CREEMEDIA

CREEMEDIA

Bogue Roeg?

BAD TIMING / A SENSUAL OBSESSION Directed by Nicolas Roeg (World Northal)

by Mitchell Cohen

Some paths should never cross. When Milena (Theresa Russell) plants her formidable leg in a doorway to prevent Dr. Alex (Art Garfunkel) from leaving a party, it’s all over for the curly-top research psychoanalyst; he had the right idea earlier, when he quipped that if they never met, they could imagine it would turn out perfectly. Clearly, this Milena, prone to drinking, doling outsloppy kisses, and espousing flapper philosophy (and keeping a husband over the border), is too much for Alex. Their Viennese romance is doomed: he wants to whisk her away to N.Y.C. and matrimony; she wants to ha-cha-cha.

Director Nicolas Roeg, working from a script by Yale Udoff, takes this tale of irreconcilable differences and turns it, as is his practice, into an elegant-looking, coolly distracted and disjointed narrative.

Roeg’s distance from his material has managed in the past to make seductively personal studies out of subject matter that ranged from gangster-rock (Performance), to sci-fi (The Man Who Fell To Earth), to psychic-horror (Don’t Look Now), and in each case his slippery style, and his off-beat casting, worked to the overall good of the project. He’s also a specialist in displaced persons and cultural dislocation: Jenny Agutter (flutter, flutter) among the aborigines in Walkabout, James Fox with Jagger and Pallenberg’s flake-a-ramas, alien Bowie on a strange planet. Bad Timing/A Sensual Obsession—a kinky affair between two Americans in Austria—is a natural Roeg step that turns, despite flashily effective moments and some realistically elliptical dialogue, into a misStep.

Emotion and eroticism would seem to be prerequisites for “a sensual obsession, ” but it’s on those precise counts that Roeg’s anti-linear treatment is defeating: sex scenes are intercut with explicit shots of surgery and obtrusive, out-of-time reaction shots, and the effectintended, no doubt—is to undercut and confuse pur feelings about the Alex-Milena bond. The acting of Garfunkel and Russell is of little help in sorting things out. Each has worthy turns: he is convincing as the analytical lover who says that “the gratification of curiosity leads to knowledge,” and she is appropriately Appealing at the beginning of the relationship. But neither is up to the throbbing madness their love leads to. While she gets progressively hysterical, he can’t manage to lather up the prescribed energy. Russell’s tantrum is all metallic bluster, and the less said about Garfunkel’s final act of sexual defilement the better. Thankfully, by that time Harvey Keitel is around to do a decidedly weird stint as the Inspector probing Russell’s attempted suicide. He knows he’s in a fuzzy-headed movie, and acts accordingly.

There are real issues of the heart and genitals ait stake in Bad Timing: the irrational possessiveneSs that refuses to accept the loss of a lover or the fact of hpr being touched by another, sex as a weapon, “secrecy and spying” (a subject Alex lectures on in class), the mysteries of courtship and passion; Nicholas Roeg is far too talented to entirely muff such volatile material. He may hold back on sustained development, but his camera-eye remains a fine instrument. (Interestingly, like another recent, failed attempt at incisive: romanticism, Mazursky’s Willie & Phil, this movie’s end credits use the ineffable voice of Billie Holiday for a Sentimental irony that the film itself has not delivered.) Bad Timing is minor Roeg, certainly; a seriously bizarre movie that makes Alex’s consuming sensual obsession seem not so much pathological as yaguely itchy, like a low-grade sting.

Two-Headed Rodent Nan From The Black Lagoon

THE GOLDEN TURKEY AWARDS by Harry and Michael Medved (G.P. Putnam)

“Best of’ and “Worst of’are quite a remarkable pair of constructs. A perfect example is the syndicated TV atrocity called The Best Of Donny And Marie. In reality, the “best” these , young dental whores are capable of is actually less bad. We’ll never get to see what was really their best moment: the time Donny put-on an Andy Gibb mask, sneakedvinto Marie’s dressing room while she was in the shower and squeezed himself into her underwear drawer. That’s the real story behind Marie’s little-publicized fear of underpants. Hey—I’vebeenthere. -

“The Worst,” on the other hand, is a favorite of all hack thinkers. There’s the worst flavor of ice cream (“Meow”), the worst color of wet-look leisure jumpsuit (warm beer) and the most idiotic background syllables in the history of pop music (a toss-up between “buppy-yah-ooo" and “buh-weem-a-wack, buh-weem-a-wack”).

