THE NIGHTINGALE (2019) ****

Most people would be overjoyed to quarantine themselves away for weeks at a time and do nothing but watch movies 24/7.  I mean, Hell, I pretty much do that anyway.  “Social Distancing”?  I’ve been socially distant long before it became chic.  

Well, it just so happens that the one month the government tells everyone to stay indoors and don’t do diddly is the month that life decides to kick me in the nuts.  I won’t go into detail or anything.  Just know that my month has played out like a Lifetime Movie, and not one of the good ones involving demented oversexed au pairs.  No, this one involves the threat of perpetual unemployment, the death of a family member, a loved one having a cancer scare, and getting rear-ended in traffic on the way to the hospital.  It’s been one of those months.  That’s not to mention all the COVID-19 shit going on in the world.  Because of that, these already stressful events are magnified, making going out to accomplish the simplest of tasks even more difficult.  Thankfully, my family’s been spared from the Coronavirus (so far), but I have to tell you dear readers, I don’t know how much more I can take.  

What I’m saying is that after a month like that, I needed a pick-me-up.  I needed to give myself over to the healing power of cinema and watch a movie that would brighten my mood.  That would uplift my spirits.  That would reaffirm my place with the human race.

Unfortunately, I watched The Nightingale.  

I’m not saying this is a bad film.  Far from it.  It’s just I didn’t realize I was getting myself into.  You know the term “Feel Good Movies”?  This is probably the best “Feel Bad Movie” of the decade.  

It’s all about Clare (Aisling Franciosi), an Irish woman, who along with her husband (Michael Sheasby) work as slaves to an arrogant British officer named Hawkins (Sam Claflin).  When he’s denied a promotion, he takes out his frustrations by killing Clare’s husband and newborn baby, all the while he and his men take turns raping her.  They then go off to an Army post and she follows in hot pursuit, accompanied by an Aborigine guide named Billy (Baykali Ganambarr) who’s just as prejudiced against her as she is of him.  Eventually, a mutual respect grows between them and together, they hunt down the men who shattered her world.  

So, basically what we got here is I Spit on Your Walkabout.  

Like I said, this was a tough sit.  In fact, it took me a couple days to get all the way through.  It’s brutal, uncompromising, and a real punch to the gut.  I give director Jennifer Kent, already a legend for directing The Babadook, a lot of credit for making this movie.  After that film became a cult phenomenon, I’m sure she could’ve taken the brass ring and directed a Marvel flick or some other Hollywood bullshit.  Instead, she made a difficult, unsettling, horror/western hybrid that features a lot of subtitles, thick accents, period costumes, and an unflinching eye for gruesome detail.  

This is unquestionably a masterpiece.  I just wish I saw it under better circumstances.  (Rape, racism, and infant murder isn’t the sort of thing to lift one’s spirits.) No matter how repulsive the subject matter got, and no matter how shitty my week has been, I still stuck with it to the bitter end.  (I had to divvy it up over a couple nights though because it eventually became too much for me.)  Kent’s style is masterful and with this film she proves that she is one of the best directors of the century.  Not only that, but she’s the rare filmmaker that makes nightmare sequences truly nightmarish.  Most directors just toss them into the mix to pad the running time.  Kent’s nightmare scenes help reinforce the main character’s fragile mental state to the audience.  Not only that, but they make you feel like you’re experiencing a dream in real time.  The effect packs a real punch.

I guess on one hand you could say that my problems were small potatoes compared to Clare’s.  That didn’t cheer me up though.  I did admire her resilience in the face of adversity.  Still, even when she and Billy give the bad guys their eventual comeuppance, it isn’t pretty, let alone satisfying.  One guy suffers one of the slowest, most antagonizing deaths I’ve seen in some time.  When he finally kicks the bucket, you let loose a sigh of relief instead of a rousing fist pump.  The other deaths are quicker, though just about as messy.  

It took me a scene or two to recognize Hawkins’ second-in-command as Damon Herriman.  You may remember him as Dewey on Justified or as Charles Manson in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.  He takes playing a creep to all new levels in this one.

I’m sorry it took me so long to see The Nightingale.  If I saw it earlier, it definitely would’ve made the Top Five of the Year list.  I’m also sorry about dragging my personal life into the review, but I had to vent.  Hopefully, April is a tad kinder to me than March.  

Stay safe.  Stay indoors.  Stay healthy, people.

TRICK (2019) ** ½

After Rob Zombie parted ways with the Halloween franchise, director Patrick Lussier and his My Bloody Valentine 3-D screenwriter Todd Farmer were brought in to do the next installment.  Unfortunately, that project stalled out before the cameras had a chance to roll.  As a fan of not only My Bloody Valentine 3-D, but also the duo’s Drive Angry, I’ve always yearned to see what they could’ve done with the Halloween series.  Their latest collaboration, Trick kind of gives you a glimpse of what could’ve been.  

Like Halloween, Trick features a seemingly supernatural killer who appears on Halloween to carve up his victims.  Instead of Michael Myers, it’s a high school student named Trick, who snaps on Halloween, kills his friends, and is shot by a cop, played by Omar Epps before disappearing into the night.  Epps is kind of like the Dr. Loomis stand-in as every time Halloween rolls around, he tries to warn everyone that Trick will come back, but no one believes him until it’s too late.  Each Halloween, Trick hides behind a different mask.  (The pumpkin mask he starts off with is a lot cooler than each of his successive disguises.)  

