Satan’s Little Helper (2004)
The Last Drive-In went all in with Halloween decorations, including a pentagram made of burning candles and candles all around the trailer. Joe Bob Briggs announced that the night would be honoring “Halloween’s main guy, Satan.” JB himself was dressed devilishly, with a pointed beard and upswept eyebrows.
Darcy wore a bright, slight, red dress, red gloves, and a marvelous devil’s mask (the same mask used in the evening’s first feature, Satan’s Little Helper). With her face covered, Joe Bob asked, “How do we know that it’s you, Darcy?” The Mail Girl gestured to her most-distinctive visible features. With delight, he realized Darcy couldn’t talk with that mask on.
Joe Bob launched into his first diatribe about Satan for the evening. He started with the Hebrew Scriptures which first used the name of Satan, the fallen angel Lucifer. He points out that the Serpent was the first feminist, telling Eve to do whatever she wanted and not listen to the Man. He went on to Faust and eventually ranted about the Church of Satan. He was so disappointed that founder Anton Lavey let it go all Hollywood, and then Peter Gilmore took his place and made the whole thing about atheism, saying Satan was only a symbol. Where’s the fun in that?
JB said that we need Satan because we need someone to blame. He began a long recitation of the names of Satan: Moloch, Beelzebub, the Father of Lies, the Lord of the Flies, the Deceiver, the Robber, the Chief Spirit of Evil, the inventor of spam email, etc., with Darcy looking on in frustration, unable to tell him to shut up.
He gloated about what fun it was to have Darcy silenced, but then he pushed things a bit too far. “Halloween 3 sucks!” he shouted. Darcy stared. “Scream sucks!” Darcy glared. It didn’t take long for Joe Bob to become quite unsettled by Darcy’s silent, steady, judging masked gaze.
Eventually, he got to talking about the cast. Wass Stevens, who played the father in the film, had once worked as a bouncer at a New York night club, where he wouldn’t let Joe Bob past the velvet rope because of his Western garb. JB had not been happy. He had much better things to say about Alexander Brickel, the child lead in the film. JB pointed out, “You can go so wrong with child actors, but that kid’s incredible.” His kindest words went to Amanda Plummer who played the mother, “Always quirky, always interesting.”
JB described the film as off center and weird. In other words, a Jeff Lieberman film. JB then brought out the film’s creator, writer, and director, Jeff Lieberman, whom he introduced as his friend.
They discussed other films in Lieberman’s filmography, such as Squirm (a killer worm film that came out in the wake of Jaws, along with other killer animal films, but Lieberman pointed out that he wrote the screenplay before Spielberg’s classic was released), Blue Sunshine (about a form of LSD that turns people into bald killers. Lieberman did admit to LSD use), and Just Before Dawn (which JB called a slasher but Lieberman denied the designation, unconvincingly).
He also made a documentary about Sonny Liston and, perhaps most surprisingly, wrote the screenplay to The Neverending Story 3. (And he made a fair deal of money writing screenplays that were never produced.)
Lieberman discussed the making of Satan’s Little Helper. He had the idea of playing with the idea of “Santa’s Little Helper” but twisted. His first thought was having a little kid write a letter asking for someone to be killed and then flushing the letter down the toilet to Hell. Writing the script (“Stoned,” Lieberman admitted), he realized the character of “Satan” would have to be fun along with being evil. He searched online to find the perfect mask and paid $320 for the mask that appears in the film. And he hired a mime and dancer (Johnny Annex) to wear the mask.
He talked about the scene where a cat is killed and its blood is used to write graffiti (Darcy indicated with mime that she was not a fan of that scene). He said he realized he needed that scene at that point in the film to show that Satan is really a nasty guy. He asked his crew for a black cat for the film. To his dismay, he received a professional acting union cat that cost $5,000. He just wanted a stray from the pound. When people were upset about a cat being killed in the film, he assured people, “I only killed one cat. But I was able to get nine takes.”
The film was made on a budget of $700,000 and made a profit. Lieberman aimed to make a film that could offend just about everybody and was pleased he had succeeded – though it didn’t offend Darcy; it’s one of her favorites. She watches it annually.
Joe Bob also loves the film, as can be seen by the following Drive-In Totals:
After the film, Darcy returned without the mask and was able to give Joe Bob a very exciting piece of mail. Chris Miller of North Carolina sent a great artifact – one of the original Cracker Barrel menus. Joe Bob was obviously touched.
Joe Bob closed the first half of the show with a couple of jokes and these inspiring words: “I would rather put on pork chop panties and run through a lion’s den than go to an indoor movie because THE DRIVE-IN WILL NEVER DIE!”
Late Night with the Devil
“Welcome back,” Joe Bob said, “To our tribute to the Devil!”
