Culture Shock 10.02.14: Elvira buries herself in her 'Coffin Collection'

Trigger warning: Some of the puns and alliterations in this column are particularly pungent and may produce prolonged paralysis. The author regrets nothing.

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, on the sofa of her 2010-11 series.

This time every year, the historic Knott's Berry Farm theme park in Buena Park, California, undergoes a transformation, becoming Knott's Scary Farm. It's one of the nation's most storied haunted attractions.

Returning to Knott's Scary Farm's 1,800-seat Charles M. Schultz Theatre this year "by overwhelming demand," is that horror hostess with the mostess, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. It turns out you can't keep a good ghoul down. So, Elvira is dying on stage twice nightly in a Vegas-style variety show. That's about the only way nowadays you can catch her live — or even dead.

Elvira's alter ego, Cassandra Peterson, retired a while back from doing the convention circuit in character. And who can blame her? She's been donning her black, bouffant wig and pouring herself into that low-cut Morticia Addams dress for more than 30 years.

Who could have guessed Elvira would become a long-term gig or that the character, which Peterson created for local Los Angeles television, would go national, even international, like pancakes?

Elvira's original "Movie Macabre" show aired from 1981 to 1986 and featured Peterson's undead Valley girl persona hosting horrible horror flicks ranging from "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" to "Night of the Zombies." From there, Elvira branched out into merchandising, comic books, two feature films (1988's "Elvira, Mistress of the Dark" and 2001's "Elvira's Haunted Hills") and a seasonal Coors Light ad campaign. You know you've hit the big time when you're shilling for the Silver Bullet.

More than almost any other horror host, Elvira has endured. But it was still a pleasant surprise when she returned to television for the 2010-11 season with a resurrected "Elvira's Movie Macabre."

Now all 26 episodes of Elvira's latest spell (including several never aired) are in one box set, "Elvira's Movie Macabre: The Coffin Collection," from Entertainment One.

At the height of her notoriety, Elvira became the
four-color hostess of DC Comics' "House of Mystery."

At a suggested retail price of $99.98, the 13-disc set isn't cheap, but the movies are. (If you're cheap, a few episodes are available at Hulu.com.) Elvira sticks with films that have fallen into the public domain. That used to happen when a production company went bankrupt and nobody renewed the copyright, or nobody bothered in the first place. Thus, Elvira serves up a bewitching buffet that includes classics such as "The Satanic Rites of Dracula" and "Night of the Living Dead," and not-so-classics such as "Attack of the Giant Leeches" and director William "One Shot" Beaudine's "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter." (Note: "Frankenstein's Daughter" is not to be confused with "Lady Frankenstein," which is also included in this set. #TheMoreYouKnow)

But don't think there's no star power here. The Coffin Collection conjures up a lot of name actors with bills to pay, including Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Joanna Lumley, Dean Stockwell, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Jack Nicholson and Joseph Cotton.

Still, let's not kid ourselves here. The real star attraction is Elvira, draped across her red velvet sofa and letting it all hang out. Well, not all. This is a show that ran in broadcast syndication. This isn't HBO's "Same Old Gnomes," or whatever. For that matter, some of the movies are censored, too, to meet broadcast standards. (I'll pause while we all laugh at the idea of broadcast TV having standards.)

Under normal circumstances, I don't approve of watching movies that have been chopped up for TV, but in this case some of the alterations, such as the fogged-out "naughty bits" in "Lady Frankenstein," are entertaining on their own merits. And so is Elvira.

With skills honed as part of LA's Groundlings comedy troupe, Peterson makes even the lamest jokes get up and walk. Sure, it's kind of a slow, shambling, zombie-like walk, but fast zombies are an abomination, and don't you forget it!

Inviting a horror host into your living room is like serving comfort food to your brain, and Elvira is the chocolate-covered cheesecake of horror hosts.

Culture Shock 07.10.14: Ed Wood's 'Plan 9' rewards revisiting

Edward D. Wood Jr.'s reputation again needs rehabilitation. Once enshrined as the worst filmmaker of all time, Wood's place atop the auteurs of awful is in jeopardy.

It's an unexpected turn for the man who wrote and directed standouts of shlock such as "Bride of the Monster" (1955) and the semi-autobiographical "Glen or Glenda" (1953).

