Only now does it occur to me... BLOOD BATH

Only now does it occur to me... that––yikes––Sid Haig has played basically every ethnicity, at one time or another.

BLOOD BATH is a fairly terrible, but fairly watchable Roger Corman clusterfuck with an exceptionally convoluted production history that involved a Yugoslavian spy thriller, a Venice Beach-set vampire flick, co-financing by Roger Corman and Stephanie Rothman, co-direction by the legendary Jack Hill (COFFY, THE BIG BIRD CAGE, SPIDER BABY, FOXY BROWN) and Rothman, music (predictably) stolen from DEMENTIA 13, and all sorts of other random and bewildering things.  You can read about the absurdly labyrinthine twists and turns of the production here.

Also, it features one of the worst-looking vampires ever:

But that's not the point of this entry– the point is the hilarious spectrum of quasi-ethnic roles that have been played by Sid Haig.  Here, he plays a beatnik named "Abdul the Arab."

  
 Haig (far right) in a well-constructed community theater vest)

Haig (second from left) placing a close 2nd in the scene-chewing contest of this particular tableau

From what I've read, he's actually Armenian-American, but in other fine films he's played Latino (THE FIREBRAND, IRON HORSE, THE FLYING NUN, CHE!, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE), Native American (DANIEL BOONE), Italian (THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE), Turkish (GET SMART, OHARA), Arabian (BLOOD BATH, THE DON IS DEAD, SWITCH, FANTASY ISLAND, MACGUYVER),  Russian (MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE), South American Indian (THE FORBIDDEN DANCE IS LAMBADA), Ambiguous Asian (BRING 'EM BACK ALIVE), and just plain "Swarthy" (MISFITS OF SCIENCE).  And I'm certain there's dozens I've missed or haven't seen.  Whew! Uh, well done, Mr. Haig––you truly are a one man "It's a small world (after all)."

Film Review: SPIDER BABY (1964, Jack Hill)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 81 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Lon Chaney Jr., Beverly Washburn, Sid Haig, Carol Ohmart, Jill Banner.
Tag-lines: "Come into my parlor, said the spider to the..."
Best one-liner: "I caught a big fat bug right in my spider web and now the spider gets to give the bug a big sting. Sting! Sting! Sting! Sting! Sting!"

Do you like spiders, Mr. Howe?" (You should probably think very carefully before you answer that.)

In 1964, after doing some mostly uncredited work on some Corman pics and directing a brilliant, existential student short (THE HOST), Jack Hill finally got a shot at his first feature, and boy, is it a doozy. It's in turns manic, hilarious, sincere, terrifying, and devastating- and it's probably the greatest, most original American horror film to emerge from the 1960's. Unfortunately, due to bankrupt financiers, it didn't see the light of day until '68, but it was the first in a series of bona fide low-budget masterpieces from Hill that would later include the Shakespearean SWITCHBLADE SISTERS, the hard-hitting Blaxploitation gem COFFY, and the radical/reactionary treatise THE SWINGING CHEERLEADERS. SPIDER BABY made an indelible impression on many a filmmaker, from Tobe Hooper and his cannibalistic family units to David Lynch and his chillingly chipper oddities to Wes Craven and his 'people under the stairs' to, most recently, Rob Zombie and his weaker noodlings on the same subjects.

But a movie as freakishly visceral as SPIDER BABY deserves far more than just a history lesson, so allow me to explain why it works (without giving too much away, of course). The film is at its best when eerily combining completely disparate elements: from the opening credits (with children's book cut-outs accompanied by Lon Chaney Jr.-sung lyrics about cannibal orgies) to Sid Haig's lanky man-child to the blurry line between kid's playthings and murderous implements, SPIDER BABY delights in fusing the juvenile and the macabre. Why have a scene with just incestuous undertones when you can have a scene with incestuous, pedophilic, violent, AND insectoid undertones?

And for being a 7-day bargain basement shoot, it has an incredible amount of class- almost as if Nabokov and Tennessee Williams collaborated on a script directed by a German Expressionist (turned Corman protégé). The acting (particularly by the aforementioned Haig, the well-meaning caretaker Lon Chaney Jr., and the two psychotic sisters, Beverly Washburn and Jill Banner) pulls of the difficult feat of being at once sinister, darkly hysterical, and full of pathos. Whew! Now: revel in the majesty that is SPIDER BABY...if you dare!

-Sean Gill

Film Review: FOXY BROWN (1974, Jack Hill)

Stars: 4.5 of 5.
Running Time: 94 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Pam Grier, Peter Brown, Terry Carter, Sid Haig, Juanita Brown, Antonio Fargas.
Tag-lines: "Don't mess aroun' with Foxy Brown Don't mess aroun' with Foxy Brown - She's the meanest chick in town!" AND "A chick with drive who don't take no jive!" AND "She's brown sugar and spice but if you don't treat her nice she'll put you on ice!"
Best one-liner: "You pink-ass corrupt honky judge, take your little wet noodle outta here and if you see a man anywhere send him in because I do need a MAN!"

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Jack Hill takes a hold of this sage advice, and picks up basically where COFFY left off. Originally, this was a sequel entitled "BURN, COFFY, BURN!," but for whatever reason, the studio changed their mind at the last minute, and FOXY BROWN was born. Pam Grier as Foxy Brown is a whole lotta woman.

Or so says her brother after Foxy shoots his ear off. (He deserved it, by the way.) Foxy (as in COFFY, with her Jamaican accents and insane wigs) is a master of disguise.

Foxy is also a master of bustin' up furniture. She even has a "black belt in barstools."

Yeah, this movie is THAT awesome.

