Mastermind: or Boss Hogg Does Kyoto

MASTERMIND- 1969/70...who knows?

Producer: Malcolm Stuart
Director: Alex March
Writers: William Peter Blatty (as Terence Clyne) and Malcolm Stuart
Principal actors: Zero Mostel, Keiko Kishi, Felix Silla, Gawn Grainger, Sorrell Booke, Frankie Sakai, and Bradford Dillman
Running time: 86 minutes
Country: American release filmed in Japan
Favorite part or a representative line (s):  
Crouchback: “A thousand pardons."
Ichihara: "A thousand acceptances."

What do The Exorcist, Roman Holiday, The Dukes of Hazzard, and Joseph McCarthy have in common?  Give up?  The answer is Mastermind.  Keep reading, it will all click eventually.

Plot Summary: An unseen point-of-view villain tries to steal a sophisticated but creepy android toy named Schatzi, who resembles the offspring of an ill-advised tryst between Woody Allen's robot in Sleeper and Hercule Poirot.  Felix Silla plays the toy.  You won't recognize him as he usually has his face covered, like when he played Cousin Itt on the Addams Family or Twiki on Buck Rogers.  Inspector Hoku Ichihara (Mostel)  is called in to track down the killer thief.  Nigel Crouchback, Ichihara's annoyingly British assistant (Grainger) does little more than provide a dialogue sponge to make scenes with Mostel seem less like one man shows and serve as set-up man for the site gags.  Sorrell "Boss Hog" Booke plays one of two all too German characters, which of course have Nazi histories.  The German part of the Axis takes more of a beating than its Pacific allies at the hands of the writers. The lovely Nikki Kono (Kishi), a nightclub owner and target of Ichihara’s infatuation and bizarre daydreams, becomes a suspect.  Ichihara cannot believe his lady fare could be involved in anything criminal.  While on the trail of the criminals, we are launched back to feudal Japan to witness Ichihara's fantasies as a Samurai with Nikki as his traditional and adoring wife courtesy of the good Inspector's all too frequent daydreams which become steadily stranger as the minutes pass.  Schatzi's inventor disappears and the hunt is on.  Jabez Link (Dillman) of the United States C.S.S. (Central Security Services) shows up as a friend, or is he foe?  Stuff happens; sped up fight sequences, a dart gun that freezes people, an oddly humorous running gag of comedic legend Frankie Sakai unsuccessfully attempting seppuku, Israeli agents, cubism, etc.  An attempt is made to have the loose fitting plot tied together toward the end by having the principle characters gather together to force out the truth much like a similar scene in The Maltese Falcon.  A few plot revelations follow, then a motorcycle chase, some more German jokes, The End.                              

To your left; an example of one of Ichihara’s daydreams that look as if Vaseline was smeared on the lens in a manner similar to the way Captain Kirk’s love interests were filmed on the original Star Trek.  Watch the two videos below for further tastes of the surreal dream sequences, which are a mix of the miniseries Shogun and the acid flick The Trip.

The Eyes have it.

Background:  This delightfully racist spoof is one of those films I first stumbled upon when flipping channels on a lazy Saturday afternoon.  I saw the great Zero on screen, so I stopped my flipping ready to see him do his thing (i.e. deliver his lines with theater volume and being likabley over-the-top).  I was a fan of Zero’s having adored him as Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), a role he originated on Broadway,  and as the charismatic Max Bialystock in Mel Brooks’ comic masterpiece, The Producers (1969). It was filmed in 1969 and set for a 1970 theater release that never really happened.  It was shelved and didn’t see the light of day until a vhs release decades later.  The original story came from Oscar winner William Peter Blatty of Exorcist and Shot in the Dark fame, which is a bit of a shock.  Blatty sought to recreate his bumbling but successful detective formula (a la French Inspector Clouseau) on the fortune cookie wisdom of the Asian Inspector Chan. Others became involved and he became so frustrated with the mutilation of his original idea by Ian McLellan Hunter, that he chose to use the pseudonym Terence Clyne.  Blatty was fired by ABC Films for his refusal to “adapt,” though his pseudonym still received writing credit.  Hunter is famous for another Cyrano de Bergerac act; he put his name on the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo’s screenplay for Roman Holiday.  He even accepted the Oscar for Trumbo’s efforts. There doesn't seem to be much of a budget shelled out by ABC.  The phrase "shoe-string budget" doesn't quite cover it.  I think these guys were wearing loafers.  Not Corman cheap, but pretty close.

