Frankenstein & Funicello And/Or Go-Go & Machine Gun Joe
That was better than my first title...

I'm not sure who I want to kill more now that the first half of this post got eaten once again. Is it Blogger? Is it Netscape? Is it me because of my own ineptitude? It's a great question.

What I wanted to do (and want to do slightly less now) was a little comparison between films that very obviously have very little to do with one another. There are several factors however that link them, and that was what I wanted to focus on. I think what's driving me to do this is simply the opportunity to mention these two films in the same breath. Opportunities like these don't come around every day.

Without further ado (and assuming something doesn't crap out on me), let's get on with the show.

In this corner:

Pajama Party (1964, d. Don Weis)
The Story: Martian Go-Go (Tommy Kirk) is sent to Earth to prepare for an invasion but gets swept up in the schemes of an old conman, the antics of the fun-loving beach gang, and the loving arms of the mad-cute Connie (Annette Funicello).

Fair enough, right?

And in this corner:

Death Race 2000 (1975, d. Paul Bartel)
The Story: In the future (Um...the year 2000, but I can't very well say 'In the past...' while introducing a sci-fi film.), a brutal cross-country race is underway where racers score points for mowing down pedestrians, but a subversive group plans to topple the government by first sabotaging the race.

Please tell me that at this point, you're scratching your head wondering why I would compare these two movies.

To tell you the truth, I don't know either. I would, however, recommend you making a double feature out of them. I'm serious.

Well, they're both very obviously exploitation movies, and considering their respective companies of origin that should come as no suprise. The former emerged from Samuel Arkoff's American International Pictures which spawned the latter's maker, Roger Corman's New World Pictures. Both of these were giants of the B-movie in their heyday. Now, Pajama Party wouldn't exactly be considered exploitation, at least not in the same more sleazy sense that Death Race 2000 is. That's only because it was in those 10 years between their releases that made all the difference in what was allowed on screen in terms of violence and more importantly nudity. Make no mistake about it though, with all of Pajama Party's now relatively innocent skimpy clothing, innuendo, and frequent singing and dancing it was aimed at pulling money out of and hence exploiting one audience: teenagers. Death Race does the same thing, it just trades the 'singing and dancing' for 'blood and guts' and 'T&A'. I'd be willing to bet that that combination was meant to draw in that same target demographic.

But that's just off the top of my head.

Apart from that, about the only thing they have in common besides both featuring car chases is ...ummm, nothing. Well, at least in terms of content. That's not to say, though, that nothing else joins them.

The most common criticism you'll find of the teenage beach gang movies, most famously the Frankie & Annette vehicles, is that they were anything but reflective of the youth of those years. In fact, you'll find that criticism spread to nearly every other genre was that it was not indicative of the various political and social movements of the 60's. Oddly enough, it was actually in odd fare like westerns such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where people, particularly teenagers, seemed to find parallels to their own times.

On the flip side, Death Race 2000 is very much a commentary on the times. Like much sci-fi of the 1970's it had taken on a darker more Orwellian tone, and much of it was a precursor to the post-apocalyptic subgenre of the 1980's. By the then the character of the anti-hero, particularly popularized by Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name role, had been firmly established and David Carradine's Frankenstiein can obviously be placed on the evolutionary charts just before Mel Gibson's Mad Max and Kurt Russel's Snake Plissken. (Go back and watch Escape from New York again and tell me that Kurt isn't doing a two hour impersonation of Clint.) As it plays the movie is self-conscious of itself as it admonishes a generation obsessed with sex and violence in a movie filled with sex and violence. It's bright and flashy locations, costumes, and vehicles aren't so far removed from Pajama Party's, but the tone has turned from bright and cheery to decadent and cynical well in keeping with the disillusioned feeling of the aging and defeated 'Love Generation.'

To me there opposite nature, tonally and thematically, within that ten year span still makes them similar. Much of that has to do with the fact that they're still aimed at the same age-group auidence. Furthermore, it's the fact that whether they are reflective of the times or not, they're both still completely farcical. In retrospect, neither is founded in a reality that existed or that came to pass. To me, that means that they are cut from the same cloth despite their appearance.

It's hard for me to pinpoint any singular moments in Death Race that I enjoyed above all others. Going in, I knew to expect a youthful Sylvester Stallone in the role of the villainous Machine Gun Joe Viterbo. What came as a pleasant shock was the realization that racer Nero the Hero was played by Cobra Kai Sensei Martin Kove from The Karate Kid. Well, ok, if I have to pick one: The scene where the nurses wheel out the old folks to be euthanized under Frankenstein's wheels, and Frank decides to dodge the old folks and wipe out the doctors and nurses lining the sidewalk. That was pretty classic.

It was a little easier to pinpoint in Pajama Party. I wasn't exactly expecting Chinatown level twists and turns, nor Groucho Marx level quips and banter. That's hard to do in a movie where you can feel a song-and-dance number just because you can feel that enough time has passed without one. The movie did, however, featured comedy great Buster Keaton. The only problem was that he was talking and in a ridiculous kiddy movie, nonetheless he actually acquitted himself admirable. My favorite bit was actually in two parts, but they're definitely of a 'you have to see it' nature. Buster gets into a war with a perfume counter girl. They spray each other back and forth with bottles of ever increasing size and of course contents. Hi-Larious. Trust me. Later at the party, the girl shows up and empties a Dr. Pepper on Buster who then heads to get the bottle off the water cooler....it was a nice semi-running gag. Also of note are the dance moves Buster busts with a bikini-clad Susan Hart. Good stuff.

Having said all that, I feel that it's time to draw this discussion to a close.

I'm not sure what the point of comparing those two movies was exactly, but it felt right at the start anyhow. In any event, to the uneducated or the uninitiated, it's bound to make me look like I know something about movies. I like to think that I do...at least a little bit.

Seriously. Double Feature.

Cheers.