LET’S GET PHYSICAL: SWAMP DIAMONDS (1956) **

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on July 17th, 2007)

This was one of director Roger Corman’s first films. While it’s not one of his best, this female filled crime melodrama is worth a look if only for a great hateful performance by Beverly Garland. A policewoman (Carol Matthews) infiltrates an all-girl gang serving time in prison. She gains their trust and organizes an escape in exchange for a cut on some diamonds that are stashed in a swamp. Mike “Touch” Connors plays a hapless guy that gets kidnapped by the gang and provides the meager sexual tension. The beginning is hopelessly filled with stock footage of Mardi Gras to pad the already brisk running time, and the ending is wrapped up way too conveniently, but Garland is a hoot at chewing up the scenery. She starred the next year in Corman’s The Gunslinger. Marie (Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy) Windsor and Jonathan (The Little Shop of Horrors) Haze co-star.

AKA: Swamp Women. AKA: Cruel Swamp.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: SHE GODS OF SHARK REEF (1958) **

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on August 18th, 2007)

Roger Corman directed this island adventure movie in color! The plot has two fugitive brothers Chris (Bill Cord) and Lee (Don Durant) escaping justice by stealing a boat and heading out to the open sea. There’s a bad storm and they end up shipwrecked on an island that’s populated by nothing but beautiful women. The native girls dance around a lot and worship the plethora of sharks that inhabit the sea surrounding the island. Chris falls in love with one of the maidens who happens to get picked to be the next sacrifice to the sharks. When Chris saves her from getting turned into Shark Chow, he upsets the gods as well as the mean old biddy that runs the tribe. Lee and Chris escape the island with his gal in tow, but Lee gets greedy and steals the women’s satchel of precious pearls and is promptly eaten by a shark.

The way Corman tries to match the action to the stock footage in the final scene is pretty hilarious. While most of the movie is stagnant, it actually features some decent underwater photography and makes great use of the gorgeous tropical locations, despite the visible boom mikes. Corman filmed this (in Hawaii) at the same time with Naked Paradise and it played on a double bill with Corman’s Night of the Blood Beast. There’s also a woefully bad theme song, “Nearer My Love to You” that’s good for some laughs too.

AKA: Shark Reef.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: LAST WOMAN ON EARTH (1960) **

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on January 12th, 2010)

Roger Corman filmed Last Woman on Earth back-to-back with The Creature from the Haunted Sea.  Since Corman didn’t realize there would be time to fit an additional film into his schedule, he hired screenwriter Robert Towne (who would later go on to write Chinatown) to star.  That way whenever Towne wasn’t acting, he was off writing new scenes.  This patchwork process didn’t do the movie any favors and hampered what could’ve been a decent flick.

 

An embezzler hiding out in Puerto Rico takes his wife and lawyer out scuba diving.  When they return to the island, they are shocked to learn that everyone on Earth has died from some sort of airborne plague.  Since they were breathing air from the scuba tanks underwater, the trio weren’t affected and as a result, they are now the only three people left in the whole world (or in Puerto Rico at least).  Predictably, the lawyer gets horny and tries to steal his client’s wife away from him, which leads to various arguments and fisticuffs.

 

Last Woman on Earth could’ve been a potentially interesting post-apocalyptic love triangle, but Corman couldn’t quite pull it off.  The laborious set-up gets the movie off to a rocky start and the flick never fully recovers.  All the stuff involving the lawyer trying to hump his buddy’s wife is OK from a dramatic viewpoint but ultimately none of the characters are likable enough for you to really give two shits about them.

 

Corman also directed The Little Shop of Horrors, Ski Troop Attack, and The Fall of the House of Usher the same year.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE TERROR (1963) ** ½

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on December 12th, 2008)

Since The Terror is public domain and always turns up on television, budget DVD’s and 50 Movie Packs, I’ve probably seen it more times than any other Roger Corman movie.  It isn’t that bad of a flick, although the behind-the-scenes story of the film is a lot more interesting than the movie itself.  Star Boris Karloff was only available to director Corman for two days, so he quickly shot a lot of scenes of him running around sets from The Raven.  He then got his assistants Francis Ford Coppola, Monte Hellman, Jack Hill, and star Jack Nicholson to film linking scenes of what Corman shot and then pieced together the movie in the editing room.  The result is a predictably choppy film, though considering the piecemeal production; it could’ve been a lot worse.

 

Nicholson stars as a French soldier who while walking along the beach sees the ghost/spirit/something of a beautiful woman (Sandra Knight, his real-life wife at the time) and follows her to the castle of Baron Von Leppe (Boris Karloff).  Turns out the chick has an uncanny resemblance to the Baron’s late wife and she, along with the help of a haggard old witch, is trying to drive him to suicide.

 

Nicholson is bland as all get out and is absolutely unconvincing as a soldier.  While the young Nicholson can’t really command the screen like he would later go on to do, he at least steps up his game while acting alongside Karloff.  Old Boris is quite good and his performance is easily the best thing about the movie.  I also got a kick out of seeing Corman regulars Dick Miller and Jonathan Haze turning up in small roles.

 

The script is confusing, and the movie is patchy, but Corman does make the castle seem spooky and the constant shots of waves crashing against the rocky shore during a storm are effective.  (They’d later turn up in many a Corman picture.)  The foggy crypt is also pretty cool looking too.

 

There’s more gore than you’d probably expect from something like this.  There is a juicy scene where a guy gets his eyes pecked out by a falcon, a decent set piece where a body is set on fire after it’s struck by lightning and an excellent face melting scene that totally rocks.  It should also be noted that whereas most of Corman’s movies (especially the Poe pictures) end with a fire, this one ends with a flood.  The Terror is way too uneven to be called a “good” film but if you’re a Corman, Karloff, or Nicholson fan, it will have its own rewards.

AKA:  The Lady of the Shadows.  AKA:  The Castle of Terror.  AKA:  The Haunting. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE WASP WOMAN (1959) ***

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on July 17th, 2007)

Producer/director Roger Corman made this to cash in on the success of The Fly. Susan (Sorority Girl) Cabot stars as an aging skin cream magnate. Sales are slipping and so are her looks, so when a scientist doing eternal youth research with wasps comes to her company, she immediately signs up to try out the serum. The injections do have one small side effect: They turn her into a bug-eyed wasp faced killer in a black body stocking! The good doctor finally destroys her by throwing acid in her face! 

This Corman cheapie benefits from fun special effects and a good performance by Cabot. It’s a lot of fun if you can get past the gratuitous bee keeping opening scene and the running time padding montages that is. Corman stock player Bruno (The Undead) VeSota has a small role as a security guard and Corman himself pops up as a doctor. Corman later remade this in 1996 as part of his Showtime series Roger Corman Presents. 

Cabot in real life was later beaten to death by her dwarf son.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1960) ****

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on November 4th, 2009)

The Little Shop of Horrors is one of director Roger Corman’s finest hours.  After directing dozens of unintentionally hilarious movies like Attack of the Crab Monsters, this was his first intentionally funny horror film.  It also happens to be a searing indictment of the small-time businessman and the lengths he will go to in order to be successful.

 

Seymour Krelboin (Jonathan Haze) works for his overbearing boss Mushnik (Mel Welles) at his Skid Row flower shop where he pines for the pretty (but dumb as a bag of hammers) Audrey (Jackie Joseph).  Seymour creates a mutant Venus Fly Trap, which he names Audrey Jr. that drinks human blood to live.  The more Audrey Jr. grows, the busier the shop becomes, which makes Mushnik very happy.  As Audrey Jr. gets bigger, so does her appetite, and eventually Seymour takes to killing hobos and hookers in order to feed her.

