Mad Foxes (1981)

While the title of this monthly article is Shitizen Kane, and, yes, these are shit films in a way, I feel a little bad throwing such an insulting word at movies I genuinely love. For me, the line between good and bad in cinema is not so black and white. If a terrible film entertains me, I love it with as much energy as I love a “legitimate” masterpiece. In my world, the only truly bad film is a soulless Hollywood hunk of poo. And that’s not even to say I hate all big-budgeted Hollywood films. No, just soulless Oscar bait filled with crocodile tears, textbook writing and generic green-screen visuals. When it comes to the sort of “bad” films that slot into the Shitizen Kane category, there are two films that stand tall in my personal ranking sheet. They are easily two of the most out of control, entertaining, stupid and amazing films. One is Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky. The other is…

MAD FOXES
1981, Spain/Switzerland, Paul Grau

As soon as the opening titles of Mad Foxes come to an end, it becomes obvious, very quickly, that this is no normal exploitation film. No, this is celluloid chaos at its most abrasive. Mad Foxes is essentially a revenge film… only it doesn’t follow the revenge formula. Instead of a rape or murder followed by retribution, we have a pattern of accidental death, rape to avenge death, mutilation to avenge rape, mass murder to avenge mutilation… repeat, repeat, repeat. Hal Walters (José Gras – who bad movie fans will recognize from Hell of the Living Dead) is apparently the “hero” of Mad Foxes; more on his lack of heroic qualities later. So anyway, Hal and his barely legal girlfriend/one-night stand inadvertently piss off some Neo-Nazi bikers in the opening scenes of Mad Foxes. The Nazi bikers seem upset at Hal’s fancy car and his necking of his gal; they bring up the issue while stopped at traffic lights. Hal drives off and, through a series of confusing maneuvers, a biker ends up hurtling off his bike to a fiery death. The bikers want revenge and attack Hal and his girlfriend as they leave a night club. The bikers rape the girl and beat up Hal.

So at this point, the logical progression would be something like this: Hal is furious about the love of his life being raped and heads off on a mission to kill the bikers who defiled his gal. Well, it sort of pans out like that… emphasis on sort of. Hal rings up a karate school made up of karate men that all work out together in a tiny room while their karate boss watches and plays with a pair of nun-chucks and requests their help. An unexpected method of revenge, but okay. The karate guys come storming into the funeral for the biker killed at the start of the film and, rather pathetically, fuck shit up. The best part about this amazing scene is not only the weak high kicks and the climactic Nazi cock removal, but the fact that some of these karate guys are fucking yellow-belts! Please enjoy:

By the end of the scene, the head biker has had his cock removed (and we assume he is dead), revenge is complete and our hero is free to continue fucking random women. Oh yeah and by the way, you know that girl that got raped at the start? We never see her again. The initial revenge delivered by Hal seems more to do with the humiliation he received from his vicious beating. Anyway, back to the increasingly convoluted plot… the bikers – after shooting all the karate men to death – find out where Hal lives and pay his beloved car a visit. Once again, they refrain from actually doing anything bad to the car other than stalking around it like cats and giving it a few weak kicks. Hal is warned by some kid and escapes. A wonderfully awful car chase ensues as the bikers ride their pathetic dirt bikes awkwardly attempting to catch up to Hal. For hardened bikers, these guys really suck at riding motorbikes. They almost instantly get into an accident. Two of them even dump their bikes and steal a taxi, which, of course, they crash straight away. As goofy as these villains are, I should point out that they are happy to violently murder anyone they come across making their giggling lighthearted attitude even more absurd. Anyway, Hal evades the bikers and makes a run to his parents’ house with a horny hitchhiker in tow and all is okay again. Until the bikers show up. (Are you seeing a pattern here?) But you’ll have to watch the film to find out what happens next. I wouldn’t want to ruin any of the silliness that follows.

