THE EVIL ONES (1968) *** ½

 

Remember a few days ago when I watched Wrestling Women vs. the Killer Robot and I fell head over heels for Regina Torne, who played the main badass wrestling lady?  Well, lo and behold, here she is again!  This time, she’s the saucy villainess in the second Mil Mascaras movie (which, according to IMDb, was actually released first).  She plays Kaneda, the leader of a female biker gang.  In the opening scene, she and her cohorts ride to her underground lair where she dances wildly while a swinging rock n’ roll band belts out a great number.  She then makes it a point to bring down Mil Mascaras, the wrestler who wears a million masks, once and for all. 

This leads up to a scene where Torne, dressed head to toe in black leather is sitting on a red velvet throne in her dungeon.  The camera slowly pulls back to reveal a couple who are strung up on adjacent columns.  When they refuse to tell her what she wants to know, she whips the shit out of them with a riding crop. 

It’s as if director Federico Curiel knew exactly what my innermost fantasy was and filmed it in precise detail. 

We also get a scene where Torne and her minions don masquerade masks, drug Mil, pin him down, and try to remove his mask against his will.  Another choice moment finds Torne dressing up like a Vegas showgirl and participating in an Aztec ceremony where she puts a hex on Mil by using a voodoo doll made of clay.  (It looks like a Lucha Libre version of Mr. Bill.)

As you can see, this one is a little kinkier than your average Mexican wresting flick.

The wrestling scenes are plentiful and feature a lot of action.  (There’s one in which Mil bloodies up his opponent.)  Curiel gives these sequences a distinct documentarian flair.  Many times, the camera is up close and personal with the grapplers, which allows the viewer to feel every armbar and stranglehold.  (I also enjoyed the bit where Torne’s sidekick sneaks into the ring and gives Mil a poisoned kiss with arsenic lipstick.) 

The music is positively buzzing too.  My main gripe is the subplot where Torne takes to breaking two criminals (one of whom has a Captain Hook prosthetic) out of prison to help her take down Mil Mascaras.  She was doing just fine on her own.  She didn’t need these two mugs mucking things up. 

I can’t say the film is as much overall fun as Wrestling Women vs. the Killer Robot.  However, it is downright riveting whenever Regina Torne is front and center acting salacious, sadistic, and saucy.  In my humble estimation, her performance remains the definitive portrayal of a Hell’s Angel dominatrix who lives in an underground lair and moonlights as an Aztec priestess and voodoo practitioner.  Torne’s vivacious energy alone makes The Evil Ones a treat from start to finish.

AKA:  Infernal Angels.  AKA:  The Scoundrels. 

THE DYNAMITE BROTHERS (1974) **

 

I reviewed this back in February under the title East Meets Watts.  Most of the Al Adamson films I have re-reviewed while poring through the Severin Films box set were originally reviewed as long as twelve years ago, so I have no problem reappraising them and writing a brand-new review.  However, since I watched this only seven months ago, and my thoughts haven’t really changed, I have decided to forego writing a new review for this one.  In the interest of posterity, here is a reprint of my original review:   

EAST MEETS WATTS  (1974)  **

Larry Chin (Alan Tang) travels from China to San Francisco to find the man who killed his wife.  Along the way, he crosses paths with a soul brother named Stud Brown (Timothy Brown) who’s being hassled by a racist cop (Aldo Ray) who handcuffs them together.  They give the cops (not to mention another assorted crop of racist shitkickers) the slip, get the cuffs off, and decide to work together to take down a local drug kingpin (James Hong). 

East Meets Watts is what you get when Al Adamson can’t make up his mind whether he wants to make a Kung Fu movie or a Blaxploitation actioner.  He splits the difference and tries to give both genres his own unique spin.  It’s obvious that the Kung Fu sequences are much more competent.  By “much more competent”, I mean they’re just as crummy as your typical low budget ‘70s chopsocky flick.  Still, there’s plenty of kicking, chopping, and nunchuck twirling to keep your interest.  We also get at least one memorable death when Tang rips a guy’s scalp off with his bare hands. 

The Blaxploitation elements are the weakest aspects of the movie, mostly because Adamson films the action so poorly.  Simple shootouts and chase scenes are rendered nearly incomprehensible thanks to the schizophrenic editing.  There’s also an unintentionally hilarious subplot involving a mute love interest (played by Carol Speed from The Mack) that will leave you howling. 

The scenes where our two heroes are cuffed together work well enough.  You almost wish they had spent the whole movie that way.  Think a Kung Fu version of The Defiant Ones.  (The Defiant Wongs?)  However, whenever they split up for their separate missions, the movie often spins its wheels.  Despite its shortcomings, I find it hard to completely dislike any film that features Aldo Ray AND James Hong, so it’s still worth watching not only for die-hard Kung Fu and Blaxploitation fans, but for connoisseurs of cult movie stars as well.

