THE ASIAN CONNECTION (2016) **

Steven Seagal stars as a shady crime boss in Cambodia.  A bank robber (John Edward Lee) steals from a bank that contains a hefty sum of Seagal’s cash.  Seagal’s right hand man (Sahajak Boonthanakit from Hard Target 2) tracks him down, but instead of killing him, he offers Lee a deal:  Continue to knock off the banks where Seagal keeps his cash and they’ll split the money down the middle.

The Asian Connection (which was co-written by Tom Sizemore of all people) is a mediocre, but watchable latter-day Seagal effort.  This one combines his recent love of playing villains with his penchant for wearing sunglasses, a doo rag, and a big bushy beard (although he still wears his more traditional Asian-inspired fashions).  As far as these things go, it’s not bad.  He spends a lot of his time sitting down (another new Seagal motif), but he does have a pretty good knife fight that opens the picture.

Since Seagal spends most of his screen time hanging around the edges of the plot, it’s up to Lee to do much of the heavy lifting.  Looking like Johnny Knoxville cosplaying as Tyler Durden, Lee makes for a serviceable leading man.  His romantic scenes are a bit dull, but he makes out just fine during the bank robbing sequences.  

Michael Jai White is around for one scene as an arms dealer who equips Lee.  He doesn’t get a lot of screen time, but he gives the movie a much-needed shot in the arm.  White delivers a solid performance, and is pretty funny too, which makes you wish he hung around longer.

DOCTOR DRACULA (1978) * ½

Producer Sam Sherman got a hold of the softcore skin flick Lucifer’s Women and hired cult director Al Adamson to take all the sex out and put in a bunch of new scenes. The new scenes feature members of his usual stock players such as John Carradine and Regina Carrol.  Because of that, it’s a lot more tolerable than Lucifer’s Women, which was filled with a lot of bad acting. 

The central premise of Lucifer’s Women is still there, but Adamson shoehorns a vampire subplot in there.  The narrative was already pretty jumbled to begin with.  The movie already has hypnotism, reincarnation, and Satanists in it.  It’s a small miracle that the new scenes are much more entertaining than the old footage.

If you’re a fan of Adamson, this should go down smooth enough.  I’ll admit, he’s not one of the most competent filmmakers out there, but he does a better-than-expected job at blending the new footage with the old.  It helps that they got Larry Hankin back for the new scenes, so the transitions between the old and new footage is hard to spot in some scenes.

Although most of the movie is bad, the scene where Dracula has sex in a coffin is kinkier and more inventive than anything in the X-Rated Lucifer’s Women.  Adamson also wisely dropped the Paul Thomas subplot, which allows the film to run much smoother.  You still have to sit through those long scenes from Lucifer’s Women though, and let me tell you, they’re twice as hard to get through the second time around.

It’s not all bad though.  I liked it when Carradine name-dropped Elvis in a list of Satanic messengers.  While the new stuff isn’t great, the scenes of Svengali holding seances and Dracula stalking his victims are more entertaining and atmospheric than the stuff the other director came up with.  However, the ending is really dumb and is about as stupid as anything found in Lucifer’s Women.  In fact, it was probably a Two Star movie until the shitty ending brought things to an abrupt halt.

AKA:  Lucifer’s Women.  AKA:  Svengali.

LUCIFER’S WOMEN (1974) *

It doesn’t get any better than the opening scene.  A magician does the old levitating woman trick, but this guy does the ancient gag one better.  He cuts the neckline of the floating woman’s dress, exposing her breasts to the audience.  No strings indeed!

Dr. Wainwright (Larry Hankin) is the living reincarnation of Svengali.  To maintain his powers, he must offer up a human sacrifice to a Satanist (Norman Pierce).  When the doctor falls in love with the woman meant to be sacrificed (Jane Brunel-Cohen), he struggles to break free of Svengali’s hold to save her.

Lucifer’s Women employed none other than Anton LaVey as its technical consultant.  I’m not sure how much he advised on the project because it looks like the same old sacrificial shit you’d see in a typical horror movie.  I don’t know how much time went into making the Satanist scenes accurate.  All I know is that they should’ve spent more time trying to make the film good.

The plot is just too stuffed to ever really work.  We’ve got possession, Satanism, human sacrifices, mysticism, and none of it gels into a cohesive whole.  The scenes with Hankin romancing Brunel-Cohen are dull and the sequences where he battles for his soul are weak.  The only parts worth a damn are the hypnotism scenes.  They have a She-Creature type of vibe to them, and the final magic trick is reminiscent of The Wizard of Gore.

To make matters worse, there’s an entire subplot about a small-time pimp (played by porn star Paul Thomas) with a lisping southern accent that’s practically unbearable.  Thomas acts surly to mimes and threatens to push Brunel-Cohen into a life of prostitution.  This subplot gets in the way of the Svengali stuff and more or less stops the movie on a dime.

Lucifer’s Women contains more skin that you’d expect to see in an otherwise tepid Satanism picture.  The majority of the scenes are lukewarm, although I did like the “Butterfly Girl’ striptease number.  The scene where Brunel-Cohen gets turned on while reading a lesbian porn comic is pretty funny too.

