MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE (2026) ***

Travis Knight’s Masters of the Universe reminded me of Gore Verbinski’s The Lone Ranger.  Both movies unwisely spend an inordinate amount of time treating its main character like a dork.  Like that film, once it stops seeing its hero as a joke and embraces the source material in the correct spirit, it kicks a lot of ass.  If the screenwriters didn’t try to beat the critics to the punch by poking fun at He-Man instead of properly propping him up as the iconic character that he is, this could’ve been a classic.  Fortunately, the last act is a legitimately great Masters of the Universe adaptation.  Maybe if there is a sequel (although the low box office receipts suggest otherwise) the filmmakers can use the momentum they gained in the last twenty minutes and carry it into the next movie. 

Adam (Nicholas Galitzine) is stuck in a dead-end job on Earth.  When his home world of Eternia is threatened by the evil Skeletor (Jared Leto), his childhood friend Teela (Camila Mendes) brings Adam home to save the day.  When he wields The Sword of Power, Adam becomes the super-strong He-Man and does battle with Skeletor’s legions of minions.

I could’ve done without some of the dopey humor in the early going, but once the action switches over to Eternia, the film gets markedly better.  The humor is actually funny in this section too, especially when it leans into the campy gay innuendo between He-Man and Skeletor, which is often priceless.  (I especially liked the scene where Skeletor gets inside of He-Man’s head and they lift weights in a gym.)  

Say what you will about Leto, but he is uproarious in this.  He takes the character of Skeletor and amps things up to Frank N. Furter levels of campiness.  He deftly walks the tightrope of the character we know and love from the cartoon with the modern-day meme version.  Idris Elba is also quite good as Duncan, He-Man’s teacher, and gets the best-defined character arc of the film.  As He-Man, Galitzine is solid for the most part.  It’s just that the movie does him a disservice by turning him into a total cheeseball for half the running time.   

Coming from someone who had all the toys and playsets as a kid, I enjoyed seeing that world realized on the big screen.  I got a kick out of seeing guys like Trap Jaw, Moss Man, and Ram Man in a big-budget epic.  I did however feel bad for poor Fisto.  Yes, he has a funny name.  We get it.  This is one joke that the movie runs into the ground.  It almost felt like the film was trying to make an over/under Kalshi bet of how many Fisto jokes it could squeeze into two hours. 

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HOT SPUR (1968) **

There had been nudie westerns in the past (most notably Russ Meyer’s Wild Gals of the Naked West), but I think Lee (Chain Gang Women) Frost’s Hot Spur might’ve been the first roughie western.  Written and produced by Frost’s usual collaborator Bob Cresse, it tells the story of Carlo (James Arenas), a Mexican stable boy who is roughed up by two cowpokes.  Later, he gets a job working at a ranch where the surly cowboys happen to rope cattle.  After the rancher O’Hare (Joseph Mascolo) catches him making eyes at his wife (Virginia Gordon), he kicks Carlo off his property.  He then sets out for revenge by kidnapping the rancher’s wife and raping her.  See, O’Hare raped his sister years ago and Carlo’s just been waiting to pay him back. 

The fiery opening credits are the best part.  They play like the credits featured in Bonanza except played in reverse.  There’s also a fun scene where a cowboy is going at it with a gal in the floor of the stable.  One of the other dudes gets the bright idea to put a saddle on his back and has another woman ride him like a horse while he is having sex.  I’ve heard of horseplay before, but this is ridiculous. 

Other than that amusing bit, this is pretty rough going.  That’s not only due to the rapey subject matter, but because of the fact that it’s pretty repetitive and the attack scenes are all rather rote.  The western setting, while novel, doesn’t really add anything to the proceedings either.  There are scenes of whipping and rope bondage, although they are nothing that really takes advantage of the surroundings.  I give Frost and his crew credit for making it look like a legitimate B western.  Ultimately, the fact that this was filmed in the great outdoors rather than an NYC apartment is the only real selling point. 

As the rancher O’Hare, Mascolo has a Ben Gazzara type of quality about him.  He gives the best performance of the entire film as everyone else in the cast is rather weak.  He later went on to a memorable appearance as the human villain in Jaws 2. 

AKA:  Fiery Spur.  AKA:  The Longest Spur.  AKA:  The Naked Spur.

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THE LUSTFUL TURK (1968) * ½

Unconfirmed sources state that at the time, this was the most expensive nudie ever made.  I don’t know, it looks pretty cheap to me.  The costumes and sets feel like they came from a community dinner theater.  It also features wall to wall narration, which means the production saved money on sound equipment.  Much of the narration comes in the form of people sitting around and reading letters.  This is a good way to pad the scenes out.  Also, if the plot calls for a boat crossing the ocean or something, the camera just cuts away to a painting of a boat and hopes the audience puts two and two together.  Heck, it’s so cheap that they couldn’t even afford to show a cutaway to the sun setting.  Instead, we get a shot of a construction-paper sun setting that looks like a fourth grader’s art project.

