American Beauty -- LOLITA (1997)

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

In this age of the #MeToo movement, it's safe to say that no one was asking for some asshole to come out and defend Lolita. But, here I am. In fact, I don't think there's anything I could say that hasn't already been said about this devious little demon of literature. And no, Lolita is not classified as horror, despite the horrific things that happen in it. But sometimes, folks, the slashers and ghosts get a little predictable and it takes a regular old drama to thoroughly creep you out.

Let's get this out of the way right up top: Lolita is one of my favorite books of all time. It has been apart of my life for so long that I've forgotten how we even met (it was probably because of a Police song...specifically this version). My own worn copy was thumbed through many times throughout college, bought used and further fondled by the 19-year-old aspiring novelist whose passions were as sweaty as her chronically wet armpits. I was going through a phase of reading "dangerous" books--not unpopular, not exactly banned, but rather the "bad boys" of books. These are used almost exclusively to be bragged about by baby literature students and/or made into largely forgettable blockbusters. The kind of material an insufferable nerd like me could vehemently defend to her entire creative writing class through a meticulously-researched essay. Most of these edgy books have not resonated with me much past that rebellious first read, but for whatever reason, Lolita stuck.

And that credit is due to the truly magnificent writing. The best parts about the book will always come back to Nabokov's talent as a writer. (And in case you're wondering, it's pronounced Nah-BO-cov. Don't be like me, the poser saying Nabba-koff for ten years.) He's one of those writers the term "sensuous" was made for, taking all your senses by the throat and injecting them with poetry. He could spin words together that could split your heart in two, and swiftly have you chuckling along with a droll aside to the reader within the same sentence. This is a man who takes time to point out the loveliness of sunlight reflecting of a car windshield and somehow makes it not pretentious.

I think Lolita is worth discussing today for the very thing that gives it such strength as a novel--the writing, for sure, but moreso, the unreliable narrator. While he certainly didn't invent the construct, Nabokov gave it an especially devious twist. To compare, let's look at American Psycho (because I will take literally any excuse to bring it up). Bret Easton Ellis created a more obvious and far less charming unreliable narrator, since you can't ever be sure if Patrick Bateman's nights spent bludgeoning prostitutes are real or fantasy...plus, he's really boring.

What a dork.

Humbert Humbert is a different animal entirely, and even more dangerous than a handsome yuppie with a chainsaw. Humbert's game is all about quiet charisma. If you let your guard down, if you stop paying attention for even a moment, his tender prose and seemingly level head can easily trick you into believing he is the tragic romantic hero he so desperately wants to be. He even hints that he's on to his own game ("you can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style"). He keeps us distracted from the horrors he's inflicting just as he deceives Lolita throughout their road trip, drugging us with pretty words and humble self-deprecation (as well as a few tranquilizers).

It's all a very elaborate, meticulously planned, and surely exhausting dance to convince us that Humbert is not simply a dirty old man. No, he's a romantic with a terrible disease fallen under the spell of an especially devious seductress. And it's here that we come to the "monster" of the story, or what Humbert would like us to believe is a monster--the elusive and deadly nymphet.

• "Now I wish to introduce the following idea. Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as 'nymphets.' "
  - Part One, Chapter 5

Humbert's quick field guide to nymphets is simultaneously one of the most fascinating and disgraceful of the book's many uncomfortable passages. Pages go on explaining the qualifications of this special breed of pervert ("You have to be an artist, and a madman"), the delicate art of spotting the prey in the crowd ("the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limb"), an thoroughly creepy study of when signs of puberty begin to show in young girls ("10.7 years" for breasts, "11.2 years" for pubic hair), along with name-dropping many famous child molesters throughout history and literature, "and nobody minds."

Humbert uses mythic language throughout these pages to further paint himself as just as helpless against these comely little beasts as Odysseus against the sirens' song. Early in, he hits us with the sad story of his first love, with whom he shared a preteen summer romance before she died of a fever before her fifteenth birthday--therefore he is the perfect target for these prepubescent sexual terrorists preying on his heartbroken arrested development. It's gross, and despicable, and the one of the most ludicrous cases of victim blaming you've ever heard--but it's still deeply fascinating that one man has gone to so much trouble to convince himself that his actions were understandable, given these very specific circumstances.

One of the most famous taglines in film history is as simple as it is salacious: "How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?" It's a question worth asking, because god, they really shouldn't have. (They did it twice.) The novel was always going to be difficult to adapt for a variety of reasons, but obviously the trickiest would be Lolita herself. How the hell do you go about casting a "sexy" child, let alone directing her to do very unchildish things without being burned at the stake? Well, both versions of the film decided to avoid that problem and created an entirely new one by aging up the character and casting teenage actresses to portray the infamous baby femme fatale: fourteen-year-old Sue Lyon in the 1962 original, and fifteen-year-old Dominique Swain in 1997. Put a pin in that bit of trivia, because we'll be coming back to it.

Here's the problem with talking about Lolita: it's really hard not to accidentally wander into the area of sounding like a pervert. But hear me out. I'm not saying I feel cheated because I didn't get the twelve-year-old child molestation movie I was promised, because good god, I don't wanna see that movie. But I do have a problem with this choice in both generations of the film because it is a great disservice to the character, and it makes this story even ickier than the source material ever intended. For the sake of brevity and the fact that Kubrick's version struck me as pretty boring, we'll be sticking to the 1997 version of the film for this discussion.

Let's start with an example. We are first introduced to Lolita lounging on "the piazza," sunbathing in her bikini and reading a magazine, like girls do. In the book and the original film, she barely regards Humbert as he walks by, offering little more than a glance over her sunglasses before returning to her reading material.

The look that would inspire Lana del Rey's everything.

But here in the 90's, we kick thing up a notch. She's still sunbathing, still reading a magazine, but...in a sundress, lying next to a sprinkler, so thoroughly soaked through that the camera takes the time to linger on every inch of flesh beneath the thin clinging cotton. Not only does this make zero sense (first of all, who does that, and secondly, you're gonna ruin that magazine!), but it's just a thoroughly creepy shot, enough to give you the willies. The music swells and the camera's gaze glides over Lo's girlish curves with all the lust of the source material, but little of the emotional context and moral tension it was meant for. Then she flashes him her retainer-clad smile, and the audience throws up.

Hey, you guys remember Poison Ivy? ....yeah....

Lolita--that is, Dolores Haze--has always been a difficult character. For one, we can barely trust a word Humbert Humbert spews at us, no matter how pretty it sounds. For two, twelve is a rough age. I hesitate to call Lolita "problematic" as a character, although it definitely comes to mind, but then again it's rare that the sexual politics of an era can be practically applied to the utter chaos of puberty.

