POPSTAR PRIVATE EYE (2007) * ½

Sexina (Lauren D’Avella) is the hottest popstar on the planet.  Little do her legions of fans know, she also moonlights as a leather-clad private eye.  When a scientist (Cash Tilton) is kidnapped, Sexina trades her Britney Spears-inspired attire for a biker chick get-up and investigates.  The trail soon leads to a mysterious music mogul (Adam West) with plans for world domination.  

Popstar Private Eye tries to spoof various genres all at once, but it just has too many irons in the fire to make for a truly funny send-up.  Things start off promising enough with a James Bond-inspired credits sequence, complete with a theme song performed by none other than Davy Jones of The Monkees.  Unfortunately, it all goes downhill from there.  Writer/director Erik Sharkey takes obvious jabs at the shallowness of the record industry, and yet the jokes are all so toothless that none of the gags land.  

The premise might’ve worked with some tried-and-true exploitation elements (namely sex and violence), but the flick is way too chaste to be much fun.  With the editing of the occasional obscenity here and a crude sexual reference there, it probably would look right at home on The Disney Channel.  There’s also an extraneous subplot involving Sexina’s number-one fan (Kellie Fernald) trying to win a contest so she can perform a concert for her school that is painfully clunky, and just feels like filler.  

D'Avella does what she can with the weak material.  She looks great in a variety of sexy outfits, and she holds your attention for the most part, even when the jokes are floundering.  West seems like he’s having fun, although his performance is more of a voiceover as the villain is one of those Dr. Claw-type deals.  He only pops up in the flesh in the final minutes of the film, and while his appearance is amusing (he has a soul patch), it’s ultimately too little, too late.  Despite the efforts of D’Avella and West, Popstar Private Eye never really pops.

AKA:  Sexina.  AKA:  Sexina:  Popstar P.I.

AMITYVILLE EXORCISM (2017) **

A contractor snaps and kills his entire family with a hammer.  He claims he was possessed by a demon after doing work in “that house”.  Before his execution, he confesses to a priest that he salvaged some lumber from “that house” and used it for his work.  He now fears the lumber is haunted and the family who lives in the house he just renovated is in danger.  

As someone who has sat through his share of fake Amityville movies, I must say that Amityville Exorcism is no dumber than many of the legitimate sequels in the official Amityville Horror franchise.  I mean we’ve already had haunted clocks, lamps, and dollhouses in that series.  Cursed scraps of lumber aren’t that much of a stretch.  

Amityville Exorcism was directed by the prolific no-budget wonder Mark Polonia.  If you’re familiar with Polonia’s filmography, you might already know what (not) to expect.  Heck, this isn’t even his first rodeo when it comes to fake Amityville movies, having already made Amityville Death House and Amityville Island (which has got to be the worst fake Amityville flick I’ve seen).  He also has Amityville in Space in production, which, of course, I will see, just because it’s called Amityville in Space.

To his credit, Polonia crams a lot of stuff into the seventy-seven-minute running time.  In addition to the alcoholic father subplot (shades of Amityville 2:  The Possession), there’s also a red specter that looks like the Masque of Red Death, killer dolls, a monster in the swimming pool, irritating POV shots of the ghost, possessions, photoshoots, a swarm of terrible looking CGI flies, a zombie attack, and of course, an exorcism.  All this isn’t very good, but at least it’s not dull, which is usually the kiss of death for these kinds of things.  I just wish the gore was better.  (There’s a scene where a robber gets disemboweled, and his guts look like a balloon animal.)  Either that, or there were some unintentional laughs to be had.  Other than that, Amityville Exorcism is an OK no-budget horror flick.  

FATAL CONFLICT (2000) *

The stars of Halloween 2, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, and Hellraiser 7 were brought together for this muddled, joyless, and dull mix of Sci-Fi, action, and Women in Prison cliches.    

Leo Rossi and Jennifer Rubin are a pair of incestuous brother and sister space age criminals who take control of a prison ship and intend to crash it into Los Angeles.  Kari Wuhrer is a disgraced pilot who is given a Snake Plissken-type deal to infiltrate the prison and take them out.  Along the way, she gets help from the imprisoned captain (Miles O’Keeffe) to complete her mission.

You would think that any movie that begins with scenes of girls mining space ore while wearing skimpy t-shirts and panties would be promising.  However, the editing is piss-poor, and the way they try to explain what’s going on during the opening credits is goofy and confusing.  Also, it looks like they stole footage from another movie and awkwardly spliced it into the proceedings to help pad out the plot.  Add to that, there’s weird narration, random cutaways to crappy special effects, and repeated shots, which creates even more confusion.   

