“All you have to do is sing...it’s something about singing.” While Eddie Murphy would be unbelievably wrong about AIDS, homosexuality, and a few other choice bits in his otherwise hilarious and legendary 1983 stand-up special Delirious, being a singer does indeed place performers amongst a more rarified air. While being an A-list actor certainly has its perks, the emotional response people get from listening to music tends to make their adoration for the performer rise much higher than that of some pretty boy TV star or a rom-com actress. “Anybody can act, but not everybody can sing.” This sage bit of advice was imparted to me all the way back in elementary school after a hit-and-miss chorus concert. I’m proud to state that my “work” wasn’t the reason these words were spoken, but let’s just say the damn choir teacher should’ve given me the fucking solo in the Fievel Goes West medley!
Anyhooooooo...while many movie studios took a shot at turning troubadours into movie stars, the results were varied to say the least. Mariah Carey (Glitter), Vanilla Ice (Cool as Ice), Britney Spears (Crossroads), (most of) Elvis Presley’s work, Mick Jagger (some of it), and Ringo Starr (Caveman) are just a handful of musical superstars who tried their hand at big screen success and pretty much failed. Studio executives presumably see dollar signs from the name-recognition of these vocalists’ involvement. If they happen to be good at acting, hey! That’s just gravy! While Tiny Tim’s bizarre, androgynous onstage persona didn’t translate into many feature film roles, he would often appear on variety shows where his frizzy hair and falsetto voice worked in small doses. His physical appearance, which could charitably be described as fat Alice Cooper, might’ve lent itself to character actor roles, but that was not to be. No, he’d leave his mark in a film which shambled desperately behind a genre that had peaked long ago. At least we got one helluva good piece of cover art from it.
The wildly uneven Blood Harvest (1987) represented a collaboration between two very different individuals who somehow found common ground and ended up becoming great friends. Tiny Tim (nee Herbert Khaury) isn’t necessarily a name younger generations are familiar with, but thanks to SpongeBob SquarePants and Insidious, his voice and music certainly is. It would be unfair to call him a novelty act of the late 60’s as he was also a tireless performer and a skilled musician, particularly with his trademark ukulele. His own extreme Christian fundamentalist beliefs would likely get him “cancelled” these days, but the trajectory of his career wasn’t exactly paved with gold. Aside from his career-boosting appearances on The Howard Stern Show (until things got ugly regarding a certain phony baloney God), he’d end up playing any venue he could, even joining a traveling circus at one point. While stories vary on exactly how the has-been (a label he freely admitted was accurate) and Wisconsin’s own Spielberg Bill Rebane got together, but it’s generally accepted that they met around the mid-80's. A partnership was formed which would lead to Tiny Tim’s first starring role and an attempt at a children’s show for which only two episodes were ever released: Tiny Tim & Friends (1992).
I feel a certain kinship with Bill Rebane, as I too am half-Estonian. Rebane’s fortunes as both a film process developer and later a producer/director fluctuated more than Tim’s, whose own career peaked and steadily moved downhill over a number of years. Rebane holds a certain distinction by having two of his films featured on MST3K, although the first doesn’t exactly count. Terror at Halfday was an unfinished 1963 science fiction film which would be sold to H.G. Lewis and form the basis for the goofy Monster A Go-Go (1965). His biggest success came with The Giant Spider Invasion (1975), an enjoyably crappy film that nevertheless rode the disaster craze of the 70’s to earn millions. Most of his work from the late 60’s to the early 80’s was produced in and around his 200-acre studio The Shooting Ranch, located near Gleason, Wisconsin. By 1986, the Wisconsin Film Office was established, with Rebane often regarded as one of the key influencers for its inception. Sadly, his fortunes dwindled soon after, as Blood Harvest was released direct-to-video after the slasher genre had long since lost steam. Rebane suffered a stroke in 1989 but has continued to put out a project or two, although none of them have received any major release or attention. If Blood Harvest turns out to truly be his final say in film, he could do a whole lot worse.
Blood Harvest somehow straddles the line between skill and ineptitude. Rebane, working from a script by four (!) writers, obviously knew the mechanics of filmmaking (he also shot the film under a pseudonym) and although there are few locations to speak of, it does feel like a real movie throughout. To his credit, the film would be entirely forgettable were it not for the presence of the rotund crooner. Tiny Tim, sporting a clown costume and makeup, floats through like some maniacal specter, constantly popping up in the weirdest places and often in solo scenes, which affords him the acting opportunities to pray, mutter to himself, and of course, sing.