When you're a girl, you spend so much time just waiting to be a woman--watching what other women do, how others respond to it, what kind of woman your mother is, what kind of woman your mother doesn't like, and so on. That's not even getting into those first strange tinglings of desire--the knowledge of "happily ever afters" and where babies come from clashing with the inherent surge that comes with noticing a cute classmate. For better or worse, girls subconsciously hang onto these little indicators, largely from the culture that surrounds them. They understand that females wield a certain power over men, but they don't have the context to really understand what that power means.

A twelve-year-old girl just coming into her own, not getting enough attention at home and no father figure in sight, spending her days poring over magazines full of handsome movie stars, plus a little more physical "experience" with boys her age than one is comfortable enough to expect--that troubled girl just might stretch out her feminine wiles on her mom's new crush.

Remember, I asked you to put a pin in the casting decisions for Lolita's translations to film. Take that pin out, we've come back to it. Despite tweaking the character's age by a few years for film (while still staying safely underage), not one other aspect of Lolita's personality is changed in the slightest, and that's a big problem for me. I don't know if you remember being twelve or fifteen, but for my money, the difference is, in Nabokov's own words,"as different as mist and mast." There is a miles-wide gap between twelve and fifteen, for many reasons, yet somehow the studios of two separate eras decided it was less perverse to market a babyish fifteen year old to the masses than it was to just go with an age appropriate star. While a child trying to act like an adult is pretty unsettling, a teenager acting like a child is far worse.

Dominique Swain's Lolita is a young woman that is forced to act immature to the point of grotesque. She ties her hair in pigtails, she wears skimpy rompers that go ALL the way up and is rarely seen in an outfit that doesn't reveal her belly button. She snaps bubblegum, kicks the backseat, and she's constantly doling out tantrums, yet she's portrayed as this irresistible force of nature despite MANY red flags that she is an underdeveloped child acting out from obvious neglect. This is a girl who gives a sexual edge to her interaction with a cocker spaniel.

I'm no child psychologist, but I can remember what I was like at fifteen. Granted, I didn't look nearly as cute in a bikini as our Lolita, but I was still at that in-between place, wanting to show it off but not knowing what to do with the attention that came with it. Also, I had acne, BO, and major body issues just bubbling to the surface. So, more often than not, I would choose the "don't look at me" road and stayed in that lane till...well, now. When I look back on fifteen, it's less a trip down memory lane than it is a full-body cringe. Your world as a teenage girl is fraught with self-esteem issues and angst, no matter how graceful your development. My job at the public library means I see plenty of fifteen-year-old girls every day and all of them carry themselves with that same awkward self-consciousness no matter how pretty they appear to be.

Now, twelve? Twelve is completely different. You're still a kid at twelve. You're not worried about grades or boys or really anything. You may be getting your first period and maybe you're already wearing a training bra, but you're far from what anyone would mistake for an adult. You're excitable, prone to occasional tantrums, and although you're certainly not a baby anymore, you're still buying Barbies with your allowance. You pin movie star posters to your walls and moon over boy bands, but your reference point for what a relationship is either your parents or "Stacy and Danny are going out" (even though they never "go out" anywhere because they don't have money or drivers licenses). It's innocence, pure and simple, aware of the grown up world without being corrupted by it just yet.

Maybe it's splitting hairs to argue that an attention-starved fifteen year old is so much more disturbing than an attention-starved twelve-year-old, but GOD IT'S SO HARD TO WATCH. This teenage Lolita is a nightmare of a child, bratty and stubborn and generally insufferable. Even the mourning of her mother is portrayed as a miserable stab for attention, howling in the other room only to trudge to Humbert's room, still howling, and crawl into his arms. She is consistently, obnoxiously childlike, almost to the point of being an act, which bring up a more unsettling possibility--that would mean that she's putting out an image that she thinks is attractive, the only kind of behavior that's ever gotten her any attention. The cinematography telegraphs as much with many of her most childish outbursts swiftly translating to seduction, almost as if the camera wants us to find this behavior just as endearing as Humbert does. And it's not, it's really, really not.

Don't play with your food!

The tragedy of Dolores Haze is best portrayed by the scene where she and Humbert first have sex, which is upsetting enough by its own merits. But note the way our Lolita broaches the subject--as some secret thing she did at camp and can't quite explain, so she "will have to show you everything," as if she's discovered some unknown phenomenon--when you do this with that it makes such wonderful feeling. The way a child would, a child who knows nothing of sex and, for once, feels like they have got one up on everyone else. I don't know how many of you were naive to the gorier details of the birds and the bees at fifteen, but god bless you, because I sure knew it.

What I'm saying is that the idea of a grown man carrying on a relationship with a twelve year old is just as bad as a grown man carrying on a relationship with an infantile teenager, so the film didn't do us any favors by casting a teenage actor besides making us feel a little less dirty for looking at her. The film's version exacerbates, if not glorifies the act of pedophilia, by making the title character (and the undoing of our "hero") forbidden fruit that is both dangerous and irresistible in a way the audience can understand--that is, making her look "womanly" enough that we believe she is not as childish as she seems. It frames Lo's behavior as the outbursts of a tempestuous lover, which just as quickly turns her into a pouting temptress, as if she is the master manipulator all along. That is, she knows exactly what she's doing, and everything that happens to her is her own fault. That is a very damaging and extremely disturbing message to send, even if it arguably stays true to the source material--material that's intentionally written from a self-admitted lunatic's point of view. This robs Lo of a great deal of the innocence that she's meant to represent, because given her age and her behavior, our instincts tell us she should know better.

Look, she's on top! She's in control! That hussy!

See, Lolita succeeds as a novel because it's a constant balancing act between pitying Humbert and being disgusted by him, all because of the language in which it's presented. Humbert repeatedly manipulates us just as he does Lolita, but even more insidiously because, for all intents and purposes, we become Humbert through reading and we are more easily seduced by him than we'd like to admit. There are plenty of moments in the novel where Humbert is so convincing that we find ourselves believing (even for a moment) that he actually is living a great tragic love story because his feelings for Lolita reach such passionate, obsessive heights. And all the while we're completely aware that these intense passages of lust and devotion are directed at a naive little girl.

Here, on film, with little of the novel's powerful poetry to guide us, and under the camera's unbiased gaze, we're simply watching a grown man leering at a teenager, and all we can feel is "ewwww." If I can liken the experience of watching Lolita to anything, just imagine a high-schooler sitting on Santa's lap. That weird mix of revulsion, judgement and guilt you're feeling? That's just about right, but stretched out for two hours.

This story never should have made it to the screen. It's too involved, too intimate to possibly be translated to a blockbuster crowd, this magnetic unreliable narrator instantly revealed as the wretch he really is under the camera's judgement. Even with big names like Stanley Kubrick at the helm or the unmatched talent of beloved actor and personal crush Jeremy Irons as our lecherous hero, Lolita was doomed to forever be that one romance that everyone gags at. And it's a real shame, because for all the debauchery and disgust, it really is a beautifully written novel that deserves more than its back of the box reputation. Just stick to the audiobook read by Irons himself. It's a much more fulfilling, more sensuous and intentionally unsettling experience.