Credits Watch:  David Webb Peoples was the editor.  He later went on to write Blade Runner and Unforgiven!  I guess you’ve got to start somewhere.

TERROR OUT OF THE SKY (1978) * ½

Terror Out of the Sky starts off with an odd dream scene in which Tovah Feldshuh is attacked by killer bees while driving a Beetle.  At first, I thought this was supposed to be some half-assed dream symbolism.  Get it, because she was driving a BEE-tle?  

As it turns out, this is a Made for TV sequel to The Savage Bees.  I didn’t realize it till later because I haven’t seen that movie.  Even if I did, I probably wouldn’t have recognized the footage because Gretchen Corbett played Feldshuh’s role in the original.

Anyway, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. works at The Center for Bees.  He mistakenly sends out a killer queen bee and must race against time to find all the shipments before the queens can mate and spawn thousands of killer bees.  He wants Tovah to go along with him, but she’s still skittish because of her rampant bee nightmares.  She gets her pilot boyfriend Dan Haggerty (who wears the same bracelet he wore in Elves) to help fly them around to the spots where the bee boxes have been sent.  Predictably, the last queen mates, and hundreds of bees descend on a baseball game in a small town.

The only part that’s worth a damn is when a guy at The Center for Bees gets a mouthful of bees.  This scene is pretty strong stuff for a Made for TV movie from the ‘70s.  Too bad nothing else in the film comes close to matching it.

The scene where our heroes try to save a bunch of boys from a school bus crawling with killer bees is the worst.  In fact, I think Terror from the Sky challenges Jeepers Creepers 2 for the worst horror sequel featuring a bunch of shirtless boys trapped aboard a school bus.  This rescue sequence is laborious and just goes on and on.  By the way, have you ever noticed how all these Made for TV killer insect movies always have that one longwinded scene of people being evacuated?  What’s with that? 

If director Lee H. (World Gone Wild) Katzin ended things after the bus rescue, it would’ve been okay.  Unfortunately, the movie continues on another twenty agonizing minutes.  It’s here where Zimbalist, Jr. wanders endlessly around in a beekeeper’s outfit walking down corridor after corridor while hundreds of bees crawl all over him.  

The most ridiculous part of the movie though is the fact that a woman could be caught in a love triangle with Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. and Dan Haggerty.  

AKA:  The Revenge of the Savage Bees.

ROBOT NINJA (1989) *** ½

I was a fan of J.R. Bookwalter’s Dead Next Door, but this might be his ultimate epic.  While that film had the help of Sam Raimi as producer, this one had David DeCoteau.  Because of DeCoteau’s influence, Linnea Quigley has a small role as Burt Ward’s secretary!

Michael Todd stars as a comic book artist who gets upset when a television producer (Ward) waters down his beloved creation, Robot Ninja for television.  He then gets his friend (Bogdan Pecic) to make him a real Robot Ninja costume (using royalties from the comic to bankroll the endeavor) and goes out and fights crime.  He crosses a gang of thugs led by a tough-talking woman (Maria Markovic) who take it upon themselves to destroy the Robot Ninja once and for all.

The thugs are low rent and cartoonish, but they make for a worthy adversary for a comic book artist with no formal martial arts or weapons training.  Bookwalter films the action in an efficient manner, especially considering the constraints of the miniscule budget.  He gets a lot of mileage out of the extreme gore too.  Eyes are clawed out, hands are cut off, and guts are ripped out.  There’s also a gnarly scene in which a gun is shoved into someone’s eyeball and the shots of the Robot Ninja performing self-surgery are disgusting.

Robot Ninja is a precursor to the likes of Super and Kick-Ass.  Not only was it ahead of its time, it’s probably ripe for a remake.  It was made in 1989 at the height of the second wave of Batmania and seeing nerds congregating in comic book shops wearing Batman T-shirts is like stepping into a time warp.  That is to say, I loved it.  Speaking of time warps, I dug Todd’s studio that had dozens of ‘80s movie posters (including some of Bookwalter’s own films) plastered on the wall.

BLACKHAT (2015) * ½

Blackhat is your typical Michael Mann film.  Well, typical except it sucks.  It follows his usual fetishes for cops and robbers stuff.  There are lots of police procedural scenes, frantic phone calls, and cops staying frustratingly one step behind their man for most of the movie.  Instead of a bank robber or a drug dealer, the bad guy the cops are chasing is a computer hacker.  

As Dirty Harry once said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”  Now, I’m not a tech guy.  I can barely blog.  Because of that, most of the computer gobbledygook went over my head.  It doesn’t matter if half the dialogue in the movie sounded like a foreign language to me, that doesn’t excuse the lethargic pacing and insurmountable running time.

Even with my computer illiterate handicap, I’m smart enough to know that the CGI shots of a virus running through a computer looked like the half-baked stepchild of Tron:  Legacy and an HBO promo from the ‘80s.

Hemsworth is good.  The sign of a quality actor is the ability to rise above the excruciating dialogue he’s been given and coast on charm alone.  He does that in spades.

