9/09/05 Quentin Tarantino Festival - Day 1 - Secret Agent Night
I showed up at the Alamo Drafthouse about 30 minutes before the doors were scheduled to open and began talking to people in line around me. Some were here (like myself) for the first time. Others were QT Fest veterans. Everyone seemed excited. About 20 feet ahead of me in line I noticed a tall guy with Sideshow Bob hair. A few minutes later Sideshow Bob turned around and I found out it was acutally Adam Duritz. The cool think was, he was lined up with the rest of us movie lovers, no different than anyone else. Nobody was hassling him, because at that moment he wasn't a famous musician... he was just a guy who loved movies.
That's what makes QT Festivals different. Sure, you may run into the occasional celebrity or two, but it doesn't matter. If you're there, you're there for the movies pure and simple. I was about to begin a 9 day movie overload and I was excited as hell.
The Spy With My Face (1965)
Tarantino shows up onstage around 8:20. "Alright Austin... where were we??" The crowd erupts with laughter, and Quentin launches into his first introduction. There's no real way to communicate this guy's enthusiasm for film, so I'll just say that if you ever get a chance to hear him talk... don't miss it. He starts telling us about this movie, then gets sidetracked telling other stories about the actors' or directors' other projects... each introduction is like a cinematic free-association test, run by a guy who has seen every movie in the world.
This film was the first of a double feature of spy movies, each starring Robert Vaughn. Apparently this movie was originally a two-part episode of the popular TV series The Man from UNCLE. Tarantino informed us that the show was so popular they would literally take two episodes from the previous season, film a few more minutes of plot, then release it in the theaters. Tarantino said he was tempted to do that with the 2-part CSI episode he did last year, but ultimately decided against it. Lots of laughter about that.
Before the movie started we got several trailers:
Fastest Gun in the West - An old west gunslinger movie staring a very old Roy Orbison. It was billed as Orbison's first film appearance, and I've got to believe it was probably his last. Lots of laughter everytime Orbison whipped out his guitar/gun hybrid.
Who? - A cool spy thriller starring Elliot Gould. It features a US spy who was captured by Russians, given a mole-man looking silver face, and returned to the US. Our agents aren't sure if he is the actual US spy, or an imposter. I've got to track this movie down, because the silver mask they give this guy is simply ridiculous.
Putney Swope - I've seen this trailer before and it's one of my favorite. Its basically a black guy and a white girl singing this really sweet sounding song about giving each other soul kisses, dry humping, and pimple cream. It tells you nothing about the movie, but is funny as hell.
The Silencers - We got about 5 seconds of this trailer, another secret agent movie starring Dean Martin, but it got cut off. Scattered boos, because the trailer looked pretty cool, but then the movie started.
I liked this movie a lot, despite never having seen any of the Man from UNCLE series. Vaughn plays Napoleon Solo, a top agent for UNCLE who is constantly battling against the evil THRUSH organization. Napoleon is the quintessential smooth secret agent. He scores with about a half dozen different girls in this movie. One of Napoleon's fellow agents explains that Napoleon is conditioned to grab and kiss any girl he sees, while the rest of us are cursed to think and plan.
In this movie, THRUSH has altered one of their agents to look just like Napoleon. They manage to kidnap Napoleon and insert the duplicate just as Napoleon is scheduled to go on a mission to ensure the safety of Project Earth Save, a device with immeasurable powers. Obviously such a device cannot be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. Will Napoleon be able to free himself before it's too late? Will the other UNCLE agents detect the enemy in their midst before allowing him access to the most powerful weapon of all time? Since there were 5-6 other UNCLE movies after this one, it's a safe bet things turn out all right.
I liked this movie quite a bit. There was a lot of very funny moments... some unintentional as a result of the shoddy looking MGM sets. Very fun movie from a series that is less campy than Batman or Get Smart, but not as serious than shows like Dragnet.
Venetian Affair (1967)
More trailers:
The Silencers - Ok, looks like they got it fixed. Very silly-looking movie, with Dean Martin hamming it up left and right. That guy was a pimp. He also has a secretary with the best name ever - Lovey Cravesit.
Rider on the Rain - A cool looking Charles Bronson spy movie. That's about it.
Scorchy - Another funny trailer about a female super spy, played by Connie Stevens. The tagline had be chuckling: "She's Killed A Man, Been Shot At, And Made Love Twice Already This Evening... And The Evening Isn't Over Yet!" On to the movie.
Ok... Tarantino descibed this as a lost movie. He has never talked to anyone else who owns a print of it, or anyone else who has seen it. He's pretty excited to show it to us, and I'm pretty psyched to see it.
He describes Vaughn's character in this movie as the anti-Napoleon, and he was right. In this movie Vaughn plays a drunk employee of a Wire Service who used to work as a spy before he was laid off. He's a complete loser in this film, and after seeing him sleep with every girl he met in The Spy With My Face, it was hilarious to watch him get rejected time and time again.
