"Curse II: The Bite" (1989) d/ Federico Prosperi

More snakes tonight, sort of. If by "snakes" we instead mean "eighties soap opera guy bitten by a radioactive snake after which his hand transforms into a giant, murderous snake head." As hard as it is to follow up a sentence of that reverse momentousness, I'm still gonna try, damn it. As you'd expect, tonight's review has fuck all to do with The Curse (1987), and is a sequel in name only. You still might want to endure the farcical plot, unremarkable acting, and uninspired direction, though, just to get a look at the vintage prosthetic effects action, as provided by the one and only Screaming Mad George.


"Those strawberry preserves...I wished lunch would never end!", exclaims Doc Marder (Sandy Sexton).
Clark and Lisa (J Eddie Peck, Jill Schoelen) are young lovers taking a desert shortcut to Bakersfield, California, against the cautionary advice of a local gas station attendant. You should always listen to these guys, they know more than washing your windshield and checking your oil, it would seem. After haphazardly barreling over a roadblock of live snakes near a nuclear test site, they take on a poisonous hitchhiker in the form of a mutated Bushmaster, who stows away in Lisa's acoustic guitar, later chomping down on Clark's inquisitive mitt. Harry Morton (Jamie Farr), a travelling salesman with a penchant for CB radios and the mouth-breathing goobers that utilize them, administers an antidote, which soon turns out to be the wrong one, of course, sending the amateur herpetophile chasing after the couple, whose road trip takes a turn for the even worse when he develops a palate for flies in his beer, and his girlfriend's caged love birds. He's also taken to relate the conversation between the five fingers and the face to her, but she sticks around anyway. And what's going on under that neatly wrapped gauze?


Jill Schoelen is beaucoup hot, even when juxtaposed against a backdrop of goopy drawers.
After Clark's mystery mitt proves to work independently from the rest of his body in pulling a yappy doctor's mandible from her face, and yanking a fellow's blood pumper from his chest through his mouth, he decides to isolate himself from the public and forego any further medical assistance by exorcising it from his body via amputation, all by himself. Meanwhile, Morton's driving around with his ears on, in fear of impending lawsuits to his company, and comically tumbling into the sack with a linebacker-sized CB trucker woman, for good measure. Clark's also set upon by a particularly mean-spirited sheriff (Bo Svenson) who offsets the normally level-headed constabulary we all know and love, and arrests him on suspicion that he's a tar addict. Reasonable. Eventually, we reach a bananas climax where we find Clark's mitt has miraculously grown back into a giant snake head, which causes his eye to fall out, and also makes him regurgitate live snakes. Will Lisa's rotten taste in men come back to lay fangs into that choice late eighties piece of celluloid tail or will it all turn out ambiguously with hopes of another uninspired, unrelated sequel on the horizon? I'll let you find out for yourselves.


Sesame Street should have gone in this direction, and envenomated Elmo. Not Mr. Hooper though.
Besides stints on Young and the Restless and Days of our Lives, and numerous television roles over the years, J Eddie also has 1990's Lambada under his cinematic belt. How many of us can say that? How many of us would. Jill Schoelen has scored genre credits in movies like The Stepfather (1987), Cutting Class (1989), Phantom of the Opera (1989), and Popcorn (1991). Besides his turn as the crossdressing Corporal Klinger on M.A.S.H., Jamie Farr has appeared in things like The Gong Show Movie (1980), Arnold (1973), Heavy Traffic (1973), and Blackboard Jungle (1955). Sydney Lassick you'll remember from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Alligator (1980), The Unseen (1981), and Carrie (1976). Bo Svenson can be seen in things like Snowbeast (1976), Inglorious Bastards (1978), and Armour of God (1986). As I said before, if you go in on this one with floor-scraping expectations, looking for eye-popping special effects typical of the era, if not often coherently explained away, then you'll get a kick out if it. On a technical level, though,  it manages but a single Wop. Approach with caution.


Somebody's doing some good blotter on the set.

"Heavy Traffic" (1973) d/ Ralph Bakshi

April jumps off the drawing table here at the Wop with another Bakshi review, in Heavy Traffic, his X-rated follow up to the popular and successful Fritz the Cat a year earlier. Gone are the trippy, anthropomorphic animals that audiences had grown accustomed to, and in their stead, real human characters facing the tribulations of life on the streets of the big city. Of course, tackling such a risky, personal project meant legendary clashes with the producer; leading to Bakshi actually being locked out of the studio along the way, as a disgruntled Steve Krantz searched for replacement directors, until Samuel Z. Arkoff threatened to pull all funding for the film unless Bakshi was re-hired. In the end, I'm sure the inner turbulence got laughed off by all over the bubbliest of champers, as Traffic's ambition and gritty realism were rewarded by both, the box office and critics, alike. While Tarantino gives PDA's to Hey Goodlookin' (1982), and Ralph often cites Coonskin (1974) as his own favorite, ol' Wop is here to tell you that tonight's review tops his list of Bakshi's cinema work to date, though nobody's ever asked me that question either. What are you afraid of? I only bite occasionally...


