STONEY (1975) *

The luscious Barbara Bouchet stars in the brain-dead lensed-in-the-Philippines stinker.  She plays the mistress of a smuggler (Michael Rennie) who gets a line on a valuable cache of jewels.  He sends Barbara to retrieve them, and naturally a lot of people come crawling out of the woodwork to get their hands on the loot. 

The promise of Bouchet naked will be the only thing to keep you watching this boring heist picture.  Even then, her nude scenes are brief and not all that titillating.  The presence of one of my all-time favorite character actors, Vic Diaz couldn’t even brighten things up.  That’s mostly because his role is minor, and his character is underwritten.  If only the filmmakers allowed Diaz to go full-tilt boogie on Bouchet.  What a treat that would’ve been.

Another problem is that the movie never tries to make Bouchet a credible action star.  Sure, she looks great while wearing a variety of vintage garments, but I bet she would’ve looked even sexier brandishing a machine gun.  Unfortunately, we’re forced to settle for a dull, British, way-past-his-prime matinee idol type to do that sort of stuff while Barbara cowers in a corner somewhere.

Most of the blame must be placed on director Wray Davis.  He never directed another movie and it’s easy to see why.  The film is painfully low on action and what action we do get is badly shot, poorly lit, and incompetently staged.  (The strobe light effect during the final double-cross is annoying as hell.)  Since most of the running time is devoted to long, boring scenes of people sitting around plotting and scheming, enjoying Stoney is a rocky proposition at best.  

AKA:  Surabaya Conspiracy.  AKA:  The Gold Seekers.

LEGACY OF SATAN (1974) * ½

Legacy of Satan was directed by Gerard Damiano, who’s probably most famous for directing The Devil in Miss Jones.  It would only follow that he would helm this horror movie about a lonely housewife (Lisa Christian) who is under the spell of a Satanist cult.  From the looks of things, it seems that this started life as a porno, but all the explicit footage was excised so it could play on the legitimate circuit.  (The frequent jump cuts and awkward edits are a dead giveaway.)  However, without any hardcore sex, the movie is a slow-moving and boring affair.  I can’t say if the presence of hardcore footage would’ve saved it.  All I know is that in its present state, Legacy of Satan ain’t much.

Legacy of Satan is reminiscent in many ways to the equally inane Lucifer’s Women.  At least that movie had some (not much) nudity.  If the synth-heavy musical score doesn’t get on your nerves, it’ll probably give you a headache.  

There’s a nugget of a good idea here, but Damiano is unable to make it work.  He films the black masses in such a shoddy manner than even the cool costumes and creative set dressing get lost in the shuffle. It’s mostly a chore to sit through and the sixty-nine-minute running time feels much longer.  

If you stick with it long enough, you’ll be treated to some OK moments.  I liked the scene where Christian is having a dream where she is lying on an altar and has a candle placed between her legs.  When she awakes, she notices she’s considerably warmer “down there”.  It starts to turn into a slasher movie near the end when Christian starts stabbing people to provide fresh blood for her master.  The ending is kind of fun, especially when her husband showed up brandishing a legit lightsaber, three full years before Star Wars.  It makes you wonder if George Lucas saw this.

HELP ME… I’M POSSESSED! (1976) ****

A doctor runs an insane asylum where he keeps a lot of women in cages and occasionally lets his hunchback assistant whip them.  His wife comes to stay with him in his mansion and is rightfully freaked out by the loonies running about.  When townsfolk start being found murdered in the nearby woods, a sheriff comes to investigate.  Gee… do you think the doctor’s crazy sister could be the cause of all this?

Help Me… I’m Possessed! would make a great double bill with Bloodsucking Freaks.  I’m not saying that because there’s an awesome scene involving a guillotine either.  It’s not quite as explicit as that flick, but it has the same anything-goes lunacy.  In some ways, it’s so reminiscent of a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie with touches of Ed Wood along the way.  Heck, there are some moments that might remind you of Manos, the Hands of Fate.

What I’m trying to say is that this is a great fucking bad movie.