Sakai and Mostel (two comedy greats)

Mostel plays the clever Japanese Inspector Hikoru Ichihara, and yes, we all know the Brooklyn born actor wasn’t even a 16^th Japanese. The idea, we all assume, was to give a send-up of ye olde Mr. Moto and Charlie Chan vehicles of the 1930s and 40s.  So, one can suspend one’s revulsion of the eye makeup and dropping of prepositions and articles if one holds it up next to the erstwhile portrayals of Charlie Chan by Sidney Toler and Werner Oland.   As it was made on location in Kyoto, Japan, the extras and minor characters are all “genuinely” Japanese and viewers should accept the character’s portrayal as parody of an antiquated Hollywood stereotype rather than the literal bigoted feelings of those who worked on the film.  Japan is positively portrayed as modern and above the goofy Asianish nature of the lead character's mannerisms and speech.  Neil Simon took a crack at the idea years later in his brilliant comedy Murder by Death (1976). In Murder, Peter Sellers (who played a career defining Clouseau in Blatty’s Shot in the Dark) plays the Chanesque Sidney Wang.  The Sellers/Simon version of the Chan spoof was executed perfectly and with more studio backing. Overall it seems to be a wasted effort by underutilizing Mostel and barely using Frankie Sakai.  Also, the whole film has a Rockford Files look and feel to it, which shouldn’t be surprising as director Alex March made his living directing episodes of such 70s gems as Kojak, McCloud, and McMillan and Wife. Still, there are some things in here worth watching.  First; Zero's still Zero.  Everything he did should be viewed as he made too few films (due mostly to blacklisting in McCarthy era Hollywood).  Second; Asiaphiles might enjoy the authentic locales and actors.  Third, there's just something about this one.  It's so strange and lame it's endearing.  It goes from boring to bizzarre in seconds like there was tag team direction happening on set.  After one viewing, I never forgot it and ended up buying a video cassette copy from Ebay for $1.  The costumes are great with vivid detail in the Ichihara samurai fantasy scenes.  The score is worth mentioning too.  Fred Karlin (Westworld and Up the Down Staircase) creates an interesting 60s folky take on Asian musical themes much like The Lovin' Spoonful did in What's Up Tiger Lily. So, If you’re a fan of Zero Mostel, you should watch it.  If you’re a fan of Charlie Chan, you should watch it. If you've always wanted to see Boss Hogg lovingly massage the buttocks of a young Japanese bath house girl, you should seek help immediately you twisted degenerate.

Inspector Ichihara's (Zero Mostel) prisoner by Z-cinema
Inspector Ichihara's (Zero Mostel) surreal... by Z-cinema
Inspector Ichihara's (Zero Mostel) surreal dream by Z-cinema

Suburban Vampirism

Fright Night – 1985.

Producer(s): Herb Jaffe

Director: Tom Holland
Writer(s): Tom Holland

Principal Actors: Chris Sarandon, Roddy McDowall, Amanda Bearse, William Ragsdale, Stephen Geoffreys

Running Time: 106 minutes.

Country: USA

Favorite Lines: “And to what do I owe this dubious pleasure?” –Evil Ed. “Welcome to Fright Night…for real.” –Jerry Dandridge.

Plot: I won’t go into great detail here.  Anyone reading this blog probably knows the plot of this eighties cult favorite.  But, here it is, in a nutshell: vampire moves into Suburbia.  Boy next door catches on.  No one believes boy next door.  Boy next door goes a little nuts.  Vampire goes a little too far.  Now everyone believes boy next door.  Big fight to kill vampire.  Everything is back to normal…or is it?  The end.

I’ll admit, this movie is not all that obscure, although I’d say it deserves a wider audience than it’s ever had.  Plus, it’s one of my favorites, so I’m leading with it…

I can remember watching it for this first time and wondering why I hadn’t heard about it before.  No one had ever recommended it to me.  I’d never heard anyone say a single word about it, in fact.  I just happened to catch it on HBO one night and was pleasantly blindsided.