So, in conclusion of a film adaptation of Lolita, in the immortal words of the Cohen brothers: "Well, what did we learn here today?....Well, I guess we learned never to do it again."

Please, please never do it again.

The Beauties of El Superbeasto

If I could make a blog solely to defend Rob Zombie's luminous career in horror film, I would. If I truly felt there was enough material to nitpick and gush over that would be meaningful to anyone but myself, I would create that blog without hesitation. But there are two reasons I haven't done this after many years of consideration:

1. I'm not yet studied enough to properly tackle the subject to the scholarly degree that I would like to, but I'm working on it (I'm also taking volunteers for thesis partners), and 
2. Even with the all the research and passion in the world to back me up, I won't change anyone's mind about Rob Zombie.

Zombie is an alienating name among the horror community--namely for his contributions to your precious Halloween series (which I will get to one day)--and he has a way of inspiring a love it/hate it split between fans. I am staunchly in the LOVE IT camp, all the time every day, but I have entered that zone of fandom where even the annoying tropes about that favorite auteur are inherently lovable. Think more Stephen King, less Quentin Tarantino. Those tropes like how Zombie gives his psychotic murderers nearly lyrical vocabulary but writes cringe-worthy dialogue for suburbanites, or how little time there is between seeing Sheri Moon's face and seeing her bare ass.

In light of the recent announcement of a new installment in the saga of the Firefly family, 3 From Hell, on the way, I'd like to highlight one of Rob Zombie's less appreciated ventures. No, not that one. Or that one. I'm talking about the one nobody seems to ever talk about, most likely because it's the one everyone forgets even exists.

Ohhh, right, that one.

The Haunted World of El Superbeasto is as much an homage to classic horror as it is Ren & Stimpy. Over the top violence and crass humor meets cartoon physics, with a healthy dose of exploitation thrown in, all with a self-aware meta approach. It all fits together somehow, in that delicious Rob Zombie way. This is truly a film that his fans (perhaps only his fans) can appreciate, highlighting all of his strengths while showing off his goofier side.

WARNING: Many screenshots ahead are definitely NSFW.

The plot--or more accurately the sequence of events that vaguely string together--is thus. The film takes place in a world populated with all the great monsters of Hollywood, plus a variety of other horrific freaks. El Superbeasto (Tom Papa) is a former celebrity luchador who has spent his retirement getting fat and producing porno flicks. He occasionally does bounty-hunting business with his adopted sister Suzi X (Sheri Moon Zombie), although she is clearly more committed to the job than Beasto.

Thanks for the moral support, I guess?

Elsewhere, the evil Dr. Satan (Paul Giamatti in maybe my favorite role, which is saying something) is looking for a wifey in order to achieve his full potential as a super-demon. He searches the globe for a woman with the mark of 666 on her ass, and finds his unholy bride in the luscious stripper Velvet von Black (Rosario Dawson). Beasto witnesses Velvet being kidnapped by Dr. Satan's gorilla manservant Otto (Tom Kenny) and rounds up his sister and his old wrestling buddies to rescue the girl and "get busy tapping that ass." A whole other bunch of crazy shit happens too, including Nazi zombies, spooky stripclubs, horny robots, explosions, mutilations, city-wide destruction, and musical numbers. And tits. Lots and lots of tits.

Here's a souvenir!

I won't sugarcoat it, folks. I hated this movie the first time I saw it. Hell, I didn't even finish it until my third watch. It's is a tasteless mess with lots of hokey jokes and gross imagery, plus some not-so-flattering depictions of women. But, after many viewings, it is precisely those things that I have come to appreciate about this trashy cartoon romp. Especially when it comes to my girls, Suzi and Velvet.

Before we get into that, a personal note: there's something about animated girls that has always been close to my heart. Like any kid, I always loved animation and I paid special attention to the ladies. Back in the 90's, there were maybe two girls in any given ensemble kids show (at least the ones that weren't specifically marketed to girls), and in the movies, even less. They were often love interests and many weren't especially complex. But there were standouts.

I imagine that Jessica Rabbit had a profound effect on most of us at an early age, but for me personally, she was an idol. She was everything seven-year-old me hoped to be one day, a stunning pillar of grace and slink that could cause a whole room to fall silent in awe, all while she pulls the strings behind your back. My big break on the Toon Town jazz scene never did hit, but to this day, I still carry some of Jessica around with me the way others may follow Marilyn's or Audrey's example. The best of these animated beauties revealed the layers of their character over time--like Jessica turning out to be a master sleuth as well as a faithful adoring wife, or Lola Bunny being an exceptionally good basketball player, I could go on--and thus they remain with us as icons, despite the questionable intentions behind their conception and design.

Exactly.

With that in mind, I have fallen deeply in love with the girls of El Superbeasto, because they follow this formula to its absolute unapologetic extreme. Suzi X and Velvet von Black are a thirteen-year-old boy's idea of "strong female characters" and I'm totally okay with it. I'm more than okay with it, I fucking love it from every ridiculous angle, to the point that--just like these other sexy idols of my childhood--I carry a little bit of them with me through my day. Most of that credit has to go to the ladies playing these cartoon pinups, since Sheri Moon and Rosario Dawson are both personal heroes and they seem to really have a blast rolling with the material.

And they've both certainly done worse.

First, there's the bubbly one-eyed badass Suzi X. Sheri Moon is Rob Zombie's muse and makes an appearance in all his films, so it's no surprise that she gets the dream role of impossibly sexy blonde super assassin. Her sex appeal and killer instincts are doled out in spades throughout the film. Suzi's origin story is portrayed as a sexy parody of Taxi Driver--a cheerleader turned vigilante doing pull ups in her closet and holding her arm over a stove burner in a dingy apartment, wearing only a gun holster and a thong. We first meet her infiltrating a Nazi castle guarded by werewolves and topless fembots in order to steal Hitler's preserved head, all while sporting an outfit straight out of Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS.

Try doing this cosplay sometime.

Suzi's a walking wet dream and the movie exploits that at every opportunity, but the cool thing about Suzi is that doesn't seem to care either way about the attention she gets. She uses all of her skills, including her looks, to gain the upper hand in any situation. And more often than not, she prefers to resolve things with her guns...and her pistols. She's known more for her violent tendencies than her beauty, able to clear out a bar full of monsters at the mere mention of her name. The only ones to underestimate her are those who don't know any better, but they learn soon enough--she responds to a certain scuzzy clown grabbing her ass by clenching her glutes tight enough to break his hand.

Somehow the least disgusting thing Captain Spaulding's ever done.