Since the release of Todd Phillips’ Joker films, his performance as Mervo the Magnificent has come back into the public consciousness due to the similarities between his and Joaquin Phoenix’s eye makeup, which feature the non-traditional pointed arches. If it weren’t for the simple fact that Tim was banking on the film to revitalize his career, one would assume that he was too big of a star to bother spending more than a day or two on set for his scenes. Besides some hilariously poor acting, continuity errors, and strained dialogue, his scenes provide the film’s only real interest thanks to his otherworldly presence and utter commitment to the insanity of the character.
The film cold opens with an extreme close-up of Tiny Tim performing, what else? A song. Not just any song, but an odd version of “Jack and Jill” retitled Gary and Jill. Why it couldn’t be the spooky “Marvelous Mervo” featured in the end credits is a shame. We learn about the plight of many farmers whose land is being foreclosed upon by the local bank, represented by Jill (one-and-done Itonia Salchek)’s father. An unidentified man is strung up by his feet and there’s an impressive throat slit/bloodletting followed by the title, though in 2003 Rebane revised it to the more generic-sounding Nightmare. Fortunately, the catchier, albeit technically nonsensical Blood Harvest remains the most popular designation.
The initial tone is quite good, with an appropriately moody score by Emmy-winning composer George Daugherty accompanying Jill’s return from college. She arrives at the humble home of her parents, which has been vandalized and features a corpse-like effigy hanging on her porch with an arrow through it. Her day doesn’t get much better when Mervo shows up unannounced bearing flowers and talking nonsense. Her childhood friend Gary (Dean West, Twister’s Revenge) soon follows and identifies the deranged man-boy-clown as his brother Mervin. This makes absolutely no sense. Unless Jill is a self-absorbed asshole with no regard for anyone else, she should’ve been aware that Gary had a brother. It’s made clear later on that they’ve known each other since they were kids while climbing into a long-abandoned childhood tree house.
After a threatening phone call and a brick through a window, the “college-educated” Jill decides to wander into the forest in order to get to the sheriff. Some random rednecks playing paintball provide a bit of fun here and one of them gives her a lift, propositioning her after the ride. Refusing his advances due to her pending engagement, the outdoor sports enthusiast delivers one of the better lines in the film: “How ‘bout some meaningless sex?” She visits the sheriff (Frank Benson), who does very little to help and whose character is pretty much worthless throughout.
Let’s just cut to the chase here. With such fabulously wicked artwork, one is led to believe that Tiny Tim is a mad slasher clown and the movie does attempt to lead you down that path. Movie posters and trailers have a history of misleading audiences and this one is no different. The main problem is that although the plotline has a few twists and turns, it becomes obvious midway through that Mervo is not the psycho killer on the loose. We see enough of the masked killer to know that the body type is completely different and while some claim to have seen the final reveal coming from a mile away, a fatal editing error/trick(?) inadvertently kept me guessing until the last half hour. You see, Jill’s boyfriend Scott (a handsome, pre-fame Peter Krause, Six Feet Under, and who refused to get nekkid for the role - good for him) is smashed in the face with a baseball bat by the killer. It’s viscerally satisfying. Though there’s a very brief and lascivious cut to Jill engaging in random ballet, the scene almost immediately cuts to Gary, dressed in his normal clothes, jogging over to Jill’s house. Gary, as you can probably guess, is the actual killer and Mervo is just a red herring. While the film does go out of its way to make you believe Mervo's the killer, particularly in a freaky bit where he visits a woman tied up in an underground tunnel of some kind, the fact remains that he’s merely a severely disturbed loon who is under the control of his sadistic and homicidal brother. I have no problem with non-traditional editing, but without a basic passage of time cut, it simply comes off as amateurish and frustrating.
Gary’s big problem? He’s obsessed with Jill and got lonely while she was away at college. Now, I can understand if she doesn’t feel like coming home for a three-day weekend or even spring break, but are you telling me that she’s never come back once during her entire college career for Thanksgiving or Christmas? There’s no way he wasn’t able to see her at least a few times over the years. What the fuck, dude? In the final sequence, which is essentially one long chase which begins in one barn, moves to another, then back to the original barn, Gary explains the whole loneliness thing which, again, is fucking stupid. He explains how his brother absolutely lost his mind since the foreclosure caused his parents to slaughter all the livestock, including Mervo’s beloved pig, Beulah. This caused him to “withdraw into that clown world of his.” One thing I’ve never seen is a character, in this case Jill, trying to fool an obsessed psychopath by playing along in order to survive, but then giving up midway to run. It’s fascinatingly kooky as she tries to act as though she’s happy Gary killed her parents and her friends and...fuck this! Nope! Freak out time! She even tries the ploy again and ends up making his arm a bloody mess by stabbing him with some kind of mini-reaper. It’s actually pretty funny because apparently Gary is a mutant of some kind who feels no pain. He simply states: “You’re making this very difficult, Jill.”
