SKYLIN3S (2020) *

Skyline was an OK, but forgettable low budget sci-fi survival flick.  Its sequel, Beyond Skyline upped the budget and spectacle, and yet it failed to really stick in my memory banks either.  The best thing I can say about the third film in the franchise, Skylin3s is that I’ve almost forgotten everything about it, and I just watched it.

This one picks up a few years after Beyond.  The alien/human hybrid Rose (Lindsey Morgan) is now the leader of the human resistance.  Unfortunately, the alien warriors she converted to her cause have caught a virus that threatens to turn them back into their original human-hating state.  She then must take a ragtag team of grunts into space and bring down the alien mothership once and for all. 

I’m glad the movie started off with a recap of Beyond Skyline because I had already forgotten most of it.  Afterwards, there’s a big chunk of the film where not a whole lot happens, which made me wish they had cut out the first half-hour and rolled highlights of it into the opening recap.  That would’ve gotten the show on the road a lot sooner.  Even then, the show, such as it is, is a dull slog.  What’s worse is that the monsters, ships, and various other special effects are often dark, ugly, and cheap looking.  (The alien sidekick whose sole schtick is to curse in his native tongue is really annoying.)  The whole thing resembles a bad ‘90s DTV sci-fi flick.  (Or maybe a bad early ‘00s Sci-Fi Channel show.)  The fact that Daniel Bernhardt is one of the main actors, sort of adds to that feeling. 

Maybe if the alien action was cool, I could’ve let a lot of this slide, but it’s well below average.  What’s worse is that Mad Dog himself, Yayan Ruhian is completely wasted in what is essentially a glorified cameo.  I’m not even sure why they decided to bring him back because he’s only in it for a minute or two in what amounts to be half an action scene.  To be fair, that’s more than he got to do in The Force Awakens, but still.

Heck, I might’ve been more forgiving if the flick clocked in at eighty minutes or so.  However, it runs a whopping one-hundred-and-thirteen minutes.  Much of the running time could’ve easily been scrapped.  It might’ve worked if the script stuck to Rose’s adventure in space, because the earthbound ground assault scenes add nothing to the plot and only help to bring Skylin3s to a crashing halt.

AKA:  Skylines.

GIRL (2020) **

Bella Thorne stars as the titular girl who returns to her shithole hometown, hatchet in hand, on a mission to kill the abusive father she hasn’t seen for several years.  (This girl REALLY wants to bury the hatchet if you know what I mean.)  Almost immediately, she pops up on the radar of the creepy sheriff (Mickey Rourke) who presides over the town.  When she finally confronts her father, it doesn’t go nearly the way she expected, and she soon finds herself at the mercy of the despicable sheriff. 

Girl, like the unimaginative title suggests, is a thoroughly ordinary and unmemorable little crime thriller.  It was sold as a horror movie, but it’s more of a redneck drama with some occasional bloodletting.  It’s fine, I guess.  It’s just that director Chad Faust (who also plays Rourke’s psycho brother) never really manages to ratchet up the tension.  While it’s a perfectly watchable affair, Faust just can’t seem to squeeze any suspense out of the admittedly thin script (that was surprise, surprise, also written by Faust).  Even the big plot twist (which isn’t really all that surprising) falls flat, which is just as much the fault of Faust’s writing as his direction.

If the movie has an ace up its sleeve, it’s Thorne.  With her permanent scowl, stringy crimson locks, and facial piercings up and down her profile, she really sells her character’s predicament and makes for a tough, likeable, able-bodied, and resourceful heroine.  Too bad the material she’s been given to work with is so weak. 

As big of a Mickey Rourke fan as I am, it pains me to say that I was a little disappointed by his portrayal of the sheriff.  He really underplayed the character’s menace and didn’t act nearly as weird as I was expecting/hoping.  I’m not saying a top-shelf Rourke performance could’ve singlehandedly saved Girl, but it certainly would’ve given you a reason to watch it.

HOT TOUCH (1981) **

Wayne (M*A*S*H) Rogers stars as an art forger who makes bank pawning off fake Picassos.  When he’s not off hoodwinking clients with his business partner Patrick Macnee, he’s making time with a married woman (Cousin Cousine’s Marie-France Pisier).  Things begin to get hairy when an art dealer (Samantha Eggar) gets wind of his scheme and blackmails him into taking on another forgery.  He then has to outthink his new clients and double-cross them before they do it to him. 

Rogers is miscast in the role of a suave forger, but he isn’t bad, all things considered.  Macnee is fun to watch though and lends the film a touch of class and charm.  Speaking of class, Melvyn Douglas also pops up in a cameo (it looks like they filmed his limo ride to the set).  Lloyd Bochner is rather memorable too as Eggar’s sleazy henchman. 

Hot Touch was directed by Roger (Barbarella) Vadim, and for a while, it seems like an ill fit for his filmography as much of the art forgery plot has the look and feel of an unsold television pilot.  However, once Rogers’ gratuitous sex scene with Pisier comes around, it finally starts to feel like a Vadim film.  Shortly thereafter, it goes back to feeling like a Made for TV movie.  Pisier is a little weak as the love interest, and despite her big nude scene, she doesn’t really leave much of an impression.  She also gets a nude chess scene that starts off well, but it’s much too short to really titillate. 

The big con finale leaves something to be desired too.  The build-up isn’t bad, but you should at least feel something when Rogers and company finally pull the wool over his new employers’ eyes.  Luckily, Bochner’s eventual comeuppance is fairly gruesome, which at least ends things on a memorable note.

There was a decent idea here.  However, with Vadim at the helm, you just expect a little bit more skin.  If he had added two or three more love scenes of the same caliber as Pisier’s first scene, he might’ve had a winner on his hands.  As it is, Hot Touch is rather cool to the touch.

AKA:  The Hot Touch.  AKA:  Manhattan Gang.

THE NEW MUTANTS (2020) ***

The New Mutants seemingly couldn’t catch a break.  It was originally supposed by be released in 2018 but had to be postponed for planned reshoots that never occurred.  It then became a casualty of Fox’s merger with Disney and was pushed back yet again.  Once it seemed like it was finally going to see the light of a projector, the pandemic hit, and its release was shuffled yet again.  It eventually hit theaters last August, but I wasn’t about to venture out during COVID to see it.  Honestly, I kind of forgot about it until it miraculously showed up on HBO Max to little fanfare last week.  Now that I have finally seen it, I have to say that it probably works best on the small screen.  Although it’s easily the least of the X-Men movies, I still sort of dug it. 