The middle section of the film is cheap, but at least it’s semi-competently put together.  The ending isn’t quite as crassly thrown together, but it’s still crappy.  The special effects look like they came from a different flick, the final scenes between Wuhrer and O’Keeffe are played out via voiceover exchanges set against a starfield.  It's enough to make you theorize that the production company ran out of money somewhere along the way and just had to cobble what they had together in order to release it.  Either that, or they ran out of time and never got around the filming the ending (or the bulk of the beginning), so they slapped some half-assed ADR on the end and called it a day.  Either way, it’s the pits.

Director Lloyd A. (Chained Heat 2) Simandl is no stranger to the Women in Prison subgenre.  Unfortunately, this time around he forgot to sleaze it up.  I mean if you’re going to make a Women in Prison movie (even one set in space), you’ve got to toss the requisite amount of T & A in there.  As it is, it’s all rather tame, not to mention boring.  (The scenes of the scantily clad prisoners breaking rocks get monotonous.)  Some amusement can be had from the cheapjack production values and inconsistent effects (this is one of those movies that takes place in the future, but people still listen to CD players), but for the most part, it’s a slog.

Once Wuhrer stows away on board the ship, things pivot into a galactic Die Hard clone.  This portion of the film is a slight improvement over the Women in Prison-inspired scenes, but not much.  Although Wuhrer looks good shooting big guns like a lady Rambo, her character is paper thin, and her “tough” dialogue is pithy.  Rossi and Rubin get shortchanged as the villains too.  Making them have the hots for one another was a good idea, but the movie is too chickenshit to properly exploit it.  O’Keeffe gives the best performance of the film, but his efforts are ultimately all for naught.  

In short, Fatal Conflict deserves to be lost in space.  

AKA:  The Prey.  

SANTO: THE LEGEND OF THE MAN IN THE SILVER MASK (1993) **

A decade after the Son of Santo starred alongside his old man in Chanoc and the Son of Santo vs. the Killer Vampires, he (briefly) played his father in this oddball movie.  Despite the title, it isn’t a biopic.  It’s more of a mix of Son of Santo solo picture and a children’s film, with a heavy concentration of schmaltz on the side.  There are also touches of the old school El Santo movies here and there, but they are unfortunately few and far between.  

Benito (Erik Sanchez) is a little boy who idolizes El Santo.  He goes to see all his movies and even wears his signature silver mask to school.  When El Santo dies of a heart attack, the Son of Santo wants to distance himself from his father’s legacy and make a name for himself on his own accord.  His old pal Carlitos (Carlos Suarez, El Santo’s sidekick in the later years) tries to make him understand the importance of carrying on the family tradition, but he wants no part of it.  Meanwhile, Benito’s single father struggles to make ends meet and becomes indebted to a local gangster.  Eventually, little Benito helps the Son of Santo embrace his father’s legacy, and the luchador in turn helps saves Benito’s dad from the bad guys.

Santo:  The Legend of the Man in the Silver Mask is kind of sweet (in spots at least), but it isn’t a patch on the old El Santo movies.  I’m not sure if it was meant as a reboot or if it was just Son of Santo paying tribute to his old man.  Either way, it almost works, but not quite.  

The film tries to straddle the line between the serious treatment of Benito’s story with the silliness of the old El Santo flicks.  It’s not a bad idea, but the kiddie stuff is pretty rough going.  I could’ve especially done without the scene where the tyke mopes about while an excruciating sappy love song plays on the soundtrack.

I did like the scenes involving Son of Santo slowly embracing his father’s shadow.  There’s a great moment when Carlito takes him into El Santo’s secret lair filled with sportscars and training equipment.  He then opens up a box containing the original El Santo mask that glows and is surrounded by dry ice fog.  

The climax is great too.  It’s here where the Son of Santo (FINALLY) puts on his father’s mask and becomes a superhero.  This new costume kind of makes his look like Space Ghost a little, and he also uses bracelets that deflect bullets like Wonder Woman and double as boomerangs.  The best part though is that Santo’s car is now equipped with lasers that can blow shit up!  This sequence is legitimately cool.  I just wish it didn’t take forever to get to it.  We also get three wrestling matches too, which aren’t bad, although director Gilberto de Anda has a tendency to over-rely on slow-motion.  

