WHEN WORSE COMES TO WORST

WHEN WORSE COMES TO WORST

The World’s Worst Film Festival

CREEMEDIA

by Edouard Dauphin

Late March. The Dauphin is sitting around the office of Nick D., film distributor. Just another afternoon on Eighth Avenue. The Dauph’s red-rimmed eyes travel the walls of the neatly appointed room, taking in posters of the movies Nick has foistered upon an unsuspecting public. Stateline Motel. Teenage Hitch-Hikers. Invasion Of The Blood Farmers.

Seeing the last poster, Edouard has his customary mild heart seizure. Was this film really his introduction to the Wild Wild World of Hollywood Screenwriting? Scanning the ad copy linfe, he shudders with embarrassment. “Dotst eat before you see this movie—and you’ll have nothing to lose!” The key to Nick D.’s success: truth in advertising.

The phone rings. Nick answers it.

The caller is the promoter of The World’s Worst Film Festival, set to screen 21 of the most abysmal achievements in Hollywood history, at the Beacon Theatre in a few weeks. He wants Blood Farmers to open the festival. But first he wants to know: is the picture really that bad? Is it truly the worst film in the history of American cinema?

Nick nods. “Are you asking me if it stinks?”

There is a pause.

“A screening? You want a screening? Are you nuts? This film is awful. You don’t need a screening. Isn’t it bad enough your audiences are going to have to sit through it? Now let’s talk rental...”

The Dauphin sinks into his Naugahyde armchair. As he listens to Nick’s end of the f bargaining, he reflects: even badness has its price.

Early April. The Dauphin is sitting around his Greenwich Village apartment watching the idiot box. Ten minutes into Wrestling Women vs. The Aztec Mummy, the phone rings. He answers.

The caller is the press agent for The World’s Worst Film Festival. Would the Dauph like passes for all 21 turkeys and a pair of invitations to the Opening Night Cocktail Party?

“Sure thing,” mutters Edouard, who hais not turned down a cocktail party since 1967. “Will it be the world’s worst food?”

“Yes, and the world’s worst liquor.^

“Good,” replies The Dauph, “the next morning I can have the world’s worst hangover. ”

MidJ April. The Dauphin is sitting around the lobby of the Beacon Theatre, a vast citadel of art located just a block from Needle Park. The lobby is a menagerie of characters vho look like entrants in a Bun E. Carlos lookalike contest, along with vague cinema types, journalistic has-beens, journalistic never wases, and a man dressed as a turkey.

The hors d’oeuvre tray, a jumble of vegetables, meat, cheese and stale crackers, looks like it was assembled by Ray Charles on one of his off days. Cheap wine is being served. The Dauph takes a generous swig of chablis. The wine remembers, but the wino often forgets.

He consults his program. Blood Farmers has been86’d in favor of Plan 9From OuterSpace, definitely a rotten flick but one that has been shown to death on Channel 1 l’s Creature Features and Channel 9’s Spaced Out Films. Blood Farmers, with its pitiful acting and lousy special effects would have been an ideal festival opener. Oh well. The Dauph reflects: badness may have a price, but true badness may go unrewarded.

A few minutes later. The Dauph, sailing along by now on a Paul Masson high, is sitting around the third row orchestra of the Beacon. The World’s Worst Film Festival has officially begun. The great unwashed public—looking just as ratty as the cocktail party elite—files in. According to the program, the first 50 people dressed as a bad movie are to be admitted free. Since the festival takes place in New York, everyone is already dressed as a bad movie.

Tjie stage lights are turned on and out pop Harold and Michael Medved, our emcees for the evening, looking hapless and embarrassing in high hats, white ties and tails. The crowd hisses them unmercifully but they prattle energetically as if only they can interpret the crap we’re about to see on the screen. Seems they’re the authors of The Golden Turkey Awards, one of those overpriced coffee table paperbacks that coincidentally happens to be prominently promoted in the fest program. So it’s a cinch this pair of sibling rivals—one of ’em 12 years older than the other fer Krissake—is going t? make some bucks on this event. But do they have toyak so much? The Dauph’s getting a hangover and he hasn’t even finished drinking.

Eventually, the lights dim and Plan 9 creaks onto the Beacon screen. This woefully inept "bomb has gained a lasting place in trivia history for being Bela Lugosi’s last appearance before the cameras. An alcoholic and—are you ready— formaldehyde junkie, Bela dropped dead two days into the filming. But did that stop trasho director Edward D. Wood from proceeding as scheduled? Of cdurse not.

He hired a Lugosi double, an unemployed chiropractor, and instructed him to hold a cape over his face for all the remaining scenes. The fact that this nerd was a foot taller than Bela didn’t faze Wood any more than the weird juxtaposition of shots showing the Lugosi character glaring at the camera, then hiding behind his cape, for no apparent reason. The stoned out Beacon audience—many of them hooked on formaldehyde themselves—lapped these sequences up.