In addition to Halloween, there’s also a bit of a Scream vibe going on as the hooded killer playfully taunts his victims with a knife before cutting them up.  The fact that Lussier edited the Scream movies and the cast includes not only Scream 2’s Epps, but Jamie Kennedy only adds to the déjà vu.  Admittedly, the film’s mythology is a bit lacking when compared to those franchises, although the final twist is clever enough.  

Even though it heavily trades on the slashers of the past for inspiration, Trick is a decent enough horror film.  The emphasis on the police procedural aspect helps make it feel more like a “grown up movie” than a common-denominator Dead Teenager Flick.  The gore and bloodletting are kept at an adequate level and the body count mounts up quite nicely.  

While it lacks the out-and-out fun of their previous outings, it’s nice seeing Lussier and Farmer getting a belated chance to flex their cinematic muscles again.  On the downside, it’s a tad overlong (it’s over a 100 minutes) and suffers from some instances of shaky-cam during the suspenseful sequences.  I exactly can’t say Trick is a treat, but I’m still glad I saw it.  Besides, it’s hard to completely dismiss a movie that boasts a shotgun-toting Tom Atkins. 

NATIONAL LAMPOON’S ATTACK OF THE 5 FT. 2 WOMEN (1994) **

When Julie Brown wrote and co-directed this Showtime Original spoof of tabloid staples Tonya Harding and Lorena Bobbitt, it had a ripped-from-the-headlines feel to it.  Watching it now, with some distance from the real events, it probably plays better than it did when it was first released.  Recently, Harding’s life was dramatized in I, Tonya, and Bobbitt became the subject of an Amazon Prime documentary.  What’s fascinating is that Brown’s treatment of the events may seem crass, but they aren’t too far removed from what really happened.  (At least in the Harding segment.)  I guess truth really is stranger than fiction sometimes.  

Tonya:  The Battle of Wounded Knee (**) tells the story of a white trash ice skater named Tonya Hardly (Brown) who is tired of perpetually being a runner-up.  With her dumbass boyfriend and nitwit friend, they conspire to take out the competition, Nancy Cardigan (Khrystyne Haje from Head of the Class).  Predictably, things don’t go as planned.  

It’s been a while since I saw I, Tonya, but I swear there are some scenes in that movie that are identical to this one.  Sure, there are plenty of groan-inducing jokes, and at least one funny sight gag (Tonya using her ice skate to cut a pizza).  It’s just that it’s more fun to watch the “real” bits of the story creeping through the obvious jokes and comedic set pieces.  Brown is an actress I’ve always admired, even if her shtick is kind of thin, but she commits totally to the role and is fun to watch.  

Next, Richard (Vamp) Wenk directs He Never Gave Me Orgasm:  The Lenora Babbitt Story (**).  It finds Babbitt having a lunch meeting with an agent (Sam McMurray) to help jumpstart her career.  While eating, she relates the events that led her to severing her husband’s member.  

The tone is a lot more over the top than the first segment.  The big joke here is that whenever “Lenora” walks by a man, they instinctively cross their legs.  In fact, the whole thing is essentially one long dick joke, and it wasn’t particularly funny to begin with.  The best Dick in the movie is Dick Miller, who plays the detective who leads the hunt for the lost member.  We also get bits by Priscilla Barnes and Vicki Lawrence (as herself), which compensate for the rest of the film’s… err… shortcomings.

Overall, this is about what you’d expect from a Made for Showtime National Lampoon’s movie from the ‘90s.  In fact, it plays more like an overlong Mad Magazine parody than anything.  Fans of Brown will enjoy seeing her gamely portraying two broad characterizations of tabloid queens, but that’s about where the fun stops.

Wenk later went on to write the modern classics The Expendables 2 and The Equalizer. 

CRUISIN’ HIGH (1976) **

The Silks are a high school gang who are at war with a rival Mexican gang called the Rudeas.  When they kill the Silks’ leader, Punch (Derrel Maury) in a drive-by shooting, the hot-tempered Cat (David Kyle) takes command.  He orders retaliation upon the Rudeas, which leads to more dead bodies.  Cat idolizes his older brother, Joey (Steve Bond), who used to lead the Silks and is now serving a prison sentence.  Joey gets out of jail and tries to go straight, effectively turning his back on the gang.  This infuriates Cat, and he sets out to make Joey pay by killing his girlfriend (Kelly Yaegermann). 

Cruisin’ High is a ho-hum high school gang drama that feels more like a collection of clichés tossed in a blender rather than a straightforward narrative.  None of it quite works either, as it plays like a ‘50s Juvenile Delinquent flick (unsuccessfully) updated for the ‘70s drive-in crowd.  As such, it’s remarkably low on anything that would appeal to exploitation fans.  The violence is rather lightweight and the nudity is fleeting.

None of that would’ve mattered if the drama between the gang members was involving.  The conflict between the opposing gangs is negligible at best, and the stuff with the feuding brothers is introduced too late in the picture to make much of an impact by the time the finale runs around.  Director John (Day of the Nightmare) Bushelman doesn’t stage the gang violence particularly well, but the cinematography by Bruce Logan (who would go on to be the D.P. on Tron) is crisp and at least gives the scenes of gang rumbles, teacher intimidation, and classic cars cruising up and down the strip a touch of class.

Two years later, Kyle went on to play Judith Myers’ boyfriend in Halloween.

AKA:  Cat Murkil and the Silks.  AKA:  The Silks.

THE INVISIBLE MAN (2020) *

You know, in MY day when they made an Invisible Man movie, they MADE an Invisible Man movie.  Filmmakers really knew what the audience wanted to see back in those days.  They also knew exactly what a man would really do once he became invisible.  That of course, is go to the nearest girls’ locker room and spy on college girls showering.  If you don’t believe me, just go watch The Man Who Wasn’t There in 3-D, The Invisible Kid, and The Invisible Maniac.  You know, the classics.  

