Pure Terror
Continuing on with our little pack of 50 (yes that's a big five oh) classic (not necessarily good, but classic) horror films.The little pamphlet has saved my butt 'cause it keeps me straight with what movie was shown when 'cause when my brain mushes out (that doesn't even make sense, does it?) I sometimes completely lose where I've left off and what comes next. Each movie also has a short synopsis (thank goodness) so I know whether I've actually already seen (and reviewed) the movie or not. So far, unfortunately, it's only been one. This second disc has two movies worth a page apiece so:
DISCO TWO MOVIE ONE
The Werewolf Of Washington (1973)
The first time I watched this movie (because my fibro-fogged brain for some reason made me erase my notes on my recorder before I typed 'em up I had to watch this twice) I dismissed it as 70s schlock. The second time around however, I began to see and appreciate that, through the absurdity, the movie makers were making quite a statement about America and the government policies of the late sixties and early seventies. The President in the movie is supposed to be modeled after President Nixon with his 'out of control' Attorney General John Mitchell. Because this was released during the Watergate scandal, it gained quite a following and is considered a cult classic.
I must confess I learned a whole lot more about the White House and its' idiosyncrasies than I ever learned in school - and I didn't wanna either but I had to present this movie straight so... yeah. And please excuse some of the pictures - the movie wasn't in really great shape.
The premise of the movie: Ambitious reporter Jack Whittier (Dean Stockwell and his eyebrows) schtups the President's daughter, gets tired of her and so persuades his boss to reassign him to Hungary where he meets a new girlfriend and plans to take her with him back to the US. Nice guy.
So we've got Hungarian gypsies, one who is a werewolf and bites Jack. Jack kills him with a silver-headed walking stick. The police don't care. Jack returns to D.C. sans Giselle who disappears altogether from the movie and is never mentioned again. Because Jack had lied to the President's daughter that he was made to go to Hungary for being pro-establishment, the President decides to make him a press assistant.
During the whole movie the President (who looks nothing like Nixon but repeats 'Let me make one thing perfectly clear' about a hundred times) moves about as if he's just one of the guys - no Secret Service, no security to speak of, and he just wanders around as he pleases. Jack tries to hook back up with the President's daughter but she got engaged to a psychiatrist. But that doesn't prevent her from flirting with him on the side. As a (small) running gag, every time Jack tries to talk to someone about his being 'cursed' by a werewolf with the Pentagram, invariably who he's talking to replies irritably, 'What does the Pentagon have to do with anything?' <Golf clap>
While talking to a rich (and very drunk) outspoken woman at a party, Jack notices a pentagram on her palm. For this movie, that means she's the next victim. Yay. Now we've got an obvious plot device to know who dies next.
Although he kills her at night and leaves her in a shopping cart in the parking lot of a supermarket, no one sees her until the middle of the next day. Maybe because her cart hit a car or something, I don't know. But this is the 70's idea of a woman who dies 'with her guts ripped open'. What you don't see 'cause it would have made this picture way too big, is a great product placement in the cart next to hers of Kellog's Special K cereal - how proud they must have been.
Jack is getting desperate but the movie has a way to go yet so he doesn't do a whole lot about his situation. Plus there are more references to Vietnam, the Panthers, inequality between the sexes and races, and hippies and liberals to be made - probably not to be understood a lot unless you're a certain age. Even watching it twice I didn't understand a lot until I looked stuff up. Which I didn't want to do but hey, I suffer so you don't have to.
I did notice that although there are lots of scenes of the front of the White House and Jack 'going to work' it never shows him actually stepping on the property. He's always either by the fence, or crossing the street in front of the White House. What, they too busy to throw a werewolf a bone and let him come in? And when he 'wolfs out' he actually looks pretty cuddly - they save a lot of money on costumes by having him NOT rip out of his suits (very distinguished looking werewolf) and he's also a fluffy whitish color - kind of a mix between a werewolf and The Shaggy Dog (don't send any hit men after me, 'kay Disney?).
