ACCELERATION (2019) ** ½

Natalie (Killer Mermaid) Burn’s son has been kidnapped by a shadowy underworld figure (Dolph Lundgren).  In order to get him back, she must complete five tasks… and by “tasks” I mean she has to kill five dudes.  Since we already saw Burn and Lundgren teaming up to shoot a bunch of guys in the cliched “Let’s Show You This One Part from the End of the Movie Before the Opening Credits Roll”, we have a feeling that somebody else is pulling the strings. 

Burn (who also produced and served as the casting director) equips herself nicely in the lead, playing a confident and tough badass.  She even shows a vulnerable side to her character, which makes her a surprisingly well-rounded heroine for this sort of thing.  Dressed in a skintight outfit that makes her look like Kate Beckinsale’s stunt double from the Underworld movies, Burn does a solid job in the action scenes as she gamely Kung Fus and shoots people.  The movie itself never really catches fire, but I’d watch her in another DTV action flick.

Lundgren (who also starred with Burn in Hard Night Falling from the same year) spends a lot of his time looking at TV monitors and keeping tabs on Burn.  He does have a nice rapport with Burn’s kidnapped son, which allows him to flex his acting chops a bit.  Like Altitude, he literally sits out most of the movie, which may come as a disappointment to his fans.

The supporting cast is a Who’s Who of DTV luminaries and random-ass actors.  The usually subdued Sean Patrick Flanery annoyingly overacts as the cranky crime boss.  I don’t know if he was experimenting with Nicolas Cage-style overacting techniques or what, but it just isn’t a good look for him.  We also have Chuck Liddell as a cliched henchman character, Oscar nominee Sally (Fatal Games) Kirkland as a waitress, an unrecognizable Jason London as a junkie, and Danny Trejo as the uh… Danny Trejo character.

The most surprising cast member was Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, who plays a soft-spoken gangster with an almost Buddhist attitude towards crime.  I thought he was great in The A-Team and he does a good job here.  It’s a shame he was never able to capitalize on his work as B.A. because he could’ve potentially had a fine career in the DTV realm, as clearly evidenced here. 

The movie itself is a competent, if forgettable, exercise.  You can see the John Wick influence as scenes are often bathed in purple light.  They don’t have the intricate “rules” of that franchise, but the directors (Michael Merino and Daniel Zirilli) certainly take a lot of visual cues from it.  Although Acceleration never really puts the pedal to the metal, it’s an OK DTV flick, with a decent amount of action, a not-bad plot twist, and some pretty solid editing (courtesy of Mike Mendez, who also directed Dolph in Don’t Kill It). 

AKA:  The Driver.

PROMISES….. PROMISES! (1963) **

Jayne Mansfield had the first nude scene by a famous movie star in a legitimate release since the advent of The Hays Code in Promises….. Promises!  They don’t make you wait long to see it either, which is certainly appreciated.  She briefly shows off her birthday suit in a bubble bath before bouncing around topless in her room until she lays down in bed and rolls around bare for all to see.  (These scenes are also repeated throughout the movie in the form of dream sequences to help up the skin quotient.)  Then, the plot begins. 

Jayne plays a married woman with a bad case of baby fever.  Her husband (Tommy Noonan, who also co-wrote) can’t seem to seal the deal, and his dumb doctor (Fritz Feld), thinking it’s all in his head, keeps him supplied with a heavy dose of placebo.  While on a cruise ship, Tommy and Jayne have a dinner party with their friends (Marie McDonald and Mickey Hargitay, Mansfield’s real-life husband), and the couples get drunk, get fresh, and wind up swapping partners… or so they think.

Mansfield’s womanly charms are pretty much the whole show.  Aside from the nude scenes, the movie itself is only mildly risqué for its time.  It’s basically a lame bedroom farce with a plot that hinges on couple swapping, a few conversations about “reproductive urges”, and jokes revolving around Spanish Fly.  To put it frankly, the jokes aren’t funny, the dream scenes are dumb, and Noonan’s shtick is tiresome. 

