The Michigan Daily-Thursday, July'24, 1980-Page 7
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Yesterday, Daily film critic Den-
nis Harvey delved into this sum-
mer's crop of horror films
discovering that most fall
somewhere in between the
frightening black humor of
"Psycho" or "Carrie" and
oblivious camp like "Plan 9 from
Outer Space. " "... too many new
cheap horror filmmakers go
through their paces as drably as if
they were churning out an ABC
movie of the week a few years ago.
They don't have the talent to be
good, and generally lack the nerve
to be floridly bad." The result is
series of, ah, unusual films that will
probably never surface in Ann Ar-
bor. Read on for the exciting con-
clusion, ifyou dare.
By DENNIS HARVEY
If Vampire Playgirls lived up to its'
title or adline ("They bite. They,
squeeze. They're ready to please."), it
would be the camp classic of this and
any other year. Lamentably, the film is
one of those mongrel messes that has no'
claim toward any title but Consumer
Falsity of the Year. A totally confused
schlock shocker of apparent Italian
origin, complete with English dubbing
that seems to go out of its way to avoid
matching the lips or action, its exact
plot or subject can't quite be figured
out.
But it is clear what the film is not
about-the sort of combined
cheerleader/vampire/make-out movie
idiocy that its U.S. name promises.
How sad. Grade-Z kinkiness would have
been a good deal more amusing than
the international fiasco that Vampire
Playgirls delivers. This is the sort of
obscurity in which characters that have
just been killed are suddenly alive and
well two scenes later, without any kind
of explanation. Someone has been

editing film with a mix-master again,
alas. The result is an ad campaign
without a movie to go with it, just some
pieced-together film stock. The film
producers should have saved their
production costs and bought a pack of
gum instead.
AT LEAST those responsibile for
Dracula Sucks have been more faithful
to their charming little concept. Here
we have fairly straight and reasonably
coherent vampire stuff, complete with
gaudy period dress and lots of ladies
heaving out of their low-cut gowns, just
as they used to in the beloved Hammer
horrors of yore. Those older films,
however, did not quite go to the full
lengths that Dracula Sucks allows. This
movie lets its bloodsuckers milk all the
available mammaries right up there on
the big screen, without any demure cuts
away at the crucial moment. Ob-
viously, in this wonderful liberated
world of today, aiming for the neck is
passe. If bloodied breasts give you
goose pimples, then this is the film for
you. Christ, it must have been made for
somebody.
There is bad taste, and then there is
atrocious taste. Death Ship has been
directed with bland, TV-movie com-
petence-the worst kind-by Albin
Rakoff, which only makes the insen-
sitivity of its central premise more con-
temptible. The film begins as a low-
grade Poseidon Adventure, with the
cast whooping it up on board a luxury
liner while an unidentified vessel heads
toward them on a collision course.
Though one would expect a luxury liner
these days to have maximal rescue
facilities, the only folks to find a
lifeboat are apparently a group of ten,
headed by Richard Crenna, Sally Ann
Howes and the eternally obnoxious
George Kennedy.
This group boards the mysterious
ship responsible for the crash, and finds
no sign of life within decades. The ship
turns out to have been a floating con-

