Unwatchable #39: “The Invisible Maniac”

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

Our journey through unwatchability has so far encompassed the work of such legendary schlock directors as Ed Wood, Uwe Boll and Albert Pyun, but now it’s time to make the case for an underrated purveyor of cinematic swill, a filmmaker who may not be a first ballot Hall of Shamer, but whose body of work is beginning to attract some attention among cutting edge cine-sabermetricians. You may know this man as Rif Coogan, but his real name is Adam Rifkin.

If the name rings a bell, you may be thinking of The Dark Backward, a 1991 Judd Nelson vehicle that was specifically engineered to be a cult favorite midnight movie, a strategy that pretty much never works. Or perhaps you’re reminded of The Chase, in which Rifkin tapped into that hidden longing within us all to be stuck in a car for 90 minutes with Charlie Sheen and Kristy Swanson. Maybe you vaguely recall Detroit Rock City, the comedy about four teenagers trying to scam their way into a KISS concert, or Night at the Golden Eagle, described by IMDb commenter stewart0602 as “the kind of work that grabs your package and squeezes for 90 minutes,” or the Austin-shot Homo Erectus, which only saw release under the straight-to-DVD title National Lampoon’s Stoned Age.

For this installment of Unwatchable, we delve deep into the Rifkin catalogue, all the way back to 1990 for The Invisible Maniac. Even in this early work, the Rifkin sensibility is on full display: quirky characters, broad humor and, most importantly, boobies. Lots and lots of naked boobies, many of them quite impressive and pleasing to the boobie aficionado. The cast includes Shannon Wisely, who would go on to a long and successful career in erotica as Savannah before her death in 1994 (I’ll never forget her exquisite work in Dixie Dynamite and the All-Star Tit Queens), Melissa Moore (Sorority House Massacre II, Bikini Drive-In), Stephanie Blake (“Stripper” in Mambo Kings, “Stripper in Big T’s” in Whore and “Tattooed Topless Dancer” in Danger Zone II: Reaper’s Revenge) and Claudette Rains, which I’m going to guess is a little in-joke by Mr. Rifkin.

The Invisible Maniac himself is played by Noel Peters in his only leading role and practically his only role of any kind (apparently he’s also in a 1997 TV-movie of Cinderella). Peters plays physicist Dr. Kevin Dorwinkle, who reacts badly when his colleagues laugh at his proposed molecular discombobulator and kills them all. He later escapes the asylum for the criminally insane and poses as a high school physics teacher, a gig that provides him plenty of opportunities to ogle nubile babes. Even more opportunities present themselves once he perfects his formula and is able to render himself invisible.

Although Rifkin was no doubt inspired by the rich history of invisibility literature and film, I’d have to guess that the opening scene of Carrie served as his primary muse. He seems determined to absolutely exhaust the possibilities of the high school girl’s locker room and, more specifically, the showers within, which he envisions as an all-singing, all-dancing nonstop party of sudsy boobs and steam rising from glistening buttocks. Who among us would not want to harness the secret to invisibility given these circumstances? (I’m asking the straight fellas here, obviously. You ladies and gay dudes are welcome to visualize soapy ballsacks or whatever it is that turns you on.)

Anyway, copious boobage aside, The Invisible Maniac is a rather tedious slog, thanks in large part to Peters’ charmless lead performance. The supporting cast isn’t much better, but in fairness to them, Rifkin does handicap their efforts by forcing them to engage in all manner of amateur mime activity in order to simulate their struggles with the invisible maniac. “I’ve got my hands around his neck! Oh no, I’m punching him and missing! Ha ha, he’s tickling me!” This sort of thing. There is a bonus for sticking with the movie all the way to the end: two more boobies!

Previously on Unwatchable:
40. Son of the Mask
41. Troll 2
42. Zombie Nightmare
43. American Ninja V
44. Leonard Part 6

Chick Hits: The Girl Power Top Ten

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:00:00 GMT

After the big screen edition of Sex & The City exceeded the low expectations of industry gurus who were shocked...shocked...to discover that people were actually interested in a movie about, y'know, gurlz, Missy Schwartz wrote a depressingly familiar story for Entertainment Weekly: “It was an unqualified triumph...one the industry observed in a stunned, slack-jawed state. As the weekend rolled to a close, news outlets filed their reports with words like unexpected, surprising, and shocking. ‘What do you know?’ they all seemed to be saying. ‘Women go to the movies!’”