The movie coasts on Mansfield’s bubbly personality.  She also sings (not too badly), although it kind of seems like that was part of the deal.  It’s as if she told her agent, “I’m not taking my puppies out of their chute unless I get to sing a number or two!”  She also posed nude in Playboy to help promote the movie, which would eventually become standard in the industry

Ultimately, the movie feels like a more polished version of a nudie-cutie.  As a comedy, it’s not successful at all.  As a landmark of celebrity skin, Promises….. Promises! is an important film.  It gives you just about what it promises and nothing much else.

FAIR TRADE (1988) ** ½

Oliver Reed stars as a drug-dealing general in a fictional South American country who wants payback on the federal agent (Robert Vaughn) who imprisoned his son.  His elaborate plan is to wait for Vaughn’s daughter (Lisa Rinna) and her girlfriends to board a plane to go to South America.  Then, he has his men hijack the flight, kidnap Lisa and her gal pals, and gun down all the male passengers.  He then holds Lisa and the female passengers captive in his jungle camp, stating that if he son isn’t released, he’ll kill all the hostages.  Little does he know that Lisa is a badass, and she and her friends escape into the jungle to plot revenge on Reed and his men.

Reed snorts so much coke and drinks so heavily in this movie that you have to wonder if he was going Method on this one.  With his gravelly South American accent, greying hair, and bushy beard, he almost always looks and sounds like the Most Interesting Man in the World.  Reed doesn’t always pay his rent, but when he does, it’s usually because he got paid for starring in junk like this.

At one point, Reed says, “I’m chasing beach bunnies through the jungle.  How humiliating!”  It’s almost as if he’s providing commentary on his own career.

Fair Trade is all over the place.  It starts off as a hijacking thriller, and then it turns into a jungle variation on the Women in Prison genre, before giving way to a female Rambo movie.  While it isn’t exactly a sum of its parts, those parts are pretty rad.  Women are kept in bamboo cages, rapist guards are castrated, people fall into a piranha pit, Ninjas ride around on horseback brandishing machine guns, and lots of bamboo guard towers blow up. 

It sounds like Fair Trade should be a classic, but it just never comes together.  If you put all the boring shit in this movie on one side of a seesaw and the awesome shit on the other side, the boring side would be hitting the ground hardcore.  However, that awesome shit is pretty awesome.  How often do you get to see Oliver Reed suffocate somebody in a pile of cocaine?  Besides, is a movie that features exploding bamboo guard towers really all that bad?

Reed and Vaughn are clearly slumming.  (Vaughn must’ve filmed all his scenes in a single afternoon.)  It must be said that future Real Housewife of Beverly Hills (and Mrs. Harry Hamilin), Rinna equips herself better than expected.  She is credible in her action scenes and is convincing at being a tough action heroine.  She can’t quite singlehandedly save the movie, but she does save the hostages, so I guess that’s a… uh… fair trade. 

Director Cedric Sundstrom later went on to direct American Ninja 3 and 4. 

AKA:  Blood Ransom.  AKA:  Captive Rage.  AKA:  Fire with Fire.  AKA:  Fighting Fire with Fire.  AKA:  Fire on Fire.

TAMMY AND THE T-REX (1994) ** ½

Director Stewart Raffill has made some weird rip-offs in his time.  Raffill’s The Ice Pirates was the nuttiest Star Wars rip-off ever made.  His Mac and Me stands as one of the most warped E.T. rip-offs in history.  Although 1994’s Tammy and the T-Rex was clearly cashing in on Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, it owes just as much to Wes Craven’s Deadly Friend.

High-schooler Tammy (Denise Richards) won’t let jock Michael (the late Paul Walker) date her because she’s afraid her psycho ex Billy (George Pilgrim) will kill him.  When Billy catches them together, he quite literally throws Michael to the lions.  (There just so happens to be a wild game preserve down the road… convenient.)  While Michael is laying in a coma, a mad doctor (Friday the 13^th Part VII’s Terry Kiser) steals his body and puts his brain into an animatronic dinosaur.  Once Michael becomes self-aware, the dinosaur goes out and gets revenge on Billy and his gang. 

