BLACK WIDOW (2021) ** ½

Black Widow is the least of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, mostly because it never really figures out what it wants to be.  I think there was a temptation on Marvel’s part to do a more stripped-down espionage-tinged earthbound adventure after so many bombastic intergalactic Avengers flicks, and the parts where Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) comes to terms with her past (and the makeshift family she left behind) works fairly well.  However, it feels like they just couldn’t resist putting a bunch of over-the-top sci-fi action set pieces in there, just to remind everybody it’s a Marvel movie after all.  It’s not that it’s bad.  It’s just that doesn’t quite jibe with the smaller, intimate moments.  It also doesn’t help that many of the fights, chases, narrow escapes, death-defying leaps, etc. feel like video game sequences or that Black Widow herself survives all of this with nary a scratch on her.  

The movie catches up to the ex-KGB-assassin-turned-Avenger after the events of Captain America:  Civil War.  On the run from just about everybody, she figures she has some unfinished business in Mother Russia and tries to take down the mastermind of The Red Room, the place that trained her to be an assassin.  Along the way, she gets help from her estranged family of spies, although whether they are trustworthy is another story.  

It doesn’t help that Black Widow is kind of a boring character.  There’s not much here that hasn’t already been explored in the other Marvel movies and done better, I might add.  Johansson was able to make the character work in the other films in just a few brief moments.  They didn’t give her much to work with this time around (which is why I’m sure she wants to get every penny she can from Disney with her lawsuit), which means the supporting characters are left to do much of the heavy lifting.  Like the main character itself, the film doesn’t have much personality until her family of eccentrics show up to breathe a little life into the proceedings.  Sure, the flick overall is mostly enjoyable, it’s just even more so whenever they are on screen.  

Another debit is the action.  Most of the fights are competent, but not all that memorable or exciting.  I guess it wouldn’t have been all that noticeable if the staging didn’t suffer from some less than stellar camerawork and choreography.  I can’t help but think this could’ve been a real winner had they hired a director who had a real knack for filming action.  Heck, the action sometimes pales next to the recent Marvel TV shows.

Overall, Black Widow isn’t bad.  It may have its share of flaws, but I can’t completely hate any movie that contains such an affectionate nod to Moonraker.  It might not have exactly been worth the extended pandemic-induced wait.  However, I guess it will keep most comic book nerds sated until whatever-the-Hell-the-next-one-of-these-things-is comes out.    

Marvel Cinematic Universe Scorecard: 

Avengers:  Age of Ultron:  ****

The Incredible Hulk:  ****

Iron Man:  ****

Avengers:  Endgame:  ****

Thor:  Ragnarok:  ****

Ant-Man and the Wasp:  ****

Spider-Man:  Homecoming:  ****

Iron Man 3:  ****

Captain America:  Civil War:  *** ½

Ant-Man:  *** ½

Guardians of the Galaxy:  *** ½

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2:  *** ½ 

Avengers:  Infinity War:  *** ½

Black Panther:  *** ½ 

The Avengers:  ***

Captain America:  The First Avenger:  ***

Captain America:  The Winter Soldier:  ***

Captain Marvel:  ***

Spider-Man:  Far from Home:  ***

Thor:  ***

Thor:  The Dark World:  ***

Iron Man 2:  ***

Doctor Strange:  ** ½

Black Widow:  **  ½

HANZO THE RAZOR: WHO’S GOT THE GOLD? (1974) ***

Hanzo the Razor:  Who’s Got the Gold? was Shintaro Katsu’s third and final film as the sex-crazed samurai.  Things open with Hanzo’s two bumbling underlings doing a little night fishing at a remote pond when they are scared off by a sexy lady ghost.  When Hanzo hears about the sultry spirit, his immediate reaction is, “Imma fuck it”.  He finds the ghost, and soon learns through his patented fuck-and-interrogate method that she is only dressing like a ghost to scare people away, so they don’t go near a cache of hidden gold.  Just as Hanzo uncovers the elaborate conspiracy, a bunch of Ninjas attack his home, and he mops the floor with them using his assorted booby traps and hidden weapons… and this is all before the opening title screen!

After the great pre-title sequence, Who’s Got the Gold settles down into a rather routine adventure for Hanzo the Razor.  Katsu once again essays the role of Hanzo with badass swagger, and it’s fun seeing him acting like a total bastard in one more adventure.  That said, it’s easy to see why they only made three of these things instead of thirty (as they did with the Zatoichi series) as there’s probably one too many subplots that prevent the film from really cutting loose.  

Some of the subplots are solid (the best one involves Hanzo rescuing a condemned man with a terminal illness and using his skills to make a cannon), but really, the first ten minutes are far and away the best thing the movie has to offer.  Still, there’s enough jaw-dropping moments (like when Hanzo infiltrates a blind man’s orgy) here to make it worth a look, especially if you’re a fan of Katsu.  Despite the spotty plotting, Hanzo the Razor:  Who’s Got the Gold makes for a fitting close to an entertaining trilogy of kinky samurai flicks.  

AKA:  Fangs of the Detective:  Hanzo the Devil, the Soft Skin, and the Gold.  AKA:  Razor 3:  Who’s Got the Gold?  AKA:  Hanzo the Devil, the Flesh, and Gold Coins.  AKA:  Haunted Gold.

F9 (2021) ***

F9 is the F9th (but not F9inal) entry in the Fast and Furious series.  As you can see, they no longer refer to the films as “The Fast and the Furious” or “Fast and Furious” or “Fast” or “Furious”.  Just plain “F”.  They could’ve called it “FF” for “Franchise Fatigue”.  I’m not saying it’s bad or anything, but it definitely lacks the fun of the past couple of installments.  That said, it still has enough dumb shit in it to keep you entertained.  

The plot is pretty simple.  Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) needs Dom (Vin Diesel) to find a McGuffin.  Dom learns his estranged brother (John Cena) is after it too, which only brings the familial bad blood to a boil.  

The big stumbling block here is John Cena is the villain.  He isn’t bad, but he’s a big step down from Jason Statham or Charlize Theron or heck, even Luke Evans.  Since these movies are all about family, we know he probably won’t stay a bad guy for long.  That’s just how it goes in the Fast universe.  

However, the flashbacks of young Dom feel like scenes from Jim Henson’s The Fast and the Furious Babies.  I guess they were trying to do a stripped-down gritty approach with these scenes.  Either that, or they were trying to return the series back to its racing roots.  Either way, these sequences really run against the grain of the lunacy that occurs later in the picture.

I guess the filmmakers were trying to appease both sets of FF fans.  Some like all the racing shit.  Others like me want to see a bunch of crazy nonsense.  Because of that, a lot of this has the feeling of gratuitous fan servicing.  (Maybe the “F” stands for “fan service”.)  They also bring back a major character the fans have been clamoring for and finally make good on the promise that the franchise will go into space.  I mean, it’s cheesy and all, but it just feels tacked on to please the fans.  

Well, was I pleased?  Sure.  I mean it’s hard to get too picky when the movie features:  1.  A car swinging on a vine like Tarzan over a huge chasm.  2.  Helen Mirren driving at high speed while eluding dozens of cop cars, all the while delivering massive amounts of exposition.  3.  Vin Diesel getting a Hercules moment where he uses chains to bring down a giant pillar that clobbers a bunch of guards.  4. Said scene causing Vin to get a bump on the head, allowing him to go back in time and see things in his past her missed the first time around.  5.  Uh, cars in space.  

This was the first movie I saw in the theater in over sixteen months, a record.  I’m still not entirely comfortable with going to the movies on a regular basis, but I plan to venture out here and there.  That said, it felt good to be back.

