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John Allman

If you’ve ever wandered the aisles at the video store or surfed the DVR pay-per-view options and seen a bunch of movies that you’ve never heard of, chances are John has watched them. Why? He loves movies. All kinds of movies. Good, bad, so-bad-they’re good, even the truly unwatchable ones. He mostly loves horror and science-fiction and drive-in exploitation movies that most upstanding model citizens wouldn’t dare watch. Then he writes up his thoughts so you can decide - watch, don’t watch or avoid at all costs. Sometimes he even gets to talk to the cool folks who make some of your favorite films.

Blood, Violence and Babes
John Allman

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Roger Corman’s Cult Classics: Piranha, Humanoids from the Deep, Deathsport

Posted Aug 11, 2010 by John Allman

Updated Aug 11, 2010 at 06:23 AM

Piranha
Genre: Horror
Directed by: Joe Dante
Run time: 92 minutes
Rating: R
Format: DVD

The Lowdown: You’d better think twice before going to Lost River Lake for a swim. The dang government has gone and tinkered with Mother Nature, creating a mutant species of piranha that can exist in both salt and fresh water, and they’ve just gotten free from their military containment.

As premises go, you usually don’t get more bare bones than a Roger Corman B-licious drive-in creature feature, but 1978’s “Piranha” still stands proudly from the pack as one of the genre producer’s more inspired efforts.

Corman was a genius when it came to taking a film from popular cinema and retooling it for a below-low-budget variation. This time out, he set his sights on “Jaws,” the granddaddy of ‘don’t go in the water’ popcorn flicks, and he one-upped the Great White by introducing a teeming horde of razor-tooth killer fish into a pristine country water park complete with kids in jeopardy, greedy developers who refuse to heed warnings and Paul Bartel as a fussy counselor straight out of Camp Northstar.

Corman also had a knack for picking top talent before broke big, and here he strikes gold with director Joe Dante, who would go on to helm “Gremlins” and “The Howling,” and screenwriter John Sayles, whose first script showed the promise that would come with some of the late 70s and early 80s best genre films – “Battle Beyond the Stars,” “The Howling,” “Alligator” and “The Lady in Red.”

In addition to Bartel, who Corman tapped to write and direct “Death Race 2000,” the cast included such familiar faces as Belinda Balaski as a doomed camp counselor, Dick Miller as the evil developer, Buck Gardner, the incomparable British scream queen Barbara Steele and Bradford Dillman, the square-jawed leading man from other nature-gone-wild classics “Bug” and “The Swarm,” who plays a mountain recluse/town drunk who springs into action with very little prompting.

The beauty of “Piranha” is its skill in creating a definite mood without ever really showing the big bad fish up close for very long. Whenever a kill occurs, you don’t really see the piranha, except for the same shot of a swarm swimming quickly underwater accompanied by a sound similar to buzzing bees. The blood is actually fairly restrained, much more so than I expect Alex Aja’s remake to be when it opens later this month in 3D.

And to be fair, “Piranha” is an OK film to receive the remake treatment because there is much potential that a bigger budget and better effects could bring.

But nothing can replace the low-fi, low-budget goodness that will always be that first trip to Lost River Lake.

The Stuff You Care About:
Hot chicks – Belinda Balaski, how I love you.
Nudity – Yes.
Gore – Yes.
Drug use – No.
Bad Guys/Killers – Government-mutated killer fish.
Buy/Rent – Buy it.

Humanoids from the Deep
Genre: Horror
Directed by: Barbara Peters
Run time: 82 minutes
Rating: Unrated
Format: DVD

The Lowdown: It was one of those movies that made you love the early, almost shockingly risqué (by today’s standards) version of HBO.

At least that was the case when I was 11 years old and my parents broke down and bought the first pay cable channel. Back then, there weren’t any original series or original films playing on Home Box Office. The channel padded its 24-hour-a-day programming with a healthy heaping of low-budget genre films that it would run multiple times a month. And I lived for those fleeting moments late at night when I could sneak into the den and turn on the TV and hope against hope that I might see a bare boob or some quality gore from a cheap independent picture that you otherwise might only catch at the drive-in.

“Humanoids from the Deep,” also known in its uncut form as “Monster,” was one of those films - a blatant rip-off of “Alien” crossed with a stag film starring the “Creature from the Black Lagoon.”

