BWANA DEVIL (1952) ** ½

Produced, written, and directed by 3-D magnate Arch Oboler, Bwana Devil was the first feature-length American color 3-D movie.  It was also responsible for kickstarting the 3-D craze in the ‘50s.  So, just remember any time you’re forced to don 3-D glasses at the movies, in some small way, you have Bwana Devil to thank for it.

The English are trying to construct a railroad through Africa at the turn of the century.  Only problem is two pesky man-eating lions have been gobbling up all the workers.  Robert Stack is the head of the project, a drunken raconteur resentful of his rich father in-law for assigning him such a dreary position.  When the lions start driving the hired help away, Stack takes it upon himself to hunt them down once and for all.  Problems arise when his estranged wife (Barbara Britton) comes for a visit.  

The 3-D effects work best during the depth-of-field shots of the African wild.  The footage Oboler shot in Africa of hippos, gators, snakes, and tribal dancing look cool, although this footage doesn’t really contain anything that comes out of the screen.  Those 3-D effects are kind of hit-and-miss (at least in the version I saw), but it’s good enough to make the rear-projection scenes of Stack walking through the wild seem all too obvious.  

The lion attack scenes have a kick to them, even if the animals move too quick for the 3-D to really work.  The shots of them prowling around camp or lurking in the bush are effective though.  The climax is a bit of a letdown as there’s a scene where one of the lions just kind of dies, even though Stack assures us (through poorly looped ADR) that he shot one, although we never hear a gun shot.  

Bwana Devil gets off to a great start.  However, once Britton shows up, it sort of drags the movie down as her character is a bit of a wet blanket.  The film works much better when it’s just Stack and his doctor buddy (Nigel Bruce) shooting the shit while fending off lions. 

As for the 3-D effects, we get enough of them to make it worth a look if you’ve got a pair of glasses handy.  Among the effects are:  

·         3-D Heads

·         3-D Hands

·         3-D Spears

·         3-D Lions

·         3-D Feet

·         3-D Dance Numbers

·         3-D Kissing

·         3-D Tail

·         3-D Snake

·         3-D Gun

The film was later remade as The Ghost and the Darkness.

KEYHOLES ARE FOR PEEPING OR IS THERE LIFE AFTER MARRIAGE? (1972) *

Sammy (Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla) Petrillo gets his marriage counselor diploma in the mail and sets off to make a name for himself in the profession.  Meanwhile, his own personal life is a wreck.  His girlfriend (Kristen Steen) won’t marry him because he always has to care for his dominating mother (also Petrillo, with his voice dubbed by the director, Doris Wishman).  As Petrillo meets with his patients, the superintendent (Phillip Stahl) in his apartment building spies on various tenants by looking through their keyholes.  

The naughty footage looks like it might’ve been taken from outer sources, perhaps old stag reels or even from Wishman’s other films for all I know.  Many of the sex scenes are tinted yellow for some damned reason.  Others are filmed through a negative filter which makes it impossible to tell what the hell is going on.  None of them are remotely sexy.  

Most Wishman movies are unintentionally hilarious.  If you’ve ever seen Let Me Die a Woman or Deadly Weapons you know what I’m talking about.  With this one she tries to be funny on purpose and the results are disastrous.  

Petrillo made his living imitating Jerry Lewis.  He unwisely dropped the act for this movie.  Sporting long hippie hair and doing random impressions (everyone from The Invisible Man to Porky Pig), and telling unfunny jokes, he never once elicits a single laugh from the audience.  You know they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel when he shows up in drag.  The results are pretty dire, even for Wishman’s standards.  

The film falls into a predictable pattern early on.  It goes back and forth from the unfunny scenes of Petrillo (who also may be familiar to you from his bit part in The Brain That Wouldn’t Die) interviewing women to the voyeur peeping on lovemaking couples.  Neither plotline hits its intended marks, making Keyholes are For Peeping or is There Life After Marriage? a frustrating experience to say to least.  

Wishman’s made some bad movies in her time, but this one just might take the proverbial cake.  

AKA:  Keyholes are for Peeping.  

DEVIL IN MISS JONES 5: THE INFERNO (1995) ***

Devil in Miss Jones was a perfect combination of art house drama and hardcore porn.  The three sequels that followed had some wild visuals, but they were mostly a vehicle for some smutty sex scenes.  This one is a porn first and foremost, with little of the visual pizzazz found in its predecessors.  Some might look down their nose at the film because of this.  However, as mid-‘90s porn goes, it certainly gets the job done. 

Juli Ashton inherits the role of Miss Jones from Lois Ayres.  I use the term “role” loosely as she is less a character and more of a pawn for various sex scenes.  Sometimes, she just watches the action, like when she gets fingered by two old men while they spy on a couple fucking.  Other times, she’s a more than willing participant, like during the Roman orgy gangbang (which includes three guys and the always sexy Jeanna Fine sporting a black latex dildo).  Some scenes are better than others, but many of them contain admittedly hot… err… climaxes. 