AKA:  F9:  The Fast Saga.  AKA:  Fast and Furious 9.  AKA:  Wild Speed:  Jet Break.

VANGUARD (2020) *

Vanguard is an elite security agency owned by Jackie Chan.  Two of his best agents (Yang Yang and Lun Ai) are given the task to protect a VIP from kidnappers.  When they fail to capture him, they go after his daughter, which eventually springs Jackie into action.   

It pains me to say this, but it looks like Jackie’s entering the Steven Seagal phase of his career.  He spends large chunks of the movie sitting behind a desk while receiving plot updates from his assistant.  Yang and Ai do most of the stunt-heavy Kung Fu, although the choreography leaves something to be desired.  When Chan finally does do something, it’s pretty lame.  (Like when he gets chased by crummy looking CGI lions and hyenas.)  In fact, Vanguard is so bad that it makes some of Seagal’s recent efforts look like Drunken Master 2 in comparison. 

Vanguard starts off bad and only gets worse (and duller) as it goes along.  That’s mostly because Chan gets less and less to do.  Making it especially pathetic, is the fact it was directed by Stanley Tong, who helmed some of Jackie’s best stuff in the ‘90s.    

Seriously, this has to be the worst Chan flick I have ever seen.  (Worse than Iron Mask, if you can believe it.)  It took me NINE days to get through it, a new record for an under two-hour film.  It’s almost enough to make you want to swear off Kung Fu action/comedies entirely.   

The plot goes in circles.  The bad guys keep kidnapping good guys and then more good guys have to come and rescue them, resulting in a different good guy getting kidnapped.  All of this is monotonous.  Even the goofy shit, like the one guy who flies around on a skateboard like James Franco in Spider-Man 3 is undone by the shitty CGI.  In the end, the villain dips sportscars in gold and uses them to make his escape.  This sounds stupid, until you realize it was only done so that the CGI animators had an excuse to make the computerized stunt cars look cheap.  You know it’s bad when during the big car chase, Jackie doesn’t even drive, he rides shotgun.  

As with all of Chan’s films, make sure you watch the end credits sequence.  As per usual, it shows us all the bloopers that occurred while filming.  It also reveals that Jackie was almost killed during a jet ski mishap.  Because of that, I guess I can forgive him for spending so much of the movie behind a desk.  

HITMAN: AGENT 47 (2015) **

Hey, remember when they made that movie from that video game Hitman?  I had to try really hard to remember too.  I think all I remember was that I spent the whole movie wishing they had got Jason Statham to play Hitman instead of the miscast Timothy Olyphant, and that pains me to say, seeing how much I like Timothy Olyphant.  It really said something about the film that it could take a great actor like Timothy Olyphant and make him feel like he wasn’t right for the role.   

So, here’s this reboot they made a few years ago.  They couldn’t get Statham this time either, so I’m not sure why they even bothered.  I mean, the role of the Hitman is nothing more than a bald badass who shoots people.  It’s a tailor-made vehicle for Statham, and yet Hollywood refuses to cast him in the role.  What gives? 

Anyway, this time around, they got Rupert Friend, an actor I am not familiar with to play Hitman.  He doesn’t have much in the way of screen presence and he doesn’t look all that intimidating either.  (He sort of resembles a bald Orlando Bloom trying to do long division.)  We also got Spock Lite from the J.J. Trek movies as the nice guy who’s obviously a not-so nice guy.   

The influence here seems to be the Bourne movies.  While there are some touches of the shaky-cam aesthetic that hamstrung that series, the action was a lot crisper than I was anticipating/dreading.  That’s not to say it was great, but it got the job done more or less.   

Friend isn’t bad while essaying the loneliness and solitude that comes with the territory of being a Hitman.  The one scene that really stood out to me was when he sat in the dark and stared unblinkingly at his laptop as it looked for his next target.  Not only did it brilliantly show the isolation and single-mindedness of the character, it helped make him sympathetic in the audience’s eyes.  As someone who depends on his laptop to write his reviews and seeing how it has been constantly on the fritz for the last few months, I certainly identified with the idea of a character who cannot perform the only task he is good at because he is at the mercy of technology.  This scene alone made Agent 47 better than the original in my eyes.   

The plot, such as it is, follows Hitman as he is in pursuit of a woman with psychic abilities (Hannah Ware) who can predict what’s going to happen in the movie before it happens.  It’s fitting that she is the audience substitute because we can predict just about everything in the movie before it happens too.  Sure, the story is predictable, but the action is slightly better than average.  While it’s nothing that will knock your socks off, it’s certainly watchable.  What’s more, it contains a gun-punching sequence, and if you know me by now, you know I love it when a guy punches another guy with a gun while simultaneously shooting him.  So, it has that going for it. 

ANON (2018) **

Anon finds writer/director Andrew Niccol back on his bullshit again.  As in The Truman Show, it deals with the concept of people being constantly filmed and/or spied on.  It is also a none-too-subtle cautionary sci-fi tale like Gattaca.  And as with In Time, it features Amanda Seyfried looking hot.  

Set in the near future, Anon paints the picture of a world where everyone has cameras implanted in their eyes.  Since it’s hard to commit crimes when you have a security camera in your retina full time, being a cop is something of a cake walk.  Somehow, someone is getting away with murder by hacking into the peoples’ peepers and erasing and/or manipulating their first-person surveillance footage.  It’s then up to cop Clive Owen to go undercover and draw out the mysterious hacker “Anon” (Seyfried) whose clients keep turning up dead.  

Sad to say, Seyfried is sorely miscast as the titular hacker.  The blame is really a two-way street as Niccol didn’t give her much of a character to work with.  I guess it kinda goes along with the anonymous nature of her character, but you can never quite get a handle on her.  It doesn’t help that her character is more of a machination of the screenplay than a three-dimensional human being.  She’s a wide-eyed innocent waif when it suits the script, and other times, she’s a seductive femme fatale.  She’s never quite able to pull off the many facets of the character, which is a big stumbling block when her identity and motives are crucial to the plot. 

Owen is good though.  He sometimes resembles a world-weary detective straight out of a ‘40s movie that somehow got stuck in a futuristic Philip K. Dick story.  His performance prevents it from completely falling apart, but it’s hardly enough to salvage this slow-moving tale.  It was also nice to see Storm of the Century’s Colm Feore popping up as Owen’s superior.  

It’s a shame too, because Niccol had a kernel of a good idea here.  Ultimately, that’s about what it is.  An idea.  It’s an intriguing premise, but there’s no real substance to hang anything on.  What’s more, the heads-up display on the constant POV shots gets annoying after a while, and the first-person shooter-style scenes are often phony looking.   

THE CURSE OF VHS DELIRIUM (2021) ***

Here’s another feature-length trailer compilation from the good folks at Umbrella Entertainment.  It can be found as a bonus feature on Drive-In Delirium:  The Final Conflict.  Like the previous VHS Delirium installments, it is an assemblage of home video previews culled from VHS releases (most of which are from Columbia Pictures and Thorn EMI).

This entry is a breezy, enjoyable romp.  Like The Final Conflict, there are quite a few “respectable” titles here, but not enough to get in the way of the fun.  It’s mostly a hodgepodge of genres, although there are a few themed stretches devoted to horror, comedy, Cannon Films, and Mondo movies.  Overall, there’s a fun mix of trailers in this collection, even if it doesn’t quite match the heights of entertainment the previous compilations in the series attained.  

