Mirror of Death aka Dead of Night (Deryn Warren, 1988)

One of the approximately 654 movies called Dead of Night but better known under its much more accurate U.S. home video and Canadian theatrical title Mirror of Death, this low-budget indie is no great shakes, but it has a lot of personality and DIY charm. You can tell it was made by people with not much technical experience (the film score drowns out the dialogue in the bar scenes, the volume and audibility of the actors' voices vary wildly, often within the same scene, and the lighting can be dimly or brightly lit within a single scene), but it's never boring, and I even got a few big laughs from it (some of which were probably not intentional).

The film opens with a bruised and battered young woman, Sara (Julie Merrill), running for her life down a Hollywood street at night. She calls her sister, actress April (Janet Graham, under the name Kuri Browne), collect from a phone booth. April and her boyfriend Richard (Richard Fast, under the name J.K. Dumont) are in the middle of a house party, but April tells Sara to come right over since she's only a few blocks away, despite Richard's exasperation at Sara's constant relationship drama. When he sees her battered face, he changes his tune and gets serious. April sends everyone home, but not before receiving a party gift from Mensa (George Carter, under the name Jordan Brown) (why were so many cast members acting under pseudonyms?), the only black man at the party. He hands her a book of voodoo rituals from his ancestral Haitian home and promptly disappears from the movie.

April, about to leave for San Francisco for two weeks for a film shoot, lets Sara stay with her until Sara gets back on her feet. She's a supportive sister, despite her annoying habit of condescendingly referring to Sara as Babygirl. While April's gone, Sara fends off another attack from her abusive ex Bobby (John Reno). Feeling ugly and low, she reads the voodoo book in the bath and decides to perform a ritual to make herself beautiful and powerful. The ritual, involving red candles, a mirror, and a circle of baby powder, works so well that it completely erases her bruises, but it also causes her to be possessed by the spirit of a vengeful empress named Sura, so don't try this at home, readers.

Sura gives Sara the confidence she's lacking, and she hits a local bar and picks up the bartender through some wildly unusual seductive tactics. These tactics include asking for a glass of water, accepting the bartender's offer of a free cognac instead, getting another man to give her a quarter for the pool table through a wily glance, making a great shot with the pool cue, and then busting some completely insane, unprompted, and unexpected dance moves for several minutes while making eye contact with the bartender. I could never do justice to Sura/Sara's dance moves (language is inadequate), but I'll try to ballpark it. Picture Elaine Benes attempting Kylie Minogue's moves in the "I Should Be So Lucky" and "Loco-Motion" videos, with just a sprinkling of Whitesnake-era Tawny Kitaen, but weirder. The bartender is absolutely grooving on it. The possessed Sara takes the bartender back to her sister's pad, but before they can get it on, the unlucky lad touches her red candles, and Sura goes ballistic on his ass.

This does not deter Sura, who hits the bar scene the next night. As soon as she walks in, a Hollywood hunk gets off his barstool and sizes her up and down with a leering smirk. Sura and the himbo immediately bust into some more insane dancing for a few minutes, this time with a Latin American flair. My wife and I were wheezing with laughter during these dance scenes. She takes the pretty boy back to Sis's house, where he gets much further (and farther) than the bartender. They have some hot but nudity-free shower sex where the camera spends an inordinately long time focusing on Sura soaping the man's navel. Guy had the cleanest navel in Hollywood that day. He spends the night and even makes a horrible-looking cup of coffee in the morning, but he touches the mirror and gets the same ballistic-on-ass voodoo chokehold.

Shithead Bobby decides to make another unwelcome return the following night, and the abusive jerk finally gets his comeuppance, mirror-spirit-style. April returns from the film shoot (which was supposedly two weeks, but maybe she's just returning for the weekend?) to find her sister digging graves in the backyard with a shovel. April asks Sara what we're all thinking, "What are you doing, burying cat tails and monkey nuts?" Sara responds to this predictable and conventional question by hitting her sister with the shovel.

Waking from her shovel drubbing, April gets Richard to come over. Sara explains that she has been possessed by an ancient empress, probably killed three dudes and buried them in the backyard, and doesn't even remember going full metal shovel on her sibling. April and Richard have a hard time with this news until they see physical proof. (Richard: "Shit! What the hell was that?") The trio decides to call a spirit whisperer to get rid of Sura by flipping through the yellow pages. They choose to go with John Smith (Bob Kipp, under the name Bob Kip, which I'm guessing was a typo and not a pseudonym) because, as Sara says, "his name sounds normal." John Smith bicycles over with a backpack full of spiritual items, and the showdown begins.

