O. C. AND STIGGS (1987)

My name is Mike Watt and I’m here to make a confession: I’m not a fan of Robert Altman. I heard a few cheers above the boos, so at least I know I’m not alone in this cinematic sin. But it is true: the consummate actor’s director makes movies that, save a few exceptions, I cannot get into. Yes, I know; heresy, thereasy, everywhereasy. Sorry but Nashville left me cold, Gosford Park left me cold and hungry and the actors were given so much freedom on The Prairie Home Companion that it was neglect. I will give you Brewster McCloud, The Player and half of M*A*S*H. The half with Robert Duvall, anyway.

There’s one Altman film, however, that I can say with certainty that I’m virtually alone in liking. That one movie is today’s entry, O.C. and Stiggs. In the mid-80s, Altman of all people was approached to make a raunchy teen comedy, ala Private Resort, Porky’s, Private School, etc. After virtually owning the ‘70s but hitting a recent slump with such fare as Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and Popeye, it must have made some sort of sense in the mind of Hollywood to bring this type of project to one of the biggest iconoclasts in the business. Like Ingmar Bergman’s Meatballs or Stanley Kubrick’s The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh.

Based on recurring characters created by Tod Carroll and Ted Mann for the popular “entertainment” magazine National Lampoon, with a script from Mann and Donald Cantrell, the original intention was to tell the story of “the amazingly spectacular and lunatic summer” of the title characters, complete with sleeping around with friends’ moms, driving drunk, skinny dipping with “The Sluts” and terrorizing the Schwab family. The novel-length story that inspired the script dominated one particular issue of Nat. Lampoon and had developed a cult following within and without fans of the magazine. Look again at the above. Perfect material for Altman, right?

Anyway…

Altman, as it turned out, was not a fan of the horny high schooler genre of films but liked the idea of doing a satire of those sorts of things. Stripping away the “asshole” nature of the title characters and focusing on the anarchy, Altman’s vision of O.C. and Stiggs became the story of two best friends who live outside the realm of social graces. Oliver Cromwell Ogilvie (“O.C., it stands for ‘Out of Control’, sez Stiggs) and Mark Stiggs (“I want you to call me Stiggs; it sounds more ridiculous,”) live in a world of their own making. Bored to death in suburban Arizona, they look for original ways to pass the time. One of their primary sources of amusement is in the torture of the “horrible Schwab family”. Patriarch Randall Schwab (Paul Dooley) owns the successful Schwab Insurance Company (“In business for just over 11 years, Misery loves our company”), makes for a typical Altman target: sheltered, nouveau riche, bigoted and tacky. The rest of his family consists of his drunken wife Elinore (Jane Curtain), daughter Lenore (Laura Urstein), who is about to marry their “caddy”, Frankie Tang (Victor Ho), and last and definitely least, Randall Schwab, Jr. (Jon Cryer), with whom they attend school, so they get to torture him there, too (via exploding water fountains and general disdain).

But there is logic behind this laser-focused harassment, as Stiggs tells African President Bongo over the Schwab’s phone. You see, Schwab Sr. cancelled the insurance of O.C.’s demented ex-cop grandfather (Ray Walston), and now he’s going to lose his home and then O.C. will have to go live with hillbilly relatives. This doesn’t sit well with Stiggs because O.C. is his best, and only, friend, for reasons that are clear from the opening moments. The problem with their little vendetta is that Schwab Sr. is barely aware of who they are and has no idea that he’s in a war at all. In Schwab world, all misfortune is caused by foreigners and drug addicts. So when the pair, say, give Schwab Jr. a machine gun at Lenore’s wedding, Schwab Sr. bellows for someone to call the cops and laments at the money already wasted on marrying his daughter to some chink caddy.

This scene contains the funniest exchange in a film rife with funny lines:

Stiggs: “Randall, how would you like to have more fun than you've ever had in your life?”

Randall: “I don't know. I've had a lot of fun. I have Legos, you know.”

When they’re not torturing the Schwabs, they’re figuring out new ways to torture everyone around them. One ingenious idea they have is buying “The Gila Monster”—an enormous and hideous truck with which to terrorize their surroundings. Which leads to the film’s second-funniest exchange with the car dealer:

Stiggs: “Number 1, we want zero miles to the gallon.”

O.C.: “Right. No MPGs. It has to be a vulgarly inefficient mode of transportation.”

Stiggs: “Loud, real loud. It has to generate a terrifyingly seismic field of noise. If we could combine really loud noise with the ugliness of poverty, we'd have the ideal car.”