In this newfangled Invisible Man, there’s only one dang shower scene and the Invisible Man doesn’t even sneak a peek.  Then again, the woman in question is his wife, so he’s already seen her naked, but still.  

To make matters worse, he keeps harassing his wife and trying to drive her crazy.  He steals her bedsheets at night, makes her burn her bacon, and harms her loved ones by making it look like she did it.  Dude, you’re freaking invisible and you’re spending all your energy on your ex?  There are plenty of invisible fish in the sea.  

Remember when Universal Studios made The Mummy with Tom Cruise and it was going to open the doors for a Universal Monsters shared universe?  Except no one went to see it, so they canceled it.  The Mummy was a big budget epic with a fun sense of adventure and cool special effects.  This is like a Lifetime Movie, but with an Invisible Man.  It should’ve been called Stalked by My Invisible Ex or Escaping Invisibility or Mother, May I Sleep with the Invisible Man? or some shit.  The budget was so pathetic that there are only like six special effects shots in the whole thing and even the most rudimentary effect (like a gun floating in mid-air) looked better in the Invisible Man films from the ‘30s and ‘40s.

It’s like they forgot how to make an Invisible Man movie.  Never mind the fact that he doesn’t spy on college girls showering.  The worst aspect is that it’s not a serum that turns him invisible, it’s a suit.  That means the formula doesn’t turn him crazy, he’s already crazy from the get-go, which is a gross miscalculation.  Universal Monsters always worked when there was a tinge of sympathy.  The Wolf Man didn’t want to turn into a werewolf, Frankenstein didn’t ask to be created, Dracula was just looking for someone to love, and the Invisible Man was the victim of a side effect of a poorly tested drug.  (Nowadays, there’d be a commercial listing the possible side effects, including coughing, fever, and turning batshit insane.)  Heck, even the Universal Monsters of the 21^st century were sympathetic.   

Another miscalculation is having the whole thing hinge on the wife.  Imagine if James Whale made The Invisible Man with Gloria Stuart as the star and gave Claude Rains one freaking line for 75% of the running time.  I get what they’re trying to say.  She’s trying to escape a bad relationship, and wherever she goes, he’s still with her, even if she can’t see him.  It’s Invisible Me Too.  It’s just that the handling of everything is so TV Movie of the Week.  Give me the Mission:  Impossible, but with a Mummy treatment of the Universal classics any day.  Either that or they should’ve taken the Guillermo del Toro route and sexed up the monster a la The Shape of Water.  You can’t tell me it wouldn’t been awesome seeing the Invisible Man knocking the invisible boots.  

This Invisible Man is also one of those Woman Takes a Long Pointless Walk Down a Hallway Only to Be Frightened by the Obvious Jump Scare movie.  There’s hardly a sound for minutes on end, then the soundtrack CRASHBOOMBANGSCREECHES to overcompensate for the predictably placed jump scare.  In fact, this is probably one of the quietest films I’ve seen in a long time.  So quiet in fact that the sound from the theater next door threatened to drown out what little noise was coming from our screen.  Heck, I started getting more caught up from the sounds coming from the wall than the sights coming from the screen.  

I can’t say it’s all bad though.  There’s one great scene where a woman is being a total Karen to her server in a restaurant and the Invisible Man has enough of her shit and cuts her throat.  You know you’re in trouble with a horror movie when your most sympathetic character is the waiter.

SEXPLORER (1976) ** ½

An alien the size of a marble lands on Earth and turns itself into a beautiful naked blonde (Monika Ringwald).  After wandering about nude for a bit, she gets some clothes at a spa and takes a stroll around London gathering information for her superiors whom she complicates with telepathically.  (Who needs a boom mic when you can just dub in whole conversations in post-production?)  She also winds up in a sex shop and gets a job as a photographer’s model. Eventually, our “Sexplorer” gets an up close and personal lesson on what human sexuality is all about, much to the horror of her superiors.

Apparently, this is Quentin Tarantino’s “favorite British film”.  If you squint hard enough, you can almost see what Tarantino likes about it.   While it’s far from the “best British movie” ever made, it’s definitely one of the best British sex comedies I’ve seen.  I’ve sat through many of these things in my day and when it comes to exploitation subgenres, they are near the bottom of the barrel.  Typically, they are devoid of laughs and aren’t sexy in the least.  This one has its fair share of humorous moments, and even manages to be sort of fun in some spots.  It’s not exactly a classic or anything, but it’s intermittently amusing enough that fans of ‘70s sci-fi softcore should enjoy it.

It’s not always successful.  It’s uneven and episodic to a fault.  The wedding reception scene isn’t funny and goes on far too long, and many sequences are pointless (like when the Sexplorer bangs a guy in a room full of balloons) or just plain dumb (like when she accidentally turns green). Still, it’s just corny and likeable to keep you watching.  The theme song is great too. 

I guess the best thing you could say about Sexplorer is how inspirational it was.  It’s easy to imagine the makers or Lifeforce and Species seeing this on TV late one night and blatantly copying the scenes of a hot naked alien chick absentmindedly sightseeing for their own screenplays.  If it wasn’t for this flick, those classics would’ve never been made.  That fact alone kind of justifies Tarantino’s claims.

AKA:  The Girl from Starship Venus.  AKA:  The Discoveries of a Virgin Beauty.  AKA:  Diary of a Space Virgin.

