Terry Jones in Memoriam

 
It's been a tough year for Monty Python fans, and it's still January. We've lost the songwriter and Python friend Neil Innes, and any remaining shreads of respect for Terry Gilliam to boot. And now dementia got the best of one of the remaining Pythons and Terry Jones is no more. He has ceased to be, etc.

Jones might have been the most important glue that kept the Pythons together, arguing for good connective material from one sketch to another in Monty Python's Flying Circus, and for the material to push forward. While he had to do his share of fighting for these artistic ideas, particularly with John Cleese, I think the entire group respected him for it. His ideas made the stuff funnier. That's why it was he who emerged as the main director of their movies instead of Gilliam, who was more gifted as a visualist.

Jones' career also was lesser after the group went their own seperate ways. He did direct a number of movies, comedies and kids' films, wrote books and scripts, and actually went back to be a historian and researcher of ancient English texts. I remember from early 2000s how he wrote some beautiful anti-war essays to protest the emerging Iraq war, sadly to no avail. But films are which he's remembered for, so let's take a look at some of his work.

Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983)
Director: Terry Jones

This is the last major Python film I haven't reviewed on this blog throughout the years. And it's the third movie directed by Jones. The movie won at Cannes film festival, and has an important place in my heart since it's the first film I ever got as a dvd. One could say I got a dvd player in order to see this movie. Thus, I loved it dearly as a teenager, but since then I've started to notice it has some flaws as well. But Jones himself considered the film to have some of the best material they ever did and was not wrong about that.

Python member Eric Idle's problem with the film was that they retread their steps and went back to just doing sketches without a story or a concrete thoroughline. But if there was, the film couldn't jump back and forth in time and place to the Third World, the Zulu War, the First World War, to the edges of the Galaxy and to Heaven itself. But one can see how the bigger themes such as religion, school and war seem to interest the group members more than actual life phases beyond the middle age. And they didn't actually manage to find any good funny answers to life's biggest questions in the end, with a fake-out which feels quite cheap after they've done something akin to this a couple of times before already. Probably they should have just saved the Galaxy Song music number for last.

In the films he's directing, Jones tends to keep his roles few and minimized. But here, he has the probably most memorable and grotesque character of not only the film, but the entire Python oveure; the morbidly obese Mr. Creosote, a seemingly fabulously wealthy culinarist and bulimic, who goes to eat every possible treat a fine French restaurant has to offer only to shoot vomit over the staff and fellow guests. But John Cleese's maitre d' gets the last laugh with the help of a wafer-thin mint. The film dares to go more into gross-out humour than Pythons ever before, but they did find a way to make everything character-based, and having the butt of jokes be a recognizable type of character rather than just the shock of guts flying or someone getting a bucket of vomit on the head.

★★★★

The Wind in the Willows (1996)
Dir. Jones

I have fond memories of this children's film of Kenneth Grahame's classic book. Besides writing and directing, Jones himself plays the lead role of Mr. Toad, although only gives himself the third billing. The whole cast is wonderful, featuring Steve Coogan, Stephen Fry, John Cleese, Bernard Hill and Nicol "Merlin" Williamson. Interestingly, Michael Palin was also involved in another Wind in the Willows released the previous year, being the voice of Rat in an animated film. Fellow Python Eric Idle plays Rat here, with Palin having a cameo as the Sun. I guess Teletubbies is set on the prehistory of this universe.

It is a bit of a film of two halves, the first being more akin to the original book, with Mr. Toad's obsessions with cars and the sunny countriside milieu. The other, then is more of a heist movie with Mr. Toad breaking out of jail and trying to get his house back from rascally weasels who have turned it into a meat-packing factory. Jones can carry the movie very well, being equal parts annoying, silly and a little bit tragic as well. And he sells the groth of the very immature but rich Mr. Toad in the latter half. The film was very much sold as a Python reunion, but other from some fleeting jokes and a general anarchic viewpoint, it is a lot more testament of Jones's singular styles.

★★★

Absolutely Anything (2015)

Dir. Jones

I wasn't expecting much from this film, since a lot of the latter-day Pythonesque works tend to be either forgettable or even terrible. Case in point was the Graham Chapman animated biopic A Liar's Autobiography (that did at least have respect for the late Chapman and some inspired moments). This was not only the last film to feature five Pythons, but also the last role of Robin Williams (as the voice of a dog). And yet, you very rarely hear anything nice being said about it.

Jones started to write the movie in the early 90's, and since then there have been a number of films that have had a similar premise of an ordinary schlub being able to do anything he wants. Most notable were Jim Carrey's Bruce Almighty and Adam Sandler's Click. Even though the film feels like a retread of similar ideas, at least it's not cynical American shit like those ones. Most of it is due to it's charming cast, featuring Simon Pegg and Kate Beckinsale as leads, and nice voice workd from the aforementioned comedy legends. The main problem is that it's just not very funny.