There only seems to be room in Suzi's heart for her sexually-frustrated robot companion Murray (Brian Posehn). Murray's in the ultimate friend-zone, programmed to adore Suzi while she seems oblivious to his advances. He gets his own rewards, though, like morphing into a vehicle she can straddle or getting the pleasure of watching her change into a new outfit. Personally, I think Suzi has the right idea having a robot boyfriend. He's got the obedience of a golden retriever, the sex drive of a desperate teenager, and he has all sorts of neat uses for the girl on the go.

She invented the multi-purpose boyfriend. Where's her Kickstarter?

On a whole other level of horny animators entertaining themselves, we have Velvet von Black, the star attraction of Monsterland's premier titty bar. She's a chain-smoking vixen with inflatable breasts and a bad attitude, and she remains topless for almost the entire movie. I absolutely love her, and her burlesque theme song gets stuck in my head on a weekly basis.

She invented multi-purpose titties. Where's her Kickstarter?

Rosario Dawson is sublime as the foul-mouthed alpha stripper who doesn't have a nice thing to say to anybody. She dominates the stage with her natural charisma, her act consisting of assaulting the audience with her opposable tits, pouring particular moterboat-y abuse on any poor schmuck foolish enough to tip her. She's nonplussed when a giant talking gorilla appears in her dressing room, and proceeds to trash-talk the brute even as he hauls her over his shoulder "like a mink-ass stole and shit" and takes off into the night.

This woman can take a fart joke and turn it into a sexual power move.

As a damsel, she's hardly distressed, responding to her imprisonment in Dr. Satan's lair with delight over the jacuzzi and complimentary minibar. She's a nightmare of a hostage, lounging in luxury and still talking shit at every opportunity. Despite being pulled between two men's affections/erections, Velvet is only ever interested in herself. She only agrees to marry Dr. Satan on the promise of financial gain and making her girlfriends jealous, and I don't think she ever even acknowledges Beasto (aside from briefly smothering him with her ass onstage).

Did I also mention how she ain't got time for your bullshit?

Although Dr. Satan needs Velvet to ascend to his super-demon status according to an unholy prophecy, his heart truly lies with Suzi, a torch he's been carrying since they were in high school (because of course). Not a moment after getting hitched to Velvet and triggers Dr. Satan's transmogrification into a giant hell monster does he scoop up Suzi and go stomping off to consummate his pubescent fantasies. So we have two women, both completely uninterested and detached from the primary situation, forced between the affections of a super-powered Dr. Satan. What's a girl to do?

This conflict brings us to the moment we were all waiting for, the Catfight. Two voluptuous badass bitches get down on the pavement to a musical number about how it's totally okay to jerk off to it!

Let's just not even bring up the Bechdel test, shall we?

I'll be an El Superbeasto apologist till the day I die, but there isn't much you can defend with a catfight scene. The first and only interaction between our two female leads consists of shit-talking one another over Dr. Satan's attentions, and swiftly dissolves into a topless street fight that's cheered on by a gaggle of drooling men. I will argue that the scene isn't as much over a man as it is a fight over each girl's self-respect--newlywed Velvet isn't gonna tolerate being cheated on, and Suzi doesn't respond well to name-calling. Since neither of them have romantic feelings for Dr. Satan, their fight is solely between them, so I can rest easy that El Superbeasto at least has that over a number of other films. Plus, this scene provides a truly great moment just before the brawl where Suzi sweetly asks a giant kaiju demon to release her, then coerces him by grinding her stiletto into his palm.

She did ask.

The whole venture ends pretty unfortunately for Velvet, with Suzi serving her a mouthful of pavement and a final crushing blow coming from her new husband's cloven hoof. But it all works out okay, because squishing his wife causes Dr. Satan's power-up to melt away and makes him vulnerable to "a little smashing of the ol' fuckface" from Beasto. We all live happily ever after as Suzi and Murray take off on another adventure, and Velvet recovers under Otto the gorilla's care, occasionally taking advantage of his baser drives. You could argue that tweaking his smart screw is a form of interspecies sexual manipulation...but again, Velvet's in it for her own gain, and if that means switching off a gorilla's sentience to harness his more animal instincts, so be it. Plus, they do seem pretty happy together.

"He's so cute when he goes all rabid on me!"

I have struggled with the feminist interpretation of many movies I love, because whether it's exploitative nonsense or critically acclaimed Oscar bait, it's excruciatingly difficult to find a female character that isn't PROBLEMATIC in some sense. I'm not even sure what the ideal female character is anymore, since a lot of the ones I thought were perfect haven't aged so well in 2018 (did I already mention Quentin Tarantino?).

I'm sorry, Uma. I'm sorry for everything.

AND YET THIS MOVIE. Somehow, for all the sleaze and silliness that saturates every frame of this demented film, El Superbeasto goes down pretty smooth for the perpetually annoyed feminist inside of me. Suzi X and Velvet von Black are prime spank bank material literally by design, but they are also fully realized characters that go for what they want and never compromise themselves, and they get the happiest endings of this entire stupid romp.

Consider that the "main" male characters, Beasto and Dr. Satan, are portrayed as insecure, egotistical buffoons whose only motivation is chasing ass and gaining power, and both walk away empty handed (although Beasto does go on tour with Loverboy, which is alright). Meanwhile, the babes they were lusting after end up with a robot and a talking gorilla, respectively, and not only are these both portrayed as happy fulfilling relationships, but you can also take away that sentient non-human manservants are preferable to actual men.

I AM GIVING A FEMINIST DEFENSE OF A FILM CONTAINING THIS IMAGE. FIGHT ME.

If you hate this movie, keep in mind, I did too once. But if, like me, you just can't get it out of your head, it may be time to give it another shot. This is a movie that repulsed me upon entry and now it's the one I put on when I'm plastered and all that can satisfy me is pure grease (plus, it's better to quote these lines and sing these songs with a slur in your speech). El Superbeasto is trash, but it's such a beautiful mess with zero morality and the salty stench of ham throughout, with just a smidge of loving homage thrown in, that it ascends its original purpose. It's more than trash, it's a masterpiece of trash, and I hope as time goes by, it's one of the more fondly remembered of Rob Zombie's oeuvre.

The Wonderful World of Nightmare Fuel -- Childhood Trauma

I've spoken before about how confronting fear through films can be a rich learning experience for a child, firing up developing synapses that are better practiced in fake danger. You have your classics, of course, the moments that most of us can agree upon as traumatizing--the boys turning to donkeys in Pinocchio, the flying monkeys in Wizard of Oz, the entirety of Return to Oz, etc. Of course, with age and wisdom comes bravery, and most of us have come to accept and even enjoy these things that used to keep us up at night. Look at me, I'm a horror fan whose first time "watching" Pet Sematary was spent with ears plugged and eyes shut so tight I'm surprised I didn't rupture something.

Then again, some things, some really deeply scarring things, stick with you forever. I may have eventually come to love the Oompa-Loompas, but you couldn't pay me to watch The Dark Crystal ever again.