AKA:  Dynamite Brothers.  AKA:  Killing of a Chinese Bookie.  AKA:  Stud Brown.  AKA:  Main Street Women.  AKA:  Dynamite Brown.

THE NAUGHTY STEWARDESSES (1973) ** ½

 

I had this on DVD from the Retro-Seduction Cinema line back in the early 2000’s and enjoyed it well enough to keep it in my collection for all these years.  Now that I have the Al Adamson Collection Blu-Ray box set from Severin Films, it’s (mile) high time I upgraded.  Since I bought the disc prior to the creation of my original blog, I never got around to reviewing it.  Until now. 

Even back then I knew this was one of Adamson’s best, and that opinion hasn’t really changed all that much, even if it isn’t exactly “good”.  Although many of his films had a smattering of nudity here and there, The Naughty Stewardesses was Adamson’s first out-and-out sexploitation flick.  Once again, he and producer Sam Sherman were cashing in on the latest exploitation craze.  In this case, they were riding the coattails of the booming Stewardess genre.  It’s also one of his best-looking films, thanks to Gary Graver’s excellent cinematography.  The editing is equally remarkable as this has to be Adamson’s most coherent feature to date.

I only wish the editor was more judicious in the cutting room as this clocks in at a whopping 109 minutes.  There’s no reason for a softcore stewardess movie to be 109 minutes.  Heck, there’s no reason for an Al Adamson movie to be 109 minutes.  In the film’s defense, I will say that this is the “steamy” international cut that includes six extra spicy minutes of footage previously unseen in America.  Just one more reason why I’m glad I upgraded my disc.

The film centers around a shy and virginal stewardess named Debbie (Connie Hoffman) who rooms together with three sexy, much more experienced stews, played by Donna Desmond, Marilyn Joi, and Sydney Jordan.  Slowly, Debbie loosens up and eventually finds herself torn between the horny old rich man Brewster (Robert Livingston) and a young photographer named Cal (Richard Smedley, who played Akro in Adamson’s Blood of Ghastly Horror), who has a mysterious sexual hang-up.  When Debbie spurns Cal in favor of Brewster, he plots to get even. 

Adamson had previously shown restraint with nudity in his films.  While there is much more of it here in The Naughty Stewardesses, it’s still more tease than please.  Still, many scenes are sexy without going overboard.  For example, this movie probably features the first pussy shaving scene in a non-hardcore flick.  That sounds great and all, but Adamson’s shy handling of it makes it feel a bit tame. 

The opening scene is particularly great.  Marilyn Joi asks, “Have you girls ever tried doing it standing up?”  Then one of the stewardesses proceeds to bang the captain standing up in the back of the plane, just out of view from the passengers.  We also get a memorable birthday party scene where a stewardess receives a cake that’s just a dude with whipped cream all over his body and candles sticking out of his nether region. 

The travelogue scenes of the girls walking around Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Palm Springs, adds to the abundance of padding.  Despite that, it plays rather well, and works more often than not.  The problem is the third act.  It’s here when the film turns into a dull kidnapping drama.  The pacing was already erratic to begin with, but once this subplot takes hold, the movie hits a brick wall and never quite recovers.  If the script had just stuck to being a slice of life look into the bedroom activities of sexy stewardesses, it could’ve been a minor classic.  Too bad that last half hour moves like molasses. 

If you can get past the obnoxious length and the gratuitous third act, I think you’ll enjoy The Naughty Stewardesses.  The ladies in the cast (especially Joi) are sexy, feisty, and likeable, and are equally amusing in their clothes as they are out of them.  The music (by the girl group Sparrow), is quite good too. 

Desmond gets the best line of the movie when she tells Livingston:  “Life to me is just one big orgasm!”

AKA:  Fresh Air.

NEUTRON THE ATOMIC SUPERMAN VS. THE AMAZING DR. CARONTE (1964) **

Just as everyone is breathing a sigh of relief following Neutron’s defeat of the evil Dr. Caronte (Julio Aleman), the fiendish doctor rears his head yet again.  His plot to take over the world is stalled when he gets mixed up with a spy (Guillermo Alvarez Bianchi) who works for a foreign government.  He steals Caronte’s formula for the neutron bomb with the intention of using it for his own devious purposes.  Once Caronte gets the formula back and disposes of the spy, he sets out to claim Nora (Rosita Arenas) the nightclub singer for his own, all the while unmasking his arch-nemesis, Neutron (Wolf Ruvinskis). 