When Tammy and the T-Rex was originally released, it looked like a harmless kid’s movie.  That’s because all the extreme gore had been removed by the producers.  Thanks to Vinegar Syndrome, the gore has been reinstated so we get to see all the squished faces, severed heads, and ripped-out guts in all their glory.  I’m sure the film would’ve played strangely enough without all the blood and guts.  With them, it just makes the whole experience that much more puzzling. 

I mean, you have to wonder who this movie was made for.  It’s almost like a Disney Channel film directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis.  It’s so schizophrenic that it’s hard to really appreciate because of the wild shifts in tone.  (At least The Ice Pirates is consistent in its WTF tone.)  However, for fans of seeing big-name movie stars paying their dues by starring in low budget crap before they were famous, it’s kind of hard to beat. 

I think the thing I enjoyed most about it was the conceit that the dinosaur is animatronic.  It’s as if Raffill knew he wasn’t fooling anyone with that dinosaur.  Either that or they didn’t have the proper time and budget to light and showcase the giant prop to effectively make it look realistic.  I bet when Spielberg saw this, he was kicking himself for using “real” dinosaurs in his flick.

As much as I wanted to like Tammy and the T-Rex, there were just too many clunky parts that didn’t quite fit.  The most ill-fitting stuff is included in the subplot where Tammy tries to steal a dead body to use as a host for her boyfriend’s brain.  This does lead to a truly bizarre scene where she does a striptease for a disembodied brain, so it’s not all bad.

AKA:  Tanny and the Teenage T-Rex.  AKA:  Tanny of the Teenage T-Rex.  AKA:  Tammy and the Teenage T-Rex.  AKA:  Teenage T-Rex.

DR. SATAN AND BLACK MAGIC (1968) ** ½

The Devil awakens his emissary of evil, Dr. Satan and orders him to track down and destroy a vampire who is searching for a formula that can change metal into gold.  Dr. Satan knows he can’t do it alone, so he turns a bunch of hot babes into his personal zombie henchwomen.  Meanwhile, some Interpol agents are trying to stop both villains before it’s too late.

The version I saw didn’t have subtitles, so if there were any other plot intricacies, I didn’t pick up on them.  Honestly, the best Mexican horror films of the era don’t need subtitles.  I can’t say Dr. Satan and Black Magic is among the best of its kind, but there are a few moments of cinematic nuttiness that translate into any language.  The cinematography, for starters, is excellent.  Everything looks like a million bucks, from the rocky sets of Hell, to the fog-shrouded nighttime scenes, to Dr. Satan’s Batcave-inspired laboratory, to the atmospheric moments when the hot babes rise from their crypts.  It’s just enough to keep you watching, but not nearly enough to qualify it as a must-see or anything. 

It’s also cool that the vampire in this one is Chinese, which gives Dr. Stan and Black Magic a different flavor than most Mexican horror flicks.  The bat transformation effects are cheaply done, but moderately effective.  For some reason though, he can go out in broad daylight and it doesn’t bother him.  Also, crosses have to be held upside down to defeat him for some reason.

It’s a little disappointing that the character of Dr. Satan is just… a dude.  He’s intense and all, but I can’t help but think he would’ve been better suited wearing a Lucha Libre mask or some sort of devil outfit instead of just a bunch of three-piece suits and black turtlenecks.  I did like the scene where he gets killed and begs the Devil (also the same actor in a cool, scary man-bat costume with a large wingspan) for another chance to return to Earth and complete his mission.  It’s basically a blatant rip-off of that old cartoon where Yosemite Sam goes to Hell.  That is to say, it’s awesome. 

Predictably, the stuff with the Interpol agents is the dullest in the film.  I’m not sure these guys were absolutely necessary.  I guess the filmmakers needed some good guys in there to counterbalance Dr. Satan’s anti-hero shenanigans.  They don’t derail the proceedings, but they don’t do it any favors either.  However, when Dr. Satan is working his black magic, the movie is a good deal of fun.

AKA:  Dr. Satan vs. Black Magic.