I really had no problem with the idea of the Son of Santo picking up the mantle from his father and starring in a bunch of movies.  Although a bit long-winded, this could’ve served as a nice jumping off point for more Santo adventures.  Sadly, the Son of Santo never had anywhere near the movie career his father had.  In fact, it took the Son of Santo eight years before he starred in his next film, Santo:  Infraterrestre.  

KEKKO KAMEN: SURPRISE (2004) ** ½

Kekko Kamen:  Surprise is the fourth and final entry in the early ‘00s reboot of Go Nagai’s naked crimefighter series.  This one revolves around a sexy secret agent who goes undercover at a music school to stop the nefarious teachers from wreaking havoc on the students.  Naturally, she isn’t up to the task, and Kekko Kamen must step in to save the day.  

As you might expect, the stuff that doesn’t involve Kekko Kamen crimefighting in the nude is a bit of a mixed bag.  I’m not sure why the filmmakers relied on the secondary heroine, as Kekko is more than capable of carrying the movie on her own.  At least the sexy secret agent gets one memorable scene where she teaches the students how to make music from farts.  

Even when Kekko Kamen is front and center, it’s still a bit uneven.  The various nude fight scenes aren’t much to write home about and are often poorly choreographed and/or way too brief to make much of an impact.  However, I did like the scene where she lured out the pervert professors by doing a sexy dance number from behind a curtain.  Her impromptu rock n’ roll version of the Kekko Kamen theme song during the finale is also quite memorable.  

There are also occasional highlights during the long, Kekko-less stretches, and the professors themselves are kind of amusing in small doses.  The bald headmaster is kind of standard issue as he has a metal claw and plays his students like instruments.  His assistant is pretty funny though.  He dresses up like Mozart and has students beaten whenever they chew gum in class.  The funniest part comes when he farts Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in the middle of the cafeteria.  You don’t see (or hear) that every day.  

The rest of the humor is kind of weak though.  The constant use of the themes from Jaws and Mission:  Impossible wear out their welcome rather fast.  I know the movie takes place in a music school, but the joke ultimately falls flat (no pun intended).

AKA:  Mask of Kekko:  Surprise.  

VIXENS OF BANDALERO (1993) *

The sexy O’Shea sisters are reunited after their ailing father has a heart attack.  When he passes away, he leaves his failing ranch to the trio.  The sisters are shocked to learn the bank is about to foreclose on their home, so they embark on a treasure hunt to get the funds necessary to save their family homestead.  

It seems like that kind of a set-up would make for a fairly straightforward movie.  However, nothing about Vixens of Bandalero is straightforward.  The incoherent storytelling and slapdash editing make me think this might’ve been an abandoned or unfinished flick that was cobbled together and then (barely) released.  

It begins with one of the sisters at a typewriter telling the story before bouncing around to various random shit (including a babe relaxing in a hot tub) before the plot even begins.  Once she begins relating the tale, there are other sequences that don’t make a lick of sense (including a deathbed flashback sequence) that further clutter up the narrative.  Whenever things get dull (which is often), director Manny Esquivel tosses in a lot of gratuitous shots of the ladies scuba diving, which further bogs things down.  Then, just when you think it’s over, it continues on senselessly for another ten excruciating minutes.

The thing that prevents Vixens of Bandalero from being totally worthless is the fact that whenever the trio of sisters are together, the male characters will often fantasize about them dancing sexy, stripping down, or getting it on right in the middle of a scene.  Sometimes it happens during an important business meeting.  Other times, it happens during a Sergio Leone-style Wild West shootout.  

I wanted to do a tribute to Gilbert Gottfried, the host of one of my favorite shows of all time, USA Up All Night, so I watched an episode featuring Vixens of Bandalero.  Because of that, the version of the movie I saw was conspicuously absent of nudity.  I don’t know if the nude scenes would’ve changed the rating much (although there are plenty of scenes of the sexy sisters in bikinis and lingerie), but this is one of the most confounding, sloppy, and just play bad late-night flicks I’ve seen in a long time.  Gilbert’s host segments are pretty basic (he just reads viewer mail), but they at least made me nostalgic for the good old days when Up All Night ruled the late-night airwaves.  RIP Gilbert.  

AKA:  Vixens of Bandelero.  

DAMAGED GOODS (1964) **

Jim (Mory Schoolhouse) is going steady with his best gal Judy (Charlotte Stewart).  They even have plans to marry, that is if the new girl in town Kathy (Dolores Faith from such Mystery Science Theater fare as The Phantom Planet and The Human Duplicators) can stop making passes at Jim.  Naturally, Judy is a “nice” girl, which can be frustrating for a guy like Jim.  When Jim and his pals go to the sleazy part of town, he unknowingly picks up a case of syphilis from a prostitute.  Once Judy learns about his trip, she promptly dumps him, and Jim naturally hooks up with Kathy.  Jim eventually finds a sore on his pecker and goes to the doctor, who shows him a filmstrip about V.D.