"Mystery Science Theater 3000," home video and the Syfy channel have exposed audiences to horrors poor Ed could scarcely have imagined. Compared to the films of Coleman Francis ("Skydivers" and "Red Zone Cuba"), rediscovered obscurities such as "Manos: The Hands of Fate" and "Death Bed: The Bed That Eats," and Syfy originals such as "Mansquito," Wood's films barely stand out anymore. They seem almost ordinary, common, unremarkable.

Wood's tin star has dimmed since Michael and Harry Medved first spit on it in their 1980 book "The Golden Turkey Awards," giving Wood a notoriety in death he never had in life. Even Tim Burton's Oscar-winning 1994 biopic "Ed Wood" seems just a distant and sad memory of when Burton and Johnny Depp still made great movies. It's more about them now than it is Wood.

Perhaps we've been looking at Wood's films the wrong way. Maybe they're more than just bad movies. Can your heart stand the shocking facts, my friends?

The obvious place to start digging is Wood's 1959 magnum opus, "Plan 9 from Outer Space."

For decades "Plan 9" has fooled everyone, critics and fans alike. At first glance, it seems like a movie about extraterrestrials coming to Earth and raising the dead. The aliens' plan (their ninth) is to stop humanity from developing a weapon that could destroy the entire universe. (Wood never does anything halfway.) In other words, "Plan 9" looks like a technically inept, dollar store remake of 1951's "The Day the Earth Stood Still." But despite itself, "Plan 9" is much more than that.

The addition of zombies to the plot is a commercial consideration. It plays to the Cold War fears of the drive-in frequenting youth audience, inculcated since grade school with a dread for the mindless, conformist Red Menace. Yet Wood mines this for an ironic comment on America's Red Scare paranoia. One of his alien visitors, named Eros after the Greek god of love, says, "It's an interesting thing when you consider, the Earth people, who can think, are so frightened by those who cannot: the dead."

Whether intentional or not, Wood both deflates the dead ideology of communism and lampoons a nervous America's dangerous overreaction to it. Only with hindsight and the collapse of the Soviet Union does it become clear.

Tor Johnson, left, and Vampira in "Plan 9 from Outer Space."

Wood's eye toward his teen audience also provides the film with its star power. TV horror movie host Vampira, pro wrestler Tor Johnson and the late Bela Lugosi (plus his stand-in) are the closest "Plan 9" comes to stars, yet all portray the resurrected undead. By accident, Wood gives us a sly take on how the old Hollywood studio system treated its contract players. It brings to mind the quote attributed to Alfred Hitchcock: "Actors are cattle." Here they are less than cattle; they're dead, especially Lugosi, who really is dead and appears only in stock footage Wood clumsily works into the final film.

In the end "Plan 9" is ahead of its time. It plays as a movie about the artifice of Hollywood. From the rickety sets and unspeakable dialogue to the non-acting actors and disregard for basic continuity from one shot to the next, "Plan 9" practically screams, "I am not real! I am only a movie!"

Perhaps "Plan 9" belongs in a different pantheon, among the great movies about movie-making: "Singin' in the Rain," Robert Altman's "The Player," and Federico Fellini's "8½." (OK. Maybe not.)

Wood didn't just make bad, incompetent, baffling films. He made bad, incompetent, baffling films that strove for deeper meaning. When he failed as a filmmaker, which was almost always, he failed magnificently. By a strange combination of delusional ambition and fortunate accident, he made terrible movies that not only are fun to watch but that surprise us with something new every time we revisit them. That is why Wood remains the Orson Welles of ineptitude.

Culture Shock 12.16.10: It's not just a telethon; it's an 'Americathon'

As the "great recession" lingers on, it's hard to imagine a time when things were, in some ways, even worse.

Sure, the Great Depression was worse. Everyone knows that. But I'm talking about the 1970s, when, apart from the music and the movies, everything pretty much sucked.

Kids today, you think you've got it bad, but at least you're not waiting in line for gasoline. Now that was bad. OK, maybe I didn't wait in line for gasoline, but my parents did. And I had to listen to them complain, which was almost as bad. And between Watergate, the hangover from Vietnam, the Iran hostage crisis, stagflation and polyester fashions, it seemed like the United States was on its last legs.

The whole country was in the dumps, and if you didn't think so, President Jimmy Carter was there to remind you.

So, in 1979, along came a movie that seemed to sum up how the country felt about itself. It was a screwball comedy called "Americathon," written by Firesign Theatre's Phil Proctor and Peter Bergman.