Critics have said that Plan 9 looks like it was shot in someone’s garage. They are just being kind. Plan 9 looks like it was shot in an abortionist’s waiting room. A top level Pentagon official is shown working in an office that contains only a desk, a gooseneck lamp and two telephones. The bedroom furniture of one character is identical to his patio furniture, shown in the previous scene, Flying saucers are easily recognizable as hubcaps and, when they are set on fire, as paper plates. Need The Dauph go on? The film ends with psychic entertainer Criswell insisting that this ludicrous tale of invaders from outer space is a dramatization of a true incident. In an earnest voice, he asks: “Can you prove it didn’t happen? God help us in the future!” Words to live by.

The Other Films. The Dauph won’t deceive you by claiming to have sat through all 21 of these abominations. There are some ordeals even the promise of a Boy Howdy check cannot make bearable. Still, a random sampling of the test’s selections confirmed that the promoters had chosen wisely if not too well. These pictures were the pits all right, but many of them were horrendous only in a camp way. Acting-wise and technically, they were no worse than a lot of other dismal flicks, many of which have been effectively pilloried in these very Creemedia pages.

They Saved Hitler’s Brain is just what it sounds like—the story of a mad scheme to preserve the Fuhrer’s gray matter in what looks like a pickle jar. I Changed My Sex is a hilarious transsexual movie from 1952, made by Plan 9 director Ed Wood, who himself liked tb lounge around the set in high heels, lace stockings and garter belts.

Chained For Life, starring the real life Siamese twins, the Hilton Sisters, tells a tale of justice in action. Joined at the hip (hence the title, get it?), the girls go on trial for a murder only one of them has committed. Their singing act (they’re a duo, natch) is worth the price of admission all by itself.

Roger Corman’s The Little Shop Of Horrors, made in three days back in 1960, is noteworthy for the quickie appearance of Jack Nicholson, who plays a pain nut who gets off on visits to the dentist. He should meet The pauph’s periodontist, who would gladly rip his gums out for him, no questions asked.

The Terror Of Tiny Town, an all-midget musical western is wildly funny for the first 15 minutes. But how many times can you laugh at a cowboy entering a saloon by walking under the swinging doors?

Best flick of the fest, and The Dauph’s personal choice for The World’s Worst: The Creeping Terror, featuring a monster from space that resembles a shag carpet. The beast is propelled along—according to the production notes—by a group of junior high school students cleverly concealed under the rug. Too bad their sneakers keep popping into view.

The carpet monster is attempting to destroy Lake Tahoe, so naturally you hope it succeeds. Topping things off, the director lost the soundtrack to the movie so a narrator, the local spokesman for Allstate Insurance, was hired to explain the action to us. Suffice to say: we were not in good hands.

All in all, it was an amusing festival, though the price—4 smackers per picture—might seem a bit high for something like Fire Maidens From Outer Space or The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies. But any fest that includes The Wild Wild World Of Jayne Mansfield (The Dauphin’s -alltime favorite screen actress) can’t be all bad.

Or is it all good?

Don’t Lapse Into A Coma Without It

THE PILL BOOK

(The Illustrated Guide To The Most Prescribed Drugs In The United States)

by Harold Silverman, Pharm. D. and Gilbertl. Simon, D. Sc.

(Bantam)_

There you are, pleasantly wrecked and heading out to your parents’ farm a few hours after a particularly lethal rock concert back in the city.

Suddenly, you don’t feel so good. You pull over to the side of the dirt road and slump over the steering wheel. Your pulse increases and you flash back to the small purple pill you took with the alcohol. Miles from nowhere in the middle of the night, what will you do? What will you do?

Like Karl Malden says, disaster can strike at any time. And as Neil Young says, rust never sleeps. So now, more than ever, it pays to Be Prepared and Keep Moving in the 1980’s.

One way to stay on top of things is to spend under $3 for The Pill Book, a fairly massive (over400 pages) and more-than-handy pocket reference which deserves status as the dedicated user’s answer to the American Express card.

It includes the following: a 21-page color section featuring 373 of the most common prescription pills, including their generic names and milligram weights (all arranged according to their specific color: white/grey, red/pink, yellow, blue/purple, orange, green, brown or—my favorite—the ever popular multicolor); a Drug Interaction Chart which tells you what not tomix’n’ match; andaspecial“Top200” chart which lists the most popular prescription drugs in America (Number one with a bullet: Valium).

The Pill Book is also a veritable treasure trove of additional information. For example, did youx know that over 17 million Americans take stimulants? And that doesn’t even take into account Lou Reed’s medicine cabinet or the CREEM editorial offices during deadline.

Additional sections on: Drugs and Food (what goes good with a Big Mac?); Questions to ask about Medicine (how long will the hallucinations last?); and Antipsychotic Drugs (is there an effective cure for Quadrophenia?) help round out the overall picture.

The book is designed by Milton Glaser (all you aft school addicts take note) and the pills themselves are photographed by none other than Bert Stern, who is probably most famous for his work with Marilyn Monroe (and if I have to explain the irony of that connection, go back to Carbona).

In The Pill Book’s introduction, the Today show’s Dr. Frank Field warn?: “If you’ve never swallowed a pill... stop reading this book. ”

Don’t let him scare you. With books like The Pill Book around, you can’t afford not to indulge.

Jeffrey Morgan