Hey Girl. Hauer You Doin’?: Spetters (1980)

It’s Wednesday, and that means another edition of the hunkiest feature ever to grace the Lair, Hey Girl. Hauer You Doin’? This time we get into the way back machine with Rutger (and his pal Paul Verhoeven) for their breakthrough film, Spetters. This is a film that’s got everything, drama, violence, sports, comedy, tragedy, and a surprising amount of full frontal male nudity. If that doesn’t get you intrigued, then how about this. Remember ’Hunks’. People used to say that, and not just on TV or in movies, I was there. I heard it. Not to sound like Andy Rooney, but when did that stop? At any rate, imagine my delight when I found out that Spetters roughly translated means hunks. While the idea behind the title might make images of super buff dudes oiled up around a pool,  the Dutch had another idea in mind. These hunks invoked images of another tormented group of teen boys, The Outsiders. So if you’ve ever wanted a teen drama with 100% more wooden shoes than you’ve ever seen in a film, then rev up your engines cause this if for you.

Shredder (2003) And You Thought He Only Hated Turtles

Before I get into today’s snowboarding slasher, I want to say that I have no ability when it comes to winter sports at all. My knowledge of snowboarding is limited to The Olympics (where it continues to puzzle me how it got in but not skateboarding), Shawn White commercials, and the game Cool Boarders that I used to have on the Playstation. So don’t expect this review to be popping with snowboarding lingo. That’s mostly because I tried and couldn’t figure out what context the words are used. Snowboarding always looks like a bad idea to me as does skiing, but I’m nothing if not an equal opportunity wuss. To me, it appears that you strap a 2 by 4 to your feet, hurl yourself down a mountain waiting for a tree to appear in front of you or a cliff you didn’t see to appear, and then, as you relax and take in the mountain locales, death ensues. For the borders in today’s film, Shredder, they don’t have to waste their time waiting for nature to cull them out because someone is more than happy to do it for them. .

Shredder starts off like they were running down a checklist of things they had to do in a slasher movie. First up, a car full of kids headed out for an abandoned ski lodge. Then, the group takes in a stranger, Christian, who is from the vaguely stated “Europe”. After that make sure you head into town to meet the locals and get warned off from where you’re staying when the creepy bartender recounts the tale of when some little girl was killed on the mountain (cue dramatic pause) by snowboarders. After that all you have to do is split up and get yourselves picked off by a merciless skier dressed head to toe in black. It probably wouldn’t come as a surprise there’s not much imaginative plotting in Shredder, but what might surprise you is while the plot was standard, the characters are actually interesting, well scripted, believable, and at times actually funny (though the film does insert a fair amount of strange gallows humor).

Having characters I actually liked in a film where the plot was spelled out like it was being dragged across the sky on an aerial banner, made for interesting viewing. It was easy to predict who might live and die, but unlike the cast of so many slashers, I actually got into it yelling at the characters to not take their next and very obvious step. I watched expecting it to be a silly, stupid, z-grade mess, but director Greg Huson, who wrote the script with Craig Carson, really pulls though by mixing the expected along with a cast of very non-standard characters. Working with cinematographer Charles Schner (2009 Alfred Hitchcock remake The Lodger, Life on Mars), the powdery snow of the pristine mountains comes off less bright and attractive than cold and desolate. Now with all this being said, I have to backtrack a bit. While I enjoyed Shredder more than I expected (as you will see from my grade), I also felt that it had a lot of needless exposition, perhaps one or two extraneous characters, and a good deal of padding in the form of people snowboarding around. However, being as it is the first (and only) horror outing from Huson, he did an above average job making the silly snowboarding content work in a slasher.

I’ve talked about how much I liked the characters without getting into specifics, but I have to call a few of these actors out. Saved by the Bell: The Next Generation’s Lindsey McKeon follows in fellow Bell alum Elizabeth Berkley's footsteps by showing her goods, but her main addition to the film is the pitch perfect portrayal of spoiled rich tramp Kimberley Van Arx. Like a lot of the characters, she seems like a bigger, more ‘90’s version of a stock ‘80’s movie character, but scenes such as when she’s going around their cabin filling her hands up with anything she can to fend off attackers, a frying pan, a fire poker, and a cheese grater, elicit enough laughs or character to shock these roles out of being stock. Billy O’Sullivan entertains (and drops quite a few movie references) as Skyler, the documentary film maker following Kirk (Peter Riggs) the stoner second best snowboarder in the world, and Brad Hawkins, former star of kid’s program V.R. Troopers, provides a great red herring as the “European” Christen. The real standout to me was Juleah Weikel as Pike. Often mislabeled as Pike the Dyke by her snowboarding friends, she nails the most interesting and dynamic character in the film. Plus it doesn‘t hurt that she was super cute.

As with any slasher the two main ingredients that have to really work to make the film good are the killer and the kills. While it was a nice bonus that I liked and was entertained by the characters in Shredder, I have liked plenty of slashers where I could have given less than a crap if my “heroes” lived or died. The killer really doesn’t make much of an impression. Until the very end of the film he has no lines, so we’re just talking your basic killer in black…..with skis naturally. However, I have to like his methods. Getting killed with an icicle, hung on the ski lift, and impaled with a skiing pole are just some of the fun ways to go in Shredder. Though it is the least messy, I really have to applaud the filmmakers for the ski life scene. They manage to make it scary, then morbidly funny, before making it chillingly scary again, and that is no easy feat.

