Skip Tracer, a 1977 Canadian film about debt collectors, shares some striking similarities with Alex Cox’s 1984 cult classic, Repo Man. The roots of Repo Man date from the late ‘70s, the same time period Skip Tracer was released—could Cox have been swayed by it?

The work of first-time writer/director, Zale Dalen, Skip Tracer was conceived during the era of “Canuxploitation”. The term “skip tracer” refers to someone who tracks down people who haven’t paid their debts. The movie concerns a cold-blooded collection agent, John Collins (played by David Peterson, in his film debut). The character has no feeling for those who are experiencing financial difficulties, and hounds them without mercy. Eventually, though, John begins to feel empathy for these people, resulting in an identity crisis.
 

 
Aside from fact that Skip Tracer and Repo Man are centered around a debt collector—an uncommon protagonist in film—the most obvious similarity is the mentor/mentee relationship. In Skip Tracer, John is paired with Brent, a younger employee looking to learn from the finance company’s “man of the year.” Fans of Repo Man know there is the similar team-up of Otto and Bud, though Otto is certainly more resistant to the idea. The lead characters also question the profession in both pictures.
 

 
Repo Man began as a graphic novel while Cox was a film student at UCLA. Around this time, Skip Tracer was making the rounds on the festival circuit, receiving a theatrical release stateside in January of 1979.

More after the jump…

 
In 1967, the government of Canada established the Canadian Film Development Corporation. In an attempt to stimulate the country’s film industry, the CFDC offered a 60% tax credit to investors who financed Canadian films that promoted Canadian culture. The movies made from 1967-1973 were very Canadian, featuring sensitive characters and Canadian locations. These motion pictures did poorly and couldn’t compete with American imports. In 1974, the CFDC changed the tax credit from 60% to a very generous 100%. With this change, Canadian filmmakers no longer had to make Canada-centric films, and were free to make movies that would appeal to American distributors. This also created a market for tax shelters—potentially fraudulent ones—in which the sole motive was to make a film in order to defer taxable income. The b-movies produced in the Great White North during this period (1974-1982) would come to be known as “Canuxploitation.”
 

The logo for canuxploitation.com

The first Canadian blockbuster to receive tax subsidies from the Canadian government was Bob Clark’s innovative slasher film, Black Christmas (1974). At the time, it was the most costly state-funded production in the Canadian movie industry’s history, with the government pitching in several hundred thousand dollars. It set box office records in Canada and did receive an American release, though it failed to make an impact, financially, stateside. Black Christmas was a high quality film, but many motion pictures from the “Canuxploitation” era are now seen as derivative of American movies, and others as complete trash. Firebird 2015 A.D. (1981) is a motion picture that fits both descriptors.
 

 
The film is set in the year 2015, when gas is so scarce the U.S. government has outlawed automobiles (it’s amusing to note that, as I write this at the end of 2015, gas is still so plentiful that a gallon of the stuff is cheaper than it’s been in years). In this ridiculous premise—why couldn’t the cars be modified to accept an alternate fuel?—those who still illegally own and operate an automobile (labeled “Burners”) are tracked down by the Department of Vehicular Control (DVC). One rogue officer, who seems more than a little off his rocker, changes into Native American garb and shoots to kill.
 

 
Character actor Darren McGavin plays rebellious gas guzzler, “Red.” McGavin, star of such television programs as Mike Hammer and the paranormal series, Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974-75), is probably best known today for his role as “Old Man Parker” in A Christmas Story (1983). He was an American with a familiar face, possibly cast over a Canadian actor so as to appeal to stateside distributors.
 

Darren McGavin as Carl Kolchak

Filmed in Drumheller, Alberta, Canada, the landscape—complete with corn fields—resembles Middle America, yet there’s nothing at all futuristic about the setting (other than that it’s post-apocalyptic looking, never mind there’s no mention of an apocalypse). Though branded a science fiction film, aside from the fact that it’s set in the future, there’s little in Firebird 2015 A.D. that brings to mind the genre. There are other elements incorporated, too, like the popular image of the American outlaw rebelling against un-American legislation (think Smokey and the Bandit), and there’s also a romantic subplot that takes up a good chunk of the running time.
 

 
Firebird 2015 A.D. has baffled viewers over the years. On the surface, it appears to be such a terrible film that it’s a wonder to many, and was even included in a documentary called The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made. Here are a few excerpts from a review penned by a typically exasperated imdb user::

…it doesn’t make a lick of sense and everything about it is just plain stupid…See, this could have been the plot of a potentially fantastic post-apocalyptic adventure in the vein of Mad Max, but instead it became a really tedious, incoherent, unmemorable and extremely pointless Canadian exploitation effort. The film is a big fat piece of nothing, with chases that are lame and car stunts that are embarrassing. It even becomes worse when the script fully begins to focus on the developing love story…instead of on the rebellion against the system. The portrayal of the year 2015 is weak and cheap looking.

The reviewer is spot-on with these observations, but I think the key to what really happened with Firebird 2015 A.D. is missing from it and all the other reviews that I’ve read: It wasn’t meant to be any good. Though it was seemingly made to appeal to American distributors and audiences, it was likely produced solely as a tax shelter. Meaning, it just had to exist for investors to get that 100% tax credit. If the CFDC reviewed it, the government couldn’t deny the producers didn’t at least *try* to make a motion picture that was worth a damn, one that would interest the average American. Hell, the film is seemingly so pro-American ideals and anti-government it looks like something that could’ve been produced as propaganda by the Tea Party.
 

 
The site dedicated to Canada’s tax shelter films, canuxploitation.com, offers an explanation as to why a film like Firebird 2015 A.D., despite its nearly $1 million budget, looked so cheap:

Unfortunately, the tax shelter legislation which gave birth to this film boom was full of loopholes. Some of the less scrupulous investors began contributing large amounts of money for film budgets on paper, but then only allowing a small portion to be used for the actual production.