 

The Little Shop of Horrors is famous for a lot of reasons.  First, it was shot in two days, which is pretty amazing.  Secondly, it kinda gained a second life after the 1986 musical remake.  Thirdly, it’s a public domain movie, so everybody’s probably seen it.  And perhaps the best reason is because it features Jack Nicholson in one of his greatest roles.  His performance as Wilbur Force, the masochistic dental patient has to be seen to be believed.  With his hair parted down the middle, he reads Pain Magazine and says shit like, “No Novocain!  It dulls the senses!”  He’s almost as nuts here as he was in The Shining.

 

This flick is chockfull of bizarre little bits and entertaining black humor.  The Dragnet style cops are hilarious and some of their banter will leave you in stitches.  The scenes of Seymour feeding Audrey Jr. disembodied hands and feet while the plant screams “FEEEEED MEEEEE!” are also pretty great.  And not only does the movie features a man-eating plant, but also a plant-eating man played by the always awesome Dick Miller.  (“I’ve got to get home; my wife’s making gardenias for dinner!”)  The Little Shop of Horrors is rife with weird touches like this that makes it so much fun.

 

Incredibly, Corman also managed to churn out Ski Troop Attack, Fall of the House of Usher, and Last Woman on Earth the same year.

 

Audrey Sr. gets the best line of the movie when she says, “I’m so hungry; I could eat a hearse!”

 

The Little Shop of Horrors is Number 3 on The Video Vacuum Top Ten Films of the Year for 1960 which places it just below The Magnificent Seven and right above Peeping Tom.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: A BUCKET OF BLOOD (1959) ***

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on August 17th, 2007)

In this fun horror/comedy from director Roger Corman, Dick Miller plays his best role as Walter Paisley, a meager busboy in a hep cat bohemian nightclub who someday dreams of being a famous beatnik artist. He tries sculpting but is no good at it until he accidentally kills his cat and decides to sculpt over its carcass. When his “Dead Cat” sculpture is an unexpected hit, he soon has to turn to murder to find willing “subjects”. Miller gives a great performance and Corman balances the chills and the chuckles nicely. It would make a good double feature with Corman’s better known Little Shop of Horrors (also with Miller) which came out the following year. Co-starring a young Bert Convy as a victim. Remade in 1995 with Anthony Michael Hall.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA (1961) **

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:  

(As posted on July 17th, 2007)

Director Roger Corman directed this back-to-back-to-back with The Battle of Blood Island and Last Woman on Earth. It has a lot in common with his classic Little Shop of Horrors:  It was filmed in a few days, it was written by Charles B. Griffith, and it has cartoony opening credits. It’s nowhere near as good as Shop, but it has its moments.

A bumbling spy stows away on a gangster’s boat who kills off his passengers and tries to blame it on the local legendary sea monster. Unfortunately for him, there really IS a monster on the loose! One of the crew members makes (obviously dubbed in) and the other, “Edward Wain” is actually future Oscar-winning screenwriter Robert (Chinatown) Towne. The tone is really out of whack and wildly uneven but Corman completists will wanna check it out.

Best line: “It was dusk. I could tell because the sun was going down.”

Watch fast for Corman using a telephone.

WANTED MAN (2024) **

Dolph Lundgren plays a disgraced cop who gets caught on camera beating up a Mexican suspect.  As sort of a half-assed PR stunt, he is sent to Mexico to pick up two hookers.  And by “pick up two hookers”, I mean “Extradite them as they are potential eyewitnesses to a drug deal gone wrong that resulted in several deaths, including some undercover cops”, and not like, “pick them up, pick them up”.  That wouldn’t be much of a PR stunt, if you ask me. 

Anyway, while transporting the witnesses they are ambushed and one of the women is shot and killed.  Together, Dolph and the other survivor go into hiding and try not to get killed by the crooked cops who are on their trail. 

Dolph gets to play his age a little bit in this one.  He walks with a noticeable limp and characters comment that he needs ankle surgery, but I have a suspicion he really did need ankle surgery, and they just wrote his injury into the script.  There’s even a subplot where he gets shot and spends much of the second act in bed healing up and watching telenovelas. 

When you’re someone as prolific as Dolph is, you have to make sure there are slight variations on the usual fare to keep your films from feeling interchangeable.  In this one, he plays a racist, although to be fair his character is more of the “drunk uncle” variety than a “card carrying member of the KKK”.  Five years from now when I’m trying to remember the recent Dolph films I’ve seen, I’ll remember this one by saying, “Oh, right that was the racist Dolph one.”  (Alternatively, I may think of it as the one where he spends a third of the movie in bed.)  I’m not saying Wanted Man is entirely forgettable, but I’m not sure just how long it will be seared into my brain.  Granted, I appreciate the attempt to mirror real world events, such as racism in the police force and all, but it feels more like an attempt by the screenwriters to give his character a unique backstory rather than be a genuine look at race and society. 

Dolph also directed the film.  He does a competent job for the most part.  It’s thoroughly middle of the road by Dolph standards, but die-hard fans like me probably won’t care.  Middle of the road is where us fans tend to be most of the time. 

Kelsey Grammer and Michael Pare also turn up playing Dolph’s drinking buddies.

This summer I was a guest on Matt’s Direct to Video Connoisseur Podcast and we discussed the film in depth.  You can check out our entire chat here: DTVC Podcast 168, "Wanted Man" by DTVC Podcast (spotify.com)

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: SPOOKS RUN WILD (1941) ** ½

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on February 7th, 2008)

The East Side Kids/Bowery Boys were always best when they had real talent to play off of.  When they worked for Warner Brothers studios, the boys starred alongside the likes of Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney and John Garfield.  When they were relegated to the poverty row Monogram studios, the biggest star they could get was Bela Lugosi.  I don’t know about you, but I’d rather see a Lugosi movie than anything Bogart was in. 

 

Lugosi plays Nardo, a vampire like “monster” who hangs out in a decrepit mansion in the middle of nowhere along with his midget sidekick (Angelo Rossitto).  The boys stumble upon the mansion and have to stay the night.  Muggs (Leo Gorcey), Glimpy (Huntz Hall) and Danny (Bobby Jordan) contend with giant spiders, floating skulls and suits of armor that move around all by themselves.  In the end, we learn Lugosi is really a swell guy after all and he helps the boys capture the “real” monster. 

 

Lugosi isn’t given a whole lot to do, but he’s as fun to watch as always.  He returned to the series two years later for Ghosts on the Loose.  Spooks Run Wild isn’t as fun as that flick, but to me, any movie in which Rossitto plays Lugosi’s sidekick is automatically worth checking out.  Dave O’Brien co-stars as the boys’ guardian.  He also starred with Lugosi in The Devil Bat the previous year. 

 

Scruno (“Sunshine” Sammy Morrison), the token black Kid of the group gets the movie’s best line:  “If I’m yellow, then you’re color blind!”

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: TREASURE OF FEAR (1945) * ½

FORMAT:  DVD

Jack Haley (from One Body Too Many and… uh…  The Wizard of Oz) stars as a bumbling reporter who is sent by his asshole editor to cover a wine festival.  Naturally, since he’s such a putz, he winds up on the wrong bus.  When the passenger sitting next to him is murdered, Haley quickly becomes the prime suspect.  Before long, a gangster arrives on the scene looking for some priceless chess pieces, and it’s up to Haley to come back to his editor with a story… if he can survive, that is. 

I’ll tell you.  A little of Haley’s shtick goes a long way.  His jittery demeanor and twitchy behavior don’t exactly translate into laughs.  (The scene where he engages in a battle of wits with a car horn and loses is especially tiresome.)  I guess when you’re covered in silver face paint and playing third fiddle to Judy Garland, this kind of routine can be tolerable.   However, as a leading man, he’s borderline insufferable.  (The irritating know-it-all Encyclopedia Brown wannabe junior detective kid will also grate on your nerves.)

I was able to stomach Haley’s brand of comedy while rewatching One Body Too Many.  That’s mostly because that film was deeply rooted in Old Dark House murder/mystery cliches, and I have a certain affinity for the genre.  Here, he’s stuck inside what is essentially a tepid whodunit comedy, and he flounders.  Badly.  (Even the requisite scenes of secret walls, hidden passageways, and bodies suddenly turning up feel awfully tired.) 

I guess die-hard Wizard of Oz fans may enjoy it.  For me, this Tin Man wasn’t just missing a heart, but he apparently lost his funny bone as well.  As for Treasure of Fear, it was in desperate need of an oil can too, as it was creaky as fuck. 

AKA:  Scared Stiff.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: KING OF THE ZOMBIES (1941) ***

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on November 13th, 2007)

Some thoroughly bland white dude (John Archer), his pilot (Dick Purcell), and his manservant (the hilarious Mantan Moreland) crash land on a jungle island where the evil Dr. Sangre (Henry Victor) dwells. He welcomes the trio into his home where unbeknownst to them; he keeps a cadre of zombies. Sangre also tries to turn a military VIP into a zombie so he can steal vital information for his vaguely Nazi government but is foiled at the last minute by the now zombified Purcell.

King of the Zombies offers no surprises whatsoever, but it also gives you exactly what you’re expecting, so you can’t say that you’re disappointed by it. Nobody will ever mistake this flick as the definitive zombie picture, but it’s a lot of fun and it moves pretty briskly.

Mantan Moreland’s performance is far and away the best thing about the movie. Some people frown upon his performances and say they are “politically incorrect”, “stereotypical”, and worst of all “racist”, but I say that the man is one of the most overlooked comedians of all time. Today, some snobs may look back at his work and say it was borderline offensive, but Moreland really had no choice in the matter. Hollywood only offered him the roles of stereotypical black porters, chauffeurs and servants, so what was the guy to do? He played what could have been insignificant, underwritten and one-note roles and made them his own, infusing them with a lot of warmth and humor. In King of the Zombies, he gives one of his best performances. You can say that his role in it is stereotypical if you will, but he’s actually the one who discovers the zombies; it’s just the stupid white people who don’t believe him.

Mantan gets all the best lines in the movie and easily steals the film from his boring (white) co-stars. When they first arrive on the island, he muses, “Harlem was never like this!” When he wakes up in a graveyard he hollers “We in someone’s marble orchard!” When he first encounters the zombies he yells, “They’s fugitives from the undertaker!” In short, Mantan is one funny son-of-a-gun and has a lot more chemistry than anyone else in the flick.

The only other person who comes close to matching Moreland’s performance is Henry Victor. A lot of you may recognize him as the strongman from Freaks. He gives a decent performance as the voodoo doctor obsessed with hypnotism. If he seems to be channeling Bela Lugosi in some scenes, it’s probably because the role was originally intended for Lugosi, but Victor was cast at the last minute when Bela proved to be unavailable.

The movie maybe kind of light when it comes to zombies (there’s only about four or five), but the climatic voodoo ceremony is pretty memorable and features a lot of extras screaming something that sounds approximately like, “Cocoa bean, cocoa bean! We love cocoa beans! Cocoa bean, cocoa bean! Zombie! I need cocoa, I need cocoa!”

If you happen to catch King of the Zombies on television (or in a bargain DVD bin) you’ll probably enjoy it. You’d probably think that it’s hardly Academy Award material, but you’d be WRONG! The musical score was actually nominated for an OSCAR, but it lost. (I’m not quite sure HOW it got nominated as the music is mostly jungle drums and comical suspense build-ups like “Doo-doo-doo-doo-DOOOOO!”)

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE GORILLA (1939) ***

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on August 17th, 2007)

The Ritz Brothers, who were a popular comedy team in the late ‘30s, star in this comedy/mystery. They aren’t very funny, but if you’re a fan of old dark house murder mysteries, like man in a gorilla suit movies, and love Bela Lugosi, then this flick is for you! The Ritz’s star as three bumbling detectives who are trying to solve “The Gorilla Murders”. Lionel Atwill is the intended victim, and Lugosi is his butler and prime suspect. (They both were in Son of Frankenstein the same year.) Lugosi later turned up in other films with comedy teams like The Bowery Boys (Ghosts on the Loose), Abbott and Costello (Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein) and Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo (Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla).

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: A BUCKET OF BLOOD (1959) ***

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on August 17th, 2007)

In this fun horror/comedy from director Roger Corman, Dick Miller plays his best role as Walter Paisley, a meager busboy in a hep cat bohemian nightclub who someday dreams of being a famous beatnik artist. He tries sculpting but is no good at it until he accidentally kills his cat and decides to sculpt over its carcass. When his “Dead Cat” sculpture is an unexpected hit, he soon has to turn to murder to find willing “subjects”. Miller gives a great performance and Corman balances the chills and the chuckles nicely. It would make a good double feature with Corman’s better known Little Shop of Horrors (also with Miller) which came out the following year. Co-starring a young Bert Convy as a victim. Remade in 1995 with Anthony Michael Hall.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: ONE BODY TOO MANY (1944) * ½

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on March 11th, 2008)

Insurance salesman Jack Haley (The Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz) goes to an eccentric millionaire’s house for the reading of his will on a dark and stormy night.  The squabbling relatives are all bound to the house until the old coot is interred into the family vault, even after a murderer starts bumping off the family members in hopes of getting his hands on the inheritance.  Bela Lugosi plays the creepy butler, and his Glen or Glenda co-star Lyle Talbot is one of the bickering relatives.

 

Yep, it’s yet another one of those Old Dark House comedy/murder/mystery/whodunit deals.  This premise had pretty much been thoroughly run into the ground by 1944, but if you’re a fan of the genre, you might groove to this otherwise creaky flick.  If you’re a Lugosi fan like me, you’ll be able to suck up most of the rampant clichés (the relatives get stranded because the bridge gets washed out in the storm, the murderer uses secret passageways to get around the house, dead bodies end up in peculiar places, etc.) and tolerate the unfunny comic relief (Haley is particularly grating) and just enjoy his performance.  He’s severely underutilized and his role is rather small, but to me, any movie he’s in is worth watching just to see Lugosi, especially when he says things like “There are too many rats in this house!”  Otherwise, it’s pretty tough going. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: MY MOM’S A WEREWOLF (1989) *

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on May 13th, 2011)

John Saxon stars as a pet shop owner who’s also a werewolf.  He seduces a lonely housewife and mother (Susan Blakely) and bites her on the toe; slowly but surely turning her into a werewolf.  Her daughter and her horror movie nerd best friend then try to help reverse her curse before she becomes a werewolf permanently.

 

My Mom’s a Werewolf was obviously trying to ride the coattails of the '80s horror-comedy craze of such films as Teen Wolf and My Best Friend’s a Vampire.  I actually dig this subgenre, partially for nostalgic reasons.  But even I don’t have enough love for the subgenre to enjoy this mess.

 

First off, the flick just isn’t funny.  I mean it’s pretty sad when your big comedic guns are Ruth Buzzi and Marcia Wallace.  And I know I use some pretty bad puns to write these reviews but the puns in this flick are awful.  (Sample dialogue:  “I want you to be my were-wife!”)  Ugh.  When a potentially funny gag comes around (like when Blakely franticly tries to shave her legs) they just keep hitting you over the head with it until it just gets annoying.

 

And the “horror” stuff is pathetic.  You have to seriously wonder if the people who made this movie ever saw a werewolf movie in their life.  I mean when’s the last time you saw a werewolf that DIDN’T change during a full moon?  And the final werewolf make-up is crappy as fuck.  They’re nothing more than a cheap Halloween mask with lots of fake hair.  It’s pretty sad.

 

There were some things I liked.  I liked John Saxon’s performance.  And the movie geek character who reads Famous Monsters, Fangoria, and Gorezone and has posters from other Crown International pictures like Galaxina and Prime Evil on her wall.  And of course, the ‘80s fashions were appropriately cheesy. 

 

Other than that, My Mom’s a Werewolf is a dog of a film.  Sure, that’s a bad pun.  It’s no worse than the puns in the movie though.

 

AKA:  My Mum’s a Werewolf.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE (1966) NO STARS

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on August 18th, 2007)

In the mid ‘60s, fertilizer entrepreneur and fledgling filmmaker Hal P. Warren made a bet with screenwriter Stirling Silliphant that he could make a horror movie with less than $20,000. His background in the fertilizer industry is evident because the result is one of the shittiest movies ever made. If it wasn’t for its appearance on Mystery Science Theater 3000, it would have faded away into obscurity, but thanks to MST3K, Manos now rivals Plan 9 from Outer Space as the best-known bad movie ever made. Like Plan 9, Manos is fascinating to watch for the sheer incompetence both in front of and behind the camera, but unlike Ed Wood’s masterpiece, it’s completely wretched. The only proper way to watch it is on MST3K with Joel and the ‘bots riffing, otherwise, you’ll probably able to stand about ten minutes of it before suffering some sort of breakdown.

Warren stars as Mike, who piles his family into the car and takes them on a vacation. They get lost and drive and drive and drive (the only movie that rivals this one for the largest amount of pointless driving scenes is The Brown Bunny) until they come to a remote lodge ran by the caretaker Torgo (John Reynolds). It would be a tremendous understatement to say that Torgo is one of the most insipid characters ever to grace the silver screen. He speaks in a jittery tone, and his body movements are equally twitchy, a fact compounded by his enormous knees. Mike wants to stay the night, but Torgo warns them that “The Master would not approve”. The Master (Tom Neyman) is collecting a harem filled with women in negligees and has his eye on Mike’s wife for his next bride. Torgo also wants her too and defies the Master and he scolds Torgo by burning his hand off. In the end the Master steals Mike’s woman (and young daughter) and turns him into the new reigning Torgo.

To say this movie is merely bad is being generous. The thesaurus doesn’t even begin to help you comprehend the awfulness that is Manos. The editing is atrocious, the dialogue was badly dubbed (by no more than three actors apparently), there’s visible crew members and film slates, and don’t even get me started on the acting. A pall of unpleasantness hung over this movie long after its release when THREE actors (including Torgo himself) committed suicide shortly after filming. They were the lucky ones.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1960) ****

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on November 4th, 2009)

The Little Shop of Horrors is one of director Roger Corman’s finest hours.  After directing dozens of unintentionally hilarious movies like Attack of the Crab Monsters, this was his first intentionally funny horror film.  It also happens to be a searing indictment of the small-time businessman and the lengths he will go to in order to be successful.

 

Seymour Krelboin (Jonathan Haze) works for his overbearing boss Mushnik (Mel Welles) at his Skid Row flower shop where he pines for the pretty (but dumb as a bag of hammers) Audrey (Jackie Joseph).  Seymour creates a mutant Venus Fly Trap, which he names Audrey Jr. that drinks human blood to live.  The more Audrey Jr. grows, the busier the shop becomes, which makes Mushnik very happy.  As Audrey Jr. gets bigger, so does her appetite, and eventually Seymour takes to killing hobos and hookers in order to feed her.

 

The Little Shop of Horrors is famous for a lot of reasons.  First, it was shot in two days, which is pretty amazing.  Secondly, it kinda gained a second life after the 1986 musical remake.  Thirdly, it’s a public domain movie, so everybody’s probably seen it.  And perhaps the best reason is because it features Jack Nicholson in one of his greatest roles.  His performance as Wilbur Force, the masochistic dental patient has to be seen to be believed.  With his hair parted down the middle, he reads Pain Magazine and says shit like, “No Novocain!  It dulls the senses!”  He’s almost as nuts here as he was in The Shining.

 

This flick is chockfull of bizarre little bits and entertaining black humor.  The Dragnet style cops are hilarious and some of their banter will leave you in stitches.  The scenes of Seymour feeding Audrey Jr. disembodied hands and feet while the plant screams “FEEEEED MEEEEE!” are also pretty great.  And not only does the movie features a man-eating plant, but also a plant-eating man played by the always awesome Dick Miller.  (“I’ve got to get home; my wife’s making gardenias for dinner!”)  The Little Shop of Horrors is rife with weird touches like this that makes it so much fun.

 

Incredibly, Corman also managed to churn out Ski Troop Attack, Fall of the House of Usher, and Last Woman on Earth the same year.

 

Audrey Sr. gets the best line of the movie when she says, “I’m so hungry; I could eat a hearse!”

 

The Little Shop of Horrors is Number 3 on The Video Vacuum Top Ten Films of the Year for 1960 which places it just below The Magnificent Seven and right above Peeping Tom.

EVIL LAUGH (1986) ** ½

A group of friends retreat to an old house in the woods to fix the place up.  It seems it used to be an old foster home that closed under suspicious circumstances.  Unbeknownst to the houseguests, a killer with a maniacal laugh is lurking about the premises and is just waiting to butcher them in a variety of ways. 

Director Dominick Brascia knows his way around the slasher genre after being killed off in Friday the 13th Part V.  (Which cameos on a cover of Fangoria.)  Most of the fun comes from seeing Brascia sending up slasher movie conventions, long before Scream made it hip.  There’s also a funny montage of the cast cleaning the house as they dance and dust in unison to a cheesy ‘80s song.  There are also plenty of odd moments along the way, like when a friend hides inside a bed to scare two lovers, a weird dinner scene, and the part where a creepy real estate agent headbangs to “The William Tell Overture”.  

Some of the editing is a little wonky though, most notably when the cop shows up looking for a missing person.   Bits like this suggests there must’ve some half-assed reshoots.  Even these patchy moments kinda add to the scrappy charm.  Unfortunately, the hackneyed editing takes some of the pop out of the kills.  (Although I assume it was done to maintain an R rating.)  There's more blood than gore here, but some of the death scenes are kind of weak.  However, there is one head in the microwave gag that predates the Last House on the Left remake by twenty-three years, so that’s something at least. 

Future porn star Ashlyn Gere is the Final Girl in this one.  You’d never guess she’d go on to a career in porn from seeing here in this though as she wears a series of unflattering and frumpy outfits.  (She also used an obvious double for her eleventh-hour shower scene.)  Oh, and that’s Scott’s brother, Steven Baio in the lead.  (He also co-wrote and produced.) 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: GHOSTS ON THE LOOSE (1943) ***

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on January 27th, 2010)

Muggs (Leo Gorcey), Glimpy (Huntz Hall), and rest of the East Side Kids try to spruce up an old house as a wedding gift to Glimpy’s sister (played by a before-she-was famous Ava Gardner).  The Kids accidentally go into the wrong house and are shocked to learn that it’s supposedly haunted.  Of course, we’ve seen enough Fake Ghosts in a Haunted House Movies to know otherwise.  As it turns out, a couple of no good spies (led by Bela Lugosi) are using the house as a hideout and churn out Nazi propaganda on a printing press in the basement.  The Kids try to put a stop to them and the usual hijinks and shenanigans ensue.

