A MAN CALLED JOE CLIFFORD (1970) ***

Anthony Steffen stars as Joe Clifford, an actor in the Wild West who inherits a goldmine from his deceased grandfather.  When he goes to collect, Joe finds his grandfather’s close friend is now in control of the mine.  It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out what happened and against the odds, Joe sets out to get revenge and reclaim the family goldmine.  What the bad guys don’t realize is that not only is Joe a skilled actor, he’s also a heck of a crack shot and has a knack for worming his way out of tight situations. 

Despite the unassuming title, A Man Called Joe Clifford is a little bit better than it has to be at nearly every turn.  Usually with Spaghetti Westerns, we just want some mindless violence, a cool antihero, and a badass theme song.  You get all that with Joe Clifford, and then some.  

The cool opening scene perfectly sets the tone.  Joe performs Hamlet in front of a crowd before blowing away a bunch of guys.  It’s especially funny because he starts out with, “To be or not to be” before the awesome Spaghetti Western theme cuts in and drowns out the rest of the soliloquy.  This was probably done to save dubbing expenses (or maybe not bore the audience with a lot of Shakespeare before getting down to the action), but it sure is cool.

Steffen is plenty cool as the calculating Clifford.  I particularly liked his use of theater costumes and make-up to disguise himself in order to get the drop on the bad guys.  The final act is where Joe really endears himself to the audience when he uses an assortment of dirty tricks and booby traps that would make Wile E. Coyote proud to turn himself into a one-man army.  

If you aren’t already a fan of Spaghetti Westerns, I can’t say A Man Called Joe Clifford will convert you.  For someone like me who’s sat through dozens of bad ones, I can appreciate one that colors outside the lines a bit.  Because of that, it’s worth getting to know A Man Called Joe Clifford.

AKA:  Apocalypse Joe.  AKA:  A Man Called Apocalypse Joe.

FUTURE WORLD (2018) * ½

James Franco has had an interesting career.  He went from starring on cult TV shows like Freaks and Geeks to appearing in big budget tentpoles like Spider-Man to showing up on soap operas like General Hospital.  As a director, he’s even more all over the place.  He’s directed documentaries, Lifetime movies, Oscar bait stuff, and… uh… this.  (Well, he co-directed it at any rate.)  Not only did Franco co-direct Future World, he also stars as the evil “Warlord”, who rides a motorcycle through the wasteland raping and terrorizing anyone unfortunate enough to survive the apocalypse.  

It’s a shame we don’t get as many of these post-apocalyptic movies like we used to.  After the success of Mad Max:  Fury Road I was hoping for a resurgence of the genre.  The star of The Bad Batch, one of the few recent post-apocalypse flicks, Suki Waterhouse co-stars as Ash, a top secret robo-babe Warlord finds in the desert.  He reprograms her not only to assassinate but be his personal concubine.  A wet behind the ears kid (Jeffrey Wahlberg) enters the wasteland looking for medicine for his dying mom (Lucy Liu) and is clearly no match for Warlord and his men.  Ash feels sorry for him, defies her programming, and helps him escape to “Drug Town” to find a cure for his mother.

The oddball cast is the only thing that really holds the picture together.  Franco gets a lot of mileage out of his shit-eating grin and general willingness to be unpleasant and sleazy.  Milla Jovovich is fun as the wild-eyed ruler of Drug Town who lords over a bunch of strung out junkies.  My favorite bit though was from Snoop Dogg who plays the owner of a strip club where the dancers wear electronic collars. 

Too bad Wahlberg makes for a terrible hero.  His anti-charisma helps to singlehandedly sink every scene he’s in.  Suki isn’t much better, but hey, she’s playing a robot, so I guess I can give her a free pass for not emoting.  

If there was some action here, it might not be so glaring, but the film just sort of spins its wheels for most of its running time.  What action we do get is rather weak and derivative.  For example, there’s a Thunderdome-type battle except that instead of taking place inside a badass metal arena, it’s nothing more than a drained, graffiti-laden swimming pool.  The big showdown between Franco and Jovovich is shockingly anticlimactic and the final confrontation between he and Waterhouse is somehow even worse.  

FAST AND FURIOUS PRESENTS: HOBBS AND SHAW (2019) ***

As a general rule, the further the Fast and the Furious movies get away from the whole car racing angle, the better they usually are.  Fast and Furious Presents:  Hobbs and Shaw puts that rule to the test as several junctures, but it remains a fun, popcorn-friendly, braindead summer movie throughout.  

