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. 

AMITYVILLE BACKROOMS (2024) **

Hey guys, have you heard about this Backrooms movie everyone is talking about?  Well, it was all sold out at the theater, so I watched this one on Tubi instead.  I admit I’m not all that familiar with the whole “Backrooms” concept.  The only Backrooms I’ve ever been to were located behind the beaded curtain in the back of the video store.  But I digress. 

Anyway, an unscrupulous realtor strongarms his client into buying the old Amityville house.  After he closes the deal, the realtor finds himself trapped inside the house with no way to escape.  Later, his boss arrives at the house to check on him and gets lost inside too. 

I guess the whole Backrooms deal involves someone being trapped inside an endless loop of liminal spaces.  I suppose the mundane look and long static shots are part of what goes into making a Backrooms thing work.  However, there were times I thought my Tubi had frozen up on me because the takes were held so long. 

I can’t say the Backrooms concept works for me as a whole, but I can see how it could appeal to some people.  I can certainly understand why the idea of combining a Backrooms video with an Amityville movie would appeal to indie filmmakers with limited means.  It shows you can take a simple premise and make a watchable movie with a minimum number of locations, a small cast (there are no women to be found in this one) and mere pocket change at their disposal.  That said, this never really approaches becoming a “good” movie.  The acting is bad and the ending is awful.  Still, it’s all downright Shakespearean compared to some of the other low-budget Amityville flicks that are out there.  You also have to deal with a lot of cheap-looking news reports that help to pad out the running time.  (These kinds of scenarios are almost a given in fake Amityville rip-offs nowadays.)

The burly realtor gets the best line of the movie when he says, “Amityville sucks!”

OBSESSION (2026) ***

This low-budget horror flick was a surprise blockbuster at the box office.  It has a simple but effective premise that manages to breathe new life into the shopworn “Monkey Paw” cliché.  Remember that one Tales from the Crypt episode with Andrew McCarthy?  It’s sort of like a 21st century variation on that. 

Bear (Michael Johnston) gets put into the dreaded Friend Zone by his coworker Nikki (Inde Navarrette).  Frustrated by the fact that he can’t express his feelings towards her, Bear buys a wishing stick and wishes for her to fall madly in love with him.  Well, it works… a little too well. 

First time director Curry Barker favors creating an unsettling mood rather than out and out shocks.  He fills the frame with drab colors, and the muted palette lends the picture an ominous feel.  While I kind of wish (heh… perhaps a poor choice of words) he went for the jugular a bit more often (there’s a scene with a steering wheel that is a real crowd pleaser), he nevertheless does a solid job setting the creepy tone early on.  Even more impressive is the fact he is able to sustain it for much of the film’s running time.  It does wear on a bit long at 107 minutes, and while it would’ve benefited from some tighter editing, Obsession remains a heck of a debut. 

The real MVP is Navarrette.  The reason the audience buys the premise is thanks largely to her total commitment to the crazed lengths her character will go through to be loved.  She does some of her best work hidden in silhouette, but she is equally fine when she goes into full-tilt nutzo mode.  We’ve had a lot of great acting performances by women in horror over the past couple of years, and Navarrette’s ranks right there with the best of them.

Barker didn’t reinvent the wheel with this one.  Sometimes, you don’t have to.  You just have to keep it spinning.

And yes, that’s Conan O’Brien’s sidekick Andy Richter as Johnston and Navarrette’s boss.