Summer of Nicolas Cage Movie #13: The Ant Bully

2006 animated ant movie

Rating: 9/20 (Emma: 9/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: Poor Lucas is a bullied little kid who takes out his frustrations on a colony of ants in his front yard, squirt-gunning the hell out of them and being generally menacing. Nicolas Cage ant uses a potion to shrink Lucas down to ant size so that he can learn a lesson about teamwork and being nice. As he adapts to ant culture, he has to figure out a way to save the anthill from an exterminator he hired a few days before he started living in it. Oh, snap!

Nicolas Cage, Bruce Campbell, and Ricardo Montalban? And the movie still is barely half as good as the other two CGI-ant movies? Nothing grabs you in this one. The animation is mediocre, the story is predictable, and the protagonist isn't easy to root for. He's really, probably like all children, unlikable. Like so many modern animated classics, this very clumsily attempts to appeal to adults and children, and I don't really see how it would be completely satisfying to either. There are a lot of big little action sequences with a thwomping score that was probably lifted from another animated movie, but all they managed to do was make my eyes hurt a little bit. I got bored with this very quickly. Cage, as expected, does fine voice work, but it was a waste of his time as he could have been working on a sequel to Vampire's Kiss--Vampire's Kiss II: Watch Out, Roaches, Because There's a New Vampire in Town. This is a completely soulless, headache-inducing affair that actually made me want to either a) get the old magnifying glass out and kill some ants myself or b) give the kid a few doors down an atomic wedgie and make him eat grass. Ricardo Montalban, by the way, needs more work. I think I'd rather watch those commercials where he talks about soft Corinthean leather over and over again than watch this movie again.

Spider Baby

1968 creepy comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Also titled The Maddest Story Ever Told, this concerns the Merrye children and their caretaker Bruno. The Merrye children all suffer from the Merrye disease which keeps them in a mentally regressive state. He keeps them away from society in a rickety mansion, and there aren't any problems unless you count the murder of a postman as a problem. One day, some relatives come to check out the place, and Bruno has to try to keep things together.

Saw this title on a "50 worst movies ever made" list, and since I'm working on achieving Bad Movie Aficionado status, I thought I'd check it out. It's disappointing that it's not really a bad movie (that and gems like Manos: The Hands of Fate and The Beast of Yucca Flats not making the top 50 make me trust this list a lot less) but it was still worth watching as one of those examples of a movie that does quite a bit in a very short time and with a very limited budget. It also works as an intentionally funny dark comedy. Note that I typed "intentionally funny" because this isn't one of those movies that is funny because of the filmmaker's ineptitude. Well, Lon Chaney Jr. does play Bruno. His screen presence is typically oafish, like a giant doddering and destructive hobo who's wandered onto the set, crashing into the set and accidentally ruining the picture. I can't tell if his drunkenly unsure "Wallah!" sound he utters when he pulls the lid off a platter of fried rabbit is intentionally comical or just because he's Lon Chaney Jr. and that's what Lon Chaney Jr. does. He does get one of the best lines when he says "How many times have I told you it's not nice to hate?" right before the camera pans to the postman's legs hanging out a window. That postman scene, the opening bit of macabre cartoon nonsense, is nutsy. Following really goofy animated opening credits, you get to watch him stumble around for about five minutes, wondering whether or not anything is actually going to happen in Spider Baby. But by the time he loses an ear, you're hooked. My other favorite moment is this little growl thing that horny Ralph does when he spots a woman. Ralph, the lone Merrye boy, is played by Quinn Redeker (The Young and the Restless), and it's a good, physical performance. The most bizarre thing about these shenanigans is that one of the characters is sporting a Hitler mustache. So this might be the only movie out there where you get to see Hitler kill a spider. Spider Baby has a nice soundtrack, ranging from noodly guitar to avant-garde dinks and donks, and I love the very cool "Itsy Bitsy Spider" variations used during some of the more suspenseful moments. A lot of this (a scene with a cat, the one boy/two girls, the mental regression) reminded me of Dogtooth although it was nowhere near as weird. I can see somebody putting this on a "50 greatest cult classics" list, but it doesn't belong anywhere near a "bad movies" list.