Forgotten since the 1980s, "Americathon" is back and available as a manufacture-on-demand DVD from Warner Archive, online at warnerarchive.com. And it seems just as relevant now as when it was in theaters.

Set in the then future year of 1998, "Americathon" depicts the United States as flat broke, and the mortgage is coming due.

No one can afford a house, so everyone lives in their cars. But that's OK, because no one can afford gasoline, either, and everyone rides bicycles or jogs to work. (Conveniently, everyone also wears track suits, because riding a bike in slacks is just asking for trouble.)

The dollar is worthless, and everyone has to pay for everything — including phone calls — in gold. (Ron Paul called to say, "I told you so.") Meanwhile, the Chinese have become successful capitalists, Vietnam is a vacation and entertainment hot spot, and the Jews and Arabs have put aside their differences to create one huge country, the United Hebrab Republic.

You know, apart from that last bit about the Jews and Arabs, none of it seems that farfetched now, does it?

Presiding over America's decline is President Chet Roosevelt (John Ritter), a former California governor apparently based on once and future California Gov. Jerry "Governor Moonbeam" Brown. Needless to say, President Roosevelt got elected solely due to name recognition, and his solution to the country's fiscal woes is to spout New Age platitudes and raffle off the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. He's already moved the White House into a Los Angeles condo.

Time, however, is running out, because the president got a $400 billion emergency loan from Native American billionaire Sam Birdwater, played by the late, great Chief Dan George ("The Outlaw Josey Wales").

And Sam wants his money back in 30 days or he'll foreclose.

Frankly, I think we could do a lot worse than Chief Dan George running the country, but nobody asked me.

Anyway, the president's new media adviser (Peter Riegert) has an idea that just might work: a telethon. So, they recruit pill-popping actor Monty Rushmore (Harvey Korman) to act as emcee, and the Americathon takes off.

Unfortunately, some of the acts are a lot like the opening round of "American Idol."

Can the Americathon succeed? Who are the shady characters working behind the scenes to sabotage it? Is that really a young Jay Leno in a boxing match with his mom? (Hey, I'll fork over a donation if it means I get to see Leno beat up by his mother.)

With 30 years' hindsight, "Americathon" is probably funnier now than it was in 1979. Plus, it's always great to see what amounts to an all-star cast of '70s television stars — Ritter, Korman and Fred Willard — in the sort of roles they do best.

And George Carlin narrates the whole thing, which is appropriate, because he spent the last decade of his life telling us all just how doomed we are.

In summation: "Americathon." It's funny, and maybe you should order a copy. Just do it while your money is still worth something.

Culture Shock 11.25.10: Celebrate Thanksgiving with some cinematic turkey

Thanksgiving brings with it lots of traditions, mostly involving food, football and long-standing family grievances.

My favorite Thanksgiving tradition, however, began in the early 1990s, when Comedy Central aired its annual "Turkey Day" marathons of "Mystery Science Theater 3000." Nothing went better with Turkey Day stuffing than generous helpings of cinematic turkeys, all lovingly riffed by Joel, Mike and their robot pals aboard the Satellite of Love.

It has been more than a decade since "Mystery Science Theater" left the airwaves, but with all the episodes available on DVD and streaming on Netflix, you can still program your own private MST3K Turkey Day marathon. And that sure beats taking a long trip over the river and through the woods just to put up with Uncle Buck having a drunken meltdown, while Aunt Sue and Aunt Evelyn argue about which of them most deserves to inherit Grandma's good silverware.

As it has for the past several years, Shout! Factory greets the holiday season with a new, four-disc MST3K DVD box set. And this year's set includes two bad-movie classics, as well as a gullet full of bonus features.

As with past releases from Shout! Factory, "Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XIX" features two episodes each from original host Joel Hodgson and his successor, Michael J. Nelson. Joel's episodes are "Robot Monster" from season 1 and director Edward D. Wood Jr.'s "Bride of the Monster," starring Bela Lugosi and Tor Johnson.

"Robot Monster" and "Bride of the Monster" have both, at various times, been saddled with the designation of "worst movie ever," making them prime candidates for the MST3K treatment.

While not as deliriously loopy as "Plan 9 from Outer Space," "Bride of the Monster" is probably Ed Wood's best-made film, although that's not saying much. It's definitely entertaining, even without Joel, Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo providing a running commentary on its shortcomings, from the inane dialog and the rubber octopus to the poorly integrated stock footage and Lugosi's unconvincing stand-in.