Authors Harry and Michael Medved have a truly sublime sense of what’s bad and what’s worse. And, of course, the more terrible, the better. Their firm belief in trash aesthetics and joyful approach to the many levels of stupidity make their book even more fascinating than the , great Boo Berry/Count Chocula controversy.

The Medved methodblogy of selecting the biggest turkeys in film is as exacting as the process that goes into making Johnson’s Baby Powder (i. e., grinding the babies finely enough to pour smoothly from the can). There’s a category for every awful idea that’s helped make American cinema the overrated stretcher service it is today. They’ve carefully delved into subjects such as Worst Two-Headed Transplant Movie, Worst Rodent Movie, Worst Performance by a Popular Singer (Dylan as Marjoe), Worst Performance by Sonny Tufts, Most Obnoxious Child Performer, Worst Nun (Mary Tyler Moore, who unnecessarily explained, “1 wouldn’t want to become stereotyped as a nun in films.”) and Worst Vegetable Movie (Can’t Stop The Music).

Certain categories are so fundamentally dumdum that they demand special attention. The Most Ridiculous Monster in Screen History is a real bloato-finish involving killer treestumps from the Antarctic, (“Navy Versus The Night Monsters”), deadly college-student-powered crawling carpets (Creeping Terror), Teenagers From Outer Space (Def Leppard) and the eventual winners, those overweight, cigar-smoking gqrillas wearing diving helmets of Robot Monster.

Some of the subjects concern great leaps in the art of filmmaking, such as the nominees for Most Inane and Unwelcome “Technical Advance”: Smell-O-Vision, Hallucinogenic Hyphovision, Carcinogenic Dogbreath vision,'Emergo (actual blown-up rubber skeleton is dropped on audience) and the much-dreaded winner, Percepto (from The Tingler), which consisted of wiring the theater seats and giving the audience small electric shocks at crucuaL moments. Percepto is now used only at selected rock concerts. Surely you’ve seen the unfortunate . fans in the front rows jump up on top of their seats, protected only by the rubber soles of their running shoes.

Still other categories are as straightforward as Worst Performance by an Animal, where a field of true decompression chamber rejects including Scuttlebutt The.Duck, Blue Bby The Hog, and Muki The Wonder Hound are whipped handily by Dinky The Chimp, who was so tempermental he has to be destroyed midway through the filming of Tarzan And The Great River. Why this solution isn’t used for human actors, I’ll never know.

The biggest winder among these select gobblers is director Edward D. Wood, Jr., as a double-threat alcoholic/transvestite who takes the two most vital categories, Worst Director and Worst Film for his precedent-setting work in Plan Nine From Outer Space.

Plan Nine is a testimony to Wood’s uncanny ability to marry a laughable concept with a thoroughly ludicrous technique. “As with any avant-garde work of art, ” goes the text, “an encounter with ‘Plan Nine’ raises more questions than it answers.” Released in 1959 as “The Great Bela Lugosi’s Last Film,” sharp-eyed viewers may wonder why he apears for only two minutes of totally unrelated fumbling and lurking. Simple! Director Wood, bargain craftsman that he was, used some old film of Lugosi that was originally shot for another movie. 01’ Bela-Wella, who at the time had a drug problem so severe he was reduced to guzzling formaldehyde, ‘ inconveniently died before Plan Nine was begun. Ed, a firm believer in recycling, used the clips ot Lugosi anyway and hired a double for the rest of . the film, cleverly advising him to hold a cape in front of his face to further the cinematic illusion.

