Thursday, May 26, 2011

Schadenfreude Movie Conclave:Blast Off Girls


BLAST OFF GIRLS

1967
Written and directed by
Herschell Gordon Lewis


We at the Schadenfreude Conclave enjoy our jobs too much. Way too much. In fact, studies show that we enjoy our jobs 37% more than we are supposed to. Fortunately we are aware that to experience too much pleasure can be hurtful, painful and symptomatic of further psychological damage. This is one of the reasons we are Schadenfreude. Here pain and pleasure exchange their masks with each other; reversing roles and upsetting the apple cart of expectations and exploding the myth of Normalcy.
Have you ever exploded a myth? Don’t. It’s gross. It’s nasty. It gets everywhere. And no one is going to clean up that myth for you. Even the Enviromental Protection Agency won’t touch it. If you blow one of those suckers up, you are on your own! Once, we took this one big stupid myth and stuck a M-60 meme up it’s. . . . .
I digress. Our purpose here at the Schadenfreude Conclave is to deliver to you, the unfortunate consumers of Culture, a guide to the movies you hate to love and love to hate. We do this, believe it or not, to help make you happy; to give you a smile or at the very least, the pleasure of seeing something new and completely unexpected, as only a really bad movie can.

BUT. Often in our searches we come across certain movies that are bad, just bad, very bad. But they must be watched. They must be categorized! They must be measured, despite the suffering they cause us, despite the pain, despite the bleeding eyes, screams of terror and unholy visions that haunt our dreams and make us question whether mankind has a right to continue to exist. We watch, for we are the Schadenfreude. We suffer for your pleasure. And we glow like fourteen pregnant fundamentalist Christian mothers with the pleasure of your suffering.

This movie, ‘BLAST OFF GIRLS’ is of the Suffering kind. It will hurt. Mostly because the band really sucks.

However, viewing of this movie will earn the watcher a Schadenfreude Order of The Scarred Collective Unconscious. To achieve this honor, you must watch the entire movie from first image to the last credit. No fast-forwarding, no bathroom visits. Short trips to the fridge are allowed, but any absence longer than 27 seconds will invalidate the Badge.


‘BLAST OFF GIRLS’ is an effort by Herschell Gordon Lewis, who has made the Schaden-favorite ‘Jimmy the Boy Wonder”. And now he enters the list of infamy. This only raises his quality in our minds. Besides, the band sucks.

This movie attempts to be a morality tale about the music industry, a long drawn out morality tale about the Music industry. A long pointless cliché filled morality tale of the music industry. There are salacious offers, including the apparent set up of a gang bang. But not even a single boob ever appears. In fact we don’t see the apparently featured “Blast Off Girls” very much. We mostly are forced to watch the band ‘The Big Blast’( played by the band ‘The Faded Blue’) play poor songs poorly. The lead is ably rendered by Roy Sager, who became a H.G. Lewis regular as well as a respected career behind the camera in many roles. Here, he is given a cane and left to deal with a script that cannot be saved by a thousand Shatners or one Daniel Day Lewis. We both weep and laugh with him. But in the end, the band sucks.

Between the band sucking, there are a few groovy clothes, some odd lines, and of course, Colonel Sanders! Yes Colonel Sanders makes a cameo trading some chicken for a song. His appearance and his dancing is quite thrilling; a prescient prediction of the Colonel’s future as an animated character, shaking it’s inky ass to rap music just to sell more giblets. But soon, the band plays again. And the band sucks. Have we mentioned that?

You will not enjoy this movie. But it may give you pleasure. It is, to the very core, Schadenfreude!!!!



Horrible Highlights:
The Colonel dancing.
There is a lovely lamp, and cool 60’s doors
Pot being the Ultimate degradation, as opposed to the path to it.

Classic bad movie elements:
Bad sound quality.
Atrocious acting. Mostly
Undelivered promise of nudity and sex.
Cliché, cliché, cliche

THE DRINKING GAME FOR “BLAST OFF GIRLS”

DRINK WHEN:
When anyone lights a cigar
There’s a room full of kids dancing
The bands make fun of someone musically

CHUG A WHOLE BEER WHEN:
The colonel dances!
Boojie sets up a gang bang
You hear the name, Sadie Thompson.


IF ONE HAS TO WRITE A COLLEGE ESSAY FOR FILM CLASS

H. G. Lewis continues his exploration into America’s culture through the food it eats. Much like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, Blast Off Girls uses the poultry industry as a metaphor for the Laissez Fair morality of the 1960’s and beyond. Oh yes, the Colonel would dance to the sweet tune of a youth culture based on consumerism and materialism. He dances all the way to the bank! Blast Off Girls is a fitting appendix to the social revolt and socially revolting documents of the European Fiction masters of the early Soviet period.

SCHADEN FREUDEN SCORE
Elements: 3 (out of 10 )
Titillation: 0 (out of 5)
Wrongness: 1 (out of 5)
Style & Funness: 1 (out of 5)
Extra points: - 1 (out of 5)
TOTAL: 6 (out of 30 )







No comments:

Post a Comment