SANTO VS. THE STRANGLER (1965) ** ½

Santo vs. the Strangler starts out like a combination of a Mexican Lawrence Welk knockoff, ESPN, and The Phantom of the Opera.  We see performers in a theater doing various musical numbers that are occasionally interrupted by El Santo wrestling in the ring.  Meanwhile, a masked killer known as The Strangler prowls around the rafters of the theater, waiting to claim his next victim.  When the detectives are unable to apprehend the murderer, they call in El Santo to bring down the killer.

At least I think that’s what happened.  The version I saw didn’t have any subtitles, so it didn’t make much sense.  I guess I’d somehow be disappointed if it did. 

If I had to choose, I’d say the earlier scenes are the most fun because of the non-stop barrage of music, wrestling, and zaniness.  The musical numbers are surprisingly entertaining.  There’s a Spanish version of “Fever” and, oddly a cover of “16 Tons” done in English.

The rest of the film is typically goofy.  El Santo has a Batcave type of lair and communicates with the detective through a giant TV monitor.  I also liked the fact that sometimes The Strangler looked like The Phantom of the Opera, and other times he sort of resembled Vincent Price in The House of Wax.  The scene where The Strangler tries to assassinate El Santo in the ring and accidentally shoots his opponent instead is a hoot.  (So, I guess that means El Santo wins?)  The subplot with the orphan kid stowing away in El Santo’s car gets a nice payoff too when he’s invited to the theater to sing “Blame it on the Bossa Nova”.

All of this is odd and silly for sure, but it’s also a tad uneven, slow moving, and sometimes dull.  It’s telling that the musical numbers are more memorable than the wrestling stuff.  I mean The Strangler isn’t a bad villain, it’s just that he pales in comparison next to some of El Santo’s weirder opponents.  That said, the unmasking of the killer scene in the finale is a ripe slice of hilarity and well worth the wait. 

AKA:  Santo Against the Strangler.  

I AM SARTANA YOUR ANGEL OF DEATH (1969) ** ½

Gianni Garko returns as Sartana in this intermittently amusing sequel to If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death.  This time out, Sartana is accused of robbing a bank, but it was actually a guy wearing Sartana’s trademark black suit and hat.  Pretty soon, there’s a hefty reward out for Sartana.  Among those looking to collect are a wily Native American tracker (Jose Torres), a down-on-his-luck card shark (Klaus Kinski, playing a different role than in the first movie), and a suave bounty hunter (Gordon Mitchell).  

I am Sartana Your Angel of Death isn’t as sharp or focused as its predecessor, but its rambling nature offers its own unique rewards.  The opening bank robbery is inventive and kicks the movie off in fine fashion.  There are also a few entertaining bits along the way, especially when Sartana gets the drop on the bad guys by doing card tricks.  I also liked it when he forced them to wear his hat and duster, using them as a decoy.  Garko once again cruises through the movie with his likeable charm and helps ensure you’ll stay tuned throughout the draggier sections.

Unfortunately, Sartana is saddled with a needless annoying sidekick played by Frank Wolf that kind of gets in the way of the fun.  The music in some scenes is kind of crappy too.  (One instrumental sounds like “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”!)  Mitchell is pretty much wasted as well, which is also disappointing.  At least Kinski is hoot as the bounty hunter who’s only out to get the reward to pay off his poker debts.  Heck, he probably deserved his own spin-off.

AKA:  Angel of Death:  Sartana.  AKA:  Sartana the Gravedigger.  AKA:  I’ll Dig Your Grave.

THE NEW BEVERLY HILLS GIRLS (1991) **

Michelle Bauer stars as a talent agent who narrates two stories.  In the first, a rock band waits at a gig for their drummer, Becky LeBeau who is running late.  Why is she running late, you ask?  Well, she’s way too busy playing with herself in the bathtub, that’s why!  When she finally gets to the studio, they belt out a rock song.  Oh, did I mention the one and only Linnea Quigley is the singer?  The song she does is no “Santa Monica Boulevard Boy”, but it’s not bad.  Then their agent brings them new outfits to wear, which means they all have to undress and change into them right there on the spot!  Becky takes lead on the next (okay) song and imagines herself singing in the nude.  Finally, to insure they get a record contract, Linnea bangs a sexy music exec while Becky watches.

The second story stars Michelle, who is overseeing a nude photography session.  Her photographer is kidnapped by a jealous rival and blackmails Michelle into selling her company.  Michelle’s models then decide to make like a bunch of half-assed Charlie’s Angels and try to rescue him. 

This segment is much longer than the first and not nearly as entertaining either.  It is padded with a bunch of nude modeling scenes, which takes some of the sting out of the sluggish second half.  More padding comes in the form of flashbacks of random sex scenes, including Linnea in a brief lesbian three-way.  Michelle herself gets a potentially good Girl on Girl scene (a flashback inside of a fantasy inside of a dream scene) that’s unfortunately ruined by a purple tint on the camera that makes it hard to tell what’s going on. 

The obvious inspirations here were MTV and The Playboy Channel.  The cheesecake nude, striptease, and sex scenes are like something out of a Playboy Video Centerfold, except they were shot with a grainy home movie camera and the sound kind of goes in and out.  These scenes also use too much slow motion, but I think that was only done to further pad out the running time.   

Ultimately, what we have here is an uneven hodgepodge.  The first story is only a half hour and moves at a fairly brisk pace.  The second is almost an hour.  Both have their moments, but Michelle’s story is awfully slow going.  What’s worse is the thoroughly awful rock song by a lame (all-male) band in the third act that stops things on a dime right when it should be heating up. 

I guess I’m being too harsh on The New Beverly Hills Girls.  After all, it’s not even really a movie; just an excuse to get a few of your favorite Scream Queens naked masquerading as a real movie.  Still, as far as Excuses-to-Get-Your Favorite-Scream-Queens-Naked-Masquerading-as-a-Real-Movie movies go, you can certainly do much worse.  

AKA:  Beverly Hills Girls.

THE MILKY WAY (1936) **

Harold Lloyd stars as Burleigh Sullivan, an unassuming milkman who comes to the aid of his sister (Helen Mack) when she’s being harassed by two drunks outside of a nightclub.  During the scuffle, Burleigh inadvertently knocks out one of the men, who just so happens to be Speedy McFarland (William Gargan), the middleweight champ of the world.  Speedy’s crafty manager (Adolphe Menjou) wants to turn Burleigh into a fighter, but he flat-out refuses.  That is until his beloved milk truck horse becomes ill.  With no other way to pay her vet bills, the decidedly puny Burleigh steps into the ring, with predictable results. 

I’m a fan of Lloyd’s silent work, but this talkie is a big comedown from his best stuff.  The set-up is sound (no pun intended), and yet very little is done with the premise.  Lloyd’s legendary physical comedy gifts go curiously untapped here, which seems odd when you figure a boxing movie would be ripe with physical comedy possibilities.  Unfortunately, the boxing scenes are brief, and Lloyd is only limited to a couple of corny dance moves that keep his head just out of the way of his opponent’s boxing gloves.

There’s also a lot of stuff with the bullying fighters (one of which is Lionel Stander from Hart to Hart) that take up too much screen time.  The subplot involving Lloyd’s sister actually falling in love with the champ is kind of clunky and merely exists as a mechanism to complicate the final act.  Menjou’s villainous manager character isn’t very funny either, and the scenes of his wheeling and dealing get in the way of Lloyd doing his thing.  

Even then, Lloyd’s boxing schtick isn’t all that funny to begin with.  The climax is particularly disappointing, especially when compared to his best work.  Although the laughs land more infrequently than the champ’s punches, Lloyd’s plucky enthusiasm keeps you watching.  

RAMBO: LAST BLOOD (2019) ****

There are few things more American than seeing Rambo in the theater with your dad.  I’ve seen every one of Rambo’s adventures since Part 2 in the theater with my old man, and each installment has strengthened the bond between father and son over the years.  When I heard Sylvester Stallone was coming out with his latest (I hesitate to say “last” because something tells me he’s still got another one of these things up his sleeve) installment, I figured, why mess with tradition?  So, I called up my dad, and despite our conflicting schedules, we made a point to see it together on opening night.  Boy, am I glad I did!  Stallone didn’t disappoint either of us.  