Awakening of the Beast

1970 didactic drug movie

Rating: 20/20 (See: Coffin Joe Movies Get a 20 or He'll Eat Your Face Off Rule)

Plot: Psychologists test the effects of hallucinogenics by monitoring volunteers. Coffin Joe invades their lobes and chaos ensues.

What I learned from this movie because Coffin Joe taught it to me and if I even suggest that he's wrong, I'll end up having my face eaten off: Coffin Joe's world is strange and made up of strange people, but none are more strange than me. That's how he introduced this delightfully messy movie.

I promise this is the last Coffin Joe movie I'll review because I don't know where I'm going to find any more of them. This is the one that halted his career, banned for twenty years, probably because it's perverted and subversive. Also known as Ritual of the Maniacs (I would have guessed Ritual of the Sadists from both the content and the Portuguese on the gruesome poster above), this is sort of like a Brazilian Reefer Madness as directed by somebody really evil. It's almost like a collection of cinematic short stories, each one a sort of cautionary tale about what might happen if you take LSD. In the opener, some creepy men picture a gal naked while a little record player plays a song about war. Then the girl starts stripping and they all watch before unwrapping a chamber pot. They all laugh, and the record reaches its scratchy conclusion.

In the next scene, a pretty girl is taken to an apartment. There's a guy suspended from the ceiling, a guy playing drums (not quite as manic as the piano guy in Reefer Madness), a guitarist lying on the floor, some guys who burst into song. She sees a guy smoking something; another guy starts stripping. Everybody starts snapping at her like they're all beatniks or extras in West Side Story before somebody asks, "Dig it, baby?" She craws through a window and stands with her legs apart on a table while the men take turns putting their heads up her skirt. They circle around her while holding up a finger and first chanting but later whistling "Colonel Bogey March" from Bridge on the River Kwai. They take turns, well, poking her before Jesus walks in and violates her with a long staff. That's what drugs can do to you, kids.

The third scene is much simpler--a guy watches three women remove their brassieres. He smells them, of course. They bend over and he kicks them.

One fantastic mini-story involves a well-to-do woman setting it up so that her black butler and her daughter (I think) get it on. She watches from a hiding spot while snorting cocaine and fiercely petting a pony.

And there's a scene I'm surprised isn't really famous, one that involves the washing of undergarments and a guy with an absurdly bulbous phallic jug.

A lot of the more gruesome scenes near the end, the ones that involve sadism and cannibalism and Marins' Boschian idea of Hell, are a lot of the more memorable scenes in the incoherent compilation Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind. One would guess that they'd make more sense in context, but they really don't. And that's the beauty of Marins and this misogynist acid trip or filthy nightmare or whatever you want to call it. Did I dig it, baby? Yes, I did, Coffin Joe! Yes, I did.

Microcosmos

1996 bug movie

Rating: 17/20 (Jen: 18/20)

Plot: Gnomes, I imagine, use very tiny cameras to record the goings-on of strange and colorful insects, some which I suspect don't really exist.

Has that perverse part of you that you don't want anybody to know about ever wanted to voyeuristically watch a couple snails knockin' coiled shells? Then, stop reading this and grab yourself a copy of Microcosmos immediately. This bug movie doesn't have the narrative structure of the recommended The Besieged Fortress, but it's got a lot more insect variety. It's the sort of thing where you think (a lot), "No, that bug doesn't actually exist. That's computer-animated!" and (a lot more), "What the hell are those bugs even doing?" Bugs are wacky, and this intimate glimpse into their world is an experience and a half. The images dropped my jaw, and several times, insects made it into my mouth while I watched Microcosmos. I suspect it's all part of a tiny conspiracy. It's fantastic stuff, and my only gripe was a theme song (lyrics below) which sounded like it was being sung by a dead child. It was in there three times, and although by the closing credits, I was singing along in a joking way, I was creeped out and couldn't sleep afterward. Hours later, it still reverberated in my noggin, and I had become convinced that I had become possessed by the "The Microcosmos Song" and had to find an exorcist in the yellow pages. That ended up being costly. Terrific movie though, so I guess it was worth it.