We're far from good movie territory here, but, as I hope my description above makes abundantly clear, this thing is far more entertaining than it should be. The performances are more consistent and natural than is usual for this kind of DIY project even if the behavior of the characters is sometimes inexplicable (the dancing). Technical limitations of sound and lighting aside, Warren's visual style is neither distractingly show-offy nor ineptly amateurish, and the movie hums along without getting bogged down or turning into a snooze. I wouldn't recommend this one to the average moviegoer, but if you have a soft spot in your heart for the low-budget b-movie (and if you read this blog regularly, I hope you do), I think you're going to have at least a little bit of a good time.

Deryn Warren had a short career as a filmmaker, but she's had a long and successful one as an acting teacher in Los Angeles and as a theater actor and director. Her other films include two other horror movies, The Boy from Hell and Black Magic Woman (starring Apollonia Kotero and Mark Hamill), and the comedy short Sweet Tessie and Bags.

Death Valley (Dick Richards, 1982)

Dick Richards is one of those filmmakers who should be better known, but the reasons for his obscurity are understandable. His filmography is small, each one is in a different genre, none were big hits or era-defining touchstones (except for a film he produced and another one he was fired from before it started shooting), and he hasn't directed anything since 1986. The three I've seen show a director with an eye for strong images and visual detail (no boring shots that are there just to move the plot along) and a sensitivity to character and performance, even in a movie like Death Valley where the characters aren't particularly fleshed out on the page. He also finds great locations that really pop on the screen (both interiors and exteriors), and his art directors and set decorators do a pretty amazing job.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Richards got his start as a photographer, which is apparent in his filmmaking style. His photography work eventually led to him directing TV commercials, and he got the chance to make movies in the early '70s, debuting with the western The Culpepper Cattle Co. in 1972. The movie made a small profit and put him on Hollywood executives' radar, and he was hired to direct Jaws. Unfortunately, his odd habit of referring to the shark as a "whale" in several meetings greatly irritated the producers and author Peter Benchley, and Richards was dumped for a young hotshot named Steven Spielberg.

That may have been bad for Richards' long-term career, but he rebounded with two excellent if not as world-changing films in 1975, a beautifully eccentric comedy-drama road movie with Alan Arkin, Sally Kellerman, and Mackenzie Phillips called Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins and a neo-noir Raymond Chandler adaptation, Farewell, My Lovely, with Robert Mitchum and Charlotte Rampling. Harry Dean Stanton is in both movies, for my fellow Stanton heads out there. He followed that double header with the 1977 war movie March or Die, took a five-year hiatus, and returned with his only horror film, Death Valley. (More on that later, obviously.) That same year, Richards was a producer on the massive hit Tootsie, a movie he'd cowritten an early draft of and worked hard to make happen. Originally planning to direct as well as produce, he butted heads with the studio over creative choices and turned the directing job over to Sydney Pollack. I wonder what a Dick Richards Tootsie and a Dick Richards Jaws would have looked like.

The rest of his too-slim directorial credits include the 1983 family melodrama Man, Woman and Child and the 1986 Burt Reynolds action movie Heat, a troubled production that saw original director Robert Altman (yes, Altman was going to make a Burt Reynolds action movie after being convinced by mutual friend Carol Burnett) quitting because his preferred cinematographer, Pierre Mignot, was having trouble getting a visa to work in the United States. (Altman also hated the script.) Richards replaced Altman, but Richards and Reynolds did not get along, to put it mildly. Richards quit after Reynolds punched him, and Jerry Jameson took over as director number three. The production remained chaotic, apologies were made, and Richards returned to the film but had to quit for a second time when he fell off a crane and injured himself, requiring hospitalization. Jameson came back and two other uncredited directors also worked on the film, raising the director total to five. The film was edited without input from Richards, multiple lawsuits ensued, and Richards was credited as R.M. Richards in the finished product. He hasn't worked in film since, and, considering he's 88, he probably won't again.

