Zombies have become so popular that the corridors of our pop culture resound with ravenous moans for “Braaaiinns!” White Zombie, screening Saturday at the Plaza Theatre’s Silver Scream Spook Show, offers a kitschy reminder that the living dead weren’t always the decomposing cannibals of George Romero.
Follow the trail of body parts back a few decades, and you’ll find the origins of zombies in Haitian folklore. White Zombie shouldn’t be mistaken for a documentary about voodoo traditions, though. Filmed in 1932 to ride the horror trend established by Frankenstein and Dracula, White Zombie fudges the detail as to whether zombies are walking corpses or living people enthralled by drugs and hypnotism.
Victor Halperin’s film begins with a painfully white engaged couple, Neil and Madeline (John Harron and Madge Bellamy), stumbling across a burial ceremony shortly after their arrival in Haiti. They plan to marry as soon as possible at the estate of their new, wealthy friend Charles Beaumont (Robert W. Frazer), having forgotten the old adage, “Don’t talk to strangers because they might try to zombify your fiancée and raid her coffin.” Desperate to steal Madeline for himself, Charles enlists the aid of a sinister plantation owner with the nefarious name of Murder Legendre (Bela Lugosi, of course). Though Madeline seems to die on her wedding night, she’s actually become enthralled by Legendre.
OK, last night I finally went to one of the Plaza’s monthly showings of The Room, a 2003 independent film that has become a cult sensation and the most recent contender for the title of the worst movie ever made.
How bad is it? It’s gloriously, resplendently, wonderfully bad. And I loved every minute of it. The Room is the only movie I’ve seen that honestly lives up to the billing of being “so bad it’s good.” That’s because it was made with the kind of old-fashioned ineptitude that’s impossible to fake. Every aspect of this film is god-awful: the nonsensical dialogue, the excrutiating acting, the laughable soft-core sex scenes, the in-and-out-of-focus camerawork, the disappearing plot points.
The focal point of the film is star/director/writer/producer Tommy Wiseau, whom Curt Holman has previously, and quite accurately, described as looking like “the kind of mob henchman Jean-Claude Van Damme would kick in the face in the first reel.” Wiseau’s Johnny is caught in a love triangle with his “future wife,” Lisa, who’s having an affair with pretty-boy Mark, whom, we’re frequently reminded, is Johnny’s best friend.
Leaving The Room, I had many questions:
Nearly all of Wiseau’s lines seemed to be looped, that is re-recorded, but how could his heavily accented delivery possibly have been any worse the first time?
Were Adam Samberg’s facial expressions from the “Jizz in My Pants” video inspired by the actor playing the frat boy with the frosted tips who gets a hummer on Johnny’s couch?
Why does Lisa’s mother reveal her breast cancer diagnosis with the same level of irritation you might experience at realizing you’re out of toilet paper?
There’s something about R. Land’s Pray for ATL design that inspires feelings of love. Those weathered hands seem so earnest. Especially when they’re covered in scales.
This weekend features not one, but two exhibitions uniting art, film, and … fish. The first is Alcove Gallery’s Big Tuna anniversary celebration tonight,July 10, from 7 p.m.-midnight. Why’s it called Big Tuna, you ask? It’s an art show inspired by the films of David Lynch. The name nods to the fictional town in Lynch’s 1990 classic, Wild at Heart, a flick starring Nick Cage as a karate-kicking Elvis Presley wannabe. The second is R. Land’s Art Opening and a Movie: Zaat at the Plaza Theatre on Saturday. (Click here for Curt Holman’s Zaat feature.)
Meanwhile, Whitespace Gallery’s Agents of Seduction looks promising. If you miss Friday’s opening, there’s still printmaker Teresa Coleman’s artist talk on Saturday, July 11 at 2 p.m.
CL’s Chanté LaGon and Curt Holman chat about the Plaza Theatre’s monthly Art Opening and a Movie series. This month features R. Land and one of his favorite movies, Zaat.
Air Loaf is broadcast weekdays on 1690 WMLB-AM at approximately 8:10 a.m., 12:20 p.m. and 6:20 p.m.
A mutated catfish man has been swimming through R. Land’s psyche since he was 8 years old.
The popular Atlanta painter grew up in Jacksonville, where he was tantalized by trailers for a movie with the inexplicable title Zaat. Director Don Barton filmed Zaat in neighboring locales such as Marineland, Silver Springs and Switzerland, Fla., so young Land had already picked up on the film.
“The trailers made it seem so real, almost like it was a newscast. The Legend of Boggy Creek came out around that same time, but that was even more of a pseudo-documentary. I remember thinking that Zaat had the potential to be the next Creature from the Black Lagoon,” Land says.
Released in the South in 1971, Zaat depicts a German scientist who, in a well-thought-out plan, decides to prove his outlandish theories and seek revenge on his naysayers by turning himself into a bipedal catfish monster — with, admittedly, little actual resemblance to a catfish. Zaat’s combination of amphibious stalkers, bathing beauties and local landmarks seized young Land’s imagination. To this day, he’s still fascinated by the film’s “fever dream” quality, with long scenes of no dialogue, just ambient electronic music and many shots of a guy in a monster suit who carries a spray bottle and spins a zodiac wheel to make his sinister decisions.
The Plaza Theatre’s monthly, ultraviolent Splatter Cinema screening flashes back to 1980 and the highly controversial Italian horror flick, Cannibal Holocaust. Partly a faux-documentary along the lines of The Blair Witch Project, Cannibal Holocaust depicts an ill-fated camera crew’s investigation into people-eating up the Amazon. The film features such disturbing, stomach-churning simulations of realism that it was banned in multiple countries and director Ruggero Deodato was arrested in Italy on obscenity charges. Offering the grindiest of grindhouse experiences, Cannibal Holocaust plays at 9:30 p.m. tonight, June 9, and even the trailer of less than two minutes isn’t entirely work safe:
CL’s Chanté LaGon and Curt Holman discuss three documentaries included in Atlanta’s 2009 Out on Film Festival: Fagbug, Training Rules and The Universe of Keith Haring. The festival continues through May 31 at the Plaza Theatre.
Air Loaf is broadcast weekdays on 1690 WMLB-AM at approximately 8:10 a.m., 12:20 p.m. and 6:20 p.m.
Zombies have become so popular that the corridors of our pop culture resound with ravenous moans for “Braaaiinns!” White Zombie, screening Saturday at the Plaza Theatre’s Silver Scream Spook Show, offers a kitschy reminder that the living dead weren’t always the decomposing cannibals of George Romero.