Vaughn just happens to be at the right place at the right time, and gets involved with a murder case. He does his best to figure things out, but for most of the movie he is truly outmached. Ed Asner as the hard-as-nails CIA chief was my favorite thing about this movie. No idea Asner could be such a bad-ass. Boris Karloff also had a small role in this film, one his last before he died.
Good stuff, but I'll be honest... I had no idea what was going on most of the time. I had only had 2 or 3 beers at this point, so it wasn't the alcohol. I've never been too good with keeping track of a dozen foreign sounding names, so maybe that was my problem. Oh well, I enjoyed it based on the strength of Vaughn & Asner alone.
Shame of the Jungle (1967)
The final film of the evening wasn't a spy movie. Nope, it was a really fucking filthy cartoon, and it was my favorite movie of the night. Tarantino told us that nowadays you may get sexy movies, or erotic movies, or titilating movies... but you very rarely get filthy movies anymore. After seeing Shame of the Jungle, I can't really argue with him. It is the filthiest movie I've seen is a long while, which is extra suprising considering it's an animated movie. But first... trailers:
Atari 2600 Starmaster Commercial - That was odd... not really sure why that was included. Old video game commercials are always good for a laugh though.
Tarzan & the Jungle Boy - You know, these old Man/Boy jungle movies really don't age well. Just can't get past all the damn pedophelia overtones. Ah, well.
Clip From Kentucky Fried Movie - At least, I'm pretty sure that's what this was. It was a clip of a Krakatoan (sp?) wedding...basically a bunch of veiled masturbating and dirty talking. Pretty funny. Movie time.
Shame of the Jungle was originally known as Tarzoon, Shame of the Jungle, an obvious parody of the Tarzan franchise. They even got Johnny Weissmuller Jr., the son of the most famous Tarzan of all time to play the part of Tarzoon. Unfortunately, the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs wasn't too thrilled with the liberties taken with his characters. They threatened to sue, so the filmmakers of Tarzoon had to figure out how to release the movie they had already made without getting sued.
Their solution was both brilliant and absurd. First, they struck the name Tarzoon from the title. Seems like a no-brainer. Then, instead of just redubbing the name of the character, they took every instance of Tarzoon's name being utterred... and reversed it. Yup, they literally cut the 1 second sound clip, flipped it, and stuck it back into place.
As a result, all of the characters run around looking for Noozrat. Except flipped dialogue never sounds clean, so you basically just hear scrambled garbage. At the end, when Tarzoon comes home to an adoring crowd, the animators just drew black boxes over the signs the crowd carried welcoming Tarzoon back. Insane. It's rumored that this is where Tarantino got the idea for bleeping out the Bride's name in Kill Bill, but I didn't get a chance to ask him about that. I'll keep you posted.
And what about the filth you ask? This is a movie that, at it's most basic, is the story of a man (Tarzoon) trying to rescue his kidnapped bride (June). Only June has been kidnapped by a giant Phallus Army so that the evil, bald, and 14-titted queen can use Joan's hair to make a wig. And Tarzoon is captured by an army of miniature Tazmanian-devil-esque creatures known as Mole Men, but then rescued by an alcoholic hippie with a flying carpet voiced by John Belushi. The movie opens with one mosquito donkey punching another mosquito, then goes to a fake-out of a gorilla masturbating, then to a depiction of the African Bush country as a giant vagina, then soon to the aforementioned Phallus Army.
And the gross-out scenes go on and on like that from one really funny sequence to the next. June is almost always naked and Tarzoon's loincloth continually falls off. At one point his monkey sidekick uses Tarzoon's schlong at a vine to go swinging through the jungle. It's safe to say they don't make movies like this anymore.
You may be asking just what a Phallus Army is. Well, as the movie shows, it's quite simple to make your own. Simply stuff a human baby into a jar that contains only a tiny hole towards the bottom. Then, apply enough pressure that the baby's tiny penis starts to get stuffed out the hole in the jar. Once that begins, increase the pressure until the baby's penis is gigantic... much larger than the baby itself. Then, whip out an axe, chop off the baby's penis, and you've got the first member of your Phallus Army. Feel free to create an assembly line if you want more than one... you don't want to have to do all that baby penis chopping by hand, do you?
In all, a great start to the festival. The first two films felt like warm-ups for the week, and those that stuck around for the midnight movie were amply rewarded. Come back tomorrow for my coverage of the all-night 80's Horror Movie Marathon. I've got my misgivings about spending all night watching 80's movies (which generally aren't my thing), but they're horror and I trust that Tarantino has managed to find a few gems. Plus the first movie of the night is Psycho II, and I'm dying to see why he chose that one. See you tomorrow!
- Micah
