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| Courtesy of Arrow Films |
Not long after taking a swan dive into
the muck figuratively and literally with their Floridian blu-ray boxed set He
Came from the Swamp: The William Grefe Collection,
Arrow Video once again has turned their attention onto another prominent figure
in the underworld of regional American exploitation horror. This time around the focus is on cult
Wisconsin based regional exploitation director Bill Rebane in the aptly named Weird
Wisconsin: The Bill Rebane Collection.
Encompassing six of the director’s films brought together on blu-ray for
the first time, Weird Wisconsin truly lives up to the moniker of being a
collection of 100% truly homegrown sci-fi/horror made by a filmmaker who built
his own studio in the woods of Wisconsin.
Best known for his animals attack from
another dimension Wisconsin flick The Giant Spider Invasion (released on
blu-ray by Dark Force), Arrow Video have curated six films spread out across
three discs along with a fourth disc devoted to extras and an original feature
length documentary about all of Rebane’s career produced by Arrow Films. The resulting package joins The Herschell
Gordon Lewis Feast set and both American Horror Project boxed sets
as another head over heels swan dive into distinctly American midwestern
regional exploitation flicks that are as looney and odd as they are inspired
surreal jaunts that gave drive-in moviegoers some of the more peculiar
offerings of their viewership.
As with The William Grefé Collection,
neither the films nor the transfers of them are examples of top-notch
filmmaking or storytelling. Rather the
charm stems from the microbudget do-it-yourself filmmaking with more than a few
moments throughout the collection of some of the weirdest ideas and vistas
you’ll ever glimpse from the world of American regional exploitation. Instead of diving in depth with these mostly
offbeat oddities, the Movie Sleuth will provide a general overview of the films
in question. While it doesn’t quite
succeed as science-fiction/horror cinema, it does as a set offer up one of the
strangest and most peculiar collections from one of midwestern America’s most
unusual purveyors of regional exploitation still at large today.
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| Courtesy of Arrow Films |
The first film in the set, Monster a Go-Go, a kind of Quatermass Xperiment cheapie involving
an astronaut who comes back to Earth transformed into a tall lanky mutant who
terrorizes sunbathers in their backyards is somewhat damaged goods. The only black-and-white film in the series,
shot and released in 1965, director Rebane first encountered trouble when
financing fell through and a chunk of the footage was lost. None other than Arrow’s other regional
exploitation darling Herschell Gordon Lewis wound up taking over directing
duties and shot a number of new sequences with other actors, resulting in a
truly confounding viewing experience that eventually became a favorite on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Jumping ahead nine years in the set
with the alien invasion flick Invasion
from Inner Earth, whose opening credits theme song is actually just a Casio
keyboard rendition of Ennio Morricone’s theme for The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, the first color feature in the set
represents a far more understated and coherent product. Involving an alien virus which comes from
within the Earth itself, as seen from the perspective of a few inside a remote
log cabin in the winter, the film benefits from the idea of less being more
with much of the action staged offscreen through sound and the radio. Of the films it’s the most straightforward
save for a truly wild finale.
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| Courtesy of Arrow Films |
Four years later Rebane would revisit
the alien viral attack film once again with The
Alpha Incident only this time around he amps up the gore, tension and
insanity of the premise. Akin to Robert
Wise’s The Andromeda Strain, the film
concerns an alien viral outbreak let loose from a satellite collecting samples
from Mars. Boiling down to a group of
people who are quarantined inside a police station, the plot thickens when it
turns out no one can fall asleep or else the virus will make their heads
explode. Soon it becomes a kind of A Nightmare on Elm Street battle as the
characters try ingesting caffeine to keep themselves from sleeping. Think of it as a reworking of Invasion from Inner Earth with blood and
gore this time around.
Circa 1983, Rebane made his first foray
into gothic horror with the haunted piano thriller The Demons of Ludlow.
Involving a small Wisconsin town which is bestowed a grand piano from
England from the original owner’s estate, the piano is initially received
graciously. But soon after more and more
bizarre incidents in the town start cropping up seemingly connected to the
piano which goes as far as dripping blood at times, a local preacher soon takes
matters into his own hands as he tries to get to the bottom of the strange and
increasingly deadly phenomena affecting the town. The resulting film resembles an unfinished
business ghost story but as such is also one of the more eccentric genre
offerings from the director.
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| Courtesy of Arrow Films |
A year later Rebane more or less
offered up his own remake of The Most
Dangerous Game involving guests of a household who are hunted down by the
homeowner for sport with the aptly named The
Game. Concerning three millionaires
who amuse themselves by grouping together youngsters with a challenge to
survive the night while facing their worst fears, the film winds up pulling the
rug out not just from under the characters but under the audience as well. Soon neither the characters nor we are sure
of what’s real or illusion anymore as the kids find themselves tormented by
everything from tarantulas to shark fins and locking people up in a sauna.
The last film in the set, Twister’s Revenge, is easily the
wackiest film in this set if not Bill Rebane’s whole career. Telling the nutball tale of a talking
superintelligent monster truck hellbent on revenge after a group of rednecks
kidnap its inventor, this “comedy” version of Christine replete with a random bar scene involving a man in a
human bat mask is easily the crown jewel of the set for being wantonly and
gratuitously weird on all fronts. If
these films ever get released separately on their own, this is the one I would
tell people to buy. The most
entertaining and consistently surprising flick in the set, Twister’s Revenge finds itself bumping shoulders with the likes of Tammy and the T-Rex for defying rational
explanation. You can’t quite put your
finger on this one and the more nonsensical it gets, the better.
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| Courtesy of Arrow Films |
A fitting end to a truly wild and
unpredictable journey through inarguably the strangest purveyor of regional Midwestern
exploitation, Weird Wisconsin comes
with a full feature length career spanning documentary on Bill Rebane produced
by Arrow Video. Diving in deep into the
director’s filmography, including the ones not in this boxed set, the
documentary is a nice finish to the saga of Bill Rebane and even manages to
make sense of the whole conundrum that is Rebane’s oeuvre.
While not of these films necessarily
aim high, as a cavalcade of homegrown drive-in outlaw cinema where all bets
were off and anything was fair game, Weird
Wisconsin is a nice treat for both newcomers and longtime fans alike and
another hit blu-ray collection from Arrow Video who continue to put a spotlight
on distinctly American exploitation horror flicks from our underexplored cinematic
past.
--Andrew Kotwicki
