his horror and science fiction films, all of which display talent, intelligence, and even a certain vague political bent. Firstly, one must call Warren an astute, even cynical showman. He knew that the best way to get play dates and box office receipts for a low-budget independent producer/director was to come up with a good, exploitable title, and a lurid ad campaign to back it up.
The film itself, as many in the exploitation field had already proven, was all but peripheral. Warren may have been one of the first independents to have great success treating horror and science fiction as just another exploitation category. Having chosen a good title and commissioned an exciting poster, Warren realized that the bottom line of the movie business was to fill an hour or so of celluloid. For better or worse, "entertainment" was not a factor in this formula. It seems likely that if Warren had found out a way to sell 60 minutes of blank leader as a film and get paid for it, he would have done it posthaste! This is not meant as a criticism; it is a compliment. Marketing itself is an art, and packaging a talent. Warren was an expert in these fields.
Oddly, Warren's first three genre films are all strong and lucid melodramas. Man Beast is straightforward but entirely competent, certainly for the budget that was likely spent. The immortal double bill, Teenage Zombies and The Incredible Petrified World, hold up today as landmarks of wildly engaging Grade-Z filmmaking, rising far above their meager origins to become rough impressionist sketches of genres Warren both loved, and hated. Both films feature dialogue-heavy yet threadbare adventures, with the barest possible references to their respective genres.
Although marginally successful as genre films, these two extraordinary features are far more triumphant as bleak, even depressive existential tracts on a decade, and culture, on the verge of psychic exhaustion. A later original production, Terror Of The Bloodhunters, is a thoughtful treatise on political dissidence, personal integrity and getting along with one's own kind. In addition to a buffo title and some amusing jungle shenanigans, Terror is, like much Warrenfilm, a contemplative think piece in a place you would least expect to find one.
However, Warren may be best known for, (and most despised for) his series of features which took a cheaply-purchased foreign film and added US insert scenes to create a series of hybrids which are unusual and unwieldy, to say the least. Jerry Warren was a structural master of film, adept at creating indecipherable, virtually schizophrenic collages. This employed a most avant-garde, and cynical, technique, that of taking another's footage, adding his own and creating a third film, an entirely different entity. The avant-garde artist community might file this under "image appropriation"... Attack Of The Mayan Mummy, Invasion Of The Animal People, Creature Of The Walking Dead, Face Of The Screaming Werewolf and Curse Of The Stone Hand are all amazing, meandering patchwork monstrosities. They are neither fish nor fowl. They are neither familiar dubbed foreign films, nor coherent original productions.
There is, with the exception of the briefest passages in Curse Of The Stone Hand, no dubbing in the foreign film sections. There is only dry narration, often by a character who overlaps from the US inserts. This narration primarily consists of a tedious retelling of the plot points unraveling in the foreign segments, often in excruciatingly literal detail. The US inserts shot by Warren (often in a room of his own house) feature an ensemble cast which includes such familiar faces as John Carradine, Bruno VeSota, Katharine Victor, Richard Webb and Lloyd Nelson. They primarily consist of a couple of characters sitting together, revealing yet more monotonous exposition. What with the schizophrenic, back-and-forth quality of the Warren hybrid films, the intricacies of the plot, and the banality with which the plot is invariably described, it is difficult (some might say impossible) to actually follow the plot in any of these Z-film wonders. Furthermore, the nature of the films is often so disengaging, that it is even tougher to want to follow the virtually nonsensical plot.
This admitted dramatic lack is seen by many as a sign of Warren's cynicism or incompetence. It may, however, be more of an uncanny attempt at art brut, a confusing existential puzzle, an aesthetic and dramatic house of mirrors. More of meditations on a genre than examples of it, there is a certain intellectual exploration afoot in the Warren hybrids. There are many long patches of preachy pontification on subjects as diverse as genetics, journalistic ethics, scientific progress, devotion to a cause, the struggle of professionals, the never-ending battle to liberate obsolete cultural mores, etc. A cynic, although often dry and laborious, could not have penned these exchanges. They are too sincere and passionate. A mere hack could have easily filled his script with genre clichés ad nauseum, without ever touching on anything as lofty as ethics or philosophy.
These exchanges prove, to his fans at least, that Warren was a bona fide artist, and cared greatly about crafting his product. This is why some don't mind his creative tampering with the foreign films he adapted, many of which were fairly pedestrian to begin with. For example, many fans have wailed and moaned about Warren's adaptation of Virgil Vogel's SF opus Terror In The Midnight Sun, which Warren purchased, cut in half, added his own material, and released in the US as Invasion Of The Animal People. The original Terror had some evocative photography, but little else in its uninspired screenplay. Warren superimposed a nifty screenplay about an expedition gone awry, and turned the genre clone into a thoughtful little treatise on faith and devotion.
In addition, there are periodic flashes of dramatic brilliance in the Warren US inserts. The discotheque scene in Attack Of The Mayan Mummy, for instance, is a primal, wonderful time capsule of pre-Beatles youth culture, a magnificent sketch which evokes an era as brilliantly as many a big-budget bid at the same target. Next issue: The Warren Hybrid Scoreboard! (Rob Craig is the brains behind a fantastic Website that pays tribute to one of the most neglected genre film icons of them all: K. Gordon Murray, the man who brought Mexican horror and kiddie flicks to Baby Boomers back in the Sixties and Seventies. You can visit Rob's amazing Website here.) Thanks, Rob! It's a tedious and thankless job to have to try to winnow out any "wheat" from Jerry Warren's cinematic "chaff," but you've proven equal to the job. We can't wait to see what more revelations about the ultimate film huckster, Jerry Warren, are in store for us next month! Article copyright © Rob Craig |