Right off the bat, we know this isn’t quite the same Rambo we’ve seen before.  For one, he’s got SHORT HAIR!  I honestly didn’t know how I was supposed to feel about this.  From the very beginning, Rambo always had long hair.  I mean the long hair is important to the character because…how else are you supposed to tell him apart from Rocky, for God’s sake!  Seeing him with short hair… took some getting used to?  Eventually, I got on board with it, mostly because I was too preoccupied counting up the dead bodies.  

It was interesting to see how else Rambo had changed over the years.  For starters, we’ve never seen him in “the world” before.  In the first film, he was drifting from town to town still with his Army jacket on his back.  Now he’s rocking a new cowboy look straight out of a Marlboro Man ad!  Some might cry foul on this, but come on, who knows?  Maybe John J. loved to wear cowboy boots and lasso mustangs when he wasn’t off fighting for Uncle Sam.  Maybe all this time when he was in the jungles wearing his red headbands and jade necklaces, he was actually yearning for a ten-gallon hat.  Who am I to say?  

When we first met Rambo, he hadn’t yet set down roots after the war.  He hadn’t even begun to find his place in a country that ostracized him for merely being a veteran.  Now, after all these years, and various pitstops to Vietnam, Tibet, Afghanistan, and Burma, Rambo has finally returned home to America and found structure, family, and peace.

Well… maybe not peace.  You see, even though he’s got a big farmhouse, lots of land, and plenty of room to break in horses, he opts to live in a vast underground tunnel system he’s carved out for himself in and around the property.  I’ll get more into this aspect later, because it’s a crucial element to the film that I think a lot of my fellow critics have slept on.

Anyway, the plot is simple.  The teenaged Gabrielle (Yvette Monreal) is Rambo’s family friend.  He dotes on her like he would his own daughter.  When she learns her biological father is alive and living in Mexico, she takes an ill-advised trip south of the border to meet him.  There, she gets kidnapped by sex traffickers, and it’s up to Rambo, John J. to save her.

Melding elements of Death Wish, Punisher:  War Zone, You Were Never Really Here, and Taken into the typical Rambo DNA was a… ahem… sly choice.  The last one was such a perfect send-off for the character that it made me kinda hope Stallone was going to let the series end there.  Sly proved me wrong as this is a great addition to the franchise.  It may not be up to the upper echelon of Rambo, First Blood, and First Blood Part 2, but it’s a mean, nasty, bleak, and brutal action movie.  That is to say, I fucking loved it. 

What’s remarkable is that Sly found some nuance and poignancy to go along with the gratuitous bloodshed.  As I stated before, we see Rambo working on a horse farm. but he doesn’t live in the house.  Instead. he lives in an elaborate underground tunnel system of his own design.  This is just so fucking perfect that I got a lump in my throat the moment I saw him living down there.  Many have missed the symbolism of this, so please allow me to elaborate why this little touch is so heartbreaking.

Okay, remember the long scene in First Blood when Rambo eludes the police and goes into hiding in the underground mine?  This sequence takes up a lot of screen time, but it is crucial to the formation of the character as we would later know him.  While looking for his way out, he goes on a hero’s quest, entering one side as a frightened fugitive and emerging from the other as a killing machine. 

Rambo’s homemade tunnels are symbolic of his past deeds.  He’s been in similar terrain and came out the other side a killing machine.  The tunnels symbolize the bridge between two worlds:  The man he once was and the killing machine he is prone to become.  As Rambo himself says, “You can’t change.  All you can do is put a lid on it.”   Staying isolated in those tunnels is his way of putting a lid on his tendencies.  Once Gabrielle is kidnapped, his world is torn apart and that lid comes off.  Big time.

There are gonna be spoilers here, and I apologize, but I’m only doing so to drive the whole tunnel metaphor home.  In the end, Rambo lures the bad guys onto his home turf, and into the tunnels, which he has fitted with various homemade booby traps, effectively turning most of the men into the consistency of peanut butter soup along the way.  Finally, he expels the ringleader of the abuse (whom he appropriately saves for last) by setting off a series of explosions that flush him out of the tunnels and above ground.  In doing so, Rambo causes the entire mineshaft system to collapse upon itself.  Not only has he blown up the tunnels and his home, he’s also severed the sole lifeline tethering him from out and out savagery.  It’s a powerful moment, stating that there’s no going back.  There’s no more John the cowboy.  There’s only Rambo, the killing machine.