We get prolonged scenes - two in particular that were both irritating and amusing at the same time is when Jack is in the White House bathroom (which is apparently set up like any business-type bathroom with stalls and everything) and since he's hiding in one, the President decides to get down on the floor to try to reach under to unlock the door... okay.
Another scene where the President attempts to get Jack to stop blubbering about being a fuzzy killer and concentrate on stopping the attacks on his policies and... oh whatever else he was talking about takes place in the President's private two-lane bowling alley. His ball gets stuck so we get a three stooges minus one scene of the two of them waddling down the gutters so as not to step on the lanes to retrieve the ball. I am not kidding.
Hmm? You heard there was going to be butt sniffing? All right, all right, I'll speed this up as much as I can. After overpowering the ONE guard at the bottom of the stairs in the White House basement, we discover that there's a whole freaking cheese making factory down there. Nah, I'm actually just kidding about that but this is some kind of huge manufacturing building with huge machines and a floor with a drain in it (ooh, what nastiness do they do down there anyway?) and it goes on for what seems miles. And then...
I'm getting pictures off the movie and I hear behind me 'What the hell is THAT? A mannequin?' Oh no no my dear hubby - what he has stumbled upon (now I have to kill him of course) is a secret lab that's apparently stashed deep within the bowels of the White House that contains all different kinds of human experiments...
We've got the guy in the cage on the left (the one my hubby noticed), a huge dude on a table covered with a sheet, leaving his HUGE booted feet sticking out, and, of course, Dr. Kiss (Michael Dunn - the guy from Star Trek?), a 3' 10" mad scientist who, for some reason, the werewolf likes... a little too much.
Now I was going to make a whole lot of jokes here, but since Dunn died of pulmonary heart disease the year this film was released (it came out, along with two of his other films, posthumously), all I'll say is that this werewolf liked him enough to revert to doggie behavior, complete with all the things that doggies do to people they like.
That's all I was going to say about that part but then Google+, for whatever reason (do they have people searching photos and just making GIFs for no reason whatsoever?) took this photo and made it just that much more special... so I HAVE to include the face-licking part now...
The movie just kind of degrades from there. I know, I know, it didn't have far to go but it really does. Dr. Kiss tells the president he wants the werewolf captured alive (we see the lone gunmen and the werewolf, not at the bottom of the stairs, but instead in a long hallway they did NOT travel in) (sigh) and then he disappears into a stall of the kind of bathroom I remember we had as kids in Elementary School - you remember those?
The huge round sink with water that shot from above in tiny streams when you stepped on the ring at the bottom? All that horrid dry powder soap? For you boys, the row of urinals? Apparently the White House of the 70's was really into school decor because several scenes are shot in suspiciously locker-filled, bland tiled hallways.
Then the doc disappears from the movie as well. Jack decides to end it all so he orders silver bullets but can only get one. He consults with his ex's new boyfriend about chaining him (to a wicker chair - that makes sense how?) but the plan falls apart when the President insists Jack needs to be with him for his most important speech on arms limitation agreement with the Chinese Foreign Minister (?!?).
The President sends a chopper to pick up Jack, who's somehow miraculously gotten out of all those chains, to be with him and the Foreign Minister - they explain away why it's not the official White House chopper by the President saying he has 'several choppers'. Nice save.
The CFM can see Jack begin to change and starts to exclaim that he wants off the chopper. The President is so clueless that he thinks the answer to the problem is to repeat a mangled Chinese phrase (the only one he knows apparently) to try to calm the man down. Nope.
Finally Jack jumps up, full-out wolfies, and attacks the President. There's a prolonged scuffle - nobody seems to care that the President is getting ripped up by a monster. No secret service, no protection.
Jack, still fuzzy, gets back to his apartment where his (ex?)girlfriend finally shoots him. Twice. That wouldn't be so bad but he only could get ONE silver bullet. Meh, at least he's dead.