There's psychedelic dance sequences, graft, corruption, topless women, castrations, the line "Don't pinch the fruit, faggot!" (which gets recycled for SWITCHBLADE SISTERS), and it all ends on a freeze frame. But before you can say, "A little taste of honey ain't good enough for me, I gotta have the whole beehive," FOXY BROWN turns the tables on you.

Allow me to explain. You're enjoying it as a revenge picture, and then, all of a sudden, there's depth. FOXY BROWN never lets you forget that while you're out there, enjoying yourself, the stakes are fucking high for these characters. They're having their friends and lovers murdered, they're getting raped- or, at the very least, having sex with repulsive men for money, and they might never see their kids again. And just as in THE SWINGING CHEERLEADERS or COFFY, Jack Hill is a master of snapping you back into the harsh, tear-streamed reality of it, right after entertaining the hell out of you. He creates a world not unlike our own, but ultimately, it's fantasy, because at least in FOXY BROWN, some form of justice is served. When we get to a line like "Jail is where some of the finest people I know are these days," it's far from corny- it really matters.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: SWITCHBLADE SISTERS (1975, Jack Hill)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 91 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Director Jack Hill, auteur of COFFY, FOXY BROWN, SPIDER BABY, THE BIG DOLL HOUSE, and scads more of brilliant flicks, Robbie Lee, Joanne Nail, Monica Gayle.
Tag-lines: " They'd Rather Kill Their Man Than Lose Him."
Best one-liners: "Get your hands off me, you fat pig dyke!"

"I lost my eye for this gang!" SWITCHBLADE SISTERS is insanely awesome, it's awesomely insane, it's off its meds, it's off the chain, and, ya know what, it's swinging that chain in your face and then punchin' you in the mouth. And then it's laughing about it. It's OTHELLO meets TEENAGE GANG DEBS meets ROCK 'N ROLL HIGH SCHOOL at the drive-in. But wait, it really is OTHELLO. The girl with the eye-patch is Iago! Lace is Othello! That guy Dominic is Desdemona?! Yes! That's amazing.



It's so over-the-top, one might mistake it as manufactured by Italians, a Spaghetti girl-gang film, if you will. Well, Jack Hill's layin' it out, and lettin' those Italians know they're not the only ones that can do operatic genre films well.


But then we got dopes askin' questions like, "If the gangs are powerful enough to make the school principal kowtow to their every whim, why do they even still go to school?" Or "Why is the opposing gang about as fearsome as the school newspaper staff?- wait, I think they ARE they school newspaper staff!" Well, this movie takes your dumb questions like that, tells ya to 'Cool it,' 'beat it,' and 'shove it,' punches you in the guts, slices your face, and screams 'Can ya dig it, chippy?!'


I believe Chekhov put it best: 'If in the first act you present a pile of empty cardboard boxes in the girl-gang hideout, in the last act, someone must be karate-kicked through said pile of boxes.' Here, let me give you girls five stars.
Wait, put those blades away. No, I wasn't tryin' to start nothin', honest!

-Sean Gill

And SWITCHBLADE SISTERS warrants special mention as one of my all-time favorites and one the key influences on my forthcoming play, Go-Go Killers!

COMING SOON: Reviews of FOXY BROWN and SPIDER BABY.

Film Review: COFFY (1973, Jack Hill)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 91 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Pam Grier, Robert DoQui (ROBOCOP), Sid Haig, Alan Arbus, Brooker Bradshaw.
Tag-lines: "The Baddest One-Chick Hit-Squad that ever hit town!"
Best one-liner(s): "I go away for half an hour for you to turn a trick... and I come back and find you ballin' some niggah bitch! You WHITE TRAMP!"

A car door opens. A man emerges. He's wearing a goldenrod one-piece jumpsuit, revealing most of his chest. He has a ridiculous silver belt buckle, a gold-encrusted cane, a maroon felt fedora, a pointy collar, gold chains, a cape, ginormous sunglasses, and a 'stache.

No one has EVER looked more like a pimp. Suddenly, a song: "King George! He's a pimp!" It's perhaps the most blatant case of 'stating the obvious' in film history. And Jack Hill's COFFY manages to do it with a completely straight face. With no irony, no 'wink and a nod.' And THAT is why COFFY works, in a nutshell. Pam Grier is a force of nature, and she gives this film its ferocious, untamable energy. COFFY is one wild sprint through L.A.'s underworld with beatings, verbal barbs, catfights, and "B*tch, I'll cut you's." COFFY's got it all: ridiculous tag-lines ("Coffy- she'll cream you!," "No one sleeps when they mess with Coffy!"), broken-bottle fights, lesbian prostitutes, one-eyed villains (see also: Hill's SWITCHBLADE SISTERS), over-the-top racists (who get theirs, of course), completely low-rent sets, Sid Haig as a vicious hoodlum, and Pam Grier doing a laughable Jamaican accent (while undercover). It's got all this, and then it's got a serious social message, too.

The revenge-seeking Coffy is forced to confront a crooked black congressional candidate who makes an impassioned plea to save his life- "Black people want dope, and brown people want dope, and as long as there people are deprived of a decent life, they'll settle for anything to just plain feel good with." He argues that his nefarious doings are part of a larger, positive social agenda. But is he to be believed? That's up to Coffy. And because the filmmakers were earnest (see also: the blaxploitation scene in Hill's SWINGING CHEERLEADERS), COFFY actually carries some weight. Four stars.

-Sean Gill

COMING SOON: Reviews of Jack Hill's SWITCHBLADE SISTERS and THE SWINGING CHEERLEADERS.