ANGEL’S MISSION (1990) ***

Angel’s Mission is another one of those Godfrey Ho cut-and-paste jobs.  It’s all over the place and rarely makes sense, but it moves like a freight train and contains some primo ass-kicking.  I’m pretty sure Ho had nothing to do with that though as he probably stole those scenes from a completely different movie.  Nevertheless, I kind of dug it.

The opening scene is strong.  A guy makes a deal with a duo of shady thieves, exchanging some stolen jewelry for a duffle bag full of money.  They try to double-cross him by calling on a bunch of machine gun-toting heavies as back-up, but luckily, he just so happens to have a giant Rambo-style gun that he uses to even the score. 

From there, we follow a Japanese policewoman who comes to Hong Kong to bust up a drug and prostitution racket.  This lady cop offers some of the best moments in the movie.  Among the highlights is the sequence where she shows up a bunch of students at a karate school who assume she can’t fight just because she’s a woman.  Another memorable scene comes when a dealer threatens to throw some drugs down the toilet, which he doesn’t realize is out of order.  There’s also a completely random attack by dudes wielding machetes. 

We get many WTF moments along the way to help ensure Angel’s Mission’s place among the highest rungs on the Godfrey Ho ladder.  One such sequence is the hilarious coed strip show.  (The strip club must be an equal opportunity employer.)  Then there’s the fact that nearly half the score is music stolen from the Re-Animator soundtrack.  Even more random is the scene where a guy gives a slideshow showcasing women who are afflicted with AIDS!

Look, I got my first dose of Moderna the day I watched Angel’s Mission, so it’s very possible I imagined like half of this.  I might be able to tell you what happened in this movie, but I’ll be damned if I can tell you what it was about.  Stuff just sorta happens without rhyme or reason.  Thankfully, the stuff that does happen is often badass as there are lots of John Woo-style slow-motion gunfights and energetic fight choreography. 

There might’ve also been a subplot about smuggling cocaine in watermelons, although it’s entirely possible I hallucinated that part as well.

In short, Angel’s Mission doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it does offer up a reasonable amount of fun.  If anything, the hilarious dubbed dialogue alone will have you LOL’ing.  Among my favorite lines:

“You’re just a horny old maid!” 

“Boss… we failed!  He’s one tough hombre!” 

“How dare you bring a pussycat into my bed!” 

The best line comes when a guy tries to bang his girlfriend in an alley and she protests, “Alleys are for gang fights!”

AKA:  Fighting Angel:  Born to Fight 5.  AKA:  Kicking Buddha.   AKA:  Born to Fight.  AKA:  Born to Fight 2.  

COMMON-LAW CABIN (1967) ** ½

Dewey (Jackie Moran) makes his living running a cabin for tourists out on the Colorado river where he lives with his blossoming teenage daughter Coral (Adele Rein) and a sexy French maid named Babette (Babette Bardot).  His latest crop of vacationers includes a cuckold doctor (John Furlong), his sexed-up wife (Alaina Capri), and a mysterious man (Ken Swofford) with a briefcase full of money.  When their drunken tour guide (Frank Bolger) runs off with the boat, the guests are stranded at the cabin where their passions eventually collide. 

Common-Law Cabin is full of director Russ Meyer’s hallmarks as there is plenty of hardboiled narration, scenes of big-bosomed, sex-starved women communing with nature, and rapid-fire editing.  In fact, Meyer’s rapid-fire style is a bit too rapid in this one.  The movie zips around so much that it often rushes through the plot at such a breathless place that it’s sometimes hard to get your bearings.  It almost feels like he tossed out whole sections of the narrative in favor of keeping the cutting going (especially towards the end).  Honestly, it probably would’ve worked better with a more gradual build-up and a less frenetic pay-off.