An unseen force wipes out an entire Native American reservation.  The sole survivor is a teenager named Dani Moonstar (Blu Hunt) whose fledgling mutant abilities might’ve been the cause of the disaster.  She is sent to a hospital for young mutants where the other rebellious mutant teens are learning to come to grips with their burgeoning powers.  Before long, they are beset by an evil presence that turns their worst fears against them and they must band together and work as a team to fight it.

While it lacks the unadulterated fun of the main X-Men series, The New Mutants accomplishes what it sets out to do, namely tell a claustrophobic horror story within the realm of a superhero movie.  I for one thought the lower stakes and character-driven plot worked well for the material.  I mean, when you’ve seen as many superhero flicks as I have, it’s a refreshing change of pace when the fate of the world isn’t hanging in the balance.  It’s nice when all the heroes have to worry about is not being mauled by an enormous psychically projected bear.  I also have a soft spot for superhero flicks in which the characters have C-grade powers.  (In this one, the heroes:  Bounce off walls, turn into a werewolf, use a lightsaber, and there’s a Human Torch knockoff too.)

If I had saw this in the theater (especially during the pandemic), I probably would’ve been underwhelmed.  If I saw it then, I might’ve suggested it would’ve been better suited as a TV show.  Seeing it at home, years after the bad buzz that soured its release has died down, it made for a perfectly acceptable evening of entertainment. 

Another bonus is that it’s only an hour and a half, which is a relief after so many superhero flicks with unnecessarily inflated running times (cough… The Snyder Cut… cough).  It’s nice to find one that actually knows when to quit.  It might’ve made for an anticlimactic swan song to Fox’s run of X-Men movies, but it’s really a lot better than I had anticipated. 

Besides, any movie that is essentially A Nightmare on Elm Street 3:  Dream Warriors Meets Grizzly 2 is OK in my book. 

AKA:  X-Men:  The New Mutants.

X-MEN MOVIE SCORECARD:

X-Men: Apocalypse: ****

Deadpool: ****

X-Men: Days of Future Past: ****

X-Men 2: X-Men United: ****

X-Men: ****

X-Men 3: The Last Stand: ****

Logan:  ****

X-Men: First Class: *** ½

Deadpool 2: *** ½

X-Men: Origins: Wolverine: *** ½

Dark Phoenix: ***

The Wolverine: ***

The New Mutants: ***

DEATH SMILES ON A MURDERER (1973) ***

A carriage overturns in front of the home of Dr. von Ravensbruck (Giacomo Rossi Stuart) and his wife Eva (Angela Bo), leaving the driver dead and the sole passenger, Greta (Ewa Aulin from Candy) with a bump on the head.  She winds up with amnesia and the couple, feeling sorry for her, take her in.  Before long, Greta is seducing not only the man of the house, but his wife too.  Meanwhile, visitors to the castle wind up getting bumped off by a mysterious killer. 

Death Smiles on a Murderer was directed by the legendary Italian exploitation maverick, Joe D’Amato.  Unlike a lot of his sleazier efforts, this one is a lot artier than you might expect as there are passages that have an otherworldly dreamlike quality.  He even manages to give us a few shocks that feels like something out of a waking nightmare.  While some of these moments are effective (like the scene where the maid keeps seeing a strange man in her room), or at the very least, interesting, they never really gel into a cohesive whole. 

The plot jumps around a lot too, which some will find frustrating.  However, if you surrender yourself to the dreamlike logic of the film, it will make for a rewarding (although quite possibly baffling) experience.  Some of D’Amato’s extreme close-ups, odd angles, and deliberately off-kilter camerawork can get a little annoying, but the eerie score is often effective. 

There are stretches of the film that feel like D’Amato riffing on a Jess Franco movie, while others play out like his version of a Jean Rollin flick.  After a strong first act involving the strange love triangle between the couple and their uninvited houseguest, the second act turns into a hodgepodge of Poe-influenced cliches.  (Think The Masque of the Red Death Meets the Black Cat.)  From there, things sort of morph into a macabre ghost story by the final third. 

With such distinct and disparate sequences, Death Smiles on a Murderer kind of resembles an anthology film that has intertwining characters and plotlines.  Although it might not have been intended as such, the movie might play better for you if you view it with that in mind.  It doesn’t quite excuse the unevenness of the overall picture, but it may be the key to enjoying it.

Aulin is lovely and gets naked quite a bit.  Her scenes with Bo are especially memorable.  It’s Klaus Kinski who leaves the biggest impression as the doctor who makes a house call to Aulin’s character.  Unfortunately, like most of the cast members, he doesn’t stick around for very long.

AKA:  Death Smiles on Murder.

LADY WHIRLWIND (1973) *** ½

Miss Tien (Angela Mao) arrives in town looking for Ling (Chang Yi), the man she holds responsible for her sister’s death.  Ling as it turns out, has faked his death and has devoted the last three years of his life to practicing Kung Fu so he can finally get revenge on the gangsters who control the town.  When their paths finally cross, Ling begs Tien for an opportunity to finish his vendetta.  Then, he will gladly atone for his past sins and face her in mortal combat.

Lady Whirlwind is a terrific martial arts flick that feels like a repurposed western.  Ling’s homestead kind of looks like a dude ranch, the various casinos and watering holes are obvious stand-ins for the Wild West saloons, and the Kung Fu battles and swordfights are the movie’s version of barroom brawls and gun duels.  The mutual respect that grows between Mao and Yi is also very reminiscent of aging gunslingers in a B oater.

Chang Yi makes for a good hero, but it’s Angela Mao who totally owns the movie.  Despite her star billing and prominence on the poster, she’s really the co-lead and probably gets less screen time than Yi.  However, when she is front and center, she makes her presence known as she commands the screen with her elegant charisma, her graceful physicality, and radiant beauty.

