Ahh… politics. That creator of strange bedfellows. That seducer of the honest and the well intentioned. That corrupt bastion of bad policies, faulty execution, and spin doctored excuses for both. Every couple of years its seems the representative form of our government gets the grand idea that people actually believe that their vote counts, and so they set about pandering—sorry, CAMPAIGNING—to bring the citizenry to the issues that the lobbyists find most important. Outrage is amplified over insignificant social dicta while truth is tempered by ideological based perspective. It’s all in service of a sinister cabal in which power cannibalizes and feeds itself, a non-stop frenzy of false pride and implied dominance. In the end, the result is a malfeasant machine that manufactures its own magnitude and perpetually pleases only those who can provide its omnivorous fetid fuel.

But wait, you don’t believe that the entire electoral process is a lost cause? You think that a sincere and straightforward candidate can rise up out of the glad-handing quagmire that is the system and avoid the behind the scenes manipulation of his or her party’s protectorate to actually serve their constituency? Well, Mr. and Mrs. America, you need a quick lesson in the realities of the Republic, and there’s no better place to start than with the many movies made on the subject. Indeed, film has, over the decades, found many ways to highlight the hypocrisy and expose the evil boiling just below the surface of the scandal-plagued political process. No sour subject has avoided the cinematic vox populi, from nation altering atrocities like Watergate and the JFK assassination to the standard stratagem of dirty tricks and the always scandalizing subject of sex.

Perhaps the best example of such an anti-politico polemic is 1972’s Year of the Yahoo. What? What’s that you say? You’ve never heard of this film? Perhaps you were expecting All the President’s Men? Primary Colors? The Manchurian Candidate? Well, if you took a smattering of Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd, mixed in a smidgen of standard exploitation, and sprinkled the entire enterprise with a heaping helping of hominy and hambone, you’d have Herschell Gordon Lewis’ long lost masterpiece of down home despotism and the media’s unpardonable ability to influence events. With a narrative fresh out of today’s headlines and a tone as cynical as a grad student’s weblog, Lewis lifts the lid off the muckraking ridiculousness that is our political process, and even provides a few toe-tapping musical PSAs along the way.

Our story begins when the incredibly liberal and virtually unbeatable Senator Burwell comes up for re-election. Angry over his left-leaning ideals, the sitting President of the United States wants Burwell defeated. He even handpicks his own rube for the job: strumming and grinning goober Hank Jackson, famous in both fields of music: country and western. Sending a triumvirate of trained pollsters and media men into the bumpkin’s backwoods barrio, the Corruptor in Chief hopes to help the honky-tonk hick win more than his fair share of the illiterate Appalachian vote. But the glad-handing Governor and his backside smooching sidekick think this corn pone crooner ain’t got a chance in Chattanooga of success. They fail to take his candidacy seriously, and spend most of their days giggling over the lopsided poll numbers.

It’s not long, however, before a sleazy, slick ad campaign and a constant play list of public pandering, philosophically fascist songs has Hank labeled a wholesome homeboy by the neo-conservative race baiters within his constituency. His TV appearances, complete with some finger snappin’, demographically accurate musical numbers, increase his image of earnestness and elect-ability. Indeed, it looks like Jackson will win the gerrymander, even when a rent strike divides his bluegrass bandwagon and unsettles his perfectly polished coalition. As Hank continues to tow the prejudiced party line, his hen pecker of a girlfriend sides with the agitators. It takes dozens of underhanded shenanigans, a sexual assault and a clear case of conscience—not to mention a lonesome ballad or two—to help Hank regain his integrity and to determine, once and for all, if it’s really The Year of the Yahoo.

Indeed, Yahoo is a real rarity amongst supposed skin and sin exploitation films, especially the one’s made by Mr. Blood Feast himself. Instead of some sleazy exposé in which naughtiness and nudity are the only salient selling points, what we have here is a really great movie with an incredibly well written script, a narrative that navigates the truths about government in a way most mainstream efforts would likely avoid. Existing outside the confines of an oppressive studio system, capable of saying anything and everything he wants, screenwriter Allen Kahn (which could just be a pen name for Lewis, by the way) creates an astute, perceptive dissection of the entire cynical candidacy process. It’s a plot that demonstrates how gaining elected office in the United States is not a matter of ethics or integrity but merely showmanship and selfless pandering to the public. Measuring up favorably against directorial heavyweights like Mike Nichols and Elia Kazan, Lewis’ political potboiler about a podunk country singer candidate being mass marketed to his population of peons feels as new and astute now as when it was made.

