Dude, Mankind Sucks: Stanley

Tim Ochopee (Chris Robinson) has self-isolated from his Seminole tribe as well as the white folks of nearby Miami, Florida. He lives in a shack out in the Everglades with a shit ton of domesticated snakes. He comes to town when he needs money, selling snake venom to the local clinic to help them manufacture anti-venom serums. He also donates the occasional snake to Gloria Calvin (Marcia Knight), an aging burlesque dancer who cavorts on stage with the reptiles. He’s got bad headaches, a possible byproduct of the heaping helping of combat shock/PTSD he developed during a tour in The ‘Nam. Still, he does his best to keep his charges safe and happy. Two of his bff rattlers, Stanley and Hazel, are even about to have little snakelings.

His idyllic existence is thrown out of whack when local shady boss guy Richard Thomkins (Alex Rocco) and his thugs Crail Denning (Steve Alaimo) and Bob Wilson (Mark Harris) come along with a new moneymaking idea. Some French fashion dude said animal skins are in, so why not catch snakes and turn them into belts, boots, and whatnot? Since Tim is the best snake wrangler around, they are willing to cut him in on the offer—he catches the snakes, the boys kill them, everyone profits! Needless to say, they are utterly baffled when he blows a gasket and throws them off his property. Is he still steamed up about his father’s “accidental” death during one of Thomkins’ alligator shooting parties?

Well, soon enough Crail, Bob, and their psycho pal Marty “Psycho” Simpson (Paul Avery) show up on Tim’s swamp, killing the snakes they find; just as soon as he finds out, Tim is opening cans of whoop ass on them to get rid of the intruders. The situation is bound to escalate, and it does in one of the more brutal displays found in exploitation cinema, a deed that drives Tim over the edge and into a revenge madness. Soon enough, he’s on the prowl, fixing the fiends who kill snakes in pointless money grabs. Thomkins is on the list, as is Gloria’s hubby/manager Sidney (Rey Baumel), and even Thomkins’ daughter Susie (Susan Carroll). William Grefé helms a quirky slice of regional Florida cinema in the unsettling revenge picture, Stanley (1972).

Regional exploitation cinema from the 1970s has yielded some masterful accomplishments despite their low budgets. I unabashedly love The Witch Who Came From the Sea (1976) as well as Dark August (1976) and that WTF masterpiece The Child (1977). Some of the films have been rotten, and some are mixed bags, but do a survey of any era and you end up with both wheat and chaff. Stanley lands squarely in the mixed bag category. When it’s running strong, it’s terrific. When it veers off course, it goes deep into the WTF weeds and not in an entertaining way. Let’s consider it, shall we?

The first fifty minutes of the movie are a character study of a damaged man who is trying to overcome his mental challenges. Tim is not an unsympathetic guy, just an antisocial one. He’s got little good to say about mankind, which is understandable—we do screw up just about everything we touch, don’t we? As he battles against the white guys who want to turn “useless” animals into “something valuable,” it’s hard not to side with the character. Initially, he even uses non-lethal tactics, mostly just releasing what the baddies catch and trading knuckle sandwiches or crotch soccer kicks. Tim’s pal Stanley’s got his back (and bites one of the baddies squarely in the ass, ending one of the fistfights before it goes into the realms of homicide). At the halfway point, the stakes raise when some of Thomkins’ men wind up in quicksand and sink while Tim just watches them go. Everything before has been character work; this is the real kickoff of the downhill slide into madness and violence.

What follows is another few minutes of Tim getting shown the depths humanity will descend to in order to make a buck. The hatred that acts like a cancer in his spirit (a term used by the Seminoles who arrive near the start of the picture) grows and grows, and he cannot do anything but act. From there, he uses his snakes like weapons, killing the enemies of his way of life, and there’s the same justification made for such acts that we find in a flick like Willard (1971): These creeps more than earned their deaths.

