JFL

David A. Prior snapped out of his boyish fantasies about fighting in the jungles of Vietnam to find that the Cold War was over. So he quickly came up with his own fantasy about what the denouement of the conflict between the superpowers was supposed to look like. Though some bloodless revolutions and peaceful tearing down of walls are nice, they have a whiff of pacifism and don’t leave much room for good old-fashioned macho heroism. Thus was born a vision in the mind of the military Peter Pan in which the Cold War powers find themselves at an impasse for the resolution of which each side calls on its best tough guy. Through these men, fist-fights finally transform embarrassing anti-war political threats into a good old fair fight mano-a-mano in a classic boyish battle in the woods. The master’s muscly brother Ted Prior kicks ass for America and the phenomenal Robert Z’Dar goes to bat for the dehumanised Soviet system. Though The Final Sanction is obviously derivative of Rocky IV, it develops that film’s concept into a nonconformist anti-authority climax, so at the same time it can be said that Prior surpassed Battle Royale here.

This solid parody in the style of Airplane! takes a shot at horror movies. It originated as one of a number of projects with which the young, diligent and, above all, enthusiastic Jim Wynorski sought to pay homage to his role model and then-employer, Roger Corman, and his portfolio of B-movies. In Transylvania Twist, Wynorski broke free from his career bonds in terms of the formalistic puns and jokes built on working with the medium of film, as well as on meta references to the earlier tradition of trash cinema and its creative centre in the form of Corman and the first generation of students of his school of remorseless film practice. The hastily thrown-together flick uses the same locations of other projects made at the time and, following the example of Hollywood Boulevard (which it references with the opening Miracle Pictures logo), uses the most ostentatious and expensive shots of action, effects and explosions from the entire existing catalogue of Corman’s New World and Concorde production companies to achieve a greater effect. In addition to a number of hilarious scenes, Boris Karloff’s cameo, cleverly borrowed from Corman’s celebrated dreck The Terror (1963), is the highlight of the movie.

In comparison with Jim Wynorski’s other films, this homage to Roger Corman’s early career doesn’t have as much of an effect on the viewer and is entertaining primarily due to the circumstances of its creation. Not of This Earth is a direct remake of Corman’s trash classic, with Wynorski betting with his then-employer and filmmaking mentor that he could shoot the flick in twelve days. On the other hand, it probably could have been made in less time, since the only thing that mattered was that the infamous Traci Lords would appear in her first non-porn role. In this respect, the film does everything that viewers expected from it at the time, i.e. it shows the actress in the nude, which was a big deal, as her porn movies had been entirely taken out of circulation and destroyed when it was revealed that she was underage at the time of filming. However, Not of This Earth primarily shows off her acting strengths, where she visibly enjoys the role of paraphrasing and simultaneously mocking the passive heroines from old sci-fi trash flicks. In addition to that, Wynorski uses the extensive Corman archive, in the manner of his other masters, Alan Arkush and Joe Dante, and their recycled epic Hollywood Boulevard, to give the production the gloss of spectacular money-shots with special effects taken from older films. Like Corman's sci-fi trash of the 1950s, Wynorski’s nudity-enhanced update may quickly fade from memory, but it delivers sufficient immediate entertainment in the form of its ridiculous, far-fetched twists, overabundance of trashy elements, and the director’s emphasis on the most spectacular special effects - breasts.

The porn movie Johnny Wadd is noteworthy primarily for being the first in a historically celebrated series of ultra-low-budget skin-flicks with a titular protagonist and serving as the main inspiration for Paul Thomas Anderson in making Boogie Nights. Anderson's fictional, yet brilliantly reflective of reality, treatise on the porn industry evokes negative reactions among devotees and, primarily, survivors of the porn chic era, precisely because of how brilliantly it is able to use creative license to capture the era it depicts, or rather a certain segment of it and phenomena that occurred then. If we compare the flicks of the time about private eye Brock Landers with their models on which they were based (though in the narration of Boogie Nights, the characters say they are conceived in opposition to Holmes and his Johnny Wadd movies, Anderson styled them based on Holmes’s pictures), we find that Anderson was still very lenient. His depiction of the lousy acting and cheapness of the productions cannot be compared with the bottom-of-the-barrel work that Bob Chinn turned out in this ultra-fast and cheap production (in the DVD commentary, he recalls that the film was shot in one day on a budget of $750) that in no way stood out at the time. The first Johnny Wadd and the sequels loosely based on it were popular with the trench-coat-wearing clientele that valued shallow exaggeration that brought something new to the narrative rules of porn with a vague framework modelled on the gritty noir school. Peculiarly, however, the films never enjoyed the massive attention that the later Deep Throat received. Though all of Chinn’s films are characterised by a certain degree of exaggeration and humour, they remain among the ranks of insipid futile sexist jokes that form a generally tasteless atmosphere. Conversely, the success of Deep Throat was derived from the fact that it broke through the previously restrictive ceiling of porn movies and come up with the concept of parody and downright imaginative visual gags, which drew to the film crowds of viewers outside the usual clientele of porn cinemas (even though it was still otherwise a very cheap and qualitatively unalluring production). The first Johnny Wadd thus remains a reminder that Deep Throat was far from being the first porn flick with a plot, as is often mistakenly said, but it also well illustrates what made it different from other contemporary productions. In Bob Chin’s filmography, it shows consistency in his directorial and screenwriting futility, which only minimally changed for the better, albeit mainly due to the technical demands of the market. Where the movie’s porn qualities are concerned, these are nullified by the anti-erotic cheap aesthetics and Holmes’s incredibly repulsive slimeball hairstyle.