OK, I'm finally going to talk about the movie, six paragraphs in. Death Valley is an intriguing blend of slasher horror, suspense thriller, family drama, and road movie that opens briefly in New York City before moving to the Arizona and California deserts. The characters in Richard Rothstein's (co-creator of sometimes spooky/sometimes silly HBO series The Hitchhiker) screenplay are a little thin, and this movie would probably be great instead of just good if we had the chance to get to know these people in more depth, but the actors and Richards do a whole lot with the little they're given. They give the whole thing a lived-in quality that's not always present in the words.

The film opens in Manhattan, with little Billy (A Christmas Story's Peter Billingsley) visiting multiple notable New York spots with his father Paul (veteran character actor Edward Herrmann in a cameo role), a professor at Princeton. Billy's parents are recently divorced, and his mother Sally (Child's Play's Catherine Hicks) has started a new relationship with a man from her small, Death Valley-adjacent California hometown, Mike (Melvin and Howard's Paul Le Mat), and is strongly considering moving back home. In hopes of getting Mike and Billy to bond and for her little New York boy to warm up to the idea of moving to the desert, she and Mike arrange for a road trip vacation from Death Valley to  Arizona. Billy is not wild about leaving Manhattan or seeing some rube who's not his dad spend time with his mother, so he gives poor Mike the business as soon as the trip begins.

Speaking of giving people the business, an Arizona serial killer is starting to get active again. After he slices up a party animal doofus, a babe in short shorts and tube top, and their sleeping buddy in an RV, Billy comes across the scene while exploring the landscape with Sally and Mike. He fortunately does not see the dead bodies, but he does pocket a distinctive gold medallion and also sees parked near the RV the very creepy 1958 Cadillac with the "HEX 576" license plate that had followed and passed them on the highway earlier that day.

Soon, the killer (or killers?) realizes the boy has seen the car, and he decides to take out little Billy. He pursues the trio through the Arizona landscape, and Richards finds all kinds of great locations in the deserts, rock formations, roadside motels, and tourist traps along the way. I love the way Richards films these landscapes and the motel interiors. His photographer's eye is especially strong in these scenes.

The dialogue is mostly basic and perfunctory, except for a handful of scenes, and the characters don't get the fullness they deserve, but they all have a relaxed naturalness that lifts up the lack of spice in the dialogue. Billingsley is a great child actor with an expressive face and he and Hicks have a believable mother-son rapport. Le Mat is maybe too relaxed in the climactic scenes but is such a believable average Joe, and we also get great supporting work from Stephen McHattie and Wilford Brimley (here billed as A. Wilford Brimley, maybe because when you see him show up a third of the way into the running time, you say, "Ayyyyyyy, Wilford Brimley!")

I like this movie a lot. It definitely has its flaws (mostly in the writing), but it has a a great visual style, a solid cast, a compelling story, and real tension and suspense, and it's beautifully lit. The craftsmanship on display practically makes me weep with rage at how shitty most 21st century movies and TV shows look. I also love the detail and character of the early '80s locations, and again I'm nearly weeping with rage at how bland and uniform so much of our landscape has become in this century of slop. You've heard me rant about this before, so I'll stop now. Death Valley is no neglected masterpiece, but it's a solid, entertaining, well-made movie full of unusual and pleasing visual detail, and that's more than alright with me. 

Tower of London (Rowland V. Lee, 1939)

1939 was a busy year for filmmaker Rowland V. Lee. After Son of Frankenstein (reviewed on this site last month), he made the drama The Sun Never Sets before returning to the darker stuff with Tower of London, an epic but concise fictionalized historical action-drama with plenty of horror movie elements and Son of Frankenstein cast members Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff, with added Vincent Price. 

Like Son of Frankenstein, it's an emotionally and narratively complex story skillfully told, with charismatic actors who, true or not, look like they're having the time of their lives. It was a passion project for Lee, who had been planning it for years. I had a great time with it.

The feeble king of England, Henry VI (Miles Mander), has been deposed by King Edward IV (Ian Hunter, not the Mott the Hoople singer) and locked up in the Tower of London, albeit in a comfortable room, unlike many of the other prisoners, who are shackled and tortured by the chief executioner and head of the prison guards, Mord (Boris Karloff), a bald, club-footed beast of a man who spends his downtime sharpening his blades with a raven on his shoulder and inflicting the aforementioned torture. As our lame duck president once said about Corn Pop, Mord is a bad dude. (The election was horrifying, the country is toast, both major parties are moral failures, nothing I can say about it here will be enjoyable, I hope a better system rises from the ashes or a meteor hits us, back to the movie.)

