STRAY CAT ROCK: SEX HUNTER (1970) **

Mako (Meiko Kaji) and her all-girl gang go around accusing horny old men of sexual harassment and shake them down for money.  Meanwhile, fellow gang member Mari (Mari Koiso) falls for a biracial Coca-Cola salesman, which causes her gangster ex to become furious.  He and his gang jump her new beau, beat him within an inch of his life, and force him to get out of town.  After the gang goes around committing more hate crimes, Mako finally has enough and puts her foot down.

Like the other films in the Stray Cat Rock series, the plot meanders, and the pacing is sluggish.  There are more exploitation elements at work here, although they run contrary to the social messages to movie is trying to convey.  There’s a forced vasectomy via broken Coke bottle, some nudity in an opium den, and a “rape party” for rich businessmen.  This certainly ups the sleaze quotient, but it doesn’t necessarily make it “better”.     

Kaji sports a big hat similar to the one she’d later wear in the Female Prisoner Scorpion films, so at least she looks cool.  Like Wild Jumbo, she isn’t given much to do.  She kinda stands idly by for most of the movie.  Once she finally stands up for her girls and begins chucking Molotov cocktails (in Coca-Cola bottles to make the revenge sweeter) at the bad guys and sleazebags, the movie picks up a bit.   

Overall, this is only marginally more enjoyable than its two predecessors thanks to the gratuitous violence.  The big problem is the misleading title.  No one hunts for sex in this movie, which is a big disappointment, so I have to deduct mucho points for that.  The highlight for me was the musical performances by an all-girl pop group, Golden Half who sing a great song called, “Yellow Cherry”.

SHINING SEX (1977) **

Lina Romay stars as an exotic dancer named Cynthia who does the titular dance number, which is nothing more than her taking off her little chain mail bikini and rolling around on the floor naked.  She catches the eye of the older, experienced Alpha (Evelyne Scott) who invites her back to their home for kinky sex.  We eventually learn Alpha is a being from another dimension who is using Cynthia for sex to gain knowledge of our planet.  (That’s just fancy talk for saying she keeps her locked up and ravages her again and again.)  After a LOT of lovemaking, Alpha coats Cynthia in a mysterious shimmery substance that will kill anyone who has sex with her.  

After a strong start, Shining Sex starts to fall apart as it plods from one interchangeable sex scene to the other.  They contain all the unnecessary zooms, nonexistent editing, and undisciplined close-ups of female genitalia you’d expect from director Jess Franco (who has a supporting role as the wheelchair bound doctor who briefly looks after Cynthia).  Lina is lovely, gets naked a lot, and participates in some near-hardcore sex scenes.  However, the pacing is listless, the running time is insurmountable (it’s over 100 minutes), and the droning music on the soundtrack almost put me to sleep.  

Things get particularly dull in the third act.  It’s here where Scott makes Lina go to Africa to seduce and kill a man.  If the whole movie was just her getting naked, having sex, and killing people with her lethal pussy (it just looks like someone poured glitter over her crotch) it would’ve been okay.  Unfortunately, it takes 80 of the 100 minutes running time to get there. 

Still, I admire the way Franco can rent a hotel room, a wheelchair, a jar of glitter, some willing naked women, and crank out a movie with his cinematic trademarks/fetishes on proud display.  He does at least give us one legitimately steamy scene where Scott gives Lina an oil massage.  Some laughs can also be had from the fact that Lina’s dubbed voice makes her sound like Betty Boop.

The biggest laugh comes when Alpha’s slave tells Lina, “I was immunized a long time ago. I can still make love to you even though your vagina has been contaminated with this deadly matter.” 

ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD (2019) ****

Quentin Tarantino’s ninth film is one of the richest and most rewarding moviegoing experiences in quite some time.  After only one viewing, I’m still having trouble expressing just how impactful it is.  I plan to revisit it very soon and if and when I have more to offer at that time, I’m sure I will chime in with some new thoughts.  As for now, let me see if I can adequately convey just how much of a big deal this thing is to me.

On the surface, it’s a film about the bromance between actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his best friend and stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt).  It’s February of 1969 and the alcoholic Rick is on his way down the Hollywood food chain.  He once was a leading man in pictures of varying quality, but now he’s reduced to being a villain of the week on episodic television.   He drinks too much and is overly hard on himself as he wonders if his glory days have passed him by.  Cliff is a once-great stuntman who is hopelessly devoted and loyal to his friend Rick.  The stories surrounding Cliff are the stuff of legend, but those stories have also isolated him from just about everyone in town BUT Rick. 

Unlike Rick, Cliff is happy where he is in his life.  He lives in a trailer while doting on his guard dog Brandy, seemingly at peace with himself and his past.  He’s just happy enough being Rick’s glorified assistant and chauffeur.  Whereas Rick is struggling to find himself, Cliff has it pretty much figured out.  Together, they are a perfect yin to the other’s yang.  One could assume they’d probably fall apart if they didn’t have the other to lean on.  

