What is well documented is their move to England aboard the troop ship RMS Bastard during World War II. They were immediately imprisoned for the crimes of Being a Stowaway with Intent to Stow Away, and Wilful Misappropriation of Ship’s Biscuits. By the time of their release in 1947, Herbert and Chester had amassed an impressive fortune by importing and selling black-market goods into Dartmoor Gaol. Sadly they didn’t have long to enjoy it, being immediately re-arrested and convicted of Importing and Selling Black-Market Goods Into Dartmoor Gaol. On their second release in 1952, the brothers once again turned their attention to the movies.

Their first studio just off Soho Square was mainly used in the production of stag reels, though by filming the filming of such material they scored their first hit, Raw Sinful London Nights of Sin. This salacious and largely staged ‘documentary’ was popular at the less reputable Soho cinema clubs, running at the infamous Compton St. Boudoir for two years. The Zeppelins invested the profits in a number of areas: several public houses, a small hotel and a failed attempt to revive the sport of bear baiting. Their biggest outlay however was the construction of Thames-on-Thames Studios in Shoreditch. Soon their new company Zeppelin Brothers Films Telephotoplay Films Productions (ZBFTFP) was churning out programme-filler dramas, comedies and thrillers at an impressive rate.

Many of the top British stage and screen talents of the day appeared in Zeppelin productions, with their familiar tagline ‘If it Bombs, it’s A Zeppelin!’ The actors too had a saying; “if you’re resting for a day or two, get shitfaced. If you’re really desperate make a picture for the Zeppelins.” They remained a mainstay of the UK’s B-picture industry until Herbert’s mysterious death in 1964. Though no body was ever found, the amount of his blood that had apparently been drained into Chester’s septic tank was calculated to be fatal. Chester’s trial and groundbreaking ‘I never touched him’ defence made legal and tabloid press history.

Taste the Bloody Fear of the Hands of Horror was a curious project for the Zeppelins, it being their only production to be shot in colour. Like many independents the Zeppelins stuck largely to monochrome, though unlike their contemporaries this was not for financial reasons. Herbert’s deep religious convictions precluded the use of colour film, which he felt was more likely to inflame the lusts and sinful thoughts of audiences, unlike the more morally pure black & white. However materialism won out over spirituality once the Zeppelins saw the success of Hammer’s lavish Eastmancolor gore epics, a success they clearly wanted to emulate.

Richard Carlsberg stars as Professor Marcus Lichtenstein, a typical mad scientist intent on pushing back the frontiers of knowledge whatever the cost. To this end he attempts to combine the body parts of the vampire Count Arkoff, a gill-man and a werewolf into a new übermonster. The reasoning behind this is never terribly well explained, but one must concede that it’s the sort of thing a mad scientist would do. The monster, played by Welsh wrestler Taffy Boyo, is not one of cinema’s most memorable creatures, but these days the film is best remembered for its fabulous, oddly sympathetic performance by Carlsberg. The latter was already a stage and TV legend by the time he first worked for the Zeppelins, in 1958’s comedy Whoops! Armed Forces!

The film is directed with some flair by Francis Kevinson, also making his colour debut. Kevinson started out making public information shorts like The Screeching Tyres of Death before moving to Zeppelin in 1956. He became one of their most prolific directors, working on all but two of the popular Inspector Fogg mysteries. Some of these have become regarded as minor classics in their own right, particularly A Sticky Wicket for Inspector Fogg, Inspector Fogg meets the Young Filly and Inspector Fogg and the Dirty Hun.

What’s special about the print from crate 7 is that it is, as stated at the beginning, the semi-mythical ‘export’ version. It features additional scenes of fake gore deemed too explicit for UK audiences, not to mention the infamous nude bathing scene by sexy starlet Sandy Sars. Sars’ pin-up status was already assured by this time, after her turn as the secretary in Dale Wisbom’s 1959 farce Has Anyone Seen My Trousers?

The UK cut of the film, with all of these scenes excised by the British Board of Film Censors, eventually gained a US release in 1965. Distributor Mormon Independent Pictures further cut several key scenes of exposition that were felt to be ‘too English,’ replacing them with newly shot footage. This concerned a subplot about fading noir actor Robert Locker (The Blonde Wore Murder) as a detective on the trail of Professor Lichtenstein. The film was then released to the drive-in circuit as Nudie Brides of Werevampenstein. It’s this inferior cut, cropped to 4:3 by MIP’s television arm, which appears on many budget DVD labels in your local dollar store. Hopefully now we can allow this curious, remarkable film to be seen as it was meant to be.

A cursory viewing of the film shows that Kostenloser and his screenwriter Gary Gaylord (genuinely his real name, and he was in fact straight) stuck closely to the blaxploitation model of a few years earlier. Rainbow Jones (Alan J. Jay, b. José Iglesias Martínez-Suárez Pérez Olivera Pérez Puente Soriano) is a gay ex-marine living happily in San Francisco’s Castro district with his lover, prominent city council member Harry Silk (Liberace). Rainbow’s pleasant existence is shattered when his best friend Pinky (Fard Fielding, Martian Biker Punks) is beaten to death by a gang of homophobic hoodlums known as Straights For Hate. Using his military training and survival skills honed in the jungles of Southeast Asia, Rainbow engages in a bloody street war with the Straights. As the film progresses, Rainbow unveils a connection between the Straights and bigoted Catholic minister Father O’Maloney (Dick Tramm, Cry Rabies!), a truly creepy character with an unhealthy predilection for underage girls. In the gripping final reel, Rainbow discovers the ugly truth: that O’Maloney is in league with Harry Silk, who has secretly agreed to allow the building of a ‘forced re-education center’ in the heart of the Castro district.

