The psychotronica 10
Movies do the strangest things.

By Dennis Harvey

THERE ARE FILMS that famously almost were – plugs getting pulled when shooting had just begun (from von Sternberg's Claudius to Terry Gilliam's recent Don Quixote). Not to mention the films forever promised, forever thwarted: Jodorowsky and his Dune, The Breast of Russ Meyer, Coppola's Pinocchio (look what we're getting instead), a dozen impossible Orson Welles projects. Still others were made, but are entirely or mostly lost: numerous silent epics, the complete Greed (adding insult to injury, Metro didn't just cut eight hours of footage, they burned them). If what does get made is a logistical miracle, all things considered (as well as a frequent cause for sorrow), what doesn't get made is an eternal source of mystery and conjecture.

Then again, movies that we never hear about are made all the time. If we did hear about them, would we be glad? Would we even believe it?

In the spirit of affirming that truth really is stranger than fiction, here are some features that actually did, somehow, get made in the year 2002. Whether their existence horrifies or beguiles you, the simple fact that they exist might put some extra wallop into your existential eggnog.

Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat In a year that saw the demise of Doris Wishman, the surviving third (Andy Milligan having bit it a decade ago) of the Great American Sleazeploitation Primitive Auteurist Trio actually put out his first film in three decades. Of course, Herschell Gordon Lewis's new Feast was intentionally camp, as opposed to inspirationally incompetent, or so say various zine-convention-type witnesses. But hey: huzzah for career closure!

Bubba Ho-Tep Subterranean national treasure Bruce Campbell (of Evil Dead and Brisco County Jr. fame) and the more respectable Ossie Davis portray Elvis and JFK, respectively, as secretly surviving rest home denizens – united at last to combat a UFO menace. This pet project by Phantasm series creator Don Coscarelli has actually been seen by people – including yours truly (and Johnny Ray Huston, see "Unseen Scenes," page 38). Naturally it's better in concept than execution. But the execution ain't so bad, either.

Clown in Kabul A documentary about the real Patch Adams – that charitably inclined M.D. made heinously famous by Robin Williams's dramatic interpretation – cheering winsome war-torn children in Afghanistan. Hold me – I am scared.

The Fall of the Louse of Usher Whatever happened to Ken Russell, erstwhile British king of purple cinematic excess and lurid quasi-surrealism (The Music Lovers, The Devils, Tommy, Altered States, Crimes of Passion, Gothic, etc.)? Answer: he refuses to go away quietly – tree-falling-in-forest theory be damned. At age 75 the mainstream-discarded rude boy is still driven to make a video-shot "comedy/horror/fantasy/musical" starring the likes of Tulip Junkie (?!) and himself. Diehard fans report it as "scraping the floor below the bottom of the barrel." We applaud his septegenarian can-do.

You'll Never Wiez in This Town Again Abandoned, thankless, despised in favor of several next-big-tasteless-phenoms, Pauly Shore writes, directs, produces, and stars in his own semidocumentary resurrection, in which he's reduced to parking cars outside L.A.'s Comedy Store and has to fake his own death to get attention. That last part makes this, in concept at least, a more profound exercise in existential science-fiction than the nuevo Solaris you've already forgotten about.

It's Only a Movie: The Making of 'Last House on the Left'; The Making of 'Tron'; Rosy-Fingered Dawn: A Film on Terrence Malick (Re: the making of The Thin Red Line) Well, at least I'm interested!

La fiancée de Dracula, Jess Franco's Incubus, Killer Barbys vs. Dracula, The Frightened Lady, Mark of the Astro-Zombie Psychotronic legends refuse to die, whether anyone notices or not. Arty French vampire specialist Jean Rollin is apparently still undressing models for blood drainage in Fiancee, which at least one video watchdog called "a pleasant surprise." Jesus Franco, the Spanish-born, globe-trotting, Z-grade specialist of some 200 directorial credits and almost as many pseudonyms, reportedly finished at least three features in 2002 – featuring such Eurotrash legends as Lina Romay, Synde Rome, and our very own stateside scream queen Linnea Quigley. Harem-keeping desert Yank Ted V. Mikels renders reports of his death greatly exaggerated with Mark, sequel to his 1969 Tura Satana (Faster, Pussycat Kill! Kill!) star vehicle. That one really did suck. But Ted made The Doll Squad (the "original" Charlie's Angels, he claimed, and he might be right!), 1973's Blood Orgy of the She-Devils, and the prior annum's The Corpse Grinders – which he also video-sequelized just last year. Mark features right-now Tura and '60s scandal-sheet fave Liz Renay, plus Brinke Stevens. Could any reunion possibly hold more historical import?

Ploddy the Policecar From the Internet Movie Database: "Eight-year-old Maria has her bicycle stolen, and like a lightning from the clear sky Ploddy the Policecar comes to the rescue! Ploddy is a living car with a mind of his own! He can talk and drive around all by himself. Ploddy and his policeman Rikhard set out to find the thieves – but it turns out to be both difficult and challenging!" Thank you, Norway, for your contribution to family entertainment.

Return to the Batcave: The Misadventures of Adam and Burt Younger actors portray Adam West and Burt Ward in their late '60s heyday as TV Batman series stars, in a semifantasy in which the Batmobile is stolen from a nostalgia museum for evil doings. Apparently the real-life Ward's reminiscences (duly recorded in his published autobiography) of shagging through their swinging decade's celebrityhood are fully incorporated here. Plus he and West cameo as themselves. This as-yet-unaired TV movie got 10 out of 10 from IMDb voters – but there were only six of them. Could this be Auto Focus without the guilt-tripping, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind without the delusional danger? Will we find out just how deep Batcave love went?

Where Is America in Bible Prophecy? No doubt right at the top of the muthafuckin' food chain, you unpatriotic heathen bastards, you. This video missive is narrated by Hal Lindsay, whose prior credits include such tempting titles as Is This the End? Or Just the Beginning, Thy Kingdom Come with Zola Levitt, and 1979's Book of Revelations overinterpretative "rapture"-mentary The Late Great Planet Earth. Forgive me, Lawd – but some of your advocates are getting pretty crackheadacious.