JB opened with his favorite portrayals of the Prince of Darkness on the screen. First he went with Al Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate in which Al was hammier than he was with Tony Montana. Another favorite is Vincent Price in The Story of Mankind where the Dark One brings a case against the human race. Both incarnations are lawyers. Coincidence?
Darcy argued for Tim Curry as Darkness in Legend. He’s never called Satan, but really… She also brought up Liz Hurley as the Devil in Bedazzled, since JB got a lot of hate mail when he called the Devil in The Passion of the Christ the only female devil on the screen. (Of course, Raquel Welch first played that part in the original version of Bedazzled, but I digress.)
Joe Bob said he thought the films with the most realistic portrayal of the Devil were Looney Tunes, “I believe in the Warner Brothers Devil. Not Taz, who I admire, but the devil that appears in a bubble on the shoulder when the character is making a moral choice…. The devil comes from inside.” JB advocated Bugs Bunny initially. Darcy countered with Tweety Bird as the angel on the other shoulder. They both agreed that Porky Pig’s Angel and Devil was the best representation of moral dilemmas.
“Is the Devil actually in tonight’s movie?” JB asked about Late Night with the Devil. He also pointed out that this was the first time The Last Drive-In showed a movie that had been released in theaters that very same year.
Joe Bob marveled at the film’s remarkable recreation of the world of a 1970’s talk show. At the time, Johnny Carson ruled the world of late-night talk, averaging 15 million viewers a night. When Tiny TIm (star of Blood Harvest, an early Last Drive-In feature) married Miss Vicki, 55 million viewers tuned in. JB rolled off the names of a number of people who tried to take Carson down: Regis Philbin, Alan Thicke, David Brenner, Ron Reagan, Jerry Lewis, Steve Allen, Arsenio Hall, Joey Bishop, and many more. Joan Rivers had been a frequent guest host for Johnny, but when she tried to take him down, he stopped talking to her. Pat Sajak made a move that should have rocketed him to the top, bringing on Joe Bob Briggs as a guest, but he had to satisfy himself with his vast fortune made through Wheel of Fortune.
Then there was Jack Delroy, host of “Night Owls,” who went up against the late night king – though he had the disadvantage of being wholly fictional. Delroy, the protagonist of Late Night with the Devil, was played the second guest of the evening, David Dastmalchian.
Dastmalchian was quick to point out that the creators of the film, writing and directing team Cameron and Colin Cairnes, based their late night host on someone other than all the names listed above. They were thinking of Don Lane, host of a late night show that had a nine-season run in Australia. He was the late-night host the Cairnes knew best.
So Dastmalchian went to YouTube to study Lane as well as Carson, Dick Cavett and others.
He also studied the smarmy work of Phil Donahue, and Joe Bob shared about an appearance on Phil’s show where he was ambushed. (“He thought we were scum,” JB said.)
Cameron and Colin Cairnes worked hard to recreate TV from the 1970’s. Except Dastmalchian, all the actors were Aussies, but you could never guess from their impeccable American accents.
The cast replicates fixtures of late night talk. Rhys Auteri plays the sidekick, Gus, a combination of Doc Severson and Ed McMahon. Fayssai Bazzi plays Christou with an awesome gold Nehru jacket, a nod to Uri Geller. Ian Bliss as Carmichael Haig obviously harkens back to The Amazing Randi.
The directors used three cameras to replicate television production back in the day. Since they would be on camera just as the rest of the cast was, the cameramen needed to dress in period costume, too. The best compliment they could receive for a shot was, “That was awful!”
News footage from the 1970s is used in the film, including footage purported to be an FBI raid of a Satanic cult (using actual footage of the FBI raid of the Symbionese Liberation Army). David and Joe Bob also discussed the film’s resort for the rich and powerful, the Bohemian Grove in Monte Rio, California. It’s a real place, founded by Ambrose Bierce (one of JB’s favorite writers) and frequented by powerful figures in the U.S. government and Sammy Davis Jr. (JB went on a bit about Sammy’s joining the Church of Satan and his fondness for orgies.)
Dastmalchian shared many common interests with JB and/or Darcy in a discussion that ranged from old TV horror hosts to comics to Fangoria to Al Yankovic.
And, of course, the movie was screened. Here are Joe Bob’s Drive-In totals for Late Night with the Devil:
Late Night with the Devil pretends to be found footage from the 1970s, but we were treated to other found footage from that era: the pilot to Joe Bob Briggs’ first movie hosting gig out in the Lone Star State, Joe Bob’s Groovy Grisly Gruesome Great Tuesday Movie with co-host Delilah the sock puppet on Cable Access 78. With JB’s groovy long locks, I don’t understand why the show wasn’t picked up by a network, but it just might have gotten him on the radar for a local newspaper column.
The closing letter asked Joe Bob to screen some work by the great Jack Hill. Here’s hoping! (Doubt that’s happening on the Christmas special, though. But really, who doesn’t have The Big Doll House on their Santa’s Wish LIst?)