Trauma bonds people, but it can also alienate. When you share an obscure moment that shattered your reality when you were seven, you accidentally reveal a lot about who you are--most importantly, what a weenie you can be. How many times have you revealed that, say, an episode of "Treehouse of Horror" kept you up for weeks, only to be laughed at by all your friends?

The point is not all scary things are scary to all people, and some scary things were barely meant to be scary at all. Growing up teaches you many things, but sometimes the most enlightening thing is realizing that you used to be (or still are) terrified of some really dumb shit. But that doesn't mean it's not worth exploring.

So without further ado, here's my list of media-induced childhood trauma!

THE JUNGLE BOOK (1967) -- Kaa the Snake

Out of all the characters in Disney's The Jungle Book that lost their dignity in translation from the source material, Kaa may have gotten it the worst. An ancient and elegant creature in Kipling's stories, Disney's animated version of Kaa is an ineffective antagonist at best and a punchline at worst. He's clumsy, inarticulate, easily overwhelmed, and he shares a voice actor with Winnie the fucking Pooh. He couldn't be a less threatening villain. AND YET. Kaa does one thing especially well, and that's hypnotism. All he needs to do is hold eye contact for a few seconds and the victim is instantly lost in a haze of swirly eyes and dopey grins as he wraps them in his coils. This was incredibly disturbing to me as a child, even if I couldn't really understand why at the time. You could point out the weird sexual aspects, not the least of which being a giggling predator trying to wrap his body around a young boy, but while researching this I stumbled into a dark pit of Kaa slash fiction and I'd rather not go down that road. Ultimately for me, it was a combination of the utter helplessness of the victim, and maybe more so, their big moon-faced smile as their doom coils around them.

THE HAUNTING (1999) -- Just the trailer

As much as I love horror movies now, I couldn't go near one as a child. (Looking at the other entries on this list, it's easy to see why.) Trailers and video box art were as close as I ever got to real horror in those days, when the cover of Street Trash was enough to give me nightmares. For whatever reason, one that sticks out to me is The Haunting in 1999--not the full trailer necessarily, but the TV spots that showed the highlights of the spookshow. I remember this film being set up to be a real blockbuster (it was not), so the commercials were played often enough to be burned into my brain as I lay awake in bed, waiting for little wooden baby heads to start wailing in the night. I avoided this movie for years out of pure terror, until finally one day my friends made me sit down and watch it. Imagine the embarrassment, and the triumph, of realizing what a laughably awful film Jan de Bont's The Haunting is. The story is a mess, the acting is lousy even with a (mostly) star-studded cast, and the CGI is awful even for its day. But I do have to give credit where it's due: without this movie, I may never have become the horror fan I am today. If I never faced that fear of poorly rendered weeping statues, who knows what else I may have never experienced.

THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER -- Every ten minutes

Many people my age claim to love this movie. My question is, "How?" How can you enjoy something so viscerally upsetting? How can you claim to love a thing that clearly does not have your best interests at heart? Brave Little Toaster is not for children. It does not exist to tell a story. Its only purpose is to attack its audience with unsettling questions and dark violent imagery under the guise of being a cute family film. If your memory is fuzzy on the plot, skim through the Wikipedia summary, and realize that not only does it read like a fever dream, but more importantly, nothing good happens to any of these characters throughout the entire film. For every few precious minutes of wholesome sweetness with a gang of talking appliances going on an adventure, there is an onslaught of surreal terrors waiting just around the corner. And I'm not even talking about that evil clown dream sequence. Remember the AC unit that has a meltdown and literally explodes in front of his housemates? Remember when the vacuum cleaner chokes on his own cord and is reduced to a jibbering vegetable for a while? Remember the flower growing all alone in the woods that falls in love with its reflection in Toaster's surface, and when Toaster runs from it, it instantly DIES OF A BROKEN HEART? Do you remember that bit of sickening tragedy that comes out of nowhere and leads to nothing? That's only a sample of the horrors that lurk in this harmless-looking film. And don't even try telling me it has a happy ending--how many 10 year old household appliances do you still own, let alone cherish? This is not a movie, this is an assault.

A GOOFY MOVIE -- Max's Nightmare

I love A Goofy Movie. You probably love A Goofy Movie. Even my Disney-hating husband with his heart of stone got choked up watching A Goofy Movie. It's practically perfect. It's got catchy songs, crisp animation, and great voice acting. It may never have the prestige of The Lion King or Beauty and the Beast, but it's still one of Disney's finest and is just as enjoyable today as it was in 1995. What could I possibly find to be nightmare inducing in this otherwise lovely film? Well, I was five when A Goofy Movie came out, and to my memory it was one of my earliest experiences in the theater. So imagine a sweet little child sitting fairly close to a huge screen when that gorgeous dream sequence begins and swiftly turns into a nightmare rife with body horror and teen angst. Again, I'm five. I don't understand the comedy of the scene, nor the context. All I see is a boy whose body has turned into a giant monster. It doesn't even matter that the monster looks like Goofy, not with all the screaming and lightening and scary music. That's a really rough start for a five year old to take in, but thankfully the movie moves right along with the bright colors and pop songs. And that's why it's a masterpiece.

THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO -- Lorenzini's transformation into Monstro

Listen, nobody loved Jonathan Taylor Thomas in the 90's the way I loved Jonathan Taylor Thomas in the 90's. I was too young to even understand what attraction was and I was still in love with JTT to the point I would watch him in literally anything, even a movie involving that which I feared most as a child: human-looking puppets. The Adventures of Pinocchio is not good in any sense, but it is memorable if only for being deeply unsettling to look at. Besides the passable hideousness of Pinocchio himself, the human characters are decked out in the most ridiculously foppish garb and filmed in garish golden-hour sunshine at odd angles to make them look even more bizarre. This movie is too interesting-looking to be ignored, yet too boring to actually be interesting, aside from the inherent delight of hearing Martin Landau struggling with a "mamma mia!" Italian accent. The film is largely forgettable, aside for one little moment on Pleasure Island, and shockingly, it's not the one you're thinking of (although that scene is pretty upsetting too). Pinocchio and his friends clap back on the villain Lorenzini (Udo Kier) by pushing him into the magic water that transformed them into donkeys. Inexplicably, the water doesn't turn him into a jackass but something else entirely--a half-formed fish man that will eventually become Monstro the whale. The makeup effects here are quite good and tastefully revealed in shadows and warped reflections. Still, those few seconds of a man's eye bulging out of his head as his skull rearranges is something you simply cannot forget.

These random moments of weird surreal terror aren't ranked in any particular order, but every list needs a number one ultimate top pick, and baby, I saved the best for last. Before the big reveal, here are some honorable mentions:

Ren & Stimpy -- all of it, the whole thing, every single second
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? -- Dr. Doom's toon eyes
Altered States -- that one part I caught on TV where a hairy naked man feasts on a goat
The Last Unicorn -- the laughing skull
Jumanji -- giant vicious mosquitoes with seizure-inducing stings
The Hobbit (Rankin/Bass version) -- friendly dwarves animated to look like living Troll dolls
Anaconda -- winking Jon Voight corpse

And now, my top tier, number one, all time greatest movie-induced childhood trauma is........