There were boobs, blood, even a baby humanoid bursting from a babe’s belly.

No wonder my parents wouldn’t have knowingly let me watch it at such a tender age.

One of producer Roger Corman’s best creature features, “Humanoids” had it all.

There were outstanding, full-body humanoid creature designs by Rob Bottin, who would later go on to create some of the best werewolf effects ever in “The Howling” and cement his reputation with the amazing non-CGI effects of “John Carpenter’s The Thing.”

A sleazy story line about mutated, extremely horny amphibious dwellers who wanted to impregnate human girls.

And some excellent genre acting by Doug McClure and the late Vic Morrow.

Plus it had a message, a sly political subplot about race relations in a small Pacific Northwest fishing village.

But man, oh man, the reason to watch this one again is the considerable gore, the excellent effects, the gratuitous nudity and that famous, final scene – the one that didn’t even try to hide its influence, gleefully giving the finger salute to Ridley Scott, and forever nailing its place in drive-in, B-budget movie history.

The only thing that’s come close to rivaling the sheer perversion of “Humanoids,” at least in recent memory, was “Feast,” the low-budget monsterfest about horny underground dwellers in the desert that just wanted to get it on and get off with whatever warm flesh they could find in a dusty dirthole bar.

The Stuff You Care About:
Hot chicks – Yes.
Nudity – Yes.
Gore – Yes.
Drug use – No.
Bad Guys/Killers – Giant horny amphibians.
Buy/Rent – Buy it.

Double Feature: Deathsport/Battletruck
Genre: Action/Post-Apocalyptic
Directed by: Henry Suso and Allan Arkush and Harley Cokliss
Run time: 82 minutes and 91 minutes
Rating: R and PG
Format: DVD

The Lowdown: Everything about “Deathsport” screams low-budget cheese from its ridiculous special effects (fake-looking laser blasts that envelop warriors briefly before they disintegrate, futuristic cityscapes that look like matte paintings, even the crystal swords that the warriors wield in battle) to the poorly explained, and therefore, hilarious, costumes worn by both the scavengers (the guys in loincloths who look like they should be hunting the cave bear) to the medieval military garb of Lord Zirpola’s dark overlords.

But just when you might consider writing off this Roger Corman-produced cheapie, it surprises you.

Revelation 1: “Deathsport” was the 1978 precursor to James Cameron’s “Avatar.” Don’t believe me, just listen as David Carradine’s Kaz Oshay tells the buxom blonde Deneer (the lovely, late Claudia Jennings) that their “union is strong.” Over and over, they repeat this mantra, much like the Na’vi tell each other, “I see you.”

Revelation 2: When you run out of ideas, make naked actresses gyrate amid a dangle of tubing filled with lights and then make those lights go all seizure-inducing Pokemon strobe to suggest that their naked hotness is being fried alive.

Revelation 3: Need to pad your running time? Not a problem. Simply edit together shots of the same scene from different angles and then use them to convey a completely different moment later in the film. If you still need to pad, re-use the same footage about 10 minutes later. No one will ever notice. I guarantee.

Revelation 4: Need cool noises to give your futuristic film that Year 3000 feeling? Just rip off “Star Wars” and incorporate sounds of the Tie Fighters attacking the Death Star. No one will notice. I guarantee. And for good measure, find the most obnoxious sound imaginable to announce when the evil motorbikes are attacking and put it on a loop so that it slowly begins to drive anyone left in the audience completely mad. If anything, it serves to club those viewers into submission like baby seals to the point that Revelation 3 is quickly forgotten.

Revelation 5: Carradine, David Carradine. What other actor could deliver his spare lines with such aplomb. It’s as if he knew just how silly he sounded saying things such as, “Like sand in the wind, keep moving.” And those fight scenes with a crystal sword. Just go with it, Carradine. You were Swayze cool years before James Dalton rocked the feathered mullet.

The second film included on this wonderful Double Feature is “Battletruck,” another futuristic/apocalyptic actioner from 1982 that looks to have been shot using many of the same production props as “Deathsport,” including some of the vehicles and filmed at or near the same location.

The Stuff You Care About:
Hot chicks – Claudia Jennings, you left us too soon.
Nudity – Yes.
Gore – Ray gun violence.
Drug use – No.
Bad Guys/Killers – Lord Zirpola and Colonel Straker, respectively.
Buy/Rent – Buy it.