Unfortunately, a hundred image consultants doing soundbite surgery at a suicidal rate would have a hard time getting the registered voter hyped about Claude King. Yes, he can carry a tune, but he can’t carry a movie. His “wish I was George Jones” persona filled with ‘golly-gees’ and hair cream just can’t seem to slink beyond the initial line reading level. He’s like any other non-actor trying to put on the performance. His halting, half-baked believability leeches every available drop of drama out of his dilemma.  Still, his “h-yuck yuck” yokelism works wonderfully within the movie. He comes across as a complete innocent made a meaningful man of the people. Actually, about the worst thing you can say about this production is that its low budget, non-professional cast aspects tend to show through more than usual. Funny how good writing will do that. Still, if you never thought that you’d experience high-class social consciousness and shrewd political satire in a surreal pseudo-grindhouse goof, then step right up and cast your ballot for The Year of the Yahoo. It’s no more ridiculous than the arrogant stumping that’s passing itself off as self-determination this midterm election cycle.

After nearly a month of horror highlights (and some significant lowlights) SE&L will be regaining its critical composure. As part of the post-terror healing process, we present five days of Forgotten Gems - films that have fallen through the cracks and that definitely deserve a second look. Beginning with the latest in Bollywood wonders, our retrospective will cover everything from Dogma ‘95 efforts to classic period pieces. But don’t worry, we’ll be back Monday, 6 November with a bunch of brand new features, including a Beginners’ Guide to Exploitation, a look at the best that Criterion has to offer, and that most maligned of motion picture presentations, the Misunderstood Masterpiece. Until then, enjoy.

The SE&L Staff

In an arena as thoroughly subjective as the scary movie, how does one even begin to come up with a list of the artform’s very best? In the hierarchy of horror, things change so rapidly (and frequently) that, at any given moment, one category of creepy - the Devil films of the ‘70s - will give way to an entirely new fear fad - the slasher films of the ‘80s. This means that, as the genre shifts, trends taper off and subcategories flourish, one man’s terror quickly becomes one filmmaker’s trash. It’s the same with opinions on what is and is not petrifying. Dread is indeed a personal propensity, difficult to discuss in terms of absolutes and universals. Yet whenever fans get together and share their experiences with the cinema they love the most, conversations typically turn toward the defining films that began their affair with fear in the first place. Though they may not always agree, it is clear that there are certain films that stand out amongst the throng, that argue for their place as not only good grue, but expert cinema as well.

This is what the SE&L list strives to uncover, the true masterpiece and milestones of post-modern horror. Again, there are certain caveats to this non-definitive Decalogue that should keep the obsessed and the angry in check, hopefully avoiding most call-outs and complaints to a minimum. Several sensational films from the myriad that many would consider crucial just missed the cut. They include current offerings like Silent Hill, Shaun of the Dead and Hostel, as well as deserving efforts from decades past like The Howling, Hellraiser, Prince of Darkness, Ganja and Hess and Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead. In addition, classics from the Golden Age – films featuring the likes of Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolfman – were also discounted, given their already important place in the overall history of horror. As we live in a contemporary world, a place that prides itself on rediscovering and then reconfiguring the past to fit its current concerns, the movies SE&L selected are all indicative of the era. They manipulate their ideas with various analogous elements, creating films that function as both macabre as well as a mirror on the modern world.

Some will still argue that favorite films are missing or seated too far down the roll. They will dismiss any compendium that does not contain their idea of fear flawlessness and belittle any attempt to praise some perceived hackwork over what they feel is a true shock landmark. Nonetheless, SE&L stands by its choices, using decades of film knowledge and years seated firmly in front of the TV (with VCR/DVD hook-ups providing the product) to make its final determinations. Sure, there are gaps in the analysis and forgotten efforts that missed the list based solely on their ‘out of sight, out of mind’ situation, but this does not take away from the ten titles found below. Each one stands as one of the genre’s best conceived and executed expressions. Authoritative? Perhaps not. Arguable? Most definitely. Ten terrific examples of terror? There is absolutely no doubt about it. Let’s begin right at the top:

1.The Exorcist

2. Evil Dead 2

3. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

4. Suspiria

5. A Nightmare on Elm Street

6. Dawn of the Dead (1978)

7. Halloween

8. The Fly (1986)

9. The Thing (1981)

10. The Other

Whenever the calendar rolls over to a certain 31 October, fright fans break out their bountiful opinions and wax poetic and prosaic about the best and worst horror films ever made. While it may seem like nothing more than a rabid fanboy pastime, that fact is it’s not that easy a task. Like comedy, terror is in the heart of the beholder, too personal to be easily agreed upon. What some find frightening gives others a case of the uncontrollable giggles and its rare when fear can be universally applied. It’s just too individualized. As a result, making any list of yeas and nays allows for lots of second guessing and subjective stipulations – especially in the arena of b-a-d. Many can’t get past the numerous nonsensical sequels that endlessly pour out of the studio system, pointing to franchises gone god-awful as their primary examples of tepid terror. For others, it’s the offerings of the past, the low budget efforts of dollar driven distributors that did little except waste 80 minutes of the drive-in owners or matinee movie audience’s running time.

