An Incredible Petrified Movie

THE INCREDIBLE PETRIFIED WORLD: An Incredible Petrified Movie.
By Steve Stones

This is certainly not Jerry Warren’s worst effort, but it’s also not his best. I give my vote to Warren’s Man Beast as his best. Like all his films, it suffers greatly in budget and runs short in length. It helps that veteran actor John Carradine is cast in the film, and Robert Clarke, star of The Hideous Sun Demon and The Astounding She-Monster. Carradine was known as one of the busiest and hardest working actors in the entertainment industry. Somehow he was able to squeeze this turkey into his busy schedule.

Although the film has an interesting plot, it is full of unintentional humor as a result of its hampered budget. For example, oceanographer Carradine launches a diving bell from his boat near the Florida Keys. The bell contains four ocean explorers who are former students of Carradine’s. As the bell is launched, it’s obvious that the bell is too small to hold a five-year-old child comfortably, let alone four grown adults who are supposed to be inside the bell. When the bell breaks from the chain that connects it to the boat, the four explorers leave the bell in scuba gear. The bell is so small that the divers have to pretend as if they are leaving the top of the bell, but actually they are swimming up from behind it. A much larger diving bell should have been
used.

Another ridiculous scene shows Robert Clarke inside the bell dressed in his scuba gear sharpening the ends of three spears by rubbing them on the top of the radio gear. The spears are to be used to hunt for fish. Anyone who was ever a Boy Scout knows that the only way to sharpen something is to use a sharpening stone, or to carve a sharp point on the end with a pocketknife. Why Clarke is using the top of the radio gear to sharpen the spears is a bit odd, yet funny and typical of a low budget movie.

Seeing the lovely Phyllis Coates run around inside the underground ocean caverns in high heels is also very ridiculous, yet adds some unintentional humor to the film. Coates is best know as the panther girl in the 1950s serial Panther Girl of The Congo, and as Lois Lane in the 1950s Superman TV show. It’s unfortunate that Coates is not running around in her sexy panther girl outfit for this film. It would add greater interest to the film, especially for male viewers.

A question that always enters my mind every time I’ve seen this film is: If the divers have the ability to leave the diving bell after it breaks from the chain connected to the boat, why don’t they just swim to the top to get help? Why go through the effort of swimming to some underground caverns in the ocean only to be stranded for a longer period of time? This is a part of the plot that doesn’t make any sense to me.

The divers eventually encounter a man in the caverns who has been stranded there for fourteen years. He wears a phony wig and beard, and is dressed like a caveman. In Michael J. Weldon’s book The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, Weldon identifies John Carradine as the actor playing the caveman. I have great respect for Weldon, but it is obvious that he has never seen The Incredible Petrified World; otherwise he would clearly know that Carradine is the oceanographer in the film, not the caveman.

The lesson to be learned from this film: If you’re going to explore the ocean in a diving bell with several people, use a much larger bell, and take enough supplies with you to last for several days. If you leave the bell, swim to the surface for help. Don’t go swimming around looking for non-existent ocean caverns. Always carry a pocketknife in case you need to carve spears to hunt for food. And lastly, don’t allow John Carradine to design your diving bell. If a small bell that barely fits a child breaks when he launches it into the ocean, imagine what would happen if
he designed a bell big enough to actually fit four grown adults? In the meantime, don’t forget your scuba gear, and be careful not to get “the bends” from being in the water too long. Keep an eye out for those sharks too!

All about 'Teenage Zombies'!

By Steve D. Stones

TEENAGE ZOMBIES: A Jerry Warren “Schlock-ster-piece.”

Anyone who wants to climb on board the convenient bandwagon of labeling Ed Wood as the “worst director of all time” needs to spend some time sitting through a Jerry Warren film. Wood, in my opinion, is the Ingmar Bergman of low-budget filmmaking in comparison to Jerry Warren. Warren’s films are like watching a seventh grade stage production: entertaining, but extremely amateurish and very hokey. He also fills his films with lots of voice over narration that very quickly becomes annoying to the viewer. Go watch Creature of The Walking Dead or the opening of The
Incredible Petrified World and you’ll see what I mean. Although Teenage
Zombies has its share of flaws, the one thing going for it is that it
does not have any of Warren’s trademark voice-over narration in the
entire film. That is a relief for anyone who mines his films.