RAT PFINK A BOO BOO (1966) ****

Wikipedia defines an auteur as “an artist, usually a film director, who applies a highly centralized and subjective control to many aspects of a collaborative creative work; in other words, a person equivalent to an author of a novel or a play.  The term commonly refers to filmmakers or directors with a recognizable style or thematic preoccupation.”  If that doesn’t describe Ray Dennis Steckler, I don’t know what does.  He’s probably best known (and rightly so) for The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.  This, however, just might be his magnum opus.  

Rat Pfink a Boo Boo is what you get when you take a hard-hitting crime melodrama, a rock n’ roll musical, a dime-store superhero movie, and a killer ape flick, toss them in a blender, and put the setting on WTF.  Apparently, Steckler started out making the crime picture and became dissatisfied with the results.  To amuse himself (or more likely to cash in on the popularity of Batman and Robin) he had his main characters become half-assed superheroes mid-film.  He also padded out the rest of the running time with musical numbers and an attack by a guy in a (rather impressive) ape costume.  The results are Z movie heaven.

What’s interesting is that the early scenes are quite intense, given the budget and the fact that it was shot silently with the sound added in post-production.  Steckler manages to wring genuine suspense from the scenes of the trio of hoodlums mugging a woman in an alley, as well as the scenes where they verbally harass Carolyn Brandt (Steckler’s leading lady on screen and off) over the telephone.  He does a fine job on the musical sequences too (this is the guy who made Wild Guitar after all).  The editing of the performances is remarkably competent and would look right at home on MTV if it had existed in 1966.  

It’s when heartthrob singer Lonnie Lord (Ron Haydock, who also wrote the screenplay) and dim-witted gardener Titus Twimbly (Titus Moede) become their crimefighting alter egos Rat Pfink and Boo Boo does the movie really take off.  The costumes look like they came out of a dime store, but that’s kind of what makes them awesome.  The fight scenes have a filmed-in-someone’s-backyard quality to them.  What’s astonishing is that they are staged and edited with a surprising amount of panache.  You also have to give Steckler credit for staging long motorcycle chases and parade scenes with no budget and zero permits.  It’s guerilla filmmaking at its finest.  (Speaking of gorilla, the ape suit is excellent and probably ate up whatever budget Steckler was working with.)

What’s more is that the film is only 66 minutes and it moves like greased lightning.  There’s no fat on it whatsoever.  Sure, Incredibly Strange Creatures is great and all, but it bogs down like a son-of-a-bitch in the second half.  This one is over before you know it and leaves you wanting more.  

Oh, and how about that title?  You might think it’s a weird play on “a Go-Go”, but it’s not.  The onscreen title was supposed to read “Rat Pfink AND Boo Boo”, and the person who designed the titles just forgot to add the “N” and “D”.  I wish there was a better explanation for it.  Then again, the oddball title just makes the movie that much more memorable.

Today’s bloated big-budget superhero movies could take a page from Ray Dennis Steckler’s playbook.  There’s more ingenuity on display here than in a dozen MCU films.  Do you think the Russo Brothers could make something this good if they had a Ray Dennis Steckler budget?  Who knows?  I’d rather imagine what Ray could’ve done had he been given just a tenth of a budget as those guys had when they did Avengers:  Endgame.

AKA:  The Adventures of Rat Pfink and Boo Boo.

TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA (1975) ** ½

Terror of Mechagodzilla was the last Godzilla movie directed by the iconic Ishiro Honda, and the final Godzilla film of the classic Showa Era series.  It starts off just like a Rocky sequel with a recap of the fight from the last movie, with Godzilla emerging victorious in his battle against Mechagodzilla.  Then the plot begins.  

While searching the depths of the sea for the remains of Mechagodzilla, a toy submarine… I mean… a research vessel accidentally awakens the longnecked Titanosaurus.  Meanwhile, those pesky aliens from Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla are still trying to take over the world.  They team up with a human-hating scientist to resurrect the malignant metal monster.  The aliens bring his dead daughter back to life, and thanks to their extraterrestrial technology, use her to power Mechagodzilla.  When the revived Mechagodzilla teams up with Titanosaurus to level Tokyo, it’s up to Godzilla to save the day. 

Hopefully, you’ll be content with the stock footage-filled scenes of beastly brawling in the opening credits sequence because it takes an awful long time to get to the monster mashing in this one.  In fact, you have to wait about fifty minutes before the G-Man finally shows up.  It also doesn’t help that Titanosaurus is one of his lesser opponents.  He’s rather goofy and lacks the menace of someone like Gigan.  Also, his power to create giant wind gusts is too similar to that of Rodan, but I did like the scene where he jumps up and swats a couple of jets out of the sky the way a basketball player blocks a shot.

Once the three titans of terror finally appear on screen together, the film at last starts to kick a little ass.  The scenes of Mechagodzilla wreaking havoc on the city are impressive, and Godzilla’s fisticuffs with Titanosaurus are a lot fun.  If only Mechagodzilla didn’t spend 2/3 of the movie in the shop, this could’ve been a top-notch effort.  As it is, Terror of Mechagodzilla isn’t bad.  I mean Godzilla gets at least one legitimately badass back-from-the-grave moment that is one of the most fist-pumping scenes of any Godzilla movie.  You just have to be a patient viewer to get to it.

We also get a little nudity this time around, a rarity in a Godzilla picture.  Too bad it occurs during a brain surgery scene, so it’s not what you would call “hot” or anything.  Still, with a movie that’s as slow to start as this one is, you take what you can get.  

Godzilla didn’t appear on the big screen for another decade with the equally uneven Godzilla 1985.

