Berserk: A Schlock Classic Film Review

BERSERK ! (1967): Film review by Dan West

    They certainly don't make 'em like this anymore, and, depending on the viewer, this just might be a good thing.  Berserk! (1967), starring Academy Award winner turned Pepsi Cola pitch woman, Joan Crawford, is, for lack of a better term, completely Berserk! Part murder mystery, part horror film, part Joan Crawford melodrama, part fetishistic historical record of traditional circus acts, the film is a schizophrenic mishmash of horror and camp that is a head-scratching delight for those who might be up for that sort of deadpan lunacy.

   The festivities begin when Gaspar the Great's highwire tightrope act is literally cut short, resulting in an impromptu lynching before a shocked circus audience and a fantastic opening credit sequence in which the swaying corpse wipes across the screen to reveal the film's apt title. Now that's the way to start a goddamn movie!

As it turns out, a gruesome hanging death is apparently good for circus business. The public's morbid curiosity proves insatiable, resulting in booming ticket sales. Joan Crawford, as Monica Rivers, the owner and ringmaster of The Great Rivers Circus, is a shrewd businesswoman who knows the monetary value of exploiting the death of her former tightrope performer to achieve maximum ticket sales. Is she responsible for the death? Is Joan/Monica that cutthroat? Soon a ridiculously jaunty Scotland Yard detective comes a sniffin' around asking that very same question, but not before we are introduced to Gaspar the Great's ambitious and cocky replacement, Frank Hawkins aka: The Magnificent Hawkins.  Cougar Joan/Monica quickly develops a lusty eye for this new daredevil beefcake who fancies performing his tightrope act in a black hood, while hovering above a board of deadly bayonet blades below. Sexy! It's a tightrope turn-on and Joan wants to bone!

    These macabre developments do not sit well with circus manager, Dorando (played by British character actor, and horror film regular, Michael Gough,) but that's okay, as he is quickly dispatched with a Herschell Gordon Lewis-style-spike- through-the-head-death. This particular kill scene unfortunately promises similar over-the-top antics, which, sadly for the audience, fail to materialize on camera. The main beef that most horror fans might have with this movie is that several potential gory punches are pulled, resulting in off-camera mayhem that ultimately leaves its audience feeling somewhat cheated.  Gruesome though the deaths are, a bit more of the good old spewing hemoglobin would have certainly been welcome. While there may be a lack of blood splatter at times, there is certainly no lack of Joan Crawford smoking cigarettes, wearing horribly garish, monochromatic outfits and attempting to look half her age/sexy. Ultimately, the dark, strategically-placed lighting that attempts to shroud Ms. Crawford in flattering, soft focus only seems to exemplify her attempts to appear 30 years younger.

    But, to Crawford's credit she NEVER sells the movie short and never once gives the impression that this film's subject matter is somehow beneath a star of her (former) stature. Crawford could always sell these pictures ... through sheer tenacity, ego, or just plain old-fashioned professionalism, she never betrayed these later films as the atrocities that some critics might have made them out to be. Perhaps that is why these last, more exploitative films in her movie cannon remain so enjoyable, if only for being oddities staining the career of a once great starlet and Hollywood legend.  I mean come on: Straight Jacket, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Berserk!, Trog ... I LOVE these films. I'm as much a fan of Mildred Pierce as any film buff, but if I had to choose between a viewing of Mildred Pierce, or Straight Jacket ... well, call me crazy, but I would have to be put in a Straight Jacket for that kind of cinematic judgment call.

   The fact that this film was shot with the cooperation of an actual working circus will not be lost on any viewer. No fewer than five full-length circus acts are trotted out as filler that seem to stretch the movie's 1 hour and 36 minute running time to something more akin to 3 hours and forty minutes, (spoiler alert: the best act is Phyllis Allen and Her Intelligent Poodles!)

   There is a lot to like here for any fan of oddball cinema. The eyesore ensembles worn by Joan Crawford are reason enough to watch this film. John Waters himself would envy these garishly grotesque gowns: the sparkling vomit/mint green evening dress with matching gloves and handbag that look as if they were stolen from a fashion forward refugee from the city of Oz, the Jack-o-lantern orange monstrosity that could sizzle the irises of a color-blind viewer wearing arc welder's goggles. And what the fuck is up with that insane Little Red Riding Hood cape? 

    The production values are high, offering crisp and colorful cinematography, great art direction and a strong cast of notable British Character actors.

    Though the film is crafted as a who done it? it actually plays out as more of a what the fuck is it? There is one particular scene in which the abnormally dapper, Eric Idle-esque police inspector is conducting an interview with Bruno, a dwarf dressed in a British Bobby's uniform, that resembles something straight out of a Monty Python sketch.

    The most WTF, David Lynch style moment in this film, however, is reserved for the sudden and somewhat bizarre musical number performed, quite out of the blue, by the cast of sideshow performers: Human skeleton, bearded lady, strong man, dwarf. It is a delightful, if truly puzzling moment in a movie chock full of them. Berserk! is not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, but by bad horror film standards, this is a movie that is both horrendous and spectacular at the same time.   For fans of Crawford's late career schlock escapades like Straight Jacket and Trog, Berserk! is an absolute must see!

