UNCLE TOM’S CABIN (1977) **

 

The evil, scar-faced slave owner Simon Legree (Herbert Lom) becomes indignant when a slave named Cassie (Olive Moorefield) does not welcome his advances.  He then gets revenge by buying her and a number of other slaves, including the wise old “Uncle” Tom (John Kitzmiller).  When Cassie refuses Simon’s affections, he begins to take out his frustration on the slaves.  Uncle Tom winds up in the crosshairs of his rage, and is gravely injured, which eventually sparks a slave uprising.

The bulk of Uncle Tom’s Cabin comes from a 1965 German-Italian production from director Geza von Radvanyi.  It was presented in America by exploitation legend Kroger Babb to little fanfare from the moviegoing public as the tumultuous ‘60s was not exactly an ideal time for an adaptation of the Harriet Beecher Stowe novel.  A decade or so later, it wound up on the desk of producer Sam Sherman at Independent-International.  Since Mandingo and Drum was still fresh on everyone’s minds, he had Al Adamson film add exploitation-minded scenes of sex and violence to make the rather dull plantation drama marketable. 

What’s interesting is that Adamson’s stuff is far and away the best thing about the movie.  The scenes of rape and revenge are more callus and cruel than the stuff found in the original version, but it’s also much more effective as it works on a baser level; one that film just didn’t even attempt to deliver on.  The subplot involving a love affair between a runaway slave (Prentiss Mouldon, who was also in Adamson’s Nurse Sherri) and a white woman (Mary Ann Jenson) who gives him shelter is surprisingly tender, and there’s a chemistry between the performers that is sorely lacking elsewhere in the picture. 

That’s not to say that the original scenes are all bad.  Herbert Lom’s performance as the despicable slave owner is magnetic enough to ensure your attention.  It’s just that the drama between him and Moorefield fails to ignite the screen the way the lovers in Adamson’s footage did.  It also doesn’t help that the old scenes are slow moving, laughably dubbed, and curiously uninvolving. 

Considering some of the patchwork jobs I’ve sat through in the past few weeks, I can safely say Adamson and company did a good job making his footage match the old.  While the appearances of his stock acting troupe is a dead giveaway, the overall effect is pretty seamless.  Sure, it may fall well short of the exploitative classic that is Mandingo, but I think Adamson’s scenes would’ve worked on their own merits as a short subject, without being beholden to the old movie. 

I’d like to add one thing that should be noted as I go through this boxset, and I think this review is the perfect place to do so seeing as the content of this movie will make many uncomfortable.  Due to constantly changing societal norms and values, many viewers will probably cringe their way through many of Adamson’s pictures (especially his ‘70s work).  Despite some of the decidedly un-P.C. stuff found in his films, Adamson employed a large number of POC actors and actresses, often time and time again.  I think that speaks volumes to who he was in real life.  I just wanted to add that to the record, just in case anyone wanted to “cancel” him based on this flick alone.

AKA:  White Trash Woman.

NURSE SHERRI (1978) ** ½

 

I previously reviewed Nurse Sherri on my old site back in 2008.  Of all the Al Adamson movies I’ve watched in the past two months, this and Blood of Ghastly Horror are the only two where I’ve felt compelled to increase my Star Rating.  I found myself enjoying this one enough to bump it up from ** to ** ½.  Who knows?  Maybe if I watch it in another twelve years I’ll go ahead and give it ***.  Here’s my brand-new review of the flick, followed by the old one:

The mixing of two totally different genres is a staple of Al Adamson’s work.  This one is a cross between a softcore Nurse nudie and possession horror, both of which were big in the mid-‘70s.  It often seems like two movies slapped together (which unlike most of Adamson’s films, this was an original work, and not another cut-and-paste-feature).  Despite the narrative whiplash involved, it winds up being kind of fun. 

Part of the amusement comes from seeing Adamson’s stock company appearing yet again.  Geoffrey Land plays the smug lothario doctor, Bill Roy plays a cult leader in his second Adamson movie in a row, and Marilyn Joi plays one of the sexy nurses.  The movie really belongs to Jill Jacobson though who plays the sexiest possessed nurse the ‘70s ever saw.