Henry's brother, Richard (Basil Rathbone), the duke of Gloucester, is a treacherous, scheming little freak who wants the throne and is willing to do anything to get it, often in cahoots with the bloodthirsty Mord. Richard has a secret dollhouse with a doll for each person in the line of succession. When he succeeds at removing the obstacle, the doll is chucked into his fireplace with much glee. 

Those obstacles include Henry, his own brother Edward, Edward's two young sons, the prince of Wales (G.P. Huntley) (he wants to snag the prince's wife, Anne Neville, played by Rose Hobart, who was the subject of a fascinating early experimental film by Joseph Cornell), the queen's cousin John Wyatt (John Sutton), and the Duke of Clarence (Vincent Price). Richard has everyone fooled except for Queen Elyzabeth (Barbara O'Neil), who has a visceral distrust of the man and is especially unnerved when he spends time with her sons. (Also in 1939, O'Neil played Scarlett O'Hara's mother in Gone with the Wind despite being only three years older than Vivien Leigh.) We also get substantial supporting parts for Nan Grey as Lady Alice Barton, John Wyatt's betrothed, and Ernest Cossart as Tom Clink, a sassy chimney sweep who gets mixed up in the intrigue.

This cast has the juice, as the perpetually online like to say. Rathbone, Hunter, Karloff, Sutton, Cossart, and Price tear into these roles, and O'Neil gets a surprising amount to do despite her more grounded part. (She's basically the straight woman for a bunch of wild dudes.) Hunter plays King Edward as a politically effective but goofy party animal in it for the good times and the prestige of power, lacking in empathy and easily manipulated by Richard. He's hilarious and knows how to ham it up just enough without wearing out his welcome. 

Karloff's role is pretty one-note but exceedingly memorable in its physicality and menace, and he's a major reason the film works as a horror film as well as a historical drama. Price and Rathbone are fantastic and immensely skilled at nailing that sweet spot between sincerity and camp. The scene where the two men have a wine-drinking contest to determine the fate of the duke's fortune is one of the great two-person scenes. Price would later play Rathbone's part in Roger Corman's 1962 remake of this movie, which also incorporated some of Shakespeare's Richard III.

Director Lee, so adept at handling the complex, competing interests of his characters in Son of Frankenstein, is equally adept at taking on the large canvas here, which includes all the palace intrigue in the tower, the love and family lives of multiple sets of characters, murders, executions, several exciting swordfights, and two epic battle scenes. He manages all this in just over ninety minutes, without letting the pace drag or hurrying the action along too swiftly. Nearly every major character is explored in depth, and even the minor characters get their moments. Lee had a reputation for going over schedule and over budget, but he got results. (He was also one of the founders of the Directors Guild of America, which was originally called the Screen Directors Guild, a union protecting filmmakers' rights.)

I don't know if 1939 was just a fluke or if most Lee films are as solid as Son of Frankenstein and Tower of London. If they are, I definitely need to dip into the catalog. Based on the two films of his I've seen, the dude had the goods. Lee retired from filmmaking in 1945, with the Charles Laughton-starring swashbuckler Captain Kidd his last movie as director. He spent the rest of his life ranching in the San Fernando Valley, though he turned part of the ranch into filming location property and rented it out to productions, including Laughton's only film as director, the masterpiece The Night of the Hunter, and continued to sell parts of it to developers for corporate offices and family homes. He made a short-lived return to the movies with the Biblical epic The Big Fisherman in 1959, producing and cowriting the screenplay but hiring Frank Borzage to direct. He died in 1975.

Dead Man Walking (Gregory Brown aka Gregory Dark, 1988)

This week, I'm writing about another apocalyptic sci-fi/action/thriller, 1988's Dead Man Walking, made by porn film director turned b-movie filmmaker turned A-list music video director Gregory Dark under his birth name of Gregory Brown. (He switched from Dark to Brown to differentiate his "legit" movies from his pornos but mostly went back to Dark for his later films and music videos. His employers for the latter career include such varied artists as the Melvins, OutKast, Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Britney Spears, Counting Crows, Orgy, Ice Cube, Sublime, The Shins, Busta Rhymes, Mandy Moore, and Snoop Dogg.)