The complete line-up includes:  The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, The Incredible Melting Man, The Humanoid, Bronx Warriors 2, Starman, The Blob (1988), My Stepmother is an Alien, The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, The Confessional Murders, Grizzly, Piranha 2:  Flying Killers, Creepshow, Mortuary, Phantom of the Opera (1989), Dark Tower, Watch Out We’re Mad, Odd and Evens, Who Finds a Friend Finds a Treasure, Cheech and Chong’s Nice Dreams, Things are Tough All Over, No Sex Please-We’re British, The Van, Stir Crazy, Stripes, The Toy, Hanky Panky, Spring Break, Screwballs, One Night Stand, Big Trouble, Erik the Viking, Enter the Ninja, Ninja 3:  The Domination, Missing in Action 2:  The Beginning, Rappin’, Doctors’ Wives, The Burglars, Gloria, Escape from El Diablo, Thunder, The Siege of Firebase Gloria, Spymaker, The Secret Life of Ian Fleming, Hells Angels Forever, Holocaust 2000, Suspiria, Brutes and Savages, The Jupiter Menace, Amin:  The Rise and Fall, The Bushido Blade, Ator:  The Fighting Eagle, Death Vengeance (AKA:  Fighting Back), Rottweiler 3-D, Superman 3, Carry on Up the Jungle, Carry on Abroad, Carry on Girls, Percy, Bullshot, and My Tutor. 

DRIVE-IN DELIRIUM: THE FINAL CONFLICT (2021) ***

Drive-In Delirium:  The Final Conflict is the seventh and purportedly final installment in the long-running series of trailer collections from Umbrella Entertainment.  Will it really be the last one?  I can’t say.  What I can say is that there have been many franchises over the years that have had a “Final” entry, and they usually manage to eke out a couple more sequels after the fact.  I can’t imagine why Drive-In Delirium would be all that different.  

You’ll be taken a little aback early on as there are a healthy selection of trailers for summer blockbusters (such as Star Wars, Superman 2, and Raiders of the Lost Ark), which isn’t exactly the first thing you think of when it comes to “drive-in” fare (although they often played drive-ins in their second run).  It doesn’t take long for things to get back on track with an assortment of When Animals Attack movies (like Bug, The Giant Spider Invasion, and Squirm), ‘70s horror (Axe, Race with the Devil, and Burnt Offerings), ‘80s classics (Re-Animator, Street Trash, and The Hitcher), giallo thrillers (A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, Who Saw Her Die?, and All the Colors of the Dark), Italian horror (Macabre, A Blade in the Dark, and Beyond the Door 3), and more ‘70s stuff (like And Soon the Darkness, Fright, and From Beyond the Grave).  Things wrap up with a collection of ads for big-budget thrillers like Marathon Man, The Deep, and The China Syndrome, which, like the blockbuster trailers, feel a little out of place in this kind of compilation.

The second half kicks off with a funny pre-movie intro for United Artists Theaters starring Chevy Chase, some old concession stand ads, and even a commercial for Star Trek:  The Motion Picture action figures.  Unfortunately, the trailers in this half of the collection are just as uneven, and once again, many of the films featured feel way too “respectable” for a drive-in.  There are trailers for disaster movies (Juggernaut, The Towering Inferno, and Airport ‘77), ‘60s crime flicks (Point Blank, The Thomas Crown Affair, and Midas Run), and the James Bond series (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, The Spy Who Loved Me, and A View to a Kill).  Whenever it does get into a groove of Blaxploitation trailers (Shaft in Africa, Cleopatra Jones, and Friday Foster) or car chase classics (Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, White Line Fever, and Smokey and the Bandit), it inevitably winds up veering back into wholesome entertainment again.  I mean, I can’t give this installment any less than *** just because of the enormous goodwill the series has built up over the years.  I know a seven-hour trailer compilation has got to contain SOME filler, but something is seriously wrong when they are sticking a trailer for The Muppet Movie in a so-called “drive-in” compilation.  

Maybe it is time for the franchise to quit while it’s ahead.  

NEUTRON VS. THE KARATE ASSASSINS (1965) ** ½

Several high-profile politicians are found mysteriously murdered.  The cause of death?  A single karate chop to the neck.  It’s then up to the masked crimefighter Neutron to snoop around a local karate school and snuff out the mastermind behind the insidious plot.  

The addition of karate into the usual Lucha Libre shenanigans gives Neutron vs. the Karate Assassins a slightly different flavor than the other entries in the series.  Instead of scenes of wrestlers practicing their moves in sweaty gymnasiums, we have karate students battling hand to hand in karate schools.  The problem is that it was released way before the martial arts movie craze kicked into gear, so there is very little here in terms of Kung Fu action to get excited about.  Most of the fights are brief and lack the hallmarks that would eventually be found in the genre as it progressed.  

Another stumbling block is the noticeable lack of Neutron.  From the looks of things, this was taken from either a television series and/or a serial as there are title cards for the various chapters.  That means that Neutron only shows up towards the end of each chapter (about every twenty minutes or so), which may disappoint some viewers.  To make matters worse, he spends more time creeping around and spying on the villains than actually fighting them.  

That said, the pace is agreeable, and even the Neutron-less patches are surprisingly watchable.  The comic relief police inspector’s schtick is also kind of funny this time out.  The participation of The Monsters Demolisher’s German Robles as the sympathetic villain also helps to keep you invested.  The nightclub performances (of which there are three) are kind of dull this time around though.  

Ultimately, Neutron vs. the Karate Assassins isn’t all that bad.  It’s just kind of slight and forgettable.  Fans of the series may be disappointed by the lack of action, but it still remains kinda fun.  

AKA:  Neutron Battles the Karate Assassins.

NEUTRON VS. THE MANIAC (1965) ** ½

The black-masked crimefighter Neutron returns for his fourth big-screen adventure.  A masked maniac is going around kidnapping women.  He then takes them back to his lair, ties them up, and films himself butchering his victims.  Afterwards, he sends the footage to the cops to further confuse and enrage them.  Neutron volunteers to help find the killer and winds up going undercover in a shady mental institution to flush out the murderer. 

Neutron vs. the Maniac has a nastier edge than the other entries in the Neutron series.  While the murder sequences are brief and/or infrequent, they are nevertheless quite effective.  The film noir-inspired cinematography, along with Alfredo Crevanna’s tight direction, helps accentuate the overall seedy atmosphere. 

Although the movie starts off in fine fashion, things sort of bog down once Neutron finds himself behind the walls of the sketchy clinic.  This stretch of the film isn’t bad (it might’ve been more engrossing if I had seen a version that had English subtitles), but it certainly lacks the inspired zaniness that hallmarks the best entries of the Neutron series.  There are also a few too many extraneous characters and unnecessary red herrings that get in the way of Neutron doing his thing, which further hampers the pacing in the middle act.  However, whenever he is on screen, masked-up, and ready to brawl, it’s a lot of fun.  The finale is solid too as the reveal of the killer is rather fun, and Neutron’s final tussle with the villain and his henchmen wraps things up on a high note. 

Unlike most masked men in Mexican horror movies, Neutron does not wrestle in the ring.  We do get one wrestling sequence though, and although he doesn’t take part in it, it’s pretty good.  There are also three musical numbers (two of which feature the sexy Gina Romand) that help to pad out the running time.

AKA:  Neutron vs. the Sadistic Criminal.  

THE SCORPION KING: BOOK OF SOULS (2018) ** ½

As far as the fourth DTV sequel to a spin-off to a sequel of a remake goes, The Scorpion King:  Book of Souls is surprisingly sturdy.  It’s really nothing more than a semi-competent assemblage of sword and sorcery characters and cliches.  We have the reluctant barbarian hero, the sexy badass princess, the villain who wields a weapon of untold power and has a core team of badass henchmen, mythic quests, a sexy sorceress, and a gruff but endearing golem.  For some, that will be enough. 