When a cult leader (Roy) dies on the operating table, his spirit possesses a nurse named Sherri (Jacobson) who happens to be in the operating room.  What follows feels like a mess of movies put into a blender.  We have horny nurses, cult leaders performing rituals, melodrama involving a blind football player (who naturally develops extrasensory gifts to discover something supernatural is afoot) finding love, a possessed woman talking like Linda Blair in The Exorcist, a revenge from beyond the grave subplot, and Scooby-Doo scenes of fraidy cat nurses sneaking into a graveyard after dark.  It has it all. 

I think I appreciated the sexploitation stuff more this time around.  There’s a random scene where Land and Jacobson flash back to their first times (he gets a blowjob while giving a presentation in class, while she has a poolside lesbian tryst).  There’s also a part where a nurse bangs a nervous patient who’s about to go in for surgery that feels like something out of a bedroom farce.  Even though these scenes are completely unnecessary, they add to the overall goofy charm of the movie.

This isn’t the first time I had to reassess the rating of one of Adamson’s movies as I have combed my way through this boxset.  Blood of Ghastly Horror improved an entire One Star.  I can’t be that generous with this one as it’s still as patchy as ever.  However, seeing the film within the context of Adamson’s other work, I can’t help but to give this an additional Half-Star at the very least.  It’s borderline schizophrenic, but it’s nutty as hell and it certainly isn’t boring.  That alone is worth an extra Half-Star in my book.

 

ARCHIVE REVIEW:  NURSE SHERRI  (1978)  **  (ORIGINALLY POSTED:  FEBRUARY, 5^TH, 2008)

A religious cult leader gets stabbed to death by a bunch of greedy doctors on the operating table.  His soul takes the form of lemon and lime colored negative scratches that possess a cute nurse named Sherri (Jill Jacobson) while she sleeps.  In no time at all, Sherri starts talking in the cult leader’s voice and begins murdering the doctors responsible for his death.  First guy gets a pitchfork rammed through his back and out his stomach.  Next guy takes a trip to Screwdriver City.  Third guy falls into a pit of molten steel.  Then Sherri has a meat cleaver meltdown on the last guy.  In the end, Sherri’s candy striping co-workers help break the spirit’s evil spell by turning the cult leader’s gravesite into an open B-B-Q pit. 

I guess this was an interesting albeit awkward attempt to blend the low rent thrills of your basic Exorcist rip-off with the titillation of Roger Corman’s sexy “Nurse” movies.  It doesn’t quite work, but then again, I’m a sucker for any movie in which nurses showcase their bedside manner by getting it on with their patients. 

The flick was directed by Al Adamson, and like any Adamson movie, there’s going to more than its share of filler.  There’s a car chase that serves no purpose whatsoever and whole sections of the film don’t make a heck of a lot of sense.  Like the scene where the spirit of the cult leader appears on a victim’s dashboard and forces him to drive off a cliff.  I mean hello, I thought the “spirit” was supposedly in Sherri’s body, so what the heck is it doing in the guy’s car?  (I will refrain from making an obvious “repossessing the car” joke.)  This scene also features a hilarious continuity error as the car goes over a cliff in the daytime, but it blows up at the bottom of the canyon at night. 

Like most of Adamson’s oeuvre, Nurse Sherri is sloppy, disjointed, and erratically paced, but that doesn’t necessarily make it unwatchable.  The film’s chief asset (besides a few hints of T & A) is a fine performance by Jacobson.  She’s pretty good, but for a movie called Nurse Sherri, she’s not in it as much as you’d think.  Jacobson doesn’t get an opportunity to really strut her stuff because there are way too many extraneous characters and subplots (like the blind football player who falls in love with a black nurse) that get in the way. 

The flick is chockfull of bad dialogue, which adds to the fun.  Some of my favorites include “Your powers are finite.  Mine are limitless!”, “I’ll introduce you to the bliss that lies on the border to Hell!”, and “One ingrown toenail and it’s the big casino!” 