"Michael! Twiggy's on the phone, she says you ought to be a good boy and return her hairstyle to her, ASAP."
Life as an underground comic artist in the big city is like being a pinball, as Michael (Joseph Kauffman) can attest to, as the twenty-four year old unemployed virgin son of a doting, nipple-slipping, Jewish mother (Terri Haven) and a shamed Italian father (Frank DeKova) with mob ties. Michael is constant mediator to their violent and abusive domestic quarrels when he isn't trading cartoons of a legless bouncer named Shorty for drinks from his favorite bartender, a together young black chick named Carole (Beverly Hope Atkinson). After a transvestite prostitute named Snowflake takes some gay knocks for hoodwinking a burly drunk on Carole's shift, she finds herself jobless and on the receiving end of unwanted charity from the enamored cripple, forcing her to cozy up to Michael in a hurry. This sudden pairing draws the scorn of a rejected Shorty and more racial venom from dad, Angie, who's generously enlisted the skills of a girthy Sicilian prostitute named Rosa to deflower his son, in between pistol-whipping his wife's face in, leading the impromptu young couple to vacate the premises for greener pastures...


I faced similar obstacles finding my way back to Cowboy X's van in a Phish show parking lot back in the nineties.
In an attempt to raise funds for a California move, Michael pitches his unusual comic strip to a gravely ill executive, providing only disappointment when the mogul turns his toes up before he finishes, while Carole's stint as a taxi dancer ends abruptly when a fortuitous panty flash kills an elderly customer. Back at home, Angie turns to the Godfather to put a hit on his disgraceful son, but the Don refuses, claiming his gripe is personal, not business. The jilted Shorty makes the scene, gladly accepting the contract in the end. Meanwhile, the lovers have resorted to crime, with Carole turning to prostitution and Michael choosing cold-blooded murder, as he bashes in the brains of one of her tricks in a fleabag motel room, but as they walk out together, they're surprised to see Shorty, who pulls his burner and pulverizes Michael's skull with a single, slow motion bullet. Top that, Walt Disney. A bizarre, psychedelic montage of disturbing imagery leads the viewer back into the live-action world, where we see Michael angrily tipping a tilted pinball machine over and storming out of an arcade, only to bump into Carole, who, after some brief unresponsiveness, takes his hand and dances us into the end credits.


"Alright, you win! Helen Reddy is better than Anne Murray!!!"
Jamie "Klinger" Farr of M.A.S.H. fame has a blink-and-you'll-miss-him non-speaking cameo in the live action sequence during the final reel. The fantasy sequence set to Chuck Berry's "Maybelline" experienced some censorship, with the tamest of three versions making it into the final X-rated cut of the film. I'd like to see the other two someday. The folks at Shout Factory, always at the top of their game, released the definitive 40th Anniversary Blu-ray last year, so there's no legit excuses as to why this one has no place upon your shelves. On the scale, Traffic naturally receives a perfect score of four Wops; a thought-provoking, visually dazzling masterpiece that comes with my highest recommendation. See it!


J.F.K.? Cobain? Dwyer? I give up already, I'm just no good at charades.

"Arnold"(1973)d/Georg Fenady

One thing people aren't likely to reminisce about when pondering the late Bing Crosby's storied life and career, is much of his Bing Crosby Productions company's output in the seventies, of which tonight's review is a lesser specimen, no doubt.I vaguely remember the movie's original release, thanks to some tv spots that featured eyes behind paintings that creeped out my three or four year old ass at the time, but negative reviews and word of mouth sent the release into relative obscurity immediately afterwards.It wasn't until a video store clearance sale years later that it'd reappear on my radar in the form of a Lightning Video vhs copy, ironically the last official release of the film in any format; the same videotape I'd wisely back up to dvd with all the packaging bells and whistles, stickler for detail I, no doubt, am.Probably more effort than the film, a weird and mostly unfunny ham-off between familiar genre faces like Roddy McDowall, Victor Buono, and Stella Stevens, upon a gothic studio set, was really worth the more I think about it.Still, it's not altogether without merit, so long as by 'merit' you don't mean 'M.A.S.H.'s Jamie Farr masquerading as a badly made up Hindu with an eye patch', which, by the way, this movie just happens to have covered, thankyouverymuch.That being said, I can't see anybody going out of their way to get a new release for the film, a la certain moustacchioed gents I know with an affinity for 3D spaghetti westerns, but it may appease certain cinephiles enough to give it an hour and a half while Wednesday night-surfing Google Video, where it currently rests, undisturbed, to this very day.

