Friday, June 1, 2018

FLESH AND BULLETS (1985) ***

Flesh and Bullets was made by former pornographers and it shows.  The production is often cheap looking, the performances are uneven, and the music is funky.  That is to say, I had a pretty good time with it.

It’s basically Strangers on a Train, with healthy doses of sex.  Two divorced men meet in a casino bar (maybe it should’ve been called Strangers in a Casino) and commiserate with their shared experiences of being constantly hassled by their ex-wives for alimony.  They decide they should kill each other’s wife, that way there will be no suspicion cast upon them.  Complications ensue when they wind up hopping into bed (and consequentially falling in love) with the other man’s wife.

The set-up is briskly handled, and the unorthodox method of having multiple narrators, constant flashbacks, and unusual subplots (like the bank robbery opening) prevent things from becoming dull.  Of course, you could always call the narrative “clumsy” and/or “slipshod”, but when it winds up working despite itself, I like to call it “unorthodox”.  

I also got a kick out of seeing the guest stars Yvonne DeCarlo, Caesar Romero, Aldo Ray, and Cornel Wilde looking totally out of place.  I bet they filmed their scenes while on a coffee break from another movie.  DeCarlo and Romero are literally in it for a minute and I swear they shared the same costume.  (They both play judges.)  Ray and Wilde are in just two scenes, but their characters have no bearing on the plot, so it feels like they were only there for marquee value and to pad out the running time.

Robert Z’Dar shows up late in the game as a jealous boyfriend of one of the ex-wives.  It’s far and away the best performance of the movie.  You can also have fun spotting porn stars Sharon Kelly, Mai Lin (as a hooker who is so horny she gives it away for free), and William Margold turning up in small roles. 

AKA:  The Wife Contract.

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