centration camp and torture chamber
used by the Nazis; it comes mur-
derously "alive," of course, and does
various mean things to the visitors. We
are treated to seeing a character write
in revulsion when tossed into a bin of
decayed human remains, and another
die horribly as her face more or less
curdles due to a poisoned piece of can-
dy. There's something morally rancid
about this exploitation of actual horrors
for a few very cheap fictional thrills,
which look even cheaper because of the
inexplicable presence of the superb
Kate Reid (currently serving a season
at Ontario's Stratford Festival) in a
supporting role. The movie is too dumb
and artless to add up to much as a
thriller, but the offensiveness at its core
leaves a strong aftertaste of disgust.
Humanoids from the Deep is equally
shameless, but its tastelessness is
exquisitely enjoyable-it has the sort of
ingenious bad idea at its heart that
camp classics are made of. Reduced to
its essential idiocy, it can be described
as The Creature from the Black
Lagoon, with the hots. Big slimy green
things emerge from the ocean near a
seaside town, filled with the romantic
.ardor of springtime and mating season.
What do they want? To further their
species' evolutionary cycle, of course.
What does that mean? It means that
they want what so many of us want-a
good lay. So, Humanoids offers the
spectacle of seeing these reptilian mon-
sters hump a lot of extremely well-
proportioned human females (who, to
preserve their honor, it must be said, do
not seem to enjoy it much)..
It will not be easy-though I'm
trying-to forget the sight of these
seaweed-covered intruders hopping
atop various squirming girls in an
amorous fenzy, bowing their heads in a
slimy attempt at what seems to be
(help me) necking. What happens to the
male victims in the film is somewhat
less ridiculously funny-they get
crushed, slashed and ripped apart-but
even the unpleasantness of the gore
can't prevent this fast-paced nonsense
from being hysterically entertaining.
For the record, it should be noted that
the movie does have some genuine
The AnnArtber Film Cooperfive
presents at AUD A: FREE
THURSDAY, JULY 24
THE GAME IS OVER
6:30 Aud A (Roger Vdim, 1966) FREE
JANE FONDA turns in one of her best early per-
formanes in this rarely seen modern day adap-
Cation of Zola's Lo Curee. This exploration of
bourgeois decadence centers around n affair
between a young Parisin woman and her step-
son. Excellent cinematography by Claude Renior,.
In French with English subtitles.
Celine and Julie
Go Boatin
(Jacques Rivette, 19 4)
8:15 AUDA FREE
A dazzling lark of a film-despite its length
(19S minut>es)it is never ponderous. A delight
ful fantasy which combines elements of The
Aabiano Night, sapstica toedy,T rite Shen
dy. -Cocteau,' commedio dell'arte, " Hitch-
ock, Proust, An American in Paris, Henry James,
Borges, and Alice in Wonderland. "The quintes-
sential French movie of the lst 15 years.
-Jim Haberman, Village Voice. French with
English subtitles.
Tomorrow: Donald Shebid's GOIN
DOWN THE ROAD and Katherine
Hepburn in Dorothy Arner's
CHRISTOPHER STRONG at MLB.
FREE.

(non-amphibious) heat in the form of
heroine Ann Turkel, who has the sort of
stunning looks deserving of a less
ludicrous showcase.
Amid the rubble of amusing and drab
bad movies, there has been just one
real surprise-the unpromisingly titled
Mad Max, an American International
action flick that goes far beyond the
usual yee-hah inanities of most road-
bound drive-in adventures. Most low-
budget thrillers of any merit rely on
seld-depreciating jokiness; it's far
easier to mock the form than to play it
straight successfully. A few years ago
Death Race 2000, directed by that king
of poverty program kinkiness Paul
Bartel (Private Parts), offered a vision
of a post-holocaustal future in which
lawless outlaws in a barren desert lan-
dscape satirically chalked up points for
each unfortunate innocent run over by
their hot rods.
Mad Max plays with a similarly
dismal milieu, substituting cool tension
for the earlier film's jokey
maliciousness. The U.S. has been
reduced to a no-man's land of highway
rapists and -thieves, with the few
policemen available free to use any
nasty means at their disposal to be rid
of the gangs of motorcycling pests. Max
(Mel Gibson), a straight-arrow cop of
the future, turns "mad" with vengean-
ce when his wife (Joanne Samual) and
child are brutally killed by a par-
ticularly vicious gang. Within its
modest bounds, the film achieves the
sort of punishing comic-book graphics
and taut sparseness that Walter Hill
has made his trademark in more ex-
pensive efforts.
Creating camp demands only inep-
titude; the makers of Mad Max have
with their limited funds done something
finally a good deal more ad-
mirable-they've made a fairly decent
movie.

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