AKA:  After Holocaust.  AKA:  Mechagodzilla’s Counterattack.  AKA:  Monster’s from an Unknown Planet.  AKA:  The Terror of Godzilla.  AKA:  Mechagodzilla vs. Godzilla.  AKA:  Revenge of Mechagodzilla.  AKA:  The Escape of Mechagodzilla.  

FRANKENSTEIN’S BLOODY TERROR (1968) **

Two graverobbing gypsies remove a silver cross from a corpse in the ruins of an old castle.  The body promptly comes back to life, turns into a werewolf, kills the gypsies, and begins causing havoc throughout the countryside.  Waldemar Daninsky (Paul Naschy) joins the villagers in the hunt for the beast and winds up destroying the creature himself.  During the struggle, Waldemar is bitten, and is cursed to become a werewolf when the full moon rises.  He turns to a pair of doctors to help find a cure; unaware they are vampires with their own sinister intentions. 

After watching The Beast and the Magic Sword, I decided to finally check out this first chapter in the Waldemar Daninsky Werewolf saga.  Now that I’ve seen it, it’s hard to imagine how someone could wring nearly a dozen films out of such thin material.  For the most part, it’s a slow moving and dull slog that’s curiously low on werewolf action.  The fuzzy-faced monster make-up looks pretty cool though, although it isn’t quite as polished as it would later become.  Too bad we don’t get to see much of it. 

Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror was originally titled Mark of the Wolf Man in its native Spain.  When the American distributors got a hold of it, they cut out fifteen minutes from the opening and it’s easy to see why, as it takes forever to get going.  They also added a hilariously awful animated pre-credits scene to explain how Frankenstein figures into all this.  You see, he turned into a werewolf called “Wolfstein” and, well… that’s it.  It’s purely a case of a company pre-selling a film by the title alone, and when it comes time to produce said movie, they just retitle another flick and add a cheesy prologue to make the movie match the poster.

Naschy is quite good.  His committed performance makes the movie worth watching, boring parts and all.  Director Enrique Lopez (Santo Faces Death) Eguiluz fills the film with plenty of atmosphere (especially during the final reel), but overall, it’s just too sluggishly paced to be wholly successful.

AKA:  Vampire Dracula vs. the Werewolf.  AKA:  Hell’s Creatures.  AKA:  The Mark of the Wolf Man.  AKA:  The Vampire of Dr. Dracula.  AKA:  The Werewolf’s Mark.  

THE SEXUALIST (1973) **

Jeffrey Montclair (Dale T. Fuller) is a struggling director trying to complete his latest skin flick, based on the astrological signs of the Zodiac.  Pressured by his sleazy financier, “The Godfather” (Jon Oppenheim), Jeffrey puts out a casting call to find nubile performers to make his passion project a reality.  Meanwhile, his leading lady Monica (Jennifer Welles) takes a shine to a sexy young ingenue, Inga (Barbara Benner).  When Inga winds up taking Monica’s coveted role, she sets out to get revenge.

The Sexualist is pretty much a mess.  The film-within-a-film scenes are kind of fun.  I especially liked the opening sequence about masturbation and how it relates to the specific Zodiac signs.  If the movie was nothing more than a series of astrologically themed sex scenes, it might’ve worked.

However, the behind-the-scenes drama involving the exasperated director, temperamental actresses, and actors who have trouble getting it up are a lot less successful.  The comedy shit is painfully unfunny too (like the scene with the guy in a gorilla suit), and the constant narration, which does a crummy job tying everything together, is often intrusive.  The sex scenes fluctuate from hardcore to softcore (most of the masturbation scenes include full penetration), which also gets a bit frustrating.  

The Sexualist is of interest mainly to see sex goddess Jennifer Welles as the diva leading lady who makes the director’s life a living Hell.  She looks great naked, but unfortunately, this is far from the best material she’s been given.  The subplot with Welles and Benner is OK, I guess.  It’s just that it feels like it came out of a completely different movie.

That’s basically the problem.  The Sexualist is all over the place.  There are three narratives going on, and none of them mesh.  If only it picked a storyline and stuck with it.  As it is, only the Zodiac sequences really work, and whenever the film cuts away from those scenes, it’s always a bad sign.    

AKA:  The Sexualist:  A Voyage to the World of Forbidden Love.

THE FINAL SANCTION (1990) **

After having so much fun with Deadly Prey, I decided to give another David A. Prior movie a shot.  Like that immortal classic, The Final Sanction stars his brother Ted, who gives another memorably over the top performance.  Sadly, it falls well short of Deadly Prey’s high standards, but the supporting cast is great and it’s just weird enough to stand out from the sea of low budget early ‘90s Direct to Video actioners.

Russia and the United States exchange nuclear missile attacks which looks like it will signal all-out nuclear war.  In lieu of WWIII, it is decided to instead pit each nation’s leading soldier against the other in a designated neutral battleground to determine a winner.  America’s man is a military prisoner (Ted Prior) who has a communication device implanted in his body so a Lieutenant (Renee Cline) can keep tabs on him and feed him intel during the duel.  The Russian fighter (Robert Z’Dar) is a ruthless killing machine who was trained via brainwashing techniques by a sadistic Major (William Smith).  Naturally, only one man can walk away victorious and give his country bragging rights to the war to end all wars.

Remember in Rocky IV when Rocky said, “In here, we got two guys killing each other, but I guess that’s better than twenty million”?  The Final Sanction is an eighty-minute version of that sentence.  Whereas Rocky IV was a parable about two men ending nuclear war between America and Russia, this is the literal iteration.  There’s even a scene late in the film that blatantly rips off Rocky IV where the two combatants gain each other’s respect, leading the Russian to defy his superiors and shout, “I fight for me!”