The "Bride of the Monster" disc also includes the set's best bonus feature, "Citizen Wood," an informative documentary featurette by Chattanooga-based filmmaker Daniel Griffith, which chronicles the making of Wood's second-most-infamous film. "Citizen Wood" is a must for anyone who knows Wood primarily from Tim Burton's Oscar-winning 1994 biopic.

"Robot Monster" is the timeless story of an alien robot named Ro-Man, who looks suspiciously like a guy wearing a gorilla suit and a cheap 1950s sci-fi space helmet. Ro-Man is all-powerful, and he succeeds in wiping out the entire human race except for six people living in the middle of nowhere.

It turns out killing a few billion people is easy, but killing six is really hard, especially if they include two annoying children you'd really like to see dead.

Rounding out the set are two Mike Nelson episodes, "Devil Doll," a 1964 horror movie about a sinister ventriloquist and a dummy with a will of its own; and "Devil Fish," a 1984 Italian-made shlocker — to coin a term — in which a shark/octopus hybrid terrorizes Italians pretending to be Americans off the Florida coast.

The only recognizable actor in either film is William Sylvester in "Devil Doll." He delivers exactly the same smug performance he does as Dr. Heywood Floyd in "2001: A Space Odyssey."

"Devil Doll" is a bit bland, even with the riffing, but "Devil Fish" is one of MST3K's better Sci-Fi Channel-era episodes.

Other extras include a panel discussion with cast members Hodgson, Frank Conniff and Mary Jo Pehl, and, for a limited time, a collectible Gypsy figurine to go along with the previously released Crow and Tom Servo.

"Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XIX" retails for $69.97. It's worth every penny, but you're a sucker if you pay full retail.

Culture Shock 11.18.10: 'Pretty Maids All in a Row' does exploitation with some class

"Pretty Maids All in a Row" may be a major-studio film with a high-class pedigree, but it has a lot in common with the low-budget, independently produced exploitation movies that populated drive-ins in the 1970s.

Released by MGM in 1971, "Pretty Maids All in a Row" is helmed by French director Roger Vadim, who blessed the world with Brigitte Bardot in his 1956 film, "... And God Created Woman" and hit the heights of pop art in 1968 with "Barbarella," starring Jane Fonda.

The screenplay for "Pretty Maids" comes courtesy of Gene Roddenberry — yes, "Star Trek's" Gene Roddenberry — who is also the film's producer. And the music is by "Mission Impossible" composer Lalo Schifrin.

And I haven't even gotten to the cast yet. It's an all-star affair headlined by Rock Hudson, Angie Dickinson and Telly Savalas.

But for all of its star power, "Pretty Maids All in a Row" is an exploitation movie — a glossy, strange and darkly comic exploitation movie, but an exploitation movie nonetheless, which is a major part of its charm.

Despite having fallen into near obscurity in the decades since its release, "Pretty Maids" is back and available on DVD from Warner Archive at www.warnerarchive.com.

High school guidance counselor/football coach "Tiger" McDrew has it all: a perfect family, a winning football team and the affections of every female in the student body. Student bodies, indeed.

His No. 1 student, the unfortunately named Ponce de Leon Harper (John David Carson), however, is another case. It seems Ponce gets just a little bit too excited — if you know what I mean — whenever he is around any of the campus' attractive co-eds, which, by the way, is all of them. And he gets way too excited around the sexy new substitute teacher, Betty Smith (Dickinson).

So, like any concerned guidance counselor, Tiger decides to help Ponce with his problem. Tiger's solution: have Betty give Ponce a little after-school "tutoring" — if you know what I mean.

Yes, there's enough inappropriate student/teacher sex going on at this high school to keep Maury Povich busy for an entire season.

And as if that weren't scandalous enough, there's also the little matter of the female students who keep turning up dead, much to the chagrin of the principal (Roddy McDowall).

As the murders mount, state police Capt. Sam Surcher (Savalas in a pre-"Kojak" cop role) narrows down his list of suspects, and Tiger is at the top of it.

Is Tiger really guilty, or does he just seem really guilty? Of murder, I mean. Obviously, he's guilty of other stuff — if you know what I mean.

Also, keep a lookout for a few unexpected faces, including James Doohan (Scotty from "Star Trek") and JoAnna Cameron, future star of the Saturday-morning adventure series "Isis," as one of Tiger's pretty maids.