On the one hand, the porn chic trend reached its peak in the second half of the 1970s, when the makers and producers of explicit adult films came up with ambitious projects that attracted the attention of both viewers and critics with their production and acting qualities, imaginative screenplays, original concepts and often even progressive work with the formulas of the category. In parallel with that, there were also purveyors of dreck like Bob Chinn, who continued to churn out obviously cheap skin-flicks targeted at a trench-coat-wearing clientele. Chinn didn’t attach any creative ambition to his films, as porn was simply easy and relatively fun work for him. This is reflected in the anti-qualities of his flicks, such as the intuitively ineffectual camera positions, long one-shot scenes and the overall feel of the productions, where no one bothered much with the cinematic aspect. It wasn’t until the 1980s that his films began to look a little more visually sophisticated, whereas for the entire previous decade they remained a reminder of the shabbiness and filth typical of the illicit utilitarian products of the under-the-counter single-reel market. Chinn's main strength lay in casting, or rather in the fact that John Holmes was happy to work with him and owed some of his cult status to him, since Chinn was the spiritual father of his film persona, the private detective Johnny Wadd. In his day, Chinn’s films were, thanks to their exaggeration and sense of humour, a welcome breath of fresh air in the mass of porn production at the time. It is necessary to add that, in these respects, there is no sophistication to speak of, however comparable Chinn’s movies may be to the work of the more ambitious directors of the time, particularly Radley Metzger and Gerrard Damian (not to mention European filmmakers such as Claude Mulot and Alan Vydra). Chinn’s humour is along the lines of crude, cartoonish sexism and relies on satisfying stereotypes of dumb, easy girls and slick dudes who always get their way.

Pure cringe with a big dose of slapstick humour, terrifying examples of monstrous parenting and an inclination toward tear-jerking in the style of Annaud’s The Bear. Son of Godzilla is a sacrilege for devotees of the more serious line in Japanese monster flicks, but for fans of naïve childishness and rubber kaiju spectacle, it’s one of the absolute peaks of the genre. Due to the limited budget, this time there is no toy-makers’ orgy as in the works directed by Ishiro Honda, but that is fully compensated for by the unbridled silliness, the absence of any seriousness and the naïvely trashy framework with a genius scientist, a beautiful savage and an intrepid reporter who parachutes onto a mysterious island in search of a scoop.

The loveable, trashy Wonder Women exists in two versions; the 90-minute export cut demonstrates that longer doesn’t always mean better. Without adding anything significant, it pays for its extended length with a more languid pace and in some places the wheels come off the film. That is a great pity, as the extended runtime needlessly dilutes the movie’s already dramatically weak narrative, which, however, is absolutely impressive in its details. Wonder Women is a Reader’s Digest not only of the broadest range of trash clichés, but also of every possible kind of base attraction, all in a cute, over-the-top and haphazard presentation. In a single film, viewers get a commando squad of beautiful women, a female genius performing transplants of all kinds of body parts in an island fortress and a dauntless detective, as well as deformed creatures, the striking exoticism of the Orient, bombastic chase scenes, ridiculously hopeless attempts at martial arts, clumsy shootouts, futuristic costumes and a basic amount of nudity. And all of that in a film that utterly inexplicably managed to get a PG rating. With its unrestrained atmosphere blending excess and imaginative trashiness, as well as seriously stylised acting performances, it actually resembles the polished British cult classic The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), but the difference between the two films is that in Wonder Women everything is proportionately cheaper and more straightforward, the result being even more hopeless and straightforwardly ridiculous.