As a result, SE&L is taking a slightly different approach toward prioritizing the legacy of fear. This will not be your typical ‘worst of’ horror movie list. SE&L did not consider the lengthy, and rather lamentable, legacy of ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s. Roger Corman and his many mediocre monster mash-ups will find no careful consideration here, nor will any effort involving giant insects, radioactive non/humans or other examples of backwater b-moviemaking. Nor did we delve into the plethora of pathetic product that arrived in video stores once the VCR became the principal source of home entertainment. Picking through the sludge put out during that age of analog abominations would be similar to shooting undead fish in a broad-based barrel. No, the approach taken here is far more mainstream. By avoided the usual spastic spook subjects (Ed Wood, Manos: The Hands of Fate, anything featuring Arch Hall, Jr.) SE&L circumvented the whole ‘crap vs. kitsch’ debate. Instead, the focus now will be on those real films that actually thought they’d end up as some manner of frightmare myths.

The main element here is that each entry on this list THOUGHT it was going to be some kind of horror classic. They positioned themselves as remaking, reimagining or revisiting ideas that had been very successful in the past. Certainly a couple could be called out and out cash grabs, chances to bilk the box office out a few more dollars before pushing straight to cable. But it’s clear that, for the most part, these were serious, straight motion pictures designed to play as accomplished companion pieces to the rest of the genre. Naturally, they failed so miserably that their collapse becomes celebrated and over time, cemented their position as one of the cinema’s outstanding stumbles. After much deep thought and soured soul searching, these are the efforts that SE&L feels best exemplifie the worst that post-modern horror has to offer. Without further ado, here are the Top 10 Worst Horror Films of All Time, beginning with the biggest bumble of them all:

1. Exorcist II: The Heretic

Buried somewhere inside this absolutely pointless sequel to horror’s preeminent fright fest is a decent idea. Following up Regan’s irregular path into adolescence while the church investigates Father Merrin’s death is a parallel scenario that has a wealth of worthwhile possibilities. Sadly, director John Boorman decided to concentrate on the more psychobabble claptrap concepts inherent in the screenplay. Throw in some random locusts, a lot of Studio 54 style strobe lights and you’ve got cinema’s most stupefyingly bad scary movie.

2. Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2

As irritatingly incomprehensible as the first film was (too much cursing combined with nausea-inducing POV camerawork) this scripted follow up was much, much worse. Though famed documentary director Joe Berlinger (Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) would argue that excessive studio interference would ruin his original vision, it is hard to imagine how any initial ideas could make this movie work. It seems purposely lost inside it own insular devices. On the plus side, this completely crappy follow-up more of less killed the Witch franchise for good. Thank heaven for small miracles.

3. House of Wax (2005)

A group of grating plot contrivances discovers a ghost town made mostly out of dumb ideas…oh yeah, and paraffin. Lots of bad movie clichés ensue. While this incredibly amateur movie has its fans, most macabre mavens simply sniffed the aroma of Paris Hilton’s stunt casting and realized the awaiting repugnance. Granted the original material was no great spook shakes, but even Charles Bronson’s wooden acting in the 1953 feature was miles ahead of a certain spoiled socialite’s braindeath as bravado turn. Even the meltdown finale couldn’t save this stool-scented slop.

4. House of the Dead

Based on a popular video game, featuring those familiar scarefest sacrificial lambs (the zombie) and helmed by that talentless Teutonic hack, Dr. Uwe Boll, what could have been a semi-competent cult effort turned out to be one of the genre’s most mindless missteps. With sequences that seem stolen from a hyperactive TRL‘s monster music video and poorly conceived creatures that look like Cirque du Soleil artists gone gamy, Boll manages to set the entire undead film back decades with his poisonous pacing, directorial dumbness and overall lack of thrills.

5. Maximum Overdrive

We all know how misbegotten the original idea was (Stephen King as fright writer ≠ Stephen King, filmmaker) but few have really remembered just how horrendous this mess of a movie really was. It’s not that the Master of Horror is utterly and hopelessly incompetent behind the camera – in fact, his opening montage of machines going gonzo is pretty well realized. No, it’s everything after technology starts attacking that begins to fester and, ultimately, fail. A wailing Yeardley Smith provides the final nail in the klutzy King adaptation coffin.