It’s also more of a pressure cooker drama than an out-and-out sexploitation flick as it deals with characters with pent-up passions, sexual frustrations, and deadly curiosities that are bursting at the seams.  The cabin itself is basically a microcosm of society, and the characters are reflections of how Meyer views the beast that is Man.  They are either good and righteous, weak and spineless, or duplicitous and crooked.  The women, of course, are all generously endowed and oversexed. 

Common-Law Cabin is one of Meyer’s lesser films, but it’s not without its charms, if you can get past the cast of mostly unlikeable characters, that is.  There are some real odd moments along the way that still makes it worth watching, like a water fight that turns deadly.  (I’m sure I’ve never seen that in a movie before.)  It’s also packed with some funny, hateful dialogue that positively crackles.  My favorite exchange being:

Husband:  “Don’t pant!  It’s an animal trait!”

Wife:  “Must be the bitch in me, dear!”

AKA:  How Much Loving Does a Normal Couple Need?

 

FRANKENSTEIN’S GREAT AUNT TILLIE (1984) ½ *

Donald Pleasence (stuck wearing a lousy wig) stars in this excruciating horror-comedy as Dr. Frankenstein’s distant relative, Victor.  Destitute, with nowhere to turn, he and his family members travel to his ancestral castle to look for the good doctor’s hidden treasure.  Meanwhile, the Burgomaster (Aldo Ray) and the town elders want to evict the lot of them, foreclose on the castle, and seize the property (and the gold) for themselves.  It’s only a matter of time before Victor and company resurrect the Frankenstein monster to help them recover the loot.

Normally in a motion picture, scenes flow together sequentially to advance the plot.  Here, the scenes seemingly go around in circles.  To make matters worse, this alleged comedy isn’t funny at all.  (Pleasence and his family live in the village of “Mucklefugger”, which tells you the level of inanity we’re talking about.)  It doesn’t help that the sound is poor, and the accents are thick, so when there is a punchline, it’s hard to tell what was even said. 

Frankenstein’s Great Aunt Tillie was made in ’84, but it’s so crude looking that it feels like a lost movie from the ‘60s.  It’s also borderline incomprehensible as it never stays on one particular plot point for very long.  It’s almost as if someone took an entire season of a television show and whittled it down to a hundred-minute movie.  Because of that, just when you think it’s about to wrap things up, it starts right back up again in an endless loop of nearly unwatchable nonsense. 

For example, when the movie is over, there’s a ten-minute epilogue of unrelated scenes (one including Pleasence selling snake oil) that go on way too long.  The title card that accompanies the epilogue even admits these scenes are nothing more than “Odds and Ends”.  Additionally, the film opens with a title card that reads, “A hundred years later…” but we never get to see what happened a hundred years before!

I guess it wouldn’t matter if the movie was actually funny, but it’s simply a mind-numbing affair any way you slice it.  The only part that had potential was the parody of the scene from Frankenstein where the monster drowns a little girl.  However, it winds up devolving into an unfunny Benny Hill-style chase scene involving her sexed-up older sisters.  (One of whom is named “Horny”.)  I won’t even mention the scene where Donald appears in drag.

Just when you think it can’t get any weirder, Zsa Zsa Gabor shows up in a cameo.  It’s only a brief scene; a montage in which she has no dialogue.  I’m sure she was glad about that.  Aldo, Donald, and Zsa Zsa have made some bad movies before, but this might be all three stars’ career low point, which is really saying something. 

I guess I should mention that Miguel Angel Fuentes plays the monster.  He and Pleasence were also in the awful The Puma Man together.  Here’s the kicker, folks:  The Puma Man looks downright Shakespearean compared to this!

HOT NIGHTS ON THE CAMPUS (1966) ** ½

Sally (Gigi Darlene) is a young farm girl who comes to New York City to start her freshman year at college.  She shares an apartment with a bunch of sexually advanced seniors who take her to her first “grown-up party”.  After some dancing, the party quickly turns into an all-out orgy (complete with human pyramids), leaving our demure coed to ponder, “At what point will they be satisfied?”  Later, Sally is seduced by her professor, and quickly embraces her newfound sexuality.  She then throws herself at a classmate and is soon modeling nude for photographers.  Eventually, Sally’s world comes to a standstill when she learns she’s pregnant.  