This documentary about Highlights, a magazine intended for children ages 6-12, progressively focuses on a full range of questions and challenges associated with creating content for children, especially the sincere ambition to provide quality, through the arc of creating a new issue and filling up its sections. The film thus opens up numerous topics arising from the pillars of creativity, responsibility and progressivity, while relating them to the connection with contemporary norms and trends, which are generally contradictory. At its core, 44 Pages shows a unique private medium owned by a family business, which, thanks to strict adherence to tradition, lives up to the ideals and qualities associated with public media. The documentary shows Highlights as a phenomenon where the corporate structure comes into symbiosis with values, as well as with creative intuition and a personal code of conduct, which we usually find rather in small production companies and not in companies with global representation. The film succeeds thanks to the fact that it focuses on the small group of people who put the magazine together in the homey environment of the former family-owned company and no longer venture into the open-office wasteland of the corporate headquarters that house the inhuman machinery of distribution, marketing, new media and foreign localisation. Thanks to this, the film can remain focused on the story about creative people with a sincere interest in stimulating children’s curiosity and imagination in an ever-changing, problematic world. The insight into the challenge for the magazine’s individual creators to stimulate children in a positive manner without the necessity of closing their eyes to difficult and problematic reality, to help them find their bearings in this world without foisting something on them or lying to them, remains particularly inspiring.

At its core, Mausoleum is an ambitious attempt at an atmospheric horror movie with supernatural elements and special effects that were obviously inspired by those found in The Exorcist, as well as in the top Italian horror movies of the 1970s. But it remains faithful to its 1980s roots and low-budget origins, sliding into a splendidly entertaining display of straightforward gore effects, rubber masks and always satisfying nude scenes. With its half-baked production and futile acting performances, it stays one step away from the desired boundary that separates solid horror movies from unwanted entertainment and detached, though enthusiastic, viewing of absurd twists. Mausoleum is a gratifying chain of explosively escalating sequences abounding with spectacularly straightforward amusements and copious effects, which in its time guaranteed that the target group of teenage viewers would want to rewind and rewatch certain scenes on their VHS players.

The expectations attached to Earwig and the Witch are exceedingly high, because it is branded with the Ghibli studio logo at the beginning and the studio’s key personnel appear in the credits. The paradox of the project is that it was evidently initiated by Ghibli’s court producer, Toshio Suzuki, as part of a long-term technological experiment in which they would try out 3D computer animation, as that seems to be the dominant current trend. Hayao Miyazaki tried a combination of computer and hand-drawn animation in the short Boro the Caterpillar and his son Goró lent his patronage to the TV series Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter, which combined 3D models with a cell-shading visual whose sketches were created in the Ghibli studio. Goró Miyazaki then got the green light from the studio’s veterans for the feature-length Earwig and the Witch, but with a lower budget, as it would not be shown in cinemas, but would be only a special made-for-TV movie. The target medium could theoretically explain the shortcomings of the screenplay. The film gives the impression of being a television pilot and, instead of dramatic conciseness, it relies on an episodic nature and only basic outlines of the characters and their development and mutual dynamics. Unfortunately, that does not change the fact that the screenplay doesn’t work as a whole and it comes across as a very shoddy adaptation of the book by Diana Wynne Jones. Whereas the amazing Howl’s Moving Castle drew out the essence of its source material by the same author and further developed it, Earwig and the Witch tries to get by with merely scratching the surface of the book’s basic concept. Paradoxically, the film’s end credits, where the further development of the characters and their lives together are shown in drawings (similar to what Katsuhiro Otomo did in Steamboy, for example), are more fun and bring out more emotion than the whole preceding story. However, the main drawback of the film consists in the 3D computer animation, or rather in the idea that viewers would want to watch something that was intended from the beginning to be a technological test. This assumption points out the overall outdatedness and confused nature of the project, which attempts to return to times long ago when everyone excitedly watched the leaps and bounds made by early computer animation in Pixar’s shorts. In Earwig and the Witch, unfortunately, Ghibli relates its level of animation, or rather shading textures, physics and virtual lighting, to those wooden years. Whereas the competition took its first CGI baby steps a long time ago, Ghibli is just now attempting its first hesitant steps and going back to the beginning on the level of the first Toy Story, but unfortunately without a sufficient degree of self-reflection. At Pixar, they were aware of the limits of the technology of that time and therefore came up with a story from the lives of plastic toys. At Ghibli, they immediately attempted to find out if they could, with their limited possibilities, create the equivalent of their renowned animated films with human and fantastical characters. Unfortunately, the result looks like someone shot a variation of Ghibli films with action figures. It is necessary to acknowledge that in its constituent elements, particularly in the expressive movements of the figures and the design of the characters and exteriors, the film asserts its origins and demonstrates the creative abilities of the animators, though it lags behind technologically. When Hayao Miyazaki reportedly compared Earwig and the Witch to Pixar, he meant Pixar’s early days. As previously mentioned, the main problem with the film consists in the fact that viewers do not expect a mere animation demo, especially not one that is technologically underdeveloped in comparison with the current mainstream standard. The sad result is that Ghibli, which embodied the global peak of feature-length animated films and was a role model for all other animators, is presenting to the audience a half-retro work that can stand up to comparisons with the antediluvian stage of computer animation, which has long since moved on from generic visuals and plastic textures and, in projects such as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run (2020), demonstrates a broad new scope of technological possibilities that the veterans evidently haven’t even dreamed of.