Damaged Goods exists somewhere in the middle ground between the roadshow sex scare films of the ‘30s and the After School Specials of the ‘80s.  Unfortunately, for a movie about the perils of V.D., it’s much too chaste and straightlaced to be any fun.  (The scene at the strip club has promise, but it cuts away from the dancer just as she’s about to take off her top.)  At least the old scare propaganda was good for an unintentional laugh or two.  This is about as square and corny as you can get.  

The V.D. filmstrip even comes up a bit short.  Other than the unfortunate sight of a syphilis-ridden infant, there isn’t much here that would scare anyone straight.  The most memorable part is the awesome instrumental surf rock theme song by none other than The Ventures!?!  I don’t know how they got involved with this mess, but at least their involvement takes some of the sting out of the otherwise boring dialogue scenes.  (Maybe they were just doing their part to warn their audience about the dangers of syphilis.)  

Jim’s doctor gets the best line of the movie when he proclaims, “We’re not here to pass moral judgment… we’re here to stamp out V.D.!”

AKA:  V.D.  AKA:  The Secret.

THE GOLDEN EYE (1948) ** ½

The owner of the titular gold mine is marked for murder.  Frantic, he turns to ace detective Charlie Chan (Roland Winters, in his fourth of six appearances as Chan) for help.  Chan then goes undercover as a vacationer at a dude ranch to investigate.  Once there, he happens upon his colleague Lt. Mike (Tim Ryan), who also is looking into some of the shady dealings at the mine.  They decide to pool their resources and snuff out the would-be assassin.  

We were nearing the end of the line for the Charlie Chan series when The Golden Eye was released.  While it lacks the panache of the early entries, it’s still pretty good for the forty-sixth part of a franchise.  Directed by William “One Shot” Beaudine in his usual economic manner, the film has the benefit of a memorable locale.  The wild west setting and the scenes in the gold mine don’t exactly save the day, but at least they give it a different flavor than many of the Chan mysteries.  

As per usual with these late-era Chan films, Mantan Moreland steals the show as Chan’s faithful valet, Birmingham Brown.  The highlight comes when he tries to pack way too many clothes into a suitcase.  He also figures into the finale where he breaks the fourth wall.  This sequence is kind of odd, but it’s sort of welcome after so many drawing room deduction scenes that typically end a movie like this.  

While Moreland gets about as many laughs as you might expect, Ryan goes a tad overboard during the scenes where he goes undercover and pretends to be a stumbling alky.  His antics aren’t very funny, and he runs his shtick into the ground almost immediately.  At least Winters anchors the film with his commanding presence and peppers the proceedings with plenty of fortune cookie wisdom like, “Information sometimes very high-grade ore.”

AKA:  Charlie Chan in Texas.  AKA:  Charlie Chan in the Golden Eye.  

BABY DRIVER (2017) *** ½

Writer/director Edgar Wright tries his hand at the crime genre with the enormously entertaining and frequently thrilling Baby Driver.  

Ansel Elgort is the titular “Baby”, a fresh-faced getaway driver who drowns out his constant tinnitus by popping in his ear buds and listening to his iPod.  Naturally, the hardened criminals that comprise his crew don’t trust the seemingly meek kid, but he always manages to surprise them with his savant-like mastery behind the wheel.  Things get complicated when Baby falls in love with a waitress (Lily James) and tries to make his next job his last job.  As we all know from watching heist movies, the “one last job” usually winds up going south.  

Wright puts together a number of rousing action sequences.  The stunt work is terrific and the constant car chases are among the best in recent memory.  He also keeps the pace going as fast as Baby’s driving, so you never have to wait long in between the various shootouts and chase scenes.  Wright’s use of pop music at first seems a bit too cool for school, but that feeling dissipates once we discover Baby’s relationship to his playlist.  Seeing how the various getaway sequences synch up to the music is one of the many joys of the movie.  

It also helps that the cast is stacked with talent.  Kevin Spacey is quite good as the coolly sinister mastermind behind the heists.  Jamie Foxx has a lot of menace as the distrusting bank robber who doesn’t take kindly to Baby’s quirks.  Jon Hamm is also aces as the seemingly laid-back member of the crew who eventually shows his true nature.  It was also fun seeing Paul Williams show up in a cameo as an arms dealer.  