At one-hundred-and-one minutes, is it a tad too long for its own good?  Absolutely.  Does the final act lack the cheeseball fun of the first two acts?  Frankly, yes.  Do some of the fights and action sequences suffer from shaky-cam and quick-cut editing?  Uh-huh.  However, as a fan of this sort of shit, and seeing how they don’t make too many of these throwback kinds of things anymore, it went down smooth enough for me.  Now I will admit, I haven’t seen The Scorpion King Part 3 or 4, and I have no idea how this ties into the first movie (other than the hero is playing the role The Rock originated), but taken on its own merits, Book of Souls is mostly entertaining and moderately enjoyable. 

It’s always a little bit better than it has to be, which helps, and it was certainly more fun than I expected.  It’s nice to find a sequel (and a fifth installment at that) that can competently hit its marks and fulfill the requirements of the genre.  Zach McGowan is a bit stiff in the lead (he resembles the love child of Dave Bautista and Luke Goss), but the ladies in the cast are all fun to watch. 

Director Don Michael Paul’s DTV sequel output is spotty at best.  For every decent flick like Kindergarten Cop 2 there are plenty of Tremors 7s and Lake Placid 4s.  This is easily one of his better efforts.  I’m not saying it’s great or anything, but where else are you going to see a turd-shaped golem reenact the famous horse-punching scene from Blazing Saddles?

DYNASTY (1977) ****

Exploitation legend Michael (The Touch of Her Flesh) Findlay was responsible for the 3-D effects for this Hong Kong/Taiwan co-production.  Sadly, he died in a helicopter accident while he was on his way to show potential investors his newly patented 3-D tech, just months before the movie was released.  Who knows what Findlay could’ve achieved if it hadn’t been for his untimely demise.  If the 3-D in Dynasty is any indication, he could’ve revolutionized the industry.  This is quite simply some of the best 3-D of all time.   

An evil warlord is out to murder a prince living in a monastery.  When he slaughters the prince’s Kung Fu master, he swears revenge.  Armed with only an umbrella, he sets out to murder the warlord’s generals one by one, working his way up the ranks.   

Usually whenever I review a 3-D movie, I keep a running tab of all the 3-D effects that poke out at the screen.  If I did that with Dynasty, I would be here all fucking day.  More stuff comes lunging out at the audience in the first ten minutes of this flick than a dozen full-length 3-D films combined.  Swords, arrows, spears, coins, branches, sticks, and more come jutting out at the audience at various speeds.  The villain’s Freddy Krueger glove also comes out quite a bit.  Seriously, don’t blink in the first half-hour of the movie because you’re liable to miss a 3-D effect.  I must’ve cackled, fist-pumped, and said, “WOW” and/or “HOLY SHIT” at least thirty times during a 3-D effect.  The depth-of-field effects are also quite beautiful as the composition of the shots are carefully laid out to make the best usage of the technology.     

The 3-D comes so fast and furious that you might kind of forget about the plot, which moves along almost as speedy.  Little plot tidbits like the Kung Fu master headbutting the warlord so hard that he forgets how to use his secret ability for exactly a week are just flat-out hilarious.  In fact, the plot moves so fast that you might not catch the implication that the villain and his new henchman are sleeping together.  If there is a flaw, it’s that the effects get a little sparse as the film is coming down the homestretch, but then again, you can say that about just about any 3-D movie. 

The gore is pretty great too, even if it’s not especially bloody.  The scene where the bad guy scalps his enemy and tosses it at the audience is particularly badass.  I also loved the scene where our hero cuts off a general’s hands and the general KEEPS on fighting!  The standout sequence is when our hero is ambushed by some ruffians carrying flying guillotines.  When a few Good Samaritans try to step in and help, they are promptly decapitated for their troubles.  The 3-D effects in this sequence are jaw-dropping.  

And who can resist the badass dialogue?  When the general asks our hero what he wants, he responds with, “YOUR LIFE!” 

This is a must-own for 3-D aficionados.  Kudos to Kino Lorber for including a blue/red anaglyph version of the film.  I sincerely hope they go back and reissue their old 3-D releases in this format since 3-D TVs are just about obsolete nowadays.  I for one would buy them all. 

AKA:  Chase After a Thousand Knives.  AKA:  Super Dragon.  AKA:  Ming Dynasty.

THE NIGHT OF MURDER (1975) * ½

Someone wearing a Blue Demon mask sneaks into a swanky hotel, kills the house detective, and makes off with some valuable jewels.  More murders occur, and the real Blue Demon quickly becomes the prime suspect.  While attempting to clear his name, Blue Demon uncovers a vast conspiracy whose goal is to discredit and ultimately kill him.   

Directed by Rene Cardona, The Night of Murder is one of the weakest Blue Demon movies I have seen.  I’m not saying every luchador flick I watch has to be in the horror or sci-fi genre, but without any fantastic elements, this one feels more like a boring Made for TV whodunit instead of the bonkers Lucha Libre cinema we’ve come to expect from Mexico.  The plot is boring, the pacing is sluggish, and the characters are unmemorable.   

Blue Demon himself is given very little to do for much of the movie as the cops spend the first act of the movie looking for the killer.  Things don’t exactly pick up once Blue Demon takes center stage.  The first big wrestling sequence is very ordinary too, and Blue Demon’s battles outside the squared circle with a variety of well-dressed henchmen are equally lackluster.  The weak femme fatale villainess doesn’t do it any favors either.  The finale where Blue Demon squares off against his evil imposter is decent, although it’s too little, too late. 

I know all these things can’t be winners, but I guess my expectations are set a bit higher when it comes to Blue Demon’s movies, especially one with Cardona at the helm.  Maybe the problem is that it is just a little too competent for its own good.  I mean, had there been cheesy effects, shots that randomly cut back and forth between night and day, and a silly plot, it might’ve been easier to handle.  As it is, The Night of Murder is more like a night of slumber. 

AKA:  Night of Death.  AKA:  Death Night.

THE FURY OF THE KARATE EXPERTS (1982) ** ½

The evil queen Queria returns to her kingdom and has a priest remind her what happened in the last El Santo movie, The Fist of Death.  Once she and the audience are brought up to speed, she proclaims, “And now I wish to share my happiness with all of you!” and promptly does a sexy Vegas showgirl dance number by a giant bonfire.  Since Queria is once again played by the buxom Grace Renat, her jiggly gyrations are an excellent way to kickstart any movie.   

El Santo and his bumbling sidekick are invited to the Jungle Girl and the Karate Prince’s wedding, so they parachute their way to the palace for the occasion.  Six minutes into the film and we have already seen an evil priestess doing a go-go number and a skydiving luchador.  This is what I call entertainment.

Unfortunately, after a promising start, The Fury of the Karate Experts kind of gets bogged down once an elderly professor and his frumpy daughter show up.  Luckily, Renat’s constant sexy dancing more than makes up for the sluggish passages (most of which revolve around characters boating through the Everglades).  The plot is also pretty thin this time around.  In fact, you’ll swear that the movie was comprised of outtakes and deleted scenes from The Fist of Death.  (The Jungle Girl’s origin flashback is shown once again in its entirety.)  We also get about a half a dozen subplots that are introduced in the last twenty minutes only to be immediately forgotten.  The ending is completely nonsensical too, but at the very least it’s virtually impossible to predict. 

Another issue:  For a movie called The Fury of the Karate Experts, there are very few karate experts on hand, and none of them seem especially furious.  