Hobbs (The Rock) and Shaw (Jason Statham) are paired together to stop a superhuman, scientifically-upgraded villain (Idris Elba) from stealing a lethal virus that could potentially wipe out the entire planet.  Shaw’s spy sister (Vanessa Kirby) winds up injecting herself with the virus in order to keep his mitts off the deadly superbug.  It’s then up to the two mismatched musclebound macho men to put their differences aside and save the world.  

This is technically a spin-off to the main franchise, so it plays a lot looser and fast (and furiouser) with the laws of reality than the other movies (which is really saying something).  I’m all for outlandish foolishness in these films, but even I was rolling my eyes at some of this nonsense.  At some point, the flick just settles into a routine of Elba trying to catch The Rock and Statham, only to have them slip out of his fingers because of one highly improbable shenanigan or the other.  Since our heroes never get hurt or are in any real danger of death, it winds up feeling like a Road Runner cartoon after a while with Elba playing the constantly stymied Coyote whose elaborate plans are perpetually foiled.  

Director David (Deadpool 2) Leitch does a fine job with the action and keeps the chases, fight scenes, and ludicrous set pieces coming at a pace that is… well… fast and furious.  Too bad that much of it feels like you’re watching a video game.  Not to mention the fact that the “plot” stuff mostly consists of exposition dumps that could’ve come out of a video game’s cut scenes.  

Despite that, the stars are in fine form.  Even when the action gets repetitive and the film… ahem… spins its wheels, it remains breezy fun, especially when they’re busting each other’s balls (which is quite often).  The gratuitous “guest star” cameos provide a few laughs, but make the movie feel more Cannonball Run than Smokey and the Bandit.  That’s not exactly a bad thing.  I guess it all just depends on what you want out of your Fast and Furious flick.  If you want mindless mayhem, Hobbs and Shaw delivers.

NIGHT OF THE COBRA WOMAN (1972) ** ½

A rare species of snake bites Marlene Clark and turns her into eternally young vixen.  She then uses her new powers to get revenge on the soldier (Vic Diaz) who raped her best friend.  She seduces him and her venomous sex organs causes his body to “rot”, which turns him into a bug-eyed hunchback imbecile.  The awesomely named Joy Bang comes to the Philippines to study the mythical snake and freaks out when she sees Diaz.  Joy calls her boyfriend (Stan Duff) and he has to fly all the way to Manila to keep her safe.  While out and about, Stan gets bitten by the snake and Clark nurses him back to health.  Clark soon gets the hots for Joy’s man and sets out to drive them apart.   She commands her trusty snake to kill Joy, but luckily Joy brought along her pet eagle to defend her.  Marlene eventually seduces Joy’s boyfriend and her snake-ified snatch “sucks the years out of him”.  To keep him from turning old, she runs around seducing more men to extract the vital juices necessary to prolong his life.

Night of the Cobra Woman kind of plays like a grimy Pilipino version of an old Universal jungle horror movie, complete with lap dissolve transformation scenes.  (Clark’s silly painted-on snake eyes are good for a laugh.)  It was produced by Roger Corman, who of course threw a little skin in there just to keep things lively enough during the dull stretches.  The film is at its best during the extended scenes of Clark going around banging dudes to keep Duff young.  Eventually, he comes running back to Joy, much to her chagrin.  Sure, some parts of the film are kind of dull, but I promise you, the scene where Clark catches him cheating on her while she’s in cobra form is priceless. 

Joy is fun as clueless dolt who loses her man to the snake goddess.  Clark is sultry and carries the movie through the rougher patches on her charisma alone.  She also earns a place in movie history for being the first actress to show some skin and SHED some skin in the same scene.  The best performance though comes from Diaz, the Pilipino Brando.  His antics are good for a laugh, but the inappropriately whimsical music that plays when he’s hopping around is hilarious.  (It sounds like something out of a Disney movie.) 

Sure, Night of the Cobra Woman plods along during some stretches, which makes the 76-minute running time feel a lot longer.  However, other bits (like when Clark is seducing her victims) are pure cheesy fun.  I can’t quite recommend it, but this Cobra Woman has its charms. 

AKA:  Cobra Woman.  Movini’s Venom.

JAILHOUSE GIRLS (1984) ** ½

Ginger Lynn desperately wants to be a fashion model, but pays the bills working the front desk at a sleazy motel.  Unbeknownst to her, prostitutes operate out of the rooms, and when the cops raid the place, they haul the innocent Ginger off to jail.  Once there, the sleazy guards and horny warden (played by Paul Thomas) all want to fuck Ginger (and who can blame them).  Eventually, Ginger says enough is enough and begins to plot her escape.