E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL -- Fuck this movie

Look, I'm not a monster. I love Steven Spielberg. I love Drew Barreymore. I love movies about aliens finding their humanity. I love animatronics. But physically, mentally, and emotionally, I cannot love E.T. I've tried, believe me. It's one of those movies you're not allowed to dislike because it is goodness in its purest form--sweet story, good directing, great score, an all-around classic. Far be it from me to try to convince you that it is not. Even I don't know why I don't like it. Maybe it's when we first meet E.T. as nothing but a set of icky probing fingers in the woods. Maybe its when he secretly takes over Elliot's mind and gets him shit-faced. Maybe it's when E.T. falls ill and they find him rotting in a ditch like a discarded powdered doughnut. Maybe it's the overall design of the puppet--as if somehow big blue eyes would save that wrinkly turd of a sinking ship. Maybe it's how every other shot of this film is framed with smoky mystery and inexplicable dread. Maybe it's not any single trait. Everything about this film unsettles me to my core and I have never been able to overcome my inherent deep-seated fear of it--not when I was a baby watching it on VHS, not when I was a teenager watching it on remastered DVD, not now as a grown ass woman struggling to get through the trailer without getting stomach pains. E.T. is as far from heart-warming as it gets for me. This is a scary, scary movie, and honestly, it deserves more of that recognition.


There you have it, my list of the most memorable childhood nightmare fuel. I hope I could help conjure up some repressed memories for you. Perhaps adulthood doesn't bring bravery, only awareness, and if we can't overcome all of our greatest fears, we can at least laugh about them.

Finding art in ZOMBIE STRIPPERS! (2008)

As a horror fan, there are few things as satisfying as picking up the stupidest title and accidentally discovering a gem. Zombie Strippers is one of those gems. Hiding beneath a cheap grindhouse title and Jenna Jameson's lusciously inert breasts is, believe it or not, a small wonder. Initially conceived as a joke, because of course it was, Zombie Strippers tells a sleazy story with brilliant splatstick moments and existential flair, as any good zombie movie should.

The meat of the story takes place in a not-so-distant future where George Bush has won his fourth consecutive term as president (because Bush jokes were hilarious in 2008). As a result, the US is at war with literally everyone. We open on a military investigation of a research facility striving to make a super-soldier serum, which has obviously gone horrifically wrong. Thankfully, the army sent its sexiest unit to take care of business.

The push-up bra is standard issue.

During the initial tour before the zombies hit the fan, the scientists explain that the nature of the disease causes your usual brain-dead, flesh-hungry zombie fare only in the male subjects, whereas female patients maintain their conscious minds while reaping all the undead benefits--super strength, heightened agility, and a bloodthirsty drive to destroy. To make an overly long sequence short, one of the less sexy soldiers gets bitten during the extermination and goes staggering off into the city. He inexplicably stumbles into an underground stripclub, where Kat (Jenna Jameson) is our lithe, shimmery, gyrating introduction to Rhino's.

No matter how you may feel about Miss Jameson, she is an absolute rock star on the pole, and sets the stage for the kind of shiny cheesecake we're in for. She has incredible confidence and control of her body, strutting the stage with a presence that both exudes and transcends her porn star status. According to the behind the scenes, she couldn't be sweeter about sharing her sexy secrets--she actually helped the other girls in the cast with their own choreography on the stage.

The handful of side characters that keep the club running serve both as comic relief and occasional antagonists. Unfortunately neither path lands very well, but no worries since we don't see very much of them. There's the slimy owner Ian Essko (Robert Englund); a smooth black DJ as the voice of reason and possibly the only sane person in this universe; a madame who is cartoonishly Russian from her pastel Lycra pants to tales of squeezing vodka from potatoes in the old country; and a Mexican janitor played by a Puerto Rican actor who is forced to caricature being Mexican to the point that it runs screaming past parody straight into blatant racism.

This is his big monologue.

The real magic lies backstage in the dressing room. Here we are introduced to our girls, each completely unique in their own shallow way. First there is the previously introduced Kat, the star of Rhino's. When she isn't tearing up the stage, she hangs out in her separate VIP dressing room, reading Nietzche and contemplating her own futile existence. She's an intellectual stripper, man, and Jameson plays it surprisingly well. She is not the hooker with the heart of gold by any stretch; rather she is an enlightened woman living in a dystopia who doesn't have the patience for anyone else's sensitivities. She's never cruel beyond mild cattiness or chilly determination, but she doesn't go out of her way to be nice, either. Her pep talk to the newbie stripper Jessy about what it takes to be a real dancer is blunt but not malicious, and is actually precisely the advice you would hope to hear from a veteran stripper. 

"First lesson: quit your bitching."

Next is Jeannie, Kat's rival and apparently the least popular stripper at the club, though God knows why since she's got some of the most stunning cleavage I've ever seen. (Maybe it's her penchant for corsets in a house full of nylon bikinis.) Whatever the reason, Jean mostly serves to shoot Kat dirty looks throughout the movie, inevitably leading to a big-breasted showdown.

Ugh, what a cow.

The "lesser" strippers are lesser only in that they don't get nearly as much screen time as they probably deserve. Gaia is set up as an empty-headed sweetheart with self-esteem issues that aren't revealed until it's beyond being relevant, while Sox is more memorable for her crush on Kat than anything else. That, and being a fucking Amazon princess.

Tall girls represent.

Then there's Lillith (Roxy Saint), my personal favorite of the ensemble in spite of and precisely because she's a ham-fisted cartoon of The Goth Chick. She's got the punky schoolgirl outfit, the cigarette-stained grumbling, the heavy nipple piercings, the spidery eye makeup that would make Helena Bonham Carter blush. She even employs a little silver pistol on a chain into her dance routines because she is just so hardcore. I fucking adore her. It shouldn't come as a surprise that Roxy Saint is also a punk rock singer, and a few of her songs are stripped to throughout the film, adding a grimy, sexy flavor to some of the gorier dance scenes. Like Sox, she harbors her own admiration for Kat and is the first gleeful converter to the undead.

SUCH ANGST!

Somewhere in the middle is Berenge, a lapdancer who is physically incapable of caring about anything. She is set up to be a much bigger character than she actually turns out to be, and in the end, the film really doesn't need her beyond faithfulness to its source material (which I'll get to).

Finally, there's Jessy, who is arguably our central protagonist, but it's hard to tell since this movie doesn't stay focused on any one character for too long. She is a good Christian girl who is hoping to raise money for her grandmother's surgery by stripping. This character could, and should, be dead on arrival, but this otherwise walking cliche has a self-aware earnestness with a just a hint of world-weariness that's endearing. She's an innocent without being an idiot.

