MY LUCKY STARS (1985) ** ½

Detective Jackie Chan needs help cracking a case.  The bad guys seemingly know his every move, so he turns to his old gang, led by Sammo Hung (who also directed), who are now wanted criminals for help.  After they spend a LOT of time goofing off and perving on the lady cop sent to babysit them, they finally team up with Jackie to take the villains down.

My Lucky Stars is a sequel to Winners and Sinners, a movie I haven’t seen, but there’s enough exposition (perhaps too much of it) so you can kind of get an idea what happened.  It starts off like a Jackie Chan Police Story sequel before turning into a Sammo Hung comedy.  Unfortunately, the two only occasionally intersect.  The early scenes hold a lot of promise as the film kicks off with some amazing stunts, including a jaw-dropping car chase, a terrific fight at an amusement park, and an inexplicable Ninja attack. 

In fact, after the stellar opening scene, Jackie disappears for a good hour, popping up only briefly for a decent fight against the Ninjas.  The great Yuen Biao gets even less screen time as Chan’s partner, who almost immediately gets kidnapped by the bad guys.  Once the film primarily becomes the Sammo show, it goes downhill fast.  A lot of the humor is downright painful to sit through (like the toilet scene), and the part where the gang dress as Ninjas and take turns tying each other up to the sexy cop is especially dire.  

Things end on a high note with an electric finale set in a haunted house amusement park attraction.  The scenes of Chan fighting Ninjas and samurais, not to mention the zombies and ghosts inside the attraction, are great.  Hung is impressive as well when he’s allowed to fight instead of mugging for the camera with his dingbat friends.  If only he had Jackie around more often, My Lucky Stars could’ve been a classic.  As it is, it doesn’t shine as bright as it could’ve.

AKA:  Winners and Sinners 2:  My Lucky Stars.  AKA:  Tokyo Powerman.  AKA:  Lucky Stars Superior Shine.

THE RED NIGHTS OF THE GESTAPO (1977) ***

After Rudolf Hess flees Germany, his close friend, Colonel von Uhland (Ezio Miani) is ordered to be executed by the firing squad.  It all turns out to be a ruse by the Nazis, who want him to lure a group of disloyal party members into a trap.  Von Uhland discovers all their peculiar vices and sets up a meeting in a makeshift brothel where he plans to assassinate them.  He enlists the help of several sex-crazed women fresh from the loony bin to tempt the men by catering to their darkest fetishes, including S & M, lactation, and (REALLY) young girls.  

That’s just a rundown of the plot.  The REAL story is we get Nazi boot fucking, lesbianism, breastfeeding, gangbangs, rape by gunpoint (and I don’t mean rape “at” gunpoint, I mean rape BY gunpoint), S & M floorshows, champagne baths, and orgies. 

At 109 minutes, The Red Nights of the Gestapo is probably too long for its own good.  As wonderfully disgusting as the movie is, there are some definite lulls in between the filth.  No matter how many talky, badly dubbed dialogue scenes you have to sit through, it’s worth it once it starts delivering the icky goods.  I mean what else can you say about a film that contains a doctor who runs a nuthouse for nymphomaniac masochists who’ve been trained to harm themselves while in the throes of ecstasy… and that’s just merely a minor plot point?  I think my favorite moment though was when a woman dressed in drag as Hitler and touched herself while repeatedly screaming, “Heil!” 

In short, The Red Nights of the Gestapo is sicker than your average Naziploitation movie.  It’s also one of the kinkiest Naziploitation flicks I’ve ever seen.  That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the BEST, but there’s plenty of sleaze to go around.  It should be enough to make the most jaded exploitation fan sit up and take notice. 

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: DANCE OF THE DEAD (2008) ***

Zombie comedies are a dime a dozen.  Very few of them work either as a comedy or as horror film.  That’s why it’s nice to find a movie that manages to deliver on the gore and the laughs. On the surface, Dance of the Dead looks like your typical high school zombie comedy, and in many ways, it kind of is.  However, there’s a lot of spirit and even a little bit of heart (to go along with the severed heads and guts) here to make it stand out from the rest of the pack.