A group of teenagers, lead by Don Sullivan, star of The Giant Gila
Monster and Monster of Piedras Blancas, discovers a remote island. They
explore the island and are captured by evil terrorist-scientist
Katherine Victor. Victor’s dopey slave zombie Ivan captures the teens
and holds them in a cage. Meanwhile Victor and her colleagues have plans
for world domination by developing mind-controlling capsules that they
hope to drop in the waters and streams of most major American cities,
thus turning people into mindless zombies. The plot is ludicrous, but
that’s it in a nutshell.

Friends of the captured teens group together and go searching for their
lost friends. They ask the aide of the local sheriff. When the search
party and the sheriff arrive at the island and are lead to Victor and
her colleagues, they discover that the sheriff is also in on the plot by
providing Victor with drunks and derelicts to test her mind-controlling
capsules on. The teens are able to escape by the end of the film, but
not without encountering a man in a cheesy gorilla costume.
Unfortunately, George Barrows is not the man in the costume. Eventually
they arrive back in their hometown and the military awards them an award
of bravery and a visit to the White House to meet the President.

If you’ve never seen a Jerry Warren film, I would suggest that you start
with his best film, which is Man Beast, followed by The Wild World of
Batwoman, also starring Katherine Victor. Batwoman was also released as:
She Was A Hippy Vampire. Apparently Warren had some copyright issues in
using the word batwoman in the first title. The Wild World of Batwoman
is a parody of the James Bond, Batman TV craze of the 1960s. If you
don’t take the film too seriously, it is a real hoot to watch. As for
Teenage Zombies, it may take some getting use to viewing a Warren film
before you can sit through this film. Happy viewing!!!

Rifftrax does Plan 9 From Outer Space live

By Steve D. Stones

Earlier in the summer, I had the opportunity to see my favorite cult
film of all time, Plan 9 From Outer Space, on the big screen at a new
library in my community. It has been a life-long dream of mine to see
Plan 9 on the big screen. That dream came true twice this summer with
the Rifftrax special engagement of Plan 9 From Outer Space, which played
in theaters for one screening only on Thursday August 20th. Rifftrax is
presented by three comic geniuses, Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill
Corbett, who were responsible for the Mystery Science Theater 3000 TV
program, which aired from 1988 to 1999. In recent years, all three have
also been involved in a project known as The Film Crew.

When I purchased a ticket and arrived at the movie theater, I was not
aware that the Rifftrax screening would be in “real time.” I assumed it
was pre-recorded like any other film playing in a movie theater. My
first clue should have been that it was a one-time screening, and that
the ticket cost $12.50. With that price, I thought perhaps I was
attending a rock concert of some washed up 1980s Heavy Metal band. Not
that I’m complaining. The screening was well worth the ticket price.

Broadcast from the music capitol of the world, Nashville, Tennessee, the
screening began with a music performance encouraging audience members to
sing, “All we want to do is eat your brains!!” Then, a 1940s short
entitled: The Flying Stewardesses was shown. It seemed appropriate to
screen this short, since Plan 9 casts a stewardess, played by Norma
McCarty. The short was hilarious. Nelson, Murphy and Corbett kept the
audience busy with laughter. My own laughter brought me to tears with
many of their comments. I have never attended a movie where the audience
members were laughing so frequently. This was a lot of fun!

As I watched the Rifftrax Plan 9, I observed that many of the comments
made were some of the same comments Mike Nelson makes for the commentary
of the colorized version of Plan 9, put out by Legend Films. For
example, in the opening scene where Bela Lugosi is attending the funeral
of his wife Vampira, Nelson observes that you can see Lugosi’s heroine
kick in as he begins to express emotion for the loss of his wife. Or,
as Criswell opens the film, Nelson makes the comment “Keep those cue
cards steady for Criswell.” Also, as pilots Gregory Walcott and David
DeMering sit inside a barren ply wood cockpit, Nelson says: “Look at all
that instrumentation! How do these pilots keep track of anything?”

My only disappointment with the Rifftrax screening of Plan 9 is that
they used the same colorized version of the film that was put out by
Legend Films. It was obvious to me because in the scene where Mona
McKinnon is lying on her bed in a night gown as the phone rings, you can
see one of the pictures hanging on the wall behind her bed has been
changed to a color photo of a couple. That picture is not in the
original black and white print of the film, and was inserted by the
folks at Legend Films as a gag. I much rather prefer the black and white
print of Plan 9.