After two smashing entries in the Neutron series, along comes this over-plotted third entry to take the wind out of the franchise’s sails.  The laborious subplot with Caronte and the superfluous foreign villain (who looks like Sydney Greenstreet in Casablanca and listens to Beethoven) pretty much stops the movie on a dime.  What’s more is the fact that he quickly unmasks Caronte, discovers his identity, and then uses it as leverage against him.  Forced with the prospect of having to do the spy’s bidding, Caronte then spends 2/3 of the movie wriggling out from under the bad guy’s thumb.  So much for being “amazing”. 

All this rigmarole with Caronte ultimately gets in the way of Neutron doing his thing.  The film was already low on fight scenes to begin with, but the dense, dull, and misguided subplot only allows for him to have three brawls, and in only one of them does he wear his trademark mask.  For Lucha Libre fans, this will come as a disappointment.  Heck, even the zombies don’t get a lot to do in this one, so horror fans will undoubtedly feel let down too. 

On the plus side, returning director Federico Curiel once again brings a strong sense of style to the proceedings.  The laboratory scenes feel like something out of an old Universal movie, and there are segments that may remind you of a Republic serial.  That’s not quite enough though to live up to the heights of Neutron, the Atomic Superman vs. the Death Robots, but at least the atmosphere is decent.

AKA:  Neutron vs. Dr. Caronte. 

MEAN MOTHER (1973) * ½

 

(Programming Note:  I know I was making August Al Adamson month, but since I still have a good chunk of movies left on Severin’s Al Adamson box set left to watch, I figured I’d extend it through September.  I'll try to watch them all before The 31 Days of Horror-Ween kicks off in October, although I kind of doubt I’ll be able to wade my way through them all by then.)

Dobie Gray (the pop singer known for such hits as “The In Crowd” and “Drift Away”) stars as Beauregard Jones, who in the pre-title sequence guns down a drug kingpin, his goons, and some dirty cops atop a tall building.  We then flashback to Vietnam where Beauregard and his buddy Joe (Dennis Safran) go AWOL and set out on separate paths.  In Spain, Beauregard gets in hot water when he helps a sexy senorita evade some hitmen from the Syndicate.  Meanwhile, in Rome, Joe comes into possession of a hot diamond and quickly gets in over his head.  Eventually, they decide to take off to Canada together, but fate has other plans. 

Mean Mother is a weird mother.  It’s one part Italian crime picture and one part Blaxploitation actioner.  Legendary schlock producer Sam Sherman got a hold of a flick called Run for Your Life directed by Leon (“Kill ‘em off ski”) Klimovsky that he couldn’t sell.  So, he gave the one and only Al Adamson a call and had him film new scenes with Gray and turn it into a black action movie so they could cash in on the Blaxploitation craze.  Despite the fact that Safran appears in both narratives, the two halves never really gel as the whole thing feels like it’s been Frankensteined together. 

Based on the evidence supplied here, Dobie is a much better singer than actor.  Safran is even worse, but the ladies in the cast are engaging.  Former Bond girl Luciana Paluzzi appears in the Klimovsky portions of the film.  She looks great and gives a decent performance, although it’s hard to grasp what she sees in the bland Safran.  (I wonder if she ever realized her scenes would someday wind up in an Al Adamson Blaxploitation flick?)  The ever-sexy Marilyn Joi shows up in the Adamson sequences and makes the sluggishly paced scenes worth watching.  We also get a bit by the sultry Robyn Hilton (Mel Brooks’ secretary in Blazing Saddles) as a bombshell in a bikini who unsuccessfully tries to waylay Gray during a roadside ambush.

The Run for Your Life segments are indifferently edited into the action, which is often poorly staged.  The pre-title sequence isn’t bad though.  You can see why Adamson frontloaded it into the picture because it’s easily the best thing the movie has to offer (Joi and Hilton’s nude scenes notwithstanding).  It quickly settles down from there and becomes something of a chore to sit through, mostly on account of the constant shifting back and forth from the Klimovsky footage to the Adamson stuff. 

Another problem:  Beauregard really isn’t all that… mean?  He’s the hero and all, but he really doesn’t do anything particularly bad to justify the title.  Maybe he had a mean mother growing up and that’s why he turned out to be such a good guy.

I’m a big fan of the Blaxploitation genre.  Even lesser Blaxploitation fare can be enjoyable for the dated fashions, low production values, and the bad acting.  Mean Mother, unfortunately, is just plain bad.

AKA:  Run for Your Life.