But really, the sort of film like this is hard to follow through, since it gives so few rules on which to work. Every problem the main character comes up with, he could fix easily if he just thought about it longer than a second. And since the possibilities given are so limitless, keeping the film mostly Earthbound feels very unimaginative. The bits with weird aliens are my favorites, but you could say this also about any Star Wars movie. So I wouldn't necessarily recommend this, but it didn't make me mad or anything. Just a bit bittersweet, since we are living in an age where old legends like Jones keep disappearing.

★★1/2

Three laughs: Rats - Nights of Terror

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of themselves, and it is an even better pleasure to find some trash that keeps surprising you than watching most quality films. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you can't believe what the film is showing to you. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.

Rats: Nights of Terror (Rats - notte di terrori). Italy, 1984
Director: Bruno Mattei

It is Chinese New Year and now starts the Year of the Rat. What better time, then, to revisit probably the most coherent film in the filmography of the schlock maestro Bruno Mattei. We might meet him in this column again a couple of times. Usually, he makes films that are cheap rip-offs of popular Hollywood movies. The fun comes from his ineptness in recreating working scenes on one hand, his inventiveness in mashing up two flavours and making his super-cheap budget work for him on the other.

A lot of fans of crappy movies absolutely detest Mattei. But usually even they make an exception with Rats. It is a sort of rip-off of The Warriors, Night of the Living Dead and your basic animal attack -movie. A group of young post-apocalyptic bikers seek shelter in a house that happens to be a breeding ground of super-intelligent and super-violent rats. The apocalypse hasn't hardened these kids too much, they are shaking in their boots the whole time. Most of the movie is shot pitch black, in order to hide the fact that Mattei really has no skills at his disposal to actually direct rats to do what he wants to. Troll 2 bad-movie maestro Claudio Fragasso worked as a co-director.

Three laughs (SPOILERS!): 

1. I am against animal cruelty, and feel strongly that even rats used in movies need to have rights to prevent them from being harmed. But anyhow, I am not a good enough person to not laugh when scenes come on where rats supposedly jump and attack characters, since basically they all just look like a guy off-camera (perhaps above them) is just throwing bagloads of rodents at them. If it's any consolation, I bet a big percentage of those are just stuffed animals, since live rats tend to cost more. And rats always land at their feet.

2. Since the rats don't actually move that much, the actors try their best to sell they are in mortal danger. But the hamming it up just comes across that they are scared in the Scooby-Doo sense. They are a cartoonish bunch anyhow, with each having a stock characteristic or a skill. And of course they seek to boink the girls of the group in the hilariously seedy mansion, not caring even if they are in the same room as their friends, who are actively trying to avoid eye contact.

Also the film's rats seem mostly want to avoid people, no matter what Mattei tries to sell us. Particularly any scene in a staircase where characters try to avoid any proximity to rats makes them seem hilariously fragile for supposedly hardened outlaws. Since rats won't just move towards the main characters, there is also a scene where some sort of cut-outs are clearly put onto a conveyer belt in order to advance menacingly.

3. The biggest laugh comes at the very end of the film, and is a surprise of the kind that I would really advise to see the film before reading this.

BIG SPOILER FOLLOWS

It turns out, Mattei had a twist ending on his mind, the like of Planet of the Apes or irony in the vein of Night of the Living Dead. As it has been a bit on the edge on why this film was set post apocalypse in the first place, the answer is given when dawn rises and our two survivors meet on with radiation-suited exterminators on city streets. When one of them removes their mask, we gat to see that they weren't human at all. They were some sort of wookiees, or gerbil-men. Or rather, I think what the film is trying to show us, is a man-sized rat who have taken over the world from the humans and are here now to exterminate even the last survivors. How's that for a twist, Mr. Shyamalan?

Three laughs: Maximum Overdrive

 
It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of themselves, and it is an even better pleasure to find some trash that keeps surprising you than watching most quality films. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you can't believe what the film is showing to you. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.

Maximum Overdrive (1986)
Director: Stephen King

Stephen King on cocaine is much like any 13-year-old. A massive dork. Nothing else could explain how such an immature movie as Maximum Overdrive could be created. Of course in the 80's, King could do anything and moneymen would be ready with their checkbooks. I'm glad he made this. Much of the movie seems to play like an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon, even though somehow this was supposed to be scary in some way.

Basically it's the most clichéd cowboys vs. indians story, with self-driving trucks (lead by a toy store novelty truck with the face of The Green Goblin) serving as the Indians, and Emilio Estevez (straight outta Repo Man) as the straigh-faced cowboy. This film seems to be a major influence on M. Night Shyamalan and his film The Happening, another film which attempted to modernize an old-timey sci-fi B-movie about the tables getting turned on humanity. The both movies had too few genuinely scary ideas and too many campy laugh-out moments and bad acting for anyone to be able to take them seriously. Nevertheless, as cult comedies, these are unbeatable.

