'Fasten your goddamn seat belt.'
Welcome back to my Dark Corner of this Sick World.
‘He’s a weird dude but he knows how to cure the clap’
We’re looking at Dance of the Dwarfs.
‘Why do you wish to know of such evil’
also known as Easy Flyer in a nod to it's star the late Peter Fonda.
‘You wanna see me on a hog’
although I doubt this is what he’d like to be remembered for…
‘It’s no great shakes but it buys me a little nookie once in a while’
We open with a mysterious death.
Anthropologist Evelyn Howard is heading into the jungle to meet another anthropologist who has made a remarkable discovery.
‘Based on what I have seen so far I strongly suspect Dr Essisnger has made contact with a tribe of pygmies’
Unfortunately the helicopter she hired does not live up to the brochure.
‘Welcome to the end of the rainbow’
Harry Bediker is a hard-drinking con artist with a taste for hookers…
and Vietnam flashbacks...
‘I spent 284 nights in a Viet cong hooch with things like that and I'm not just about to do that again.'
Which I imagine is supposed to excuse his character
and pave the way for the romance that’s going to happen…
even after his drunken rogue schtick veers into assault.
'Get your hands off me!'
After the helicopter is shot down.
'Goddamn it.'
'Are we on the ground yet?'
The pair make their way on foot to the research station to find that Dr Essinger has vanished after seeing strange things in the jungle.
‘Looks like some sort of anthropoid creature. An ape possibly’
Local Luis knows better.
‘Duendes’
‘Duendes?’
‘Dwarfs. Spooks, boogger boogger!’
Evelyn decides to find her friend or at least learn what happened to him so needs to clean up Harry’s act.
'What the hell are yu doing?'
‘Saving you from yourself’
and pretty soon...
‘Frog’s turned into a prince’
When he’s sober he barely tries to rape me at all, it’s like a fairy tale.
‘You know, you’re not so bad when you’re cleaned up’
Now they must find Dr Essinger in the dense jungle.
‘Through the trees and to the right’
Well those are really helpful directions, I imagine they’ll find him in no time.
‘Your lame attempts at humour are getting very tiresome'
While Evelyn is out earning the Oscar for most pointless macheteting,
Harry goes to fix his helicopter using cooking oil as a substitute for hydraulic fluid.
‘I spit on your mother’s mazola’
Uncalled for. Harry is held up by the people who shot them down.
‘A gun to you head and you still make jokes’
They’ve got the drop on him but, and I don’t want to overstate this;
these are the dumbest men who have ever lived.
‘You guys ever heard of Cuban Roulette?’
Okay, they’re not going to shoot themselves.
‘You first’
‘Wanna play?’
The only person dumber than the bad guys who just gave their prisoner a loaded gun,
is the man who sat down and wrote this scene thinking ‘Ah yes, our intrepid hero outwits his adversaries’
‘If you don’t like it why don’t you go back home’
Finally, 15 minutes from the end and having not seen them since the opening, the monsters return…
and attack.
Well that was worth waiting for…
‘You wanted dwarfs, you’ve got dwarfs’
I really don’t think I do.
This is basically Romancing the Stoned, and I was amazed to learn this came out first.
It also draws on The African Queen another story of a drunk being reformed by the love of a good woman
with Germans instead of lizard men.
‘That sucker’s history’
But, stories like that work because the couple are in a pressure situation.
It’s not that the monsters don’t appear until the end.
That’s probably for the best.
And their presence is hinted at throughout.
The problem is the characters never feel they’re in danger.
‘That’s a gross distortion of the truth’
The actors might have felt in danger.
They just go about their lives so there’s nothing to push them together.
The only real threat to Evelyn is Harry Bediker himself.
Their inevitable romance relies on us buying into these single-dimension stereotypes falling in love.
‘You’re really a darling’
Then there’s the very ending, Spoilers. And after 90 minutes with the tone set consistently at romantic comedy adventure...
What the hell?
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Peter Fonda made his fair share of low budget weirdness, what's your favorite?