The dungeon sets are cheap looking, but I wouldn’t want them to look any other way.  They’re absolutely perfect.  The scenes of women in their underwear being strung up while crazed lunatics rattle their cages will sear themselves into your brain long after you watch it. 

The POV stalking shots are a thing of beauty too.  An unseen killer slowly creeps up on unsuspecting (and sometimes suspecting) victims.  All they can do is just raise their hands and allow the red tentacled monster (or whatever the Hell it is) kill them while being splattered with the most ‘70s looking blood you’ve ever seen.

The low budget craftsmanship (or lack thereof) is endearing.  The dated costumes, groovy music, stilted acting, and awful wigs are guaranteed to put a smile on any bad movie lovers’ faces.  The surprise is, the monster effects are startlingly effective.  The writhing tentacles are similar in many ways to Rob Bottin’s effects in John Carpenter’s The Thing, even if they do resemble sentient Red Vines.

Also, no one gets possessed, says, “Help me”, or says, “Help me… I’m possessed!”, which somehow makes it all even better.

AKA:  The Possessed.

A GRIL NAMED IRON PHOENIX (1973) **

I've never known a gril named Iron Phoenix, but I did have a grill named George Foreman once.  I know, I know, the title should be A Girl Named Iron Phoenix, but I'm a stickler for calling a movie by what it says in the title credits, even if it is misspelled.  Unfortunately, the misspelled title is the most memorable thing about it.

Dock workers have been dying on the job while the company collects on the insurance money.  Iron Phoenix is sent in to investigate and uncovers a dastardly plot by the local Mob.  The big-time gangster behind it all then sends in The Four Tigers to silence her once and for all.

Things get off to a groovy start with lots of funky music, bad dubbing, and a handful of energetic fight scenes.  We also get a funny moment when Iron Phoenix catches a thief who uses chopsticks to steal money from people’s wallets.  However, once she follows him back to his “master” (a homeless Kung Fu beggar), the movie starts to fall apart.  

Look, if you’re going to call your film A Gril Named Iron Phoenix, make sure it’s going to be about the girl named Iron Phoenix.  Don’t all of a sudden make it a buddy comedy about a homeless Kung Fu master and his annoying pupil.  Let your feisty and likeable heroine fight her own battles instead of the painfully unfunny comic relief.  Don’t keep her on the sidelines watching the action.  Allow her to participate.  Even if Iron Phoenix’s role wasn’t marginalized, I’m not sure it would’ve saved the movie.  One thing is for sure, the short running time (77 minutes) doesn’t hurt.

AKA:  A Girl Named Iron Phoenix.  AKA:  A Girl Called Iron Phoenix.

DAY OF THE DEAD: BLOODLINE (2018) **

This Day of the Dead isn’t really a sequel to Day of the Dead 2:  Contagium.  Nor is it a sequel to the 2008 Day of the Dead remake.  It almost plays like another remake of George A. Romero’s original Day of the Dead, with a few weird additions.  I’ve seen plenty of terrible DTV zombie movies in my time and as far as they go, you can do a whole lot worse.  It’s certainly better than Contagium or the 2008 remake.

The world is overrun by “rotters” (zombies).  Zoe (Sophie Skelton) is a scientist living in a military compound along with some soldiers and other assorted survivors.  While out on a supply run, she stumbles upon a rotter named Max (Jonathon Schaech), who used to stalk her when he was still human.  He follows the soldiers and sneaks into the compound to see Zoe (once a stalker, always a stalker).  Zoe captures him, chains him up, and performs experiments on him in hopes of creating a rotter vaccine.

The character of Max is sort of a variation on Bub from the original Day of the Dead.  Having him infatuated with the heroine makes this just different enough to prevent it from becoming yet another run-of-the-mill zombie movie.  (There’s a scene where Zoe lets him lick her in exchange for a blood sample.)  I’m not saying this ever comes close to being “good”.  Let’s face it.  This was never going to live up to the original, but it separates itself from Romero’s universe in enough ways to justify its existence.  Sure, there’s still all the scenes of soldiers collecting zombie specimens, the asshole in charge causing trouble with the heroine’s research (although no one could’ve been as big of an asshole as Joe Pilato’s Captain Rhodes), and the large-scale zombie breakout at the end you’d expect from a Day remake.  If you wanted to see those beats recreated yet again, you’re in luck.