If the movie has a flaw, it’s that the love story between Elgort and James rings false.  It’s your standard Hollywood Meet Cute and all their scenes together feel hollow and manufactured.  In fact, the outrageous car chases are more believable than their lovey-dovey scenes.  James does what she can, but her character is almost painfully one-dimensional.  That’s a small qualm in the long run because when Baby Driver has its foot on the gas, it’s a lot of fun.  

DOGVILLE (2004) ****

A seemingly fragile woman named Grace (Nicole Kidman), on the run from gangsters during the Depression, seeks solace in the small mountain town of Dogville.  The tight-knit community is at first wary of her presence, but the town philosopher (Paul Bettany) asks the residents to allow her to stay on a trial basis.  He suggests she can perform tasks for them in exchange for their silence.  Grace is agreeable to this, but little by little, the town begins taking from Grace until there is nothing left for her to give.  

I know that plot summary seems vague, but the way the townsfolk of Dogville (pardon the pun) slowly show their teeth is one of the most effective parts of the movie.  At three hours, it would at first seem like a slog, but writer/director Lars Von Trier keeps things moving along at a steady clip.  If this was a quick ninety-minute flick, then Grace’s rise and fall in the community wouldn’t nearly have as much power.  The lengths the residents go to dehumanize her is often shocking and appalling, and yet, the slow descent into depravity is a real doozy of a ride.

The reason the film is so powerful is because of the overly theatrical presentation.  The set-up is very similar to Our Town.  Everything happens on a bare stage, with the houses in the town outlined in chalk.  That way you can see everybody going about their day.  Without the comfort of walls and doors, the secrets of the town are out in the open, and because of that, it’s only a matter of time before the townsfolk reveal their true self to Grace.  There is no way Dogville would’ve had the same impact if it was shot in a traditional manner.  The fact that the repugnant and shameful acts happen to Grace on a barren stage for all to see hammers it all home and heightens her humiliation.  

What Von Trier seems to be doing here is a clever facelift of Our Town.  While Our Town was about the kind of town Americans would like to think of as their home, Dogville, with its many secrets, pent-up hate, and malevolent aggression, is about the town we’re ashamed to talk about.  The flipside of Americana and warm apple pie.    

It helps immensely that Von Trier assembled a murderer’s row of talent to populate the town.  Bettany is good as the “aw, shucks” freethinker who is slowly revealed to be full of shit.  We also have Lauren Bacall as the lady who loves her gooseberry bushes, Patricia Clarkson as the schoolmarm, Chloe Sevigny as Bettany’s former flame, Ben Gazzara as a blind man, Phillip Baker Hall as Bettany’s dad, and John Hurt as the narrator.  As an added bonus, James Caan plays the sinister gangster and none other than Udo Kier is his right-hand man!  However, it’s Kidman’s brave performance that holds everything together.  The way she faces cruelty, abuse, and depravity, and still manages to keep on trucking is a sight to behold.  

A sequel, Manderlay, followed with Bryce Dallas Howard in Kidman’s role.

BLACK HORIZON (2004) *

A Russian-American space station that was built by the lowest bidder is now slowly heading into an unscheduled reentry.  Further complicating matters is a looming meteor shower that threatens to pummel the station into oblivion.  It's up to Michael Dudikoff to head a rescue mission and intercept the station before it meets with disaster.  

Black Horizon is one of those Fred Olen Ray movies where he was credited as “Ed Raymond”.  You know, the kind where he takes a bunch of action sequences from other movies (mostly Get Carter and Scorpio One) and THEN wrote a story around them.  That explains why there’s an unrelated car chase with Ice T before the credits roll or why Dudikoff suddenly decides to hop in a jet.  These bits are mostly there to pad out the running time.  Unfortunately, they are the best thing about the film.  Once the focus shifts to the astronauts’ fight for survival, it becomes a dull slog.  You can spot the sequences Ray was responsible for because they’re cheap looking.  I’m thinking specifically of the scenes where the astronauts try to repair the ship by doing a spacewalk, and the wires on their suits are painfully obvious.  

Even as a big fan of Ray, it pains me to say this is one of his weakest efforts.  At least some of his familiar cohorts like Richard Gabai and Robert Donavan are on hand.  They don’t alleviate the boredom or anything, but it is fun spotting them when they turn up.  (Ray himself even has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo as a gunman who gets iced by T.)