AKA:  Beyond the Living.  AKA:  Black Voodoo.  AKA:  Hands of Death.  AKA:  Hospital of Terror.  AKA:  Killer’s Curse.  AKA:  Terror Hospital.  AKA:  The Possession of Nurse Sherri.

ROBBERY OF THE MUMMIES OF GUANAJUATO (1972) **

 

Count Cagliostro (Tito Novaro, who also directed) reads from a magic scroll and awakens the mummies of Guanajuato and orders them to kidnap several scantily clad senoritas.  A little boy sees the mummies parading around in the moonlight and runs and informs the authorities.  Of course, they don’t believe him, so he goes and tells his favorite masked Mexican wrestler Mil Mascaras about the resurrected relics.  Together with his two pals, Blue Angel and Jalisco Lightning, the trio sets out to put the Count and his undead army down for the count. 

Even though Mil Mascaras co-starred in The Mummies of Guanajuato alongside El Santo and Blue Demon the very same year, Robbery of the Mummies of Guanajuato doesn’t appear to be related to that one in any way.  I guess it could be seen as a loose remake, but it never quite matches the heights of silliness that movie managed to attain.  (Although I did like the scene where Mil investigates a crime scene using a magnifying glass, just like Sherlock Holmes.) 

As with that film, it focuses on a trio of wrestlers, but whereas Mil was easily the low man on the totem pole in that one, he’s the main star here.  He doesn’t do a bad job in the lead.  It’s just Blue Angel and Jalisco Lightning are poor substitutes for El Santo and Blue Demon.  Blue Angel does have a great costume though as the big white “A” on his blue mask makes him look like a dime store version of Captain America.

At least the mummies look cool.  They resemble haggard zombie scarecrows instead of the traditional bandaged mummies.  It’s also funny that Cagliostro not only controls an army of mummies, but an army of little people too.  (This is the second movie I’ve seen in two days that featured a villain with an army of munchkin henchmen.)

Unfortunately, the wrestling takes a backseat to the mummy stuff as there is only one wrestling scene in the whole flick.  Although Novaro handles the scenes of the mummies being resurrected and stumbling around well enough, they ultimately have very little to do.  The finale is pretty much a washout too.  The scenes of our three heroes running across a minefield goes on forever, and their brawl with the mummy menace is particularly disappointing.  That anticlimactic feeling is only deepened by the fact that Cagliostro’s castle just kind of blows up, leaving our heroes (and the audience) to wonder what the heck that was all about.  (I guess if I saw a version that had subtitles, I might’ve known.)

Novaro and Blue Angel returned the next year for The Castle of the Mummies of Guanajuato. 

BLACK SAMURAI (1976) ***

 

I bought this on VHS for $5 at Roses in the late ‘90s during the Blaxploitation resurgence that occurred shortly after Pam Grier starred in Jackie Brown.  I’m not sure if it was my first Al Adamson movie or not (I also picked up Dracula vs. Frankenstein in a giant clamshell box around this time), but it certainly got me hooked on his films.  It’s cheap and chintzy, but the badass performance by Jim Kelly gives it an unmistakable sense of cool. 

Based on the series of Black Samurai men’s adventure novels, Kelly stars as an agent of D.R.A.G.O.N.  He is a master of the martial arts who lives by the samurai code.  When his girlfriend is kidnapped by a villainous cult leader, Kelly springs into action to get her back. 

Black Samurai finds Adamson working away from Sam Sherman and his usual Independent-International team.  Even though the film was essentially a for-hire gig, it very much feels like an Adamson picture.  I’m sure he was hired for his spendthrift ways, which helps give some of the action sequences a bigger (but not much) feel (like when Kelly drives a car loaded with gadgets, just like James Bond).

The cool Bond-style opening credits scene coupled with a funky theme song sets the tone nicely.  We also get a great scene where a shotgun-toting, poorly dubbed Felix Silla interrupts Kelly during his meditation.  (There are several fights involving dwarves and little people, actually.)

Although it’s a little more respectable than your typical Adamson production, we still get scenes of strippers shaking their goodies for all to see.  Adamson handles the action better than you’d expect too as Kelly’s Kung Fu scenes are solidly entertaining.  The best part is when he gets to bust out a jetpack.  Yes, it’s yet another Bond reference, but unlike 007, Kelly actually gets to use it for a lengthy amount of time. 

