SIGN ‘O’ THE TIMES (1987) ***

After Purple Rain, but before Batman, Prince made this concert movie promoting his double-album Sign ‘o’ the Times.  It’s mostly filmed performances of songs from the album, so if you’re hoping he’s just going to play the hits, you might be disappointed.  I mean, at one point he does about a minute of “Little Red Corvette” before he gets bored with it and goes onto another number.  However, Prince’s showmanship is in top form, so even if some of the songs are far from his best, he performs them with a lot of raw sexual enthusiasm, which makes it recommend. 

Not all of it works.  The attempts to make the film seem more cinematic often fall flat.  The scenes of quarreling lovers that run throughout the performances are completely unnecessary.  This narrative ultimately doesn’t amount to much and only gets in the way of the music.  They should’ve lost these sequences to make room for more classic Prince jams if you ask me.

The music, while not exactly Prince’s best, is still strong enough to carry the movie.  He opens with a rip-roaring rendition of the title tune, and “Hot Thing”, “Housequake”, “If I Was Your Girlfriend”, and “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man” are all entertaining.  The highlight though is when Prince is joined by Sheena Easton for a duet of “U Got the Look”.  It’s little more than a glorified music video (it occurs while Prince is daydreaming in his dressing room), but the chemistry between them is electric and the song is a straight-up banger as the kids say nowadays.

The rest of the songs are sort of forgettable.  Still, it’s interesting to see how creatively Prince is able to fuse various genres like rock, gospel, funk, and disco into a broad musical tapestry.  That to me, is a sign ‘o’ a legendary performer.

AKA:  Prince:  Sign ‘o’ the Times.  AKA:  Prince Tonite. 

FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL (1981) ***

Judging from the bland title and the unoriginal opening, I thought this was going to another forgettable Kung Fu flick.  Boy, was I wrong.  This one is a lot of fun.  It will surprise you in more ways than one. 

Some thieves steal a sacred Kung Fu text from a Shaolin temple and kill the abbot.  Time passes, and a young girl, miffed that the Shaolin temple does not allow women into their ranks, teams up with her uncle to kick their ass.  They then reach a compromise:  If she retrieves the book from the vicious gang, she will be allowed entrance.  So, her uncle begins teaching her the art of “positive Kung Fu”, which has one side effect:  It turns her into a man!  (Complete with mustache!) 

So, not only to we have a feminist Kung Fu movie, we also have one that acts as a trans allegory (crude as it may be) as our heroine is a woman trapped in a man’s body (albeit temporarily).  This is why I watch so many seemingly ordinary Kung Fu flicks.  You never know when you’re going to get one that is this progressive. 

In addition to swapping genders, the book also gives the user the ability to acquire many skills that are rarely seen in martial arts movies.  Throughout the film, the heroine uses Go-Go Gadget Legs and Mr. Fantastic arms to defeat her enemies.  Other gimmicked fight scenes include fighters who use poison, can become invisible, and take on animal characteristics. 

The book also apparently gave the composer the ability to steal music from the 1933 version of King Kong.

Fight for Survival (which also goes by the infinitely more awesome title, Kung Fu Halloween) doesn’t stay on one subject for very long as it’s constantly hopping from one nutty premise to another.  Although this can get a little frustrating at times, it’s certainly never boring.  It’s not perfect by any means (the heroine’s two bumbling sidekicks are annoying), but it’s unique, memorable, and a lot of fun. 

AKA:  The Fight for Shaolin Tamo Mystique.  AKA:  Don’t Bleed on Me.  AKA:  Kung Fu Halloween.  AKA:  Lady Wu Tang.  AKA:  Shaolin Tamo Systique. 

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.