 

The first act of Ghosts on the Loose is heavily padded with lots of wedding preparation scenes.  There still is some good stuff sprinkled in there to keep you watching until the Kids get to the house though.  From then on, we get a stream of mostly funny (and sometimes stupid) one-liners and malapropisms to make any East Side Kids/Bowery Boys/Dead End Kids fan happy.

 

Ghosts on the Loose will never be mistaken for a comedy classic but director William “One-Shot” Beaudine keeps the gags coming at a steady clip.  Gorcey and Hall once again make for a good team and many of the lower tier Kids get a fair amount of screen time too.  I particularly liked the final gag in the movie when Hall comes down with a case of “German Measles”, which are essentially just little swastikas painted all over his face.

 

Naturally, if you’re an Old School Horror fan like me, you’re probably watching this flick just to see Bela Lugosi.  Even though he isn’t given a whole lot to do, Lugosi still is able to make the most of his screen time.  He also manages to be kinda funny too during the scene where he poses inside of a frame and pretends to be a painting.

 

Best exchange:  

Muggs:  What color are your eyes?

 

Dave:  Blue.

 

Muggs:  Well, if you don’t want them to be black, keep ‘em open!

 

Ghosts on the Loose is on The Video Vacuum Top Ten Films of the Year 1943 at the Number 5 spot; which places it below Hit the Ice and above Batman:  The 1943 Serial.

 

AKA:  Ghosts in the Night.  AKA:  The East Side Kids Meet Bela Lugosi.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: DEATHROW GAMESHOW (1987) ***

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on March 31st, 2011)

Director Mark (A Polish Vampire in Burbank) Pirro’s demented horror comedy is kind of like a Troma version of The Running Man (which was also released the same year) centered around Richard Dawson instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Chuck Toedan is the host of the hit game show Live or Die in which death row convicts have a chance to go free by competing in outlandish games.  Mostly though, they just wind up dying on the air.  During one show, Toedan unknowingly kills a Mafia don on live TV and the Mob comes after him.  When “the best hitman in the world” tries to kill Toedan, he has no choice but to make him a contestant on the show.

 

The first 20 minutes of this movie is priceless.  If the flick had kept up the same comic energy for the next hour or so, it would’ve been a classic.  The game show scenes and television commercials are great, but the movie gets extremely bogged down during the hitman subplot.  Basically, whenever the flick switches away from the game show studio, feel free to get up, grab a beer, make a sandwich or whatever because you won’t be missing much.

 

Despite the patchy nature of the film, there are a couple of really funny scenes.  I think my favorite moment was when they tie an electrode to a dude’s dick and have a hot gal (Debra Lamb) do a striptease in front of him.  If he gets a boner, he’ll be electrocuted.  After the dance, he survives but when the host places a hand on his bare shoulder, he gets a boner and is fried. 

 

Hey, did you hear that?  Do you know what that sound is?  It’s the sound of you adding this movie to your Netflix Queue.

 

Sure, it’s not great or anything but Deathrow Gameshow is funny enough, short enough (under 80 minutes), and ‘80s enough (the hairstyles alone are worthwhile) to give this a look-see.

 

AKA:  Death Game.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE CREEPING TERROR (1964) ***

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on March 2nd, 2013)

A rocketship crash lands in a small California town. A slow-moving monster emerges from the craft and creeps around town eating various citizens who are unfortunate enough to be lying on the ground and/or severely motion-impaired and/or dumb enough to stand still and allow the monster to devour them. A scientist and a newlywed cop team up to take the monster down.

The Creeping Terror has all the ingredients for a great B movie. It has awful acting, an intrusive narrator that’s constantly talking over the action, and one of the worst monsters of all time. This thing looks like a giant walking carpet. You won’t believe it.

The scenes of people dragging themselves into the creature’s mouth are unforgettable. The long lingering shots of women’s legs slowly being devoured are hilarious. There are tons of these shots in the movie, yet somehow, they never get old (at least to me).

The narrator’s intrusive ramblings are another story. The long scenes of the narrator talking over the silent footage of the actors gets a little unbearable after a while. And oddly enough, there are some scenes that are in desperate need of narration, but the narrator is nowhere to be found!

Despite the overall creaky nature of the film, The Creeping Terror has plenty of WTF moments to keep you entertained. There’s a long scene of a mother taking her child’s temperature with a rectal thermometer. Then there’s the fat fisherman who falls into a creek and slowly awaits his eminent death. But by far my favorite scene is the hilarious dance party. It features some of the whitest white people doing some of the whitest white people dancing the screen has ever seen. Plus, the terrifically terrible music playing in the background will get stuck in your head for days.

AKA: Dangerous Charter. AKA: The Crawling Monster.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA (1961) **

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:  

(As posted on July 17th, 2007)

Director Roger Corman directed this back-to-back-to-back with The Battle of Blood Island and Last Woman on Earth. It has a lot in common with his classic Little Shop of Horrors:  It was filmed in a few days, it was written by Charles B. Griffith, and it has cartoony opening credits. It’s nowhere near as good as Shop, but it has its moments.

A bumbling spy stows away on a gangster’s boat who kills off his passengers and tries to blame it on the local legendary sea monster. Unfortunately for him, there really IS a monster on the loose! One of the crew members makes (obviously dubbed in) and the other, “Edward Wain” is actually future Oscar-winning screenwriter Robert (Chinatown) Towne. The tone is really out of whack and wildly uneven but Corman completists will wanna check it out.

Best line: “It was dusk. I could tell because the sun was going down.”

Watch fast for Corman using a telephone.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE BOURNE LEGACY (2012) * ½

FORMAT:  DVD

Remember those signs on the highway that used to read, “Was This Trip Really Necessary?”  Well, they need a sign for The Bourne Legacy that reads, “Was This Movie Really Necessary?”  It is essentially a Bourne movie… without Jason Bourne.  I mean Bourne movies aren’t much WITH Jason Bourne to begin with, and this flick proves they are even less so without him. 

It seems secret agent Jason Bourne ruffled some of the government’s feathers, so the CIA is out to exterminate any and all people associated with his old outfit.  That includes a secret agent trainee named Aaron (Jeremy Renner).  Naturally, he narrowly survives his assassination attempt, and he goes after the suits that green lit his termination. 

Actually, the plot is about Universal Studios wanting to milk every last cent from the franchise with or without Matt Damon. 

You know what this movie really reminded me of?  The Dukes of Hazzard.  Remember when Bo and Luke wanted more money, and they brought in Coy and Vance to replace them?  Yeah, that’s basically what this is.  The Bourne Identity:  The Coy and Vance Years. 

Director Tony (Andor) Gilroy (who wrote the previous entries in the series) apes Paul Greengrass’s shaky-cam style, but luckily doesn’t go overboard with it.  The action highlights are unfortunately few and far between though. Although the motorcycle chase in the end is decent, it really feels like the sort of action scene you’d see in the middle of an action flick and not at the climax.  (I did like the part where Renner jumps on a guy and squashes him Super Mario Bros. style.)  Still, Gilroy doesn’t bring anything new to the table.  Heck, since he doesn’t have Matt Damon, he actually brings LESS to the table. 

You know if this was an original standalone movie it might’ve been OK.  Not good mind you, but it would’ve at least been watchable.  However, Jason Bourne casts a long shadow (the character anyway) over the movie that it practically keeps reminding you that you’re watching the Dr. Perky version every step of the way.  

Renner isn’t bad in the lead, but he isn’t given much to work with.  Rachel Weiz is given an utterly thankless role and Edward Norton just sits in an office and gets shitty with coworkers.  At least the supporting cast is full of such heavy hitters like Stacy Keach, Scott Glenn, and Oscar Isaac.  The fact that they show up in small roles makes sure this isn’t a complete waste of time. 

Ultimately, this Bourne never finds its own identity. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: OZPLOITATION TRAILER EXPLOSION (2014) *** ½

FORMAT:  DVD

Even as a die-hard fan of trailer compilations and a lover of Australia exploitation (affectionately known as “Ozploitation”), I can’t believe it has taken me this long to get around to watching this.  It packs over two and a half hours of Ozploitation trailers onto one disc, and the fun comes at you in a fast and furious manner.  The sheer length and non-stop onslaught of titles can be a little overwhelming, even for someone who has sat through as many trailer compilations as I have.  Perhaps sensing the possibility of giving the viewer too much of a good thing, the makers of the Ozploitation Trailer Explosion wisely separated the collection into three distinct categories.  That at least helps break things up a little bit.  My advice is to watch one section a night and it’ll go down a lot smoother. 

“Sexploitation and ‘Ocker’ Comedies” gives us a glimpse of Australia’s wild and colorful softcore comedies of the ‘70s.  There are trailers for Mondo “documentaries” like The Naked Bunyip, The Love Epidemic, and The ABCs of Love and Sex Australia Style.  We also get trailers for such comedies like Alvin Purple, The Adventures of Barry Mckenzie, Fantasm, and all of their respective sequels. 

The next segment, “Horror and Thriller” features some of the best-known exploitation titles to come from Down Under.   Even if you’ve never seen some of these titles, I’m sure you’ve at least heard of the likes of The Last Wave, Patrick, Long Weekend, Thirst and Road Games.  And if you’ve only heard of these films, this is the perfect sampler to whet your appetite.  This was for me the most successful stretch of the collection, mostly because I’m a dyed-in-the wool horror fan. 

“Cars and Action” is the final section, and it offers up a fun smattering of… well… cars and action.  We get trailers for such Australian action flicks as The Cars That Ate Paris, The Man from Hong Kong, Mad Dog Morgan, Stunt Rock, and BMX Bandits.  The Mad Max movies are notably absent from this sequence, but you do get to see a young Mel Gibson in the trailer for Attack Force Z. 

Overall, this is a blast from start to finish.  While I have seen a number of the films featured here, I discovered at least half a dozen flicks to add to my ever-increasing watchlist.  What more can you ask for from a trailer compilation?

The complete trailer line-up is as follows:  The Naked Bunyip, Stork, The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, Libido, Alvin Purple, Barry McKenzie Holds His Own, Alvin Rides Again, Petersen, The Love Epidemic, Wompers, Plugg, The Box, The Great McCarthy, Eliza Fraser, Don’s Party, Oz, Fantasm, Fantasm Comes Again, The ABCs of Love and Sex Australia Style, Felicity, Dimboola, Centrespread, Pacific Banana, Outback, Fright:  Night of Fear, Inn of the Damned, End Play, Summerfield, The Last Wave, Patrick, Long Weekend, The Night, the Prowler, Snapshot, Thirst, Harlequin, Nightmares, The Survivor, Dead Kids, Road Games, The Killing of Angel Street, Heatwave, A Dangerous Summer, Next of Kin, Cassandra, The Cars That Ate Paris, Stone, The Man from Hong Kong, Mad Dog Morgan, Raw Deal, Journey Among Women, The FJ Holden, Money Movers, Stunt Rock, The Chain Reaction, Race for the Yankee Zephyr, Attack Force Z, Turkey Shoot, Freedom, Midnight Spares, BMX Bandits, The Return of Captain Invincible, Sky Pirates, Fair Game, Dead End Drive-In, and The Time Guardian. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: DEATH RACE 3: INFERNO (2013) **

FORMAT:  DVD

Death Race gets bought out by an evil mogul (Dougray Scott) who turns the race into a worldwide event.  He also reneges on the contract of the reigning champion Frankenstein (Luke Goss) and blackmails him into throwing the race, which makes everyone’s favorite racer streaming mad.  When Death Race gets taken out of the prison and into the desert, Frankenstein sets out to settle the score. 

Death Race 3:  Inferno kicks off with a fun ad for the Death Race that plays things with its tongue firmly in cheek.  I thought this would mean this entry would retain some of the same black humor that made Roger Corman’s original Death Race 2000 so memorable.  Sadly, the announcer’s gusto during the race highlights is one of the few enjoyable aspects of the film.  

The new setting doesn’t add much to the flick either.  The prison races in the first two movies were like a video game come to life and had a sense of fun about them.  This time out, all we get are a bunch of drab-looking sand dunes and desert tracks, which only adds to the overall generic feel.  The inclusion of a bunch of locals protesting the race feels like a clumsy attempt at social commentary too. 

There is at least one new interesting wrinkle to the race:  A preliminary round where the female navigators fight to the death for a place on the track.  However, the sixteen-women brawl is ultimately underwhelming as the fight is rushed, the camerawork sucks, and the whole sequence is edited halfway into oblivion.  Likewise, the race scenes themselves in general suffer from over-editing and less than optimal camerawork.  Speaking of editing, the twist ending isn’t bad, but it’s needlessly over-explained and over-edited.  This is a DTV Death Race sequel we’re talking about here.  This isn’t The Usual Suspects. 

Goss is bland and generic in the lead. which suits the movie as it’s bland and generic too.  Danny Trejo doesn’t get much to do (besides get a BJ) and Ving Rhames essentially just has a cameo this time around.  Fortunately, Scott is having fun chewing the scenery as the crooked warden.  Too bad his demented glee didn’t rub off on the rest of the cast. 

AKA:  Death Race:  Inferno.

IT’S A SICK, SICK, SICK WORLD (1965) * ½

This obviously fake Mondo movie starts off in New York where it follows the exploits of rapists in Central Park, gays in Greenwich Village, the “photographer’s model” racket, judges who grade strippers, and prostitutes who turn tricks for drugs.  Then the action switches over to Germany as we pay a visit to the concentration camps.  Afterwards, we take a look at German night life including mud wrestling, the red-light district, strippers, and drug dealers.  We head off to London for the next segment as we look in on British strippers and prostitutes (one who uses personal ads to find clients), and there’s a long scene where two men fight over the same girl.  Then in Paris a tourist takes his dates to various strip clubs, and we also see the Parisian red-light district, and a belly dancing club where comic relief pot smokers look on.  Things wrap up with a segment on casting couches and an odd party where people throw trash everywhere. 

Even the most exploitative Mondo movies take on the air of a faux-documentary and show the audience the various skeevy happenings under the guise of amateur anthropology.  This one is callous, cynical, and judgmental and has no qualms telling the audience just what it thinks about its subject.  By doing so, it takes the fun right out of it. 

For example, one scene shows a couple of average gay guys walking down the street and the narrator grumpily quips, “It’s a sick… sick… SICK world!”  That shit so wouldn’t fly today.   I mean it’s one thing to reserve that kind of attitude while showing concentration camp footage, but when it’s just a couple of dudes just going about their day?  C’mon. 

I mean how authentic can the whole thing be when the people being documented are recognizable (or at least recognizable to me) B-movie players like Sammy (Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla) Petrillo and Doris Wishman regular Sam Stewart?  Something seems awfully fishy.  Because of that, I can’t give It’s a Sick, Sick, Sick World a clean bill of health.

AQUASLASH (2020) ***

You know, I’ve never really thought about it, but a water park is an ideal location for a horror movie.  Like lakeside summer camps and sunny beaches, it’s a perfect place for horny scantily clad teens to run around, fornicate, and get hacked up.  It’s a wonder the genre hasn’t taken full advantage of the idea sooner. 