Another big detractor for me was Mann’s continued use of digital video.  Although many of the exterior shots are slick and moody, the action scenes are often grainy and use a lot of irritating shaky-cam camerawork.   Seriously, it looks like Mann filmed half the action on his phone.  And I’m not talking an iPhone either.  Mann straight up Jitterbugged that shit.  

I’m not afraid to admit I was lost throughout most of this movie.  It’s one thing to be lost because you can’t understand what the characters are talking about.  It’s another thing when the camerawork is so bad you can’t tell what the hell is going on during the action.

What’s worse is that it takes an hour-and-forty-two minutes for Hemsworth to finally put on a black hat!  What the fuck?  By that point, I was rooting for Thor to pull out his hammer and smash his laptop to pieces.

AKA:  Hacker.

SPACE PROBE-TAURUS (1965) ** ½

A rocket carrying four scientists is launched into space.  On their voyage, the crew makes contact with a ship from another world.  They board the vessel, run into an alien, and kill it within minutes of their historic meeting!  The astronauts hop back into the ship and are thrown off course by a meteor shower.  They wind up landing on a mysterious moon where they recharge their batteries.  Before they can blast off, they must tussle with some giant crabs.

This kind of sci-fi exploration movie was on its last legs when Space Probe-Taurus was released.  2001 was only three years off and after that, chintzy rocket ships and astronauts sitting in La-Z-Boy chairs would be a thing of the past.  There’s even the obligatory sexist astronaut that doesn’t think a woman should be up in space.  Also, revolvers are standard issue astronaut equipment… you know… in case you want to shoot an alien immediately after you make first contact with it.  

I have a high tolerance for these movies.  Space Probe-Taurus won’t convert any new fans to the genre, but anyone who appreciates a cheesy space exploration movie should have fun with it.  It gets points for getting the show on the road pretty quickly, although some of the relationship drama that clogs up the middle section is laughably bad.

Even though they were using the same techniques Flash Gordon used thirty years prior, the effects are still entertaining for the most part.  While the bulk of the effects are cheesy, the shots of the astronauts floating around in space are well done.  The monsters are cool too.  I especially liked the rubbery looking alien who kept frantically licking its lips.  The giant crabs, which are just regular crabs walking around an Estes rocket are also good for a laugh.  There’s also a Creature from the Black Lagoon-inspired monster that wears a long black wig and swims around.  The mask looks like it could fall off the diver at any moment, but that’s part of its charm.

AKA:  Space Monster.

THE LOOKOUT (2007) **

Chris Pratt (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, not Chris Pratt) has his sports career is cut short when he gets into a car accident that leaves him brain damaged and suffering from memory loss.  Because of his condition, the only job he can get is an after-hours janitor in a bank.  (Also, because of his condition, he thinks he’s Chris Pratt and not Joseph Gordon-Levitt).  He spends his spare time hanging out with his blind roommate/sponsor (Jeff Daniels) while pining away for a “normal life”.  (And presumably, a role in a Guardians of the Galaxy movie.)  Chris is befriended by an old schoolmate (Matthew Goode) who helps beef up his confidence, but it’s all a ploy to manipulate him into robbing the bank.

I was a big fan of writer/director Scott Frank’s A Walk Among the Tombstones, so I was curious to check this out, as it was his directorial debut.  I also immensely liked Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s performance in The Walk.  Because of that, I thought The Lookout couldn't miss.  Man, was I wrong.

The early scenes are the best.  Frank does a good job infusing his characters with personality. Daniels in particular excels as the blind roommate.   Once the heist kicks in, the movie oddly enough stops on a dime.  I thought there'd be a big twist or something at the end to justify the lackluster third act, but no.  This has got to be one of the least impressive heists in cinema history. 

Still, Frank does a fine job at establishing a nice atmosphere.  All the ingredients were there for a fine drama.  Frank had the marinade ready; he just forgot to bring the meat.

HAIL, CAESAR! (2016) ** ½

Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) is a fixer at a Hollywood studio who is overseeing the finishing touches on a big budget Biblical epic.  When his leading man (George Clooney) is kidnapped by Communists, he has to scramble to get him back.  He enlists the help of a cowboy star (Alden Ehrenreich) to find the mastermind behind the scheme, which could be one of the studio’s top stars.

Hail, Caesar! is the Coen brothers’ love letter to the Golden Age of cinema.  There’s probably too many side characters and subplots swirling around that prevent it from gaining any sort of momentum.  The crux of the story is involving, but the Coens seem to be having more fun with their little plot detours, character embellishments, and recreations of old movies.  

I liked how the audience is introduced to each movie star by watching them film a scene from their latest picture.  Channing Tatum has a long Gene Kelly-inspired tapdancing sequence and Scarlett Johansson gets her own Ethel Merman underwater number.  Unfortunately, most of the characters (with the exception of Brolin) are thinly sketched.

There are a few winning moments.  The scene where Ralph Fiennes tries to help Ehrenreich with his dialogue is hysterical.  This sequence alone has more laughs than what’s found in the rest of the film.