"Look at your feet
This funny world
Full of insane small creatures

And listen to
This buzzing chord
Who keenly spreads such keen murmurs.

The sound's buzzing, swarming,
Sliding beetles, snails, and ladybirds

On swarming grubs
On sliding ants.
Open your eyes before you die.

Sit on the grass,
Observe and paint
The toad, the wasp, the dragonfly.

The sound's buzzing, swarming,
Sliding beetles, snails, and ladybirds

On swarming grubs
On sliding ants.
Open your eyes before you die."

This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse

1967 sequel

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Coffin Joe is back to his old tricks after being acquitted of the murders he's accused of committing, the same crimes we got to see him commit in the first movie. He still longs for a son, and kidnaps six women with the hopes that one of them will be perfect enough to help him create the perfect offspring. It's sort of like a Coffin Joe reality show except one that is nowhere near as offensive as the Sarah Palin reality show. He dumps tarantulas on them and allows snakes to attack them. This does nothing for his popularity.

All of a sudden, Coffin Joe's got himself a hunchbacked friend! Bruno! This sequel's not as strong as the first, mostly because Coffin Joe never shuts up. The guy just goes on and on and on. No wonder he's got no friends! I still like his character though, as misanthropic as they come, a guy with a weird spider fetish, and a guy who could really be considered a good role model because he sets a goal and then refuses to give up until that goal is reached. There are some genuinely creepy moments, made creepier by the nothing-budget, but this one doesn't shock as much as At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul. There was one great scene though with a close-up of Coffin Joe coming in for a kiss. If anything in this movie gives me nightmares, it'll be that. After the opening credits--weird sound effects accompanying images of floating bones, hands bursting through soil, and underpants--I had high expectations, but this installment of the Coffin Joe story stutter-stepped a bit too much and never was able to sustain a momentum. Bruno was cool though.

The Wasp Woman

1959 Roger Corman sci-fi monster movie

Rating: 5/20

Plot: Janice Starlin, the owner and face of a cosmetics company, worries about declining profits and her waning beauty. Lucky for her, she meets Dr. Zinthrop at exactly the right time. He's discovered a fountain of youth only its not a fountain at all but a "powerful royal jelly" extracted from wasp jism or something. It works on rats, then on cats, and finally on Janice Starlin. Starlin becomes obsessed with her refound beauty. But are there side effects she doesn't know about? Like turning into a wasp woman and biting people? Oh, snap!

This starts really strong with what seems like a poorly-shot documentary on beekeepers. Yeah, this thing hits you with a barrage of cheapness from shot one and doesn't let up. You get one of those wonderful character-wrestling-with-something-stuffed scenes (a cat, in this instance) that I've grown to love, the same art work hanging on walls in two different settings (an office and an apartment), and one of the goofiest monster costumes you'll ever see. There's a lot of pseudo-technical jibber-jabber that confounded. Most confounding, however, were a pair of scenes where I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on. In one [SPOILER ALERT], the scientist, right after he's been attacked by a stuffed cat, staggers off a sidewalk and gets struck by a car. Why does getting attacked by a cat make a person forget to look both ways before crossing a street? The other scene is when the scientist is showing off his creation to Susan Cabot's character. He injects a rat, puts it in a cage, and then talks for a while so that the audience can't see the rat. When the camera shows the rat again, it's a little bit smaller. Later, it's even smaller. I couldn't figure out what that meant. Does the royal jelly injection lead to youth or dimunitiveness? There are a handful of scenes that make this kind of fun, but a completely maddening soundtrack that makes it almost painful in chunks. It would also be painful to anybody bothered by poor editing and storytelling, of course. And anybody who, like me, is left with a desire to have a sexual encounter with the wasp woman, a desire you know will lead to numerous sleepless nights. Susan Cabot made for an attractive wasp woman. Still, I wouldn't have been able to control my own royal jelly if Sebastian Cabot had starred as the wasp woman.