What makes Lady Whirlwind crackle is that the stuff that occurs in between the Kung Fu chaos is absorbing and entertaining.  Most movies have a love triangle.  This one has a revenge triangle.  The characters’ complicated motivations, allegiances, and loyalties are well-defined, so when they fight one another, we wind up cheering for both sides.  Those fights, it should be said, are something else.  Mao has an excellent scene where she singlehandedly takes on Sammo Hung and his gang inside a crooked casino.  The action is fast and furious, and the choreography is lightning paced. 

Lady Whirlwind is still just rough enough around the edges to make it feel a little more down-and-dirty than your average Kung Fu flick.  (It’s got some bloody fight scenes complete with eye gouging and gut ripping.)  The dubbing is terrible too, and the score blatantly steals from Diamonds are Forever, which is the sure sign you are watching some quality chopsocky.  If there is a flaw, it’s that the finale is a tad lackluster as Mao spends most of the time watching the battle from the sidelines.  Despite that, it’s a real winner.

Probably the most memorable thing about it though (aside from Angela Mao, that is) is the fact that it was released in America under the hilarious title “Deep Thrust” to capitalize on the success of Deep Throat!     

AKA:  Deep Thrust.  AKA:  Deep Thrust:  The Hand of Death. 

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN (2011) ****

Most parents think of their children as little angels, no matter how badly they behave.  Even when their kid is a little hellion, they still think the brat can do no wrong.  Or (even worse), they turn a blind eye to their kid’s antics.  

Eva (Tilda Swinton) knows her son Kevin (Ezra Miller) is a bad seed from a very early age.  The little bugger is smart too.  He acts like a little prince to everyone else and only shows his true nature to his devastated mother.  Bound by love or duty or helplessness, she is powerless to do anything as he slowly morphs into a complete psycho. 

Director Lynne Ramsey’s We Need to Talk About Kevin is the art house version of the Macauley Culkin killer kid flick, The Good Son.  We’ve seen plenty of these killer kid movies before.  What makes this one so disturbing is that Ramsey puts you so deeply rooted in Tilda’s shoes that you feel damn near every second of her anguish.  We are right there with her as she watches in horror as her son matures into a monster.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is different from so many other killer kid flicks, mostly because it is told in a nonlinear fashion.  We know things are going to go bad eventually.  It’s just a question of how and when.  Some scenes are short and fragmented, feeling like half-remembered memories.  Sometimes the horror comes less from Kevin being a bad kid and more from others perceiving her as a bad parent.  Sometimes that’s even worse.

Ramsey is the real deal.  This isn’t exactly a horror movie, but it is the most uneasy I have felt watching a movie in a long time.  It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion.  You sit there, idly watching as everything goes to hell.  The film is especially traumatizing if you’re a parent, as it adds another layer of unease to the proceedings. 

The film is anchored by a riveting performance by Swinton.  It’s also uneasy seeing John C. Reilly cast as the clueless father as he basically plays his usual self, which heightens the counterbalance between the two parents.  However, it’s the chilling performance by Miller as Kevin that makes it memorable.  He is truly evil to the core.  He has everyone around his mother snowballed into thinking he’s an All-American boy, while simultaneously taking demented glee in letting his mother know just how twisted he really is, all the while knowing she’s helpless to do anything about it.  Miller is thoroughly despicable as the sociopathic teenager, but really, all the young actors who play the character at various stages are equally great. 

SIGN ‘O’ THE TIMES (1987) ***

After Purple Rain, but before Batman, Prince made this concert movie promoting his double-album Sign ‘o’ the Times.  It’s mostly filmed performances of songs from the album, so if you’re hoping he’s just going to play the hits, you might be disappointed.  I mean, at one point he does about a minute of “Little Red Corvette” before he gets bored with it and goes onto another number.  However, Prince’s showmanship is in top form, so even if some of the songs are far from his best, he performs them with a lot of raw sexual enthusiasm, which makes it recommend. 

Not all of it works.  The attempts to make the film seem more cinematic often fall flat.  The scenes of quarreling lovers that run throughout the performances are completely unnecessary.  This narrative ultimately doesn’t amount to much and only gets in the way of the music.  They should’ve lost these sequences to make room for more classic Prince jams if you ask me.

The music, while not exactly Prince’s best, is still strong enough to carry the movie.  He opens with a rip-roaring rendition of the title tune, and “Hot Thing”, “Housequake”, “If I Was Your Girlfriend”, and “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man” are all entertaining.  The highlight though is when Prince is joined by Sheena Easton for a duet of “U Got the Look”.  It’s little more than a glorified music video (it occurs while Prince is daydreaming in his dressing room), but the chemistry between them is electric and the song is a straight-up banger as the kids say nowadays.

The rest of the songs are sort of forgettable.  Still, it’s interesting to see how creatively Prince is able to fuse various genres like rock, gospel, funk, and disco into a broad musical tapestry.  That to me, is a sign ‘o’ a legendary performer.

AKA:  Prince:  Sign ‘o’ the Times.  AKA:  Prince Tonite. 

FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL (1981) ***

Judging from the bland title and the unoriginal opening, I thought this was going to another forgettable Kung Fu flick.  Boy, was I wrong.  This one is a lot of fun.  It will surprise you in more ways than one. 

Some thieves steal a sacred Kung Fu text from a Shaolin temple and kill the abbot.  Time passes, and a young girl, miffed that the Shaolin temple does not allow women into their ranks, teams up with her uncle to kick their ass.  They then reach a compromise:  If she retrieves the book from the vicious gang, she will be allowed entrance.  So, her uncle begins teaching her the art of “positive Kung Fu”, which has one side effect:  It turns her into a man!  (Complete with mustache!) 

So, not only to we have a feminist Kung Fu movie, we also have one that acts as a trans allegory (crude as it may be) as our heroine is a woman trapped in a man’s body (albeit temporarily).  This is why I watch so many seemingly ordinary Kung Fu flicks.  You never know when you’re going to get one that is this progressive. 

In addition to swapping genders, the book also gives the user the ability to acquire many skills that are rarely seen in martial arts movies.  Throughout the film, the heroine uses Go-Go Gadget Legs and Mr. Fantastic arms to defeat her enemies.  Other gimmicked fight scenes include fighters who use poison, can become invisible, and take on animal characteristics. 

The book also apparently gave the composer the ability to steal music from the 1933 version of King Kong.