Three laughs (SPOILERS!):

1. The first laugh comes in the first scene. This spot is usually used to create an athmosphere of dread and fear in competent horror films. King, however uses first the opening text to explain some mumbo-jumbo about a passing meteor. And then, he himself is seen walking to an ATM under a big banner that says FUCK. The machine doesn't dispense cash, it just tells him he's an asshole. Self-deprecation of the highest order.

2. The next scene is just as funny, as a draw bridge raises unexpectedly and ruins many a people's day. Watermelons get squashed, some guy falls into water and of course cars are crashed in some prime Blues Brothers -like stunts. The funniest thing, however, is seeing the AC/DC truck go, since they are the fellows blasting WHO MADE WHO on the soundtrack.

3. The laughs keep coming when a junior-league coach is killed by a Coke machine shooting cans at his junk and a little kid gets flattened by a self-driving steam roller. I would give it to one stock racial hustler losing at an arcade and letting out an exhausted SHIIIT before the machines first give him a lot of money, then hypnotize him for a bit and then zap him dead. Overly convoluted, don't you think?

Three laughs: The Barbarians

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of themselves, and it is an even better pleasure to find some trash that keeps surprising you than watching most quality films. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you can't believe what the film is showing to you. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.

The Barbarians (1987)
Director: Ruggero Deodato

In the 1980's, the once lucrative Italian film industry started to diminish, with directors turning to churning out cheap knockoffs of American hit genre movies for VHS markets. The barbarian picture seemed to be a particularly popular of them, since peplum movies had been big before, in the 50's. And to make one, you really didn't need any more than just a very muscled main actor, a sword, a desert and lots of muscle oil.

The Barbarians was co-produced by the legendary American B-movie company Cannon Films. The original director was the Serbian Slobodan Šijan, but he was replaced by the man behind Cannibal Holocaust, Ruggero Deodato. For a Deodato movie, the end result isn't as dark as one would think, and the nihilism is kept strictly below the surface. The film's world sees hippie-like natural people getting easily brutalized by stronger hands, and gives little hope for any brainier activity to have much use in the world or there to be any non-violent way to solve conflicts. The Barbarian Brothers (Peter and David Paul) bumble their way through a fantasy landscape, with little agenda of their own and never, ever, giving any thought into anything.

It's a very casual movie for a genre that usually features a larger-than-life threat and some operatic melodrama. As it happens, it is probably the best Groo the Wanderer adaptation one could ever hope for. With twice the Groo!

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The first 20 minutes or so are pleyed relatively easy as far as Italian genre movies go. Michael Berryman from Hills Have Eyes is included in a group of nasty desert warriors who kidnap a woodland hippie queen and take her sons captive. They are seperated and raised to be barbarian gladiators, fighting against bigger and bigger opponents for sport. The first laugh of the film comes from when it is decided they should fight each other, and they are given the first pieces of dialogue. The Pauls really aren't much of actors, and it seems to take everything they have in their heads to try to pronounce words somewhat correctly. But the film is written as they argue with each other all the time. So, there is a contrast of two child-minded muscled barbarianmen arguing unconvincingly and fighting nonchalantly against horders, while Berryman throws more and more goons into finishing them off.

2. The film seems to recognize many of the other faults of the leading men, even making fun of them at points. I especially love the scene where during an espionage mission, they happen to peek into a tent which happens to feature a harem of beautiful ladies. The reaction the Brothers have for this is to do a noise, which is sort of a mixture of an excited yell of a bull in heat, and the wheezing laughing struggles of an asthmatic who has heard the most hilarious joke in the world.

3. The producers, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, were notoriously cheap, so in their pictures everything that was possible to do cheaper, often was. Case in point was the sets and the special effects. The film manages to have a halfway convincing dragon, which looks like a roasted pig, for about two seconds of screentime. The fun begins when it gulps down our heroes and we see how he looks on the inside. It looks like a tunnel with blue and red christmas lights and a fog machine. Who knew dragons had a techno club inside them!

Three Laughs: Surfer - Teen Confronts Fear

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of themselves, and it is an even better pleasure to find some trash that keeps surprising you than watching most quality films. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you can't believe what the film is showing to you. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.

Surfer: Teen Confronts Fear (USA, 2018)
Director: Douglas Burke

One might think once you have seen The Room, you have reached an absolute nadir of so-bad-its-hard-to-believe quality. You would be wrong. Tommy Wisesau might have been an auteur that sabotaged every part of the film he was involved in (ig. acting, directing, producing, writing), but at least his cameraman managed to shoot sharp shots. Another important thing is the self-importance and deluded belief in the film one is making. You can't copy the sort of enthusiasm.