Horrors of Spider Island

1960 go-go-ploitation movie

Rating: 2/20

Plot: Sleazeball Gary, nightclub manager, hires himself a posse of leggy dancers and hops in a plane to Singapore. Unfortunately, the plane crashes and the group winds up stranded on an island. They find some food, enjoy their time skinny dipping, and struggle to survive. Gary, after wandering into the woods one night, is bitten by a dopey-looking spider and turns into a horrible monster. Will the dancers be rescued before Gary kills them all? Can they survive the horrors of spider island? And is this the worst movie I'll see all year?

I spent the majority of this movie trying to figure out why it was dubbed, very poorly dubbed. The actors and strippers certainly looked like English speakers. Turns out that this was filmed in Germany as Ein Toter hing im Netz, or A Corpse Hangs in the Web. It's also known as It's Hot in Paradise. References to both webs and spider (and horror for that matter) are misleading since there's a single shot with a corpse hanging in a web and not all that much action involving the dude who turns into a murderous spider/man hybrid. But anyway, this certainly shows how low Germany had sunk following WWII. What makes me most angry is that this movie was just a big tease. You saw a lot of leg and a great deal of skin, but nary a nipple. And you saw a spider puppet a couple times and a spider-guy a few more times, but the latter's hairy hand sort of grabbing at victims was about it for the titular horrors. I did dig that dubbing though. You get to hear people pronounce "rations" with a long a-sound, lots of exaggerated sound effects like slurping and moans, and inflection that doesn't come close to matching the moods of the character. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if the characters had better things to say. "Is there anything more wonderful than water?" "A dead man. . .in a huge web." It's not good writing, but at least by the end of the picture, they had figured out what the plot would be. Throw in what has to be one of the worst fight scenes in cinematic history (it ends with a hug) and some special-ed effects (that plane crash was really something) and a jazzy score and you've got yourself a pretty bitchin' movie. Oh, there's a catfight in this one, too, if you're into that sort of thing.

First Men on the Moon

1964 documentary

Rating: 15/20

Plot: International lunar landers touch down at the same exact spot on the moon where they'll find a piece of paper and a withered flag proving that people had actually already visited the moon seventy years before. Back on earth, they visit the elderly and likely cuckoo former writer/amatuer astronaut to get the scoop. The scoop turns out to be really silly!

Here's a movie featuring Ray Harryhausen's effects where the effects don't completely steal the show. The effects you'd see and say, "Oh, that's Harryhausen alright," are even more of a distraction than anything else. At times, the moon beings, anthropoids with bee features, are animated but most of the time they're costumed people. Kind of weird. You also get a skeleton and a pair of monstrous centipede things. With the latter, it's almost like Harryhausen said, "Hey, I still have some time. Let me throw another creature in there." Now, the space effects and the moon atmospherics are impressive. I really like this version of the moon, one that would no doubt annoy the type of person who looks for scientific accuracy in their sci-fi films. I really enjoyed the set design though. This is better acted and written than your typical B-picture, dialogue peppered with some humor and good characterization. Edward Judd and Martha Hyer bust out of what could have been pretty generic roles as a pair of lovers, and Lionel Jeffries is very good as a crazed scientist character, very reminiscent of Back to the Future's Dr. Brown actually. I figured I'd mention him since I'm seeing Back to the Future references everywhere these days. I like the story despite the goofiness (Jeffries' character has created an anti-gravity paste which he applies to a metallic bulb in order to travel to the moon; the characters wear diving outfits for the trip), and it's only a big moment and a much better ending away from being really good. That ending, which just sort of grabs you and jerks you out of the story before throwing a "The End" on the screen, really is a stinker. Definitely worth checking out for fans of Harryhausen, H.G. Wells, and creatively preposterous science fiction movies.