The cool thing about this movie is its inventiveness, and its nostalgic nod to the then out-of-fashion Gothic horror genre.  This “horror” movie was made when the Jasons and Freddies and Michaels were the reigning horror box-office champs.  Subtly and characterization and plot were out of style.  The slasher films of the mid-eighties, with their ultra-gratuitous (albeit chillingly fun) violence and dismal look at adolescents were the prevalent mode of delivering screams.   Fright Night was different.  It was something new and something old, all at once.  And, unlike the piss-your-pants scariness of some slasher films, it was a “fun” horror film.

The plot is a deft reworking, and up-dating, of Bram Stoker's Dracula.  You have a Renfield, a Mina, a Jonathan Harker, a Van Helsing, but they’re all re-imagined in a nineteen-eighties milieu. It’s a simple idea, but the execution, despite some admittedly lagging scenes (the dance club scene, for instance, is a snorefest…), is brilliant. Part of its brilliance is in the fact that it never tries to take itself too seriously.  Also, it’s clear that the actors were having fun. 

And there are some great performances in this film. I can’t say enough about Roddy McDowall as “Peter Vincent, Vampire Killer.”  McDowall is so good in this roll (he’s the Van Helsing-type character) and strikes just the right notes.  McDowall’s understanding of this rather pathetic, conflicted, loveable, down-on-his-luck character is acute. It's hard not to read into his spot-on portrayal in this role as mirroring, in some way, his personal life.  McDowall himself was a bit "washed up" at this point in his career.  Also, Amanda Bearse (yes, Marcy from the TV show “Married with Children”) is adorably good as Amy, the Mina character.  But, arguably, the star of the movie is the delightfully odd Evil Ed, played by Stephen Geoffreys, whose performance is so desperately weird that he commands almost every scene he’s in.  Also, the majority of the best lines in the film are Ed’s, delivered in a twisted, cracking pubescent snarl.

If for some reason you haven’t already seen this movie, don’t be too hard on yourself.  Just rectify the situation by getting your hands on the DVD.  

-Basil Rathbone.

Bill Murray: The Gateway Drug.

Though I had seen other cartoons and various films, the first movie I remember being burned into my brain was a VHS copy of Ghostbusters which I received for my fourth birthday in 1985. I will never forget shaking excitedly when the VCR started humming and clicking, the flash of a notice from the FBI warning me not to charge others to watch it with me, and the intense score of Elmer Bernstein blaring as I caught a glimpse of the New York Public Library lion statue.  With my eyes wide and my jaw dropped, I was ushered into the world of film fandom.  Building on a theme, my parents also gave me a box of Ghostbusters cereal, essentially sugar dipped bits of Styrofoam and marshmallows.  Two bowls was enough, though I held on to the empty box long after the stale bits of ick had been tossed.  Thus began my love affair with film.  I remember having nightmares, as any four year old who saw Sigourney Weaver groped by demons and morphing into a Hell hound should.  The many days without sleep were a small price to pay to feed this strange compulsion to watch this film over and over and over again until the tape was literally wearing thin.  I became an insatiable movie buff before the ripe old age of five.  My parents, who were both film junkies, fed my hunger with the collected works of Jerry Lewis, the complete James Bond (I'm an expert on the entire series), Mel Brooks, John Candy, Doris Day, Peter Sellers, Laurel & Hardy, John Wayne, Alfred Hitchcock, and Jack Lemmon (to name a few).  I was the only middle schooler I knew who could recite all of Some Like It Hot and found W.C. Fields hilarious.  For my Mom; she loved murder mysteries, classic horror, and musicals.  My Dad watched anything that showcased cars; American Graffiti, Grand Prix, LeMans, Bullitt, and Gumball Rally, as well as any Elvis Presley musical or British comedy he could find.  As I matured, so did my taste in film, as I discovered Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch as well as the endless frontier of foreign cinema with Fellini, Kurosawa, Murnau, and Herzog.  These new found gems only added to the layers I had acquired.  My propensity for Cinematic sophistication became balanced when I discovered schlock and exploitation films in college.  I grew to believe Ed Wood was a misunderstood genius, who with proper funding could have been as accomplished as Orson Welles, and Troma's Toxic Avenger sequels are actually better than the first.  This melting pot of ideas has created a functioning addict who hasn’t watched a TV series regularly since the late 90s because to me, a TV functions as a means to watch movies.  My collection, which married into my wife’s own pile of DVDs 7 years ago, numbers in the 800s.  They all sit on two long shelves placed flush together.  It is one of the first things people see when they walk into our home, and it never goes unnoticed.  My family still speaks in our own language of movie quotes.  So when Mr. Rathbone ran his proposal for this blog by me, I was more than eager to contribute.  The following should prove I am more than qualified:

