PADDLETON (2019) ****

As someone who felt helpless standing by while a loved one bravely fought (and beat) cancer, I must confess, Paddleton affected me in a major way.  It captured the feeling of being along for the ride while someone close to you is in the grips of a deadly disease.  There’s literally nothing that you can do or say that will make things any better, so you’re best to face it with a sense of humor and by showing your loved one how much you care.

 

Although the film is about a friend (Ray Romano) helping his cancer-stricken pal (Mark Duplass) commit legal pharmaceutical suicide, it manages to be a very funny flick.  It’s essentially a road trip movie as the two friends head out on the road to obtain the drugs that will end his (eventual) suffering.  In the meantime, they do a little living along the way (though realistically, not much).  No one crosses anything off their bucket list or anything like that, but they do have a few experiences that bring the duo closer together.

 

The performances by Ray Romano and Mark Duplass are equally great.  From their awkward exchanges with other people, you get a sense the only person they will ever be able to relate to is each other.  I especially liked the fact that they spent so much time together watching Kung Fu movies (make that one specific Kung Fu movie).  In fact, they are so much alike in their own idiosyncrasies that many people assume they’re a couple.  

 

Paddleton ranks right up there with Manchester by the Sea as one of the best depressing comedies in recent memory.  Even though the subject matter is bleak, the performances are funny and the laughs are hearty.  Some will likely be turned off by the subject matter, but I say if you can’t laugh in the face of death, you might as well give up completely.

SUPER RIDER (1975) ***

Lots of boats and planes go missing in the Bermuda Triangle.  It seems fairly obvious it’s the work of a giant robot... right?  A brilliant professor then assembles a team to pilot their own giant robot to defeat the bad robot. 

 

Super Rider (which is the actual on screen title, though it appears on Tubi under the name The Iron Superman) features some of the worst special effects I have ever seen.  The robots look like toys bought from a 5 and 10 store.  The models are a complete joke.  The scaling is hilariously wrong.  

 

I kind of loved it. 

 

Super Rider must’ve been edited from a TV show as it jumps around quite a bit.  First, our hero is hired to man the giant robot.  Then, he’s apparently part of a team of robot pilots in the next scene.  The fact the dialogue is dubbed into German and presented with poorly translated English subtitles adds to the overall hallucinatory experience. 

 

The villain is hilarious too.  He looks like a wizard with Troll doll hair, and one of his pet giant robot’s weapons is an oversized wagon wheel.  He even has a goon squad who dress up like a football team and kick exploding footballs at our hero. 

 

The good guys have their fair share of lunacy as well.  Their robot, “Super Weapon” oddly has the initials “MB'' on its belt.  I mean, shouldn’t the initials be “SW”?  Its big move is to fire rockets out of its nipples, which… I mean… why not?  There’s also a comedic cop sidekick named “Porky” who flies in a hot air balloon motorcycle.  Speaking of cool vehicles, our hero also drives around in a Mach 5-style car.  In one scene, he drives it right up inside of Super Weapon’s butt!  

 

Although the budget for the robot battles was only about $4.25, they are nevertheless fun to watch.  The villainous robots have a variety of weapons like giant maces, drill arms, and psychedelic freeze rays.  While some of the fights get a bit repetitive, I can’t help but love any movie that features a scene in which a giant robot is crucified by the villains and later returns to life to kick ass.  That’s right, folks, we’re talking about Robot Jesus here. 

 

The cherry on top is the hilarious dialogue.  I’m sure a lot of things got lost in translation, but that only adds to the fun.  My favorite line was when Porky was talking to the heroes about the evil football team and said, “These guys are unfettered by scruples!”

 

AKA:  The Iron Superman. 

SONGBIRD (2020) ½ *

When you set out to make a movie during a pandemic, inevitably you have to make a movie ABOUT a pandemic.  I mean how else are you going to explain why (most) everyone in the cast is social distancing, communicating over their computer via Zoom, and sitting alone listening to podcasts?  I don’t know about you, but I just lived through a year and a half of this shit.  I don’t need to see another ninety minutes of it.

 

Songbird was produced by Michael Bay.  That explains why the virus in the movie is called COVID-23.  You can almost hear him in a pitch meeting:  “You know what would be even more jacked than COVID-19, bro?  COVID-23!  Isn’t that boss? That’s at least four more COVIDs than we have now!”

 

Nico (K.J. Apa) is an immune courier who rides his bike through the empty streets of a pandemic-ridden America delivering packages for his boss (Craig Robinson) while 99.9% of the population is stuck indoors.  When his girlfriend (Sofia Carson) is exposed to the virus, she is immediately scheduled for termination.  Nico then breaks protocol and risks his life to save her. 

 

Songbird is mostly a shitshow from start to finish.  The lone bright spot is the always lovely Alexandra Daddario who plays a sexy cam girl/YouTube singer.  I guess the fact that she sings makes her the “Songbird” of the title?  If that’s the case, she’s not in it nearly enough to justify naming the movie after her character.  You have to wonder if originally she was supposed to be the main character, but somehow, the other plot line managed to win out during the editing process.  The highlight comes when she participates in a weird sex scene that unfortunately ends way too abruptly to be worth a damn. 

 

The movie is brimming with a bunch of fine actors (Peter Stormare, Demi Moore, and Paul Walter Hauser among them) who are completely wasted as they are up the creek without a paddle in a sea of fragmented narratives that never really gel together.  At all times, it feels like a crass, joyless cash-in to exploit our common current struggle we find ourselves in. 

 

Also, it makes it really easy to hate when it’s just so fucking terrible. The erratic camerawork and incoherent editing during action didn’t do it any favors either.  In short, the shit Songbird pulls just doesn’t fly with me.