And if Sex and the City 2 (or The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 or Mama Mia!) or any other female-centric movie succeeds in the near future, Hollywood will be surprised all over again, and Entertainment Weekly and other publications will run similar articles about the American movie-going public’s "unexpected," "surprising" and "shocking" desire for strong female characters...a desire Hollywood will more or less continue to ignore as it continues its relentless pursuit of teenage boys, no matter how many Speed Racers crash and burn along the way.

Because, after all, many studio execs are just overgrown boys themselves. They dig gadgets, explosions and special effects, and CGI creations are easy to control and merchandise. Female-centered movies tend to rely on well-written screenplays, relatable characters, nuanced direction and...yecccch...feelings: all the things most studio execs pretend to champion but secretly hate.

But we here at The Screengrab aren’t afraid to get in touch with our feminine sides as we raise our Cosmos to these Top Ten “chick hits”: films that put their empowered female characters front and center (without resorting to stripper poles OR big gauzy Prince Charming/Bridezilla wedding porn).

THELMA AND LOUISE (1991)

Okay, so I’m not sure how empowering it is to drive off a cliff in real life, but this Ridley Scott film (based on an iconic script by wunderkind, zeitgeist-tapping Academy Award-winning screenwriter Callie Khouri) caused a sensation upon its release by (A) objectifying Brad Pitt as a hunky slab of beefcake (thus electrifying and pretty much launching his career) and (B) allowing Susan Sarandon’s Louise to gun down the scumbag who was raping Geena Davis’ Thelma (and later blow up the truck of a leering male chauvinist pig) without even feeling all that bad about it, just like any number of male actors in any number of male-centric revenge fantasies...except in films like Dirty Harry, Death Wish, Taxi Driver, etc., the male heroes didn’t have to die in the end to satisfy Hays Code-style notions of karmic retribution for stepping outside the lines of acceptable social conduct. Still, the film’s outlaw motif energized female audiences by (melo)dramatizing the common stereotypical perception of men as either (a) dangerous assholes or (b) hapless boobs while providing enough action and sex to attract audiences of every gender.

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA (2006)

There’s a beloved feminist koan that goes something like this: ruthless, aggressive men who go after what they want are called winners, while ruthless, aggressive women are called bitches. Of course, most thinking people realize that ruthless, aggressive men are actually called assholes...and it’s the universal, gender-blind nature of the eternally confusing success vs. happiness equation faced by Anne Hathaway’s aspiring fashionista “Andy” Sachs that helped to make the film version of The Devil Wears Prada a $300 million dollar monster hit. And, let’s see...two seconds of Googling and...yep! There’s a TMZ article from 2006 with a, shall we say, certain familiar ring to it: “Blah blah blah, female-centered film exceeded all expectations...yadda-yadda-yadda...industry analysts surprised,” etc., etc. etc. As Meryl Streep’s formidable Gordon Gekko-in-stilettos magazine mogul Miranda Priestly might say to those industry Suits who stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the existence of fifty percent of their audience, “Details of your incompetence do not interest me.”

BRING IT ON (2000)

This broadly played late-summer sleeper is actually packing a lot of heavy metaphorical lumber for a teen flick about a cheerleading competition. Kirsten Dunst is the new head of the Toros, who cheer for the (rich, white) Rancho Carne High School in Los Angeles; they're gearing up for the national championships, which they've won the past six years with the spectacular routines provided by departing team leader Big Red. But when a new girl with a gymnastics background and an attitude -- Eliza Dushku, who was too cool for Buffy the Vampire Slayer's school -- joins the squad, she has unsettling news. It turns out that Big Red was stealing her plays from the fly girls who cheer for the (black, poor) East Compton Clovers, thus making the Toros the cheerleading equivalent of Pat Boone to the Clovers' Little Richard. Dunst actually does her best to rationalize this cultural parasitism rather than destroy her cheerleading institution overnight, but the situation becomes intolerable after the Clovers attend a Toros game and mock their blonde plagiarists by performing the stolen moves in the stands. In the end, both teams attend the finals and show that they can use their brains and talents to compete honorably on the field of battle. There is, however, one scene that shows that contemporary standards of empowerment may be thornier, and weirder, than is commonly acknowledged. Dunst offers the Clovers, who have been prevented from attending the national competition by financial hardship, the chance to come by talking her father into getting his company to sponsor them, but the head Clover (Gabrielle Union) contemptuously rejects the offer, telling Dunst that they don't need her charity; they'll raise the money themselves, their own way. Their own way turns out to be going on an "Oprah"-like TV show and raising contributions by guilt-tripping viewers with their tale of woe. I guess it's honest labor and not charity if it helps "Oprah" kill an hour.