Dead Man Walking makes the Roger Corman production in my last post, Deathsport, look like a glossy, expensive studio prestige picture, and it's probably safe to assume that the majority of the budget went to the hiring of the cult character actors in the lead roles, which is not a criticism. That's money well spent. The movie has a great premise and a pedestrian visual style clearly hampered by the obvious production budget limitations, but the mostly exciting cast does a lot to keep a film-loving viewer interested.

In the terrifying future of 1997, a world hit hard by a deadly plague is in the process of rebuilding itself. The infected plague victims, who look like sufferers of leprosy (or at least a community theater playhouse version of leprosy), have been confined to heavily guarded shanty towns/slums called plague zones. The uninfected and immune live freely in a society that's close to ours, far away from the plague zones. Wealthy corporations swooped in and consolidated even more power during the pandemic phase (sound familiar?), and the biggest corporation, Unitus, has just begun a process to build housing projects in the plague zones, giving plague sufferers an apartment for their final few years in exchange for cheap labor for Unitus.

Besides the healthy and the plague-infected, a third group of humans called zero men are free to do their freaky thing. Zero men have the plague and will eventually die of it but are non-contagious and don't show any outward symptoms. A healthy person could hang with zero men and not get infected, but would any of them want to? Most of the zero men live lives of reckless abandon and erratic craziness.

John Luger (b-movie legend Wings Hauser) is a zero man who spends his days and nights giving zero effs and drinking at Club Zero, a freaky bar for zero men. We meet him at Club Zero playing chainsaw roulette with another crazy zero man. Hoisted from the ceiling is a chainsaw with a cranky pull starter. The roulette players take turns holding the saw to their opponent's neck and pulling the chain. If you can get the touchy starter to kick on and shred your opponent's neck, you win the game. Luger plays calmly while puffing a cigar and kissing his lady friend Rika (Tasia Valenza) in between turns. To no one's surprise, especially anyone who looked at the credits and saw Hauser's name at the top, Luger wins the game as blood spurts on the fellow patrons.

Meanwhile, Unitus executive Mr. Shahn (John Petlock) and his daughter Leila (Pamela Ludwig) are taking a ride through a plague zone in Shahn's limo, driven by Shahn's chauffeur Chaz (Re-Animator's Jeffrey Combs), to inspect the site of one of the future housing projects. The unlucky trio is set upon by three escaped prisoners, Decker (the late, great Brion James, who eats this role alive), Snake (the great Sy Richardson, who doesn't get enough to do in this movie), and Gordon (Joe D'Angerio). Snake and Gordon are run-of-the-mill criminals, but Decker is a crazed, violence-loving maniac as well as being a zero man. 

Decker kills Shahn, leaves Chaz for dead, and kidnaps Leila, taking her deep into the plague zone. A rescued Chaz tries to get the cops to go after them, but no authority will enter the zone, so Chaz tries his luck at finding a mercenary for hire at Club Zero. Luger likes the idea of heading into the zone on a crazy adventure, so he joins Chaz in the search for Leila. Lots of freaky post-apocalyptic shenanigans ensue, including a visit to Café Death, a plague zone bar that, according to Decker, "makes Club Zero look like Disneyland." (Neither of these bars will win any production design awards, but they have a low-budget charm.) Café Death has a more punk rock vibe than Club Zero's biker bar without the bikes feel, as well as live entertainment from a performance artist/emcee who sets a guy on fire. My wife recognized that emcee as Diz McNally, the co-host along with Dave Coulier of Nickelodeon's Out of Control. We didn't have Nickelodeon in my hometown when I was growing up, so my wife's Nickelodeon references frequently sail right over my head.

This is the kind of premise that's crying out for a decent production design budget and a strong director (imagine what Brian Trenchard-Smith could do with a story like this), but Brown, who hadn't made many non-porn films at this point in his career, doesn't really have the resources or the experience to make this look better than a random A-Team episode. Still, he knows the power of his actors' faces and lets Hauser, Combs, and especially James turn this mother out. (Again, I wish Richardson had more to do.) Hauser gets some great closeups in his early Club Zero scenes, stogie in mouth and chainsaw in hand (or at neck), James takes full advantage of his villainous charisma throughout, and Combs is perfect for playing a conflict-avoiding wimp who discovers his inner strength (though I never quite understood why he was so hellbent on saving his boss's daughter at all costs other than some unexplored relationship or unrequited love angle).

