Luther the Geek. Carlton J. Albright, 1988.
😿😿😿
Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray #100, released 2016. English language. Runtime approximately 80 minutes.
Summary: Numerous depictions of cruel killing of chickens.
Details:
1) Off camera, a man implicitly bites the head off a chicken, 2:25, then spits the gore, 2:48.
2) Image of the decapitated chicken from the previous scene, 3:42-3:45.
3) Butchering of a dead chicken, starting with decapitation at 8:52, and continuing through chopping, 9:13.
4) Graphic special effects of biting off a chicken’s head, 17:34-17:45.
5) Dead deer hanging from a tree, huntin’ style, 37:07-37:24.
6) Dead chicken thrown at a person, 1:05:09.
It is unfortunate that the nucleus of Luther the Geek is the historic carnival character ‘The Geek’ who bites the heads off of live chickens. For otherwise, Luther the Geek is among the more interesting horror films among the 80s-90s dump of slasher garbage. Edward Terry’s performance as a homicidal maniac who has taken on the mannerisms and personality of a chicken is quite entertaining, quite good.
Luther the Geek also provides one of film’s more authentic portrayals of mainstream mid-80s fashion. Pop films from or evoking that period are excessively anxious to emphasize New Wave and mass market Punk styles. Too much green or pink coloring in hair that too often is some variation of a Mohawk; too much cheap leather in goofy colors; too many spiked dog collars. If we accept these depictions as accurate, all this and more was worn by 90% of girls to high school every day as though lime green fishnet bodysuits were sold in Penney’s.
I attended high school and college in ho-hum rural areas (Luther the Geek is set and filmed in ho-hum rural Illinois). At that time I knew all about Cindy Lauper as well as Wendy O. Williams, and was tearfully aware that their fashions did not appear in my world, be that world real, false, mutant, or authentic. Girls I knew, whether good girls, trashy girls, popular girls, or AFS girls, all aspired to unflattering high-waisted saggy-assed jeans, ugly petit popcorn-knit shirts of various constipated micro-collared design, and had hair somewhere on the continuum between the cheerleader flip-back and Mall Hair with a poof in the front resembling an angry Pomeranian.
Luther the Geek authentically shows that 1980s. Teen girls wear prematurely dumpy clothes in pastel colors and drive pastel-colored cars with light tan vinyl seats that degrade prematurely along the raised welts. A scene in a grocery store documents period packaging style in which even famous brand names have a ‘generic’ look to the graphics, and a USA Today vending box on the sidewalk looks strikingly like an android from the original Star Wars trilogy. At one point a college boy in nondescript clothes produces his hideous wallet made of khaki vinyl held closed with a wide velcro band. That was the real 1980s and I still have the identical wallet in a drawer.
Miss Thompson Goes Shopping. David Gladwell, 1958.
Metropolis. Fritz Lang, 1927.
The Marriage of Maria Braun (Die Ehe der Maria Braun). Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1979.
Man’s Peril: The Making of 'Good Times, Wonderful Times’. Michael Rogosin, 2009.
The Man with a Movie Camera (Chelovek s kino-apparatom). Dziga Vertov, 1929.
Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood. Christopher Speeth, 1973.
The Maestro: King of the Cowboy Artists. Les Blank, 1994.
Machine Animal (Stray Cat Rock: Machine Animal / Nora-neko rokku: Mashin animaru). Yasuharu Hasebe, 1970.
Luther. Guy Green, 1973.
Lovers and Other Strangers. Cy Howard, 1970.
Love + Anarchism. Yoshishige (Kijû) Yoshida, 1969-1973.
The Lost Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis. Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1969-1971.
Lorsque le bateau de Léon M. descendit la Meuse pour la première fois (When Léon M.’s Boat Went Down the Meuse for the First Time). Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 1979.
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Tony Richardson, 1962.
The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen). Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006.
Little Sisters/Powder Burns. Alex de Renzy, 1971-1972.