Arnold(Norman Stuart) seems to have gone all stiff at the thought of Robert(Roddy McDowall) gaffling his inheritance.
The film begins with an English caretaker and constable looking on as the funeral procession of local tycoon Lord Arnold Dwellyn(Norman Stuart) as the proceedings abruptly change to a wedding ceremony between the recently deceased and a buxom young thang named Karen(Stella Stevens)(!), much to the dismay of the congregated wedding party, comprised of Arnold's younger brother Robert(Roddy McDowall), his widow, Lady Jocelyn(Shani Wallis), his cousin Douglas Whitehead(Patric Knowles), his doting sister Hester(Elsa Lanchester), Whitehead's law partner, Evans(Farley Granger), and his mysterious Hindu(not really) manservant, Dybbi(Jamie Farr).Constable Hooke(Bernard Fox) decides to sneak a peak at the affair, only to watch the soused vicar(Victor Buono) ask a man's coffin if he takes Karen to be his lawfully wedded wife.A pre-recorded tape of the cadaver's voice piped through a tape deck in the coffin responds appropriately without cue.Hmmm, that's strange.The policeman and caretaker are invited to the reading of Arnold's will, where most of his fortune goes to his lovely new wife provided she stand near to her husband's cadaver for the rest of her life, while miserable pittance bequeathals are doled out to his other family members, and goose eggs for his brother.When the guests are taken aback by their late relative's future money plans, the cassette answers their queries as if he were alive in the room with them.The cryptic tapes continue to turn up at the manor, warning against feelings of anger and greed from his family, though, you just know the circling vultures are about to get their just desserts somehow...

Less material, more flesh from Stella Stevens here, and I'd consider upping it a Wop, to be sure.
Arnold's widow inherits the Rolls Royce and a cosmetic company, but when she samples a facial cream, it reacts violently, disfiguring her face and doing the old girl in before she can scheme any further with Evans.Meanwhile, Karen and Robert have been discreetly planning a getaway for two, but when Arnold seemingly follows the adulterers to Robert's pad, he hurries back to the manor, where a custom crushed red velvet suit for Arnold's body has arrived, and when he tries it on, it constricts around his body until he upchucks his own innards.Karen desperately turns to Whitehead for a way out of her agreement, to which Douglas offers to help for half of the inheritance money plus fringe benefits, the old dog.Whitehead samples some of Arnold's expensive cognac to celebrate his recent good fortune, only to end up being compacted in the back of a garbage truck when the drink turns out to be drugged.Karen turns to Evans with the same deal she offered Douglas, innadvertently getting Dybbi beheaded when he searches the basement lab for Arnold's hidden fortune.After Evans and Karen get themselves crushed to death in a shower with shrinking walls, Hester reveals that she and her dead brother dreamt up the whole scheme to rid themselves of greedy inheritors, and that all of his inheritance will ultimately go to her.When Arnold's final tape begins to sound too cocky for Hester's tastes, she has his body cremated immediately.After snuffing the caretaker with a spade, she stumbles upon Arnold's secret hiding place for his riches while interring his remains in the crypt.She crawls into the secret room to gloat over the money, but a moving wall seals her in permanently as another cassette of Arnold wisecracks that expected such betrayal from Hester, and they'd be together forever now.Outside, Hester's cat traps a raven behind a tombstone as the constable obliviously rides off on his bicycle, while the bird tears the feline to pieces off-camera...

Arnold's painting can see me sawing logs on the couch.
The late Fenady also helmed 1973's Terror in the Wax Museum for Bing, with Ray Milland, John Carradine, and much of the cast from tonight's feature, as well, and countless episodes of television shows over the years, which he was much better suited for, imho.Stevens would appear in genre fare like blaxploitation classics Slaughter(1972) and Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold(1975), horror like 1979's The Manitou, and even Chained Heat(1983).If you're into genre film and you don't know Roddy McDowall by now, you're a lost cause, for sure.Grand dame Lanchester only played Frankenstein's monster's titular bride back in '35, while we're at it.If you're unfamiliar with her...alright, I'll stop.Shani Wallis sang the cheesy title song that'll make your life miserable for days after watching, as well as appearing in tonight's movie.Like I may have mentioned earlier, Arnold is a strange little flick, with a hardcore made-for-tv vibe about it, that showcases some inventive deaths while failing epically at making the viewer snicker.If you're into McDowall or any of the others, it may be worth tracking down for a screening.As it stands, it merits a wholly average two Wops on the scale.

Elsa Lanchester looks older than the piles of cash she's surrounded by here.