True to form, Aquaslash has plenty of scenes of hot babes in wet bikinis sliding down water slides in slow motion.  As an added bonus, we even get an ‘80s style wet T-shirt car wash scene in there for good measure.  It also delivers on the gore, which is always something that’s appreciated in a good old-fashioned throwback genre flick. 

Thirty-five years ago, there was a murder at a water park.  Cut to present day, and a bunch of high school graduates are having their senior trip at the park.  Little do they know someone has sabotaged one of the water slides and has turned it into a slicing and dicing killing machine. 

The best aspect of Aquaslash is its short running time.  Writer/director Renaud Gauthier must’ve had a feeling that the premise was thin to begin with, so he kept things humming along at a brisk seventy-one minutes.  Because of that, he doesn’t gum up the works… or clog up the filter as the case may be.  The climactic sequence of the sabotaged slide slicing teens into freshly cut briskets is a real winner, even if that’s where most of the body count comes from.  I mean it would’ve been nice if there had been a little more invention elsewhere in the film (or at least more opportunities to turn the seniors into chop suey).   That being said, it’s hard to complain when the movie ends with dozens of severed limbs bobbing up and down around the park. 

AKA:  Aquaflush.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: PASSION IN THE SUN (1964) **

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on September 4th, 2009)

A stripper on her way to her latest gig gets kidnapped by some bozos at the airport.  They take her out to the desert where she escapes in her underwear.  While eluding capture, the stripper often finds time to bathe naked in a stream and daydream about taking her clothes off.  Meanwhile, the owner of the strip club is worried because she hasn’t showed up, so he puts a lot of dancing girls in her place (one of which dresses like an Indian).  Just when the kidnapper looks like he’s catching up to the ditzy dancer, an escaped sideshow geek jumps in and kills him.  The lecherous freak then pursues the chick to an amusement park where she hides in the Wild Mouse rollercoaster.  The geek chases after the gal but comes to an untimely end when he gets run over by the Wild Mouse car.

 

Passion in the Sun is a mostly dull nudie flick made up of boring striptease routines.  The “plot” stuff is nothing but stupid chase scenes that are accompanied by some of the worst incidental music I’ve ever heard.  The reason I sorta dug it was because the final Wild Mouse chase is awesome.  When I was growing up, there was a Wild Mouse ride at our local amusement park that sat dormant for what seemed like forever.  Supposedly that was because someone died on it.  Just the thought that somebody could die on something that was intended to be fun kinda fucked me up as a kid and turned me off rollercoasters for a long time.  Seeing the old Wild Mouse ride (and more importantly the ominous looking mascot) in its heyday sparked a bunch of childhood nostalgia for me that no doubt added an extra ½ * or two to my review.  (Seeing someone getting killed on said coaster was pretty cool too.)  If of course you don’t share my enthusiasm for ancient amusements of a bygone era and are watching this thing for its intended arousal purposes, you’re going to be severely disappointed.

 

AKA:  Passion of the Sun.  AKA:  The Girl and the Geek.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: GHOSTS OF HANLEY HOUSE (1968) **

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on October 24th, 2020)

Ghosts of Hanley House is the kind of obscure horror flick I enjoy stumbling upon.  It’s a regional feature with no name stars and even less of a budget.  It’s also notable for being written and directed by a woman, Louise Sherrill.  It’s a shame she didn’t direct anything else.  Although the film as a whole isn’t always successful, Sherrill shows some ingenuity when it comes to creating atmosphere with obviously very few resources at her disposal.

A guy and his friend make a friendly wager in their neighborhood bar:  If he can stay one night in the haunted Hanley House, he’ll hand over the keys to his Ferrari.  He eagerly agrees, calls up some pals, and together they have a party in the abominable abode.  Naturally, one of his friends happens to be a psychic, and during a séance, the ghosts show themselves to be very real.

Sherrill delivers a strong pre-title sequence that sets the mood nicely.  As the camera tours through Hanley House, doors slam, thunder crashes, and women scream.  The sound effects coupled with the ominous music almost make it feel like something out of an old radio show.  The stark black and white cinematography is also well done.  The shots of people standing in front of a black background are eerily effective, and some scenes are reminiscent of Night of the Living Dead.

You also have to give Sherrill credit as a screenwriter.  In most of these movies, you wonder why the people just don’t automatically leave the house at the first sign of danger.  Here, the hero has a very good reason for staying:  A Ferrari!

Ghosts of Hanley House starts off in fine fashion.  Sherrill doles out low key but effective chills throughout the first act.   I also enjoyed the great acid rock soundtrack during the early scenes.  I especially liked it when it was blaring over the dialogue to disguise the fact they didn’t have synchronized sound for the outdoor scenes. 

Unfortunately, the movie quickly takes a nosedive in quality and it never quite recovers.  The film pretty much slams on the brakes in the second half when the group decides to leave the house and wind up getting lost in the woods.  From there, the picture slowly peters out until it reaches its thoroughly unsatisfactory conclusion.  (The axe murder flashback is the only highlight of the otherwise dreary finale.)  Still, it’s worth a look for the promising early scenes that play almost like a no budget remake of The Haunting. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: VIOLATED (1953) ** ½

 FORMAT:  BLU-RAY

A call girl is found murdered in her apartment stabbed with a pair of scissors.  To add insult to injury, all her hair was cut off too.  While the police search for the madman, we meet a pretty, young, and naive model who gets lured into posing for a seedy photographer.  The photographer has the hots for a surly burlesque dancer who sometimes models for him.  Meanwhile, a recently released sex offender begins following her around.  Could he be the depraved killer?

Violated is an early example of a sex maniac movie.  Its chief asset is the great New York location work which gives you a nice glimpse of the city that’s not usually found in low budget potboilers of the era.  Sure, it might seem pretty tame by today’s standards, but it was likely shocking to moviegoers back in the early ‘50s.  In fact, even though the film is uneven for the most part, it does feel a little ahead of its time.  The finale that gratuitously over explains the killer’s motive is sort of a forerunner to Psycho too. 

Most of the time in these kinds of things, the police investigation sequences bring the pace to a crashing halt.  That’s not the case with Violated as some of the detective scenes work rather well, especially when they bring in the usual suspects of perverts and creeps and work them over.  Sadly, the exploitation bits feel rushed and/or glossed over.  The burlesque numbers, bubble baths, and catfights also seem to end before they can really begin.  I know this is 1953 we’re talking about, but I’m sure they could’ve tried to be a little more down n’ dirty.  Fortunately, the film does have a nice sense of atmosphere. which somewhat makes up for the lack of skin.  The proto-surf rock guitar score is also pretty good. 

Screenwriter William Mishkin later went on to produce many Andy Milligan movies. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE NAKED WITCH (1961) *

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY

A young college student (Robert Short) in Texas runs out of gas on his way to a singing festival in a small town where everyone speaks German and dresses like they did a hundred years ago.  He’s preparing a thesis on witches and quickly learns the locals are very superstitious, especially on the subject of witches.  The only one eager to help him is a young blond named Kriska (Jo Maryman).  When he stupidly digs up the witch’s grave, he accidentally revives her, and the nude witch (Libby Hall) sets out to get revenge on the descendants of the man who accused her. 

The Naked Witch starts with an unnecessarily long (and mostly inaccurate) history of witches accompanied by long lingering shots of paintings.  The only thing that makes it memorable is the fact that it’s narrated by Laugh-In’s Gary Owens.  This is followed by a long stretch of boring narration from our hero.  Once he arrives at the village, it becomes obvious the production didn’t use synch sound for many scenes (or it was considered unusable) as the dialogue is often poorly dubbed.  Other times, the narration is dropped over conversations to let the audience know what is being said by the characters, which gets annoying fast.  It’s almost enough to make Manos, the Hands of Fate look quasi-professional. 