Although Rifftrax already has a Plan 9 DVD out on the market for sale,
it will be interesting to see if they release this one time screening
version onto DVD in the near future. Perhaps Criswell once made the
prediction: “In the near future, I predict Rifftrax will release a Plan
9 DVD version that will entertain you for years to come!”

An interview with Best Worst Movie director Michael Stephenson

By Doug Gibson

This article originally appeared in blogs.standard.net on Aug. 11:

http://blogs.standard.net

I had a great interview with Michael Stephenson, the director of the indy documentary “Best Worst Movie.” BWM is the story of “Troll 2,” a film Stephenson starred in as a child.The film was an unmitigated disaster that for a long time never played a theater in the world. Now it’s a cult film. How that happened, and how it changed the life of the cast, most notably an Alabama dentist named George Hardy who starred with Stephenson in “Troll 2,” is funny, heartwarming and interesting.

“Best Worst Movie,” which plays this weekend at the Salt Lake City Film Festival, is garnering great reviews on the festival circuit. There’s a chance the film will get a theatrical release early next year and a DVD release is planned for next spring.

Stephenson admits that for a long time he tried to forget “Troll 2.” I asked him when he first began to realize the film was gaining a cult following.

“It was about four years ago,” he says. He started receiving MySpace messages from young people asking if he was the boy in “Troll 2.” The messages came with pictures of fans recreating scenes from the film, such as eating green “goblin” food. (”Troll 2″ is really about vegetarian human-consuming goblins, which adds to its lunacy.)

Stephenson noticed that these “Troll 2″ fans didn’t seem to know about each other. “I became intrigued,” he said, adding, “I’m the star of the worst movie … There’s a story here.”

Stephenson, still a working actor and living in LA, called Hardy and things started to roll from there. The first theatrical screening was in New York City. The premiere there of “Troll 2″ was a huge success. Since then, it’s played to large crowds in many cities.

Stephenson decided to make the charismatic Hardy the focus of the documentary “Best Worst Movie.” “He’s so genuine. He’s so likable,” says Stephenson, adding that Hardy represents what makes “Troll 2″ overcome anonymity: he has real sincerity and great rapport with the film’s fans.

The “Troll 2″ fans are as unique as “Best Worst Movie” portrays them, says Stephenson. They can also surprise, he says. “In Seattle a kid came dressed up as a tree in a pot and his friends dragged him into the theater,” recalls Stephenson laughing. (The fan was paying homage to segments of “Troll 2″ that featured North Ogden actor Darren Ewing.)

Stephenson was just a kid when “Troll 2″ was filmed, mostly in Morgan County, and was amazed to learn facts about cast members that he didn’t know then. Utahn Don Packard, who played a goblin store owner in “Troll 2,” admits in “Best Worst Movie” that he was a mental institute outpatient while making “Troll 2.” In the documentary, Packard admits he literally wanted to kill the young Stephenson. “I wasn’t acting,” he says.

Other cast members Stephenson reconnected with included “Grandpa Seth” Robert Ormsby and the reclusive Margo Prey, who played his mom in the film. The visit to her home, recounted in BWM, “was the bright spot of her year,” he said.

The director of “Troll 2″ is Claudio Fragasso, a veteran Italian filmmaker. After “Troll 2,” Stephenson made another film with Fragasso. Called “Beyond Darkness,” or “House 5″ or a couple of other titles, it’s a haunted house tale set in New Orleans. Stephenson played a possessed boy. Fragasso said the film made money in Europe, but it remains largely forgotten as “Troll 2″ grows in popularity.

Fragasso is a fascinating man. He can be a showman and play to the crowd in BWM, but Stephenson captures his anger at “Troll 2″ being called the “worst film” of all time. In BWM, during a “Nilbog Invasion” event in Morgan, Fragasso is visibly angry at criticism of his film.

Nevertheless, Fragasso and his partner, “Troll 2″ screenwriter Rossella Drudi, plan to make a Troll 2: Part 2. Stephenson is conflicted by the idea of a sequel, but I get the feeling he would — again — get intrigued enough to try.

“You can’t create something like “Troll 2″ intentionally,” he says. But then he adds, “maybe they (Fragasso and Drudi) will do it again.”

Recently “Troll 2″ was placed on Hulu.com, where fans can watch it for free on the Net. I can also be watched via its imdb.com page.