"Pretty Maids All in a Row" is a funny, clever black comedy with some truly great dialog, like when one student reminds the other football players that they never have practice after a murder.

It is also a rare example in the 1970s of a studio film beating the low-budget filmmakers to the punch. It predates other films about illicit student/teacher relationships like 1974's "The Teacher," with former "Dennis the Menace" child star Jay North as the lucky student, and 1978's "Coach," a Quentin Tarantino favorite starring Cathy Lee Crosby ("That's Incredible") and Michael Biehn ("Terminator").

"Pretty Maids All in a Row" has been lost in Hollywood's film vault for too long, and it's great to have it back.

Culture Shock 09.09.10: Veteran tough guy shines in gorefest 'Machete'

After nearly 200 movie and TV appearances, Danny Trejo finally has top billing.

Sure, it's in a relatively low-budget movie that pays homage to other low-budget movies made four decades ago. But he's billed above two-time Oscar winner Robert De Niro. That's not bad for someone who did prison time before falling, by accident, into a career playing movie tough guys.

And they don't come much tougher than Trejo in "Machete."

"Machete" originated as the fake movie trailer at the beginning of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's 2007 exploitation double-feature, "Grindhouse." The fake trailers ended up being the most popular part of "Grindhouse," so now Rodriguez has expanded "Machete" into a full-length film.

And it's a welcome change of pace after a lackluster summer movie season in which only "Inception" lived up to its hype. "Machete" is unapologetically ridiculous, fun, bloody and over-the-top — a throwback to trashy 1970s drive-in movies. If you can see "Machete" at one of the nation's few remaining drive-ins, do so. That's how it was meant to be seen.

Trejo plays the title character, an ex-Federale hiding out illegally in the United States after narrowly escaping a Mexican drug lord (Steven Seagal) who — as it happens in this sort of movie — also killed Machete's family.

While working as a day laborer, Machete gets picked up by a mysterious man in a limousine. The man, played by the great Jeff Fahey ("Lost"), makes Machete an offer he can't refuse: a suitcase full of money in exchange for assassinating a Texas state senator (De Niro) whose anti-immigration platform is bad news both for illegal immigrants and the businesses that hire them.

But nothing is what it seems, and the assassination attempt turns out to be a set-up intended to boost the senator's falling poll numbers. Machete winds up injured, on the run and in search of evidence that will not only clear his name but also reveal a vast conspiracy of politicians, drug lords and border-control vigilantes, who are in league to build an electrified wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

Yes, I guess you could say this is a political movie, with Mexican immigrants as the good guys and border-control advocates as the bad guys. But like the many 1970s B-movies that also strived for social relevance, the message here is beside the point. The real point is delivering a lot of crowd-pleasing action and some gratuitous nudity. And "Machete" delivers both.

Trejo's Machete is a man of few words, which is probably a good thing. No one will ever mistake Trejo for a great actor, but he is an imposing screen presence, and one of his few lines seems already on its way to becoming a catchphrase: "Machete don't text."

Trejo also benefits from a great supporting cast, especially Fahey's wonderfully sleazy Booth, Cheech Marin's scene-stealing performance as Machete's brother/priest and Don Johnson as the racist leader of a vigilante group that is most definitely not modeled on the Minuteman Project. As for De Niro, "Machete" seems like the most fun he's had making a movie in years.

Jessica Alba co-stars as an immigration agent on Machete's trail, and Michelle Rodriguez provides the film's heart as Luz, who may be the leader of an underground resistance group.

Then there's Lindsay Lohan, who is also in this movie even though she barely has anything to do. Her character's big scene is actually reused footage from "Grindhouse," with a different actress playing the role.

But obvious body doubles and occasionally shoddy special effects are part of "Machete's" charm. Robert Rodriguez has set out to make a cheesy B-movie, and he has succeeded. If he ever makes good on the two sequels he promises at the end — "Machete Kills" and "Machete Kills Again" — I won't complain.

Culture Shock 08.19.10: Score for now: Scott Pilgrim 0, the world 1

It didn't take long for the recriminations to begin. It was clear late Friday that "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" was a box-office dud.

"Scott Pilgrim" took in just more than $10 million in its opening weekend — not a good showing for a movie that cost an estimated $60 million to make and probably another $30 million to market. That's despite months of hype, a crowd-pleasing performance at Comic Con and a flood of TV ads aimed squarely at the movie's target demographic of Nintendo-age gaming geeks. Adult Swim even aired a four-minute animated prequel — now online at adultswim.com — for that extra, last-minute buzz.