KLUTE (1971) ***

Klute was a daring film for its time not only because it centered around a call girl, but because it featured an independent woman who was in control of her sexuality.  Not only that, she spoke about sex frankly (it is her vocation, after all), which must’ve been shocking when it was first released.  As played by Jane Fonda, the character of Bree is one of her most memorable, not just because of the character’s explicit discussions, but because of the humanity that she brings to the role.  If the character of Bree was something of a revelation (at least in big budget studio films of the time), the movie itself is rather standard issue. 

Donald Sutherland stars as the title character.  He’s a strait-laced cop who is on the search for a missing businessman.  His only lead is Bree, a call girl the man frequented.  She’s also been getting obscene phone calls from a stalker who just may have murdered Klute’s missing man.

He may have his name in the title, but Klute sure as shit plays second fiddle to Bree.  Sutherland’s not bad in the role, it’s just that it’s flimsily written, which is strange given the fact the movie is purportedly about him.  I bet director Alan J. Pakula sensed the detective story angle was an old hat and decided to focus in on Bree instead.  In fact, the movie is at its best when the two are in the midst of their will-they-won’t-they affair.  It’s when the killer plot starts to sneak in does the movie feel routine.  The climax is a bit of a mixed blessing because it’s more of an emotional confrontation than a physical one.  While it works for the character of Bree, fans of thrillers in general may feel a tad disappointed by the finale.

The fact that Klute still feels a bit trailblazing after all these years is a testament to Fonda.  The famous scene where she is in the throes of passion with a client and then stops a beat to check her watch is justifiably a classic.  Too bad you’ll be checking your watch too during the slower sections of the film.

THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT (2018) *** ½

Matt Dillon stars as Jack, a mild-mannered serial killer who recounts five incidents that happened to him in a span of twelve years.  First, he picks up an annoying stranded motorist (Uma Thurman) who gets on his nerves so much that he has to bash her face in with a jack.  The second has him posing as a police officer to gain entrance into a widower’s home so he can kill her.  The next incident finds Jack hunting a family in the woods.  The fourth involves him trying to have a “normal” relationship with a woman (Riley Keough).  The final story is about Jack’s method to cause the maximum amount of death with the smallest amount of effort.

Lars Von Trier made a powerful film here.  It’s structured almost like an anthology.  Each segment has its own distinct style.  The first feels like a recreation on a true crime TV show.  The second is almost like a macabre black comedy with Dillon’s OCD forcing him to perpetually revisit the scene of the crime and keep cleaning up.  The third plays out like a variation on The Most Dangerous Game.  The next one is reminiscent of an edgy ‘90s indie drama.  The final incident could’ve come out of a Human Centipede spin-off.  This isn’t a movie for the faint of heart as Von Trier offers many stomach-churning moments along the way (like the baby duck scene).  There’s also a scene involving a woman’s boob that I am not likely to forget any time soon. 

Dillon is terrific, alternately playing cold, comedic, rugged, intense, and manic.  There are humorous sequences where he looks like he stepped out a Farrelly brothers movie and others in which he is downright coldhearted and bloodthirsty.  This is definitely one of his best performances in a long career of great performances.

What’s interesting is that among the five “incidents” there are many more murders detailed that Jack throws in there almost as a bonus.  Like your typical serial killer, he can’t help bragging, and slips these extra anecdotes in there almost to show you how clever he is.  He also goes on about such mundane things as architecture, winemaking, and fighter planes with the same level of detail as his killings, which shows just what a wacko he is as he can’t distinguish the intricacies of murder with so-called “normal” conversation.

The House That Jack Built is near-perfect for about two hours or so until Von Trier arrives at the totally unnecessary epilogue.  Some may enjoy the hellish nature of the finale, but I personally feel it was overblown and heavy-handed.  If the movie ended with Jack’s “house” being built, it would’ve been a masterpiece.  Then again, I may feel different about it if I see it again somewhere down the line.  I don’t know when that will be because it’s a rather hard pill to swallow.  It is truly one of the most unsettling movies of the past twenty years.