The movie devolves into your standard stalk-and-slash with some poorly dubbed screams that don’t even bother to match Jill’s lip movement. I was reminded of a chase scene from Madman (1981) in which the killer stalks some helpless victim for what feels like hours. She even takes a THIRD shot at seducing him, laying a sweet kiss on him, during which I yelled, “Bite his fucking face off!” The sheriff popped by earlier, sirens blaring, for absolutely no reason, so we’re assuming he’ll be the one to save her, but holy shit! It's Mervo the Magnificent to the rescue, despite having been shot by Jill a bit earlier. The camera pans over to Gary, whose eyes pop open. Why? Who cares? Oh, and somehow, it’s daylight again, even though it was the dead of night a few minutes ago.
The film isn’t devoid of entertainment value, but the enjoyment is often derived from the wrong things. Namely the various errors or crude handling of the material. One flaw that I’ve never seen in other movies is Jill’s ever-changing lipstick applications. From scene to scene, they vary wildly. And we’re not talking about lipstick changing because it’s several hours later. I mean her lips are a light shade when she lays down, but when we cut back to her, they’re darker and more vibrant. Salchek was very much a willing performer, I’ll give her that. In what feels like a desperate effort to spice things up, she appears nude in many scenes, even going full frontal more than once. As an actress, she reminds me of a way less-talented Caroline Williams, but some of the dialogue she has to utter doesn’t do her any favors. When Scott comes in to surprise her, she says the following: “You fool! You scared me half to death, almost! I’m so pleased to see you.” Ouch. When she answers the phone, she has to deliver the clunky: “Hello? Oh, it’s you, Sarah.” Speaking of, Sarah (Lori Minnetti, who became a local Wisconsin TV mainstay), isn’t exactly the brightest tool in the shed as she discovers her car is locked, tries the passenger side, then marches right back over and tries the same door again. Still locked, honey. That’s what locks do.
There’s creepy and then there’s a creeper. Gary is definitely a creeper, a creepozoid, and a would-be rapist, too. Now, due to the poor editing, I was legitimately fooled into believing Gary was not the killer. I can’t overstate this enough. There’s editing finesse and then there’s just basic incompetence. Gratuitous scenes involving the masked killer chloroforming Jill, then tying her up bare-chested and taking polaroids of her take place. Another arrives where the gloved murderer runs his hands over her thighs while Scott watches, bound and gagged. Some moments are actually well-designed, like a long pan from a passed-out Jill to the feet of the killer. Sarah’s blood has been drained into a bucket and left in Jill’s fridge, so when she opens it up, she faints. It’s a plot contrivance that’s unbelievable. Even more bizarre is that Gary just enters the frame from out of nowhere, but that makes sense later since HE’S THE KILLER! He washes and fondles her in the tub before laying her down, naked, of course. A bit more fondling, including nipple kissing, then he takes a seat nearby. He takes a minute, then next thing you know, he’s stripped down and tries to make sweet love to Jill against her will. Finally, she wakes up and is understandably pissed. I was surprised at the maturity of this scene, with Jill responding with the slightly compassionate “I understand. I know how much you love me.” While I applaud the psychology aspect here, the fact that Gary has the capacity to rape someone should still be discussed and maybe she ought to throw away her half of the BFF pendant.
After the first bloody throat slit, the film takes ages to give us another gore scene, but it’s not without its quirky charm, most of which involves Tiny Tim. One detail I found wonderfully hilarious is the Commando (1985) poster above Jill’s bed. Like, what is she doing while she stares up at the impossibly muscle-y and handsome Ah-nuld? The priest at the church where Mervo is hunched over praying is inexplicably British. Mervo offers to make Jill coffee and exits with the truly odd line, “Can I make myself happy, too?” A pretty decent suspense scene takes place when someone, who is clearly Mervo, is sitting on Jill’s swing and squeaking incessantly. She looks out and sees a large man with long hair, wondering who he is. Who the fuck else could it be?! Still, the squeaking continues and when it stops, we realize he’s coming for her, presumably. Once the bodies start piling up, the gore factor gets stronger, with a fun arrow-through-a-hand effect and more upside down, pig-style throat slits, some of which feature what is obviously a person just off-camera squeezing a bottle of fake blood onto the floor.
What may have ultimately doomed the movie is Rebane’s desire to try something a little different. Sure, it would be predictable for Tiny Tim to play a murderous clown who just stalks teenagers, but with some wild one-liners and a decent body count, who knows? Maybe it would’ve been a more accessible and therefore successful character which might’ve brought Tim back into the limelight. I must say, I was only familiar with Tiny Tim through his ultra-brief cameo in the opening of Betty Thomas’ excellent Private Parts (1997). While there have been a surprising number of impressive musician-turned-actors, Tiny Tim’s impassioned performance as a mentally-shattered clown remains unforgettable.
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