Well, move over Tommy, since here comes Douglas Burke, auteur and physics professor at USC. He has directed, written, produced and stars in Surfer. As well as the soundtrack is based on tunes hummed by him. The film's main role is played by his son, Sage Burke, who doesn't seem to be quite as enthusiastic about the art they are creating. It would appear that the titular teen looks so antsy for the most of the movie as if would rather be surfing than listening to his old man's inane monologues throughout the movie.

The super-low budget movie is supposed to be a life-affirming lecture with overt Christian overtones. The titular teen has traumas from  surfing in too massive waves and now has a fear of the ocean. He confronts the spectre of his long-lost father (made, according to him, from squid ink and electricity), who gives him mystical advice on how to confront one's fears. The latter half sees the teen exploring what actually happened to his father, along with lots and lots of filler material about surfing, most of which seems to have been shot on a family vacation.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The main thing one gets from this movie is an idea of how much Douglas is trying to act as hard as he can. Never so much than in an endless monologue (10? 15? 20 minutes? Who can tell?) where he laments his own situation and how in the afterlife they didn't tell him how returning to life would also make him FEEL. Burke adapts a sort of Patrick Stewart imitation, I guess in order to appear Shakespearean. With lines like "I AM LIVING IN AN IRON MAIDEN OF PAIN, BOY!", laughter comes often and tears were rolling down my cheeks on both of my viewings of the movie.

2. The second half has an equally "interesting" take from Douglas, having him break the advice given in Tropic Thunder and attempts to act as a catatonic patient in a wheelchair. The astonishingly tone-deaf and ableist performance is made even sillier with the repetition, with a supervising doctor ordering Sage to repeat that he loves his father over and over again, which makes him go even further catatonic, falling from his wheelchair, and knocking open tha comically huge Coke bottle army underlings had just brought Sage, along with a huge purple plastic straw.

3. There would be plenty of good choices for the 3rd Laugh from Douglas's teachings (like the scene with a beached whale carcass, when he orders Sage to "look at it without me"), but I would like to showcase how brilliant the supporting cast are. Two regular bozos in from lunch are sent to check under cars for hidden bombs by the military, I guess in order to add to the runtime, and to show how secretive the military base really is. And Dr. Burke (Gerald James) meets an old skipper at the pier and gets a few answers out of him by presenting him "really good cognac", ie. Hennessy. The conspiracy thriller plotting went a little over my head since I was staring at the loop of a bird flying a circle across the camera or how the bad green screen effects makes the Skipper's (Mitch Feinstein) glasses disappear every time he turns his head.

Apparently there exists a black-and-white version of the film that tool the filmmakers 20 months to make. It reportedly slowly fades into color by the third act. Whichever version is possible, grab a few drinks and a few friends along and you will have a good time. Especially if you like watching footage of surfing.

Three Laughs: Tammy and the T-rex

 
So, I'm going to start detailing trashy films that would be hard to give stars to. Basically, these are the movies that would get ★ or ★★★★★ here. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you can't believe what the film is showing to you. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these, has a special place in my heart.

Tammy and the T-rex (USA, 1994)
Director: Stewart Raffill

This is a really goofy teenaged romantic comedy where Denise Richards and Paul Walker (both before they really got famous) play lovebirds, where Romeo gets his brain fused into an animatronic Tyrannosaur. Just because. The film was reportedly scrambled together when the filmmakers got free access to a good dinosaur puppet that used to be a amusement park sideshow in Eastern Europe.

The film has been available for years as a VHS hacked to pieces. The original film had some really bloody gore parts, which were removed in order to market this to Jurassic Park -starved audiences. Vinegar Syndrome has since reinstated the missing bits. But it's still really weird to think, which audiences was this really aimed at? The director Stewart Raffill is also known from the horrendous E.T.-ripoff Mac and Me.

I think it has a sense of weirdness on the level of Troma, where it throws everything but the kitchen sink at you in order to get cheap laughs. The difference is that with a Troma film you know exactly what you get, whereas this film is all over the place, taste-wise, and thus more unpredictable (and funny!).

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. Paul Walker's character is inexplicably killed by taking him to a safari park to be mauled by lions. As the entire film was shot within 25 minutes from Raffill's house, one has to wonder, is he living in a Roar-like house filled with man-eating lions?
2. The cheapest laugh of the film comes when The Mad Doctor Wachenstein (Terry Kiser) pokes around with Walker's dead body and his brain. He gets a visible rise (ahem) out of him. Shame to let such a well-endowed body go to waste.
3. The gore effects are always fun, with the T-rex getting rid of most of the villains in 10 minutes or so. But the real fun is with T-rex's tiny front legs. Thus, it's silly fun to see him talk on the telephone or filp the bird with those adorable hands. But yeah, the third laugh is for T-rex ripping someone's head off with guts galore.