Maybe I was just expecting more from writer/producer David F. (Blood Feast) Friedman and director Byron (The Head Mistress) Mabe. 

The plot is simple.  In the 19th century, a sultan (Tom Ato) buys a virginal young Englishwoman named Emily (Abbe Rentz) and her servant Eliza (Gee Gentell) for his harem where he forcibly indoctrinates them into womanhood.  However, the constant narration is needlessly wordy and overly flowery.  It also suffocates the action.  The awkward structure that revolves around people sitting and reading letters does it no favors either.  In fact, I found my attention starting to wander by the time we get to the scene where there’s a flashback inside of a letter. 

The softcore action itself is rather tepid.  It’s almost like Friedman and Mabe were so enamored with the idea of making a “legitimate” smut movie that they forgot to make it smutty.  Even the light bondage and S & M scenes fall flat.  The sequences of fair maidens being ravished get repetitive too.  I guess if you’ve seen one deflowering you’ve seen them all. 

There is at least one line of dialogue that had me cracking up though.  It’s spoken by the title character when he realizes someone other than himself has taken a slave girl’s virginity and he asks her, “How long have you been joined to the uncircumcised pig?”

KNOCK AT THE CABIN (2023) ***

I make no secret about my disdain for M. Night Shyamalan’s movies.  I’ve never liked one of his films.  Usually, when the premise is good, the ending is either predictable (The Sixth Sense) or just flat-out sucks (Signs).  The ones I’ve come closest to enjoying are the ones that are consistently goofy throughout (like The Happening and Old).  Then, there’s the ones that are terrible all the way through (like Unbreakable and The Village).   Well, I guess the law of averages dictates I’d be bound to like a M. Night joint at some juncture. 

Dave Bautista approaches a little girl (Nikki Amuka-Bird) playing in the woods and begins acting super creepy.  She runs and tells her two dads (Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge) who lock the cabin door.  Soon, Dave’s “friends” show up to the cabin stating they have important “work” to do.  They eventually break in, tie the family up, and tell them they have to make a sacrifice in order to save the world. 

Knock at the Cabin starts off like a siege movie with the dads doing everything they can to stop the intruders, which isn’t much since the cabin isn’t exactly Fort Knox.  I don’t want to spoil the best parts, which tend to be a tad philosophical, but the central crux of the story is quite compelling.  Most of Shyamalan’s work has a great beginning and a crummy ending or vice versa.  I guess the surprising thing here (there isn’t really a “Shyamalan Twist” in this one) is that the film is at its best when it’s just a bunch of people sitting around and talking. 

M. Night gets a lot of mileage out of Dave Bautista.  He plays a gentle giant that sometimes borders on Lenny from Of Mice and Men, but there’s always a possibility he could snap at any point.  Groff and Aldridge are quite good too, as is Amuka-Bird (although she isn’t given much to do besides cower in fear for the last two acts). 

So, chalk this one up as the first M. Night movie I enjoyed.  Maybe he’s got another winner up his sleeve.  Despite his track record with me, he still displays enough potential in his films that keep me (sometimes foolishly) coming back for more.  I guess whenever M. Night knocks, I’ll still answer. 

ALL WOMEN ARE BAD (1969) * ½

A door-to-door salesman comes home early one day to find his wife in bed with another man.  Devastated, he runs off to New York City where he rents a seedy apartment and starts peeping on women.  Wherever he goes, he sees his wife’s face in the women he ogles, which slowly sinks him into madness.  

Directed by Larry (Beware the Black Widow) Crane, All Women are Bad is only an hour long, but it suffers from way too much padding.  If Crane cut out the scenes of our hero getting lost in the woods, taking slow moving ferry boat rides, and wandering around Chinatown, the film would’ve been a helluva lot shorter.  The unnecessary recap of events at the very end further helps to pad things out to an interminable length. 

Maybe my issues with the film could’ve been overlooked had the softcore sex scenes been decent.  However, Crane gives them a listless quality that is decidedly unsexy.  Sometimes, Crane begins a scene with promise (like the stuff with the fortune teller or the weird undertaker), but the follow-through is weak or ends abruptly.  Even the lesbian bondage scenes squander much of their potential.  Crane also delivers one of the most cut-rate “trip” scenes in screen history.  (It’s nothing more than a woman posing in front of a slideshow projector.)  The unending stream of useless narration grates on the nerves too. 

There’s an occasional bright spot to be found amid the malarkey.  We get an odd scene where our main character peeps on two guys getting it on.  I guess if the title of the film is All Women are Bad then that means these men are good?  Either way, this bit is certainly progressive for the times.  The most memorable moment though comes when our hapless hero looks down and imagines he has his wife’s breasts!  Also, I can’t completely hate any movie whose title inspired a Cramps song, but that morsel of goodwill only goes but so far.  For the most part, All Women are Bad just ain’t very good. 

That’s future Deep Throat director Gerard Damiano as the talent agent (he was responsible for the “special effects” too). 

BAD, BAD GANG! (1971) **

Two couples named Adam and Eve and Jane and Abel head to the “Garden of Eden” campsite for a vacation.  While Adam and Abel are busy fishing and playing cards, Eve and Jane sneak off to the camper to bone.  Eve and Jane then go down to the lake for some sunbathing where they are kidnapped and raped by some bikers.  As Adam and Abel stand by powerless to do anything, the jealous biker mamas decide to rape them too. 

Not to be confused with The Hard Riders, another biker skin flick starring Rene Bond, Bad, Bad Gang! was directed by Jon Donne AKA: Donn Greer.  His handling of the porn scenes leave something to be desired as they are indifferently filmed for the most part.  Although the grungy feel is perfect for a biker-themed roughie, most of the hardcore scenes are a bust.  The lesbian scene in the camper between the two leading ladies is decent, however. 

I had a little trouble trying to figure out the whole religious angle.  Okay, our main characters are called “Adam” and Eve”, and the campsite is called the “Garden of Eden”, right?  So, if that’s the case, then who are the bikers supposed to represent?  The snake?  Or are they meant to be the apple?  If so, having Eve being taken against her will goes against the whole idea of Original Sin.  (If that’s indeed what’s intended.).  A Christian scholar I am not, but sheesh.  Maybe I should just repeat to myself “It’s just a crummy fuck flick from the ‘70s and I should really just relax”. 

The use of an instrumental of “Amazing Grace” in some scenes is pretty hilarious too.  Donne might’ve thought added to the religious symbolism, but it just seems goofy more than anything.   Still, fans of Bond (I’m including myself here) will probably check it out just to see her in action. 

Greer later made the incredible WTF classic, The Rare Blue Apes of Cannibal Island. 

STARLET! (1969) **

Starlet! was written by legendary exploitation producer David F. (A Smell of Honey, a Swallow of Brine) Friedman.  The film sometimes feels like an attempt by Friedman to break out of the nudie business and make a “real” movie.  He used the old Hollywood axiom of “write what you know” and wrote a story about making low-budget skin flicks.  The results are quite uneven. 

Carol (Dee Lockwood) is an aspiring actress working in softcore nudies who hides her profession from her roommates.  Linda (Chris Mathis) is uptight, and Allison (Shari Mann) will practically jump anything that moves.  Linda’s director boyfriend Forrest (Victor Brandt) is appalled when she is raped at a Hollywood party by a producer but is powerless to do anything for fear of losing his big break.  Meanwhile, Allison strikes up a romance with aging starlet Maxine (Kathi Cole) while Carol begins sleeping her way to starring in a sleazy producer’s big budget epic. 

Some of this plays like a half-assed version of Valley of the Dolls, but it’s all pretty cheap.  The scenes set inside Friedman’s own studio feel like a cost-cutting measure more than anything.  Even though Starlet! is more serious than most of his efforts, there’s still people with names like “Phil Latio” running around, which seemingly runs against the grain of his dramatic intentions. 

I admire the fact that the opening scene shows the skin flick world in an unflattering light, or at the very least, depicts it in a realistic manner.  The director constantly yells at the actress while she’s just going through the motions with her co-star in bed.  Had the screenplay concentrated more on this sort of behind-the-scenes minutia than the standard cliched dramatic tropes, it might’ve worked. 

While there’s enough T & A here to pass it off as a skin flick, Friedman’s strive for legitimacy takes some of the fun out of the proceedings.  It’s also severely lacking the charm of his more disreputable efforts.  Still, there are some memorable moments (like the Pilgrim-themed bondage movie) and a few legitimately funny lines.  (“Be obscene and not heard!”)  It also benefits from the presence of Stuart (Faster, Pussycat!  Kill!  Kill!) Lancaster as a sleazy producer.  Oh, and Friedman even shows up playing himself!  

Ultimately, the film suffers from a needlessly bloated running time.  It probably also has too many unnecessary supporting characters.  Because of its ambling nature, Starlet! never quite reaches the top. 

AKA:  Hollywood Sex Slaves.