Dead Man Walking is not a great movie. You've seen the apocalyptic road movie done much better and much worse if you've been around enough. Still, I couldn't help but enjoy myself watching these actors navigate this story, and I liked the touch of having actual newscasters turned actors (Mario Machado and Mary Ingersoll) deliver the post-apocalyptic network news in between scenes. Actors always sound wrong when they pretend to be newscasters, but actual newscasters or actors with broadcast news experience have an instinctive feel for newscaster voice. I think you have to be born with it. So, Dead Man Walking. If you're a b-movie fan who digs the '80s low-budget sci-fi/action straight-to-video aesthetic, give this one a go. It's solid.

Deathsport (Nicholas Niciphor & Allan Arkush, 1978)

The second Roger Corman-produced post-apocalyptic vehicle-based movie about a deadly sporting event starring David Carradine (and the third involving vehicular insanity if you include the non-post-apocalyptic Cannonball!), Deathsport was meant to follow up on the success and popularity of Death Race 2000 but turned into an enormous fiasco for almost everyone involved, though it's still an enjoyable if not particularly distinguished b-movie. The behind-the-scenes drama involved Roger Corman trying to convince David Carradine not to do the movie, Carradine regretting not taking Corman's advice, a chaotic atmosphere on set involving much drug and alcohol abuse, an inexperienced director leaving the movie twice (he quit, came back, and then got fired), Corman vet Allan Arkush coming in to save the day twice, and physical altercations between director and actors with vicious but contradictory he-said/he-said accounts of what went down from Nicholas Niciphor and Carradine.

Carradine signed a five-picture deal with Roger Corman in 1975, beginning with Death Race 2000 (written about on this site a few months ago). He followed it up for Corman with the aforementioned cross-country road race movie Cannonball! (not to be confused with The Cannonball Run) and moonshinersploitation comedy Thunder and Lightning. In the meantime, the popularity of Death Race 2000 and the Kung Fu TV series put Carradine back on the radar of Hollywood casting agents and major international productions, and he snagged the lead in Hal Ashby's Woody Guthrie film Bound for Glory (one of the only good music biopics) and Ingmar Bergman's The Serpent's Egg (one of Bergman's only English-language films).

Back on the A-list or at least comfortably near it, Carradine stayed loyal to Roger Corman and their five-movie deal and agreed to play the lead in Deathsport. Corman tried to talk him out of it, telling him to wait for something better, but Carradine insisted, figuring a similar concept to Death Race 2000 could cross over from drive-ins to mainstream audiences the way that movie had. He almost immediately regretted the decision, saying the movie killed his career momentum and stuck him in b-movies and episodic television for most of the rest of his working life, though some of that stuff was great, especially The Long Riders, Q: The Winged Serpent, and his Hollywood comeback in the Kill Bill movies.

Deathsport was a thorn in Corman's side almost from the beginning. Corman's veteran screenwriting collaborator Charles B. Griffith took a crack at it first, but Corman didn't like the results and thought it was a rare Griffith dud. So did most of the directors in the Corman stable, who turned it down one after another, including Arkush (co-director of Hollywood Boulevard and director of Rock'n'Roll High School, Heartbeeps, Get Crazy, Caddyshack II, and at least one episode of at least half the network TV shows from the '80s to the 2010s). Corman got recent USC film school graduate Nicholas Niciphor to completely rewrite the movie. Niciphor had just written the screenplay for the indie drama Our Winning Season, an early film from Stepfather director Joseph Ruben that had done well. That film's producer, Joe Roth (later a major studio executive), told Corman he should let Niciphor direct Deathsport because he'd seen his USC student films and thought the kid had the goods. Corman gave him a shot, which turned into a disaster.

According to Niciphor, he walked into a hostile, drug-addled set with a perpetually stoned Carradine and a perpetually drunk and/or coked-up Claudia Jennings who wouldn't stop giving him the business. He claims Carradine was also physically abusive, roughing him up on multiple occasions. Carradine admits to the heavy drug use on set from both him and Jennings but says that Niciphor was erratic, prone to tantrums, and physically and emotionally abusive to Jennings. When he saw Niciphor hit Jennings, he went ballistic and kicked Niciphor's ass. Carradine's version of events is mostly backed up by Deathsport cinematographer Gary Graver (a lifelong Orson Welles collaborator and close friend who took jobs on b-movies and porn films to scrape up some cash for Welles' projects), who emphasized that Niciphor was especially mean to Jennings, and Arkush, who says Jennings was very coked-up but that Niciphor didn't know what he was doing and behaved inconsistently. Graver also says he thinks Niciphor had untreated PTSD from Vietnam and that the director would often become obsessed with relating the grisliest details of his war experiences. We don't have Jennings' point of view because she sadly died in a car accident in 1979 at the age of 29. Whatever the truth, this was a majorly dysfunctional set.