Hot Nights on the Campus kind of feels like a lost Doris Wishman movie.  It takes place in cramped apartments, features non-stop narration, and is a bit nastier than your typical ‘60s sexploitation flick.  The fact that it stars Bad Girls Go to Hell’s Gigi Darlene kind of reinforces that feeling.

The sex scenes aren’t nearly as hot as the title implies and the non-stop narration is sometimes intrusive.  The voluptuous Darlene is cute as a button, which certainly helps.  However, her erotic encounters aren’t quite as much fun as the early party sequences.  In addition to the wild orgy scenes, there’s a little girl-on-girl action (“Things like this just didn’t happen!”) to spice things up.  The swinging jazzy score is also memorable.

Overall, Hot Nights on the Campus is breezy, briskly paced fun if you’re into this sort of thing.  Some of the most enjoyable bits come courtesy of the film’s lack of budget and cinematic know-how.  I’m particularly thinking of the scene in which Darlene’s narration proclaims, “My world felt fuzzy and out of focus!” to excuse the fact that some of the outdoor scenes were in fact, fuzzy and out of focus. 

One thing that makes it more interesting than a lot of ‘60s sexploitation flicks is that it actually deals with the consequences of the heroine’s actions.  The scenes where she goes to get a back-alley abortion by a woman who looks like a chain-smoking witch (“She looked as evil as her trade!”) is especially memorable.  On the other hand, if you’re expecting some sizzling schoolgirl action, you might be disappointed.  I mean for a movie called Hot Nights on the Campus, we never once see Sally on the campus, let alone attend class, or do any homework!  Still, she’s promiscuous enough to get a passing grade in my book. 

AKA:  Nights on the Campus. 

MORGAN (2016) **

Scientists clone an artificial human and monitor “it” as she grows at an accelerated rate.  After years of study, Morgan (Anya Taylor-Joy) finally snaps and stabs one of the doctors in the eye.  You know that “1000 days without an incident” sign in the break room?  You’re gonna have to flip that number back down to 0. 

Corporate is having a cow that their prized asset went haywire, so they send a suit (Kate Mara) to assess the situation.  It’s her job to see if Morgan can be trusted not to violently lash out again.  If she does, it will mean she will have to be terminated.  I guess you can figure out how that goes. 

The film is at its best in the first act.  This stretch feels like a John Hughes version of Ex Machina.  Director Luke Scott (Ridley’s son) doesn’t have much style to speak of, but he builds the tension slowly, but assuredly.  Things kind of go out the window during the second act as Morgan’s psychotic tendencies are unleashed and she turns against her creators.  Here, the movie sort of morphs into your typical slasher scenario.  While this portion of the flick isn’t great, it’s marginally better than the final act which sees Taylor-Joy and Mara squaring off and Kung Fu-ing the crap out of one another.  Although it’s not exactly bad, it just shifts gears too often to work as a cohesive whole.  Like the main character, it feels like it was created in a lab and not made organically.

Fortunately, the cast is stacked cast from top to bottom with heavy hitters.  Taylor-Joy does a fine job in the lead, but the supporting players are the glue that holds everything together and prevents the film from completely unraveling.  I mean it’s hard to hate any movie that contains Boyd Holbrook, Michelle Yeoh, Brian Cox, Toby Jones, Paul Giamatti, and Jennifer Jason Leigh.  Mara, on the other hand, is far too bland in a crucial role.  Then again, maybe that was intentional all along, given the big plot twist at the end.