Fight for Survival (which also goes by the infinitely more awesome title, Kung Fu Halloween) doesn’t stay on one subject for very long as it’s constantly hopping from one nutty premise to another.  Although this can get a little frustrating at times, it’s certainly never boring.  It’s not perfect by any means (the heroine’s two bumbling sidekicks are annoying), but it’s unique, memorable, and a lot of fun. 

AKA:  The Fight for Shaolin Tamo Mystique.  AKA:  Don’t Bleed on Me.  AKA:  Kung Fu Halloween.  AKA:  Lady Wu Tang.  AKA:  Shaolin Tamo Systique. 

ANGEL’S MISSION (1990) ***

Angel’s Mission is another one of those Godfrey Ho cut-and-paste jobs.  It’s all over the place and rarely makes sense, but it moves like a freight train and contains some primo ass-kicking.  I’m pretty sure Ho had nothing to do with that though as he probably stole those scenes from a completely different movie.  Nevertheless, I kind of dug it.

The opening scene is strong.  A guy makes a deal with a duo of shady thieves, exchanging some stolen jewelry for a duffle bag full of money.  They try to double-cross him by calling on a bunch of machine gun-toting heavies as back-up, but luckily, he just so happens to have a giant Rambo-style gun that he uses to even the score. 

From there, we follow a Japanese policewoman who comes to Hong Kong to bust up a drug and prostitution racket.  This lady cop offers some of the best moments in the movie.  Among the highlights is the sequence where she shows up a bunch of students at a karate school who assume she can’t fight just because she’s a woman.  Another memorable scene comes when a dealer threatens to throw some drugs down the toilet, which he doesn’t realize is out of order.  There’s also a completely random attack by dudes wielding machetes. 

We get many WTF moments along the way to help ensure Angel’s Mission’s place among the highest rungs on the Godfrey Ho ladder.  One such sequence is the hilarious coed strip show.  (The strip club must be an equal opportunity employer.)  Then there’s the fact that nearly half the score is music stolen from the Re-Animator soundtrack.  Even more random is the scene where a guy gives a slideshow showcasing women who are afflicted with AIDS!

Look, I got my first dose of Moderna the day I watched Angel’s Mission, so it’s very possible I imagined like half of this.  I might be able to tell you what happened in this movie, but I’ll be damned if I can tell you what it was about.  Stuff just sorta happens without rhyme or reason.  Thankfully, the stuff that does happen is often badass as there are lots of John Woo-style slow-motion gunfights and energetic fight choreography. 

There might’ve also been a subplot about smuggling cocaine in watermelons, although it’s entirely possible I hallucinated that part as well.

In short, Angel’s Mission doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it does offer up a reasonable amount of fun.  If anything, the hilarious dubbed dialogue alone will have you LOL’ing.  Among my favorite lines:

“You’re just a horny old maid!” 

“Boss… we failed!  He’s one tough hombre!” 

“How dare you bring a pussycat into my bed!” 

The best line comes when a guy tries to bang his girlfriend in an alley and she protests, “Alleys are for gang fights!”

AKA:  Fighting Angel:  Born to Fight 5.  AKA:  Kicking Buddha.   AKA:  Born to Fight.  AKA:  Born to Fight 2.  

COMMON-LAW CABIN (1967) ** ½

Dewey (Jackie Moran) makes his living running a cabin for tourists out on the Colorado river where he lives with his blossoming teenage daughter Coral (Adele Rein) and a sexy French maid named Babette (Babette Bardot).  His latest crop of vacationers includes a cuckold doctor (John Furlong), his sexed-up wife (Alaina Capri), and a mysterious man (Ken Swofford) with a briefcase full of money.  When their drunken tour guide (Frank Bolger) runs off with the boat, the guests are stranded at the cabin where their passions eventually collide. 

Common-Law Cabin is full of director Russ Meyer’s hallmarks as there is plenty of hardboiled narration, scenes of big-bosomed, sex-starved women communing with nature, and rapid-fire editing.  In fact, Meyer’s rapid-fire style is a bit too rapid in this one.  The movie zips around so much that it often rushes through the plot at such a breathless place that it’s sometimes hard to get your bearings.  It almost feels like he tossed out whole sections of the narrative in favor of keeping the cutting going (especially towards the end).  Honestly, it probably would’ve worked better with a more gradual build-up and a less frenetic pay-off.

It’s also more of a pressure cooker drama than an out-and-out sexploitation flick as it deals with characters with pent-up passions, sexual frustrations, and deadly curiosities that are bursting at the seams.  The cabin itself is basically a microcosm of society, and the characters are reflections of how Meyer views the beast that is Man.  They are either good and righteous, weak and spineless, or duplicitous and crooked.  The women, of course, are all generously endowed and oversexed. 

Common-Law Cabin is one of Meyer’s lesser films, but it’s not without its charms, if you can get past the cast of mostly unlikeable characters, that is.  There are some real odd moments along the way that still makes it worth watching, like a water fight that turns deadly.  (I’m sure I’ve never seen that in a movie before.)  It’s also packed with some funny, hateful dialogue that positively crackles.  My favorite exchange being:

Husband:  “Don’t pant!  It’s an animal trait!”

Wife:  “Must be the bitch in me, dear!”

AKA:  How Much Loving Does a Normal Couple Need?

 

FRANKENSTEIN’S GREAT AUNT TILLIE (1984) ½ *

Donald Pleasence (stuck wearing a lousy wig) stars in this excruciating horror-comedy as Dr. Frankenstein’s distant relative, Victor.  Destitute, with nowhere to turn, he and his family members travel to his ancestral castle to look for the good doctor’s hidden treasure.  Meanwhile, the Burgomaster (Aldo Ray) and the town elders want to evict the lot of them, foreclose on the castle, and seize the property (and the gold) for themselves.  It’s only a matter of time before Victor and company resurrect the Frankenstein monster to help them recover the loot.

Normally in a motion picture, scenes flow together sequentially to advance the plot.  Here, the scenes seemingly go around in circles.  To make matters worse, this alleged comedy isn’t funny at all.  (Pleasence and his family live in the village of “Mucklefugger”, which tells you the level of inanity we’re talking about.)  It doesn’t help that the sound is poor, and the accents are thick, so when there is a punchline, it’s hard to tell what was even said. 

Frankenstein’s Great Aunt Tillie was made in ’84, but it’s so crude looking that it feels like a lost movie from the ‘60s.  It’s also borderline incomprehensible as it never stays on one particular plot point for very long.  It’s almost as if someone took an entire season of a television show and whittled it down to a hundred-minute movie.  Because of that, just when you think it’s about to wrap things up, it starts right back up again in an endless loop of nearly unwatchable nonsense. 

For example, when the movie is over, there’s a ten-minute epilogue of unrelated scenes (one including Pleasence selling snake oil) that go on way too long.  The title card that accompanies the epilogue even admits these scenes are nothing more than “Odds and Ends”.  Additionally, the film opens with a title card that reads, “A hundred years later…” but we never get to see what happened a hundred years before!

I guess it wouldn’t matter if the movie was actually funny, but it’s simply a mind-numbing affair any way you slice it.  The only part that had potential was the parody of the scene from Frankenstein where the monster drowns a little girl.  However, it winds up devolving into an unfunny Benny Hill-style chase scene involving her sexed-up older sisters.  (One of whom is named “Horny”.)  I won’t even mention the scene where Donald appears in drag.

Just when you think it can’t get any weirder, Zsa Zsa Gabor shows up in a cameo.  It’s only a brief scene; a montage in which she has no dialogue.  I’m sure she was glad about that.  Aldo, Donald, and Zsa Zsa have made some bad movies before, but this might be all three stars’ career low point, which is really saying something. 

I guess I should mention that Miguel Angel Fuentes plays the monster.  He and Pleasence were also in the awful The Puma Man together.  Here’s the kicker, folks:  The Puma Man looks downright Shakespearean compared to this!

HOT NIGHTS ON THE CAMPUS (1966) ** ½

Sally (Gigi Darlene) is a young farm girl who comes to New York City to start her freshman year at college.  She shares an apartment with a bunch of sexually advanced seniors who take her to her first “grown-up party”.  After some dancing, the party quickly turns into an all-out orgy (complete with human pyramids), leaving our demure coed to ponder, “At what point will they be satisfied?”  Later, Sally is seduced by her professor, and quickly embraces her newfound sexuality.  She then throws herself at a classmate and is soon modeling nude for photographers.  Eventually, Sally’s world comes to a standstill when she learns she’s pregnant.  

Hot Nights on the Campus kind of feels like a lost Doris Wishman movie.  It takes place in cramped apartments, features non-stop narration, and is a bit nastier than your typical ‘60s sexploitation flick.  The fact that it stars Bad Girls Go to Hell’s Gigi Darlene kind of reinforces that feeling.

The sex scenes aren’t nearly as hot as the title implies and the non-stop narration is sometimes intrusive.  The voluptuous Darlene is cute as a button, which certainly helps.  However, her erotic encounters aren’t quite as much fun as the early party sequences.  In addition to the wild orgy scenes, there’s a little girl-on-girl action (“Things like this just didn’t happen!”) to spice things up.  The swinging jazzy score is also memorable.

Overall, Hot Nights on the Campus is breezy, briskly paced fun if you’re into this sort of thing.  Some of the most enjoyable bits come courtesy of the film’s lack of budget and cinematic know-how.  I’m particularly thinking of the scene in which Darlene’s narration proclaims, “My world felt fuzzy and out of focus!” to excuse the fact that some of the outdoor scenes were in fact, fuzzy and out of focus. 

One thing that makes it more interesting than a lot of ‘60s sexploitation flicks is that it actually deals with the consequences of the heroine’s actions.  The scenes where she goes to get a back-alley abortion by a woman who looks like a chain-smoking witch (“She looked as evil as her trade!”) is especially memorable.  On the other hand, if you’re expecting some sizzling schoolgirl action, you might be disappointed.  I mean for a movie called Hot Nights on the Campus, we never once see Sally on the campus, let alone attend class, or do any homework!  Still, she’s promiscuous enough to get a passing grade in my book. 

AKA:  Nights on the Campus. 

MORGAN (2016) **

Scientists clone an artificial human and monitor “it” as she grows at an accelerated rate.  After years of study, Morgan (Anya Taylor-Joy) finally snaps and stabs one of the doctors in the eye.  You know that “1000 days without an incident” sign in the break room?  You’re gonna have to flip that number back down to 0. 

Corporate is having a cow that their prized asset went haywire, so they send a suit (Kate Mara) to assess the situation.  It’s her job to see if Morgan can be trusted not to violently lash out again.  If she does, it will mean she will have to be terminated.  I guess you can figure out how that goes. 

The film is at its best in the first act.  This stretch feels like a John Hughes version of Ex Machina.  Director Luke Scott (Ridley’s son) doesn’t have much style to speak of, but he builds the tension slowly, but assuredly.  Things kind of go out the window during the second act as Morgan’s psychotic tendencies are unleashed and she turns against her creators.  Here, the movie sort of morphs into your typical slasher scenario.  While this portion of the flick isn’t great, it’s marginally better than the final act which sees Taylor-Joy and Mara squaring off and Kung Fu-ing the crap out of one another.  Although it’s not exactly bad, it just shifts gears too often to work as a cohesive whole.  Like the main character, it feels like it was created in a lab and not made organically.

Fortunately, the cast is stacked cast from top to bottom with heavy hitters.  Taylor-Joy does a fine job in the lead, but the supporting players are the glue that holds everything together and prevents the film from completely unraveling.  I mean it’s hard to hate any movie that contains Boyd Holbrook, Michelle Yeoh, Brian Cox, Toby Jones, Paul Giamatti, and Jennifer Jason Leigh.  Mara, on the other hand, is far too bland in a crucial role.  Then again, maybe that was intentional all along, given the big plot twist at the end.

BOBBIE JO AND THE OUTLAW (1976) ***

Bobbie Jo (Lynda Carter) is a restless carhop with dreams of being a country singer.  Lyle (Marjoe Gortner) is a small-time hood who aspires to be Billy the Kid.  When their paths cross, the sparks are immediate.  They fall head over heels for one another and drive off into the sunset in his stolen sportscar.  Eventually, Lyle gets hoodwinked into driving the getaway car for an armed robbery, which results in the death of a security guard.  Together with Bobbie Jo’s sister (Merrie Lynn Ross) and her criminal boyfriend (Jesse Vint), they go on the lam and begin planning even more elaborate heists. 