6. Nightbreed

Legend has it that Clive Barker conceived his second feature film, based on his intriguing novella Cabal, as “the Star Wars of horror movies”. What it ended up being was an unqualified disaster, with substantial studio meddling and massive budget problems contributing to the world’s first eerie ipecac. Unable to decide if it’s a monster movie, an ambitious piece of beast-based mythos, or simply a slice and dice serial killer film, Barker braves all three. The ridiculous results, including the horrendous performances by all involved, speak for themselves.

7. The Fly 2

David Cronenberg’s first Fly was such a memorable masterpiece, a perfect marriage of material and maker that only a Hollywood halfwit could think that a sequel would succeed. Even worse, they decided to junk everything that made the original so special – concepts like script, emotion, intelligence and characterization – and replaced them with Eric Stoltz and a mutant puppy dog. Right. Only a Chevy-sized can of DDT (or a second sex scene with Daphne Zuniga) could have killed the creature feature franchise more expertly than this deadly drone.

8. Amityville 3-D

Sometime between 1982 and 1983, the geniuses behind Tinsel Town’s beans decided that that old warhorse from the ‘50s – 3-D – was ready for its motion picture comeback. As one of the several multidimensional efforts to make use of the tired cinematic turd, this third look at the Lutz house got even stupider and more incomprehensible. Nothing more than a lot of camera pranks perpetrated on an already blasé audience, the lack of any authentic connection to the so-called “real” events that occurred in the notorious locale made the film all the more laughable.

9. Van Helsing

How do you undermine the legacy of all the classic Universal monsters? Why, you give unlikely blockbuster director Stephen Summers a Mummy‘s worth of money and enough CGI to choke a ghoul. Then you let him raid your catalog of timeless terror icons and retrofit them into some stupid adventure yarn starring everyone’s favorite Downunder dude Hugh Jackman. While many consider this confused combination of the Gothic and the groan-inducing as merely a faux horror film, the dread one experiences while watching this carton creature creation is real enough.

10. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

Otherwise known as how Sheriff Hoyt got his perverted groove on. You know you’re in trouble when a prequel (Strike 1), setting out to reshape and redefine one of horror’s premiere figures (Strike 2), instead spends all its time presenting the tale of how some ancillary character became a gun-toting goon. (Strike 3). When Marcus Nispel took on the daunting task of remaking the Tobe Hooper original, he brought as much artistic and narrative invention to the mix as possible. All this dreadful retread offers is pathetic, predictable pointlessness passing itself off as dread.

He was more of a fashion accessory than a celebrity, a chiseled example of Hungarian beefcake perfectly complementing his wife’s over-sexualized cheese. But there was more to Mickey Hargitay than as brawn to Jayne Mansfield’s buxom beauty. While together they may have resembled biology gone baroque, individually, Hargitay and his much more famous bride were athletics and oranges. She was a considered caricature of the era’s leading visage of sensual beauty. Her talent was never measured in performances, but in appearance. For the rest of her tragically short life, Jayne Mansfield would fight against her summarization as a sex object, trying to avoid being championed solely on her chest. For her foreign born husband however, physicality was all he had.

Born into an athletic family (the Hargitay’s frequently preformed as an acrobatic troupe in their native Hungary), bodybuilding was not young Miklos’ first passion. He was a championship ice skater, and skilled at soccer. It wasn’t until he came to America in the 1940s to escape his country’s compulsory military service that he discovered the joys of muscle training and toning. Considered by most to be an odd, even perverted obsession with the human form, there was very little fame, or fortune, in being a muscleman. Yet the minute he discovered the joys of the gym, Hargitay proved he was a natural at the fledging sport and it wasn’t long before he was winning titles long dominated by Americans. In 1955, Hargitay was crowned Mr. Universe, matching the accomplishment of his inspiration and idol, Steve Reeves.

The surrounding recognition finally placed him within the flickering cultural spotlight. The saucy old school actress and nightclub personality Mae West – never one to pass up a well-built body – immediately hired Hargitay to be part of her revue in New York City. Suddenly, the untrained 30 year old was appearing before cosmopolitan crowds, the leering butt of West’s wicked wordplay and entendres. One night, reigning Broadway novelty Jayne Mansfield came to the Latin Quarter club to catch West’s act. The legend goes that, when asked what she was interested in that evening, Mansfield cooed “I’ll have a steak…and that man on the left”. Soon, Hargitay and his newfound heartthrob were inseparable.