My favorite part was when Queria put El Santo under her spell and made him her slave.  Of course, if it was me wearing the silver mask, you wouldn’t have to put me under a spell if you looked like this:

Many of El Santo’s movies feature sequences that fluctuate from night to day in successive shots.  The Fury of the Karate Experts features what is probably the most egregious day-to-night-to-day scene of all time when a wild nighttime voodoo ceremony is intercut with scenes of people riding boats in broad daylight, with occasional cutaways to the moon to make things even more confusing.  Still, I can’t be too tough on the film when nearly half of the movie is devoted to Grace Renat doing her thing. 

AKA:  The Fury of the Karate Killers.  AKA:  The Fury of the Karate Masters. 

THE FIST OF DEATH (1982) *** ½

Queria (Grace Renat) is a sexy priestess who wears slinky white Vegas showgirl outfits.  During a healing ritual, she uses “The Star of Great Power” to cure crippled and blind villagers while her even sexier twin sister Kungyan (also Renat), who dresses like Elvira looks on.  The evil twin then taunts her sister by turning into hairy wrestlers, snakes, and even a tiger via jump cuts.  Kungyan then orders her badass henchman (Mexican wrestler Tinieblas) to steal the stone.  

Desperate, Queria turns to her idol, “The Oracle” for help.  The Oracle, it should be said, is nothing more than a C-3PO Halloween mask Krazy Glued to a funeral wreath.  (Kungyan has an Oracle of her own, which is a C-3PO Halloween mask spray-painted purple and glued to a mirror, so it looks like a bizarre version of the Magic Mirror from Snow White.)  Naturally, the Oracle tells her there is only one man who can help her, El Santo!

 

That’s right, El Santo doesn’t even show up for a good fifteen minutes, and it really doesn’t matter when so much of the movie is this entertaining.  He was nearing the twilight of his life, and he’s older, slower, and lumpier than we’re used to seeing.  That’s okay though because the supporting cast is colorful, exuberant, and a lot of fun to watch.  I haven’t even mentioned the subplot about the Karate Prince (Steve Cheng) marrying the sexy Jungle Girl (Sandra Duarte) or the evil queen’s plot to sacrifice her.

 

I don’t know where Grace Renat has been all my life, but she is incredible.  Yes, she is quite lovely as the good twin, but she is easily in the Hall of Fame when wearing her evil priestess outfit.  WOW!  She also does seductive dance numbers while wearing a spangly gold dress.  

 

Renat looks like a million bucks, but so does the movie.  It’s a lot more atmospheric and colorful than a lot of the later El Santo pictures.  That doesn’t mean the overall cheapness of the production isn’t endearing.  I mean, wait till you see the split-screen effect used to show both twin sisters on the screen at the same time.  You’re guaranteed to howl with laughter.

 

Somewhere around the halfway point, the breakneck pacing and rampant hilarity begin to wane.  It’s here where the film relies a little too heavily on padding in the form of scenes of El Santo walking through the jungle, taking leisurely boat rides, and going on scenic airplane trips.  These scenes still contain a few moments of laugh-out-loud cheese though (like when Santo tosses a henchman into the business end of a propellor).  Also, just when it looks like the film is about to peter out, Renat will do a crazed dance where she undulates wildly in front of the glowing stone, and everything is right with the world again.  

 

One could complain that The Fist of Death is low on action as Santo only gets one wrestling match, and a tag team affair at that.  The fights outside the ring are weak too, mostly due to his advanced age.  Many revolve around him simply deking out of the way of the opponent’s attacks.  Still, when the rest of the movie is this entertaining, it’s a minor quibble.

 

This was filmed in Florida back-to-back with Fury of the Karate Experts, which proved to be El Santo’s last starring vehicle.  

THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT (2021) * ½

After a botched exorcism of a little boy, the spirit of a demon goes into his older brother.  A few days later, he kills somebody while under the influence of the demon.  He’s arrested for murder and it’s up to the paranormal investigating team of Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) to prove he’s not guilty by reason of demonic possession.   

The Conjuring Cinematic Universe is spotty at best.  There have been a couple of good entries, but the pendulum of quality swings wildly into the realm of cinematic shit just as often.  I knew I was in trouble when I saw this one was directed by Michael Chaves, who also helmed one of the worst Conjuring spin-offs, The Curse of La Llorona.   

The opening exorcism scene is laughable.  From the visual rip-offs of the Friedkin classic, to the cheesy looking body contortions, it’s pretty pathetic in just about every regard.  It only gets worse from there. 

This is also one of those movies where everyone speaks in hushed tones, so you have to keep turning up the volume on your TV to hear what they’re saying.  Then… BAM!  There’s a loud noise or a sting on the soundtrack and it about blows out your goddamned speakers.  (Speaking of which, I’m glad I was able to see this streaming at home on HBO Max instead of venturing out into the theaters.) 

For all the predictable jump scares, the only jump cut that works is a (intentionally) humorous one in which another one of the Conjure-Verse’s characters gets namechecked.  Other than that, it’s pretty much a mess.  Ultimately, it’s nothing more than a bunch of assorted ideas that never gel, including moments that rip off Amityville 2, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4, and The Shining.  

It might’ve been somewhat reasonable at ninety minutes, but since it clocks in at nearly two hours, it’s kind of a chore to sit through.  (Again, thanks to being home, I could pause it and make myself a sandwich or something whenever things got dull.)  It doesn’t help when much of the movie is so repetitive as many scenes boil down to Wilson standing around with a look on his face like he has an ice cream headache while Farmiga wanders off on a psychic field trip through a crime scene. 

The Conjuring:  The Devil Made Me Do It is not out-and-out awful like Annabelle, or as relentlessly dull as La Llorona.  I guess the presence of Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga alone guaranteed it wouldn’t be a total washout.  Even though this one isn’t very good, I kind of like seeing them growing old together and solving supernatural mysteries and shit, even if they look like they’re pretty much going through the motions this time around. 

The Conjuring Universe Scorecard: 

The Conjuring:  ***

Annabelle Comes Home:  ***

Annabelle:  Creation:  ** ½ 

The Conjuring 2:  **

The Nun:  **

The Conjuring:  The Devil Made Me Do It:  * ½ 

The Curse of La Llorona:  *

Annabelle:  ½ *

THE AMUSEMENT PARK (2021) ****

“One day you will be old.” 

Doesn’t sound so ominous, does it?  That one sentence, spoken by the great Lincoln Maazel at the beginning of George A. Romero’s long-lost The Amusement Park echoes throughout the rest of the film.  It is both a reminder and a warning.  A cautionary tale for the young and a bitter mirror for the elderly. 

Romero made The Amusement Park in the early ‘70s as a PSA for the Lutheran Church to raise awareness about elder neglect and abuse.  I think they were expecting something a little more… churchy.  I guess they didn’t realize that when you hire the director of Night of the Living Dead to make a statement, you get more than you bargained for.  In some ways, it is his most haunting and terrifying film.  Free from the constraints of a simple narrative structure, Romero was able to create a waking nightmare scenario dripping with symbolism, irony, and cruelty.  The church shelved the finished product, citing it was too disturbing, and who could blame them, really?  

As a jaded horror fan, I must admit it is one of the most disturbing films I have ever seen. 

That isn’t hyperbole.  The way Romero was able to recreate the sensation of being trapped inside of a nightmare you can’t escape is rather incredible.  I can count on one hand the number of films that have left me in a state of shock, sickness, and fear.  It is a movie that will make you scream, first out of fear, then out of anger. 

I won’t spoil the specifics, but I’ll give you the broad strokes.  Maazel is a kindly old man who despite numerous warnings, goes into a seemingly harmless, even joyous amusement park.  He soon learns it is an ominous death trap where the elderly are ridiculed, marginalized, imprisoned, and left to die.  Each one of the attractions on the outset seem to offer fun, solace, and happiness, but they all have their own pitfalls, causing the elderly riders much inconvenience, shame, and regret. 