After all that, a mere $10 million seemed like an insult. But to add injury, "Scott Pilgrim" finished the weekend at No. 5, behind the geriatric action stars of "The Expendables," a Julia Roberts vehicle and two holdovers from previous weeks. ("Inception" isn't going away until everyone has seen it — and dreamed about it.)

How could this have happened? "Scott Pilgrim" had been a trending topic on Twitter for a week before it opened — it still is — prompting the movie's director, Edgar Wright, to tweet Tuesday night, "Still trending No. 1 worldwide. For over a week now. If the film was called Scott Pilgrim Vs Justin Bieber, the internets might explode."

So, how did the movie billed as "An epic of epic epicness" end up an epic fail at the box office?

No. 1: It was the studio's fault. Universal spent millions marketing "Scott Pilgrim," but it went about it all wrong. Universal sold it as an action movie when really it's more of a romantic comedy, only with video-game graphics and Kung Fu.

No. 2: It was the calendar's fault. Opening "Scott Pilgrim" against Sylvester Stallone's "The Expendables" was a guaranteed fail. Both movies targeted the same demographic: people who played lots of Mortal Kombat.

No. 3: All of those free preview screenings backfired. Almost everyone who left the screenings loved the movie, but they didn't pay to see it again when it opened.

No. 4: It was Michael Cera's fault. Just about everyone has grown tired of Michael Cera playing Michael Cera in every movie. Portraying the same character in every film is fine if you're John Wayne or Jack Nicholson. It's not fine if you're Michael Cera.

(But to be fair, this time Cera does something different. Normally, he plays socially awkward smart guys. This time, he plays a guy who isn't smart enough to realize just how socially awkward he is.)

No. 5: It's a comic-book movie. Apart from "Iron Man 2," 2010 has been a rotten year for movies based on comic books. "Kick Ass," "The Losers" and "Jonah Hex" all flopped or underperformed. "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World," based on the six-volume graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O'Malley, is just part of the curse.

No. 6: "Scott Pilgrim" was never going to appeal to more than a cult audience.

Whatever else it is, "Scott Pilgrim" is original. It's a movie that looks and behaves like a video game. It's "Superbad" meets "The Legend of Zelda," as Scott must battle his girlfriend Ramona's seven evil exes in order to date her. Each ex is a level of the game, with Ramona functioning as the prize at the end.

(O'Malley's graphic novels are deeper than that, but squeezing six volumes into a two-hour movie — while keeping all of Scott's showdowns with the exes — meant dumping a lot of the best character bits.)

Probably all of those reasons played some role in the movie's dismal box-office result.

But in the end, the box office doesn't matter much. "Scott Pilgrim" is the sort of movie that will live on.

It reminds me of another movie that was a disappointment at first but went on to become a much-loved classic. And 28 years later, "Tron" is popular enough to spawn a sequel.

So, maybe Scott Pilgrim's finest hour is yet to come.

Culture Shock 08.05.10: Roger Corman built legacy of B-movies, A-list moviemakers

Before the Academy Awards and the billions in box-office earnings — long before he became the "king of the world" — James Cameron was a lowly squire.

Actress Dey Young recalls Cameron as the guy who brought her coffee on the set of 1979's "Rock 'n' Roll High School."

Others tell stories about Cameron as an inventive, young special-effects technician who worked magic on the 1981 low-budget sci-fi flick "Galaxy of Terror."

But besides Cameron, "Rock 'n' Roll High School" and "Galaxy of Terror" have two other things in common. Both are Roger Corman productions, and Shout! Factory recently released both on DVD and Blu-ray as part of its new "Roger Corman's Cult Classics" collection.

As big a year as Cameron has had with that whole "Avatar" thing, the past 12 months have also been pretty busy for Corman, who is enjoying something of a resurgence at age 84.

Last year, Corman received an honorary Oscar in recognition of his contributions to the movie industry. This year, he has unleashed "Dinoshark" and "Dinocroc vs. Supergator" on unsuspecting SyFy channel viewers. And a third movie, "Sharktopus," is still yet to come. The preview trailer for "Sharktopus" is already an Internet sensation because, let's face it, everybody wants to see a genetically engineered shark/octopus hybrid run amok and threaten to eat Julia Roberts' older brother Eric.