Rick’s neighbor is the lovely and famous Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie).  Even though he’s a household name himself, Rick still turns into a giddy fanboy at the prospect of living next door to a movie star.  To Rick, she embodies what it means to be a star.  

While Rick overcomes his own set of self-imposed mental demons on the set of his latest TV show, Cliff kills time taking a beautiful hitchhiker (Margaret Qualley) to the Spahn Ranch.  I’ll stop right there.  If you know your history, you might be able to guess how it might turn out.  Or maybe not if you remember Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. 

Tarantino is clearly in love with Hollywood in the late ‘60s and this is his love letter to that bygone era.  The way he weaves the minutia of the directors, movie stars, TV shows, commercials, trailers, and non-stop pop music of the time is downright magical.  Some may think the movie is too long, but I quite honestly didn’t want it to end.  I especially loved the scenes of Cliff driving around Hollywood blasting music.  The way Tarantino drops the music into the scenes via jump cuts, along with the long-gone scenery of Hollywood deftly gives you a feel of what was in the air at that time. 

The film really belongs to Leo and Brad.  I was a little nervous about DiCaprio in the lead as I found him to be sorely miscast in Tarantino’s Django Unchained.  However, he gives us a truly moving, full-bloodied, and believable portrait of a man stuck in a crisis of faith.  Not in God, but in himself.  His tortured, alcoholic tantrum in his trailer is some of the best acting he’s ever done.  He’s so wounded, sad, and honest in the scene where he describes a book he’s reading that it had me choking up.  

On the other side of the coin, Pitt is all unfettered id and gleeful delight as Cliff.  I never thought he’d be able to top Tyler Durden, but Cliff Booth comes awful close.  He’s quite possibly the best friend you could ever hope for.  He’s so easygoing and carefree… until he’s not.  Then, just be glad he’s on your side.

The film is terrific when it’s contrasting the lives of the two buddies, however, Tate’s character though mostly peripheral, is equally important.  She’s there to remind us that movie stars are people too as she is quite literally the girl next door.  Robbie is particularly winning in the scene when she goes to a movie theater and talks her way past the girl in the ticket booth into letting her see her own movie without paying.  Yes, she’s glamourous and beautiful, but look at the way she watches the audience’s reaction to her film.  The way she gets a kick out of seeing them enjoy her work.  She just wants to entertain.  

Once Upon a Time follows in the hallowed tradition of Tarantino characters who are struggling actors and/or stunt people.  Like Dick Richie in True Romance, Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction, and Zoe Bell in Death Proof, the characters in this movie love to talk about their latest roles and past work.  Tarantino clearly has an affinity for the struggling actors of Hollywood and the picture is a love letter to them as much as it is to the town itself.

On the action side of things, there are at least two fight scenes that are just simply incredible.  I wouldn’t dream of spoiling either of them but allow me to say that the finale may be my favorite thing Tarantino has ever done.  He pulls it back just a notch, so it’s not quite as over the top as Basterds, and in doing so hits an entirely different and compelling note.  It’s still hilarious and gory as hell though.  I loved it.  Not to mention the fact that Pitt is devastatingly funny in it.

Tarantino also gets an intense amount of suspense out of the scene when Cliff goes to the ranch.  Not only is this scene a crackerjack sequence of tightly wound tension, it serves as the main theme of the movie.  Cliff is an old school stuntman whose way of life is kind of on its way out.  The hippies that have taken up residence at the western ranch represent the younger generation.  The not-so certain future.  Seeing the western setting overrun by dirty hippies is the perfect metaphor for the next generation taking over and making the once great landscape their own.  It’s kind of a western in that respect with Stuntmen being Cowboys and Hippie Cultists the substitute for the Indians.

It’s also a Hangout Movie as Rick and Cliff buddy around for most of the running time.  Some may be left cold by the lack of an A-to-B-to-C plot, but that is what was kind of refreshing.  Here, the characters’ interactions inform the plot and not the other way around. It’s also a film about The Last Good Time.   The Nostalgia Monster.  How we often look back to the crest of the wave and remember things being great, even when they didn’t always seem that way.  Even the low points didn’t seem so bad.  Then of course, once the shit hits the fan, nothing was ever the same again. 

This is a special movie in more ways than I can count.  I probably didn’t do it the justice it deserves.  It’s a film that demands your attention.  I think everyone will walk away wanting to be more like Cliff while feeling that pang of recognition that there is more Rick in them than they’d care to admit.  

TERROR IN BEVERLY HILLS (1991) *

Terrorists kidnap the president’s daughter while she’s shopping on Rodeo Drive.  Naturally, there’s only one man who can stop the terrorist mastermind.  That man is played by… 

You guessed it... Frank Stallone.

Terror in Beverly Hills is punishing almost from the get-go.  It’s particularly sluggish when the focus is on the terrorists.  The beginning is plagued by long boring scenes of the terrorists boarding a plane, getting annoyed by a kid in the next seat, and getting hassled at customs.  It’s almost like director John Myhers was more interested in the minor inconveniences of traveling rather than the action.  