Dudikoff does what he can with the thin material.  Although he gets the “AND” credit, he’s really the star of the show.  If anyone deserved the “AND” credit, it was Ice T, who mysteriously gets top billing.  Despite the aforementioned opening action sequence, all he really gets to do is spy on some shady Russians who don’t want the rescue mission to be successful.  Incredibly, these earthbound scenes are even more sluggish than the stuff in outer space.  

AKA:  Stranded.  AKA:  On Eagle’s Wings.  

QUICKSAND (2002) **

Michael Dudikoff stars as the new psychiatrist on a military base.  On his first day on the job, a patient babbles on about some big conspiracy before blowing his brains out.  Duds is then assigned by the general (Dan Hedaya) to make sure his wild child sexpot daughter (Brooke Theiss from A Nightmare on Elm Street 4:  The Dream Master) gets a Section 8 so she doesn’t embarrass her brother’s political aspirations.  Naturally, when the general is found dead, it isn’t long before Dudikoff becomes the prime suspect.  While trying to clear his name, he also must see to it that the general’s daughter doesn’t become the next victim.  

Quicksand reunites Dudikoff and his American Ninja 1 and 2 director Sam Firstenberg.  Those hoping for another potentially potent pairing will probably be left disappointed as this is more of a military whodunit with shades of a political thriller than an out-and-out action flick.  There isn’t much here in the ways of fisticuffs (Dudikoff gets jumped by a bunch of bad guys who steal his briefcase) and the big car chase basically devolves into Dudikoff spinning donuts in his Jeep in the middle of the desert.  The finale is weak too and would feel more at home on a Lifetime Movie than a Dudikoff/Firstenberg team-up.

Dudikoff isn’t his usual ass-kicking self, which is kind of the problem.  He more of the guy-on-the-run type of thriller leading man.  I’m glad the film offered him an opportunity to stretch his acting muscles a bit, but it would’ve been nice to see him at least punch/kick/shoot his way out of a jam or two.  Richard Kind fares better as the detective in charge of the case.  Kind isn’t the first guy you’d think of for a role like this, and his inspired casting helps to inject some humor into what would’ve otherwise been a boring and cliched character.  Hedaya is usually fun to watch, but he doesn’t stick around long enough to make much of an impression.  Thiess has a couple of nice moments as his mixed-up daughter, although the plot doesn’t really allow for her and Dudikoff to generate many sparks.  

ROBOT WARS (1993) * ½

In the future, a giant robot scorpion is relegated to being used as measly public transportation.  On one outing, the head of robot affairs stupidly allows a foreign dignitary to pilot the robot, and he predictably hijacks the automaton to use for his own sinister purposes.  In order to stop it, the robot’s original pilot Drake (Don Michael Paul) and a reporter (Barbara Crampton) have to find another giant robot that’s been hidden somewhere in the desert.  

Although Robot Wars is only seventy-one minutes long, it feels much longer than that.  It’s a sequel to Robot Jox, a movie I haven’t seen, but if this flick is any indication, I’m not missing much.  Most sequels would at least leave a couple of breadcrumbs to fill in audience members who haven’t seen the first movie.  This one doesn’t.  It just throws you into the deep end and expects you to swim.  I sunk to the bottom pretty quickly.

It also suffers from a bargain basement budget, a thin plot, and a hero who’s one of those arrogant, douchebag assholes that were all-too common at the time, which makes him hard to root for.  The whole thing feels like they started filming on a Monday and had it on video store shelves by Friday.  The crappy costumes, shoddy sets, and paltry plot wouldn’t have really mattered if the robot stuff was tip top.  The stop-motion effects are pretty good when you take into consideration the meager budget the special effects team had to work with.  However, the title Robot Wars is really misleading as there is only one robot battle in the entire movie and it is really brief and anticlimactic.  Robot Skirmish is more like it.  

At least Barbara Crampton and Lisa Rinna are around as eye candy.  Since this was strictly a PG-rated deal, their futuristic jump suits stay firmly on, and aren’t revealing in the slightest.  I’m not saying a little skin here and there would’ve won the Robot Wars, but it certainly would’ve battled the boredom.

AKA:  Robot Jox 2:  Robot Wars.  AKA:  Steel Robot 2.  

MORBIUS (2022) **

After suffering from a rare blood disease all his life, Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) performs an illicit experiment mixing human DNA with that of vampire bats.  Naturally, he tries the serum on himself and although at first it seems to be the cure he’s looking for, it has one nasty side effect:  It turns him into a CGI-faced vampire with a thirst for human blood.  

I like these comic book movies probably more than I should, but even for a dyed in the wool comic book fan like me, Morbius was pretty bad.  It seems to be a throwback to the cheap comic book flicks from the early ‘00s.  Even viewed through those rose-tinted glasses, it still comes up short.  If you enjoyed Elektra, Blade:  Trinity, and Ghost Rider:  Spirit of Vengeance, you’ll probably barely tolerate Morbius.  

It’s one thing for a comic book movie to be inspired by the ‘90s/’00s, but it still kind of has to do its own thing.  Look at The Batman, which came out just last month.  It was clearly ripping off the David Fincher thrillers of the ‘90s and ‘00s, but it had its own fresh spin.  Morbius on the other hand looks like a lost comic book film from the ‘00s that you might drunkenly catch at two in the morning on TBS.  There are bullet-time shootouts that look like they came out of a Matrix-inspired ‘90s action movie, a gratuitous villain dance montage that looks inspired by Spider-Man 3, a sequence where Morbius uses some sort of sonar superpower that’s right out of Daredevil, and even a moment that lifts directly from The Usual Suspects, but it’s like a hundred times less effective.  (Then again, there is a scene where he controls hundreds of bats, which makes him more of a Batman than The Batman, so there’s that.)

It doesn’t help that the superhero action sequences are lackluster.  The scenes of Morbius and the villain bouncing off buildings and punching each other in mid-air get old fast, and the finale is so woefully anticlimactic, you’re left wondering, “Is that it?” even well past the customary post-credits sequences (which are just hollow imitations of post-credits sequences we’ve seen in other Marvel movies).  The whole movie is like that though.  It rushes headlong into the next scene before it’s even properly developed an idea.  In fact, there’s a subplot where Morbius is treating a little girl who has the same blood disease as he does, and he is forced to put her into an induced coma to save her life.  However, we never find out what happened to her.  There’s no scene later on where he brings her out of it.  Heck, he doesn’t even mention her again.  It’s just another subplot that gets lost in the shuffle of the generic superhero action.  

It’s a shame too because Leto is committed enough to the overall Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde vibe of the character.  The best scene comes when he takes over a low-rent counterfeiting operation and turns it into his own underground science lab.  The part where he confronts the ringleader is entertaining, and if the movie had him fighting more street-level crime, it could’ve been fun.  As it stands, Morbius is one of the weakest post-MCU comic book flicks in recent memory.    

RESIDENT EVIL: WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY (2021) ** ½

Milla Jovovich is one of my all-time crushes.  Because of that, I find the Resident Evil movies to be immensely rewatchable thanks to the fact that she spends most of her time in the franchise scantily clad and kicking ass.  Which is why rebooting the series without her seems so confounding to me.  It’s kind of like making Terminator without Arnold Schwarzenegger or Rocky without Sylvester Stallone.  Needless to say, I went into Resident Evil:  Welcome to Raccoon City with a sense of trepidation.  Much to my surprise, I found a few things to enjoy about it, even if it was frustratingly Milla-free.  

This reboot takes place in the late ‘90s (which means people use beepers and say things like, “What’s a chatroom?”) in the decaying titular city.  The skeevy Umbrella Corporation is about to pick up at take their multi-billion-dollar operation elsewhere, leaving the town a hollow shell.  Those left behind are forced to deal with the remnants of Umbrella’s latest experiment:  A bunch of zombies.  Soon, the infection spreads, and the last remaining human survivors must find a way out of the town before the company bombs it back to the stone age.  

Writer/director Johannes (The Strangers:  Prey at Night) Roberts brought a real John Carpenter vibe to the proceedings.  (Right down to the Carpenter-esque font.)  Unlike Paul W.S. Anderson’s frenetic action-heavy approach, Roberts favors building up a sense of dread.  While letting that marinate, he’ll occasionally pepper in a couple of humorous sequences set to pop music, which helps to alleviate the tension and keep the audience on its toes.  His assured camerawork combined with the classy cinematography helps to create a real air of atmosphere.  Even though the film drags its feet in places, it always looks and feels appropriately creepy.  Too bad the unwieldy running time (107 minutes) and lackluster third act ultimately prevent the film from really cutting loose.  Also, for a zombie flick, it’s seriously lacking in the gore department, so I’ve got to take points off for that too.

The younger members of the cast are rather interchangeable and forgettable.  Fortunately, Donal Logue is great as the asshole Yelling Police Captain.  He effortlessly steals the movie and injects the film with a little zest whenever it threatens to bog down.  I also liked seeing Neal McDonough (no stranger to video game movie reboots after starring in Street Fighter:  The Legend of Chun-Li) pop up as the evil scientist guy/Final Boss.  

I was never a big fan of the Resident Evil video games.  I was always more of a House of the Dead kind of guy.  I can’t really say how faithful this version is in comparison to the Anderson’s films (although it seems like they took some liberties with the characters), but taken on its own terms, it's a decent outbreak/zombie flick.  If Milla had been in it, it probably would’ve been in the middle of the pack of Resident Evil movies.  As it stands, it’s probably the fourth or fifth best one.

MARY, MARY, BLOODY MARY (1975) ** ½

Mary (Cristina Ferrare) is a bisexual artist who picks up men, drugs them, slashes their throats, and drinks their blood.  She finds potential love with a hitchhiking beach bum (David Young), but there’s always the danger her hunger might force her to turn him into a hot lunch.  Complications ensue when a murderer dressed up like The Shadow (John Carradine) goes around killing people in the same method as Mary.

Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary is a relatively low key, but moderately effective entry in the ‘70s lesbian vampire subgenre.  It’s not up to the lofty heights of Vampyres or beautifully shot like Daughters of Darkness, but it’s a reasonably entertaining chiller in its own right.  The highlight is the lesbian bubble bath sequence where Mary is brought to tears when she realizes she’ll have to kill her lover in order to survive.  

There’s also a great scene early on where a shark injures a fisherman and his buddies drag that fish out of the ocean, haul it onto the shore, and beat the crap out of it.  I’m not one for animal cruelty or anything, but I do like me movies about vigilante justice.  Imagine if they put these guys in Jaws.  It could’ve been Death Wish with Sharks.  

Ferrare (who was married to John DeLorean at the time) is pretty good in the role, which requires her to be seductive and tempting in her vampiric state, and sad and lonely in her artistic day job.  Speaking of day jobs, this is another one of those vampire movies where the vampire is a “real” vampire.  That means sunlight, garlic, crosses, and the like don’t have any effect on her.  She just needs to feed on human blood periodically to stay alive.  

Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary is more of a melancholy look at a lonely vampire life than a straight-up horror flick.  Because of that, the kill scenes, car chases, and run-ins with the stranger in black (who may or may not be Mary’s father) lack sizzle.  Had director Juan Lopez (Alucarda) Moctezuma been able to make these sequences crackle, it might’ve been a classic.  Then again, the fact that he made the quieter scenes work better in comparison says a lot too.  

In the end, it’s a toss-up.  If you want a balls-out horror flick, you’ll probably be let down by Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary.  If, however, you prefer a sad, bleak look at a vampire’s dreary day-to-day existence, it will be a somewhat rewarding experience.

AKA:  Mary, Bloody Mary.  

WOLF WARRIOR (2015) * ½

Leng Feng (Jing Wu, who also directed) is a sniper who defies a direct order and takes out a drug dealer.  He is immediately imprisoned but is quickly pardoned so he can become a “Wolf Warrior”, who are described as the “Special Forces inside the Special Forces”.  To get acquainted with his new team, Leng and the other Wolf Warriors go out on training maneuvers in the middle of nowhere.  Since the Wolf Warriors don’t have the benefit of live ammo, the drug dealer’s big brother sees this as the perfect opportunity to get revenge, so he sends his right-hand man “Tomcat” (Scott Adkins) and his team of mercenaries to kill Leng and his new comrades.  

Wolf Warrior has a simple, seemingly can’t-miss premise, but it’s a pretty hollow and cheap actioner in just about every way.  The action is rather dreadful, and the fight scenes are poorly choreographed and/or rushed.  It doesn’t help that we are saddled with a bland hero (who is a sniper, which doesn’t leave much time for a lot of hand-to-hand action) or the fact that we have to sit through a lot of gratuitous pro-China propaganda right smack dab in the middle of the flick.  

The cheapest bit comes when the Wolf Warriors find themselves surrounded by the sorriest looking pack of CGI wolves I’ve seen outside of a SyFy Channel flick.  I was kind of hoping Jing would’ve got bitten by one of the wolves and turned into a literal Wolf Warrior.  I guess that was just too much to ask for.  

Naturally, I only watched this because Scott Adkins played the villain’s henchman.  Sadly, he isn’t given a whole lot to do.  I will say that whatever pulse the movie has is courtesy of his presence onscreen.  Even then, his fight sequences are way too brief to make much of an impact either way.  Although he is afforded the luxury of a decent death scene, overall, his final confrontation with Wu is lackluster.  It’s bad enough when American productions waste Scott Adkins’ talents.  It’s even worse when we import foreign productions that can’t properly utilize his skills.