Filmmaker Charles Band has always been focused on the numbers. Throughout the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, he was pushing toward a specific goal: produce 200 movies by the year 2000. He blew past that milestone long ago (his film count has now surpassed 400) and has even started proudly displaying the tally in the end credits of his recent projects. But there are a few entries in his filmography that he doesn’t count toward the official total. The very first exclusion happens to be the very first movie he ever directed. It’s a parody called Last Foxtrot in Burbank, and it took almost fifty years for Band to reluctantly acknowledge it as "Film Zero."
To understand Last Foxtrot in Burbank, we first have to look at the movie it was spoofing: Last Tango in Paris.
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, who is considered to be one of the greatest directors in Italian cinema history, the drama Last Tango in Paris stirred up a lot of controversy when it was released. It earned an X rating in the United States, though that didn't stop it from becoming one of the biggest hits of 1973.
The film’s notoriety has only grown over the decades, fueled by star Maria Schneider’s revelations about the trauma she endured on set. The infamous scene where her character is assaulted by Marlon Brando’s character using butter as a lubricant, the most discussed moment in the movie, was especially troubling. Schneider, who was only 19 at the time, has said that the scene was sprung on her at the last second, and if that’s the case, it’s entirely understandable why the experience would leave a permanent scar on her.
Even when it was raking in cash, Last Tango had a reputation for being sleazy and repugnant. Fifty years later, it feels even more like a twisted male fantasy. Brando, then in his late 40s, plays Paul, an American man who has taken a trip to Paris while mourning the suicide death of his wife. When he goes to check out an apartment, a lovely young local girl (Schneider’s character Jeanne) also happens to be there to take a look at the place. The guy is depressed and disheveled, has almost thirty years on her, and barely says a word to her. There’s no reason for her to find him appealing in the slightest. Plus, she’s already engaged to someone else. And yet, when Paul randomly makes a move on her just a minute or two after they walked into this place separately, she immediately wraps her arms and legs around him and starts passionately kissing him.
They have sex up against the wall, then agree to keep meeting in this apartment to have anonymous, casual sex with each other. Strictly anonymous, because Paul insists that they not tell each other their names or share any personal info. Because, of course, why wouldn’t she want to have sex with this slobby old sad sack stranger all the time? The only thing that exists between them is what happens within the walls of that apartment. Including, yes, eventually, a butter-lubed rape.
Brando delivers a solid performance as a character who moves from unlikable to outright despicable, while Schneider is charming as the girl making a terrible mistake. Their acting is the only reason to watch the film, which otherwise consists of a series of miserable interactions where Paul gives Jeanne a variety of reasons to be upset. The ending is just another bummer that will leave you wondering why you bothered to watch the movie at all.
If you want the gist of Last Tango in Paris in 56 minutes instead of 130, you can watch Last Foxtrot in Burbank. It puts a comedic twist on most of the major moments in Tango without inflicting trauma on the lead actress. Writers Bill Haggard (a.k.a. Frank Ray Perilli) and Sam Vaughn (a.k.a. Louis Garfinkle) must have caught Tango in theatres multiple times in order to get such a grasp on the scenes of the movie quickly enough to get the parody into production while the original film was still having its theatrical run. Of course, the fact that Foxtrot is less than half the length indicates that they only retained less than half of the scenes.
Last Foxtrot in Burbank tells the same story as Last Tango in Paris, but in a goofy, nonsensical way. Michael Pataki (hiding behind the pseudonym Michael Loveman) does his best Brando impression in the lead role of Paul, while Sherry Denton (in her first and only screen acting role) takes over for Maria Schneider as Jeanne. They spend most of their time in an apartment; Denton is almost always naked, while Pataki is almost always in an overcoat, even during a bottomless scene in a bathtub. Paul mourns his wife, who committed suicide. He has sex with Jeanne. He treats her like dirt. You know, just like we saw in the other movie.
As mentioned, this was the feature directorial debut Charles Band, who would go on to found the legendary genre movie studio Full Moon. The son of veteran filmmaker Albert Band, who had moved his family to Europe to pursue career opportunities there, Band got his directing days started by shooting experimental short films while he was growing up in Italy. By the early '70s, he was in his early twenties, living in America, and ready to get into the feature business.
Not surprisingly, when you look over the films he has made over the course of his career, he really wanted to make his directorial debut with a horror movie. He was convinced (by his stand-up comedian friend Perilli) to direct this comedy instead, and hid behind the name Carlo Bokino to do it, even though he has put the directing blame on Pataki at times over the years. His fellow future genre filmmaker John Carpenter was the editor tasked with cutting the footage together. Just imagine Carpenter sitting in an editing room, deciding that, "Yes, this is the perfect shot of Michael Pataki's dick with Groucho glasses sitting on top of it."
There are some amusing moments, but most of the jokes fall flat. It's kind of a fascinating study in awkwardness.
Before kicking off his movie career, Band was making money by selling people leather-bound copies of the New York Times that were published on their birthdays - and some of that money might have gone into this production. The plan was to self-distribute the film, but the attempt at "four-walling" was an immediate money-losing disaster. Unhappy with this failure, Band says he tried to destroy all copies and wipe the movie out of existence, although it has been reported that some prints made their way to grindhouse cinemas. At least one copy survived over the decades, and now it’s out there in the world. Band has even given it a Blu-ray release, finally accepting the movie onto his filmography.
Last Foxtrot in Burbank doesn’t really work, but at least it still exists for curious people like myself to check out.
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