WHEN WOMEN LOST THEIR TAILS (1972)
aka Quando le donne persero la coda
Article 3150 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-27-2010
Posting Date: 3-30-2010
Directed by Pasquale Festa Campanile
Featuring Senta Berger, Frank Wolff, Lando Buzzanca
Country: Italy/West Germany
What it is: Caveman comedy/satire

Five cavemen live in the skeleton of a dinosaur with a woman whom they share. When a stranger shows up and introduces them to the concept of money, they begin to lose everything they have.

One thing I was sure of going into this sequel to WHEN WOMEN HAD TAILS; there was no way this sequel was going to demean or lessen the quality of the original movie in my eyes, as that would have been impossible. What did surprise me was that, unlike its predecessor, this one actually seemed to have a focused theme; once the stranger introduces the concept of money to the cavemen, the movie turns into a satire on capitalism, which is here portrayed as the game of a con man. Granted, once you latch on to the theme, the movie becomes more than a little obvious; in fact, it gets pretty repetitive after a while. Senta Berger fans may also be disappointed; because of the thrust of the plot, her character becomes secondary and almost vestigial at times, which is my way of saying that she doesn’t get very much screen time. Still, she does provide a focus for some interesting points; one of the themes that pops up at one point is the changes in standards of beauty, and one of the final scenes involves her encounter with a new con man who equates women’s liberation with prostitution. There’s another sequel out there to this series, but it doesn’t appear that it has the same set of characters, and Senta Berger is noticeably absent from the cast. The basic upshot of this one is that it turned out to be a lot more interesting and sophisticated than I thought it would be. Don’t read too much into that statement, though; I thought this one was going to be totally worthless.

WATERMELON MAN (1970)
Article 3149 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-26-2010
Posting Date: 3-29-2010
Directed by Melvin Van Peebles
Featuring Godfrey Cambridge, Estelle Parsons, Howard Caine
Country: USA
What it is: Satirical fantasy

An obnoxious white insurance agent wakes up one morning to discover that he has turned into a black man. When his desperate attempts to turn back to white fail, he begins to find his life changing…

In some ways, this is similar to the previous year’s CHANGE OF MIND in that a white man gets to experience what it’s like to be black. It’s an aggressive, over-the-top movie. The first half plays like a slapstick movie and is too shrill for its own good, but it does serve its purpose; by contrasting how people react to his obnoxious behavior when he’s white and how they react to it when he’s black, it does manage to show the various manifestations of racism in action. Estelle Parsons, here playing another white wife of a black man as in THE UFO INCIDENT (albeit one who was initially married to a white man) portrays a character who serves as an interesting example; though a liberal by nature (she watches news broadcasts about the race riots), she finds actual marriage to a black man to be ultimately unsupportable. The movie is quite effective; it’s both sad and fascinating to watch how this initially unlikable boor is forced to adjust to a new life and, ultimately, a new world. There’s some very interesting names in the cast. Erin Moran (who plays the man’s daughter) would go on to play Joanie on “Happy Days”, former Three Stooges foil Emil Sitka pops up as a delivery man, Mae Clarke appears as an old woman in her last movie, and Paul Williams has a cameo as an employment clerk. The most interesting cast member, though, is none other than Mantan Moreland as the man who works at the lunch counter; his reaction to the main character’s change gave me the biggest laugh in the movie, and I’m glad Melvin Van Peebles decided to use him.

WARLOCK MOON (1975)
Article 3148 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-25-2010
Posting Date: 3-28-2010
Directed by Bill Herbert
Featuring Laurie Walters, Joe Spano, Edna MacAfee
Country: USA
What it is: Low-budget witchcraft flick

A young female art student ends up dating a young man who takes her to an abandoned spa in an out-of-the-way village. There she encounters a strange old woman, and begins to have mysterious experiences with a ghostly woman and two ax-wielding madmen.

Yeah, I could see how this low-budget horror film (shot in an abandoned tuberculosis clinic in San Francisco) could creep you out under the right circumstances, especially if you caught it late at night. To its credit, Laurie Walters is a likable heroine, and, despite the fact that it often moves at a snail’s pace and has too much wandering around, it never quite put me to sleep. However, the heroine is a major fool; she puts her trust in a creepy boyfriend she barely knows and, despite the fact that she could easily drive off at anytime during the last half of the movie, she insists on leaving herself at the mercy of some quite obvious psychos. It has a fair assortment of plot twists, but the movie is so obvious about showing its hand early on that none of the twists really comes as a surprise. Still, I’ve seen far worse, and the good and bad in the movie is so evenly balanced that I can see how opinions would fluctuate wildly; the IMDB ratings chart does show a fairly even distribution of votes throughout the whole quality spectrum. Uneven, but far from worthless.