Stiggs: “...making people think that you're poor, so they know you've got nothing to loose if they crash into your car... Here's a list of places I want this car to be totally unwelcome. Number one: funerals. Number two: affairs of state, you know, real formal ones...ones with...chamber music. Number three: wet golf greens. Number four: the acropolis.”

O.C.: “Ah, yes. Driving this car right in the acropolis should be completely horrifying to every civilized guy on earth.”

As their covert war escalates, Stiggs employs the assistance of a lunatic Vietnam vet played by the quintessential Vietnam Vet-playing-actor, Dennis Hopper. A burned out former-military photographer (sound a wee bit familiar?), who grows acres of marijuana and shares company with an always-armed pilot named Goon and has audible flashbacks during conversations, Sponson is the source of all their mischievous needs. And when the boys are cornered by Schwabs, it’s Sponson who leads the aerial assault on Suburbia. “Where are you, Crazy Boy? All the houses look the same!”

O.C. and Stiggs is sheer elegance in its defiant inelegance. Instead of the intellectual Porkys they’d hoped for, the producers received this manic, stream-of-consciousness tale of hijinx set against a backdrop of adobe and cactus. As is his nature, Altman fills the screen with details and oddball characters (like Stiggs’ mother who, to get into her role for a community theater performance of Cactus Flower, has filled the house with cacti and shapes food into cactil shapes). It’s not all cacophony, however. There’s an under-developed romance between O.C. and a local socialite, Michelle (Cynthia Nixon), that serves as a subplot, as does a skinny-dipping-at-the-Schwabs comedy of errors sidetrip to the home of Pat Coletti (Martin Mull), the Muumuu King.

Like many of Altman’s movies, O.C. and Stiggs is short on characterization and long on bizarre sequences. There are a lot of deus ex machina resolutions to plot threads and an extended performance by King Sunny Ade that never seems to end. O.C.’s romance with Michelle never really goes anywhere, and even after things wind up predictably hunky and/or dory for our protagonists, they continue to plague the clueless Schwabs, which makes more or less sense than in the original magazine story where they harass Schwab Jr. for the duel reasons that “He lives near us and has an enormous head”.

The key to the film is in the performances of the main characters, played by Daniel Jenkins and Neill Barry. Obviously, if you don’t like them, if you find them more obnoxious than endearing, you’re going to hate this movie, which even strident Altman fans did. However, the two wonderboy Merry Pranksters have a certain charm, even if they are indistinguishable from time to time (Stiggs wears sunglasses). And they have an unbreakable bond that gives their relationship gravity. Many modern reviewers have criticized the pair for their “homoerotic” tendencies—skinny dipping together, never appearing apart—but that isn’t apparent, particularly when viewed through ‘80s eyes. They’re inseparable chums because no one else gets them—because they don’t want anyone else to get them. They wear sombreros to the mall precisely because no one else does. Near the end, when Sponson lowers O.C. from the helicopter to Michelle’s window, the occasionally-jealous Stiggs yells out “I love you!” and gets one in return. They feel like a genuine exclamations, summing up the chaos of the day.

At the same time they’re being accused of homoeroticism, the same reviewers accuse them of homophobia, because of the way they stalk and harass two closeted teachers at a Mexican carnival. Yes, what they say seems intolerant today and yes it’s meant to be mean-spirited, but it doesn’t come off as particularly homophobic to me. Instead, it seems to strengthen the idea that these two “don’t-give-a-damns” hone in on the biggest insecurities of their “lessers” and exploit them for fun or for leverage. Combine this cruel trait with some of their sweeter or crazier moments, and they come off as real human teenagers, who are notoriously all of the above and more.

Like most other Altman movies, O.C. and Stiggs feels less like a complete story and more like a voyeuristic snapshot of the lives of disparate people. Nothing is wrapped up neatly because life doesn’t do that either. For better or worse, Altman obviously worked hard to make this fratboy lowbrow comedy into something more than the sum of its parts.

But audiences didn’t like it. After sitting it on a shelf from ’84 to ’87, MGM advertised O.C. and Stiggs as a typical Porky’s knock-off and felt cheated by the indifferent pacing and seemingly random storyline (despite the fact that the majority of the Porky’s-inspired films have similar episodic stories lacking in pacing or characterization). There’s also less nudity or profanity than one would expect from this type of thing. And hardcore Altman fans felt that their master had either flipped out or sold out, even moreso than when faced with Popeye.

So maybe it’s the contrarian in me that likes this particular Altman offering than his others. It sure isn’t because it seemed like Bob cared more about the characters. In fact, on the DVD, he spends more time apologizing for the film than discussing it. That could have something to do with my affection for this underdog as well.

Or maybe it’s because my best friend and I used to wear sombreros to the mall, and terrorized the neighborhood for no particular reason. Whereas I’ve never been to a French fashion show nor ever had anything to do with Lily Tomlin. Everyone needs something they can relate to.

CANNIBAL GIRLS (1973)

I guess I don’t have to tell you this but film fanatics have a mandate to find the most obscure movies they can. It’s like a genetic aberration, not dissimilar to those who haunt antique stores and garage sales. Everyone is looking for their own personal Holy Grail while at the same time keeping their eyes peeled for other gems along the way. For the hardboiled-to-the-core Master Film Geek, the search is for something even deeper: the Pure One. The one movie the Master is convinced only he has ever heard of. This is a delusion held in the very soul of every Film Geek since the beginning of Film Geekdom, whenever you’d like to place that all-important (or not-very-important) epochal genesis. Somewhere, there is a film so rare that even those who made it have not actually seen it. Such is the stuff that generates movie conventions and back-room autograph signings. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary—to be fair, this evidence has only become overwhelming after the invention of the internet—even the Master Uber Evil Overlord of Film Geekery is certain that he and he alone owns, on VHS or Bootleg DVD, the key to Geek Transcendence. The ONE MOVIE that no one has ever heard of.

For many delusional years, Cannibal Girls was my One Movie. Discovered by accident while working at Incredibly Strange Video, during the internet’s fledgling years, I was convinced that I had found the most obscure movie ever made. Since it was a bootleg, its existence was only made privy to the most elite of customers. It was marked with only its title and shelf number, and neither were that inticing. It had never once been rented. In our hastily-scrawled “catalog”, Bruce Lentz, the owner, had written only “weird comedy-horror film directed by Ivan Reitman and starring Eugene Levy” and “Deposit for Rental required.” Well, if that isn’t weapons-grade catnip for the film enthusiast, nothing is. The clear case seemed hermetically sealed, and when I opened it, long-imprisoned air puffed out. It was like opening a little plastic tomb. The plain black video tape. Offering wonders to be explored.

And, of course, after all that mystical bullshit buildup, the actual movie was a bit of a let down.

How could it not be? That’s precisely the reason that the morlocks on the internet stab out “best movie ever? I think NOT!” on listings for Citizen Kane. How could it be? It’s impossible for a mere film to live up to the hype, either borne by decades of praise or merely a few seconds of interior-monologue hyperbole. So back into the shelf it went, and into my memories the viewing was stuffed, tossed among the refuse of other movies I’d watched that day. Still, something about Cannibal Girls still struck me as special. Maybe it wasn’t all I’d built it up to be as I walked it from shelf to in-store VCR, but it was still obscure. Maybe deservedly so, some may argue. Even over the following internet-heavy years, there was still little to learn about Reitman’s embryonic career step. It certainly wasn’t available in any form officially. I had to be one in a mere number of those who had laid eyes upon it.

Until now, thanks to the saints over at Shout! Factory. Recently, they made available on Blu-Ray and DVD my One Movie, complete with extras and the film’s “original” soundtrack. The degraded 35mm image was scrubbed to sparkling. And now Cannibal Girls can finally be seen the way it was intended: by an audience.

Right out of film school, a larvae-stage Ivan Reitman, with his business partner Daniel Goldberg, decided to make a feature-length movie. He browbeat a local equipment warehouse into giving him any unused 35mm equipment, then struck a deal with the processing lab to come aboard as investors in exchange for his fees reduced by 50%. Finally, enlisting the help of many of his friends, in particular two theater-junkies named Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin—he felt sufficiently prepared to make a horror movie. You know, the most commercially-marketable genre around. At the time. In 1972.

Script? Who needs a script when you have talented improvers on your hands. All that was deemed necessary were scene outlines, get everyone from A to B without bumping in to anything. A-to-B in this case: in the quaint and quiet Canadian town of Farmhamville, a local legend has spread about a trio of nubile young lovelies (Anthea, Clarissa, and Leona) who enjoy nothing more than murdering—and then eating—passers-through and other strangers. First, they lure men into lustful security with their naked wiles, then they butcher their prey, devouring some, er, bits, raw and saving the rest to be cooked and served later. They all lived together in the town’s sole stately, comfy bed and breakfast. But since they’re not there any more, here are directions to the place.

All of this bloody exposition is delivered by Mrs. Wainwright (played by wealthy, upper-crust heir to the Jarvis Family fortune May Jarvis, who happened to own the film’s primary location) to young hippie couple, Gloria (Martin) and Clifford (Levy), whose car has unfortunately broken down and need a place to stay. Sent up to this stately bed and breakfast, the young couple meet their host, the suave and tuxedoed Rev. Alex St. John and his three wards, Anthea, Clarissa and Leona.