They married in 1958. Hargitay went on to take a few small roles in Mansfield’s movies, including the triumphant big screen translation of her Great White Way hit Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? He even got to mimic his inspiration Reeves by portraying the mythic strongman in 1960’s The Loves of Hercules. It wasn’t long though before the novelty of both Hargitay and his honey started wearing off. After his stint hosting a TV exercise program and her string of unsuccessful starring roles, the couple soon found themselves working within the ridiculed realm of exploitation. In 1963, Mansfield bared all for the camera with Promises! Promises!, and 1964 saw Primitive Love, a sort of sex comedy spoof on the Mondo movie craze sweeping cinema.

Like all pairings that seem more aesthetically than interpersonally pleasing, Hargitay and Mansfield grew apart, then divorced. Taking custody of the three kids (including future Emmy winner and Law and Order star Mariska) and attempting to find a place in the unforgiving realm of fame, the more or less lost 41 year old wasn’t prepared for the shocking news of his ex-wife’s gruesome death in 1967. Reduced to performing a puerile, tacky club act overloaded with insinuation and kitsch, Mansfield was traveling between shows when her car was hit, head on, by a semi-tractor trailer truck. Killed almost instantly, the resulting carnage was brutal, becoming a media milestone in the still developing realm of tabloid journalism. The grindhouse gang even utilized the ghastly accident scene photos for an incredibly distasteful “documentary” on the actress entitled The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield. Of course, a grieving Hargitay and his children were featured in all their devastated sorrow. 

Now totally on his own, celebrity wise, Hargitay tried. He played a sadistic figure of vengeance in the Eurotrash classic The Bloody Pit of Horror, and starred in a few low budget Italian genre efforts. Yet by the mid 70s, his uniqueness had all but worn off. Mission: Impossible had given Peter Lupus (another noted bodybuilder) a shot at stardom, and he had proven much more versatile. Besides, another Eastern European was establishing his muscle man credentials on the circuit, and by the time of Hargitay’s final film role in 1973’s Rites, Black Magic and Secret Orgies in the Fourteenth Century, Arnold Schwarzenegger was on his way to his third straight Mr. Olympia title – and future superstardom. By the ‘80s, Hargitay was nothing more than a footnote, a forgotten figure in the life of an equally lapsed “love goddess”. In one of those ironies that only show business can support, a 1980 biopic of Mansfield featured Schwarzenegger as Jayne’s buff better half.

His latter years were not empty. Hargitay had remarried in 1967, and new wife Ellen would be his last life partner, remaining by his side until his death from multiple myeloma at age 80 on 14, September of this year. Hargitay had also been successful in business, and Schwarzenegger often pointed to him as the role model by which he modeled his professional and athletic career. Daughter Mariska slowly built her resume in Hollywood, and now stands as one of TV’s dramatic powerhouses. And thanks to the archival aspect of the new home video revolution, much of his and Mansfield’s dismissed work has enjoyed a kind of kitschy, cornball nostalgia. Yet lost within all this retro revisionism and show business scavenging is a wholly forgotten fact. Hargitay and Mansfield represented the beginnings of the body objectification that the present day pop culture lives by.

Unlike Marilyn Monroe, or the more obvious examples of sexual stardom to come, Jayne Mansfield was a classic cartoon, carnal in only the way an over-inflated dish like she could be. And in the world of corporeal synchronicity, she required a man large enough to fit her copious and unapologetic feminine fertility. Hargitay, all tight skin sculpting and Greek god idolatry, was the perfect personal accompaniment. He was considered male model of machismo - a manlier Steve Reeves, a less militant Jack La Lanne. Better yet, he proved that a few hours in the gym and some minor consideration for the way one looked could and would land you the sex siren straight out of the pages of those newfangled “men’s” magazines. They were the Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson of the Eisenhower era, the Nick and Jessica of the pre-Camelot crowd. In a world not ready for outright discussions of lust and physical love, Mansfield and Hargitay represented the possibility, and the problems, associated with same.

Sadly, with his passing, Hargitay takes with him the last vestiges of that time. The couple’s infamous ‘Pink Palace’ – a cheesy mansion complete with a heart-shaped swimming pool – has long been raised by the current owner, and the seemingly outrageous physical forms that the couple carried have been usurped by individuals buying completely into the omnipresent plastic surgery concept of personal success. In a time where overweight businessmen accompanied their haggard housefrau wives to the local hot spot for a few potent potables and a little so-called sophisticated entertainment, Mansfield and Hargitay were said ideal’s illustrated Id. Now, they are just forgotten facets of a pre-revolution sexuality.