Well, I suppose that’s the plot out of the way. I’m at a loss of where to begin my critique of a masterpiece of shit of this magnitude. I guess the first thing that is really noticeable about Mad Foxes is just how plain repulsive the lead character, Hal, is. I mean, yes, every character in Mad Foxes is fucking repulsive, but the lead character is utterly devoid of any positive qualities. Yet, somehow, the ladies love him. This is a man that fucks anything that moves from virginal eighteen-year old to slutty hitchhikers; a man who instructs a karate man to cut off a biker’s dick (a dick which is then shoved in said biker’s own mouth); and a man who has a permanent smugness to his sun-wrinkled face. It doesn’t help that the dialogue – or at least the dubbing – is absolutely mental. Hal spills out some amazing lines. Just check out this gibberish:

The dubbing in Mad Foxes is all over the place with characters permanently talking over each other (a classic sign of a great bad movie) and endless hysterical lines. Even side characters who appear for as little as one scene have something ridiculous to add to the dialogue. (My favourite is when a man who has just been dumped by his a girlfriend runs after her as she speeds off in a car, he’s dragging along a trunk and instead of yelling that he loves her, or something, he yells: “what am I going to do with this trunk now?!”) The villainous bikers have too many fantastic lines… too many to list. In a standout line – after viciously disemboweling some innocent woman – one of them screams: “we’re the kings of the universe!”

And that brings us to the violence of Mad Foxes. Wow… for such a stupid film, Mad Foxes is kind of horrific when it comes to the red stuff. When you see the violence in something like The Story of Ricky, it’s funny and absurd because it’s so terribly fake and excessive. The violence in Mad Foxes is excessive (not quite as excessive as Ricky, but what is?), but it’s also quite brutal and – while not exactly “realistic” – it packs somewhat of a punch simply for its nastiness. In amongst the goofy dialogue, ridiculous characters and swastika armbands (that often are devoid of swastika when filming takes place outdoors), there are moments of uncomfortable cruelty. During the opening rape – you know, that rape that is utterly forgotten about moments after it happens – one of the bikers shoves his fingers inside the girl, then pulls them out, covered in blood, and they all cackle about her being a virgin. It doesn’t stop there. He then smears his bloodied finger over her nose. Then the sloppy (and thankfully short) rape scene is allowed to occur. As absolutely horrifying as that sounds, it’s so obnoxious in its execution that even my girlfriend (not as hardened and jaded a viewer as I) let out a laugh. Similarly, later on, we have a shockingly violent home invasion, which occurs while the bikers swagger and cackle their way through the scene. It’s an impossible experience to describe. You’re watching a stupid film with stupid characters spewing out stupid lines – stupid, stupid – but at the same time this horrible shit is happening on the screen. Mad Foxes fucks with your head with its clash of brutality and stupidity.

Bloody hell. I’ve already written over a thousand words and I haven’t even looked at my notes I took while watching the film. There’s so much more to say about Mad Foxes, so I’ll give you a short list of just a few of the ridiculous things I noted down while viewing:

– An amazing cut from an explosion to a truly awful looking disco.
– Rampant full-frontal male nudity.
– The hero narrating what he is doing at a bar. (To the bartender, holding glasses, he nods and says: “I’ll take the glasses with me.”)
– The bikers’ claim that the hero is always “bragging about his nice car”; something he never does.
– A mental smoke-machine-infused dance number that seems to take place somewhere entirely irrelevant to the story and characters.
– Hal’s constant grunting and groaning while kissing women.
– A funky theme song that would sound more in place in an Italian cop movie or buddy comedy.
– A sex scene in a bathtub filled with disgusting brownish yellow water.
– At one point the film cuts to characters we’ve never seen before – butt-naked – rolling around on a beach. And it’s a while before we understand their relevance (which is basically nonexistent anyway).
– One of the villainous bikers strolling around naked for no apparent reason, and the line of “let me piss in your mouth”, which is confusingly uttered over the scene.
– The hero asking some guy where the bikers hideout is and getting this reply: “Yeah, everybody knows their hideout.”

If that’s not enough reasons to see Mad Foxes, you’re reading the wrong blog, my friend.