Rocky IV this ain’t though.  Heck, it isn’t even Deadly Prey.  While Prior is fun to watch, there’s nothing here that comes close to matching the non-stop thrills of that classic.  His brother David’s staging of the action is rather lackluster too, although Prior and Z’Dar’s final mano y mano brawl is a solid capper on the film.  

Prior is at his best when he’s having conversations with Cline, but he’s basically just talking to himself and doing a one-man show.  These scenes kind of play out like a poor man’s Innerspace and Prior proves he’s adept at displaying a comedic side.  I just wish David went all in on the silliness the way he did with Deadly Prey because ultimately, The Final Sanction was just dumb enough to pique my interest, but not dumb enough to sustain it.

ABIGAIL LESLEY IS BACK IN TOWN (1975) *** ½

Priscilla (Mary Mendem, who was also in The Image the same year) catches Abigail Lesley (Jennifer Jordan) in bed with her husband Gordon (Jamie Gillis).  Somehow, they remain married.  Three years later, when Abigail returns home, there is a swirl of rumors and gossip about why she’s come back.  It doesn’t take long for the promiscuous Abigail to start banging everyone in sight (including Gordon).  Eventually, Priscilla’s close-knit circle of friends falls under Abigail’s spell.  Will Priscilla be next?  Or will her repressed desires be her undoing?

Abigail Lesley is Back in Town feels like a master thesis from writer/director Joe Sarno as it encapsulates many of the themes that run throughout his work.  It’s a film about suburban hypocrisy, repressed housewives, and untapped sexual desire.  The heightened dialogue, bombastic performances, and Sarno’s camerawork often makes it feel like a combination of Shakespearean tragedy, soap opera, and Douglas Sirk melodrama.  That is to say, this is one heck of a movie!

The 100-minute running time is a bit steep, but the sex scenes are plentiful, and Sarno handles them expertly (especially the ones devoted to suburban swinging and group sex).  There’s a particularly great scene where Jennifer Jordan dominates Chris Jordan (no relation) into having a scintillating lesbian encounter.  Speaking of relations, Chris is hurting from being spurned by her brother (played by Eric Edwards), whom she’s had incestuous relations for years, so she’s more than willing to try a little Sapphic surprise.  

Sarno only occasionally relies on obvious porn-level dialogue (“I have a leak that needs filling!”) and cutaways.  The film’s most absorbing trait is its realistic, complicated, and well-defined characters, all of whom come to life courtesy of the terrific cast.  Jennifer Jordan is fun to watch as the sexy, manipulative, and irresistible Abigail.  Jennifer Welles brings a lot of spark to the role of the insatiable Aunt Drucilla too.  Predator’s Sonny Landham gets several good moments as a loudmouth stud who says things like, “You got one of them overactive torsos!”  Oddly enough, the usually boisterous Jamie Gillis seems a bit muted here as Mendem’s two-timing hubby.

Speaking of Mendem, her tour de force performance elevates the film from softcore smut to horny high art.  The scenes of her suffocating her desires always ring true and she gives these moments a touch of unexpected poignancy.  However, once she finally embraces her inner hedonistic spirit, she really sizzles.  It’s enough to make you wish Abigail Lesley stayed in town more often.   

AKA:  Abigail is Back.  AKA:  Sexpert.  AKA:  The Secret Garden.

GODZILLA ON MONSTER ISLAND (1972) ***

From the opening shots of comic book panels, you immediately know Godzilla on Monster Island is going to be a colorful, eye-popping, silly romp.  It’s loaded with cool monsters, great scenes of mass destruction, and of course, fun monster mashing mayhem.  Not only that, but the plot is even worth following for a change.

An out of work comic book artist gets a job at the “Children’s Land” amusement park drawing monsters for their latest attraction.  When he notices a woman running from security, he investigates and learns the park’s creators are keeping her brother hostage.  She’s also in possession of a tape the teenage CEO of the park wants back, and when she plays it for our hero, it sends a homing message to King Ghidrah and Gigan to come to Japan and start wreaking havoc.  It’s then up to Godzilla and his buddy Anguirus (who are living like The Odd Couple out on Monster Island) to stop them.  

There’s a lot to like here aside from the monster mashing.  The amusement park set-up is a lot of fun.  Their main attraction is an observation tower in the shape of Godzilla.  It’s life-size, and people can go all the way to the top and find out what it’s like to see things from Godzilla’s perspective.  (I wish they had one of these at Universal Studios!)  I also liked the fact that the human villains were giant alien cockroaches in disguise.  (Franz Kafka eat your heart out!)

The human characters are also memorable this time out, something that can rarely be said for a Godzilla picture.  The comic book artist hero is plucky and likeable, but the thing I liked best about him was that he’s kind of a wimp, and his badass girlfriend (who is a black belt in karate) always has to bail him out of trouble.  There’s also a hippie sidekick who is obsessed with eating phallic shaped food who’d fit right in in a John Waters movie.  

Of course, it’s those monster mashing sequences that makes Godzilla on Monster Island such a blast.  Gigan makes for a rather badass adversary.  Sporting a four-pronged beak, blades for arms, and a glowing cycloptic eye, he causes destruction with his gnarly buzz-saw belly, a weapon that is as puzzling as it is awesome.  Ghidrah looks like he’s suffering from a stiff neck(s) (the puppeteering isn’t what it once was), but the scenes where he and Gigan fly around like Maverick and Iceman in Top Gun are appropriately kick-ass.