The plot, with the annoying Devil (Rip Hymen) constantly talking to the camera, is weak.  You could easily fast-forward through his scenes and get right to the fucking and you wouldn’t miss much.  Part 5 also contains one of the longest opening credits sequence I’ve seen in a porn, so you could probably skip right past that too.  

If there is a complaint, it’s that some of the scenes suffer from a repetitive nature as the majority of them involve group sex.  If you can get past that, there are some rather steamy moments to be had.  There are also just enough clever set-ups (in one scene, two monogamous couples are locked in cages and forced to fuck their partners for all eternity) and weird touches (like the fat woman dancing during a dining room table three-way) to make it a worthwhile entry in the long-running series.

COLLEGE KICKBOXERS (1992) ** ½

On the first day of college, freshman James (Ken McLeod) immediately gets into a beef with his roommate Mark (Mark Williams).  They wind up settling their differences with an impromptu Kung Fu fight on the quad and become instant best buddies.  Their fight catches the eye of a racist gang leader named Tanner (Matthew Ray Cohen) who tries to get James to join his ranks.  When James refuses, Tanner’s gang jumps him after work, but his co-worker, a Chinese cook named Wing (Tang Tak-Wing) saves him.  James then tries to convince Wing to train him so he can win a big karate tournament and use the prize money to save Mark’s karate school. 

My main movie passions are cheese and sleaze.  There’s no sleaze here (save for a brief topless hot tub scene), but College Kickboxers has plenty of the former to make it a fitfully fun kickboxing time-killer.  It plays like a mash-up of The Karate Kid and No Retreat, No Surrender and while it’s nowhere near the classic those two films are, it has its moments.

McLeod kind of has a Thom Mathews quality to him.  The character of James has a good mix of conflicting character traits that make him a flawed hero.  Sometimes, he’s an endearing goofball.  Other times, he’s an upstanding citizen who drop-kicks racists.  He can also be a stupid lunkhead who thinks with his dick too much.  I liked the scene where his boss interrupts him while he’s talking to some girls at work and he instantly gets an attitude and says, “What’s the big idea? I’m trying to score!”  He eventually overcomes this character flaw with the help of Wing’s training. 

Since this is a kickboxing movie, there are a lot of training sequences and/or montages.  The most memorable scene has Wing making James train barefoot on a hockey rink.  I think this might be a Kung Fu first.  The most interesting aspect is when he teaches James acupuncture to take out his opponents using a dummy with all the pressure points mapped out.  Some of the training scenes are pretty silly though (like when they play the “Slap Hands” game).  It goes without saying that this movie has a training montage where the hero runs up and down the beach.  However, it also contains a montage of our hero… at a petting zoo?!?  That’s… different.

The fight scenes are decent for the most part.  I liked the scenes where Wing comes to James’ rescue and there’s a part where Mark and James fight the bad guys at the mall that I wish went on a bit longer.  Too bad the typical karate tournament ending offers no surprises whatsoever.  

College Kickboxers gives you 85 minutes of breezy, cheesy Kung Fu entertainment.   It’s goofier than your normal fare, although not enough to qualify it as a classic or anything.  Still, its heart is in the right place.  It won’t graduate Magna Cum Laude or anything, but College Kickboxers gets passing marks from me. 

AKA:  Trained to Fight.  AKA:  College Kickboxer.  AKA:  Full Contact Champ. 

PINOCCHIO (1971) ** ½

The softcore sex movie Pinocchio, more commonly referred to as, The Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio, boasts what is probably the greatest tagline of all time:  “It’s Not His Nose That Grows!”  I mean who wouldn’t want to see THAT?  Sadly, the film struggles to come close to matching that great bit of marketing.  It’s almost as if the filmmakers came up with the tagline first and immediately went into catch-up mode trying to make the picture match the promise of the poster.

The Fairy Godmother (Dyanne Thorne from the Ilsa movies!) takes off her top before telling the tale of Pinocchio.  The lonely Gepetta (Monica Gayle) yearns for a man, so she makes one out of wood.  She names him Pinocchio (Alex Roman) and when sex with her wooden man doesn’t go as planned (Pinocchio is kind of a creepy mannequin that talks with a spooky disembodied voice), she wishes he’d become a real man.  Luckily, the Fairy Godmother was listening, and grants her wish, but on one condition:  Pinocchio doesn’t use his sexual prowess indiscriminately.  Before he can even make love to Gepetta, he’s led astray by a pimp named Mr. Gorgio (Eduardo Ranez) who turns him into an oversexed, overworked gigolo.  The only problem is that the more Pinocchio uses his giant member, the bigger his dick gets, which causes him all kinds of grief.   