1. I believe that Russ Meyer's Supervixens is a better film than Citizen Kane.
2. I believe the best anime Japan produced was Robot Carnival.
3. I have seen at least four Alejandro Jodorowsky films: Holy Mountain (my favorite) El Topo, Fando Y Lis, and Sante Sangre. 
4. I have seen Roger Corman's Fantastic Four as well as the Captain America crapfest from 1990.
5. and Finally, I own two Cook and Moore films; Bedazzled and Hound of the Baskervilles.  

I hope to share some of my passion and knowledge acquired over the years by bringing you titles you may not have known existed.  As a side note, I still get that rush when I see the Columbia Pictures lady with her torch and hear the eerie score at the beginning of Ghostbusters.  The nightmares subsided but I’m still tasting that cereal (shudder).

In the way of a mission statement...

“My sense of the past is vivid and slow. I hear every sign and see every shadow."
-Barry Hannah

In the early eighties, when I was a wee lad, there was a place close to our suburban home called Everything Video.  You could go there and rent movies and a VCR. (This was way pre-Blockbuster, and way pre-owning-your-own-VCR.)  On many a Friday evening my dad and I would head down there and rent VHS’s (they also had Betamax) and a VCR and head back home and dig in for the weekend. This was exciting to me, lazy little shit that I was.  Screw fishing!  Binge movie-watching was much preferred.  You could stay home and you didn’t have to kill anything.

My dad’s taste is eclectic, and he was always very permissive with my brother and me, so I was exposed to a wide array of cinema at a very early age.  If I were arrogant about such modest matters I might even say that my viewing was “prodigious.”  By the time I was eleven, I was well on the road to cinephilia.  One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Marathon Man, Taxi Driver, The Godfather, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and on and on.  (In high school I filled in the gaps.)

Those weekends with my dad, staying up late, watching everything from Fright Night to Fort Apache, were aesthetically formative.  I love movies.  I love all kinds of movies.  But, mostly, I love the odd, bad and out of the way.  I love The Beastmaster and Krull.  I love Ice Pirates and Time Bandits.  I watched Brazil when I was twelve and had no idea what was happening, but loved every minute of it.  In the middle of the night, sitting next to my dad, I watched Richard Lynch rise out of a pool of blood in The Sword and the Sorcerer and nearly shit myself out of pure adolescent fear.  Heavy Metal, which is practically pornographic, scarred me for life when I saw it for the first time at the age of ten.

My dad loved to watch old movies, too, especially stuff from the thirties and forties.  The Thin Man, is one of his favorites.  Can you imagine a “Millennial” sitting through The Thin Man?  I did.  And, I’d wager, lots of guys my age did.  Gen Exers seem to be an excessively nostalgic lot.  I know I was, and still am.  (To this day, by the way, William Powell is, to my mind, about as cool as they come.)   

Monster movies from the fifties are particularly special to me.  Perhaps it’s because my dad grew up watching that stuff, but it’s also the tone of those films.  The innocent, playful, heroic mood is captivating.  Those movies are filled with wonder, with a thrilling sense of “make believe.”  And, of course, they’re cheesy and awful, in the best way possible.

Nostalgia.  That’s a big part of this, I suppose.  Nostalgia for the stuff of my childhood.  Nostalgia for the stuff of the past, in general.  Also, a desire to find new-to-me things, not just to uncover the odd, hard-to-find things I've already seen.  That’s reason enough, I guess.

I'd also like to extend an invitation to other nostalgia-haunted nerds. If you find some old, weird, obscure cinema-related something (art, a clip, an essay, an old film review, anything) and think it pertinent, send it our way.  In the meantime, we'll watch and look and "fly low," and find some cool stuff to put up.

Most Earnestly & (not ironically) Tongue-in-Cheekedly,

-Basil Rathbone.

"What a puny plan."

Coming soon! A blog celebrating the bad, obscure and the forgotten.  Movie reviews, clips, essays, doggerel, various and sundry other items, as well as, we hope, interviews.  It's "a puny plan," but aren't they all? Anyway, keep checking back with us, and please be patient.  We promise to have some fun and cool stuff happening here.