A GOOD REVIEW OF A BAD MOVIE: BY THE SCHADENFREUDEN CONCLAVE

Alley Tramp
Director: H. G. Lewis
1966
Released in the US 1968



Herschell Gordon Lewis, the director of Alley Tramp, has committed many aesthetic crimes in the landscape of the social milieu we call the media, and we in the Schadenfreude Conclave have applauded this brave warriors’ success in disfiguring the collective unconscious. But Alley Tramp does not scar anything except one’s perceptions of acceptable furnishings in the living room of a late sixties’ home. And though H.G. Lewis always pours a heapin’ ladleful of WRONG! in his films, the WRONG!ness is usually muted by the age of the film, by insanity as a plot device, or by NOT using Patty Duke look-alike’s to stoke pedophile’s fantasies. In Alley Tramp, we get an hour and a half of undiluted WRONGNESS.

Our Heroine is 16 and ready to experience the world of love and passion around her, in other words she wants to get laid. Now in a modern movie, she would be told that her feelings are normal but not to express them until she is ready, and then in very special moment/episode she gets the boy. In a sixties mainstream movie, the feelings would not ever be mentioned because woman don’t really get horny. In a HG Lewis movie, the girl’s carousing mother denies the girls’ reality completely and then makes out with Dad during dinner and then in the bedroom where our young lady watches them go at it which inspires her to seduce her cousin. So yes, The sky is a different color to HG Lewis.

The Schadenfruede Conclave understands it is supposed to call underage sex wrong in all circumstances. It understands, but it refuses. To take the morality of these movies seriously is as ridiculous as expecting a major sports star not to cheat on his wife. People between the ages of 14-17 have sex. Sometimes it’s wrong, sometimes it’s not. Just like when people between the ages of 18-130 have sex. What’s wrong in this movie is not the sex, but the deliberate call to youthfulness by the lead. It’s creepy. Way creepy. And the cousin thing is bizarre. We’re sorry to spoil the plot for you, but you needed to know, just in case you invited the Pastor over for Schadenfruede Tea. Don’t worry, there’s a lot more plot to inhale before this stinkburger is over! And a lot more WRONG!

One note on the mundane side. This movie has an extraordinary amount of great Kitsch furniture. The Standing lamps, the dining room chairs, the side lamps shades with the plastic covers; collectors will have a field day with this flick, if they can get past the constant stream of offensive behavior between the brick-a-brack.

Another mundane note for the linguist. This movie uses the word ‘jazz’ as a term for the act of sex. Our records show that this had not been used since the Tijuana Bibles porn comics of the 1920-1940’s. We believe this might be the latest sincere use of the word in this definition. Let us know if we are wrong.

Check out the WRONG score, on our Schadenfruede scale below. This movie should offend you. It is trying to offend you. And as its goal is to offend and not to entertain, it is an Exploitation (or Sexploitation) Film. It also does it very badly, which is what makes it a Schadenfruede Movie. But remember, we at the Schadenfruede do not judge, we only condemn.

On a final note, the credits are all pseudonyms. This is not unusual for these films, but here everybody used fake names, and they are outrageously French fake names. Even ole Herschel Gordon Lewis, the man who read Lolita and thought it would make a good musical, buried his head on this one.



SOME FUN STUFF PARTICULAR TO THIS FLICK ARE:

The Teen tantrum
Mom’s acting. Ouch!
The line, “ Unh-Unh, better than Mother!”


CLASSIC BAD MOVIE ELEMENTS:
Bad acting
Script is uh. . .underdeveloped.
Deliberate pointless stripping scenes
Bad camera work; stiff, slow to pan.

THE DRINKING GAME FOR “The Alley Tramp”

TAKE A DRINK WHEN:

When the Granny panties come out!
You see any lamp.
Constantly during any montage. Just, keep drinking.


CHUG A WHOLE BEER WHEN:
You see the teddy bear
When cousins kiss!!!
Any girl gets slapped.


IF ONE HAS TO WRITE A COLLEGE ESSAY FOR FILM CLASS

Steinem versus Freidan was not the first clash of Proto-Modern Feminism; it was the Mother- Daughter characters in “The Alley Tramp”. Herschel G. Lewis creates a stark black and white story of a young girl lead astray, or led to social relevance, by the excessive sexual imagery she is witness to. The incestuous elements of her passionate attempts to digest and synthesize the psycho-sexual energies released by the conflict of the hegemonic attitude of the Western Philosophies versus the rise of gender liberation becomes the spear point of realpolitik Buddhist political manifestation.

SCHADEN FREUDEN SCORE
Elements: 7(out of 10 )
Titillation: 4, but a creepy 4 ( out of 5)
Wrongness: 5!!!(out of 5)
Style & Funness: 4(out of five)
Extra points: 3 (out of five)
TOTAL: 23 ( out of 30 )