I’ve always liked Marjoe Gortner.  His career is one of the most interesting in Hollywood history as he started out as the “youngest ordained minister” (at the age of four) before turning his back on the faith-healing circuit in an effort to attain movie stardom.  The fact that he wound up starring in stuff like Mausoleum and Starcrash only endeared him more to me.  With Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw, Marjoe became the only man in screen history to make out with Wonder Woman while she was topless.  That only cements his legendary status in my eyes. 

Celebrity skin enthusiasts will be over the moon for Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw as it represents the only time Wonder Woman got naked on film.  She undresses in front of her mother, bangs Marjoe twice, and goes topless during a random-ass mushroom scene, complete with a Native American acid guide.  As an added bonus, The Howling’s Belinda Balaski, who plays Carter’s tomboy best friend, also goes topless in this scene. 

Carter gives a likeable performance and Gortner is equally fun to watch.  I especially got a kick out of seeing the former preacher telling Wonder Woman that “Squeezing a trigger is just like praying!”  He also presides over the funeral for one of his fallen compatriots, giving him an opportunity to draw on his past for acting inspiration. 

Directed by Mark L. (Showdown in Little Tokyo) Lester and written by Vernon (The Unholy Rollers) Zimmerman, Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw is an agreeable, though unspectacular, modern-day Bonnie and Clyde riff (with a touch of the Good Ol’ Boy redneck car chase movie thrown in there for good measure).  Whenever things get kind of slow, you can amuse yourself by imagining Sylvester Stallone as Lyle as he was the producers’ second choice if they couldn’t secure Marjoe in the role.  It would’ve been a different movie, that’s for sure, but I think they made the right choice.  The supporting cast, which includes Gerrit Graham (as the head of a hippie commune), Virgil Frye, and James Gammon is solid too.

BOUNTY TRACKER (1993) **

Lorenzo Lamas stars as a bounty tracker in Boston who takes the money from his latest reward to visit his brother (Paul Regina) in Los Angeles.  Little does he know, his bro is about to drop the dime on some nefarious money launderers.  When a professional hit team led by Mattias Hues takes his brother out, Lorenzo puts his bounty tracking skills to the test to bring down the killers. 

The opening scene is a lot of fun and really got my expectations up.  Lamas worms his way into an all-black bar dressed like a librarian, complete with nerdy glasses, a chintzy suit, and a fake prissy English accent.  This scene is on par with any given SnakeEater movie.  Too bad things get thoroughly generic once Lamas goes to L.A.

Yes, from there, Bounty Tracker turns into your standard action/revenge flick.  It’s not exactly a terrible one.  The action is decent (there’s a scene where Lamas singlehandedly mops the floor with students in a karate school), but the plot isn’t anything special, and the villains are pretty weak.  Also, the subplot with Lamas teaming up with some at-risk youths whose mentor was also killed by Hues slows things down as the film enters the homestretch.  The flick would’ve went down much smoother had Lamas lone wolfed it instead of playing babysitter for a third of the running time. 

Lamas gives a fine performance all things considered.  I just wish the script gave him more opportunities to ham it up like he did in the early scenes.  I understand that his character is grief-stricken and seeking justice, but he could’ve at least had some good one-liners in his back pocket to carry the movie.  The supporting cast, which includes Whip Hubley, Judd Omen, and Remote Control’s Ken Ober is kind of interesting.  Too bad Hues makes for such a lackluster bad guy.

AKA:  Head Hunter.

TRAIN TO BUSAN PRESENTS: PENINSULA (2020) ** ½

Train to Busan was one of the better zombie movies in recent memory.  The animated prequel, Seoul Station was pretty good too, which made me eager to see what a live-action sequel would look like.  I guess we find out in the awkwardly titled, intermittently effective Train to Busan Presents:  Peninsula. 

A soldier tries to get his family out of Korea to escape the zombie virus.  While aboard a boat headed to Japan, an infected passenger kills his sister and nephew.  Four years later, he and his bitter brother in-law team up to sneak back to the zombie-infested mainland for a daring heist that could net them $20 million bucks.  Naturally, things do not go as planned. 

The idea of a zombie heist movie has potential.  (Zack Snyder is doing a similar thing with the upcoming Army of the Dead.)  The opening sequence works really well.  The scenes that set up the heist aren’t bad either.  It’s just that once the action switches over the mainland, things become rather uneven. 

The film works in fits and starts.  Whole sections feel like they have been taken from other (better) movies and stitched together a la Frankenstein.  There are moments that will remind you of Escape from New York (with zombies instead of roving gangs), Day of the Dead (the army captain who runs the place has a screw loose), and Land of the Dead (there’s an arena where humans fight zombies; not to mention the hero’s use of fireworks to distract the zombies).  The final car chase that feels a bit like Mad Max Meets Escape from New York has a few good action beats, but some of the CGI car stunts look awful phony.  Some moments are better than others, although they don’t exactly come together to make a satisfying whole. 

It may not quite click, but Train to Busan Presents:  Peninsula is more ambitious than many recent zombie flicks.  I certainly admire the attempts to open up the world of the first film.  It’s just that in doing so, you trade world-building for the concentrated dose of adrenaline-fueled suspense that the original had.  The bloated two-hour running time doesn’t help either.  Whatever qualms I had with this one, I’m still onboard for the next Train.

AKA:  Train to Busan 2.  AKA:  Peninsula.

CRUEL JAWS (1995) **

Bruno Mattei’s blatant Jaws rip-off Cruel Jaws recycles (ahem… STEALS) footage from not only Jaws, but all its sequels during the shark attack scenes.  Not to be outdone, Mattei also borrows (make that HIJACKS) footage from The Last Shark, another Jaws rip-off that’s almost as blatant as this one!  The results aren’t exactly “good”, but it’s worth watching just to marvel at all the ways Mattei cribs from Spielberg and his successors.

In fact, Mattei does a good job imitating Spielberg’s style as he captures the look of the original Jaws for many sequences.  He even copies a lot of the same camera moves.  Mattei also replicates the same beats Jaws 2 director Jeannot Szwarc put down.  And Jaws 3-D director, Joe Alves.  And Jaws the Revenge… you get the point.  Mattei also steals whole chunks of dialogue, scenarios, and camera set-ups from the franchise.  The results often look like an amateur playhouse company performing select scenes from the Jaws movies.  Unlike those directors, he shows no restraint when it comes to showing the half-eaten human leftovers of the shark’s victims, which is definitely appreciated by us gorehounds.