The fight scenes are chockful of all the Saturday Night Wrestling moves you know and love, but what makes the kaiju brawls so intense is that for the first time ever, the monsters bleed when they’re hit.  In fact, Godzilla bleeds in this one just about as much as Rocky does in any given Rocky sequel.  There’s a particularly great shot where Anguirus tries to perform a Bill Goldberg spear into Gigan, winds up going headfirst into his buzz-saw belly, and his blood splatters all over the screen!

Oh, and I haven’t even gotten to the best part yet.  Once Godzilla finds out something’s gone wrong in the park, he tells Anguirus to go check it out.  Yes, you read that right.  THE MONSTERS TALK IN THIS ONE!  What makes it even better is the fact that they kind of growl and moan, but the translations appear onscreen as little thought bubbles.  You see, it’s that whole comic book inspiration again.  It just goes to show that more kaiju movies should take a… ahem… page from them.

AKA:  Godzilla vs. Gigan.  AKA:  Extermination:  2025.  AKA:  Earth Destruction Directive:  Godzilla vs. Gigan.  AKA:  Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah:  Earth Destruction Directive.  AKA:  War of the Monsters.  AKA:  Earth Assault Order:  Godzilla vs. Gigan.  

GODZILLA’S REVENGE (1969) **

Ichiro (Tomonori Yazaki) is a bullied latchkey kid who returns home from school and disappears into his own imaginary world.  There, he takes flight to Monster Island and watches Godzilla duke it out with some monsters, courtesy of stock footage from Son of Godzilla.  Ichiro falls into a hole, and Minya, the Son of Godzilla helps him out.  They quickly become chummy and watch more monster battles together. 

I’ve long had a theory about Godzilla.  It is my belief that his film career closely resembled Elvis Presley’s.  Early on, they were both wild, dangerous entities that were signals of the upheaval and change in the world around them.  About a decade into their run, their edge and mystique faded.  No longer a dark and scary force of nature, they became audience-friendly matinee idols and often wound up playing opposite cute kids.  Despite their latter-day shortcomings, I still maintain that any Godzilla or Elvis movie is still worth watching, just for the sheer fact that they’re in it.

Some would argue Godzilla’s Revenge is the nadir of the entire series because it is the most cloying, silly, and obvious cash-grab made at the kiddie market.  It features an annoying juvenile hero in too-tight shorts (who seems modeled on the Kenny character from the Gamera movies), relies heavily on stock footage, and runs a brisk 69 minutes.  While I agree that most of this is dumber than a bag of hammers, it does have a certain charm about it.  Say what you will about it; at least it’s not boring, like Godzilla vs. Monster Zero.  

The scenes on Monster Island are kind of fun, even if they mostly consist of recycled footage from Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster and Son of Godzilla.  The scenes of Ichiro and Minya palling around are cool in a kitschy way.  It’s the scenes that take place in the “real world” that are kind of the problem.  I know Godzilla movies aren’t exactly known for their “dramatic” scenes with actual human beings, but the stuff with the kid and his absentee parents is downright annoying.  The subplot about Ichiro getting mixed up with a gang of bank robbers is especially dire and the whole thing just kind of fizzles out in the end.

In the American dubbed version, Minya sounds like a cross between Goofy and George from Of Mice and Men.  (In the Japanese version, he sounds more childlike.)  The subtitled version does have the benefit of a hilarious theme song, so both versions have their merits.  Despite the cheapjack nature of the whole enterprise, this is far from the worst one in the series.  Not a ringing endorsement for sure, but the kids are sure to love it.

AKA:  All Monsters Attack.  AKA:  Minya:  Son of Godzilla.  AKA:  Godzilla:  All Monsters Attack.  AKA:  Godzilla, Minilla, Gabara:  All Monsters Attack.  AKA:  All Monsters on Parade.  AKA:  Attack All Monsters.  AKA:  Great Charge of All Monsters.

NAKED VENGEANCE (1985) *** ½

After her husband is killed by a mugger, former actress Carla Harris (Deborah Tranelli) moves back home with her folks to recuperate.  She quickly realizes that just about every man in town, from the gas station attendant to the gardener to the ice man, is a perv or a letch.  Carla takes her protests to the sheriff, who naturally does nothing.  One night, the guys get drunk and rowdy, and they band together to gang rape her.  When her parents come home unexpectedly, the men gun them down.  Carla has a mental break and is admitted to a hospital for observation but sneaks out of the facility to get revenge on the men who violated her and murdered her family. 

Directed by Video Vacuum Hall of Famer Cirio H. Santiago, Naked Vengeance plays like his version of I Spit on Your Grave.  He does a good job of aping that movie as there are variations on Grave’s gas station, castration, and motorboat scenes.  He even replicates the slow burn opening, although not quite as successfully. 

What makes it stand out is the fact that it’s more action oriented.  There are car chases, fight scenes, and the sequence where the woman-hating all-male posse take arms against Tranelli is a real showstopper.  The finale, an all-out, no holds barred battle between Tranelli and her final surviving attacker is a real doozy too and helps set Naked Vengeance apart from your average Rape n’ Revenge exploitation flick.  Tranelli’s performance also helps propel the film from being merely another I Spit on Your Grave imitator.  She’s quite good during her revenge scenes, calling men “BASTERD!” with lots of gusto.

The only real flaw is the Death Wish-inspired scenes with Tranelli’s murdered husband that bookend the film.  Although it’s satisfactorily wrapped up in the end, these scenes just kind of needlessly add to the already inflated running time.  That said, this is a solid effort through and through and another winner from Santiago.

AKA:  Vengeance.  AKA:  Mad End.  AKA:  Satin Vengeance.

THE BEAST AND THE MAGIC SWORD (1983) *** ½

The Beast and the Magic Sword was the tenth of Paul Naschy’s Waldemar Daninsky Werewolf movies.  Unlike the preceding films, it was a Spanish and Japanese co-production.  Working with a Japanese crew, Naschy was able to make something wholly unique and dreamlike; a picture that blows the other sequels out of the water in terms of craftsmanship.  It’s proof that with the right resources, he was a better storyteller than he’s usually given credit for.  It’s by far my favorite entry in the Waldemar saga.

It begins with a prologue (set in the tenth century) of how the Daninsky curse got started.  An evil witch stabs his pregnant wife in the belly with a wolf skull!  It’s a great sequence, and the terrific sets and costumes helps gives it a grand scale. 

Six centuries later, Waldemar (Naschy), his wife (Beatriz Escudaro), and a blind girl (Violeta Cela) flee their homeland to avoid capture by the Spanish Inquisition.  Together, they go to Japan to find Kian (Shigeru Amachi), a holy man who may hold the secret to curing Waldemar’s lycanthropic curse once and for all.  When Kian’s cure proves ineffective, Waldemar turns to an ostracized sorceress (Junko Asahina) for help.  Predictably, she double crosses him and sets out to use his curse to fuel her own treachery.   

The Beast and the Magic Sword is nearly two hours long.  It probably didn’t need to be that damn long, but you get the sense that Naschy, happy to have a large canvas to tell his Werewolf saga (for a change), was going to put as much on screen as his imagination could allow.  There are some pacing problems to be sure.  Cool prologue aside, it takes about a half-hour for Waldemar to get to Japan and finally turn into the werewolf.  However, when he does, it’s well-worth it.  The sequence in which he tears through a brothel and claims dozens of victims is a thing of blouse-ripping, neck-biting, bloodletting beauty.

I mean this movie has it all.  Spanish Inquisition dudes in hoods, werewolves, sexy sorceresses, samurai, topless assassins, Ninjas, disgusting nightmare sequences, and ghost samurai.  The film doesn’t just play like a checklist of cool shit either.  Perhaps it was working with a Japanese crew that gave the samurai sequences a sense of authenticity.  These scenes are very much seeped in traditional samurai cinema with themes of honor, loyalty, and betrayal running throughout.  It’s not just the usual werewolf shenanigans with a pinch of samurai shit thrown it there.  It’s a true melding of genres.    

Maybe the Japanese crew were also responsible for Waldemar’s new look as Naschy sports a much more elaborate make-up this time out.  The headpiece is extremely large and gives him almost a bear-like appearance.  Sadly, we only get one major transformation sequence (except for the obligatory change-back scene in the finale), but it’s a pretty good one.  

Just when you think The Beast and the Magic Sword can’t get any better, the evil sorceress sets her pet tiger loose in Waldemar’s cell and there’s a duel to the death between them!  Sure, the third act may get a little bogged down once the Japanese medicine man goes off into the mountains to battle an unending series of ghost samurai in exchange for the magic sword.  Even with those longwinded scenes, I can’t help but love this flick.  I don’t know about you, but any movie that answers the age-old question:  “Who would win in a fight?  A werewolf or a tiger?” is OK in my book.

AKA:  The Werewolf and the Magic Sword.

DEADLY PREY (1987) ****

Deadly Prey is basically The Most Dangerous Game Meets Rambo.  The key difference is that instead of having a billionaire villain who hunts humans for sport, it’s Col. Hogan (David Campbell) who trains his army of mercenary soldiers by having them hunt and kill ordinary citizens.  His goons pick the wrong man when they kidnap Mike Danton (Ted Prior) and use him for their latest mission of human target practice.  Little do they know Danton is a one-man army who quickly makes mincemeat out of the would-be mercenaries.  Hogan, who trained Danton to kill in Vietnam, then has his wife (Dawn Abraham) kidnapped, which sends Danton into a violent rage, and he wages war on Hogan and his men.

For Rambo on a budget, Deadly Prey is hard to beat.  Hell, there are even some moments that manage to out-Rambo Rambo.  Remember in First Blood when Col. Trautman said, “He’s been trained to eat things that would make a billy goat puke”?  Well, we actually get to see Danton ingest said disgusting material.  You didn’t see Stallone do that!

No sir, only a guy like Ted Prior could manage that.  He’s kind of like the missing link between Sylvester Stallone and Miles O’Keeffe in this movie.  Before he dons his more Ramboesque attire in the finale, Prior spends most of his time running around the woods in little white short shorts that look very reminiscent of O’Keeffe’s loincloth in Tarzan.  You have to love the way he throws himself into the role and marvel at his ingenuity as he kills his enemies with clubs, spears, and even twigs.  Soldiers.  Tanks.  Helicopters.  They’re no match for Ted Prior.

Just when you think it can’t get any better, Cameron Mitchell shows up as Ted’s father in-law.  He gets a particularly great scene where he chews out Troy Donahue, who plays the mercenaries’ mysterious benefactor.  I can’t say the film is exactly lightning paced, but when it does occasionally downshift, it’s full of scenes of Mitchell doing what he does best.  This is the kind of padding I enjoy in a movie.

For as low as the budget was, you have to give major kudos to director David A. Prior.  He really got the most bang for his buck and never runs out of inventive ways to kill people.  The scenes of action carnage Prior concocted will live forever in my mind’s eye.  He even manages to give his brother Ted a couple of impressive hero shots, including the unforgettable final image.  

26 years later, the team of Prior and Prior teamed up once again for a sequel, Deadliest Prey.