Invasion of the Blood Farmers

The New Beverly remains quite possibly the only fully-functioning revivial theater in Los Angeles. How can a city with as many people involved in film as LA have only one theater dedicated to showing cheap double-features of movie classics?

I mean, the Egyptian has all kinds of screenings and special programs, but it's not really like a cheap revivial house. Plus, they show all kinds of new movies (such as the recent advance screening of Steamboy held there, reviewed by my co-worker and fellow blogger Ari).

But the New Bev just shows old movies, at $6 per double-feature. It's a pretty amazing deal, made all the better when you consider line-ups like Scarface with Carlito's Way, or Infernal Affairs with Chungking Express, or Brazil with Twelve Monkeys.

My favorite event at the New Beverly remains the monthy Grindhouse Night, hosted by Eric Caiden of Hollywood Book and Poster and, until recently, Johnny Legend, who has since retired to Florida. Check out a small online article about the event here, featuring some very appealing photos of local favorite Dukie Flyswatter.

Interesting trivia note about Johnny Legend: he directed the famed Andy Kaufman mock-umentary My Breakfast with Blassie as well as 70's grindhouse classic Young Hot 'N' Nasty Teenage Cruisers.

Second interesting trivia note about Johnny Legend: he's the brother of Lynn Margulies, ex-wife of Andy Kaufman, portrayed in the film Man on the Moon by Courtney Love.

I've met Ms. Margulies at a few LA film events, and she's very friendly and approachable, but have never gathered the courage to ask her a certain question...How does it make you feel when they cast Courtney Love to play you in a movie? Offended? Proud? It definitely says something about the way people see you, and it may not be entirely positive.

Anyway, I've gotten sidetracked. I was going to talk about the first film of tonight's double-feature, Ed Adlum's 1972 low-budget disaster Invasion of the Blood Farmers. Adlum appeared at the screening in person to introduce the film, and began by warning us that it isn't any good. He refrained from using the word "sucks," but only at the behest of his wife. He shared with us his opinion on camp - that no one can intentionally create camp, and it only happens when artists behave with the utmost sincerity.

Blood Farmers was made over the course of three weekends on a budget of $24,000. And you can tell. It's obscenely amateurish, a no-frills attempt to provide mild gore at minimal expense. The incredibly thin story of an ancient race in need of a human sacrifice in order to survive suffers from some of the most atrocious acting ever to grace the silver screen, particularly stage actor Norman Kelley.

As Adlum explained before the show, Kelley was a well-regarded theatrical actor with no film experience. This becomes painfully obvious every time he opens his mouth or attempts to emote. The guy constantly aims for the rafters on every line, regardless of the fact that he's in a movie and there are no rafters. So, a quick shot of him picking up the telephone to say, "Hello, dear" instead becomes an ungainly, exaggerated pantomime, capped off with an entirely overzealous reading of the line, rendering the simple sentiment into something more consequential than, say, the Apollo Moon Landing.

In typical low-budget exploitation style, as well, the movie drifts aimlessly from set piece to set piece. So, we get a brief, stacatto sequence of a newlywed couple being butchered and drained of their blood, followed by a long, labored take of a man standing in a laboratory swirling blood around with a beaker.

So, the movie's awful, right? Absolutely horrendous. One of the worst things I've ever seen. So why is it so much fun? Why do I keep going back month after month to see films like Invasion of the Blood Farmers, Night of the Bloody Apes, The Candy-Snatchers and Simon, King of the Witches (that last one was part of a double feature with a film called Calendar Girls, about a man methodically killing all the models appearing in a single Playboy Issue...this is a plot begging to be remade into a big, stylish Hollywood thriller...Turge, call me.)

The answer is in their innocence. These are films desperate to make an impression on you. They have no budget, they have limited marketing, and in most cases, the filmmakers have no experience. They're not going to compete with Polanski, Scorsese or Kubrick. These are guys who wanted to make cheap movies, get them out into a few small theaters on 42nd Street or some cheapo Hollywood Blvd. screening room and make some kind of a name for themselves.

So, they stoop. They stoop as low as they can go, filling the films with gratuitous violence, lame jokes and constant, unneccessary nudity. But in their desperation to undermine morality, to violate taboos, they usually wind up seeming rather mild.

For example, there's a film called Mantis in Lace, in which a stripper lures men back to a scummy alley, makes them think she's going to have sex with them, and then brutally stabs them to death. Half of the film consists of nude or partially nude belly dancing. In 1968, it's leering cinematography and psychedelic freak-out murder sequences might have seemed a bit daring or controversial, but I kind of doubt it. Now, the film is downright quaint. But it thinks it's being nervy, underground and titillating, and that's where a lot of the pleasure is derived.

When a mainstream Hollywood movie's bad, you know the filmmakers had every opportunity to get it right. Rob Cohen has no excuse for making XXX, a movie that's not just awful but hideously boring. Say what you will about the overall quality of something like Invasion of the Blood Farmers, but it was made by guys who were hungry. They may not have known what they were doing, but they were committed to doing something, to getting your attention in any way possible.

Now, there are truly vile grindhouse films that really do shock and disturb audiences. We saw a trailer tonight for an old film called Scum of the Earth, in which a family proclaimed to be "Poor White Trash" finds themselves stalked and murdered by an axe-wielding maniac. The film appears to be crammed wall-to-wall with racism, stereotypes, grisly death and mayhem, and I'm not suggesting it's neccessarily quaint. These are films that exist in a separate category - some of them can be fun as well, but in a different way. They're about how far the filmmakers are willing to push the envelope, how far outside of the bounds of good taste they're willing to go.

That's not Invasion of the Blood Farmers. It's disturbing, but only because it thinks it's disturbing. It's actually quite silly and delightful. It's nice that the filmmaker has enough confidence and panache to show up to the screening. He gets the joke, and that's really cool.