Hail, Caesar! is much too unfocused to be wholly successful, but it’s still watchable just for the performances.  Ehrenreich proves he’s a star in the making.  He looks good in a cowboy hat and bolo tie too.  If he doesn’t take off playing Han Solo, he can tide himself over with a Joe Bob Briggs biopic.  Brolin is quite good in the lead and does what he can to hold the film together.  Clooney makes do with his admittedly flimsy role, although he's seen better days.  

It’s the supporting performances that make it fun.  Most people are only on screen for two or three minutes.  No matter how scattershot it gets, it’s hard to completely hate a movie that features Clancy Brown, Christopher Lambert, and Dolph Lundgren in bit parts.  I mean where else are you going to see Channing Tatum salute Dolph Lundgren?

DEMON WIND (1990) * ½

I have fond memories of seeing the lenticular video box cover for Demon Wind on video store shelves back in the day.  I always regretted never renting it.  I mean other movies like Uncle Sam and Jack Frost had lenticular VHS boxes, and they were awesome.  There’s no reason Demon Wind shouldn’t follow suit.

As it turns out, it’s mostly terrible.

Cory (Eric Larson) is plagued by bad dreams, so he takes his girlfriend and his seemingly never-ending posse of friends to the shack where his grandparents mysteriously died years earlier.  It looks just like a burnt-out shell, but when they cross the threshold, they find themselves in the house just as it was all those years ago.  One by one, they become possessed by demons and naturally, the only one who can stop them is Cory.  

Demon Wind is a bad Evil Dead rip-off.  It’s overlong, dull, and often doesn’t make a lick of sense.  The kills quickly get repetitive as does the make-up on all the possessed people.  

There are some weird touches here that prevent it from being a total loss.  In one scene, a woman gets turned into a baby doll.  That’s not even the weird part.  The weird part is the others just sort of accept her fate and move on.  

Cory’s gaggle of friends offer some amusement, just for the sheer number of them.  Even as the movie is headed for the third act, his buddies continue to show up to become demon fodder.  My favorites were the two magician friends who irritate the jock asshole of the group by constantly performing magic tricks. 

Demon Wind was the first film by Charles Philip Moore.  He would get much better as he went on to direct the immortal Angel of Destruction four years later.  You can just tell he was itching to direct Kung Fu movies from the random scene where one of the magicians kickboxes a beer can. 

LARCENY (2017) **

I was a fan of director R. Ellis Frazier’s Rumble, so I decided to take a chance on his latest film, Larceny.  Like Rumble, it is a competently made picture.  Since it doesn’t have the same kind of bonkers twist ending, it’s kind of a forgettable affair. 

Dolph Lundgren stars as an ex-DEA agent who gets himself thrown in jail down in Mexico.  That might sound like a dumb thing for a gringo to do, but Dolph has a plan.  He knows that’s where a big drug dealer keeps all his money and Dolph and his team are planning to take it off his hands.

Larceny is a heist film, so those expecting your typical Lundgren shoot ‘em up may be a little disappointed.  The pacing is also a bit slow and nothing much happens during the middle section.  Frazier fails to get any mileage out of the admittedly novel setting.  It’s a shame too because combining the heist and prison genres seemed like a good idea.

It’s one thing for a movie to be low on action.  It’s another thing to set up a big action sequence and not deliver.  In order to make his escape, Dolph lets the prisoners loose to create a distraction.  Everything looks like it’s leading up to a big shootout, only Frazier cuts to black and flash-forwards to Dolph’s girlfriend being kidnapped after the heist.  It happens so abruptly that it made me think that the production simply ran out of money and couldn't afford to film the sequence.

Dolph is his usual charismatic self.  We also get solid support from Corbin Bernsen as Dolph's boss and Louis Mandylor as a crooked senator.  Jocelyn Osorio also does a fine job as the lone woman on Dolph’s team.  She proves she’s just as capable as the boys and holds her own in her dramatic scenes.  I wouldn’t mind seeing her in her own starring vehicle.

AKA:  Maximum Security.

THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1963) *

William Castle seemed liked the right person to remake James Whale’s classic The Old Dark House.  Castle had a knack for presenting horror with a light tongue-in-cheek touch, which made him perfectly suited to the material.  Unfortunately, his version of The Old Dark House relies way too heavily on comedy, and none of it is very funny.

Tom Poston stars as an American car salesman who comes to a decrepit mansion to deliver a car to his English roommate, played by Peter Bull.  The place is crawling with kooky relatives who inform Poston his roommate died suddenly under shady circumstances.  Poston gets mixed up in the family squabble for the will, and soon becomes the killer’s next target.

Castle’s most famous films featured gimmicks that were often more fun than the movies themselves.  The Old Dark House doesn’t have one, and it’s doubtful the wildest gimmick imaginable could’ve made it work.  It’s probably his all-time worst.  There is one memorable scene involving a death by knitting needle, but that’s about as close as Castle comes to blending horror and humor effectively.

Much of the problem has to do with Poston’s performance.  He was great on Newhart and all, but he is painfully unfunny here.  To be fair, he wasn’t given much to work with as the script mostly requires him to do a lot of double-takes and pratfalls while interacting with the oddball family.  Bull fairs slightly better playing multiple roles, although he doesn’t garner any laughs either.