Just a small town girl, living in a zombie world....

Unfortunately, she's got a literal ball-and-chain dragging her down--her bumbling boyfriend Davis, who keeps following her around the club and being a general skeeze. One second he's pleading with her not to take her clothes off for strangers, the next he's slinking into the shadows to enjoy the show. Just like a dude. Even though Davis is just as useless as any of the other men in this picture, he at the very least serves for Jessy to show her strength. When he begs her to not strip, she hears him out but sticks to her conviction. She doesn't even apologize for his hurt feelings. She makes it clear the whole ordeal has nothing to do with him, and that her grandmother's well-being is "more important than staying pure for you." That's a shockingly progressive direction for a goody-two-shoes character in a movie called Zombie fucking Strippers.

Back to the plot, such as it is. The infected soldier hangs out at the club, the virus quietly consuming him. When Kat struts out for another dance, he rushes the stage and proceeds to rip her throat out. Everyone looks on in horror, but are surprised to find that Kat recovers from her wound quite quickly. In no time, she's ready to take the stage again, gaping flesh wound and all.

And she fucking KILLS IT.

Jenna Jameson decomposes beautifully over the course of the film, but these initial scenes are just stellar. The virus has turned her into a vicious, tireless beast, her feral dancing becoming both erotic and frightening. With her black eyes and deranged grin, not to mention the blood streaked all over her golden flesh, she is a full-on predator on the hunt for meat. And the fellas can't get enough!

Fear-rection.

When the other girls catch wind of the secret to Kat's makeover, they begin converting to zombie-ism for a taste of the power. Kat's posse swiftly overtakes the club's line up, and infected male patrons begin piling up in the basement like rabid dogs. It is up to the remaining survivors to deal with the sexy zombie menace, and if they can't reason with them, they'll have to shoot their way out. Typical silly splatterfest ensues, with a few sets of glitter tits to spare.

Believe it or not, Zombie Strippers is based on what some people would call art. Back in 1960's France, a fella named Eugene Ionesco wrote a little farce called Rhinoceros at the height of the absurdist movement in theater. The play tells the story of a man named Berenger, an everyman who prefers to drown his first-world sorrows and spin philosophy at the local tavern rather than face any real responsibility in life. One day, his musings are interrupted by a passing rhinoceros, which is later rumored to have formerly been a person. Over time, more people in town mysteriously transform into rhinos, rampaging through the streets and destroying property. The remaining non-rhinos try to rationalize the bizarre events and attempt to figure out a cause, but one by one they surrender their humanity to become something else.

Soon the town is lousy with rhinos, all except Berenger and his lady love, Daisy. The two decide to make the best of things and try to go about remaining human despite being surrounded by dangerous animals that were once their neighbors. Over time, the transition to rhino-hood becomes more and more attractive to Daisy, and she eventually leaves to join the herd. Berenger struggles to hold on to his humanity, finding himself seduced by the call of the rhino as well. In the end, he decides to resist temptation and actively fight against the rhino invasion.

The play has a few themes floating around, but the most central is the notion of conformity. Ionesco presents us with normal people who inexplicably become beasts, and the remaining humans willingly follow them--not all at once, but slowly. Through conversation and persistent rationalization, they convince themselves that making the change is simply better than remaining what they are, as if it's a new level of enlightenment, a superior state of being. The play speaks directly to the insidious nature of Nazi propaganda, but could just as easily be applied to any number of hostile movements throughout history--the Salem witch trials, the Satanic Panic of the 1980's, even now with the marketing of our most recent election--a hideous idea that presents itself as profound logic, taking root in the impressionable individual and gradually creeping into public consciousness as the status quo. Berenger represents man's resistance to savage herd mentality, and he ultimately finds direction by pointing away from everyone else.

In these modern times, zombies are an ideal replacement for rhinos. Since Romero's triumphant premiere, they have always represented our most base selves, stripped of empathy and reason, hungry for domination (and flesh). Zombie Strippers takes this and cranks it up to maximum parody levels, but the themes remain the same. You could even dig a little feminist message out of the fact that the base male is a mindless drone whereas females can retain their speech and get bitchy superpowers.

Wanna lapdance?

Personally, in 2018, the zombie theme is largely played out, and by now even the most inventive twist still often rings a bit stale (with a few choice exceptions). But sometimes art doesn't strike at the right moment and takes a few years for anyone to recognize it for what it is. I believe Zombie Strippers is ripe for a comeback, not only for its timely political unrest, but also for its feminist themes, however flimsy they may be in context. For me, I always enjoy an ensemble of beauties taking on their shitty situation, so Zombie Strippers fills a void for me in the same way that Showgirls does, even if the amazing quality and vibrancy of their female cast doesn't get near as much screen time. 

So Bad It's Terrible -- THE WICKER MAN (2006)

I love bad movies--a deep, true love without irony and only a hint of malice.

My idea of a good time is getting people together with a couple drinks and taking the piss out of some poor fool's honest effort at filmmaking. By this point, the world has caught up with the joys of playing the home version of MST3K, and seemingly everybody has a favorite bad movie. There is no shortage of bad movies that have been agreed upon as "classics" and are must-sees for anyone hoping to have fun with an unintentional comedy. Most of them, like Birdemic and Fateful Findings, are truly awful in their execution and helplessly funny in their sincerity--ideal for a perfect bad movie night.

But not all bad movies are created equal. There are the bad movies that are not fun, not hilarious, simply bad--stiff, boring, joyless. These are the movies have no redeeming qualities even in their most memorable moments. These are the movies that make people like me angry, especially when the world at large recognizes them for something they simply are not. On one side of the spectrum we have Sharknado, a series that is gleefully bad on purpose and yet doesn't do a lot to stand out from your typical Scary Movie fare--stupid, yes, and ruining the definition of "so bad its good," but ultimately harmless.

On the other side, we have the movies that are exhumed from the ashes of their dismal box office returns and held up in campy reverence when they were better off remaining forgotten. These movies are what memes are made of, doomed to be an ironic joke that everyone is in on until it inevitably implodes into anti-comedy. And what is arguably the most iconic, overused, anti-joke in Internet history?

Well, I say, no more. I cannot let the memes represent this film any longer. I cannot abide another day of all the top ten lists out there lying to the bad movie novices of the world. Please, listen when I tell you that The Wicker Man is a terrible film in every sense of the word.