The owner of a marineland theme park is given notice to vacate the premises.  Meanwhile, a killer tiger shark is going around putting the bite on people.  The town officials and the asshole real estate guy don’t want to close the beaches because of the big regatta.  Naturally, the shark turns the big race into a hot lunch.

This is one of those movies where the star rating system doesn’t do it justice.  It’s not good in a conventional sense.  However, if you enjoy a terrible Italian rip-off like I do, you’re sure to have fun with Cruel Jaws.  Personally, I thought the gratuitous Mafia subplot (which I guess was cribbed from Peter Benchley’s original novel) got in the way of the fun in the third act.  Plus, the ending is way too abrupt to be completely satisfying.  That said, there are plenty of laughs and eye-rolling moments here to keep fans of WTF cinema entertained.

Since so much of the film rips off Jaws visually, it goes without saying that it also rips off John Williams’ Jaws theme.  What makes the music in Cruel Jaws so great is that it also steals from his score to Star Wars!  Also, get a load of the hero who resembles what Hulk Hogan would look like if he never lifted a weight in his entire life.  (“Whatchoo gonna do when anorexia runs wild on you?”)  Another hilarious highpoint is the scene where a pair of girls call some horny dudes “dick brain” again and again.  You don’t get that in a Spielberg movie, that’s for sure.  (Unless that was a poorly translated nod to the “penis breath” line from E.T.)

Which reminds me:  Come for the stolen footage and recycled plotlines.  Stay for the hilarious dialogue.  I think the best line came from the teenage fish expert’s girlfriend who gives him an ultimatum and says, “Once and for all, it’s the fish or me!”  That alone makes it better than Jaws the Revenge in my book.

AKA:  Jaws 5.  AKA:  Jaws 5:  Cruel Jaws.  AKA:  Shark Terror.  AKA:  The Beast.

THE IMMORAL MR. TEAS (1959) **

The Immoral Mr. Teas announced Russ Meyer as a force of exploitation moviemaking.  Even in this, his first movie, his style was already cemented.  The rapid-fire editing, the acerbic narration, the scenes of nude women frolicking in the wild, and the boobs.  Plenty of boobs.  They’re all here.  It’s as if he arrived on the scene as a fully formed filmmaker.  I can’t say it’s his best work though.  Even if it is fun to spot his various fetishes and idiosyncrasies on display so early, the movie itself leaves something to be desired. 

Then again, the first of its kind is always sort of like that.  While The Immoral Mr. Teas wasn’t the first nudie movie, it was the first one where the women were actually viewed as sexual objects and not passive nudists off playing volleyball or sunbathing or something.  Now, we get them doing such things as cooking, typing, canoeing, and playing guitar.  Ah, progress!

Mr. Teas (Bill Teas) is a meek deliveryman who spends most of his idle time looking down women’s blouses and/or peeping on them from afar.  After a trip to the dentist, he finds he has the power to imagine women naked as they go about their everyday tasks.  (A hypno-wheel is the special effect.)  He eventually spends less time at work and more time girl-watching.

While most of the humor is lame, there are a couple of okay gags.  My favorite bit is when Mr. Teas gets picked up by a woman he thinks is a hooker, but it turns out she’s… well… I wouldn’t want to spoil the joke.  The rest of it just isn’t that funny.  That wouldn’t matter if it managed to be sexy, but it’s much too innocent and tame to get your pulse racing.  The longest (and best) sequence is when Mr. Teas spies on three women out in the woods, although you have to wait a long time to get to it.  Also, the relatively short sixty-two-minute run time feels much longer due to the repetitive nature of the film.  (How many shots of Mr. Teas’ daily commute did we really need?)

Meyer (who can briefly be seen as one of the patrons at a burlesque show) got his start as a Playboy photographer, and many of his compositions feel like live-action photo spreads (especially the scene where Mr. Teas eats watermelon).  You can see that Meyer was still working at making a “real” movie out of what he knew best.  However, the results, as uneven as they are, are mildly enjoyable. 

AKA:  Mr. Teas and His Playthings.  AKA:  Steam Heat.

JIU JITSU (2020) *

You know, I was looking forward to Jiu Jitsu.  It had a wacky premise (it’s basically Mortal Kombat Meets Predator), a stacked cast (which includes Nicolas Cage, Alain Moussi, Tony Jaa, and Frank Grillo), and a director whose work I have enjoyed in the past (Dimitri Logothetis).  Nothing could’ve prepared me for how bad it really was. 

The first sign of trouble is the comic book panels and rotoscoping that make the various chapter breaks look like a graphic novel.  It’s one thing to make a movie with a comic book sensibility.  It’s another thing to gratuitously call attention to itself, saying, “Look at this!  It’s just like a comic book!”  That shit didn’t cut it in the director’s cut of The Warriors and it doesn’t cut it here. 

Another problem is the first-person fight scenes that occur early on.  If there’s anything worse than shaky-cam action sequences, it’s a first-person fight scene that makes the various shootouts, fistfights, and Kung Fu battles look like a video game.  What really gets annoying is how the action switches from the perspectives of Moussi and Jaa within the same scene.  All the hopping around back and forth from their POV just makes the action that much more disorienting. 

I was a fan of Moussi’s work in the Kickboxer movies (the second of which was also directed by Logothetis).  However, the plot does him a great disservice as it calls for him to have amnesia for much of the picture.  He has the potential to be a fine actor, but you’d never know it when all he gets to do in this movie is walk around in a daze and scowl like he’s got an ice cream headache.

Despite a promising premise, it’s more than a little sad that the movie just lazily copies and pastes the plots of Predator and Mortal Kombat together to make a clip art version of a movie instead of at least coming up with some sort of new slant on the material.  The monster is invisible and uses infrared scopes to hunt for his prey just like in Predator, and Cage’s character is obviously supposed to be the stand-in for the Christopher Lambert incarnation of Raiden. 