Our last scene (if you can call it that) is listening to the President making a speech which ends with a howl. Wow, how exciting.
DISCO TWO MOVIE ONE
The Werewolf Of Washington (1973)The first time I watched this movie (because my fibro-fogged brain for some reason made me erase my notes on my recorder before I typed 'em up I had to watch this twice) I dismissed it as 70s schlock. The second time around however, I began to see and appreciate that, through the absurdity, the movie makers were making quite a statement about America and the government policies of the late sixties and early seventies. The President in the movie is supposed to be modeled after President Nixon with his 'out of control' Attorney General John Mitchell. Because this was released during the Watergate scandal, it gained quite a following and is considered a cult classic.
I must confess I learned a whole lot more about the White House and its' idiosyncrasies than I ever learned in school - and I didn't wanna either but I had to present this movie straight so... yeah. And please excuse some of the pictures - the movie wasn't in really great shape.
 |
| Jack and his eyebrows get a silver headed walking stick. |
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| Jack and the President have a little bedroom talk... |
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| Giselle who? |
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| Sign of the Pentagon... err, I mean Pentagram. |
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| Guts? Her dress isn't even ripped... |
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| Wolfie travels in style... |
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| Apparently 'wolfing out' starts by looking like Jack Nicholson... |
Hmm? You heard there was going to be butt sniffing? All right, all right, I'll speed this up as much as I can. After overpowering the ONE guard at the bottom of the stairs in the White House basement, we discover that there's a whole freaking cheese making factory down there. Nah, I'm actually just kidding about that but this is some kind of huge manufacturing building with huge machines and a floor with a drain in it (ooh, what nastiness do they do down there anyway?) and it goes on for what seems miles. And then...I'm getting pictures off the movie and I hear behind me 'What the hell is THAT? A mannequin?' Oh no no my dear hubby - what he has stumbled upon (now I have to kill him of course) is a secret lab that's apparently stashed deep within the bowels of the White House that contains all different kinds of human experiments...  |
| Is that Prince on the left? |
 |
| A little butt-sniffing between friends... |
 |
| Eww dude you were just sniffing his butt! |
The movie just kind of degrades from there. I know, I know, it didn't have far to go but it really does. Dr. Kiss tells the president he wants the werewolf captured alive (we see the lone gunmen and the werewolf, not at the bottom of the stairs, but instead in a long hallway they did NOT travel in) (sigh) and then he disappears into a stall of the kind of bathroom I remember we had as kids in Elementary School - you remember those? The huge round sink with water that shot from above in tiny streams when you stepped on the ring at the bottom? All that horrid dry powder soap? For you boys, the row of urinals? Apparently the White House of the 70's was really into school decor because several scenes are shot in suspiciously locker-filled, bland tiled hallways.Then the doc disappears from the movie as well. Jack decides to end it all so he orders silver bullets but can only get one. He consults with his ex's new boyfriend about chaining him (to a wicker chair - that makes sense how?) but the plan falls apart when the President insists Jack needs to be with him for his most important speech on arms limitation agreement with the Chinese Foreign Minister (?!?).The President sends a chopper to pick up Jack, who's somehow miraculously gotten out of all those chains, to be with him and the Foreign Minister - they explain away why it's not the official White House chopper by the President saying he has 'several choppers'. Nice save.The CFM can see Jack begin to change and starts to exclaim that he wants off the chopper. The President is so clueless that he thinks the answer to the problem is to repeat a mangled Chinese phrase (the only one he knows apparently) to try to calm the man down. Nope.
Finally Jack jumps up, full-out wolfies, and attacks the President. There's a prolonged scuffle - nobody seems to care that the President is getting ripped up by a monster. No secret service, no protection.
Jack, still fuzzy, gets back to his apartment where his (ex?)girlfriend finally shoots him. Twice. That wouldn't be so bad but he only could get ONE silver bullet. Meh, at least he's dead.
Our last scene (if you can call it that) is listening to the President making a speech which ends with a howl. Wow, how exciting.
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