Director Henri Pachard’s Jailhouse Girls is mostly entertaining, although discerning fans of the Women in Prison may be left a little cold.  Sure, it’s full of all the usual Women in Prison clichés, such as prisoners being subjected to strip searches, delousing, and showers, all with the added allure of hardcore penetration.  However, many of the scenes of the guards and/or warden using the prisoners for their own sick desires aren’t depraved as they could’ve been (like when Thomas takes problem prisoners to “The Tower” to be fucked by the matron while he watches) as it sorely lacks the sleaze you’d hope to see in your typical (softcore) WIP movie.  Then again, it’s hardcore, so there’s that. 

Despite being a XXX picture, the scenes themselves vary in steaminess.  While the majority of the sex scenes are tepid, the sequence where Ginger and Raven partake in some saucy scissoring is a real scorcher.  The scene where Joey Silvera bangs Ginger on the bus on the way to prison is pretty decent too and Taija Rae makes a memorable impression in her all-too brief cheerleader themed scene.  

In the end, Jailhouse Girls stops short of being a great Women in Prison movie, mostly because of its unwillingness to push the envelope.  It’s almost as if Pachard thought having the hardcore was enough.  As a XXX flick, it probably has too much plot that gets in the way of the action.  Not to mention the fact that it probably needed one more scene equal to the Ginger/Raven sequence to make it a breakout success.

THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS (2001) ***

I kind of run hot-to-cold on Takashi Miike’s work.  For every masterpiece like Audition there’s more than a few wildly uneven Dead or Alives.  That said, the motto of The Video Vacuum has always been quantity over quality, and since few directors embody this philosophy like Miike, I always look forward to his films.  In 2001, he made no less than seven features including the badass Ichi the Killer.  It was in that year he made this jaw-dropper of a flick. 

The film kicks off with some of the best stop-motion animation I’ve seen in recent memory.  A little creepy Cupid-looking guy rips out a girl’s uvula before taking off on an unexpected series of misadventures.  The focus then switches to a family of oddballs who have turned their home into an inn.  Trouble is, no one stays there anymore which is causing friction between the family.  When their first guest in forever commits suicide, the family conspires to hide the body in fear publicity would further damage business.  More customers wind up at the hotel and suffer from similarly quirky deaths, leading to more cover-ups. 

Oh, and did I mention it’s a musical???

Personally, I kind of wish there had been more stop-motion animation sequences.  The weirdo Cupid dude is genuinely cool, but he disappears after the first scene, which is disappointing.  The other stop-motion animated scenes that are sprinkled throughout are charming, although they lack the unbridled glee of the opening.  

The core of the story is sound though, and the humor is appropriately pitch black.  The songs are surprisingly amusing too, which helps to make it a winner.  Did it really need to be nearly two hours long?  Absolutely not.  Still, there are plenty of WTF moments to be had to ensure lovers of out-there cinema will find happiness from the Katakuris.  

12 ROUNDS 2: RELOADED (2013) *

12 Rounds was a decent WWE action movie that proved to be a better showcase for its director (Renny Harlin) than the WWE superstar it was supposed to be promoting (John Cena).  This unrelated sequel piqued my interested because it was directed by Roel Reine, a prolific director of enjoyable DTV action sequels.  In fact, many of his films manage to eclipse (or at the very least, honor) their higher-budgeted predecessors.  I’m sad to report that 12 Rounds 2:  Reloaded is the first one of his films I’ve seen that just flat out sucks. 

Randy Orton stars as an EMT who administers first aid at the scene of a car accident while off duty.  One year later, he gets a mysterious call from an unknown caller who forces him to jump through various (twelve to be precise) hoops all over the city or run the risk of being blown up.  If you haven’t already guessed, the mastermind behind it all is seeking retribution for Orton’s actions in the opening scene.

Done right, the premise could’ve worked.  It’s just that there’s very little drive here to keep you invested.  It’s hard to care about the villain’s predictable plight and Orton’s character is so thinly sketched that it becomes nearly impossible to root for him.  It’s also incredibly skimpy when it comes to action, which is the big problem.  The shootouts and car chases are few and far between and seem like small potatoes compared to the original’s set pieces (and most of Reine’s films to be honest).   The finale is particularly lame, but the ultimate kiss of death is that it’s just plain boring.

The good news, Reine and Orton fared much better with their next outing, the unabashedly fun The Condemned 2.