Unfortunately, the last twenty or so minutes of the movie are baffling to me as to why they even exist. Tim has gotten his revenge and winds up kidnapping Susie, bringing her home, spewing Biblical bullshit about needing an Eve for his Eden. They might have sex, she tries to go, he commands his snakes to kill the ungrateful brat, and … well, it all goes downhill from there. It doesn’t fit in with the story we’ve seen to that point. It doesn’t mesh with the character (even the crazy version) and it feels like someone said, “Hey, we need to keep the cars in the drive-in, so let’s add some crrrrrazy action!” It’s disappointing after such a generally interesting picture.

Grefé is not generally a subtle director, and yet there are subtle touches to this flick that make it nothing short of hypnotizing. There’s a cruelty to the proceedings, which is unsettling. Particularly in the face of the first fifty minutes, which does its damnedest to inspire hope of some kind of equilibrium—all those hopes get dashed as Tim discovers that mankind’s role is to eat other animals up, both literally and metaphorically. This is as cynical and critical a film as anything Romero ever shot. That Grefé employs these messages while also struggling to make a buck is the delicious irony found in any commercial artform.

The performances are all right with a couple of high points. Alex Rocco gets to chew some scenery as the unrestrained capitalist. He delivers two memorable scenes that are masterclasses in how to deliver lines that build an evil character without twirling the proverbial moustache. One of them involving his get rich quick scheme (and demands for retrieval of money dropped in swamp water). The second involves him ruminating about the good work he’s doing turning useless, awful animals into useful products. Also, his face when he jumps into a pool that’s filled with water moccasins is one of the most hilarious yet honest moments in the film.

Mark Harris is the other standout performer here. Not because he can deliver the lines: he does a passable job at best with that task. However, his physical acting is top notch stuff. Consider the believable ways he adds his character’s injury to simple acts like walking. He has a terrific sense of how to look like a bully and then immediately undercut that. It’s a brilliant physical performance. And then there is his inevitable death scene. It’s one of the most memorable because he goes from tough guy to pleading victim, and he actually hits a couple of heart cords before he goes. It’s the kind of sleazy and cowardly sidekick death that makes a character like Skank (Angel David) memorable in The Crow (1994).

From a craft perspective, the movie looks and sounds all right. However, Stanley also has a couple of very 1970s pop tunes that make appearances in the title/end credits and once in the transition from revenge picture to whatever it is in the end. They are somber but danceable, with lyrics that hammer on the nose of ecological awareness and conservation. They carry a heavy level of disillusionment with destructive ways of life. Not bad songs on their own, but the music doesn’t quite fit the proceedings as well as the lyrics.

As a warning to those with a soft spot for animals, Stanley may well include some actual animal abuse. Looks like it to me, and the filmmakers are certainly cavalier about the fate of some of the snake actors in their flick. Grefé boasted Stanley was made into a wallet that he carries to this day, which is either tacky or despicable, depending on your point of view. There’s a heartbreaking moment when baby snakes get mashed to death by a crazy bad guy, which looks like real animals getting beaten into bloody fragments. There’s another part, right around there, where a snake gets blown away with a shotgun, and it sure doesn’t look like a puppet. I for one don’t like actual animal death in my entertainment. However, the filmmakers don’t have much in the way of sympathy for the critters, which is a complete one hundred and eighty degree shift from the story they are telling.

The Vinegar Syndrome release of the film is accompanied by expected features. These include a commentary track, a lengthy making of feature, a Q&A at the New Beverly Cinema, and a return to the locations of the film. The image is pretty sharp, a solid transfer.

In the final analysis, Stanley is an unsettling flick, and though it ends up in WTF land, its first seventy minutes or so have some intriguing moments and cool visuals. Also some animal cruelty, which is disappointing. Anyway, it’s a movie I’m glad I saw once, and a film I probably won’t be watching again any time soon.

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Stanley is available in DVD and streaming editions. The Blu-ray is packaged along with Horror High (1973), another regional horror flick (from Texas, not Florida).

Next week, we look at another pair of unrelated films, starting with William Malone’s feature film debut: Scared to Death (1980). It is available in DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming editions.

Writing for “Dude, Mankind Sucks: Stanley” is copyright © 2022 by Daniel R. Robichaud.

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