In fact, it takes almost twenty minutes for Frank to even appear on screen.  I never thought I’d want MORE Frank Stallone in a movie, but here we are.  Stallone does what he can with his limited skill set, and in the right hands probably could’ve been marginally effective.  Too bad it’s painfully clear Myhers has no idea what he’s doing.  Aside from a few haphazard car chases early on, the action is largely absent, leaving us with a lot of dull scenes of people arguing with each other.  The action we finally do get is poorly staged and the editing is embarrassing.  The big fight between Stallone and the heavy is especially terrible. 

The highlight (for me anyway) was seeing Cameron Mitchell as a foul-mouthed, chain-smoking, chain-donut-eating Yelling Police Captain.  His constant obscenity-laden diatribes help to keep you awake, although he’s not in it nearly enough to make it worthwhile.  Some amusement can also be had from seeing the great William Smith (whose familiar voice is dubbed by another actor) as the President.  Unfortunately, he’s only in a handful of scenes and never gets to do anything worthy of his talents.

AN EYE FOR THE GIRLS (1966) **

A narrator with a thick Midwest accent (“Ain’t that a mouthful of cheese?”) teaches a class about the female form.  We then see choppy and grainy footage of women dancing before we’re shown nude stills while a guy offscreen points to their naughty parts with a pencil.  Then, there are still images of a guy named “Georgie” taking pictures of scantily clad “goils”. 

The rest of the film plays out like that.  Instead of seeing actual stripteases, we merely get a series of photos of girls with less and less clothing.  It often feels more like a slideshow accompanied by clumsy narration than a real movie.  Either that or a screen version of a pictorial from nudie magazine.  Sure, it’s clumsy and awkward, but once you get used to it, it isn’t too bad.

The narration is good for some laughs.  After a close-up of boobs, the narrator says, “How would yah like tah spot weld deez things?”  What the fuck?  It’s not close to being “good”, but it’s certainly strange enough and short enough (it’s less than fifty minutes) to be watchable. 

Georgie’s mugging gets old quickly though, and the girls vary in attractiveness.  Still, it’s got enough random moments (like the odd scene where a guy holds a woman at knifepoint, not to mention the padding taken from an old western) to make for a unique experience.  It’s actually kind of shocking this was made and released. I would’ve liked to have seen audience’s reactions to this one when it was first released. 

THE MOVING FINGER (1963) ½ *

A thief is shot and wounded while robbing a bank.  Some no-good beatniks nurse him back to health in an effort to get their grubby hands on the loot.  Lionel Stander (from Hart to Hart) plays a coffeeshop owner who caters to the beatnik crowd who also wants to cash for himself.  Pretty soon, cops and crooks soon start swarming around the place looking for the lost loot, further complicating matters. 

The Moving Finger is a borderline unwatchable pseudo-noir beatniksploitation drama that is completely undone by the thoroughly repellent characters.  After an okay opening, things quickly devolve into one interminably boring scene after the other.  The scenes of the beatniks hanging out, smoking dope, singing godawful songs, and holding cockroach races will make you want to pull you hair out.  Only Stander’s crotchety rambling provides a brief respite from the listing pacing and the boneheaded beatnik shenanigans. 

Another problem is that the filmmakers couldn’t figure out whether they wanted to make a crime thriller or a beatnik flick.  Splitting the difference between the two does no one any favors.   The Moving Finger also briefly flirts with being a full-blown horror movie during the scene where Stander makes out with a sexy woman.  Thankfully, this scene is abruptly cut short before he can get to second base.  In fact, a long section of the film is devoted to unattractive people making out, further adding to the viewer’s displeasure.

MURDER A LA MOD (1968) ** ½

Murder a la Mod is Brian De Palma’s first movie.  It’s alternately frustrating and fascinating.  The most impressive thing about it is that he arrived fully formed with plenty of the cinematic fetishes that would later become his hallmarks already on display.  There are Hitchcockian murder set pieces, a shopping scene that plays with time similarly to Carrie, William Findlay acting creepy, and characters using film to uncover a crime.  All of this is maddingly uneven, but when it hits the sweet spot, Murder a la Mod is a lot of fun.

Artist models are instructed to disrobe by an unseen photographer during screen tests.  Some are timid and/or complain and others are brutally murdered on camera.  One such victim is Tracy (Andra Ankers).  Is the creepy cameraman Otto (Findlay, who even sings the awesome theme song!) to blame?  Or is someone else the culprit?  

Most of the fun comes from seeing De Palma already exploring thematic material he’d later use in his other movies.  Like Body Double, it involves the seedy side of moviemaking.  There’s also a definite Psycho element at work here, which would later influence De Palma’s Dressed to Kill.  We even get a body-hiding scene that’s similar to Sisters.   

After the shocking opening scene, things get awfully uneven.  One scene plays out like a silent comedy while the next turns into full-on gory horror.  These shifts in tone are often jarring, although it adds to the film’s anything-goes charm.  The meandering script and the amateurish performances (especially by the bank manager) are the main debits, but it still remains a fascinating curio for De Palma’s fans.  Like the title pun, it’s amusing even if it doesn’t quite work.