 

 
Though Firebird 2015 A.D. did show up in Canadian theaters in 1981, and may have played a U.S. drive-in or two, I couldn’t find any evidence it impressed an American distributor enough to gain wide release in the states. It did come out on VHS, but it seems no one has bothered to put this stinker out on DVD. Well, one was released, though it looks like a bootleg to me.
 

 
Watch the entire film—if you dare—after the jump…

 
If I threw the words “sexy vampire comedy” at you, what are the first images that come to mind? A Catskills Lothario, fanging luscious and lonely housewives all across the East Coast? We should be so lucky! (Yes, I would watch the living end of that.) Instead, those key words do not have the best pedigree. There’s belly dancing/actress Nai Bonet’s star vehicle to nowhere, Nocturna and the straight out of Germany, 1982’s Dracula Blows His Cool. The latter best known for giving the world the song, “Rock Me Dracula (Suck Me Suck Me)” and not a whole lot else. But there is one film in this highly iffy arena that has been building a slow simmer of a cult status since 1974..

The film in question, one that was thought to be lost for years until it was recently unearthed, cleaned up and released by Impulse Pictures earlier this year, is Sexcula. (That’s pronounced sex-kula.) Made in Canada, complete with Federal funding from an undoubtedly unknowing Canadian Film Development Corporation, Sexcula was only screened once and then disappeared. That one private screening gave birth to years’ worth of gossip and word-of-mouth. Few could have expected that this mega-obscure skin flick with fangs, complete with a cast that have dropped off the face of the Earth, would someday be easily available. Even fewer could even begin to know what to truly expect from this ridiculous but overall fun hybrid of a film.

You’re given the false sense of safety, at first, with the dark castle in the thrall of night, while the phrase, “Those Evil deeds of the Countess” appears. (And yes, “Evil” is capitalized like that.) The title credits begin to roll, with character credits including “Benchtest and Hooker,” which is the first sign that we’re not in Kansas anymore. After this, a young couple drive around the countryside until they arrive at a large house, which looks more like urban ruins than the former glamorous glory of the girl’s (Debbie Collins) familial castle. Her family’s unusual history is summed up with the phrase,“the stories about this place would curl your pubes.” Not to state the obvious, but pubic hair generally is curly, but this is really beside the point. I gave up all rights to complain about logic the moment I entered a universe called Sexcula.

The girl goes on a hunt for her grandmother, Dr. Fallatingstein’s (Jamie Orlando) diary. As the young lovers go on a picnic, where curiously the woman is full on starkers while her date keeps his polyester finery on., he begins to read the diary. Turns out, her grandmother delved into Frankenstein-esque activities, with her piece-de-resistance being the perfect man, aptly named Frank (John Alexander). He’s a smashing success except for one minor detail. Frank’s got the sex drive of a dead dog doped up on salt peter,  a source of tremendous frustration for his creator. The Dr. is left with only one solution—to call her niece, Countess Sexcula (Debbie Collins, again) for help. Turns out Sexcula is one busy lady, combining one glamorous and DNA-riddled lifestyle of vampirism and hooking, with a twist of nymphomania. In fact, take two guesses what our heroine is up to as her Aunt gives her a ring? That would be a firm yes, with the ultimate romantic gesture of getting it on flanked by the ultimate swanky notes of a Herb Alpert-esque tune. The sex scene ends with her smiling and flashing the peace sign at the lens, hinting at a time when women and men were more likely to get naked and friendly in front of the camera as an act of cultural rebellion and good times.

The Countess makes her way to Castle Fallatingstein immediately, leading to the introduction of the rest of the Dr’s motley lurid crew. There’s Benchtest (Marie McLeod), an emotionless love-bot, Orgie (Tim Lowery), the mongoloid hunchback with ants in his pants and even a Gorilla (Bud Coal, which is a fab name), who seems to get more action than poor Orgie.

The girls try numerous techniques on hapless Frank, including a romantic carriage ride, hypnotism, sex cell blood transplants or, my personal favorite, a dramatic striptease. The latter may sound harmless enough, but throw on some pink lights, a sweet turned savage gorilla and guns (!) into the mix, and than you have the way into my fetid little heart.

Unfortunately, things start to wane pretty quickly, with the latter half of the film inexplicably focusing on a mock wedding on a porno shoot that turns into one sterlingly retarded swing party. My best guess is that the filmmakers needed to pad things out with an unrelated loop or footage from an abandoned project, since it shares none of the actors and lacks the goony, gothic glow that permeates the rest of the film.

Sexcula is a fascinating, if not wholly successful curiosity. It’s not really a horror film, though it has some of the superficial trappings of one. It’s not really lough-out-loud funny either, though in its best moments it is earnestly ridiculous and cute. The cast obviously had some fun and not just in the body-love sort of way. Collins, touted as a Canadian Marilyn Chambers, actually gives off more of a sunny Melanie Griffith, circa the early 80’s vibe than anything else.

With films like Sexcula, the whole “whatever happened to” thought is bound to cross into your noggin, but perhaps it is for the best that the cast is mired in fringe film obscurity. While you and I are probably cool enough to be impressed that say, our lawyer or teacher was in a weird Canadian vampire-sex spoof film from the 70’s, society is still in devolve mode.

Past, present and future, Sexcula is one of the reasons why the information age can be a great tool. Films that have been thought to been lost for decades are starting to turn up, which is a beautiful thing for any film lover worth his/her salt. As for Sexcula itself, while it’s almost more of a saucy experiment than anything else, it is also lovably daffy in moments and bless Impulse Pictures for releasing it.