After many disappointments, it was a true pleasure to find such an enjoyable lost work in crate 7. Pink Justice crackles with energy and excitement, fine performances, and sharply quotable dialogue. It’s easy to imagine that had the film been more successful, many of the lines would have found their way into our shared cultural lexicon. In particular, Rainbow Jones referring to his gold plated .475 Wildey Magnum ‘Big Steve’ with kittens painted on the handgrips; “this is the closest these fingers get to pussy, honey!” before blowing away a bad guy. From the moment Rainbow beds a straight guy simply by kissing him, to his distinctive limp-wristed hand to hand combat style, he seems to be a ready-made hero for the gay community, a pink Shaft if you will. He even has his own theme ‘Rainbow Jones Is Here’ by gay soul collective Fag Street Junction, with the catchy refrain “Rainbow Jones: the Queer you Fear.” Our print also included the film’s theatrical trailer, a two-minute explosion of action and colour with the superb voice-over “He’s the fag who’ll put you in body bag… Call him a homo and he’ll put you in a coma! This summer, God Save You from The Queen!”

Kostenloser’s agenda is clear from the outset. All of the heterosexual characters are loathsome, particularly the paedophile priest (who, one notes, only interferes with girls). The gay characters on the other hand are almost all sympathetic, with the exception of ‘Harry Silk.’ It’s odd that a role so clearly based on celebrated gay politician Harvey Milk is shown in such a negative light. Apparently this was due to an acrimonious one night stand between Milk and Kostenloser a few years earlier. The director even subverts Milk’s famous catchphrase by having Silk say in the final scene, “My name is Harry Silk and I’m here to shoot you!” However, this is a small black mark against an otherwise terrific film.

Sadly the failure of Pink Justice meant that many of the cast and crew drifted into obscurity. Not so Alan J. Jay, who infamously underwent treatment at a religious compound and became a Pentecostal minister, getting married and funding several viciously anti-gay films including The Swishy Scourge and the notorious Death Camp 3. His autobiography ‘Alan J. Jay – the J stands for Jesus’ was a bestseller in Alabama and Louisiana. Later still he renounced his conversion, and following his wife’s mysterious and unsolved death he fled back to Mexico, undergoing gender reassignment surgery. He still works today on television under the name Rosa Iglesias Martínez-Suárez Pérez Olivera Pérez Puente Soriano, and won a 1997 TV Novela Award as the dying matriarch in popular telenovela ¡Sexo prohibido!

It is our hope that with some extensive restoration of the print we may be able to secure a DVD release for Pink Justice. As both a cultural artefact and a gripping action-adventure film, it deserves to be seen at last.

The plot of the film is standard slasher material. At Kennedy High School in Rubinstein, Minnesota, the class whipping boy is chess club captain Ralph Prowse (former child star Grimpen Myer). After being disfigured and sexually humiliated during a prank by the cheerleading squad, Prowse is sent away to an asylum. One year later and the cheerleaders are getting ready for their senior prom, when a mysterious stranger in a black & white checkered mask begins to kill them off one by one.

Naturally it’s Prowse exacting his revenge, but what makes the film unusual is the inventive chess theme to the kills. Cheerleader captain April (Swedish starlet Terri Larssson) is pecked to death by a flock of rooks. Her sycophantic friend Chickie (future soap regular Whilimena Waters) is impaled on a bishop’s crook. The promiscuous girl Fácile (Rae Volconvo in her first and last film role) is throttled by the magnetic tape from a porn VHS cassette, which is phonetically dubious at best. Fácile’s jock bully boyfriend Chad (Rolf Barney) is decapitated with a Gladys Knight album. The culmination of the murders is to be the death of final girl Leigh at the chess-themed prom night, where she is crowned queen. Leigh is played with a deft touch by noted scream queen Betsy Mauser, then riding high on the success of Railroad Spike, Stab School and Railroad Spike 2.

In the harsh light of day, Chess Club is no better or worse than any number of independent 1980s slashers. Director/writer/producer Bill McNair here shows little of the visual flair he brought to his later work. What gave the film its notoriety was the legal case brought by the United States Chess Federation, who accused McNair of bringing the game into disrepute. The lawsuit was successful, and the Los Angeles Superior Court orderrd all copies of the film destroyed. The distraught McNair fled to Paris, where he eventually directed the psychological thriller Non-sens Injustifié. The commercial failure of that fascinating film effectively put an end to McNair’s career, and after tawdry exploitation shocker Mon Dieu, Mes Yeux! he never worked again. He was last seen driving a Lyon taxi in 1991.