I loved the way Romero makes the viewer feel as if they are in the grip of a nightmare.  The use of oversized props, repeated sequences, and subliminal appearances of a shrouded figure heighten the already intense atmosphere.  Maazel, who is incredible, is not only our battered main character, but also an audience surrogate.  The closer you are to his age, the more you will feel his pain, exhaustion, and fear.  Heck, I’m in my early ‘40s and I was having panic attacks throughout this thing. 

Not only is this a wonderful piece of cinema archeology (I can’t imagine this working half as well if it didn’t look like a ‘70s home movie that escaped from Hell), but it is also a treat for fans of George A. Romero.  He is clearly having a field day sprinkling in all his visual trademarks, peppering the screen with his usual stock players (he even has a cameo himself), and drenching the film with his signature irony.   

This is an angry film.  It is a condemnation of elder neglect and abuse.  The wraparounds featuring Maazel as himself offer some hope, but not much.  The reason it works so well is that at its heart, The Amusement Park is a good old-fashioned Christian Scare Film.  Scare Films don’t work if the audience isn’t scared.  And brother, you ain’t never been scared like this! 

One of the scariest things about The Amusement Park?  It was filmed in 1973 and nothing has changed.  

CURSE OF THE UNDEAD (1959) **

Here’s a horror flick from the late ‘50s Universal cycle that’s sort of slipped through the cracks.  It’s not very good, but it earns points for being the first vampire western.  Despite the novelty, it feels less like an earnest effort to blend two different genres and more of a slapdash attempt to string together two unfinished scripts.  

Drake Robey (Michael Pate) is a gunfighter in black who moseys into a quiet western town.  Buffer (Bruce Gordon) is a greedy ranch owner in the midst of a land feud with a prominent family.  After Buffer has the patriarch shot down, his daughter (Kathleen Crowley) hires Robey to get revenge.  Only the town preacher (Eric Fleming) suspects Drake is the one responsible for the rash of murders that have left the victims with two puncture wounds on their neck.

The western sequences are rote and uninspired; full of stock characters and standard issue cliches.  In fact, if it wasn’t for the vampire angle, Curse of the Undead would’ve been completely forgettable.  The problem is the horror elements aren’t all that great either.  The long flashback explaining the vampire’s origin is hokey and weak too.  The Old West variations on the usual vampire shenanigans are OK, I guess.  One thing is for sure, genre buffs will have fun spotting how and when the film rips off Dracula.  Ultimately, there aren’t nearly enough of these moments sprinkled about to make it worthwhile.  Still, it might be worth a look, if only as a curio.  

There are a few good ideas here.  The sequence where the preacher is stalked by the vampire starts off well.  (He can only see the vampire’s shadow and hear his footprints.)  It’s just that the execution is clunky.  I did like the Invisible Man-style special effects during the film’s final minutes though.

It also doesn’t help that the cast is bland from top to bottom.  Fleming makes for a square (I know he’s a preacher and all, but still), and Pate is no Bela Lugosi.  I’m sure you probably already knew that, but he’s not convincing as a hardened gunslinger either.  Gordon kind of looks and acts like Rodney Dangerfield when scared, which is kind of funny though.

Director Edward Dein later went on to make the much better The Leech Woman.

AKA:  Mark of the West.

ARRIVAL (2016) ****

Sometimes it’s the notes you don’t hit that matter the most.  We’ve seen what happens in Arrival many times before, dating way back to the ‘50s.  Aliens come to Earth trying to communicate with mankind.  Almost immediately, the world is thrust to the brink of war, if only because one slight misunderstanding could unleash an unknown form of extraterrestrial fury.  

Arrival is a much more intimate, thoughtful, and thought-provoking film than many of its ilk.  Instead of focusing on the global implications of an alien invasion, we focus (mostly) on one woman and her task to understand the alien’s language.  She is a linguistics professor who is assigned to meet the aliens firsthand and decipher their cryptic language, which looks like rings a coffee cup would leave behind on an end table.  

Amy Adams gives a great performance as the heroine.  Many scenes are nothing more than her and octopus-like monsters that spurt ink and run around like that sculpture Catherine O’Hara made in Beetlejuice.  Somehow, she’s able to not only pull it off, but make you feel something for both her and the aliens.  You see, it’s up to her to make head or tails of the alien’s symbols and decide whether or not their intentions are friendly.  

It’s slow going too.  The process, I mean, not the movie.  Director Denis Villeneuve takes his time to allow Adams and the aliens to build trust and eventually, an understanding.  Yes, the movie does have the usual subplots that are normally found in the genre.  There’s the typical stuff involving the Russians and Chinese potentially plotting war against the aliens, but it feels more like he’s paying lip service to the genre demands than caving into them.  This is a movie more interested in establishing a line of communication with other worlds than starting wars with them.  It’s closer to Close Encounters of the Third Kind than Alien, minus all the stuff with Richard Dreyfus playing in his mashed potatoes.   

I wouldn’t dream of revealing just how Adams… uh… arrives at her conclusion regarding the aliens’ intentions.  That’s kind of what makes it memorable.  Sure, it sort of owes a debt to Contact, another movie in which an Oscar winner talked to aliens, but it works just as well, if not better here. 

In short, Arrival is one of the best alien movies I’ve seen in a long time.  It’s further proof that Villeneuve is the real deal.  I can’t wait to see what he does with Dune.

THE MANHANDLERS (1974) ** ½

When directionless Katie (Cara Burgess) inherits the family business from her deceased uncle, she thinks it’s the perfect opportunity to show that she can make something of herself.  Understandably, she is mortified to learn the family business is a shady massage parlor.  She eventually gets over it though, and with the help of her two gal pals (Judy Brown and Rosalind Miles), she turns the business legitimate.  Once the Mob learns Katie and her crew are turning a profit, they send some hoodlums to collect protection money from the girls.  Problems arise when one of the mobsters falls in love with Katie. 

I’m a sucker for movies where the main character inherits a sexy business.  As far as the subgenre goes, The Manhandlers isn’t a particularly stellar example, but it’s innocuous fun for fans of lighthearted drive-in exploitation fare.  Did I wish there were a few more nudity-laden set pieces?  Sure.  However, the acting is surprisingly solid, the pacing is relatively swift, and the storyline is engaging for the most part. 

Director Lee (Angel Unchained) Madden does a competent job when it comes to the various sex, shower, massage, and body painting sequences.  While the rest of the picture falls short of being a classic, it remains a sturdy vehicle for its leading ladies.  All three get at least one major sex and/or nude scene, which at the very least, makes it worth the price of admission.  Burgess is likeable in the lead, and it’s a shame she only made a handful of films because she equips herself quite nicely.  Likewise, Miles proves to be a winning comedienne, and her performance is proof she could’ve had a bigger career outside of exploitation films.  Fans of The Big Doll House’s Judy Brown will enjoy having another opportunity to see her in the buff too. 

AKA:  Soft Touch.

SLEDGE HAMMER (1983) **

Sledge Hammer is the no-budget shot-on-video horror movie that launched the careers of legendary DTV director David A. Prior and his leading man brother, Ted.  Together, they would go on to make the immortal classic, Deadly Prey.  However, there are only faint glimmers of the promise to come in this one.   

A group of friends decide to hang out and party in a remote farmhouse where some grisly sledgehammer murders took place ten years before.  It doesn’t take long before the hammer-swinging killer (who wears a cheap dime store Halloween mask) returns to his old stomping grounds.  Naturally, he’s a little cheesed off to find these morons on his property, and he sets out to hammer out a few details, if you catch my drift.   

Sledge Hammer is far from the worst SOV horror flick I’ve seen.  The problem is that Prior is a big fan of ridiculously long establishing shots and unending slow-motion sequences.  (One of which looks like it could’ve been a regional commercial for Massingill feminine products.)  It’s obvious that they are only there to help stretch the running time to something approximating an actual motion picture, but they slowly wear out their welcome.  Not to mention the long scenes of the cast drinking it up, goofing off, and frolicking about.  Or the long musical interludes of Ted noodling endlessly on his guitar.  Or the long-ass food fights, repeated scenes, and the end credits that are filled with fake names to further stretch things out.  If they cut out the repeated sequences and sped up the slow-motion stuff, it might’ve only been an hour, but it probably would’ve been a fun hour.  At eighty-five minutes, it is sometimes a chore to get through.  

The good news is that there are enough choice moments here to keep watching.  When the sledgehammer murders eventually do occur, they aren’t bad as the head bashing effects are by far the best thing this cheesefest has going for it.  Prior was smart enough to find a killer who had a signature weapon with a little pizzazz.  Most of these movies have axe-wielding killers.  Sledgehammers are just different enough from a lot of other implements seen in similar horror flicks to make this one stand out from the rest of the pack.     

If your tolerance for this sort of thing is low, stay far away.  I myself run hot and cold on SOV horror flicks.  It’s certainly spotty, that’s for sure.  (It’s not nearly as effective once it begins introducing potentially supernatural elements.  It’s much better when it's delivering on the old school stalking and killing.)  However, there are plenty of unintentional laughs to be had (like the cheesy sex scene) to make it worth a look as a curio.

AKA:  Sledgehammer.

ARMY OF THE DEAD (2021) ** ½

Zack Snyder returns to the zombie genre after a seventeen-year absence with the fitfully amusing (and just as fitfully uneven) Army of the Dead. 

A zombie virus runs rampant through Las Vegas.  The government walls in the city to contain the outbreak, but naturally, you just can’t have all that Vegas money sitting in the casinos like that.  So, Dave Bautista and his team of thieves sneak back into town to steal some loot and hopefully, avoid becoming zombie grub.   

The zombies are divided into two categories:  “Shamblers” and “Alphas”.  The Shamblers are just your garden variety gut munchers, however, it’s the Alphas you have to watch out for.  They are super-fast and super-strong and can communicate with the zombie leader, Zeus (Richard Cetrone).  Eventually, our heroes manage to piss Zeus off, and he declares open season on the living. 

The best moments in Army of the Dead find Snyder leaning into his tendencies of glorious excess.  The opening sequence features a great needle drop on a choice Richard Cheese song (shades of his Dawn of the Dead remake) as zombie showgirls and undead Elvis impersonators wreak havoc on The Strip.  Snyder also gleefully cribs from everything from An American Werewolf in London to Escape from New York to Apocalypse Now to Aliens.  Heck, even the heist set inside a walled-up zombie city was already done in Train to Busan Presents Peninsula.  (Also, Cetrone is basically playing a slight variation on his role as “Big Daddy Mars” in John Carpenter’s wrongly neglected Ghosts of Mars.)  These little nods to other (better) movies are fun, although they don’t add up to a whole lot in the end. 

I mean Snyder even rips his own self off, which is kind of funny.  Two of the main zombies are seen wearing capes and crowns that make them look like zombified versions of Superman and Wonder Woman.  There’s even a scene where one dons a helmet that makes him look like Gerard Butler in 300!  He also rips off the zombie baby idea from Dawn of the Dead.  

I’m sure Snyder had fun making a patchwork pastiche after so many self-important superhero movies.  Admittedly, parts of this really work.  However, at over two and a half hours, it’s just way too long for its own good.  This could’ve easily been pared down to under two hours, but as is the case with most Netflix Originals, the filmmakers are allowed a little bit too much leeway to do whatever the hell they want.  I think a director should have artistic freedom and all but judging from this and The Snyder Cut of Justice League, it’s apparent that Snyder just doesn’t know when to quit. 

Then again, any movie that features a zombie tiger is kind of critic-proof, if you ask me.  

Bautista is OK in the lead, but it’s Laura Arnezeder who gets the best line when she says, “Take another step and I’ll blow her head off.  Or… more of it off.” 

THE PINK BIKINI GANG 3: THE BLACK COBRAS COUNTERATTACK (2014) ** ½

This is the third and as of this writing, final entry in the Pink Bikini Gang series.  This time out, the dreaded Black Cobras are sprung from prison to help steal a powerful weapon that can threaten the world.  It’s then up to everyone’s favorite bikini-clad gang of lascivious Latinas to bring them down.   

The Pink Bikini Gang 3:  The Black Cobras Counterattack features even more overly cheeky shots of the ladies in action.  (If you catch my drift.)  As a bonus, we also get long scenes of them changing into their bikinis.  In fact, these sequences go on so long that some of the ladies just sort of hang around in the background with nothing to do while they wait for their teammates to undress.

In short, this is far and away the best film of the trilogy.   

As in the second film in the series, The Pink Bikini Gang vs. the Black Cobras, this one features plenty of training scenes of the Pink Bikini Gang lifting weights under the guidance of a Mexican wrestler.  This time out, instead of Hurricane Ramirez, it’s some guy in a clown outfit that makes him look like the love child between El Santo and Ronald McDonald.  I kind of wish there was more Lucha Libre action, but oh well.

The good news is that the film feels more cinematic than the other movies, which looked like they were made in someone’s backyard.  Sure, there are still plenty of scenes that look like that in this one (like the long scenes where the ladies hang around the production company’s editing bay which also doubles for their headquarters), but this is a marked improvement in just about every way.  In fact, it’s downright almost good.

That’s mostly because the filmmakers found a lot more reasons to feature the Pink Bikini Gang jiggling, dancing, lounging, and cavorting around in their pink bikinis.  It also helps that it looks like their bikinis might’ve shrunk in between Parts 1 and 3 as there’s even more of the ladies’ various assets that manage to wiggle their way out of their already skimpy garments.  Not to be outdone, the Black Cobras have their fair share of scenes where they hold slumber parties, hang out, and dance around in their skimpy black bikinis too.  

All this concludes with a solid catfight between the two scantily clad factions.  I don’t want to spoil anything, but the ending is kind of surprising as it ends on a cliffhanger.  So far as I can tell, there isn’t a part 4 (yet).  Hopefully someday all the plot threads (and G-strings) will be wrapped up in a satisfying manner.  Till then, we’ll just have to be content with the fact that The Pink Bikini Gang 3:  The Black Cobras Counterattack is the pinkest, most bikiniest Pink Bikini Gang movie of them all.

SHADOW IN THE CLOUD (2021) *** ½

A pilot named Maude (Chloe Grace Moretz) boards an Allied plane during WWII carrying a top-secret package.  Right away, she is bombarded by the rampant sexism from the flight crew.  As the plane heads to its destination, she gets the suspicion they are not alone.  Eventually, Maude comes to realize there is a gremlin aboard the plane with the intention of sabotaging the flight.  Naturally, none of the men believe her until it’s too late, and it’s up to her to save the day and protect her precious cargo. 

Shadow in the Cloud owes a heavy debt to the Bugs Bunny cartoon “Falling Hare”, Gremlins, and the Twilight Zone episode, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”.  There’s also a big chunk that kind of plays like a dramatized radio play as Moretz is locked inside of a machine gun turret for much of the picture and listens via headset to everything that’s happening aboard the plane.  Even though the film is largely a hodgepodge, it is nevertheless an effective one.  Sometimes, it’s a little silly.  Sometimes, it’s a little dumb.  However, Moretz’s performance grounds the ludicrous premise, and her character's tenacity will have you rooting for her throughout. 