I mean, who wouldn't want to see that?

Yes, improbable as it may seem, the man responsible for "Sharktopus" has an Academy Award on his mantle. And that lone fact pretty well sums up the amazing and unlikely career of one of Hollywood's most successful moviemakers.

How successful, you ask? Well, Corman titled his 1990 memoir "How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime."

Never losing a dime, however, wasn't always easy. Corman re-released "Galaxy of Terror" multiple times under multiple titles until it turned a profit.

He also had other tricks up his sleeve. For instance, before striking the sets for "Galaxy of Terror," Corman put a second sci-fi movie into production just so he could get more use out of the same sets. The result was "Forbidden World," also just released on DVD.

Between them, "Galaxy of Terror" and "Forbidden World" are a crash course in the Corman formula. "Galaxy of Terror" is an "Alien" rip-off featuring the B-movie equivalent of an all-star cast and special effects that look like they should have cost more than they did. "Forbidden World," meanwhile, has an even smaller budget but makes up for that by upping the amount of exploitation, mostly in the form of a cheesy alien monster and gratuitous nudity.

Since the 1950s, Corman has produced or directed more than 300 movies. Combined, I'm guessing those movies cost less to make than Cameron spent on "Avatar" alone. But if there is one thing Corman knows how to do, it's make a movie on a limited budget.

It might not always be a good movie. But it will probably be an entertaining movie, at least in its own way. And an entire generation of filmmakers, including Cameron, rose to prominence after learning their craft from Corman.

Corman helped launch the careers of actors like Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson, as well as directors like Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard and Jonathan Demme.

Working for Corman is the ultimate internship for aspiring filmmakers. You learn everything you can, then you are ready to take on anything Hollywood might throw at you.

And in the process, you might make a movie like "Galaxy of Terror" or "Piranha" or "Death Race 2000" — the movies discriminating fans of drive-in, low-budget and exploitation cinema buy on Blu-ray nearly 40 years later.

Culture Shock 07.01.10: Forgotten movie sums up the gung-ho 1980s

It was the 1980s. Ronald Reagan was president. Sylvester Stallone was re-fighting — and winning — the Vietnam War. And high school students were fending off a Soviet invasion.

You didn't mess with America, and if you did, you were soon sorry. This was the era that spawned every Chuck Norris joke you've ever heard.

In the gung-ho decade of "Red Dawn" and "Invasion USA," a mullet and guns — lots of guns — were all you needed to take on the Forces of Evil. It was "morning in America," every day was the Fourth of July and Hollywood got busy settling the U.S. of A.'s old scores.
Sometimes the plots were, to be charitable, a little silly. But even for anyone who thought "Red Dawn" was a documentary from the future, there was one movie that made all the others seem sane. That movie was 1987's "Nightforce."

If you've never heard of "Nightforce," that's understandable. This straight-to-video action flick received most of its airplay on late-night cable TV. The VHS tape is long out of print, and it isn't a likely candidate for reissue on DVD. And that's a shame because while "Nightforce" is in no sense a good movie, it is bizarre artifact from a decade that now exists only as a target for jokes on VH1.

Here's the plot: Central American terrorists kidnap a U.S. senator's daughter, and for reasons that don't make any sense, especially because we're talking about a senator's daughter, the government is powerless to act. Meanwhile, the senator refuses to give in to the captors' demands because "we don't negotiate with terrorists."

It falls to the daughter's mullet-headed, polo-wearing college friends to come to the rescue. They load a jeep with automatic weapons and ammunition, then head south of the border on a rescue mission you just know is going to end with half of them dead. But one way or the other, they'll rescue the girl and shoot a bunch of foreigners, especially that one guy who looks like a burly Fidel Castro. He's a dead man.

There's also a subplot about said senator's daughter, Christy, getting married to some rich guy even though she's in love with the rich guy's younger brother. But as far as I can tell, the subplot is there mainly to justify the sex scene that occurs in the first 10 minutes. That's reason enough, come to think of it.

Amazingly, Christy's friends drive all the way to Central America without getting their throats slit.

They also have the good fortune to meet a friendly mercenary played by 1980s B-movie mainstay Richard Lynch, who gives them even more guns, plus some tactical support.

Most of "Nightforce's" (unintentional) entertainment value comes from its absurd script, but you can't discount the cast. Apart from Lynch, there's Linda Blair — smack in the middle of her post-"Exorcist" career's action movie phase — playing Christy's best friend and leading the rescue operation.