Toxic waste from the nearby power plant causes zombies rise from the grave on the night of the high school prom.  A group of students from different social circles band together for survival.  Eventually, the zombies crash the prom, and the only ones who can stop them are our troupe of misfits, nerds, and punk rockers. 

Dance of the Dead features some great gore and a few surprising moments.  This is one of a handful of movies that make a good case for fast zombies as the scenes of the undead corpses leaping from their graves at full sprint are very effective.  As much gore, blood, and guts get tossed around, I think my favorite moment was when the dissected frogs from science class come back to life.  The zombie love scene is pretty great too.

The zombies are seemingly modeled on the ones from Return of the Living Dead.  They run around, move kind of funky, and occasionally speak.  There are even some moments that borrow from Night of the Living Dead as well.  Hey, if you’ve got to steal from someone, steal from the best I always say.  Despite the one-note premise, director Gregg (Siren) Bishop keeps the movie brimming with zombie carnage and cranks out some genuinely funny zingers in the process.

The performances are solid across the board, which really helps.  Greyson Chadwick was the real standout for me as the Vice President of the student body who fights undead student bodies.  She hasn’t been in a whole lot since the film was released, which is a shame because she really shows a knack for believably playing a zombie slayer in a prom dress without making it feel like a cheap gag.  She has my vote come re-election time.

INVASION OF ALIEN BIKINI (2011) **

Young-gun (Young-geun Hong) is a virginal dork who rescues a beautiful woman named Monica (Eun-Jung Ha) from being accosted using his Kung Fu skills.  He takes her back to his place so she can recover and maybe play a little Jenga.  When Monica tries to seduce Young-gun, he resists.  Little does he know, she’s an alien who seeks a sperm donor to propagate her species.  Little does she know, the poor dope has taken a vow of celibacy and will not give into temptation, even under the most dire of circumstances. 

Invasion of Alien Bikini is an uneven mix of Korean craziness.  It sounds like it’s going to be a Sci-Fi sex movie, but it starts out like a lame romantic comedy before turning very dark.  The opening Kung Fu fighting scenes are amusing and get things started off on the right foot.  When it gets down to the sexy shenanigans, it’s more embarrassing than laugh-out-loud funny.  (Young-gun recites multiplication tables and sings the Korean national anthem to take his mind off getting an erection.)  Once you find out WHY Young-gun doesn’t want to get horizontal with Monica, things take a grim turn.  The Sci-Fi elements are kind of odd too (at one point, Monica’s spine comes out her back and attacks), and the twist at the end is more of a head-scratcher than anything.  The whiplash in tone doesn’t jibe and prevents the film from really working.

All this might not have been so bad if Ha got naked.  As it is, she spends a lot of time in her bra and panties, which is okay, I guess.  I know if she told me, “I need your sperm” repeatedly, I’d do what the lady said and not put up a fight like this idiot.

Overall, Invasion of Alien Bikini has its moments, but Species this is not. 

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: SUMMER OF 84 (2018) * ½

Summer of 84 is Stranger Things meets Rear Window meets The ‘Burbs.  It’s a throwback to the days where kids rode bicycles throughout their neighborhoods instead of being constantly on their phone, used nudie books as masturbatory material instead of the internet, read the Weekly World News to get their paranoia fix instead of clickbait bullshit, and relied on milk cartons as lost children bulletins instead of Amber alerts.  It was also a time when serial killers worked their way into the national consciousness. 

That’s just a fancy way of introducing the plot.  Four dorky teenage friends suspect their neighbor of being a serial killer.  Well, that’s about it as far as the plot is concerned.  

Summer of 84 comes from the directing trio of Francois Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell.  Their previous film, Turbo Kid was a pastiche of various movies, but it was a fun pastiche, filled with lots of energy, invention, and spirit.  This is just a pastiche. 

The film lumbers from predictable scene to predictable scene without any tension, drama, or momentum.  At all times it feels like an outline for a movie than the finished product.  Like the filmmakers told themselves they’d go back and fill in things like character development (the kids are all paper-thin stereotypes), red herrings (there is only one suspect and it’s obvious from the start he did it), and legitimate scares later on, but they somehow never got around to it.  