The same uncompromising attitude is. apparent in Wood’s use of noticably bent cardboard tombstones, paper plate flying saucers disguised as pie tins and the frequent confusion between day and night scenes. As the authors point out, “the jumble between light and darkness helps givg the movie a ‘timeless’ quality.” All this, plus Criswell as narrator!

The Golden Turkey Awards comes highly recommended to any serious student of utter ' garbage. The only requirements for the reader aire the artistic vision to recognize repellance as the guiding factor in all modern media and the ability to stay up for the 4 a.m. movie.

Rick Johnson

And It’s Jersey Deb In 7

First it was movies, then it was designer jeans and now.. .professional wrestling? That’s right! Deb Harry has cast her fate in the ring under the name Dirty Debbie Doom. Shown here with tag-teammate Andre The Giant (the giant what?) D. D. Doom made her debut in a special exhibition match commemorating the grand opening of the new Elastique Land in Matville, USA. After demonstrating her infamous Weiner-Squeezer on good-sport Andre, she went on to destroy Mongo The Mongolion Centipede in a record 45 seconds! “It’s that weird look she gets on her face,” claimed a crushed Mongo. “It’s like she’s squinting to see a Summer Blonde commercial on your face.” It paid off twice for our Dark-Rooted Danger, who wrote a song about her experience. How does it go? “Oh, you know,” says Deb devilishly, “Kinda doom-doom, da-doom da-doom, dee dee..” , Either way, the Blonde Battler is a tough lady to pin down!

Rick Johnson

The Pleasantville Horror

THE READER’S DIGEST • (The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.; Pleasantville, N.Y.).

HovTdoS^mericaspeirChappaquidickTAre

you insutance-wise? Should parents play God? Heard any good ones lately?

The answers to these, and dozens of similarly intriguing questions can be found each month in America’s favorite method of rubbing out trees, the Reader’s Digest. Each month, 20 million copies of the Digest infijtraite America’s -mailboxes, homes, and doctor’s offices, with a format so varied as to make a Ted Nugent guitar solo appear inventive. And no wonder. If magazines were divisor^ the Digest would be unity. -

A quick glance over some recent feature titles goes a long way toward explaining the seemingly

nondescript magazine’s appeal. Can you . honestly resist stuff like: “Have Astronomers Found God? (and, if so does He know all the words to “Tumbling Dice?”); “The Troubling Truth About Teen-Agers And Sex, (what, they know evqn less about it than the Digest’s subscribers?); and “The Energy Crisis: There Is an Answer” (sure, put Valium in the water supplies).

If that kind of rock-’em-sock-!em journalism isn’t ypur bag of oats, surely you can do business with the never-ending stream”o(light features. “Changeable April.” “Mischievous March.” “Do Clouds Sleep?” “Unforgettable Cult Mass Murders.”

And even of you’re still not happy—what, you want Mencken to edit this thing?—there’s always the barrel-of-fun escapades of “Humor in Uniform,” “Life in These United States,” and “Campus Comedy.” Talk about three riotous topics. And you’re probably sitting around wondering what kind of shoe a banana peel rpakes.

1 Let’s face it, there’s something for everybody in the pages of the Reader’s Digest,.particularly if you happen to be a middle-aged Republican hypochondriac. But whether the editors have to get tough (“Marijuana and Driving: The Sobering Truth”), their job is to make it easy for you. And they do it so well; most of this stuff is not only digested, it’s flushed and partially decomposed as well.

Unfortunately, intensive research has shown that it is not possible to actually buy the Reader’s Digest. Most experts suspect that it simply appears in mailboxes of senior citizens and practicing medicos. Another school of thought holds that the Digest spontaneously germinates on suburban coffee tables. In any case, there’s no need to worry, as you’re usually no further from a copy than a cop on the beat is from a storekeeper’s profits.

By the' way, copies of this article will be available in an upcoming Large-TypeEdition of CREEM, and will make a perfect and practical gift for mom, dad, or any recent high-school graduate.

J. Kordosh