Ultimately Chess Club does not really justify its notoriety, but neither did it deserve to go unseen for 25 years. McNair had some interesting ideas and perhaps would have developed into a successful director. Sadly his career was, if you’ll pardon the pun, ‘checked’ before it began. Ahem.

During apartheid, even well before the 1985 sanctions,  a lot of things were simply unobtainable in South Africa. American (and to a lesser extent European) action films, for instance, frequently depicted blacks as equals, which for obvious reasons wasn’t going to fly. A number of local z-grade producers leaped to fill the void, including Pieter Copperhorn. The son of British immigrants to South Africa, Copperhorn, like many converts to many ideologies over the years, became a fanatical Boer nationalist (he would commit suicide in 1992), but one with a certain talent for gaining financial backing for his films. Government connections also meant that he was often able to obtain the services of South African Army and Navy units for crowd or action scenes, which went a long way, given the meager budgets he operated with (Bigotry, Violence and Implied Sex: The Triple Features of Apartheid Exploitation Cinema claims Copperhorn never had a budget higher than R500,000).  He also tended to write, direct, and star in his own films. In 1977, this wasn’t a serious imposition, as the thirty-six-year-old Copperhorn was still ruggedly handsome, but age and success took a toll on him. By 1988′s Haul Down the Union Jack, he was overweight, balding, and perspired heavily in all of his scenes.

The film opens with a title card informing us that we are looking at a secret American military base, “THE HOME OF US STRATEGIC NUCLEAR COMMAND”. It appears to be a collection of World War II-era Quonset Huts. An admittedly impressive explosion then obliterates the huts.

A new title card informs us we are looking at the “US WHITE HOUSE WAR ROOM”. It looks pretty much like any other conference room you’ve ever seen, but there’s a big map of the world like you might see in an elementary school on the wall, and what appears to be a transparency of the org chart for an armored division hanging next to it.  The President of the United States (Gerald Pienaar, in a surprisingly funny turn) , a thinly veiled caricature of Gerald Ford, is receiving a report that all of the NATO countries (and France) have had their nuclear arsenals destroyed, and that Russia is now announcing a plan for German reunification. It is implied that this will be a Communist Germany.

Obviously, the USA can’t let this stand, and the President demands to know where a stopgap nuclear deterrent can be found. Where indeed?

We cut to Pretoria, as another title card helpfully informs us. Actually, we cut to the war memorial Fort Klapperkop, a disused Boer War-era fortress, where Jan Baaker (Copperhorn), an agent of BOSS (the South African’s Orwellian-sounding Bureau Of State Security, subsequently disbanded in 1980 and replaced with the National Intelligence Service) is receiving a briefing from his superior, “G” (Piers Uys) on the protection of South Africa’s atomic defenses. Now that the Russians (presumably) have destroyed NATO and France’s atom bombs, South Africa is the world’s last bulwark against Communism and anarchy. As if to emphasize the danger, a sniper narrowly misses Baaker and G, who in turn kill him with a fusillade of stunningly well-aimed pistol shots.

Meanwhile, at the “USSR ATOMIC WARHEAD STORAGE”, a team of Americans (including one black man played by a white in blackface) have carried out a countersabotage of the USSR’s missiles. However, the black American is revealed as a GRU mole, and they are ambushed by the Russians, who kill them all. Before he dies, however, the commander of the Americans manages to trigger their demolition charges. Now both sides are on an equal footing.

“BACK IN PRETORIA” (Copperhorn must have gotten a bulk discount on these captions), Baaker is riding shotgun to a convoy with one of South Africa’s nuclear weapons (played by what appears to be an old British Bloodhound SAM) when a group of Communist-affiliated (read: black) guerrillas attack in overwhelming numbers. The convoy, incidentally, is played by two land rovers plus the missile truck. The overwhelming numbers are probably ten or fifteen distinct attackers shot from different angles. They are beaten off, but in the confusion, an American spy (Carson Roberts) steals the missile truck.

What follows is a low speed chase; Copperhorn doesn’t even bother to speed up the film. That’s just as well, because it would have looked ridiculous, with the missile swinging about on its trailer and a hilariously unconcerned herd of cattle looking on at one point.

Baaker eventually manages to catch up to the missile, where he finds the American getting ready to hotwire the missile and launch it at Moscow.  A tense stand-off follows, but then the South African shoots his nemesis dead in what is apparently supposed to be a demonstration of Dirty Harry-esque elan.  (Copperhorn was a huge fan of the Dirty Harry films, and reportedly tried to obtain rights to remake them in South Africa. The refusal led to his later film, Filthy Pieter [1982].)

Following this is the denouement, in which South Africa, now the world’s sole nuclear power, announces that it will be acting as a world police force, “to stop conflicts before they start”. Apparently the two-power system threw the world out of balance, and now everyone will be safer in a one-power world.

It was perhaps not surprising to see the name of enterprising smut producer Roy Avenue (b. Stanley David Hergesheimer) in the credits. Avenue was particularly adept at combining existing footage with newly shot sex scenes, most infamously when he used two episodes of the popular British sitcom That’s Your Funeral! as the basis for his 1975 hardcore farce Cuties in Coffins. By the time the series’ producers ITV got wind of Avenue’s actions the film had already vanished from Times Square’s porno theaters, but not before Avenue had banked a tidy sum.

What we found in crate 7 was evidence that Avenue either purchased the rights to or simply stole the footage of an unfinished movie from Taiwanese independent filmmaker Lee Tso-nam (Mission: Kiss and Kill, The Invincible Kung Fu Legs). Some time around 1978 – the exact date is sadly as lost as the original film – Tso-nam invested much of his own money into a pet project provisionally titled Scorpion Kick vs. Sea Urchin Kung Fu. Starring Cliff Lok (Kung Fu Genius) and legendary superkicker Hwang Jang Lee, the film was never completed, perhaps because co-star and action director Wilson Tong’s (Snake Deadly Act) fanciful sea urchin combat style was bizarre even for a 1970s kung fu film.

At first it seems that Deadly Fist of the Hedgehog is simply going to be a vaguely chopsockey-themed porn movie, as a young man named Chew (Tom Byron, b. Thomas Bryan Taliaferro) seeks out Master Hedgehog (Ron Jeremy, b. Ronald Jeremy Hyatt) and asks to learn kung fu. Master Hedgehog’s unique training regime involves nothing more than having sex with a variety of women, which somehow (the film is not specific) confers great fighting skills on the male participant. Hedgehog demonstrates with his wife (Kay Parker, b. Kay Rebecca Taylor), before breaking an obviously polystyrene ‘brick’ with his erection.

Hedgehog magnanimously allows Chew to ‘practice’ on his daughter (Kristara Barrington, notably the only Asian in the American half of the production), before the film cuts to a fight scene from the Lee Tso-nam footage. Here we begin to appreciate Avenue’s thought process: Cliff Lok is dressed in a spiny costume to represent his sea urchin style, and wears a face mask (Tso-nam’s original script apparently had the Sea Urchin as a mysterious Robin Hood-style vigilante). With Byron’s voice dubbed over the footage, Avenue clearly hoped the audience would believe this was Chew in disguise. And of course I hardly need mention that hedgehogs are spiny, like sea urchins.

As to the fight itself (featuring choreographer Wilson Tong as the antagonist), it’s a well-done affair. For kung fu fans this will be the main area of interest in Deadly Fist of the Hedgehog, particularly as all footage from this production was thought to be lost. Indeed, the only way we were able to identify this footage at all was thanks to the rare still photographs of the urchin costume from David Bordwell’s excellent book, Taiwanese National Identity and Shaolin Invincible Sticks: The Films of Lee Tso-nam.

The film then proceeds in this fashion, fight scenes alternating with sex scenes featuring a couple of familiar faces from the early-80s adult scene, Dorothy LeMay and Crystal Dawn. The final confrontation between Cliff Lok and the main villain, played by Legendary Superkicker Hwang Jang Lee, is intercut with another sex scene so the smut fans don’t get too restless. This final encounter is between Parker and Barrington, who seem unconcerned that they are playing mother and daughter. One may infer that this is a reference to Parker’s ongoing role in the popular incest-themed Taboo series of films.

Avenue’s attempt to cash in on both the kung fu craze and Ron Jeremy’s ‘hedgehog’ persona seems to have made little impact on either smut or chopsockey fans. Perhaps the cuts between the cheap indoor porn footage and the more professional, sweeping outdoor kung fu scenes is simply too jarring. Perhaps it’s because the hastily-applied ‘occidental’ makeup worn by Jeremy and Byron keeps falling off during the sex scenes (the female performers aren’t so adorned). Deadly Fist of the Hedgehog is far from a classic, but as a testament to the ingenuity of Roy Avenue, it has little equal.

NB. despite the title, the film does not contain any scenes of fisting.

Judging from the fashions, cars, locations and a few theater signs, the film seems to have several elements.  The bulk of the film seems to be a foreign film, probably Italian, which sought to cash in on the success of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and appears to be from 1968 or 1969.  Two other elements are used:  softcore inserts taken from a porno of early 1970s vintage, and crime film footage most likely shot in 1972 or 1973 in what appears to be Hartford, Connecticut, as indicated in a few key locations such as the blue dome of the Colt factory.

Jerry (Clifton Brown, Mean Mother) is dating Justine (Daliah Lavi, The Whip and the Body), but her strict Catholic parents (Guiseppe Gerolami of The Tower Shield of Ajax and Albina Mandolini of Never Carry Your Revolver to a Gunfight with Geronimo) object to the color of his skin as well as the fact that he’s a Baptist.  The strange thing is that we never actually see Jerry and Justine in the same frame-clearly Jerry was inserted into the film and only Justine’s stand-in’s head appears with him.  An even more audacious bit of fakery is used for scenes which feature Jerry in frame with Justine-the filmmakers appear to have simply projected the original film and placed cardboard cut-outs of Clifton’s face over the original actor and then filmed the projection.  Most audaciously, at one point Clifton stands in front of the screen and delivers lines.  The effect is jarring and obvious to even the least observant.  Careful study of Italian genre film of the time points to Christopher Lee’s largely forgotten stab at a bedroom farce, Papà, Sono Spiacente Che Ho Preso il Limey al Pranzo! as the source for these scenes!

In the Italian scenes, Justine deceives her parents as to Jerry’s true identity, going so far as to have him appear with his face and hands wrapped in bandages, and sight gags, slapstick and wackiness ensues.  In completely different film stock,  lit and shot in a way that suggests student filmmaking at it’s worse,  new characters inform us that Justine’s father is the head of the Mafia that controls “Harlem” (clearly Hartford in the few street scenes).  Interspresed with the wacky farce we get blaxpo action in the form of Jerry and hs men taking over the father’s rackets and killing indiscriminately, as well as two additional softcore sex scenes of Jerry’s prostitutes, which are barely introduced and taken from an unrelated 1964 softcore film Is That All There Is?

Squaare Assss Dinner represents blaxploitation at it’s worst.  Every character is a horrible stereotype and it’s clearly an outsider (Milardo) trying to give the audience what he thinks they want-Jerry seducing Justine’s “sisters”, poorly mounted violence and racial epithets presented without any redeeming qualities.  Even with footage from at least two other films to choose from we still get some lengthy driving sequences and a five minute montage of a high school dance that’s supposed to be a night club and is shot in 8mm.  The cinematographry is inconsistant and the direction amateurish, at times feeling like a school play filmed with a static camera.  The action is clumsy and sparse, and the dialogue has to be heard to be believed-at one point Jerry tells Justine’s godfather Gino-”I’m gonna take you out and we’ll see who pees spaghetti sauce you I-talian turkey meatball!”  I can only feel sorry for the obviously amateur but enthusiastic actors recruited for the film; exactly how Milardo coerced Clifton Brown into starring is unknown.  The one bright spot in the film is the surprisingly good funk soundtrack provided by the little known and previously believed to be unrecorded Hartford funk band Colt .44, especially the title song and Jerry’s theme.

Milardo is  rumored to have created two endings for the film.  In one he planned to show at showings with a primarily black audience Jerry would win (using an edited version of the original Italian film’s ending-Lee, poking fun at his ghoulish image, accidentally poisons his prospective in-laws and the couple gets married) while for audiences that were primarily white Jerry would get his comeupance, tied to a pole and shot with arrows at the Italian festival’s play of St. Sebastian’s martyrdom.  Exactly how Milardo planned to accomplish this is unknown, but Crate 23 contains neither ending, merely ending with Lee/Jerry serving his in-laws.

The film opens with a fairly stirring shot of what is obviously a model of a spacestation against a still backdrop, but the modelwork itself is still impressive, resembling to a great extent the (in)famous Department of Automobile Roads of Georgia building, albeit festooned with antennae. A caption appears in teletype-style cyrillic; presumably, based on the dialogue, it’s letting us know that this is Solar HQ for the Red Banner Solar Fleet sometime in the early 21st century (subsequent dialogue leads me to believe about 2030).

The camera cuts to the inside of the station, which is perhaps unsurprisingly spacious and immaculate. Dr. Mary Jones, an American scientist, is coming aboard to conduct research, her own government not having any facilities adequate to the task. This is incidentally only the first of many subtle or not-so-subtle indications that the USA is now isolated and by far the poorer cousin to the Soviet-aligned nations of the world—later on in the film, we see a British spacecraft called the Harry Politt—but for all that, the movie’s tone is pretty gentle considering it was made during the height of the Cold War. Jones is greeted bySoviet officer Captain Alekseyev, who informs her that she is very fortunate: an extrasolar object has been detected passing by Pluto, and it is emitting radio signals that seem to be of intelligent origin. She will be on hand to witness humanity’s first contact with alien life. If she likes, Alekseyev will get her a spot on the “large solar rocket cruiser” (presumably an awkward translation of Russian term for a guided missile cruiser) Admiral Yumashev when it heads out to meet the object.

Dr. Jones is of course very interested in getting a seat on the Yumashev, but in exchange she insists that she be permitted to take Alekseyev out for dinner (“this is how it is in my country: you can’t do something for someone unless you get something in return”). What is obviously supposed to be a sort of charming interlude follows, as the two eat an ostensibly romantic meal consisting of various Russian dishes (Jones remarks that several of the food items, including, ironically enough, whole-wheat bread, are virtually unobtainable in the USA). Unfortunately both actors are a little wooden (though this may just my inability to grasp the subtleties of tone in the original Russian, vice the subtitled translations), and the scene goes overly long. That, however, is intentional, as Dr. Jones misses her chance to get aboard the Yumashev before she departs. Alekseyev consoles her by offering her a ride on his own ship, the small and fast “guard ship” (destroyer?) Vdumchivyy, which is acting as a sort of chase plane for the Yumashev.

The next scene is kind of a tour de force for the film; all the dialogue is in voiceover as we see the mammoth cruiser (which dwarfs the station) pull away, followed by the much smaller and sleeker destroyer. It’s clear that a lot of work went into the ships, and their hulls are covered with details like radomes, missile pods, thrusters, and (in a wonderful touch) escape pods swung out on davits, all of which we see as the camera loving pans across the ships’ hulls. It never for a moment looks like they aren’t models, but the craftsmanship is so impressive it’s hard to care.

This is a Soviet film, and in case you’d forgotten that, a large part of the voiceover is just Alekseyev talking about the training process for spaceship crews and how the ships operate. Mercifully this exposition is cut short(ish, it still takes a good ten or fifteen minutes) when the extrasolar object heaves into view. Through the miracle of forced perspective, it’s shown to be enormous in comparison to the Yumashev, and the Soviet hails to the object are greeted by a barrage of projectiles shaped like inverted eggs. They leave little spiralling plumes of smoke behind them as they rocket towards the cruiser, but mercifully, no wires are visible.

Back onboard the Vdumchivyy, Jones and Alekseyev watch in horror as the missiles (which a helpful technician informs us are kinetic weapons) punch holes in the Yumashev‘s hull, an effect achieved by a sort of white aerosol spray coming out of the sides of the model as she slowly rolls onto her side. (Exclaims Alekseyev: “She’s venting atmosphere!”)

Too small to stop the enemy on her own, the Vdumchivyy sends off a contact report (“to the Red Banner Solar Fleet”). Alekseyev, however, is a New Soviet Man, and he runs from no-one. (“We can’t stay, it’s too dangerous,” pleads Dr. Jones as she clings to his arm, but Alekseyev has no time for love.) If his tin can can’t outfight the attacker, he’s going to try and out think them. Evading wildly (accomplished by the simple expedient of shaking the camera and having the actors lurch around), he again tries to contact the extrasolar object. This time, the aliens respond.

The costume design for the aliens was actually pretty clever. They appeared to be encased in a sort of large dome-shaped fibreglass spacesuit with curious bulging protrusions and a ring of arms sticking out around the middle. The effect is a little cheesy, but props to the Russians for at least attempting a nonhuman alien. Anyway, the aliens inform the humans (in another almost interminable stretch of expository dialogue) that “billions of your years ago”, one of their freighters crashed into the earth, seeding it with life. Humankind apparently evolved from a sort of domestic pet, and now the aliens have come back to reclaim their property. They’re not really brooking any arguments, either; the Vdumchivyy has to dodge another fusillade of missiles when Alekseyev objects to being considered property-by-descent.

Dr. Jones is by now terrified. She demands to know what Alekseyev is stalling for; it’s clear to her that he’s just delaying the inevitable. By way of reply, a radar operator suddenly announces that the Red Banner Solar Fleet is now in range and closing fast. Alekseyev triumphantly indicates a viewscreen, and we see an actually quite impressive collection of model starships now bearing down on the extrasolar object and blazing away.

It’s pretty clear that the aliens have gotten more than they bargained for here, but as they try and flee, the Vdumchivyy intercepts them and delivers a blistering salvo at point blank range, causing the extrasolar object to turn into a rather anticlimactic series of pyrotechnics.

The aliens defeated, Jones and Alekseyev share a largely passionless embrace, and then Alekseyev invites Jones out for dinner, jokingly adding that “in my country, there’s no obligation attached, so…only if you want to!” Groan. Roll credits.

It seems, from what I’ve been able to ascertain from the documentation in the file cabinet accompanying Crate 2, that the Russians intended this to be their Star Trek series, a science-fiction franchise which could be marketed overseas and which would display the excellence of Soviet cinema. Obviously, things didn’t really work out.

Apparently, the film proved to be immensely expensive, and less of a hit with Russian audiences than anticipated. It didn’t help that American films like Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back were doing big business overseas, and quite frankly, Red Banner Solar Fleet’s effects can in no way compete with theirs. A good way to describe it would be if you had given very talented men a virtually unlimited budget with which to create the most epic 1970s-era Doctor Who special effects extravaganza they could imagine. Additionally, while Star Wars and Star Trek may not always have the most compelling actors, they can usually be relied upon to toss in a few scenery chewers to keep things at least interesting. Red Banner Solar Fleet’s performances are as sterile as the future it’s striving to evoke.

That being said, I’m sorry there were never sequels. I think once the series got on its feet, it could have produced some eminently watchable films. Word has it that the props are still extant, mouldering in a Volgograd warehouse. Maybe someday some Russian auteur will dig them out and fulfill that promise. A boy can dream…

John Henry Fielding was the son of Isaac Fielding, whose Fields of Screens company produced training films for Chicago’s meat packing industry. After interning at his father’s company over summer vacation, John dropped out of school to work full time. He fell in with the firm’s young lighting technician, Paul Whitestone, and they began using the Fields of Screens equipment and film remnants on weekends to make Big Monster Ruckus. According to the testimony in Whitestone v. Fielding, the movie cost about $4,000 to make — the majority of which went to pizza and train sets.

There is no credit listed for the screenwriter (although both men claimed in court to have written the majority of the script), and there is in fact little credit to give. What dialog exists is purely clumsy exposition, most often in the form of narration. In fact the soundscape is barren. Aside from voices, there is only the stock music played through the opening credits. Even when the promised ruckus begins there is no sound whatsoever. That’s not entirely true, I have to confess. There’s also the occasional pop of the degraded soundtrack.

The film is in remarkably good condition. It shows very little wear, which may mean that it was the copy given to Isaac Fielding in return for the use of equipment. Testimony indicated that only three prints of the film were made, and two were periodically taken to amenable drive-ins for screenings. According to Whitestone, one town made it part of a yearly festival and held costumed wrestling contests.

The story is as follows: some scientists are exploring the island of Nipponia (…yeah…) which seems to be the shoreline of Lake Michigan. We’re told that they are there to follow up on “readings”. As they wander around, we are treated to some forced perspective shots of a guy in an ape suit. When the scientists leave, the “ape” stumbles after them. So much for plot. After that, it’s all ruckus as first the ape rampages over model houses for train sets then is joined inexplicably by a man in robes and a fright mask. After some individual tromping on plastic buildings, they start to wrestle. Shots of stomping in trainyards are interspersed with close shots of an extended slappy-fest. Eventually the guy in the robes runs away, and the ape does a victory lap that ends with punting a moving train.

It’s kind of awesome in its childish directness, although the lack of noises makes it feel as though it’s longer than the 56 minute running time.

In case you’re curious, Whitestone lost his suit against Fielding. The judge ruled that as the only agreement about profits was a verbal arrangement that each man had a copy to do with as he pleased there was no basis for assuming that Fielding should split the take from any given showing. I can only assume that this leaves a sequel in serious doubt.

It’s telling that even sixteen years after he’d made it in six weeks with a small cast almost all related to him by blood or marriage, Creature from the White Lagoon still had some kind of hold on him. If you’ve ever seen it, it’s not hard to see why: Jones’ deft touch cuts through all the pseudo-Blaxpo swagger and bravado and broad satire to craft a sensitive portrayal of a creature adrift in a time it doesn’t belong in.

Unfortunately, while the directing—and even the acting, especially considering the level of experience most cast members had—is ably done, the special effects, such as they are, are terrible. The Creature himself (Maurice Jones Senior, giving a remarkable first—and last—performance) is simply a man with a shaven head in what appears to be a combination of white facepaint and sprinkled flour. The actual lagoon he hails from is never shown. Virtually any scene calling for more action than fisticuffs happens offscreen.

The plot is simple enough: the Creature from the White Lagoon awakens after a slumber “thousands of years in duration”, as a voiceover (ably done by Jones Jr) informs us, and shambles out into the modern world. He finds himself in a typical 1970s-era city (specifically Chicago, although no major landmarks are shown), and despite his clearly freakish appearance, he attempts to blend in with modern society. When the creature’s species roamed the earth, the voiceover tells us, the albinos of the race ruled over the more numerous pigmented members of their species, and naturally the creature, seeing caucasians, believes them to be the ruling class and attempts to rejoin the elite.

A series of misadventures follow. In the most memorable, a housewife (Annette Cartier, who Jones would leave his wife for in 1976) tries to get her henpecked husband (Jack Graham) to KO the creature so the authorities can come to pick it up, but the WASP patrician and the creature instead end up sitting on the porch, drunkenly discussing how the world has slipped through their fingers. Much of the movie is like this; muted and tinged with sadness, but with a strange kind of optimism: the racist world the creature wanders through is dying out, and it knows it, just as the creature knows he will soon die in the modern world’s inhospitable climate. (In a later scene, the creature runs afoul of two racist cops, who mistake it for an African-American albino and hassle it before it beats them up and flees. In a more conventional blaxploitation film, this would precipitate a massive manhunt, but in White Lagoon, the cops shrug resignedly and limp back to their cruiser.)

The print in Crate 5 is in a bad way, and the sound is inaudible in many parts; I was fortunate that a poorly mimeographed copy of the shooting script was included, so that even when there was no audio I could follow along. Even so, I was deeply impressed by this film, a totally atypical blaxploitation film that nonetheless is quietly triumphalistic in its own way: while whites seem to rule everything and are oppressive, Jones seems to say, they even more than their victims are cognizant of the fact that they are no longer in control of the edifices they’ve created. It’s a message made all the more effective by the fact that the villains are neither completely unsympathetic  nor caricatures.

Having now seen four of Bezet’s efforts (including 1975′s Stellar Police Action, and 1980′s Android Hunter), I am impressed with the writer/director/producer’s ability to create films that seem inspired by well-known films to come. His simultaneous fear of and reverence for technology reflects the tensions within Western culture itself. He imbues devices with fantastical power that far surpass rational expectations and invariably cause horrors beyond imagining – which on Bezet’s typical budget usually meant a handful of “teenagers” getting doused in caro syrup.

The hero of Tank Command is Freddy Prescott, played with enthusiasm by Jonathon Tillman (one of the Bezet irregulars). Freddy is a senior in high school and spends a lot a of time playing Tank Command on his Watari system (actually Combat on Atari 2600). This, with typically Bezet illogic, transforms the youth into a tactical genius with the ability to control vehicles with his mind. I confess that I played more Caterpillar than Combat, but I never noticed any comparable effects. Perhaps my console was flawed.

Every adult in Freddy’s life (including a memorable scene with a roller-skating transvestite) gives him an obligatory lecture on how he’s wasting his life playing video games and losing touch with reality. His father gives him an ultimatum: do one useful thing with skills learned from playing Watari games or give up the game system and join the baseball team. We are then shown the shelf of trophies earned by Mr. Prescott in high school. I had a frame copied and enlarged to inspect them, which provided about an hour of entertainment for us in the intern workroom. My favorite was the team trophy for 2nd place in the conference in Girls’s Volleyball. Tim suggested that Bezet just loaded up a box at a pawn shop.

Luckily, Freddy finds a flyer for the Watari Game King Competition at the arcade. Seems that the event will take place in his town, and in only two days! There are top prizes for best score on a number of Watari games, including Tank Command! How lucky! That’ll show pops! What follows is a sequence of shots that details his practice regimen. Close shots on his hands while he works the joystick (stop snickering!), crazy angles of the tanks battling on his 12″ TV, putting a bandage over the blister on his thumb, eating potato chips… It looked pretty much like Saturday to me.

It’s interesting that Freddy’s parents disappear during this time. It demonstrates how spartan Bezet’s productions are that there are never people in scene that don’t speak or serve the plot visually. Even Freddy’s room, while appropriately lived in, is clearly another boy’s room that they took over for a few days of filming. A rather young boy to judge by the small bed and the posters of Sesame Street puppets.

The day of the competition arrives, and Freddy dresses for victory in tight blue shorts and a hockey jersey with the arms ripped off. Need I mention the headband? A rivalry is established with the late introduction into the film of a baseball jock. His name is Buck, although he’s listed as Jock in the credits, and that’s pretty much all there is to him. Buck (Jock) has a throng of female admirers, represented by one suggestively attired woman whose big line comes as Buck (Jock) grabs the joystick. “I wish he’d grab me like that,” she confides to nobody.

Despite the promise of several contests, the entirety of the competition consists of Freddy playing Tank Command against Buck (Jock). The game is played on an enormous 20″ screen, and a crowd of literally three hangs on every move. While Freddy and Buck (Jock) duel with 8-bit tanks, Sado Watari (inventor of the Watari console and owner of the company) observes. He wears thick glasses, uses the word ‘honorable’ a lot (“honorable contestants”, “honorable audience”), and has a French-Canadian accent. Watari waits until the game is tied at 10-10 and springs into action. He taps at his giant calculator watch, a completely different TV than they’d been playing on explodes (with the camera at a safe distance, showing that nobody is within 200 yards of the set), and we are transported to a miniature battle ground where toy tanks maneuver in passable stop-motion.

I’ll be honest. I’m a sucker for stop-motion animation. It doesn’t need to convince me of anything; it just needs to move.

This is Richard Bezet’s strength as a film-maker. Whenever his movies finally get around to the action, he inserts a crazy animated sequence. He revealed in a segment on the local program Manitoba Magazine that he and his friends played a lot of war games with elaborate miniatures. He’d call on their expertise to design and build the elaborate sets for his movies. In this case, they re-created the entire city at 1/100 scale. It’s a beautiful piece of modeling, and it all gets destroyed in the tank battle that follows.

One tank starts blowing up the town. Miniatures tumble and burn. A cut scene shows a close shot of Freddy in darkness with multi-colored lights shining on  him. He drops the exposition that the game has become real and that Buck (Jock) is destroying everything. He decides to leap into action, but he doesn’t know how to operate a “real” tank. As he wishes aloud that he could just make it move forward, the tank lurches forward. Instantly, he’s a pro at manipulating the tank with his desires.

Now for the battle! Freddy misses the enemy tank and destroys the school. He quips “So much for that math test” but decides that he should switch ammunition. His next shot also misses, but it bounces harmlessly off of a few buildings before disappearing. Freddy is pleased with the effect, but then he realizes that his opponent has disappeared. A shell flies right past Freddy’s tank, and he catches a glimpse of the enemy tank before it vanishes again. “He’s in invisible mode!” Freddy cries.

What follows is the sort of idea that probably sounded good in the design stage, raised concerns in filming, set off alarms in editing and got in anyway. A stop-action miniature fight between invisible tanks! For long moments, nothing happens. Then a tank will blip in and out of sight and a shell will destroy a building or bounce around harmlessly for a while. Astoundingly, the flickering shadows in the empty sequences indicate that even though nothing was moving it was still being animated one frame at a time. What were they doing between frames? Did they actually have invisible models?

All good things must come to an end, and so too must stupefying action sequences. Freddy announces that he’s got to make this one count, his tank blips into view, and a shell bounces off several walls before hitting nothing. A flashpot explosion is spliced in, and all is well. Freddy dashes over to see if Buck (Jock) is alright. Instead, he finds Mr. Watari sitting on a charred piece of ground. Watari runs away, and Freddy is about to give chase when Buck (Jock) grabs his shoulder. “Let him run,” he advises. “He can’t hide.” A siren is heard faintly. As the royalty-free music swells, Freddy asks if there’s any room on the baseball team. “I think I’ve had enough of video games,” he confesses.

And so, having saved an unnamed Canadian town from a French-Canadian led Japanese technological incursion with the skills he learned by opposing societal pressure, our hero buckles and does what everyone wanted all along. It’s a Hollywood ending that feels all the the more awkward in a movie made so completely outside the system, but it reflects Bezet’s recurring assertion that we are not ready to wield such power. Far from opposing technology, he ultimately decides that we simply don’t deserve it.