Which is weird, because it’s 108 minutes long, and yet, it feels like nothing ever happens.  It’s long on running time and short on substance.  I mean it seemingly just goes on forever.  Just when you think it’s over, it plods on for another twenty minutes.  Not only that, but it gets needlessly uglier as it goes along, and the finale is sure to leave a bad taste in your mouth.   

This is one summer to forget.

REVENGE (2018) ***

Richard (Kevin Janssens) takes his mistress Jen (Matilda Lutz) to his remote desert home for a weekend fling.  Trouble brews when his hunting buddies Stan (Vincent Colombe) and Dim (Guillaume Bouchede) show up unexpectedly.  After Stan has his way with her, neither Richard nor Dim seem to want to do anything about it.  When Jen threatens to go to the cops, they push her off a cliff.  She somehow miraculously survives and sets out to get some payback. 

Revenge is a better than average rape and revenge movie.  It’s stylish, if a bit overlong.  It's involving, even though it’s predictable.  Though flawed, it’s certainly more empowering than most of these things. 

In fact, it turns into a female First Blood in the second act once Jen goes into a cave, nurses her wounds, and finds the strength to fight on.  She even emerges from the cave as a Lady Rambo, complete with a big ass hunting knife.  I will say her sudden transformation from laid back party girl to hardened hunter is a bit hard to swallow, but that doesn’t take away from the gut-punch effectiveness of it all. 

Revenge contains some really over the top, crowd pleasing moments.  Sometimes, it tends to get a bit self-indulgent.  The unending dream-within-a-dream scene is particularly drawn out, but at least it does have a terrific exploding head gag.  Too bad some of the special effects elsewhere in the movie look phony (like the bloody foot scene).

The film moves at a deliberate pace.  If the filmmakers took the time to punch it up a bit in the editing room, it could’ve been a real classic.  The finale especially goes on way too long.  (How many times can you run around in circles down the same hallway without seeing your prey?)  Still, it’s hard to complain when so many gallons of blood wind up being spilled in the climax.  This movie throws more red stuff around in the last ten minutes than most pictures do their entire running time.  Because of that, it’s worth a look. 

KING COHEN (2018) ****

Larry Cohen is one of my favorite directors, mostly because he makes movies no other director can make besides Larry Cohen.  Most of the time, their reach exceeds their grasp, usually due to their low budgets.  When Larry is firing on all cylinders (such as the case in my favorite Cohen film, The Stuff), it’s truly a sight to behold.

This absorbing, informative, and just plain fun documentary by Steve Mitchell starts right at the beginning of Cohen’s trajectory.  We follow him through his early days writing scripts for television, and then features, before he becomes dissatisfied with the way Hollywood ruined his work.  He turns to directing as a way to protect his scripts and develops a unique style almost immediately.  Before long, he’s cranking out classic after classic.  From Blaxploitation to horror, it doesn’t matter what the genre is.  You’re always guaranteed to see something idiosyncratic in the work to let you know it’s a Larry Cohen movie. 

The most fun part is hearing about his guerilla filmmaking tactics.  He was a master of stealing shots in crowded New York streets with big stars, live special effects, and zero permits.  It’s kind of amazing that he was able to get away with some of the stuff he did, especially the Andy Kaufman scene in God Told Me To. 

Everyone that is interviewed seemed to genuinely enjoy working with Cohen.  I loved seeing his constant leading man Michael Moriarty gush over their work together.  Fred Williamson is also around to contradict some of the legends Cohen has made for himself.  

It was also nice to see the way Cohen championed the used of elderly Hollywood legends.  There’s a particularly touching moment involving the death of Bernard Herrmann, who scored It’s Alive.  Sometimes, that backfired on Cohen.  When he hired Bette Davis for Wicked Stepmother, she walked off the set and never came back.  Ever the soldier, Larry forged ahead and did his best with the footage he had.  

The film also goes into how Cohen was fired from I, the Jury, a movie he envisioned as a franchise.  Man, what could’ve been!  Eventually, he grows tired of the director’s chair and becomes content to write material for other filmmakers.

Cohen is engaging and colorful in his interviews.  You can tell just by the way he talks, he’s a natural born storyteller.  Sadly, we lost Larry earlier this year.  There will never be another one like him.

Long live the King.

AKA:  King Cohen:  The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen.