Some of Those Responsible: George 'Buck' Flower

Shitty Movie Sundays: Massacre Mafia Style, aka The Executioner, aka Like Father, Like Son

Lounge crooner and self-styled King of Palm Springs, Duke Mitchell, was proud of his Italian heritage. After the Godfather flicks came out, Duke had some thoughts about the movies, and about how Italian-Americans are stereotyped in this country. So, he scrimped and saved, mortgaged and hustled, and made his very own mafia flick that was violent, preachy, cheap, and played into every single one of those negative stereotypes.

Written, produced, directed by, starring, and featuring songs sung by Duke Mitchell, Massacre Mafia Style tells the story of Mimi Miceli (Mitchell, credited under his birth name, Dominico Miceli). When Mimi was a teenager, his father, crime boss Don Mimi (Lorenzo Dardado), was deported back to Sicily, and the younger Mimi accompanied him. Now, he’s a grown man and a widower with a young son. The siren call of Los Angeles is ringing in his ears, so Mimi decides to head back to the States and make a name for himself as a gangster. He recruits childhood friend Jolly Rizzo (Vic Caesar), and the two begin their ascent by kidnapping and ransoming Chucky Tripoli (Louis Zito), who is the big guy in LA. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Massacre Mafia Style, aka The Executioner, aka Like Father, Like Son”

October Horrorshow: Tammy and the T-Rex

Pop quiz, hotshot. You have access to an animatronic dinosaur for three weeks, and a million bucks burning a hole in your pocket. What do you do?!

If you’re Etka Sarlui, you call up b-movie auteur Stewart Raffill and ask him if he would like to make a movie. And if you are Stewart Raffill, you then say ‘yes,’ because one should never turn down work. A week later, Raffill, along with Gary Brockette, have a screenplay, and two weeks after that, Tammy and the T-Rex is in the can, the dinosaur is off to a theme park in Texas, amazingly undamaged, and the world has its next insane shitty movie. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Tammy and the T-Rex”

October Horrorshow: Pumpkinhead

Stan Winston was legendary in the film industry. Before he died, he won three Oscars for visual effects (Aliens, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and Jurassic Park), one for makeup (Terminator 2 again), and racked up a total of six other nominations. He either led or was part of the effects and makeup teams that worked on The Thing, The Terminator, Ghoulies, Predator, Leviathan, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Interview with the Vampire, Avatar, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. In short, the man had a hell of a career turning the unreal into the real. In horror, he was a master monster maker. But, a man has to branch out, explore new opportunities. Enter Pumpkinhead. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Pumpkinhead”

October Horrorshow: Village of the Damned (1995)

The October Horrorshow continues here on Missile Test with a film from the latter half of John Carpenter’s career. The man whose work has inspired no less than three remakes (with more on the way) was no stranger to remakes himself, having previously applied his unique talents to The Thing. More than a decade later, 1995 saw the release of Village of the Damned, a remake of the 1960 British production of the same name. Carpenter’s Village of the Damned is not that bad of a film, but it suffers from the same great flaw that typifies much of his work. That is, the ideas in the film are better than the execution. Carpenter flicks will get the gears turning, a good thing, but in Village of the Damned, like in They Live or even a classic such as Escape from New York, so much territory feels left unexplored. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Village of the Damned (1995)”

The Empty Balcony: Escape from New York

Escape from New YorkBack before the great wave of gentrification began to hit American cities in the mid-1990s, there was the 1980s, an era when the distressed environment of the cities bottomed out. Long decades of neglect, strained local budgets, and rising crime left our cities veritable war zones. The inner cities were voids of hopelessness, abject poverty, and filth. Even affluent neighborhoods were just dangerous enough to breed well-heeled residents with canny street smarts, always looking over their shoulders for the dark figure hiding behind a tree or in an alley. This kind of palpable fear of urban environments is contagious, and it entered into our lore. We could envision no bright future for the American city because we had seen decay extend its grip for so long. Today’s cities have not fully recovered, and they remain always on the brink, ready to slide back as soon as people’s cares turn elsewhere, but it’s hard to picture just how bad things got unless one were a witness.

There are a few films here and there where our urban legacy is on full display. Wolfen had major scenes, some visually stunning, filmed among the devastation of the South Bronx. The classic film The French Connection was a study in browns — rust and dirt every bit as important a character as Popeye Doyle. Fort Apache, The Bronx was a caricature of the inner city, sometimes offensive, but it came from somewhere real. The Warriors has attained mythical status as New York’s ultimate cult film of the night, playing on our fears of a city gone out of control, at the mercy of costumed thugs. At times laughable, the film still wallowed in very real grit, a symptom of the disease that had befallen the city. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: Escape from New York”