BOBBIE JO AND THE OUTLAW (1976) ***

Bobbie Jo (Lynda Carter) is a restless carhop with dreams of being a country singer.  Lyle (Marjoe Gortner) is a small-time hood who aspires to be Billy the Kid.  When their paths cross, the sparks are immediate.  They fall head over heels for one another and drive off into the sunset in his stolen sportscar.  Eventually, Lyle gets hoodwinked into driving the getaway car for an armed robbery, which results in the death of a security guard.  Together with Bobbie Jo’s sister (Merrie Lynn Ross) and her criminal boyfriend (Jesse Vint), they go on the lam and begin planning even more elaborate heists. 

I’ve always liked Marjoe Gortner.  His career is one of the most interesting in Hollywood history as he started out as the “youngest ordained minister” (at the age of four) before turning his back on the faith-healing circuit in an effort to attain movie stardom.  The fact that he wound up starring in stuff like Mausoleum and Starcrash only endeared him more to me.  With Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw, Marjoe became the only man in screen history to make out with Wonder Woman while she was topless.  That only cements his legendary status in my eyes. 

Celebrity skin enthusiasts will be over the moon for Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw as it represents the only time Wonder Woman got naked on film.  She undresses in front of her mother, bangs Marjoe twice, and goes topless during a random-ass mushroom scene, complete with a Native American acid guide.  As an added bonus, The Howling’s Belinda Balaski, who plays Carter’s tomboy best friend, also goes topless in this scene. 

Carter gives a likeable performance and Gortner is equally fun to watch.  I especially got a kick out of seeing the former preacher telling Wonder Woman that “Squeezing a trigger is just like praying!”  He also presides over the funeral for one of his fallen compatriots, giving him an opportunity to draw on his past for acting inspiration. 

Directed by Mark L. (Showdown in Little Tokyo) Lester and written by Vernon (The Unholy Rollers) Zimmerman, Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw is an agreeable, though unspectacular, modern-day Bonnie and Clyde riff (with a touch of the Good Ol’ Boy redneck car chase movie thrown in there for good measure).  Whenever things get kind of slow, you can amuse yourself by imagining Sylvester Stallone as Lyle as he was the producers’ second choice if they couldn’t secure Marjoe in the role.  It would’ve been a different movie, that’s for sure, but I think they made the right choice.  The supporting cast, which includes Gerrit Graham (as the head of a hippie commune), Virgil Frye, and James Gammon is solid too.

BOUNTY TRACKER (1993) **

Lorenzo Lamas stars as a bounty tracker in Boston who takes the money from his latest reward to visit his brother (Paul Regina) in Los Angeles.  Little does he know, his bro is about to drop the dime on some nefarious money launderers.  When a professional hit team led by Mattias Hues takes his brother out, Lorenzo puts his bounty tracking skills to the test to bring down the killers. 

The opening scene is a lot of fun and really got my expectations up.  Lamas worms his way into an all-black bar dressed like a librarian, complete with nerdy glasses, a chintzy suit, and a fake prissy English accent.  This scene is on par with any given SnakeEater movie.  Too bad things get thoroughly generic once Lamas goes to L.A.

Yes, from there, Bounty Tracker turns into your standard action/revenge flick.  It’s not exactly a terrible one.  The action is decent (there’s a scene where Lamas singlehandedly mops the floor with students in a karate school), but the plot isn’t anything special, and the villains are pretty weak.  Also, the subplot with Lamas teaming up with some at-risk youths whose mentor was also killed by Hues slows things down as the film enters the homestretch.  The flick would’ve went down much smoother had Lamas lone wolfed it instead of playing babysitter for a third of the running time. 

Lamas gives a fine performance all things considered.  I just wish the script gave him more opportunities to ham it up like he did in the early scenes.  I understand that his character is grief-stricken and seeking justice, but he could’ve at least had some good one-liners in his back pocket to carry the movie.  The supporting cast, which includes Whip Hubley, Judd Omen, and Remote Control’s Ken Ober is kind of interesting.  Too bad Hues makes for such a lackluster bad guy.

AKA:  Head Hunter.