The best part is the opening credits sequence, designed by Charles Addams.  His most famous creation, The Addams Family, premiered on television the next year.  At times, this almost feels like a test run for that show, but it’s nowhere near as much fun.

KEEP WATCHING (2017) * ½

A killer installs hidden cameras inside unsuspecting families’ homes and watches them.  He then murders them live on camera and broadcasts it on the internet for the world to see.  Bella Thorne is a typical teenage girl who hates her new stepmother.  She also happens to be the killer’s next target.

Keep Watching is basically The Strangers remade as a Found Footage horror movie.  It relies heavily on the hidden camera gimmick, which is a double-edged sword.  Some of the camera placements give us a handful of interesting angles.  I particularly liked the shot from inside the microwave (although you have to wonder how the hell the killer rigged it up).  Other times, the cameras should’ve been easily seen by any and all of the family members.  The camera that’s mounted onto flashlight is the most obvious example.  (Although this leads to an OK sequence involving a Polaroid camera.)

Like most of these things, you have to wait an awful long time for something to happen.  The thing is, you know exactly where it’s going the whole time, which makes the wait feel even longer.  Even the big “twist” is a foregone conclusion, but the movie seems to think it’s pretty damned clever, so it drags it out as long as humanly possible.

I basically only watched this for Bella Thorne.  Unfortunately, she isn’t nearly as well-utilized here as she was in Amityville:  The Awakening or The Babysitter.  The supporting cast, which includes Chandler Riggs, Ioan Gruffudd, and Leigh Whannell are decent, although they aren’t strong enough to carry the movie throughout its slower passages (of which there are many).

DE PALMA (2016) ****

Noah (Frances Ha) Baumbach and Jake (Young Ones) Paltrow aren’t the first two guys you’d expect to make a documentary about Brian De Palma.  Thank God that they did.  It’s essential viewing for De Palma die-hards, or for anyone who loves cinema in general.

Baumbach and Paltrow are slavish to chronology, which makes me love the documentary even more.  They go through De Palma’s filmography with a fine-tooth comb, starting with his early experimental ‘60s movies and moving onwards.  In between clips of his films, we see De Palma talking about the movies and giving on-set anecdotes and dishing out a wealth of fascinating technical and incidental information.  This approach works, mostly because you get to see his work as an artist slowly take shape over the years, but also because every one of his films is covered.  You knew they were going to go in-depth on Scarface, but did you expect them to spend so much time on Mission to Mars?  Heck, even the underrated Wise Guys gets its due!

Folks, this is simply a two-hour film school.  Some may grouse about the rhythm of the movie as it goes from film clip to talking head shot of De Palma to film clip.  Me?  I loved the conciseness of the project.  Few filmmakers deserved a documentary of this nature.  Hell, fewer filmmakers have a filmography worth discussing for two hours.  

You know what, there’s a part of me that wishes it was twice as long.  That’s mostly because De Palma is so damned interesting.  He’s a born storyteller.  Even without a camera, he’s fascinating just sitting there talking movies.  Whether he’s regaling us with war stories from his battles with the ratings board or talking shit on the Carrie remakes, De Palma holds court like few can.  As a filmmaker, there are few finer.  His misfires are more interesting than most directors’ best work. Even his worst films have his distinct fingerprints all over them, which is something that can’t be said for most filmmakers.   

ATOR: THE FIGHTING EAGLE (1983) **

Miles O'Keefe stars in this Conan rip-off from Joe D'Amato.  It is curiously lacking the exploitation goodness you’d expect from that Italian sleaze merchant.  Instead, what we get is long stretches of extreme boredom punctuated with moments of side-splitting hilarity. 

O’Keefe stars as Ator, who must rescue his wife (Ritza Brown) from the clutches of the evil Spider King (Dakkar).  An Amazon warrior (Sabrina Siani) in search of gold and adventure, joins him on his quest.  In the end, Ator squares off against the king and does battle with his giant spider.   

For a while there, I thought this was going to be worse than its more famous sequel, Cave Dwellers.  I mean nothing happens for about the first twenty minutes.  (Heck, the first five minutes is filled with old guys spouting prophecy after prophecy.)  The plot moves along at a sluggish pace, but some of the side journeys Ator takes are amusing.  I liked the part where the Amazon women held wrestling matches and the winner got to use Ator as breeding stock, and the scene where Laura Gemser tries slip Ator a Mickey is right out of a Hercules movie from the ‘60s.   

Dakkar makes for an OK villain, if only because of his willingness to let spiders crawl all over his bare arms and bald head.  The giant spider is probably the most memorable part, and for all the wrong reasons.  The budget was so low that they could only afford to show four of its legs at a time.  The editing during Ator’s final showdown with it is downright hilarious too.     

AKA:  Ator.  AKA:  Ator the Invincible.

BLACK PANTHER (2018) *** ½

Twenty years ago, Blade was released.  Its success was largely due to Wesley Snipes’ iconic performance as the badass bloodsucker.  Back in 1998, there were no notions of shared Cinematic Universes.  It was just a strong black actor starring in a comic book movie and elevating it into the ranks of a modern classic.  Oddly enough, it took twenty years for another black Marvel character to topline his own franchise.  Although I think Blade is more significant because it was the first film under the modern-day Marvel brand, there is no denying that Black Panther has taken the world by storm. 