The Incredible Shrinking Man

1957 sci-fi flick

Rating: 16/20

Plot: After being spritzed with insecticide and made sparkly by a cloud of radioactive material, poor Scott Carey notices that he's started shrinking. It's incredible! He fights to remain relevant until an accident forces him to also fight for his survival.

First, I should point out that I gave this a bonus point for a Billy Curtis appearance, my "Little Person of the Year" back in 2008 when I still used the M-word. Midget. He had only a small role (pun absolutely intended!), but he's always good to see. On the surface, this is pretty typical 50s sci-fi nonsense with a little action-packed survival story tossed in. But I'm convinced that The Incredible Shrinking Man is so much more than that, a kind of psychological allegory or a philosophical wet nightmare. All that stuff about dualism at the end, the infinitesimal and the infinite, the closing of circles, an existential nightmare transitioning into a heroic standing-up to infinity, a backhand to Nietzche's withered cheek, a dab of theology, a little bit of Zeno's paradox thrown in. What a closing monologue and last line! Sure, it's reaching, but it succeeds in getting the butter from the popcorn to the brain. There's a thick layer of sticky context here--symbolic spiders and their webs, man's eternal struggle to eat a piece of moldy cake, the nightmarish possibility that you could be devoured by a pussycat, fire and water symbolism. Aside from all that, it's a good movie anyway. There's some bad acting and an oppressive score, although the opening music featuring a trumpet and theremin is really good. The special effects are outstanding. The killer cats and spiders look real and menacing beside poor shrinking Scott. The sets and effects used to create a new world for the titular character are great. The guy did have translucent legs at one point, but the fact that this never really looked all that dopey is impressive. This is from a Richard Matheson story, and its themes of loneliness and figuring out your place in the world connect it with his The Last Man on Earth and its various remakes. This was a pleasant surprise, and anybody given a free copy of The Incredible Shrinking Man should probably watch it.

A Bug's Life

1998 Seven Samurai remake

Rating: 16/20 (Abbey: 19/20)

Plot: Mean grasshoppers threaten a colony of ants after clumsy Flik dumps the food they collected to keep the bullies happy. The lead grasshopper, the cleverly-named Hopper, doubles the order and gives the ants until the last leaf falls to collect. Flik is sent away to find some warrior bugs, but he brings back circus bugs instead. Together, they come up with a plan to rid themselves of their grasshopper enemies.

I love the nod to Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven here although if you count the inarticulate Tuck and Roll, you've actually got nine bugs that come to help the ants. This movie has a little trouble getting started since few of the ants really have any character. The exception would be the protagonist voiced by Kid in the Hall Dave Foley, but even Flik has to grow on you a little bit. Once Flik gets to the big city, the story, as well as the animation and the action, picks up. The circus bugs and P.T. Flea (The Empire Strikes Back's John Ratzenberger, Pixar regular) give the film funk and flavor, and as soon as they're introduced, the puns, some of them very bad, start flying so rapidly that you'll wish you had a fly swatter. There are three terrific action sequences in this although the climactic battle scene that takes place at night might be a little too intense. A Bug's Life is a funny movie, but, uncharacteristically for Pixar movies, a few of the jokes are a little on the cheap side. Still, A Bug's Life is stuffed with creative ideas, fun characters (Kevin Spacey's Hopper is a great villain), lively Randy Newman (of "Short People" fame) music, and terrific animation. I also really appreciate the messages behind the cute little bug story. There are lessons about noncomformity, the power of the imagination, facing up to bullies, and reaching goals despite your size. I'll always have enough of a sweet spot for Toy Story to love it a little more than this one, but it's hard to watch this and not think of it as a step up for Pixar.