Of course, there would be no movie if the pair turned tail and caught the next bus, so instead they stay for the night, have a nice meat-based meal, attempt to get it on (if only Gloria would shut up), smoke cigarettes, and await their turn in the being-picked-off department. Because in the meantime, the three usually-naked lunatics are out sexing up and butchering local inhabitants, assisted by their standard-issue mute and inbred caretaker.

The Reverend’s thrall knows no borders, so of course the whole town, more or less, is in on it (six inhabitants, at least), including the local sheriff, who does his share of assisting in the slaughtering of man-flavored livestock.

After a very scary dream Gloria has of sacrificing a bound Cliff to some dark entity, she becomes much more clingy while Clifford grows distant. He doesn’t even take the time to sing her any ear-scraping awful folk songs on his guitar. All he cares about is devouring “steaks” at the various eateries.

Then, a twist occurs, then some circular logic, the possibility of a sequel and scene.

Okay, so… what? So Ivan Reitman, the guy who made Ghostbusters and Meatballs and a bunch of other awesome cornerstones of our childhood, went out and made the same movie that Ted V. Mikels, H.G. Lewis and lesser-knowns have been making for years. And then he turned around and sold it to Sam Arkoff, whose company AIP was infamous for this sort of film. The story and execution of Cannibals Girls was stale at the time and just got staler until it went past its own decomposition and found new life as the plot of countless micro-budgeted movies found on any nook and cranny website. And you just said that it wasn’t very good.

In my defense, I was not alone in that assessment. The first completed cut ran only 65 minutes, leading investors and even the principal filmmakers to say, “It’s too short and it’s not very good.” Opting for reshoots with less gore, Reitman and company begged and borrowed $5,000 and returned to Cannibal Girls and inserted the now-notorious “scissors mutilation” scene, the infamous “pick-axe” scene and the most wonderful “three naked girls eat a guy alive” scene. So there. Now we had that.

Okay, the joy of Cannibal Girls is not the movie itself. Those watching for the crystalline beginnings of Levy’s and Martin’s comic talents will only strain their eyes. Because much of the movie was adlibbed, the dialogue comes off as more natural but that doesn’t make what they’re saying interesting. The closest we get to funny is a daffy Gloria trying to get their car to start by talking nicely to it. And even for true Levy enthusiasts, you’ll be hard-pressed to even recognize him at the film’s start. Instead of Bobby Bittman, we get a Levy who looks more like one of Gilbert Shelton’s Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers (Phineas to be precise), with his face buried beneath a hippie afro, beard and thick glasses. While there is some comedy to be mined from that, it loses its novelty after about half an hour.  

Still, the gore is gory, the sets are nice and Canada is used to a decent purpose (though, while being a part of Canada that landed outside of Toronto, it still just looks like anyone’s backyard in the winter).

When Cannibal Girls was finally released to theaters, Arkoff added a gimmick in the “Warning Bell” (which sounds more like a “horror honk”) to warn viewers that a gore or nude scene is approaching, so one might avert one’s eyes. As dumb as this sounds on paper, it actually works to the movie’s advantage in that it creates suspense out of nothing. It turns a lull or a drag into actual anticipation. So this might have been a genius move on Sam’s part.

But you can overlook so much because of what the movie is. For many struggling independent filmmakers, Cannibal Girls is affirmation that you’re on the right track. No, of course the industry doesn’t work like this any more. You can’t just go out and shoot any piece of crap and hope that Sam Arkoff will rise from the dead and hand you an advance for $50K. What you can best hope for is that you go out and make a piece of crap and Lloyd Kaufman doesn’t punch you after you submit it to Troma.

This was a sell-it-quick movie made by amateurs with little expectation of the outcome. And the man behind it was the guy who made Ghostbusters. Starring two centerpieces from the magnificent SCTV. It’s “the little engine that could” scenario with the best possible outcome. The ultimate message to be gleaned from Cannibal Girls is not “a diet of human flesh will keep you young and beautiful if largely mute”, but “if as cool a director as Ivan Reitman can make a silly little trifle like this and then Ghostbusters and Stripes, and then have his silly little trifle become a highly-sought cult film, maybe there’s hope for the rest of us.”

As mentioned, Shout! Factory released two versions of this little gem, one on straight DVD and one to Blu-Ray (so far this is a Canadian release only) and the transfers on both are more gorgeous than they deserve to be and contain copious extras including an alternate soundtrack with that “warning bell”, which is the version most recommended to watch.

And if, in the end, this is no longer one of your Holy Grails, go back to your list. The thrill, after all, is the hunt.