The closest comparison to Black Panther I can make is Shaft.  It is not a perfect movie, but it's cultural significance overshadows its flaws.  Like Shaft, it's a black director working with a mostly black cast on a tent pole action film with a soundtrack by a renowned black artist.  Since it was director Ryan Coogler’s follow-up to Creed, I couldn’t wait to see it.  While it falls short of the heights of Creed (and Blade), it’s still a top-rate comic book flick.

After the events of Captain America:  Civil War, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) returns home to Africa to take up the mantel of Black Panther, king of Wakanda.  His reign is challenged by the determined Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) who claims he has a legitimate right to the throne.   When Killmonger defeats T’Challa, the kingdom is forced to go along with his militant regime.  It’s then up to T’Challa to regain his strength and defeat Killmonger once and for all. 

I think the weaker parts of Black Panther are the superhero-y moments, mostly because we have seen that stuff a dozen times before.  What we haven't seen is a black nation portrayed as royalty with tech that would make Luke Skywalker and James Bond envious.  As great as Boseman and Jordan are, Wakanda is the real star.  The world-building aspects take elements from other movies, but still manage to feel fresh and unique.  I loved the hierarchy of the various tribes and the combination of primitive and futuristic tech reminded me a bit of John Carter.

As a fan of Creed, I was hoping Coogler would deliver on the action sequences.  Unfortunately, some of the fights are too dark and/or feature quick-cut editing that detract from the action.  The big costumed brawl during the finale looks a bit too cartoony, but the challenge fights for the throne are heated, brutal, and gorgeously filmed.  These fights are also structured like a Rocky movie.  Specifically, Rocky 3 as Black Panther loses his title and has to have a rematch in order to reclaim it.

There are a lot of characters to juggle, but Coogler does a good job at giving the supporting characters moments to shine.  The cast contains a wealth of strong women, all of whom leave their mark.  Lupita Nyong’o has considerable chemistry with Boseman as his love interest, and Danai Gurira kicks a lot of ass as the leader of his royal guard.  It’s Letita Wright who steals the show as Black Panther’s smart mouth sister who constantly busts his balls and acts like a teenage version of Q.

The movie really belongs to Jordan as the seething Killmonger.  When he’s front and center, you kind of forget about Black Panther.  That’s not a knock on Boseman, who is charismatic, and a born leading man.  Like The Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman, he blows the hero off the screen with his commanding screen presence.  He’s truly one of the best Marvel villains of all time.

Sure, the movie has its flaws.  In fact, I think if the running time had been a good twenty or thirty minutes longer, it would’ve let the plot breathe a little and some of the pacing issues would’ve ironed themselves out.  However, the big take away is that Marvel has a character that resonates with a whole new audience.  I for one can’t wait to see Black Panther kick some ass in the upcoming Infinity War.

Marvel Cinematic Universe Scorecard:

Avengers:  Age of Ultron:  ****

The Incredible Hulk:  ****
Iron Man:  ****
Thor:  Ragnarok:  ****
Spider-Man:  Homecoming:  ****
Iron Man 3:  ****
Captain America:  Civil War:  *** ½
Ant-Man:  *** ½
Guardians of the Galaxy:  *** ½
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2:  *** ½ 
Black Panther:  *** ½ 
The Avengers:  ***
Captain America:  The First Avenger:  ***
Captain America:  The Winter Soldier:  ***
Thor:  ***
Thor:  The Dark World:  ***
Iron Man 2:  ***
Doctor Strange:  ** ½ 

MYSTERIOUS ISLAND OF BEAUTIFUL WOMEN (1979) **

Peter Lawford is a wealthy industrialist who is using his private plane to get an injured worker (Michael McGreevey, from the Dexter Riley movies) to a hospital.  The pilot (Sandy McPeak) gets them hopelessly lost so when they run low of fuel, they have to land on an uncharted island.  They soon learn the place is inhabited solely by women.  Lizbeth (Jaime Lyn Bower) rules the women with an iron fist and takes orders from a divine spirit known only as “Sister”.  She allows the men to stay only if they agree to fight off some nasty “head choppers" who periodically pillage the island.  Naturally, the co-pilot (Steven Keats, from Death Wish) falls head over heels for one of the natives, which causes a power struggle among the women.

Even for a ‘70s Made for TV movie, Mysterious Island of Beautiful Women is a slow and uneventful affair.  Once the men find their way to the island, there isn’t a whole lot for them to do except make doe eyes at the natives.  The identity of Lizbeth’s supernatural deity is predictable, and the explanation is overly long-winded.  (I mean, what would a ‘70s Made for TV be without a lot of gratuitous padding?)