Kelly, who really should’ve been a bigger star, looks relaxed and confident, and he carries the movie effortlessly.  His performance alone should’ve warranted a slew of sequels, which we unfortunately did not get.  He has a lot of chemistry with Adamson regular Marilyn Joi, who plays the villain’s sexy right-hand woman, Synne. My favorite exchange is when she calls him, “my white knight!”, and he responds, “I’m never the white knight, baby!”

For a low budget Blaxploitation James Bond/Enter the Dragon knockoff, Black Samurai is hard to beat.  The budget can’t quite keep up with its comic book sensibilities, but that’s kind of the charm.  While it may drag in spots, once it starts cooking, it’s a damn good time.  It’s proof that Adamson, given a good cast and a decent script, could churn out a winner.

AKA:  Black Terminator. 

NURSES FOR SALE (1976) **

 

An epidemic breaks out in a third world country, and freshly inoculated American nurses are sent to administer a vaccine.  A corrupt police official mistakes the vaccine for heroin and steals the shipment.  He places the blame on a crusty sea captain, played by Curd (The Spy Who Loved Me) Jurgens and throws him in jail.  Jurgens eventually escapes and comes to the aid of the nurses, who have been captured by revolutionaries.

Nurses for Sale came about when producer Sam Sherman acquired a German movie he couldn’t do a whole lot with.  Seeing that Roger Corman was making a mint with his sexy Nurses series, he had Al Adamson add some spicy footage of horny nurses.

Adamson’s work on the film amounts to about ten minutes of screen time.  His major contribution was the pre-opening title sequence in which two sexy nurses engage in a three-way with their stud lover.  Whereas Adamson’s previous patchwork features had some semblance of cohesion, it’s pretty apparent that this beginning has been crassly tacked on as it really doesn’t match the rest of the movie.  The lighting is poor, the acting is bad, and the whole scene feels like a crummy stag reel that’s somehow managed to play as a short subject before the main attraction.  The girls briefly show up later as prisoners in the revolutionaries’ camp for a bit of lesbian lovemaking.  There’s also a forced blowjob scene that’s awkwardly cut in with the prison break sequence, but overall, these extra snippets don’t add much to the picture. 

The rest of the movie (directed by Rolf Olsen) is OK.  About halfway through, the film takes a detour into the jungle.  Because of the grimy cinematography and the jungle setting, it’s easy to see how drive-in patrons would mistake this for one of Corman’s lensed-in-the-Philippines actioners.  Unfortunately, the sleaze is limited to a scene of the nurses showering, a few tame sex scenes, and one gratuitous wardrobe change.  We also get a decent acid-to-the-face scene.  The comedy is lame too, and the dubbing is cheesy, but Jurgens makes it watchable.  (I liked the part where he butted heads with the dirty cop who tries to confiscate his shipment of alcohol.)

The good news is, it’s short.  At only 66 minutes, it’s by far the shortest film so far on the Al Adamson boxset.  (Although he was only responsible for about eight minutes worth of footage.)  Of course, it FEELS much longer than the running time suggests (the finale is especially protracted), but it’s far from the worst cut-and-paste flick featured on this set.

Two years later, Adamson and Sherman would take another Jurgens/Olsen collaboration, The Doctor of St. Pauli and repackage it as Bedroom Stewardesses.

AKA:  Captain Typhoon.  AKA:  Captain Roughneck from St. Pauli.

BLACK HEAT (1976) **

 

Kicks (Timothy Brown) and Tony (Geoffrey Land) are cops out to bust a hotel full of hookers.  The girls also help the sleazy kingpin Ziggy (Russ Tamblyn) pull off a series of heists.  After Ziggy kills Tony, he tricks his grieving girlfriend (Jana Bellan) into setting up his next score.  It’s then up to Kicks to get revenge and bring Ziggy down. 

