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Theory of Creation, the artist with bandaged fingers. "Who am I to argue with science?" The jumping-off point might be the squealing seedlings from The Thing from Another World, a jocular variation materializes in Mushnick's flower shop in a Skid Row California out of the Fifties but not quite yet into the counterculture. The nudnik (Jonathan Haze) makes a living tripping over things at the store, the merchant (Mel Welles) is about to fire him when he reveals his botanical experiment, a flytrap hybrid named after the ditzy ingénue (Jackie Joseph). Mineral water does nothing to the wilting snapper but blood droplets make it grow "like a cold sore from the lip," nightly snacks of body parts are soon required if the trophy from the Society of Silent Flower Watchers is to be won. "Shut up and bring on the chow!" Roger Corman's brilliant vaudeville on the theme of success—a companion piece to A Bucket of Blood as a Yiddish fable framed by a mock-Dragnet investigation. A mutant aestheticism for "that meshugganah plant," answered by the connoisseur (Dick Miller) who's "crazy about kosher plants." (He orders a bouquet of carnations and reaches for the saltshaker in his pocket.) Two days of shooting are more than enough when the screenplay is Charles B. Griffith's richest, more than enough to excite Beckett's jealousy when the hero's visage pops out of a junkyard toilet. Welles' kvetching and Myrtle Vail's cough-syrup toast are integral to a most inspired ensemble, and there's Jack Nicholson's unforgettable turn as a bow-tied masochist giggling himself into a climax under the dentist's drill ("No novocaine, it dulls the senses"). The punchline is a literal blossoming, Eraserhead is an aftertaste. With Karyn Kupcinet, Toby Michaels, Leola Wendorff, and John Herman Shaner. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |