BLOOD FOR BLOOD (1995) **

Lorenzo Lamas stars as a ponytailed cop who works in “youth services” teaching at-risk kids Kung Fu.  Since he’s one of the few men on the force who speaks Cambodian, he gets roped into translating for some detectives on a stakeout.  Naturally, things go sour, a shootout ensues, and there are casualties on both sides.  Shortly after the bust, an unstoppable hitman (James Lew) arrives on the scene to pick off the cops involved in the stakeout one by one.  When he comes after Lamas’ family, Lorenzo digs deep inside of himself to unlock an ancient power to defeat his enemies.

Lamas gets to Kung Fu a lot of people in this and he is quite adept; gamely slinging roundhouse kicks and flashing samurai swords.  He also spends a lot of time in his underwear.  Whether lounging in bed, sweating while having nightmares, participating in sex scenes, or fighting toe to toe with Lew, Lamas’ skivvies are on screen more often than not.  Heck, they should’ve gotten their own billing.  

The cops-and-robbers stuff is very basic.  There’s probably a little too much plot as Lamas has to deal with bad guy Cambodians AND villainous Russians.  The shootouts are handled well enough by director John Weidner, but they don’t push the Blood for Blood over the top or anything.  At least James Lew is fun to watch as the assassin who uses weapons straight out of a Shaw Brothers movie.

What isn’t basic is the fact that Lamas has half-assed Jedi powers like having premonitions and being able to move sand with his mind.  Mako shows up briefly as the Yoda to Lamas’ Luke, but not long enough to make a difference.  As cool as it sounds to have Lamas playing a mystical warrior, they really don’t do much with the concept, which is disappointing.  They should’ve really tried to milk it for all its worth, but I guess they chickened out at the risk of seeming too silly (and as we all know there’s no such thing “too silly” in a Lorenzo Lamas movie).

Then again, maybe not.  I mean I can believe Lamas possesses inexplicable mental powers in this movie.  However, I just can’t believe him as a half-Cambodian.  These little oddball touches don’t necessarily make Blood for Blood better than your average Lamas flick.  (In one scene, Lamas uses what Joe Bob Briggs would describe as “Lamp Fu”.)  It does make it more memorable though.

AKA:  Midnight Man.  AKA:  Man Hunt.

WHERE THE BOYS ARE (1984) * ½

Where the Boys Are is a remake of the old 1960 film but updated for the age of the ‘80s Teenage Sex Comedy.  I guess the main appeal of a remake was to let the girls (Lisa Hartman, Wendy Schaal, Lorna Luft, and Lynn-Holly Johnson) act wild and crazy in one of these movies for a change.  Even though they claim they’re going to Fort Lauderdale on Spring Break for “animal sex and debauchery”, it’s all surprisingly tame.  Sure, they bring along a male blow-up doll, go out drinking, and participate in a “Hot Bod” competition, but it’s all very reserved.  (There’s even a gender reversal of the cliched scene of one of the main characters inadvertently picking up a prostitute.)

It’s well-meaning, I guess and less crass and crude than other similar Teenage Sex Comedies of the era.  Maybe that’s part of the problem.  People wanting a typical Teenage Sex Comedy will walk away disappointed because of the lack of skin.  People who want a comedy from the female gaze will be disappointed as there’s really nothing here that indicates it’s coming from a woman’s perspective.

Director Hy Averback’s career mostly consisted of television work, and you can certainly tell.  There’s barely enough nudity here to get an R rating.  There are brief topless shots on the beach (the film’s biggest laugh comes from a guy with a megaphone who tricks topless sunbathers into turning over) and during a bikini contest, but that’s about it.  Otherwise, all you get is a bunch of girls in skimpy bathing suits and one in a kinky S & M get-up.  All of this probably seems just as chaste to today’s audiences as the original was in ’84.  I mean the whole thing ends with a goddamn piano recital, for Christ’s sake.  

Johnson, who was so appealing in For Your Eyes Only, is one of the few sources of fun here.  Unfortunately, most of her dumb dialogue requires her to says stuff like, “It’s like a supermarket of sex!”  Schaal is fine too as the prudish girl who gets drunk and does a striptease on top of a bar, but neither actress is given the opportunity to really cut loose, which is a shame.

If anything, Where the Boys Are is notable for being the first movie ever released by Tri-Star Pictures.

AKA:  Where the Boys Are ’84.

CHERRY, HARRY AND RAQUEL! (1970) ***

Russ Meyer’s Cherry, Harry and Raquel! is the only movie I can think of that starts off with a written plea for the tolerance of free love and sex immediately followed up by a long narration condemning the use and trafficking of marijuana.  I guess Meyer’s work is filled with contradictions, shameless moralizing, and even more shameless nudity.  It’s certainly a lesser work for Meyer, but it still contains enough of his hallmarks to make it worthwhile for fans.  There’s all the rapid-fire editing, Dutch angles, and shots of busty women making love and/or frolicking in the nude against far-reaching vistas that you’ve come to expect from the man.  The results are uneven and spotty, but I’ll be damned if there aren’t some flashes of brilliance here.

Harry (Charles Napier) is a corrupt sheriff who runs reefer out of a pissant desert town.  He keeps two women on the side, a sexy blond hooker named Raquel (Larissa Ely) and a fiery redhead nurse named Cherry (Linda Ashton).  Harry is delayed in the desert when he gets entangled in a vicious gun battle, and his ladies past the time by smoking dope and getting it on with one another.

Cherry, Harry and Raquel! is rather inconsequential and lightweight.  The fragmented, unstructured narrative is frustrating at times, but the highlights are pure Meyer.  Ely goes down on a guy while her wine goblet covers his phallus.  Napier finds Ashton buried in the sand before uncovering her breasts and balling her on the dunes.  Then there’s the scene of Napier fixing a flat tire intercut with a gynecological exam.  It’s bizarre, brazen, and totally Meyer.

I’m not saying it all works.  The random insert shots of Uschi Digard running around naked, showering, and suggestively eating celery doesn’t add up to much of anything, other than to help pad out the running time.  Then again, if you want to pad out the running time, having Uschi Digard roaming through the desert nude for no good reason whatsoever is a good way to go about it.  The overly violent shootout in the desert also feels a bit out of place.  I guess if anything, Meyer was trying to show everyone he could pull off a bloody gun battle just as well as Sam Peckinpah.    

Meyer took his comic book penchant for sex, violence, and overall outrageousness to the nth degree with his next film, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls later in the year.

AKA:  Megavixens.  AKA:  Three Ways to Love.

UNINVITED (1988) *** ½

Uninvited is the best mutant-cat-escapes-from-a-genetics-research-lab-and-stows-aboard-a-yacht-carrying-young-spring-breakers-and-old-character-actors-and-picks-them-off-one-by-one movie I’ve ever seen.  It’s longwinded, preposterous, uneven, and downright bizarre, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Believe me when I tell you there is some truly special shit in this flick.  

Remember in Alien when the alien opened its mouth and another mouth jumped out?  Well, when the cat in Uninvited opens its mouth ANOTHER CAT jumps out and mauls the humans.  Incredible.  

This was made by Greydon Clark, who is admittedly all over the map in terms of quality.  Once in a blue moon you get a Black Shampoo from Greydon.  Most times though, it’s something like Angels Revenge.  Thankfully, Uninvited in closer to the Black Shampoo end of the spectrum.  

Probably my favorite moment comes when a kindhearted gas station attendant takes pity on the cat and gives it a saucer of milk.  Minutes later, he is killed by a gunman during a robbery.  What does the cat do?  It stows away in the getaway vehicle and GETS REVENGE!  Holy Shit, is this movie awesome or what?

I haven’t even told you about the scene where it turns guys wearing Jiffy Pop colored hazmat suits into hamburger.  Or the part where Clu Gulager (who’s sporting a pair of hilarious fake teeth and some serious Coke bottle glasses) pisses it off and it tears him a new one.  Or the elongated aerobicizing scene.  (“I think you’re better than Jane Fonda!”)  Or the scene where Sheri Shattuck eats food tainted with radioactive cat blood and her throat erupts in bloody sores quicker than you can say Meow Mix.  

It’s PG-13, so the make-out scenes between the teens don’t feature any nudity.  That’s okay though because the scene of cat-us interruptus is classic.  It also contains one of the greatest white-teens-with-no-rhythm-trying-to-dance scenes of the ‘80s.

Sure, the third act is a mess, especially during the cat-less portions.  I won’t even bring up the fact that even though it was released in 1988, it looks like it was filmed in ’81.  Just do me a favor.  Before you sit down to watch Uninvited, ask yourself one question:  Am I the kind of person who wants to see George Kennedy’s Achilles torn out by a demon Muppet cat?  If the answer is a resounding “FUCK YEAH!”, then you’re sure to have a great time.

AKA:  Killer Cat.

THE GIRLS FROM THUNDER STRIP (1970) *

Director David L. Hewitt has made some movies that were so spectacularly bad that they became instant classics (like The Mighty Gorga).  He’s also made some that were just plain bad (like The Wizard of Mars).  The Girls from Thunder Strip falls into the latter category.

   

Three bikers get their kicks by raping and humiliating women.  The only thing they hate more than women is hillbilly gas station attendants.  A tussle with one such hillbilly ends in the accidental death of the gang’s biker mama.  The sheriff promptly shows up and throws them in jail. 

Meanwhile, Casey Kasem (!!!) is a government agent trying to bust a trio of sisters who bootleg moonshine.  The sisters wind up busting out the bikers to help them battle the cops.  Naturally, the try to have their way with the sisters, which leads to a biker vs. moonshiner war.

The Girls from Thunder Strip plays like a mash-up of the biker, redneck, and moonshine genres.  There are scenes of biker stomping, prison breaks, and Good Ol’ Boy-style car chases accompanied by banjo music.  In fact, there is a LOT of banjo music in this movie.  You’ll probably get a headache from the constant, merciless, unending banjo picking.

This often feels schizophrenic.  It tries to cover too many genres and never does any of them justice.  The plot starts off incoherently and only gets worse as it goes along.  The tone is all out of whack too.  This is the only movie I can think of that contains a vicious rape scene and then twenty minutes later, Casey Kasem falls victim to a Bugs Bunny-style explosion that leaves him comically standing around in a daze with scorched clothing.

The ending is the pits though.  After a long foot chase (cue the banjos!), our hillbilly hero corners the biker leader into a cave.  Then, there’s a closeup of a stuffed bobcat, followed by the sounds of screaming and growling.  I guess this was supposed to signify the biker being killed by the bobcat, but the editing is so piss-poor it’s hard to tell what the hell happened.  It’s pathetic.

Hewitt’s next attempt at the biker genre, The Tormentors, was a lot better.

MAJOR LEAGUE: BACK TO THE MINORS (1998) ***

I put off seeing Major League:  Back to the Minors for… oh… twenty years, mostly under the assumption that it would suck without the presence of both Charlie Sheen and Tom Berenger.  I mean, how are you going to make a Major League movie with only Corbin Bernsen, Dennis Haysbert, and the C squad of players from Major League 2?  The addition of primarily TV talent in major roles such as Scott Bakula and Ted McGinley didn’t help to combat the feeling that this was going to be nothing but a DTV sequel that somehow got released theatrically by mistake.

Then not too long ago while perusing IMDB, I saw that Walton Goggins, everyone’s favorite bad guy from Justified had an early role in it as a brash young ballplayer and it sparked my interest.  I don’t know if it was the twenty years of low expectations or what, but it only took about twenty minutes for me to get into the groove of Back to the Minors.  Sure, it doesn’t quite measure up to its predecessors, but it’s a solid sequel that showed the franchise wasn’t quite dead.

Bakula plays Gus, a washed-up pitcher who resorts to using frozen baseballs to get batters out.  Former Indian Roger Dorn (Bernsen) is now the owner of the Twins and signs him up to mentor a hotheaded ballplayer (Goggins) on their minor league squad.  The big leagues Twins manager (McGinley) constantly makes fun of Gus, which leads to a drunken bet as to whose team is the best.

This builds up to a minor league vs. big league playoff game, which is unique.  It’s hard to say how believable it would be (and if it did happen, it would probably occur during the pre-season and not when the teams are still in contention), but it does give this entry a different flavor than the other films in the series.  It’s here where it sort of becomes an underdog movie like Rocky (there’s even a big rematch) than your standard baseball flick, which is refreshing.

The performances really sell it.  I don’t know why I ever doubted Bakula.  He’s always been a solid performer who deserved to be a bigger star.  He’s immensely likeable as the down and out manager and he and Bernsen have a few funny scenes together.  It’s fun catching up with the various players from the other movies (not to mention Bob Uecker); even if some of their gimmicks are past their expiration date.  The new additions to the cast are fun though, and Goggins fares well as the hotheaded slugger in desperate need of guidance.  I also enjoyed seeing Friday the 13^th Part 8:  Jason Takes Manhattan’s Jensen Daggett as Bakula’s love interest.  

It’s Peter Mackenzie as “Doc” the pitcher with the slowest fastball on record who gets the best line of the movie when he goes to a greasy burger stand and tries to order a salad.  When he learns they only have three salad dressings, he tells the waiter, “You know, just bring me a gun so I can shoot myself.”

THE LEGEND OF WITCH HOLLOW (1969) ** ½

A young girl is killed, strung up, marked with weird symbols (in blood, of course), and drained of her blood in the swamp.  She’s just one of eight girls who’ve been killed over the past two years.  Anthony Eisley is a journalist who follows a team of psychics into the swamp to see if they can find the killer.  The culprit is Luther the Berserk (John Lodge), who is in league with a witch (Warrene Ott) who’s plotting to make herself young again.  They also want to control the body of the beautiful young “sensitive” psychic (Thordis Brandt) and force her to pledge allegiance to their dark lord.

The Legend of Witch Hollow is amusing in that it shows so much skin, but never quite pushes the envelope into out and out nudity.  I have never seen so many bare backs, cleavage, and legs, and no actual nipples, bushes, or butt cracks.  It even resorts to using some Austin Powers-type of tricks to cover the nudity, which is simultaneously funny and frustrating.  

Some parts might remind you of Jess Franco making an Al Adamson movie (or vice versa), but other parts have their own unique charm about them.  There’s some genuine atmosphere here, like when Luther calls upon the witch, the scene where the professor holds a seance, and the various midnight strolls by girls wearing flimsy lingerie as walk through the misty moonlit swamp.  I also like the unintentionally funny running gag of the professor being forced to bury the bodies of his dead students.  

It sits on its hands a bit too long in the middle section, but occasionally it springs to life.  The finale is particularly memorable.  It’s the only movie I can think of that ends with a raucous Satanist feast, whipping, blood drinking, a sorcerer shooting fireballs from his fingertips, a chase through a swamp, and a naked woman drowning in quicksand.  The thrills in the rest of the picture are much too fitful and intermittent to qualify this as “good”.  On the other hand, I’m certainly glad I saw it, even if it didn’t exactly cast a spell on me.  

Producers Alvy Moore and L.Q. Jones later made A Boy and His Dog together.

AKA:  The Witchmaker.  AKA:  The Naked Witch.  AKA:  Witchkill.