Immoral Tales Interruptis

I was seriously, seriously intending to write the For-Real next installment of the Immoral Tales series (concentrating on another Spanish filmmaker and his infamous Accion Mutante, so that's obviously been unceremoniously postponed for the next post) when the series of articles came to to a sideways skid into a roadside telephone pole after I decided to take ten days off of work to “catch up” on a few things. Ironically, one of those things was supposed to be my intake of films and books. But unfortunately, instead of Exorcism & Black Masses or Accion Mutante or even the requisite Vampyros Lesbos re-watch, my catching-up has involved the likes of Snakes on a Plane and Schwarzenegger's Red Heat. This Wednesday morning in particular I found myself with a little more time than I'd expected to have between reading the Dark Tower novels in the waiting rooms of passport offices and performing script overhauls at the local pubs, and I happened to throw on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – a good thing too, as it reminded me that I should be keeping up with my own self-imposed journalistic responsibilities, pretentious as they may be. At any rate, I can't get back to the pub right now anyway, as it's not even eleven in the A.M. yet. But I'm not going to talk about Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, obviously, this is a Jess Franco blog, and as of late I've been stretching the thematics of that nearly to the breaking point already. I did, however, have a chance to check out a couple of my own immoral tales that have been sitting by the DVD player collecting dust for the last few months, the first being the Megan Fox horror vehicle Jennifer's Body, the other one being a Shriek Show-produced in-house exploitation horror flick Wicked Lake. I thought at least this last one would be somewhat thematically linked to the main focus of this blog (Jess Franco, lest I forget) as this distribution company (Shriek Show) has has the great fortune (both good and bad) to have released Franco's most commercially accessible films, being Faceless and Killer Barbys; as well what have to be two of Franci's most perfunctory efforts ever: Diamonds of Kilimanjaro and Golden Temple Amazons, these last two being nothing more that ultra-light naked-women-romping-through-the-jungle exploitation flicks with absolutely nothing to set them apart from any other sort of mundane dreck by any other filmmaker. Honestly, they're a waste of time. However, I'm sure at some future point in time I'll be talking more about Faceless and Killer Barbys (although I'd recommend you don't spend too much time seeking out its shot-on-video sequel, The Killer Barbys vs. Dracula – you ask anyone who's seen it). Getting back to the waste of time, allow me now to save you some of that expense: Forget about Jenifer's Body (unless you're a 20-year-old East Coast hipster, in which case you might dig it) the only thing it had going for it was Megan Fox explaining how she was no longer a “back-door virgin”. Other than that, this was strictly for the Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist crowd, only drunk and possibly not quite as educated. It's a movie that wants to make fun of it's own exploitation genre, only it's not funny, clever, or very satisfying overall, as it shies away from its own all-out exploitation (I have the feeling Jennifer's Body is a film that thinks it's too good to have to stoop to that level). If you like your exploitation pretentious, then by all means... The next one on this exploitation double-feature , however, was completely free of pretension. Unfortunately, it was also free of a good script, good acting, good editing and good directing.

“Look over there... there's two women fucking a polar bear!”
“Don't tell me these things right now.”
-Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.
The one and only thing Wicked Lake did have going for it was the first forty minutes where the four leading female romp around naked. In their house, at the lake, in the lake, with each other, in an art class... but at the end of the day, it was all for naught, as Wicked Lake was ultimately boring, boring, and then boring some more. Completely unlike Shriek Show's other in-house features Flesh for the Beast, Shadow Dead Riot or Machine Girl. If you weren't going into Wicked Lake ready to compare that to these other (far more entertaining and way better) films, then I'd have to wonder how Wicked Lake ended up in your DVD player in the first place. I wanted to end this blog on a higher note, which is actually why I brought up these other Shriek Show productions, and it's my hope that the company goes back to producing these entertaining exploitation productions without dangerously sacrificing their scripts with the thought that sheer exploitation alone would make up (or cover up) for the otherwise sever lack of story planning. And as Shriek Show gets into releasing more of their titles on the Hi-Def Blu-Ray format, we can hope that some of their Franco films like Faceless makes its way to this better format. Unfortunately, the next Hi-Def release on Shriek Show's slate is their own Wicked Lake this summer. Trust me, you can skip it.

-V.