The cast makes it watchable.  Lawford seems to be having a good time surrounded by beautiful women and Keats does a fine job as the most levelheaded male in the bunch.  Clint (Killdozer) Walker is probably the most memorable as the muscle-bound passenger with a giant chip on his shoulder.  Of the native women, Kathryn Davis fares best as the blond-haired “Snow” who gets a crush on Keats.  It’s unfortunate she only starred in one more movie because she is quite fetching.  We also have Jayne (Body and Soul) Kennedy as the lone black woman of the tribe named “Chocolate”.

The script was co-written by Gary Sherman, who was a few years away from his magnum opus, Vice Squad. 

AKA:  Island of Sister Theresa.  

EXTRACTION (2015) ***

Bruce Willis stars (and by “stars” I mean he filmed all his scenes in one day and mostly appears at the very beginning and end of the movie) as a secret agent who is kidnapped by terrorists.  If their demands aren’t met, they’ll use their MacGuffin to cripple the world’s computers or something.  Kellan Lutz is Willis’ son, a desk jockey at the CIA who can’t seem to pass his Fed Final Exam.  Once he learns his dad has been kidnapped, he teams up with his ex-girlfriend (Gina Carano), who also happens to be a field operative to rescue him and save the world.

Extraction is your typical “Let's Rescue My Dad from an Abandoned Warehouse” movie.  Lutz is a capable, if unexceptional leading man, but equips himself nicely in the action scenes.  Carano does a fine job too and they have enough chemistry together to keep you watching.  In fact, this is one of the few times where she gets to exhibit her A) Immense physical prowess B) Acting range and C) A little bit of sexuality.

Bruce may be working on limited screen time, but he still manages to leave an impression.  Although he’s been going to the DTV well quite often in recent years, he refuses to phone it in here.  He has a nice rapport with both Lutz and Carano, and you wish there was more of him to go around.  

Director Steven C. (Arsenal) Miller does a solid job overall.  He handles the car chases and shootouts capably enough and while there are a few instances of shaky-cam during the fight scenes, it’s not nearly enough to derail the film.  Miller certainly knows how to keep things moving.  Extraction runs a lean 82 minutes and moves at a lightning pace.  I can’t say it’s a classic or anything, but it’s one of Bruce’s best DTV efforts.

CASTLE OF BLOOD (1964) ** ½

A reporter (Georges Riviere) meets Edgar Allan Poe (Montgomery Glenn) in a bar for an interview.  A lord (Raul H. Newman) interrupts and offers the reporter a bet that can’t spend the night in his creepy castle.  When he gets there, he finds the place inhabited by the sexy Elisabeth (Barbara Steele), who falls immediately in love with him.  Elisabeth’s sister (Margrete Robsahm) seems jealous of her new beau, but is she really making a play for the hapless reporter, or is she trying to save him from a fate worse than death?

Director Anthony M. Margheriti was trying to capitalize on the success of Mario Bava’s Black Sunday.  He apes Bava’s style adequately enough and gives the film a healthy dose of atmosphere.  Fog-drenched sets, cobwebbed hallways, and candlelit studies abound.  The scene inside the creepy crypt is sure to give fans of Black Sunday a sense of déjà vu.  

As an exercise in style, it works, but as a horror film, it’s a little uneven.  The appearance of a skull-faced ghoul that suddenly moves is rather effective and there’s a surprising bit of nudity too. The assorted murders, ghosts, and supernatural happenings are a tad on the predictable side though.  (One plot device even plays like a gothic horror variation on A Christmas Carol.)  I could’ve also done without the scene where a snake’s head is chopped off.  

Steele is easily the best thing about the movie.  She looks terrific and her sultry demeanor makes the slow passages worthwhile.  Margrete Robsahm is a solid foil for Steele and they are especially good in the scenes where they act out their sibling rivalry.  Georges Riviere is a bit of a dullard though, and the many sequences where looks endlessly down hallways and staircases for Steele get repetitive.  

Margheriti later remade this as Web of the Spider.

AKA:  Castle of Terror.  AKA:  Long Night of Terror.

LUCK-KEY (2016) *** ½

Jae-sung (Joon Lee) is a suicidal actor who stumbles upon an unconscious man (Hae-jin Yoo) in a bathhouse.  Eager for a new life, Jae-sung switches locker keys with the man, who judging by his clothes and car appears to be extremely wealthy.  When the guy finally comes around, he’s suffering from amnesia and accepts his new life as a struggling actor easily enough.  Jae-sung on the other hand slowly realizes his new identity isn’t what it appears to be.  He eventually figures out he’s a hitman and that his target is his next-door neighbor, a girl he’s already fallen head over heels for.  

From the set-up, you’d fully expect Luck-Key to be an obvious action comedy, but there’s surprisingly little action in it.  Much of the film is dependent on the two men growing into their new identities.  Predictably, they have to find each other and work together to straighten their lives out in the third act.  Even these scenes refuse to give into convention and cliché, managing to surprise the audience at every turn.

The performances are solid across the board.  We spend a great deal of time with both Lee and Yoo and get to know what makes their characters tick.  When Yoo’s career starts taking off, we’re rooting for him, even though we know he’ll have to get back to his job as a hitman eventually.