JACKIE BROWN (1997)

Such '70s blaxploitation films as Coffy and Foxy Brown may have made Pam Grier a cult star, but it was always a degraded form of stardom, and not just because the movies were cheap genre knockoffs; she may have had the chance to show that she could hold the camera and kick ass in the final reel, but she still also had to get her top ripped off before being raped by guys who looked like the Ku Klux Klan's answer to Uncle Fester, while being called things like "this big-jugged jigaboo." Jackie Brown catches up with Grier more than twenty years down the road, when she's at an age when Hollywood regards actresses as disposable. It's not a great age to be a flight attendant, either, which is why Jackie is working for a low-grade Mexican airline and acting as a courier for Los Angeles-based gun dealer Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson). Both Ordell and the federal agents setting up a case against him regard Jackie as a pawn who can easily be taken out of play at any moment. But -- and here's the key difference between this and Grier's '70s vehicles -- the movie respects her. The way she looks through Tarantino's lens, you sort of picture the camera shuffling its feet nervously as it tries to work up the nerve to ask her if she's been seeing anybody lately. And so Ordell, whose fearsomeness would cut him a lot more ice in a different Tarantino movie, is reduced to a comic figure; for all his bluster and firepower, his assumption that the middle-aged black woman with the low-paying job must be a bit player (which Jackie will use against him, and against the feds, too), makes him ridiculous. The only man in the movie who can see Jackie for what she is remains Robert Forster's bail bondsman Max Cherry, who, unlike the film's younger, strutting cocks, lacks the ego and capacity for self-deception that might get in the way of his seeing clearly what's in front of him. Tarantino included a riff (borrowed from Jules Feiffer's The Great Comic Book Heroes) on the arrogance of Superman in the second Kill Bill film, and Jackie Brown is in some ways a black, female Superman fantasy, except that Jackie doesn't have to put on a pair of eyeglasses to trick the dull-witted into thinking she's no match for them.

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (1992)

Long before Joss Whedon was a small-screen institution, he was just a fresh-faced young script doctor with a dream. That dream was to create a richly detailed fantasy world featuring nubile teenage girls. Sure, you’re saying: how does that make him any different than millions of other guys? Here’s how: his nubile teenage girls kicked ass. And not just any ass, but demonic vampire ass! Within a decade, Buffy the Vampire Slayer would find its way onto television and prove a major cult hit, giving the country a brand new definition of girl power and adding an entirely new dimension to teen angst as Buffy Summers and her Scoobies battled monsters and bloodsuckers at Sunnydale High. But it all started with this low-budget big-screen number. Whedon, once he’d decided he was a highbrow auteur, more or less disavowed the Buffy movie, but in many ways, it holds up a lot better than people give it credit for: it doesn’t take itself so deadly serious, it has tons of terrific comic turns from Paul Reubens and Stephen Root in supporting roles, and while Kristy Swanson’s Buffy may not carry the emotional weight that Sarah Michelle Gellar’s did, she looks mighty fine in a half-shirt, and she furthers the cause of female empowerment the way only a vampire slayer can. She’s rough, she’s tough, and she maintains her keen fashion sense: what could be more feminine than that?

Click here for Part Two!

Related Posts: Girl DisemPowering: Nine Films That Didn't Do Feminism Any Favors (Part One & Part Two)

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

The Screengrab : Kristy Swanson

Unwatchable #39: “The Invisible Maniac”

Chick Hits: The Girl Power Top Ten