That dichotomy of the horroriffic and the humorous playing against each other is a lot of what works in Shredder, but I would be hesitant to call it a horror comedy as it doesn’t have enough jokes to push it all the way into that category. Shredder really defied my expectations. I was totally expecting to be eviscerating the film to comic effect by now, and nothing surprises me more right now than actually recommending it to you folks. It will not be the best slasher you’ve ever seen, but whatever you expect it to be, even after reading this review, is probably not going to be what you get. So go be bitchin’ or gnarly or whatever the kids are saying these days, and check this one out. As for me I’m going to remain off the slopes, there’s plenty of ways for me to mess up and die in day to day life. I don’t need snow, a mountain, or and evil skier to help me out with that!

Bugg Rating

Kansas City Bomber (1972): Raquel Welch and Roller Derby. Need I Say More?

Before we get into the post today, I want to thank B-Sol for having me on his new podcast Conversations in the Dark. Go on over to the Vault of Horror and check out the podcast to hear what happens when B-Sol meets the B-ugg to talk about upcoming releases. Of course, check it out after this installment of Beautiful Ladies of Genre.

The seventies were a magical time. The idea that originated in the sixties, that anything was possible, seemed to be coming true. Unfortunately, it mainly focused its power on messed up stuff. Take for example roller derby. Nowadays, when the sport comes up all you see is tattooed, rockabilly/punk girls skating under names like Eva Destruction, but at one time roller derby’s stock was up. In 1972, franchises were being set up, televised bouts of both male and female teams were popping up on network television, and roller derby was becoming big business. Naturally, someone had to make a film. A gritty look into the world of professional roller derby, and who better to play the lead role in Kansas City Bomber than one of the hottest ladies that the seventies could offer, Raquel Welch.

Ms. Welch stars as K.C. Carr, a star skater of the Kansas City team, but K.C. is traded off after she catches the attention of Portland based derby promoter Burt Henry (Kevin McCarthy). He sees star potential in K.C, but this doesn’t sit too well with the rest of the Portland Loggers. Current star skater Jackie Burdett (Helena Kallianiotes) definitely takes a disliking to K.C., and Jackie retreats into constant drinking while K.C. takes her place. Trying to juggle her job, her friends, her two kids, and the expectations of her corporate stooge boyfriend, K.C. struggles to keep her life together and be the best and baddest on eight wheels.

Kansas City Bomber is simply enough a mash-up of melodrama and roller derby, and despite what you might expect, it actually works pretty well. I’ve always really liked Raquel Welch’s acting. Not only is she exceedingly beautiful to look at, she also has turned in some great performances in films like Myra Breckinridge and 1969’s 100 Rifles. Her performance as K.C. Carr is really the glue that holds the narrative and the spliced in skating action together. I will have to say that there is precious little of the skating performed by the actress. She makes up for athletic feats with a sensitive performance of a woman trying to find her way in a literally violent world. Welch comes off as strong, independent, and little out of control, and this performance should have silenced critics of her acting.

The critics had another darling in mind to laud though. Helena Kallianiotes really brings the alcoholic, bitter, haggard Jackie Burdett to life, and while she was nominated for a Golden Globe for the performance, I thought it was rather one note. She does have an awesome look, and it’s a long way from her debut performance as a belly dancer in the Monkees’ film Head. The other performance that deserves a mention is Norman Alden as Horrible Hank Hopkins, a simpleton skater that is constantly the target of abuse. Alden doesn’t go too far over the top (at least not until his story concludes), and his shy flirtation with Welch’s character actually brings about an emotional conclusion that could easily ended up a hamfisted mess.

For all these good performances, one of the best things to see is the roller derby footage. Looking into this film, I saw some mentions of members of the team being actual players, and the action on the track is sometimes great to see. I actually did not realize that there were men’s roller derby teams, but I still think the ladies are much fiercer and fun to watch on the track. Seeing both the skating, and the crowds that they assembled to watch the events, really put you into the wayback machine for a look at middle America rather than the gritty cities that dominated seventies cinema. Roller derby itself is portrayed as the dangerous violent sport that it can be, but it also worked in the personality and spectacle of a professional wrestling event.

Kansas City Bomber is no classic example of how to shoot a movie, but it does have a grit to it that is enhanced by the seedy underbelly of the roller derby business. Director Jerrold Freedman mostly worked in television, and while he made several TV films, he only made two more features, 1980’s Borderline with Charles Bronson and 1986’s Native Son with, um, Matt Dillon and Oprah. So, Freedman never made it big, but Kansas City Bomber deserves to be remembered. This would have been an absolute classic to see at a drive in, but even now, it stands up beyond its reputation as an oddity.

If you like good looking girls on skates, seventies cinema, Raquel Welch, the guy who was the bad guy in UHF, or seeing what Midwestern hicks looked like thirty seven years ago, then this is the perfect film for you. It was nearly the perfect film for me, but it got bogged down by the melodrama and lacked any kind of lighter side of the story to keep it from being a bummer. The combination of all the elements that are there do deliver more than I expected, and I had some hope for this one going in. If you only see one movie about roller derby, do you really want it to be Whip It? I say you take a pass on that one and go back to when the derby was skating its way to the top.

Bugg Rating

This trailer is looking pretty rough, but I kind of liked that. The second video down is a song by folkie Phil Ochs which was intended for this film, but never used.