Corman mostly kept his distance from the on-set drama but felt that the inexperienced Niciphor was struggling to handle the action scenes. When an exasperated Niciphor quit near the end of the shooting schedule, Arkush stepped in. Niciphor came back and agreed to finish the film on the condition he didn't have to direct any Carradine scenes, but the problems persisted and he was fired, with Arkush again stepping in for reshoots as well as a re-edit. Corman told him to salvage the film by shooting some exciting motorcycle chases, even more nudity, and several explosions. Arkush delivered the goods. The usually tight-pursed Corman really let him go wild with the pyro, and the film has a comically awesome number of major explosions. Niciphor never directed again (he's credited on this film under the fake name Henry Suso), but he continued to work as a screenwriter.

Despite all this behind-the-scenes insanity, what's on screen is a pretty standard Roger Corman b-movie. We have a post-apocalyptic wasteland in a future "one thousand years from tomorrow" where most of humanity and our institutions and technology have disappeared. A handful of independent city-states still exist but what lies between is mostly a barren desert, inhabited by cave-dwelling cannibal mutants. A nomadic, scantily clad tribe of nomadic guides with mild psychic healing and telepathic powers make their living by safely guiding people from one city-state to another. Two of these guides are Kaz Oshay (Carradine) and Deneer (Gator Bait star and Playboy Playmate Jennings). The mad dictator of one of the city-states, Lord Zirpola (David McLean), has replaced capital punishment with deathsport, a battle to the death in an explosives-laden outdoor stadium with the prisoners on souped-up motorbikes called death machines. If you kill your opponent, your criminal record is wiped and you go free.

Lord Zirpola's right-hand man is Ankar Moor (Richard Lynch, especially memorable in The Seven-Ups, God Told Me To, and Bad Dreams). Zirpola has the wild idea to kidnap all the guides and make them fight the prisoners in the deathsport events. This is an insane move, but Ankar is one hundred percent on board because he got his ass kicked by Oshay's mother several years ago and wants revenge. Ankar also wants Lord Zirpola's job. After a valiant battle with Zirpola's men where he dispatches most of them with these awesome devices that instantly vaporize people, usually mid-scream (we get a lot of hilarious interrupted screams), Oshay is captured and imprisoned. Deneer has already been captured, too. Zirpola even throws his doctor, Dr. Karl (William Smithers), in a cell after the doc tells him he has a previously unknown brain disease caused by excessive radiation and needs to step down as leader. Dr. Karl's son Marcus (Will Walker), who was being guided by Deneer when she was taken, returns to save his dad. I just watched Will Walker the previous Friday in Paul Schrader's Hardcore, and here he is again on a second consecutive Friday. You can't make this stuff up.

After a harrowing imprisonment, torture (including nude electric shock treatment for the women; the dudes get to keep wearing their loincloths), a deathsport game, and a daring escape, Oshay, Deneer, Dr. Karl, and Marcus take off across the desert, with Ankar and his boys in pursuit. The cannibal mutants also get in on the action. More motorcycle chases, nudity, explosions, decapitations, tender moments, cannibalism, laser blasting, and sword fighting ensue. It's all pretty silly and pretty fun.

With Arkush's help, Deathsport made it past the finish line. It's not one of the great Corman movies, but it's not turgid slop. If you like the drive-in b-movie experience, you'll probably find something to like here, but it's nothing to rearrange your schedule for if you have a great movie to watch. I can be an arty son-of-a-bitch, but I also like shit blowing up real good, motorcycles driving real fast, decapitated heads rolling, and sexy ladies, so I can never dismiss Deathsport entirely. It's no Death Race 2000, but, hey, it's alright.

One last wild bit of trivia for my fellow music fanatics. The film's score by Andy Stein is played on a bunch of bleeping and blooping synths by cult avant-garde composer (and member of Iggy and the Stooges on the final leg of the Raw Power tour) "Blue" Gene Tyranny and on guitar by Jerry Garcia. I would love to know the story behind the music. The score is pretty bonkers and one of the movie's highlights.