Or maybe I’m just reading WWWAAAAAAYYYYY too much into things.  Look, it’s been eleven years since we saw Rambo, John J. turn the bad guys into little bitty pieces.  So, maybe I’m just overcompensating a little due to the long wait.  

I honestly can’t tell you how good it was to see Rambo draw a bow again.  Action fans will be eating up the finale (which features one of the best needle-drops of a classic rock song you’ll hear this year), in which Rambo shows no mercy as he stabs, chops, slices, eviscerates, guns down, blows up and generally makes pasta salad out of the bad guys.  There’s even a moment where he goes full-on Sub-Zero on a villain that will have you cheering.  Imagine a straight-faced Machete movie and that might give you an idea of what to expect.

If Rambo:  Last Blood is in fact, the last Blood, it’ll be a nice conclusion.  The title may sound like a joke from an episode of The Simpsons or something, but it’s fitting.  It perfectly sums up Stallone’s willingness to entertain as he’s practically given us his very last drop of blood to keep the fans happy.  

In the words of Rambo, John J.:  “Mission accomplished!”

LONELY HEARTS (2007) ** ½

Lonely Hearts is based on the same case as the cult classic The Honeymoon Killers.  That film at least felt like a true-crime docudrama.  This one feels like an ION TV mini-series with an occasional naughty bit thrown in here and there.  

The tip-off that this ain’t your father’s Honeymoon Killers is that the female killer is played by Salma Hayek and not Shirley Stoler.  I mean, as one of the world’s leading Salma fanatics, I can easily say she is one of the hottest women on the planet… which makes her totally wrong for the part.  At least her partner, Jared Leto TRIES to look like his real-life counterpart, although his performance comes up short next to Hayek’s (admittedly amusing) flamboyant theatrics.

While Hayek and Leto are picking up rich women and killing them for their money, cops John Travolta and James Gandolfini are on their trail.  I like both performers, and neither one of them phone their roles in.  It’s just that their dialogue is kind of rote.  You almost wish you could call for a do-over and see them act their scenes with a better script.  Likewise, Leto and Hayek are fun to watch, and Salma in particular has a few moments of campy, vampy melodramatics, but you kind of wish the whole thing came together as a solid whole and not a collection of hit-and-miss vignettes. 

Lonely Hearts struggles to find a consistent tone, only occasionally hitting a bullseye.  However, it’s not nearly as lurid as it thinks it is, and it’s nowhere near respectable enough to work as a straight true-crime thriller.  Even though it suffers from comparison to The Honeymoon Killers, with this cast (which also includes a brief, but memorable bit from Alice Krige), it’s nothing less than watchable.   

AKA:  Lonely Hearts Killers.

HELLBILLY (2003) ** ½

Hellbilly is only 47 minutes long, and the first 3 ½ are devoted to a title sequence of a Jeep going down a desert road.  Lucky for us, Skinamax legend Beverly Lynne is in the Jeep and gets it on in the very first scene.  When her lover leaves to take a piss, he is killed by titular lunatic (who wears something that looks like a modified Leatherface Halloween mask).  Lynne then runs through the desert as the masked madman gives chase.  Hellbilly finally catches up to her and ties Bev to a chair.  When she escapes AGAIN, Hellbilly goes after her again and murders anyone who stands in his way (including a pair of guys inexplicably playing chess in the woods).

I’m not entirely sure what Bev is doing in this shot-on-video horror film, but her very presence helps to elevate it from the usual dreck.  She gives a strong performance too and is far better than the regional actors that populate the rest of the film.  Too bad her character disappears abruptly from the proceedings.  

Some of the kills are amusing.  I liked the part when Hellbilly beat a blind woman to death with her own cane.  My favorite moment though was when he shoved pages of a Bible into a nun’s mouth (and panties).  The gore isn’t bad, although the machete-to-the-skull effects are overused.  

It’s not all good news.  The repetitive banjo score will get on your nerves and the ending is pretty terrible.  Despite these limitations, Hellbilly goes down rather smoothly thanks to the abbreviated running time and Lynne’s feisty performance.