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Blood Feast: A Review of the Novelization of the Landmark Gore Film

           (Warning: contains spoilers, so please excuse the smell of putrefying flesh.)

    Exploitation film legend, Herschell Gordon Lewis (Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs!) wrote a lot of books in his lifetime. As one of the chief pioneers in the field of direct marketing (junk mail to you and me) the man was regarded as an icon by his advertising peers … a label that may or may not be applicable to Lewis as a filmmaker, depending on your preference for cheaply-made, gore-drenched exploitation movies.

    With titles like, Sales Letters That Sizzle, and Direct Mail Copy That Sells, Lewis’s prolific body of written works deal mostly with the subject of penning effective ad copy. The man did, however, write a few novelizations of his cinematic car accidents; novelty books that were sold at the drive-in movie theatres showing Lewis’s over-the-top films. Today these books are highly collectible in their first run print versions due to their extreme rarity; a fact that surprised author, Lewis, who later said, “in those days we couldn’t give them away.”

    Thankfully, for those of us who can’t seem to track down these prized collectible novels, reprints of both the Blood Feast novelization and the Two Thousand Maniacs novelization were published in 1988, with each including a new introduction by Herschell Gordon Lewis. As a strange bonus, my copy of the Blood Feast novel was published with a small collection of pages printed out of order, a mistake that seems oddly fitting, given HGL’s long, single-take, ragged pan directorial style of filmmaking. It was like a reel of film shown out of order that no one noticed.

    Say what you will about the man’s filmography, but Lewis’s intelligence and wit were undeniable, a fact that makes the Blood Feast novelization such a fun and outrageous read. Written with severed tongue planted firmly in slashed cheek, this tale of murderous Egyptian caterer, Fuad Ramses, and his efforts to resurrect the goddess Ishtar with an offering of diced female body parts contains passages that are laugh-out-loud funny.

    Lewis’s humor often waltzes into surreal territory, as evidenced by his inclusion of a talking cat in this pungent potpourri of deranged dismemberment. Yes, you read that correctly … there is a talking cat in the novelization of the film, Blood Feast (and if that’s not sales copy that sizzles, I don’t know what is.) The cat's name is Carson, and he is quite the animal rights activist.

    HGL’s breezy prose makes for a quick and amusing read. And, if the man’s subsequent prolific book output is any indication, Blood Feast was probably written in one evening. It reads a bit like an old Woody Allen story with female eviscerations peppered into the mix: a gimmick that a few of Allen’s recent films could use to their advantage, but I digress.

    The book is hardly a straight re-telling of the infamous splatter film's plotline by any means—not with characters such as the aptly named Sergeant Bull Schitt—so if you are seeking true horror thrills, you might look elsewhere. Instead we are gifted with passages such as this gem: "Karl had been standing in the bathroom applying Man-Tan to his somewhat darkened face, as he had been doing periodically for eight days, anticipating eventually that he would be black enough to pass for the Count Basie concert at the Trivoli, an exclusive for the spade trade." Or this introduction of the character, Fuad Ramses: "He had been known as the 'Elliptical Egyptian' in the early years around Cairo. The name derived from the shape of his head, which, elliptical as an egg, had been hairless from the time of his addiction to the narcotic Sphinx cigarettes exported by his father. He had started smoking these on the occasion of his first visit to the Ramses Factory of Tobacconist Arts, a notorious producer of well-disguised narcotics, including Half-and-Hashish, Rum-and-Marijuana, Cocaine-Cokeakoola and Sphinx, the cigarette for distinguished addicts."
  

     Strange? And how. The weirdness continues in the same chapter: "He was not a frugal man and lavished himself with an incredible variety of luxuries, including gigantic sponges, solid gold-sheeted wall coverings, one hundred pound bags of cashew nuts, a trailer filled with ping pong balls which he later dumped from the top of the Prudential Building, rubber falsies of varying sizes with which he covered the walls and floor of an entire room."

    And I would be remiss if I did not include this excerpt: "Sol also wore the new hip pants, that hugged the hip, and the thigh, and the knee, and the ankle, and couldn't be worn by anyone with big toes. Sol had big toes, but he was resourceful enough to put the pants on over his head."

    I just have to wonder what the hell anyone might of thought after reading this book in 1963. Maybe something along the lines of "What the fuck was that?" A response similar to what anyone might have thought after viewing the film for the first time.

   As previously mentioned, my copy of the book went completely apeshit after page 64, and the novel suddenly leapt forward to pages 77-80, then back to pages 73-76, and then leapt back further to pages 69-72 and finally ended up back at page 65, making for a wacky reading experience indeed. I have no idea if every copy of the novel was reprinted in this manner, but if they are, I suggest just jumping about the book as the pages dictate. The weird journey contained in those pages is certainly worth the effort, despite the inconvenience. Perhaps all other copies were printed in proper order and mine is just a fluke. Someday I must track down another copy of the book to check, or, better yet, find an original first edition from 1963—now that would be something I would rip out someone's tongue for!

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