Although the dual struggles between the characters is often amusing, honestly this runs about ten minutes too long.  Some of the Meet Cute stuff with the heroes’ respective girlfriends sometimes drags the pace down and could’ve easily been trimmed.  However, this is a relatively minor quibble in the long run.

Luck-Key is proof that you don’t need a lot of action and violence to keep a plot about a hitman afloat.  In fact, it’s the lengths Yoo goes through to NOT kill anyone that makes his character so endearing.  This is the rare movie in which the humor comes out of the characters’ decisions and conflicting personalities.  Maybe more Hollywood productions should take a cue from it.

AKA:  Key of Life.

EXHUMED FILMS: 20 YEARS OF TERROR (2017) ***

I’ve never been to one of Exhumed Films’ all-night horror marathons or special screenings of long-lost cult classics.  This trailer compilation is a sampler of movies they’ve shown throughout the years.  For folks like me who haven’t been able to attend their shows, this is the next best thing.  While it’s certainly fun watching this at home, I can only imagine how it would play to a packed house. 

There are trailers for plenty of classic horror films and fan favorites.  Several of the genre’s top filmmakers are featured, with John Carpenter being the best represented with trailers for Assault on Precinct 13, Dark Star, and Halloween.  Even though trailers for such films as Last House on the Left, Phantasm, and Zombie have appeared on other trailer compilations over the years, it’s still good to see them again.  

If you’re a fan of trailer compilations like me, you’ll love seeing some of the more obscure titles.  The trailers for Monstrosity, The Night Daniel Died, and The Satanist sure piqued my curiosity.  I was also glad to see plenty of trailers for 3-D movies like Dynasty, Metalstorm:  The Destruction of Jared-Syn, and Treasure of the Four Crowns, but the one for Comin’ at Ya was truly something special.  One area that made this compilation different was its inclusion of films from the ‘90s like Dead-Alive, Candyman, and Naked Lunch.  I hope it’s a trend that continues in trailer compilations to come.

The ninety-minute running time feels a little brief.  Maybe that’s just because I’ve gotten so spoiled with the Trailer Trauma Blu-rays in recent years.  Still, it’s worth it just for the Beyond the Valley of the Dolls trailer alone.

THE BOSS (1973) **

Henry Silva stars as a hit man who in the opening scene, gets the drop on a bunch of gangsters and blows them up while they're watching a skin flick.  This sequence is dirty, mean, and violent and gets things off to a rollicking start.  Too bad nothing else in the rest of the picture can top it.  It’s always a shame when a movie blows its wad right from the get-go.

The gangsters retaliate by kidnapping the daughter of Silva’s mob boss.  They hold her captive and repeatedly rape her.  The thing is, she’s a nymphomaniac and loves the attention.  When Silvia rescues her, she comes on to him and she’s such a fantastic lay that he decides he wants to keep her for himself.  He then sets out to take down her father and become the new mafia boss.

Despite the excellent opening scene, The Boss is a dreary and dull gangster picture.  The constant double-crossing gets tiresome almost immediately and none of the drama with the warring mobsters is very interesting.  The action sequences are few and far between and they do little to spice things up.  There’s one cool stunt where Silva drives directly through a car, effectively cutting it in half, but that’s about it.  Although the nympho subplot helps to make it memorable, this is definitely the weakest film in director Fernando Di Leo’s Milieu Trilogy.

AKA:  Murder Inferno.  AKA:  Wipeout!

TARANTULAS: THE DEADLY CARGO (1977) **

Two pilots bringing coffee beans from Ecuador into the country get a nasty surprise when hundreds of poisonous tarantulas sneak aboard their plane.  We eventually learn they're not really tarantulas, but banana spiders.  I guess Banana Spiders:  The Deadly Cargo just doesn't have the same ring to it.  Anyway, the spiders kill everyone on board before making their way to a small town to terrorize the population.

Like all ‘70s Animals Run Amok movies, the mayor is worried that the titular animals will ruin the town’s big day.  In this case, it’s shipping out oranges that are vital to the town’s economy.  It’s then up to fire chief Claude Akins to kill the spiders without damaging the orange crop. 

There’s one memorable, odd moment when two characters have a champagne picnic overlooking the town’s "School for Autistic Children".  Seriously, is that your idea of romance?  I don’t think this guy had much of a chance getting past first base if you ask me.  Thankfully, the children aren’t put in any peril from the spiders, or the picnickers for that matter.  

The early scenes of the pilots bringing the spiders into the country are more fun than any of the nominal drama that happens in the town.  That’s mostly because the pilots are played by Tom Atkins and Howard Hesseman.  They show a lot more spunk and life than anyone else in the cast, that’s for sure.

Akins is OK as the square hero.  Bert Remsen is merely going through the motions though in the thinly-written role of the mayor.  Pat Hingle is also around as the crotchety town doctor and Deadly Friend’s Matthew Labyorteaux plays the token kid in jeopardy.

Like most of these Made for TV movies from the ‘70s, Tarantulas:  The Deadly Cargo is heavily padded to fit in its two-hour time slot.  The finale in which Akins sets out to destroy the spiders is particularly laborious and time-consuming.  It’s also far too tame to make much of an impact as the spider attack scenes lack… ahem… bite.