I really liked the propaganda cartoon that precedes the main feature that warns soldiers about gremlins.  I have to wonder if this had been a Warner Brothers movie if they would’ve just used “Falling Hare” instead.  No matter, as it’s pretty cool either way.  One minor quibble is that the electronic score seems really out of place in a film set in the ‘40s.  Fortunately, it’s used rather sparingly.   

Shadow in the Cloud runs a lean eighty-three minutes.  Director Roseanne Liang gets a lot of mileage out of the claustrophobic setting and milks the premise for all its worth.  While some of the set pieces are ridiculous, they feel like a breath of fresh air coming on the heels of such a taut, sparse, and minimalistic first half.  Even when things threaten to spin out of control, Liang still manages to keep ‘em flying.

THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD (2021) **

It’s been a while since we had an Angelina Jolie action vehicle.  Those Who Wish Me Dead isn’t exactly a good one, but it’s a reminder of what we could’ve been getting in lieu of all those Maleficent and Kung Fu Panda movies over the years.  

Angie stars as a “smoke jumper”, which is just a silly way of saying she’s a skydiving firefighter.  Since Something Bad Happened in her past, she is now reduced to being stationed all by her lonesome in a fire tower in the middle of the forest.  She finds a kid (Finn Little) whose father was murdered by some hitmen (Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult) and it’s up to her to protect him at all costs.  The killers set a forest fire to cover their tracks, but we all know Angie has what it takes to put out the fire and take down the bad guys.   

The worst thing about the movie is simultaneously the most endearing.  It just tries too hard to make Jolie this tough, capable action heroine with emotional baggage who participates in big action scenes, but at all times, she just looks like a goddamn movie star.  Her Burnout on the Edge scenes are funny too.  We learn the answer to “Just How Badass is She?” early on when she stands up in the back of a speeding pick-up truck and pulls her parachute, sending her flying down the highway in search of an adrenaline rush.  Never mind the fact that her hair and make-up suggest she should be playing in a romantic comedy or something.   

Other than that, it’s pretty standard stuff.  The only real difference is that we have a firefighter heroine instead of what ordinarily would’ve been a traditional cop heroine.  It was directed by Taylor (Hell or High Water) Sheridan, and features a great supporting cast that includes Jon Bernthal, Jake Weber, and uh… Tyler Perry as the man who sanctioned the hit.  Jolie isn’t bad, it’s just that her repartee with the kid is kind of grating.

Those Who Wish Me Dead ultimately suffers from having way too many side characters that get in the way of the main story.  Maybe the filmmakers realized Jolie and the kid had no chemistry, so they kept cutting away to the deputy and his pregnant wife and the subplot about the two hitmen.  There are also one or two goofy touches, but it’s not nearly enough to make it worthwhile.  I mean what can you say about a movie that has Angelina Jolie trying to avoid being struck by lightning not once, but TWICE!?!

Also, for a firefighter, she spends most of the movie running away from the fire!  Firefighter?  More like a fireAVOIDER, amirite?

THE PINK BIKINI GANG (2013) **

You might remember me reviewing The Pink Bikini Gang vs. the Black Cobras a while back.  I didn’t have a really good idea what was happening in that one because A) I don’t speak Spanish and B) I had never seen the first Pink Bikini Gang movie, appropriately titled The Pink Bikini Gang.  Well, I finally checked it out, and I’m only slightly less confused as before.  

 

Some bad guys are trying to sell a top-secret missile-launching device that looks like an Amazon Kindle in a pink protective slipcase.  Their meeting is interrupted by a team of gun-toting dudes in black sunglasses who kill everyone and steal the machine.  When all attempts to retrieve the device fails, the government sends in a team of bikini clad babes to use their feminine wiles to stop the bad guys and save the world.  

 

The Pink Bikini Gang looks even cheaper than its sequel.  In fact, sometimes, you can see crew members and/or confused bystanders wandering into the shots.  It gets off to a strong start as the opening credits sequence features many jiggling butts.  However, it bogs down almost immediately as it’s frontloaded with a lot of long, dull dialogue scenes.

 

The cast is a bit of a mixed bag as anyone who doesn’t wear a bikini doesn’t make much of an impression.  I could have done without the girls’ stereotypically gay boss, who kind of acts like a Mexican version of Bosley from Charlie’s Angels.  The bad guys mostly look like ex-professional wrestlers (you can tell by their scarred foreheads), although they aren’t really all that memorable.  I did like the one villain whose Coke bottle glasses made him look like a cross between Danny Trejo and Burgess Meredith from the “Time Enough at Last” episode of The Twilight Zone.  

 

Like the sequel, the main draw here is the scenes of scantily clad bikini babes.  While that flick had plenty of scenes of the titular ladies walking slowly down hallways while brandishing firearms, this one is curiously low on bikini-girls-walking-down-hallways thrills.  However, the scene where they unsuccessfully try to holster their guns and resort to shoving them down the backside of their bikini bottoms is almost worth the price of admission.

 

The sequel was wise to have two sets of women in bikinis going toe to toe to help keep your interest.  This one has no such luxuries.  That’s right, the villains this time around are just a bunch of boring dudes, Because of that, The Pink Bikini Gang definitely doesn’t have the same level of sex appeal as the sequel.  That said, there are some fun moments here, like when our heroines swim in an Olympic-sized pool, beat up ugly dudes who hit on them in bars, put on impromptu bikini fashion shows, and naturally, perform seductive dance routines.  I think my favorite moment came when they use poison lipstick to drug the bad guys with tainted kisses.

 

All this makes for a fitfully amusing time.  Too bad that when it should be over, it continues on for another (bikini girl-less) ten minutes.  I’ll still give it Two Stars just because I couldn’t understand most of the plot.  (Those dialogue scenes certainly drag it down.)  Although it’s not up to the standards of the second one, when the girls are front and center, The Pink Bikini Gang is kinda fun.

THE PLAYBIRDS (1978) ** ½

A murderer is going around London strangling models who have appeared in a men’s magazine called Playbirds.  Two stymied Scotland Yard detectives pound the pavement but are unable to come up with any leads.  Desperate for a break in the case, they ask a sexy, but capable traffic cop (Mary Millington) to go undercover as the magazine’s next centerfold to hopefully lure and trap the killer.   

The Playbirds is one of those movies that have too many moving parts to quite work as a cohesive whole.  In addition to the police procedural plotline, we have the giallo-esque murder sequences (featuring a killer in black gloves), and faux-Playboy modeling shoots (including a Satanic orgy featuring a guy in a werewolf mask).  These set pieces work individually, but the final product feels a bit incongruous and uneven.  The stuff involving the Hugh Hefner wannabe’s woes at the racetrack are especially tiresome (the horse race footage provides the film with ample padding), and the downbeat ending doesn’t really fit the tone of the rest of the film.   

Fortunately, The Playbirds features one of my favorite exploitation movie tropes:  The sexy cop who goes undercover to nab a killer.  I particularly liked the scene where Millington had to “audition” in front of her co-workers to prove she had what it took to be a Playbirds centerfold.  (They also audition other lady cops, you know, just because.)  Millington has a winning screen presence, and her affable good cheer makes these swinging sexploitation sequences memorable.  It’s just a shame that many of the detective scenes are so plodding.  I did like the killer’s gimmick though.  (He numbers his victims with lipstick on their forehead.)   

Bottom Line:  When the film gets bogged down with the various subplots, it’s kind of a drag, but when it’s focused on the T & A (the lesbian scene is particularly saucy), The Playbirds soars. 

AKA:  The Playbird Murders.  AKA:  Secrets of a Playgirl.