Shoplifters of the World (Stephen Kijack, 2021)

Shoplifters of the World is quite possibly the worst film I've ever loved. "Based on true intentions," as an opening title reads, it takes place on the day The Smiths broke up! One Denver-area teenager, Dean (Ellar Coltrane, the Boyhood boy!), becomes so despondent over the news that he holds the local metal station DJ, Full Metal Mickey (Joe Manganiello, who also produced), hostage at gunpoint and forces him to play Smiths records all night! Meanwhile, four teens who know how Joan of Arc felt spend the evening negotiating the rocky transition into adulthood while listening to the all-Smiths broadcast and talking in Smiths quotes! 

Forgive the exclamation marks because this is a film that elicits the most giddy reactions, especially if you're a Smiths fan yourself. The first third speeds by in a blinding sugar rush. I was literally on my feet dancing every five or so minutes. Try this exercise while watching - do a shot every time you hear a character use a Smiths lyric or song title. Ok please don't do this because you will be DEAD of severe alcohol poisoning by the thirty-minute mark. Veteran of well-received music documentaries on Scott Walker, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Sid Loft/Judy Garland, Stephen Kijack wrote and directed Shoplifters of the World with little regard for how unnatural a film so permeated with Smiths obsession would come across. It was a miracle that Morrissey could get away with de facto dialogue such as "She said: 'Eh, I know and you cannot sing!' I said: 'That's nothing, you should hear me play piano!'" in the first place. Putting those lyrics in the mouths of characters makes for the corniest movie imaginable. 

But what Shoplifters lacks in smooth narrative propulsion, it more than makes up in the sputtering euphoria (and contempt) associated with fandom. The overall effect is 90 minutes of someone who just cannot shut up about their obsession, apt since it took Kijack over a decade to get the thing before eyeballs. It's the most wince-inducingly earnest film since Empire Records (Allan Moyle, 1995), the theatrical version, not the "Special Fan Edition" which was too "good"/bland and thus far less compelling an artifact about popular music fandom in all its gulping awkwardness. And Shoplifters traffics in more than just the Smiths. You also get a Madonna clone, a Siouxsie clone (pursued by a Robert Smith clone at a party), and a Grace Jones clone. The sparring between Dean and Mickey touches on Alice Cooper, Whitesnake, Whitney Houston, the Stooges, a Kiss lunchbox, etc. Best of all, Mickey holds up and hypes, Oh My God!, the greatest album of the 1970s!

The film loses steam in the middle as the four main teens Come To Terms With Things. But it ends all Pump Up the Volume-style with disparate groups brought together outside of the radio station by, what else, "How Soon Is Now?," the goth "Kumbaya," right? Wrong. No such thing exists, yet another facet to the preposterousness of this film. But Shoplifters needs to be loved, especially given the scathing reviews. So please join me in loving it, fellow Smiths geeks. 

P. S. I assume Morrissey will loathe this film if he ever stoops so low as to watch it. 

Grade: My conscience says B+ but my heart (and butt) say A-minus 

 

Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)

I've always despised this film for amping up the trend of slaughtering sexually operational teenagers (and let's be specific here - Gen X teenagers in the most immediate wake of forever-aging Boomers). This time, I liked it both more and less. The puritanism came off more muted because the violence is far less gory than I remembered. In fact, the slower editing rhythms feel positively ancient today. There's even a noteworthy pause after Michael kills Bob. I'm not sure what it means. It definitely doesn't feel like it's a moment of remorse or even reflection for Michael, more like blasé curiosity. But the resulting languor juts out in a genre where the dispatched are quickly forgotten. 

I also admired the lazy tracking shots which had the effect of delineating the ambient boredom of the suburbs, the precondition for teens smoking pot, drinking beer, and having sex. At this remove, it feels more like an art film and I wonder if my students today would even bother finishing it.

But wow is the story ever a botch! Loomis (Donald Pleasance) is barely fleshed out so we have little idea as to why he's so willing to stop Michael that he'll wait for him in Michael's abandoned childhood home (and strongarm the local police into letting him do so). (Yes, I know he's fleshed out in the footage Carpenter shot for the TV version. That info and $2 won't get you an Irish cream cold brew at Starbucks.) Who exactly is Loomis? Carpenter gives us the barest portrait of an adversary and then moves on to his drifting dolly shots. 