WRESTLING WOMEN VS. THE KILLER ROBOT (1969) ****

Gaby (Regina Torne) is the reigning lady wrestling champion of Mexico. Her uncle gets kidnapped by a mad scientist named Dr. Orlak (Carlos Agosti) who wants him to perfect a mind-control device that will turn ordinary people into “human robots”.  When her uncle refuses, Dr. Orlak has him killed by his badass robot henchman.  (He looks like a cross between Pizza the Hut’s sidekick in Spaceballs and Blade from Puppet Master.)  Dr. Orlak also keeps an ugly mutant named Carfax (Gerardo Zepeda) locked up in cellar.  He’s one of the doctor’s failed experiments who likes to kill nurses.  After her uncle’s body is discovered, Gaby vows to put a stop to Orlak’s plans once and for all.  Just when you think you’ve seen the last of the mad Dr. Orlak, he puts the brain of Carfax into a wrestling woman and turns her into a human robot named Elektra who challenges Gaby for the title! 

Wrestling Women vs. the Killer Robot was directed by the great Rene Cardona, who also made the very similar Night of the Bloody Apes that same year.  (Zepeda essentially played the same role in that film.)  Apparently, there was also a “hot” version of the movie called Sex Monsters, which supposedly had sex and gore inserted into the picture, a la Apes.  Unfortunately, that version is presumed to be lost.  Even without the sexy and gory inserts, Wrestling Women vs. the Killer Robot is one of the finest hours in the history of Mexican Wrestling cinema.

I mean how can you not love a movie that involves sexy wrestling women in formfitting spandex throwing each other around a ring while a robot dressed like an ‘80s music video version of a ‘30s gangster busts through I don’t know how many balsa wood doors, as horny caged human freaks assault sexy nurses?  Also, one thing just occurred to me.  The mutant is named Carfax and our heroine is named Gaby.  That is so almost a Dracula reference. 

Some may take issue that the wrestling scenes are for the most part, completely random.  Some may also note that they aren’t up to the grappling standards of an El Santo picture.  I say they are some damned fine examples of Lucha Libre, mostly because the women in this movie are hot (especially the vivacious Torne).  Whatever these scenes lack in wrestling expertise, they more than make up for in the eye candy department.

The dialogue is pretty great too.  There are so many terrific lines and quips throughout the film.  However, I think my favorite line came when Gaby professes her love of Lucha Libre, and her uncle retorts, “You should try a safer sport… like marriage!”

AKA:  Sex Monsters.  AKA:  Wrestling Women vs. the Murderous Robot.  AKA:  Sex and the Mad Killer.

MIL MASCARAS (1969) ***

 

A group of world leaders raise a young boy to be an undefeatable champion of justice.  When he grows to be a man, he dons a Lucha Libre mask and becomes Mil Mascaras.  Working from intel provided to him by his mysterious benefactors, Mil sets out to smash a crime syndicate bent on world domination. 

Unlike El Santo, who never really had much of a backstory in his movies, Mil Mascaras devotes nearly an entire reel to his origin story.  If you can stomach the ill-fitting stock footage left over from WWII, the scene where the baby Mil is discovered in the bombed-out wreckage of a dilapidated building is quite effective.  I also liked the training montage of Mil growing into adulthood as he learns to sharpen not only his physical attributes, but his mind as well.  (There’s even a brief shot of him working in a mad scientist lab!)

Speaking of getting physical, Mil is a lot of fun to watch in his wrestling scenes.  He is quick on his feet, does a handful of flashy moves, and has a commanding presence in and out of the ring.  The film is likewise fast-paced and contains a number of action sequences and fight scenes to keep you entertained.

Another way this picture is a little different than say, the works of El Santo is the music.  In most Lucha Libre movies, the music sequences are akin to easy listening and/or traditional folk music.  Mil Mascaras features wall-to-wall rock n’ roll.  The scenes set in a rock n’ roll club where a bunch of teenagers twist the night away have a lot of energy, and the big musical number (sung by a girl who looks like Twiggy) will get your toes tapping.  The musical score, though repetitive, is catchy too, and gives the assorted fight scenes an added flair. 

In short, this is another top-notch Mexican wrestling movie.  Based on the evidence here (as well as the El Santo films I’ve seen in which Mil had supporting roles), I’m going to have to add the Mil Mascaras series to my ever-growing pile of must-see Mexican wrestling franchises.  In these troubled times, the genre has offered me a lot of comfort and strength.  I often ask myself why I am so drawn to them.  I think I know the answer now.  It’s because the Luchadores of Mexican Cinema harken back to a simpler time.  They stand for truth, justice, and the Mexican way.  Plus, unlike a lot of people in this country, they know how to wear a damn mask.