THE WORST WE CAN FIND - Christmas Advent Calendar: Day 11 - Hollywood After Dark

The season is a time of reflection; to look back at events from the past and consider how they shaped the future. Case in point for THE WORST WE CAN FIND Christmas Advent Calendar, it’s the FILM CREW and HOLLYWOOD AFTER DARK. It’s not jolly and it has no good cheer, but every Advent Calendar with chocolate in it usually has at least one weird piece that you wonder how it got there.

Hollywood After Dark (1960)

Program: The Film Crew

Air-Date: July 7, 2007

The DVD cover for the first Film Crew release.

Plot: Tony (Anthony Vorno) runs a junkyard and is approached by Nick (Paul Bruce) and his pal Tom (John Barrick) about helping with a heist. Tony turns him down, but after only making $3 off a water-pump, he decides to join in and turns up at a burlesque club where Nick is the owner, or manager, or guy who has an office there (hard to say).

At the club, Tony beats Sandy (Rue McCalanahan; yes, that one). She’s a stripper who wants to be an actress. They have the worst meet-cute possible and decide to go to the beach, where they attempt to have a good time while being rather miserable about it (The killing couple in The Sky Divers were more fun to hang around). On the beach, Tony’s shaved back is so conspicuous (especially his partially shaved arms) that it’s hard to turn away. And anyone that grew up with Rue as a Golden Girl or even Maude is just going to find it hard to think of her as sexy as the film wants her to be.

After falling in tolerance with each other, Sandy heads to a writer’s apartment to read over a script, but he drugs and forces himself on her. Tony waits outside until after she leaves to beat the guy up.

Hollywood After Dark, or Hollywood After Dork. It's hard to tell.

The heist occurs where Nick and Tom rob a place above the shoreline and then drop the loot to Tony in the water. As mentioned by the Film Crew, it turns out that Tony’s part in the heist was unnecessary (there should have been at least a scene where Nick and Tom get pulled over by the cops and shown to not have the money and making Tony’s part in the scheme more logically, but it’s not here). Tony has the money and tries to convince Sandy to held off with him, but she refuses.

Your cast of unique faces in Hollywood After Dark.

After a walk along the beach, Tony decides to hand over the money and walk out of the deal, only for Tom to have killed Nick and knifes Tony so he can keep all the money to himself. Tony smashes Tom in the face with a lamp and stumbles off, dying in Sandy’s apartment. Tom, bleeding from the face, tries to get away from the cop and dies in a crash. 

That’s the movie. Not more to see here, folks. Move along. Move along.

Favorite Riff: “Hey, Pal, wait!  We both share the common goal of debasing Rue McClanahan!”

Thoughts:  The Daily Ardmoreite in Ardmore, Oklahoma ran a short article in their September 14, 1960 edition raving about native Rue McClanahan, an “Ardmore High School and Tulsa University graduate,” being the lead in a new movie called Walk the Angry Beach. The article goes on to say that the film had filmed earlier that year.  Although a producer of the film would later state that the $5,000 production never got released because they were sold bad film stock, the movie did play out in the California area in 1961 for a time with the better-known title Hollywood After Dark. The movie was evidently also titled The Unholy Choice at some point, but the only records of it being shown is on the first two titles.

Writer-director-producer John Hayes started his career with a half-hour-long short film called The Kiss that was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 1958 (and is available to see on YouTube; it’s actually a sweet little film with a cinematic twist at the very end). Hayes would go on to writer and/or direct several exploitation films, including RiffTrax favorite End of the World (with Christopher Lee), but is probably best known for his quirky horror film Grave of the Vampire.

Rue, of course, went on to fame namely in television. Several of the other actors did work here and there, but Hayes and McClanahan are the best remembered of the group.

As mentioned above, the movie was filmed in 1960, released to a small number of theaters in California in 1961 and then finally released to other theaters in 1968 with a new copyright notice, hence why it is usually reported as being from 1968 although everything looks much order than that in the film. As mentioned in the commentary by the Film Crew, the stripping by various women goes on far too long and probably hurt the film’s chances in finding a larger audience. A review in Variety in March 1961 gave good marks to McClanahan, Vorno, and most of the cast, and felt that Hayes “glum, acid, point-of-view” had merit, it was also felt that the film was too arthouse for the grindhouses, too offbeat for mainstream theaters, and too risqué for “the Puritan pressure barrier.” Except for those curious to see McClanahan in such a role early in her career, it wasn’t until the Film Crew riffed the movie that more people found out about it.

The Riffing: As I mention in my book The Worst We Can Find, television shows, shorts, and movies that took other media and retooled them into comedies with redubbed dialogue or riffing usually had one thing in common: they all were introduced with a set-up as to WHY the redubbing was needed. What’s Up, Tiger Lily? has an introduction by Woody Allen to explain the premise; Dynaman had an introduction each week to explain what was going on as well. Same with Mad Movies with the L.A. Connection and even It Came from Hollywood.  Hercules Returns builds an entire plot around the riffing.  MST3K certainly did with the whole “experiment,” with the off-shot, Cinematic Titanic began with a storyline to explain why people were talking over the movies.

Bill discovers that lunchtime meetings are hardly the place for brainstorming. Or eating.

And The Film Crew was no different. The first episode of the series (and subsequent episodes) would begin with Mike, Kevin, and Bill explaining that they had been hired to do commentaries for films that did not have them yet.  It would only be later as Mike begins doing the commentaries with Legend Films that did not need set-up to explain why the funny talking was going on would RiffTrax begin to come into focus.

The Film Crew had been started by the threesome after leaving MST3K, where they would make appearances on NPR to do comedic reviews of movies on All Things Considered. This would branch out to providing introductions for movies on AMC and Starz/Encore in 2005 as well as some material for a Three Stooges collection for Legend. The ball would continue to roll into 2006 when it was announced that the Film Crew would be making a series for Rhino Home Video. Four episodes were produced before Rhino pulled the plug. While rumors surrounded this as being the work of Jim Mallon supposedly threatening to pull out of a deal with Rhino releasing MST3K on video, Kevin in 2007 said that it rather had to do with Rhino not thinking the riffing was as “complimentary as we did.”

The series was eventually picked up by Shout! Factory, a splinter video company that came out of Rhino, who released the four episodes in 2007. Some minor dubbing was done due to the switch, with all mentions of Rhino now becoming Shout! Factory, and the boss character, Mr. Rhino to Mr. Honcho. While some fans would wonder if there would be more episodes, Mike was already working to build up RiffTrax and the others had move on to other projects as well. Nor was Shout! Factory breaking down the door demanding new episodes anyway.

A little razzmatazz from the Film Crew at the end of Hollywood After Dark.

The series is very much a similar set-up as seen with RiffTrax for the three, with the three sometimes playing off each other as much as the movie itself. The three, who also wrote each episode, would do a short intro on-camera with Mr. Honcho phoning in, then a “Lunch Break” at a midpoint in the film (oddly enough, Cinematic Titanic would also take a similar mid-film break for a short comedy sketch). The Lunch Break usually involved some time of shenanigans that leads to someone – usually Kevin – not getting a chance to eat. After the film, the three would return for a final sketch to wrap things up (with some DVDs including additional sketches unrelated to the movies as extras).

Rhino may have had a point about the commentary being a bit “uncomplimentary” and you can hear it here with Hollywood After Dark. Some of the material would certainly have never made it on MST3K and perhaps not even the more PG-13 humor of the later RiffTrax. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile checking out for the evolution of RiffTrax in the making, as well as four solid riffs. All four are available to watch on Amazon, RiffTrax, YouTube and Tubi and should be checked out. Just don’t be surprised if you feel you may need to scoot the younger fans out of the room after hitting play.