Then there's James Van Patten, son of "Eight is Enough" patriarch Dick Van Patten, as Steve, the younger brother/love interest. (Or is he the older brother? I honestly forgot.)

Somehow, Lynch spent a fair chuck of the 1980s dealing with Dick Van Patten's children. In "Nightforce," he tries to keep James from getting killed, while in 1985's "Cut and Run," he tries to kill Dick's TV son Willie Ames.

Lastly, there's Christy, played by Claudia Udy, best known for her title role in the Cinemax After Dark favorite "Joy," due on DVD later this month.

It almost goes without saying, but Udy spends most of the movie in various states of undress.

Basically, "Nightforce" is the sort of untrained-Americans-kick-butt-against-skilled-adversaries movie that could only have come out of the '80s, with just enough exploitation elements to keep late-night viewers awake.

For all of its schlock value, "Nightforce" says something about the prevailing attitude in America during the decade it was made. America was finally over its post-Vietnam funk and looking to kick butt.

How quaint those pre-Iraq, pre-Afghanistan days seem now.

That announcer guy from the movies dies at 68

In a world where a movie’s opening weekend could mean the difference between a blockbuster or a flop, one man held the key to box office gold.

You probably don’t know his name, and you probably never saw his face, but you know his voice.
Don LaFontaine was the voice of Hollywood. Not just any voice, but  “a deep voice that sounds like a 7-foot-tall man who has been smoking cigarettes since childhood,” as he put it when parodying himself in a movie trailer for “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

But that voice fell silent Monday, when LaFontaine died of complications from a lung-related illness. He was 68.

Still don’t know who I’m talking about? If that’s the case, I have three words for you: “In a world.”
With those three simple words, LaFontaine became more than a man, more than a voiceover artist, more than the Picasso of movie marketing hyperbole. He became a legend.

In a gravelly baritone that made even romantic comedies seem ominous, LaFontaine narrated more than 5,000 movie trailers and more than 350,000 television commercials, according to his Web site. Some of his best known trailer voiceovers include “The Terminator,” “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” and “Batman Returns.”

LaFontaine’s voice was everywhere, as was his “In a world …” catchphrase, which became such a running gag that he parodied it himself, playing “that announcer guy from the movies” in a TV commercial for GEICO insurance: “In a world where both our cars were totally underwater …”

In a 2007 interview, he explained why he came up with his “In a world…” gimmick.

“We have to very rapidly establish the world we are transporting (the audience) to,” he said. “That's very easily done by saying, ‘In a world where ... violence rules.’ ‘In a world where ... men are slaves and women are the conquerors.’ You very rapidly set the scene.”

In a world where you have only 60 seconds to grab people’s attention, LaFontaine was king. He redefined what it meant to be a voiceover announcer. So, if he wasn’t narrating a particular trailer for some upcoming movie, nine times out of 10, it was someone who sounded a lot like him.

Probably his closest competitor in the voiceover business was the somewhat mellower East Coast announcer Hal Douglas, who for years was the voice of Miramax, A&E, The History Channel and The WB. Before The WB merged with UPN to become The CW network, you could always count on Douglas to alert you to that “very special episode of ‘The Gilmore Girls’ ” airing later that night.

In one of those showbiz twists, Douglas probably has gotten just as much mileage out of “In a world…” as LaFontaine did, which is why they’re both known, depending on whom you ask, as the “In a world” guy. And when Jerry Seinfeld wanted to parody over-the-top movie trailers in the trailer for his 2002 documentary “Comedian,” he turned to Douglas, who dutifully rattled off such movie clichés as “In a world,” “In a land,” “In a time” and “In a land before time.”

In 1997, LaFontaine and Douglas teamed with four other voiceover artists for the short film “5 Men and a Limo,” which was shown before the 26th Annual Hollywood Reporter Key Art Awards and satirized each artist’s various catchphrases.

“5 Men” is now a popular video on YouTube, as is a short film about LaFontaine himself, “Don LaFontaine: The Voice,” which opens with LaFontaine solemnly intoning these words:

“Throughout history, man has marveled at the vast complexity of the universe. Without a single unified voice, humanity has been left searching for answers to the unknown. Now one man has the power to change that and to spread his voice across the Earth for all of mankind to hear. One man — me!”

In a world without Don LaFontaine, the movies are going to seem a lot less exciting.