The opening scene of the outbreak is kind of fun.  (Students partying in a morgue store their booze in the freezers where they keep the bodies.)  The zombie attacks are fairly bloody (there’s a lot of arterial spray) and the Hateful Eight inspired blood puking scene was appropriately juicy.  The early scenes in the compound, while inferior to the original, are at least tolerable.  Once Schaech gets loose and the zombies start attacking, the whole thing begins to slowly circle the drain.  From then on, it becomes one interchangeable scene of zombies biting humans after the other.  It gets repetitive quickly and the gore is too brief to really put it over the top.

I will say I’ve enjoyed seeing Schaech’s transformation from potential leading man in That Thing You Do to DTV vet.  He stars in stuff like this every chance he gets, and he almost always looks like he’s having fun doing it.  His very appearance in crap like this usually guarantees I’ll watch it at some point.

DID BABY $HOOT HER $UGARDADDY? (1972) ** ½

A mobster is killed for a million dollars, but the money goes missing.  A detective is out to recover the loot and goes to pay a visit to the widow, who winds up being a nympho.  Her daughter, Baby catches them getting romantic and takes photos of them in the bath tub.  When his captain sees the pictures, he has him thrown off the case.   After Baby and her mother are murdered, the detective goes on the trail of the killer, a sexy stripper who works in a Mob-owned night club.

Did Baby $hoot Her $ugardaddy? is an uneven, but mostly agreeable ‘70s skin flick.  The strip club scenes are the best part.  There’s a memorable dance where a woman in a black trench coat brandishes a toy shotgun, but my favorite number was when a dancer wearing a motorcycle helmet shone a flashlight into the audience for some inexplicable reason.  Although you’ve got to wait a long time to get to the T & A, the short running time and snappy pace keeps things popping right along.  

The scenes with the detective are decent enough.  The actors aren’t quite strong enough to pull off their roles, but whenever our hero’s getting tangled up with Baby and her sex-crazed mother, it works.  (The reveal of the blue-faced corpse is effective too.)  While the ending is pretty much a bust, the dated ‘70s fashions and music go a long way to keeping Did Baby $hoot Her $ugardaddy? afloat till then.  Fans of ‘70s kitsch will love the song, “Baby’s Got a Fever” that plays over one of the stripteases.  That ditty alone is almost worth the price of admission.  

FRIEND REQUEST (2017) *

You know that one weirdo girl in a hoodie who always sits alone in the cafeteria?  You know how you get that feeling that maybe you should befriend her because society tells you that’s the nice thing to do?  Well, Friend Request is about the best argument for NOT doing that.

To add insult to injury, this gal has zero friends on (this movie’s fake, unauthorized, pleased-don’t-sue-us-Zuckerberg version of) Facebook.  That’s even worse than having no friends in real life because everyone on the golldurn internet can see what a loser you are.  Of course, if you take the bait and friend her on Fakebook, chances are she’s going to be a social media stalker.

In Friend Request, she’s not only a weirdo girl in a hoodie and a social media stalker, but she’s a witch too!  If you even think of unfriending her on Fakebook, she’s liable to hang herself, film it, and put it all over your social media to make you look like a complete asshole.  Then, she’ll probably use her witchcraft to make wasps kill off all your friends.

It’s like she’s unfriending you… LITERALLY!

Hopefully, that summation is enough so that you don’t even need to see Friend Request.  However, if you do take it upon yourself to see it, make sure you have a high tolerance for these lame “the internet is a scary place” movies.  I sure as shit don’t, and it was a chore to get through.

As horribly rotten as most of it is, I have to say that the performers were decent.  It’s just that they couldn’t elevate the shoddy material.  It’s better than Unfriended, that’s for sure, but that’s not saying much.