Like its main character, Pinocchio is too good-natured and naïve to be down and dirty fun.  It’s also not funny enough to work as a comedy and not campy enough to work as a cult item.  Even though it kind of falls through the cracks, it remains watchable throughout.  

The film has decent production values for this sort of thing.  The costumes and sets were better than I was expecting.  If only the sex scenes were up to task.  The standout sequence is memorable for all the wrong reasons.  I’m talking of course about the part when Gepetta bangs the wooden, lifeless Pinocchio while tears well up in her eyes.  I guess we’ve seen many movies about guys with lifeless sex dolls, so a gender reversal is only fitting.  

Thorne is the best thing about the movie.  She has a funny running gag where she waves her wand and accidentally makes her clothes disappear.  She also kind of stands in as the Jiminy Cricket character too, acting as his conscience when he’s at a moral crossroads (and is promptly ignored).  The legendary Uschi Digart also shows up for a bit part dubbed by a man.  

The behind the scenes talent is somewhat interesting.  This was the feature directing debut for actor Corey Allen, who later went on to helm the disaster picture Avalanche and none other than Ray Dennis (The Incredibly Strange Creatures That Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies) Steckler was the cinematographer.  Too bad the script (which was co-written by Allen) couldn’t live up to the tagline.

AKA:  The Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio.  

THE WOMAN HUNTER (1972) *

Barbara Eden stars as a wealthy socialite who was just involved in a terrible car crash.  She and hubby Robert Vaughn head down to Acapulco for a little R and R and escape some bad publicity.  They are followed by Stuart Whitman who charms the bored Barbara with his flagrant flirting.  She soon learns he’s obsessed with her, and has been spying, taking pictures, and keeping an extensive dossier on her.  Could he also be the murderous jewel thief that’s been preying on rich women?

The Woman Hunter is a languid and uninvolving TV movie (you can tell from the constant fade-outs that signal a commercial break and the fact Whitman is a “special guest star”) that hasn’t an ounce of suspense.  You can tell from the get-go where this thing is going right down to the predicable last-minute plot twist.  You can’t blame the three leads for grabbing a quick paycheck and a free trip to Acapulco but none of them seem particularly invested.  Director Bernard L. (Attack of the Giant Leeches) Kowalski is an old pro, yet he’s unable to breathe any life into the cliched script.  I mean Barbara’s character is named “Mrs. Hunter” and Whitman is hunting her, so the dual meaning of the title is the closest the bankrupt script comes to being clever.

The standout scene is when Barbara gets drunk at a party and has an extended dance number in front of the ogling tourists.  It’s kind of random, but at least it’s memorable.  Equally memorable is Vaughn’s eventual comeuppance.  There’s also a completely unnecessary scene of Larry Storch standing around, getting drunk, and telling lame jokes.  These fleeting moments barely register a blip of actual interest from the viewer and aren’t nearly bonkers enough to save this turd from being a total snoozer.

SORORITY BABES IN THE DANCE-A-THON OF DEATH (1991) ½ *

Sorority Babes in the Dance-A-Thon of Death is supposed to be a sequel to David DeCoteau’s immortal Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama.  DeCoteau even produced this mostly unwatchable shot on video mess.  It’s actually closer plot-wise to Nightmare Sisters, but either of those films would be preferable to this interminable bore.  

Five college girls open up their new sorority house and plan a pajama party. One of the girls buys a crystal ball from an antiques shop and brings it to the party. They get bored and perform a seance with the crystal ball, causing one of the girls to become possessed by a demon.

Sorority Babes in the Dance-A-Thon of Death is bad to be sure, but to make matters worse, none of the sorority babes get naked.  They do dance around a lot (and play Twister), albeit fully clothed.  I’m not saying it would’ve saved the movie if they had been naked.  It certainly couldn’t have hurt though.  You know it’s bad when the scenes of the old couple who are trying to recover the crystal ball are more entertaining than the stuff with the sorority girls.

All of this is sluggishly paced as it takes forever to get to the horror elements.  It’s only 69 minutes, but you’ll swear it’s twice that.  The sound is also poor in places.  Cheesy dialogue like, “She’s not our friend anymore.  She’s something else.  Something evil.” might’ve been good for a laugh if the sound had been properly recorded.  Despite that, you can actually hear the director yelling “Action!” and “Cut!” in some scenes.  

To top it all off, the video cinematography is horrible.  Much of the movie is hard to see, either because the picture is too dark or just plain blurry.  It almost seems like it was filmed on a fourth or fifth generation videotape.  Either that or someone tried to erase the tape and failed.  If that was the case, they should’ve tried harder.