Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: Abar, the First Black Superman

1977 Blaxploitation sorta-superhero movie

Rating: 4/20 (Fred: 4/20; Josh: 3/20; Ryan: 5/20; Libby: Was not able to finish because she had to explain racism to her 8-year-old son)

Plot: A black doctor experimenting with rabbits moves into a white neighborhood with his family. The white folk don't like it so much and respond like any normal racist would--killing their new neighbors' pet and hanging it at the front door, shouting racist things, attempting to steal their Frisbees, attempted murder. The titular local civil rights leader begins to defend them. Eventually, the doctor perfects his potion and turns Abar into a superhero.

I love movies that are in English but still dubbed. The dubbing makes the guy playing the doctor--J. Walter Smith, who also co-wrote this and then did nothing else at all in the movie biz--seem like an even worse actor than he is, something that I imagine was very difficult to pull off. Tobar Mayo plays the superhero, and I don't know if it's his build or his bald head, but I thought he could have pulled off action star in movies with bigger budgets. He was in Killer of Sheep which is a movie much different than this one although it tries to accomplish some of the same things. And he was "Third Indian" in Escape from New York. This is really inept filmmaking and storytelling. The first hour of the movie focuses, sometimes uncomfortably, on the racism. Director Frank Packard (his only directing credit) plays the Martin Luther King Jr. card early and often, hammering you over the head with the message. Then, the movie shifts gears dramatically, the doctor starts shooting rabbits to show that he's perfected the formula to make rabbits bulletproof, and we get more of the sci-fi superhero nonsense that my Bad Movie cohorts and I wanted for this week's selection. And it is nonsense! Sure, this titular superman can fight, but he's also got these telepathic abilities to turn prostitutes and drug dealers into college graduates, liquor into milk, and purse snatchers into quality citizens. He can also cause giant snakes to materialize. Superman can't do that! It's so goofy, and I think at this stage, the movie's message gets a little muddy. After all, this movie was really focused on the clash between hateful whites and black people minding their own business, not on the problems with black urban youth. The last half hour isn't enough to salvage this and make it an enjoyable bad movie although there is a twist at the end with Frisbee woman that has to be seen to be believed. And there is a misshapen pimp who made me laugh. Tony Rumford plays Dr. Kincade's son, and he's the worst child actor I've seen in a while. This was also his only role. His is a performance that stands out, and trust me, that's difficult in a movie like this. This is an interesting little socially-critical document, but it's not anywhere near a good movie and probably not a very good bad movie either.

What Is It?

2005 movie

Rating: n/r (Mark: n/r)

Plot: A snail murderer wrestles with himself.

According to the credits, "This film has not advocated the assassination of Steven Spielberg in any way."

My brother and I made the trip to Bloomington to see Crispin Glover again. He showed us slideshow versions of eight of his novels, showed this first movie of the "It" trilogy, and then verbosely sort-of answered some questions. He had a beard this time.

I love this man. I really do. I have a feeling that people think I'm just joking around when I go on and on about him, but I think he's a borderline genius and one of the most interesting of Hollywood people. Having said that, his performance in this is about the worst part of the movie. He and his hair (or possibly wig) are distracting, and being distracting in a movie like this is an impressive feat. So what kind of movie is this? It's oddball avant-garde, cheap but fanciful and full of ideas, and a lot of people are going to find it downright offensive. It takes place, from what I can tell, on at least three levels of consciousness, years before Leo and his special effects team did it in Inception. The cast is made up mostly of unintelligible actors who have Down's Syndrome. There are references to Shirley Temple and Nazis, sometimes at the same time. There are cheap puppet shows. One character, the one who tells us that he's Michael Jackson, is in blackface. One scene right after Crispin Glover's character--either Dueling Demi-God Auteur or The Young Inner Psyche and Id since he plays both--floats in with what has to be one of the best special effects I've ever seen features a Cabbage Patch Kid, the playing of a song that uses the no-no n-word and is mostly about how black people smell, and a naked black woman in a monkey mask manually pleasuring Steven C. Stewart, the guy with severe Cerebral Palsy who wrote and starred in the second film of the "It" trilogy. Yep, that's the kind of movie this is, and if you're not in the right place mentally to see any of that, you should stay away. As I've mentioned many times on this blog, I like my avant-garde or experimental films best when they're a little goofy or at least humorous, and I did find parts of this really funny although I stifled laughter because I didn't know how the woman sitting next to me felt about the whole thing. I mean, I already came in with the guy who had smelly hair, so I already had one strike against me.

I can't pretend to know exactly what this is (pun, I guess, intended) or what Glover is wanting to say, but it's a movie that sticks with you and makes you think which is one of the director's intended goals. It's far from a perfect movie and, in fact, appears to have been filmed in Crispin Glover's backyard or basement, but at the same time, it is unique and almost pretty special. My brother and I are refusing to rate the thing because we're a couple sissies. I neglected to ask everybody else in the theater.

By the way, this is now easily at the top of my list of "Best Shirley Temple Movies" right ahead of The Littlest Rebel.

The Brother from Another Planet

1984 urban sci-fi production

Rating: 13/20

Plot: The titular brother, a mute alien, crash lands in Harlem. He tries to adapt despite his inability to speak. Two mysterious men who I think might come from those Matrix movies in black pursue him.

This is far from the 1980s blaxploitation picture that I was expecting. Netflix kept telling me that I would like this one, so I finally said, "Fine, Netflix! I'm starting the damned thing! Are you happy now?" It's a science fiction B-movie with a dopey title, but it's not nearly as goofy as you would expect it to be. There's nothing over the top with the possible exception of the protagonist's toes, and all of the humor is very low key. My favorite scene is a short one where those aforementioned men in black walk into a bar while searching for the brother. I don't know what effect is used, but the film just seems off, like it's filmed backward or something. The men in black move with this lurching motion that is really cool. There are other cool small moments in this, but it really fits more into the "interesting failure" category than anything else. There's some social commentary (character names: The Brother, West Indian Woman, Hispanic Man, Haitian Man, Islamic Man, Korean Shopkeeper) and a lot of no-budget effects. The story's not always interesting, but I did like watching Joe Morton as the title character. He does a great job considering he's not given a single line. In all, I'm glad that Netflix recommended this even though the parts don't quite add up to enough of a whole. If nothing else, it was cool seeing all those early video game machines.