The original Wicker Man and its remake follow essentially the same plot: a police officer is summoned to a secluded island where a young girl has gone missing. When he asks the locals about the child, they give conflicting stories--some claim she's dead, others say alive, and some claim to not recognize her at all--and they seem amused by the officer's growing frustration. He discovers that the island is economically dependent on their crops and the people have turned to paganism to encourage bountiful harvests. The staunchly Christian policeman observes their practices with confusion and horror, and it only encourages his frantic search for the missing girl. What little evidence he collects leads him to suspect the girl will be sacrificed at the approaching May Day celebration, so he infiltrates the festivities hoping to find her before the lord of the isle can reach her first. He realizes all too late that it's all been a ruse from the beginning, and the real sacrifice is him. The film ends with the officer locked in the belly of the enormous Wicker Man as the islanders light the pyre and sing a song, joyfully watching their sacrifice burn.

To get it right out of the way, I do love the original Wicker Man. However, that love is not blind enough to not notice that it's a bit of a mess, at least the cut I have. The film was famously hacked to pieces by the ratings board upon its original UK release, and although a director's cut does exist today, you have to check the box very carefully to know which version you're ordering on Amazon (I did not). Either version is far from perfect. It's the seventies, so things like sluggish pacing and stilted acting are forgivable, even charming. Other things--like the casual nudity, impromptu musical numbers, and wacky paganism--are just as baffling as they are deliriously entertaining.

If the song doesn't get stuck in your head, the wall-smack ass-dance will.

But then again, this disjointed dreamy style seems entirely intentional, in order to place the audience in the same position as our hero, Sgt. Howie (an adorably uptight Edward Woodward). We are as confused as he is throughout the film, following clues that lead nowhere while the cagey townsfolk stand aside and snicker. It makes that final twist all the more effective when we realize the entire thing was an elaborate game, not to cover up a murder but to lead a lamb to slaughter. What the film lacks in rational sense, it more than makes up for in sheer weirdness. And if nothing else, Christopher Lee's performance as the too-cool turtleneck wearing pagan philosopher is worth the price of admission.

Fast forward to 2006, and our post-9/11 world is fraught with swaggering cool guys, gritty yellow filters, and aimless anger at no particular source.

Let's start with Nicolas Cage, because why would we begin anywhere else? Let me make this perfectly clear: I love me some Nic Cage. I can get in a Raising Arizona quote-off with the best of them. I place Face/Off not only as one of my favorite movies of all time, but also the only action movie I'll ever need. One day, I'll write out all my feelings about Vampire's Kiss as the masterpiece that it truly is. I love Nic Cage in the most unironic way any woman can.

Exhibit A.

That's why it hurts me so deeply that this is the performance my fellow bad movie lovers hold up as the best of Crazy Cage. It is simply not the case. He's too National Treasure in this for my tastes, cool and controlled--mumbling all his lines with that jaguar-purr voice of his like a low-rent Jeff Goldblum and barely creasing his magnificent face beyond a stoic scowl. It's disappointing given what the internet prepared me for. He is so reserved and low-key in the bulk of this movie that it's almost a relief when he starts sucker-punching women. Once he finally cracks and the "How'd it get burned?!" scene appears, I am so thoroughly checked out of the film that I don't even care how hysterical he is.

Even the famous "Not the bees!" scene couldn't save this sinking ship, which explains why it wasn't included in the theatrical cut. With its popularity as the absolute funniest thing to say anytime someone mentions bees, it's easy to forget that the iconic moment is completely pointless within context. The villagers pour bees in his bonnet till he passes out, only to instantly revive him with a hit of EpiPen so he can be awake to meet the title character. Completely, utterly pointless. It was nothing before the internet, and it's less than nothing now.

Aside from the fleeting moments of Crazy Cage in the final act, the movie offers nothing in the ways of entertainment value, leaving plenty of time for me to just sit back and notice how hateful it is. Not as in "I hate this movie" (which I do, obviously), as in the film's essence, the bitter mood that permeates every frame. This movie is marinated in thick, salty hate gravy that has a very direct and blatant target, and it's all thanks to an angry little man named Neil LaBute.

This is a guy who has a booming social life and doesn't participate on even one hateful message board.

If you're familiar with LaBute's other work, you'll know that his material tends to be infused with a palpable anger towards women. One only needs to watch about four minutes of this scene to get a real clear idea of how the man's mind works, and how much he would like to convince you that his view is the unsentimental truth. You could argue his work is strictly satirical and thus a thoughtful commentary on toxic masculinity, but there is a line between satire and rampant misogynist fantasy. LaBute is either unaware of that line, or he's actively dry humping it while flipping you off and screaming "Just think about it, maaaaan!"

Though the two Wicker Man films are similar in many ways, LaBute made a few tweaks to mold his vision of the story. Namely, he made Summerisle a matriarchal society where the few men that live there have their tongues removed and serve as laborers. To hammer in that imagery just a little deeper, the island's main export was changed from apples to honey...meaning bees...meaning a queen surrounded by witless male drones to do her bidding...and macho man Nic Cage is deathly allergic to bees. Subtle.

WOMEN ARE SCARY!

Remember that trend in sci-fi movies back in the day of men discovering lost civilizations or alien races comprised entirely of sexy ladies? There was a glut of these in the '50s and '60s, blatant male fantasies where one or two dudes stumble into a tribe of exotic babes who have never seen a man before and are just dying to have someone tell them what to do. Wicker Man is like that, but in reverse--it carries itself with that same smug air of the masculine know-it-all stumbling into the land of women, but instead of portraying the women as empty-headed natives, they are a calculating pit of vipers. They know exactly what a man is, what he wants, and what to do with him. Even LaBute's dumb sexy fantasies are injected with an insecure, paranoid dread towards the opposite sex.

The remake makes an interesting choice by pitting one man against an all-woman society, but fails to do anything interesting with it in terms of commentary, if that was indeed the intent. The villagers speak in veiled language like the first film in order to mislead our hero, but the added female factor makes it feel like a pointed jab. Worse than the double-speak are the non-answers, Cage's direct questions earning no more than a menacing giggle in response.

If LaBute is trying to say something with all this, it comes across as little more than a man screaming into a camera about how girls are so weird and scary. I just get this image of some moment during production with Ellen Burstyn approaching him to ask about a scene and LaBute just gaping back at her in terrified confusion as he attempts to understand how she's making noise come out of her face-vagina.

You are a sad, strange little man.

Aside from being inherently sexist and not nearly as provocative as it thinks it is, The Wicker Man's greatest crime is that it is boring as all hell. Even if you can squeeze a smidge of enjoyment out of Cage's mild freakouts or the absolutely baffling way in which he's dispatched, it is not worth the dismal slog it takes to get there.

 This film does not deserve a spot on your bad movie list. It is purely, concretely, irrevocably bad from top to bottom, completely unworthy of the fame it has achieved from its laughable awfulness. There are such better bad movies out there, and such better Nicolas Cage movies, and that Venn diagram is so often a beautiful perfect circle. There are better ways to waste your time.

Trust me, I am a Nic Cage expert. 

Exhibit B.

 So please, if you must deduce the gifts of Nicolas Cage to a meme, make it a performance that is actually meme-worthy.