And as with Jason, what does Michael want? Why does he slaughter these particular teenagers? Furthermore, why does he try to kill Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis, fab)? As the final girl, she's not sexually operational. So then why must he torment her? The characters are just these empty vessels for Good and Evil. As we've learned from the structure of musicals and feature-length pornography, there has to be something at narrative stake for the spectacle (of song and dance, of hardcore sex, of gore) to signify. Halloween just feels like a template for dozens of crappy films to come. And, of course, there's a great deal of historical significance to that. But this review consecrates the fact that I need never watch it again.

Grade: B (upped a notch for that historical significance)

Night Caller (Anthony Spinelli [as Wes Brown], 1976)

A tale of an obscene phone caller tormenting his neighbor, Night Caller offers two compensatory pleasures to vault over its lumpy narrative. The titular creep Robert (David Book) calls Helen who indulges his perversion by allowing him to listen in on a lovemaking session. However, Helen is actually a man (Vernon von Bergdorfe) in a dress and makeup while his partner is a woman wearing a mustache (Enjil von Bergdorfe [sic!]). I assume Robert is unaware of this and would bristle at the knowledge. But that's lean communication for ya and it provides an attractive filigree to a potentially cookie-cutter film. 

The other chief pleasure is the intermittently electronic score composed and conducted by one Richard Silsby. Brittle pings, aluminum winds, and 1970s-Miles-style treated horn blats appear on the soundtrack at unpredictable moments which initially came across as an extreme distancing device, preventing the viewer from identifying too closely to Robert or indeed anyone having intercourse on screen. The tactic reminded me of Kay Dickinson's contention in her book Off Key - When Film and Music Won't Work Together that one unacknowledged aspect rendering mid-1980s "video nasties" so offensive to moral guardians in the United Kingdom was the clash between the empty, shallow synthesizer scores and the gushing imagery. As Dickinson notes,

"Sonic flatness jars with the ways in which accompanying images might penetrate deep within the victims’ bodies, rummaging around protractedly in their innermost recesses" (124). 

But pondering Night Caller's score further, I wonder if the synth sounds facilitate a sort of emptying of identity allowing viewers to better give themselves over to the sleaze. It may make for a brittle abandon akin to a medulla-obliterating huff of poppers. In any event, a solid grind.

Grade: B

The Lucifers (aka Satan's Sex Slaves, aka The Devil's Handmaiden, no director credited, 1971)

Hot garbage in which The Devil grants horny wishes in exchange for souls. Best part is when He makes the offer to impotent Jim (Rick Cassidy, buff and sexy). The Devil (with much gravitas): "Render up your eternal soul to me. Is it a deal?" Jim: "Yeah what the fuck! Why not?!?" The episodic structure is attractively ragged. But the sex scenes drag on painfully with two of them taking 12 minutes *each* in a 59-minute film (the copy I watched was called Satan's Sex Slaves from Alpha Blue). Argh! I did dig the shots of a Ren Faire-type of setting with passers-by never suspecting they'd appear in a spank film. 

Grade: D

The Geek (I Wouldn't Want To Sign It Either, 1971)

I had high hopes for this adult film about the search for a bigfoot. But The Geek is quite possibly the most abominable porno I've ever seen (see what I did there?). It'd be difficult to conjure up a more cynical film since it stints on basically everything - endless shots of walking, about a page of dialogue, stock music, desultory sex scenes, and, worst of all, The Geek itself (pictured below) doesn't show up until 43 minutes into a 56-minute film. I hear Something Weird Video released a 14-minute cut and it might be more merciful in that form. But this hopefully fullest-length version has me wondering if there's a level lower than the bottom of the barrel. The worst. 

P. S. A title says it was shot in Oregon, Washington, and Alberta.

Grade: F

Side One Great, Side Two Not 1: Steely Dan: The Royal Scam (ABC,1975)

In which I begin a series lodging complaints against albums blighted by crappy side twos. Moral: Most LPs should be EPs.

The worst album by the best English-singing band of the 1970s (assuming the New York Dolls and Chic don't count since they didn't span the entire decade and [The] Sweet don't count since they weren't an album band), The Royal Scam fits in this category with some reshuffling. I'll take a side one with the final song/title track replacing "The Fez" which, like "Green Earrings,"sounds like a b-side anyway. Almost instrumentals, they both belong exiled onto side two. "Haitian Divorce" is too damn slow and long (5:51 when the brooding, obsessive title track is only slighter long at 6:32?? Neauxp!). Plus the title doesn't scan; they needed two more syllables for it to work with the rhyme scheme. And "Everything You Did" is quite possibly the worst song they ever recorded. Even the great line about the Eagles is swallowed in a soggy falsetto. 

The first four songs, though? (chef's kiss)