You can say a lot of things about the quality of the movies Al Adamson and Sam Sherman made together, but you have to admire the ingenuity they had when it came to selling them.  Black Heat is an example where the genesis of the film is more interesting than the finished product.  They were looking to make a Blaxploitation actioner and a sexploitation potboiler, and figured why not just make two for the price of one?  They would create two different marketing campaigns under two different titles and film two different opening scenes (one that played up the gunrunning angle, the other featuring a bunch of scenes of the girls in the hotel getting naked, fucking, and showering) but keep the rest of the pictures the same.  They’d then play them in separate markets and the filmgoing public would be none the wiser. 

The film itself is serviceable at best.  Like most of Adamson’s work, the plot is a bit slipshod, with a few too many extraneous subplots that get in the way of the fun.  For example, the final junkyard confrontation between Brown and Tamblyn is well done, but unfortunately, the movie keeps going for another ten unnecessary minutes.  There is some trademark Adamson sleaze here (gang rape, forced lesbianism, a guy getting his legs ran over by a car, etc.), although not really enough to make it recommended.  Still, it’s not a bad Blaxploitation flick, all things considered.  (The score by Paul Lewinson is appropriately funky.)

The performances are what keep it afloat.  Brown is likeable as the suave badass cop Kicks.  He has an easy chemistry in the streets with Land and between the sheets with Tanya Boyd, who plays his reporter girlfriend.  Naturally, Adamson’s wife, Regina Carrol also turns up (as a nightclub singer), although she isn’t given a whole lot to do this time out.

AKA:  U.S. Vice.  AKA:  Syndicate Vice.  AKA:  The Murder Gang.  AKA:  Girls’ Hotel.  AKA:  Town Rats. 

HELLISH SPIDERS (1968) ****

 

Giant spiders from outer space travel across the galaxy to invade Earth.  They take the form of Earthmen (you can tell they’re spider men because they all have a small spider tattoo behind their ear) and begin harvesting human brains, the vital foodstuff for their queen, Arachnea.  Naturally, the only one who can stop them from conquering the world is everyone’s second favorite luchador, Blue Demon!  The aliens know this too, so they create their own invincible wrestler to go one on one with the champ in the ring.

I love it when low budget movies steal their special effects footage from other films.  Usually though, they try to pinch footage from higher budgeted and/or slightly better made features.  Director Federico Curiel probably had his pick of footage to blatantly steal from and put into this flick.  What makes Hellish Spiders so great is that he went and stole the UFO footage from Plan 9 from Outer Space, the one picture that’s notorious for its famously awful pie tin/hubcap spaceships and flying saucers. 

I fucking love it. 

Not content to steal only from Plan 9, Curiel lifts whole scenes from Teenagers from Outer Space too.  The famous dog disintegration scene from that movie is shown in its full glory.  It’s fitting though, because like the teenagers in that flick, the aliens in this movie leave a trail of fleshless skeletons in their wake, so it all kind of synchs up.  Not only does Hellish Spiders borrow footage from Plan 9 and Teenagers, it recycles some familiar musical cues from Creature from the Black Lagoon and This Island Earth.  Also, the spiders themselves look a lot like the ones found in Horrors of Spider Island, which only adds to the fun.

While the invasion is going on, Blue Demon spends most of his time wrestling.  There are at least five wrestling scenes, or seven if you count the two sparring sessions in the ring.  The brawl with the alien champion is particularly fast-paced and entertaining.  The shit really hits the fan when Demon smashes his opponent’s arm to reveal his spider appendage, horrifying the spectators in the process.  Blue Demon also does battle outside the squared circle with the spider soldiers, who wear pretty sweet looking Dracula capes.

Once again, Curiel shows why he is one of the premier directors in Lucha Libre cinema.  Sure, the production may be cheap and shoddy, but the sequences set in the aliens’ underground lair are loaded with atmosphere.  The shots of the heroine clinging to the giant web as a slimy spider inches ever closer to her are particularly well done. 

In short, this is one of Blue Demon’s best solo efforts.  There’s tons of wrestling, cool monsters, and very little plot to get in the way.  Ed Wood devotees will also love seeing the footage from Plan 9 being repurposed here.  What more can a B movie fan ask for?