Co-directed by schlockmeister extraordinaire Larry Buchanan, The Naked Witch is rough going for the most part.  It also takes a long time to get to the “naked witch” shit.  To make matters worse, there are scenes of the witch walking around naked, but for some stupid reason, all the naughty bits have been obscured!  What the hell.  Fortunately, whenever she’s skinny dipping, we finally get to see a little skin.  It just seemed odd to me that whenever she’s on dry land her body is blurred out.  I’m not sure what kind of witchcraft that is, but it sucks.  At least the close-ups of the witch’s face are marginally effective.  Sadly, that’s the only part of her that gets a good close-up. 

AKA:  Witches.

A SHEAR DELIGHT (1995) ****

The legendary Up All Night hostess Rhonda Shear stars in her own hour-long special.  It sort of plays like a tamer version of a Playboy Video Centerfold.  Rhonda is interviewed about her history in show business, competing in beauty pageants, and even her brief time in local politics.  Peppered throughout the interviews are cheesecake modeling scenes of Rhonda lounging around in (what else?) sheer lingerie.

Rhonda’s bubbly personality and winning charm comes across during the interview segments.  Naturally, her beauty is on full display in the softcore segments.  While she doesn’t exactly appear nude or anything, her outfits leave very little to the imagination.  The fun segments include Rhonda modeling a lacy white number, sporting a black catsuit, performing a dance with a white feather boa while wearing a short skirt, and donning a cowgirl outfit (while riding in a saddle, no less).  

The highlight is when she seductively eats a popsicle… and let me tell you… this scene is enough to keep you… UP All Night… if you know what I mean.  While the other segments are great and all, this one is pure cinema.  For foot fetish fans there’s a rather incredible scene where she smooshes a banana and jelly donuts with her toes.  The scene where the filling symbolically shoots out is something else.  Again.  Cinema.  At its finest.  Eat your heart out, Scorsese.

Rhonda naturally plugs Up All Night a lot (and her merchandise catalogue).  In fact, much of this sort of feels like you’re watching Up All night without the movie segments.  That is to say, it’s A-OK with me. 

The behind-the-scenes talent is pretty impressive too.  Scream Queen Monique Gabrielle also served as producer and Penthouse Pet and Andy Sidaris muse Julie K. Smith was the set designer.  Julie also starred in the immortal The Strap-On Adventure, which was also directed by this film’s director, Tony Angove.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE FEMALE EXECUTIONER (1986) ***

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY

The Female Executioner begins with Brigitte Lahaie naked in a hot tub, and if there’s a better way to start a movie, I’ll be damned if I can think of it. 

Lahaie stars as a tough cop who busts a lady kingpin for the kidnapping of a young girl.  Her crazy son retaliates by kidnapping Brigitte’s sister.  When the sly villainess double crosses Brigitte and kills her sister, Lahaie goes out for revenge. 

The Female Executioner is essentially a French version of an American style action movie with the novelty of a female porn star in the lead role.  Lahaie is essentially Dirty Harriet as she bends the rules to put the bad guys away.  Since it’s Lahaie in the lead, that means she also gets some gratuitous sex scenes.  I’d like to see Clint Eastwood try that.  (On second thought, I’d rather not.)

We all know Brigitte is more than capable in between the sheets, but she’s equally impressive when she hits the streets.  She handles herself quite nicely in her action scenes and is quite convincing when kicking ass.  She even has a cool gimmick of not using guns… that is until her sister is killed.  Then she has no problem blowing away scumbags.  I believe that’s what the highbrow critics call a “character arc”.

It’s not all great, however. The plot gets kinda fractured in the third act and it sometimes feels like the production might’ve run out of time or money (or both).  The music is pretty bad too as it sounds like something you’d hear on the local nightly news.  That in no way should stop you from seeing it, especially if you’re a fan of Brigitte as she is simply dynamite.  It’s almost enough to make you wish she found a second career as an action heroine. 

AKA:  Miss Magnum.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) ****

FORMAT:  4K UHD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on January 7th, 2010)

Dummmm Dummmm Dummmm DAH DUMMMMM!!!!!!!

 

(Sorry, I had to do that.)

 

2001:  A Space Odyssey is not my favorite Stanley Kubrick movie (that would be The Shining) but from a technical standpoint it’s his masterpiece.  Kubrick combines breathtaking visuals (the Star Gate sequence is still one of the coolest looking things ever put on film), with stunning special effects (incredibly they still hold up forty years after the film’s initial release), an awesome soundtrack (Dummmm Dummmm Dummmm DAH DUMMMMM!!!!!!!), and unnerving sound effects (Dave’s constant heavy breathing in the spacesuit is damned eerie) to create a truly unforgettable movie-going experience.  It’s definitely one of the best films of the 60’s; if not of all time.

 

I probably don’t need to give you a plot crunch of this one but I will anyway.  This giant black monolith (it looks like a big ass Nestle Crunch bar) shows up during the “Dawn of Man” (Dummmm Dummmm Dummmm DAH DUMMMMM!!!!!!!  Okay, that’s probably getting annoying.  I apologize.  I’ll stop that now, I promise.) and turns some scared, leaf eating apes into bone-wielding meat eaters.  Millenniums later, astronauts find another monolith on the moon that points them in the direction of Jupiter.  While on the mission to Jupiter, astronauts Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) have to contend with a homicidal computer named HAL (voiced by Douglas Rain) who flips his lid and tries to kill everybody.  Only Dave survives and he alone enters the monolith where he gets turned into an enormous Space Baby. 

 

This flick is completely devoid of human emotion, which is kinda odd but it completely works.  (Years later, Attack of the Clones would achieve a similar feat.)  Instead of engaging our emotions, Kubrick opts to challenge our grey matter by not clearly spelling everything out, like most space operas do.  It’s this kind of approach that makes the film ideal for multiple viewings.

 

Another thing that makes 2001:  A Space Odyssey so timeless is that it has a little something for everybody.  If you want a highfalutin thought-provoking science fiction movie, you got that.  If you want a pulpy Killer Computer Runs Amok Movie, you got that too.  If you just want to drop acid and trip balls, you can do that as well.  Mostly though, 2001 is pure unadulterated Stanley Kubrick firing on all cylinders.  Amazingly enough; Kubrick’s next film, A Clockwork Orange is even better.  

 

2001:  A Space Odyssey is on The Video Vacuum Top Ten Films of the Year for 1968 at the Number 2 spot; which puts it right in between The Kiss of Her Flesh and the Number One titleholder, Night of the Living Dead.

QUICK THOUGHTS:

Kubrick was a great filmmaker before 2001:  A Space Odyssey, with such films as Paths of Glory, Lolita, and Dr. Strangelove already under his belt.  It was 2001 though that elevated him to legendary status.  56 years later, and it hasn’t aged a day.  In fact, it looks even better now in 4K UHD, which brings me to…

4K UHD NOTES:

Holy hell.  I haven’t seen many films in the format, but it will be tough to top this one.  It’s almost like 2001 was solely designed as a systems test for your 4K TV and Blu-Ray player.  From the vast landscapes of the “Dawn of Man” prologue to the endless stretches of the cosmos, every frame looks simply incredible. 

The colors are terrific too.  From the blackness of space to the eye-popping trippy visuals during the climax, it’s all rather glorious.  Heck, even the mundane Heywood Floyd scenes really pop.  Every detail looks sharp as hell too.

In short, this is a must own.  It’s the next best thing to seeing it in the theater in 70mm.