At least Cage brings some sort of energy to the movie.  He too seems to be borrowing freely from other films, as he sometimes plays his character as a slacker modeled on The Big Lebowski, while other times he rants and raves like Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now.  It’s enough to make you wish Cage starred in a legit Predator sequel and called it a day instead of popping up in a slightly-classier-than-an-Asylum-mockbuster knockoff.

It’s a shame that a movie starring Jaa, Cage, and Grillo turned out so dull.  Grillo is particularly wasted as he’s mostly around to bark orders and disparage Moussi’s amnesiac character for not “remembering the plan”.  When Jaa first came onto the scene in Ong Bak he proved he was the most exciting martial artist on the planet.  After the awesomeness of The Protector, he was never quite able to capitalize on that early promise.  Jiu Jitsu is not an ideal vehicle for his talents, but we do get one scene where he uses his patented knee attack to bash his enemies.  However, that’s not enough to make it worthwhile. 

Jiu Jitsu moves like lead, and when a burst of action does happen, it’s so chaotic that most of the joy is sucked right out of it.  (Many of the fight scenes feature way too much slow motion.)  Once we finally get to the fighting tournament, it’s nothing more than a series of repetitive matches with predictable outcomes.  You can only take so much of a guy in a cut-rate Guyver costume beating up on people before it gets dull.  The fights themselves are uninspired, interchangeable, and forgettable, which is perplexing as I thought Logothetis did a pretty solid job on Kickboxer:  Retaliation’s action sequences.

 In short, Jiu Jitsu is Jiu Shitsu.

IRON MASK (2020) *

“I’ve waited a long time for this”.

This line is spoken by Arnold Schwarzenegger just before he and Jackie Chan square off against one another in Iron Mask.  So have their fans.  The last time they met on screen (in Around the World in 80 Days), Arnold had little more than a glorified cameo.  Here, both men have very little screen time, but they are front and center just long enough to exchange fisticuffs with one another.  The results are underwhelming to say the least as the fight is hampered with some inane comedy and gratuitous 3-D moments.  As lame as the fight is, it still manages to be the best thing about the film, which has to rank among both stars’ worst. 

The fact that both of them are barely in it (Jackie gets the “With the Special Participation of” credit) is the first tip-off that this is going to suck.  Making things even more unbearable is the fact that it has about four other plots going on that feel like they came out of entirely different movies.  There’s a mapmaker (Bruiser’s Jason Flemyng) who travels through China while hanging out with a flying monkey, a princess who disguises herself in drag to avoid detection from her enemies, and a Russian prince (who wears the titular mask) who frees himself from the Tower of London and goes on a pirating adventure.  That’s not even mentioning the WTF prologue about white wizards making tea from the eyelashes of dragons or some such shit. 

The film was a Russian-Chinese co-production and it’s an overstuffed, bizarre affair.  It often feels like a ten-part mini-series that was edited into two hours.  Characters come and go, chaotic action sequences bluster on, and shitty CGI abounds.  The finale is particularly awful, and the film as a whole is a rather exhausting and excruciating affair.   

It’s not all bad though.  I liked the villainess’ henchmen.  One looked like a Rock Lords version of Super Shredder and the other resembles the love child of Doctor Fate and Tik-Tok from Return to Oz.  Really though, there’s no reason to see it other than for the participation (make that SPECIAL participation) of Schwarzenegger and Chan.  After all these years, they really deserve a better brawling platform than a shitty Russian-Chinese movie.  As an added bonus, you also get Rutger Hauer (in one of his last roles) in one scene wearing a powdered wig and looking as confused as the audience.

The sad thing is, there could’ve been a good movie made about the Chan and Schwarzenegger characters.  Imagine a tale of a wrongfully imprisoned man (Chan) and his jailer (Schwarzenegger) whose relationship spans decades.  First, they start off on the wrong foot and try to kick each other’s asses before they learn to respect one another, and over time, eventually become allies.  That’s a lot better than the “Hey, you’re a pretty good fighter, look me up whenever you’re in China so I can give you a long-winded propaganda-laced speech about Chinese nationalism!” shit that we wound up with. 

AKA:  Viy 2.  AKA:  The Mystery of the Dragon Seal:  Legend of the Dragon.  AKA:  The Mystery of the Dragon Seal.  AKA:  The Iron Mask:  Mystery of the Dragon Seal.  AKA:  The Dragon Seal.  AKA:  Journey to China:  Mystery of the Iron Mask.  AKA:  The Mystery of the Iron Mask:  Journey to China. 

HANZO THE RAZOR: THE SNARE (1973) ***

Shintaro Katsu returns as the badass samurai policeman Hanzo in this sequel to Hanzo the Razor:  Sword of Justice.  This time out, he’s investigating the death of a young woman.  He does some digging and discovers she had an illegal abortion.  He traces the operation back to a priestess who is in cahoots with a crooked treasurer who is jacking up the price of gold.  Hanzo, who abhors corrupt elected officials, sets out to see that justice is served. 

Director Yasuzo Masumura brings a lot of style to this entry.  The scene where the priestess preforms her abortion ceremony is eerie and colorful.  It almost feels like something out of a Mario Bava movie.  In another great scene, Hanzo is buried alive and heroically rises from the grave.  Masumura also delivers on the action as the sequence where Hanzo busts up the priestess’ den of iniquity is stellar.

If you liked the first movie, you will have fun seeing the hallmarks of the series playing out once again.  Hanzo is still beating his meat (literally) and ruffling the feathers of his superiors.  Bad guys are still getting torn to shreds in Hanzo’s booby-trapped rooms.  Hanzo is still dishing out his own unique brand of torture.  (One scene gives new meaning to the term “sit and spin”.)

Yes, like its predecessor, Hanzo the Razor:  The Snare features some pretty wild stuff.  There’s lots of sex, depravity, and violence to go around.  As in that film though, the third act gets a little too… conventional as the subplot about catching a thief who is planning to rob the Mint leaves Hanzo little time for his sexual and violent tendencies.  Still, if you’re a fan of the original, or Katsu’s Zatoichi movies, you’re sure to find plenty to enjoy here.

AKA:  Kung-Fu Hara Kiri.  AKA:  Fangs of the Detective:  Hanzo the Razor’s Tortures from Hell.  AKA:  Razor 2:  The Snare.  AKA:  Razor Hanzo’s Torture Hell.