GIRL SHY (1924) ***

Harold Lloyd stars as an awkward tailor’s apprentice who stutters every time a woman engages him in conversation. The fact that he can’t even talk to the ladies doesn’t stop him from writing a fake tell-all book about his alleged romantic conquests. On the way to drop his book off to the publisher, he meets a wealthy woman (Jobyna Ralston) who’s betrothed to a greedy bigamist.  Needless to say, he falls head over heels in love with her.  Since Lloyd is poor, he thinks he doesn’t have a shot with his true love.  Once his book becomes a sensation (the publishers, who at first mocked Lloyd’s novel, eventually decide to release it as a comedy), he sets out to stop Ralston from marrying the no-good lout.

 

Girl Shy kind of suffers from a long winded build-up, but once it settles in and finds its groove, it’s quite enjoyable.  While there are several big laughs here, I can’t help but think that some of the gags would have benefited from sound (like the scene where Ralston smuggles her dog onto a train), which was still a few years away.  Still, there’s plenty of funny stuff here to make it worth a look.  Lloyd especially does a fine job during his date with Ralston where nothing seems to go right.  (During a romantic interlude, he sits on a turtle thinking it’s a rock and winds up in the middle of a pond.)

 

The extended finale where Lloyd races against the clock to stop the wedding is action packed and contains lots of cool stunts and big laughs.  He carjacks half a dozen automobiles, a policeman’s motorcycle, and even a trolley car in order to get to the church on time.  This sequence is among Lloyd’s best work and is a real testament to not only his gifts as a comedian, but as a fearless stuntman as well.  

OUT FOR BLOOD (1993) ***

Don “the Dragon” Wilson stars as a lawyer hellbent on revenge in this better-than-expected Death Wish clone.  After his wife and kid are killed by drug dealers, Don goes into a kill-crazy fit every time he even LOOKS at drugs.  When he literally stumbles upon a drug deal in the middle of the street, he goes Batman on the dealers.  Yes, dear reader, I just may have applauded during the bit where Don grabs a brick of cocaine and tears it apart with his bare hands in glorious slow motion. 

 

It’s not all perfect.  You have to put up with a lot of flashback/deranged visions/waking nightmare sequences that are intercut with the action.  Some of them kind of play out like the final Tommy Gunn fight at the end of Rocky V.  They aren’t too intrusive on the action though. 

 

Most of the nightmare/flashbacks are due to the fact that Don has “selective amnesia” and can only remember snippets from the night his family was killed.  When he beats up a random bozo who’s high on PCP, he seems to remember a little more.  In an effort to further jog his memory, he puts on a purple and black outfit, goes out into the city at night, and beats up on more bad guys!  (The press eventually dubs him, “The Karate Man”.)

 

Don does a respectable job, all things considered.  I mean, most of the time he just furrows his brow like he’s got an ice cream headache during his flashback scenes.  However, when it comes to kicking ass, he excels.  The supporting cast is strong too.  We get an early performance by Return of the Living Dead 3’s Melinda Clarke as Don’s dead wife.  With her pale, sexy features, she looks positively ghostlike in the dreamy flashbacks which help make them pretty effective.  Shari Shattuck is also around to essay the role of the prissy love interest, and Andy Sidaris staple Roberta Vasquez pops up as well playing a cop. 

 

Overall, Out for Blood is kind of dumb, but it’s my kind of dumb.  (The twist ending is especially ludicrous.)  Even though it’s a bit uneven in spots, I’d still rank it as one of Don’s best.  It’s highly enjoyable and lots of fun. 

 

Naturally, Don gets the best line of the movie when he tells his wife:  “I feel naked without my beeper!”

 

AKA:  Karate Man.  

WILD GALS OF THE NAKED WEST (1962) **

The first ten minutes or so of Russ Meyer’s Wild Gals of the Naked West did not inspire confidence.  In one scene, Russ stages an Indian attack on the beach where the only prop is a flag planted in the sand?!?  Next, he recreates the shootout at the OK Corral without the benefit of any cowboys.  In fact, no actors can be found in both sequences, which rely heavily on narration and camera movement to create a nonexistent action scene.  I think these two scenes were probably added after the fact to bolster the running time because immediately afterwards ANOTHER narrator (this time an onscreen drunk prospector) shows up to tell us about the titular women.   

 

Fortunately for the audience, things improve drastically from there.   

 

Russ keeps the gags and jokes coming at a steady pace.  Some are less successful than others, but there are a few hearty laughs to be had.  Mostly, the film plays out like a series of loosely connected Laugh-In-style sketches with a fair amount of nudity thrown in there to disguise the fact that much of it isn’t very funny.  (Some, but not all the women wear pasties.)  There are scenes inspired by Harpo Marx as there’s a guy in a red clown wig who chases women around.  We also get a guy in an ape suit that shows up randomly.  Halfway through, something of a plot emerges as a stranger moseys into town looking to tame the Wild West and encounters its wacky inhabitants.  

 

It ultimately doesn’t amount to much, but the rest of the movie isn’t nearly as terrible as the first ten minutes would suggest.  Most of this is so lightweight that it will barely even register.  However, if you want to watch a lot of bouncing bosoms in a Wild West setting, Wild Gals of the Naked West should fit the bill.  

 

AKA:  The Immoral West.  AKA:  Immoral Gals of the Naked West.  AKA:  Naked Gals of the Golden West.  AKA:  The Immoral West and How It Was Lost.  AKA:  The Naked West and How It Was Lost. 

THE PINK BIKINI GANG VS. THE BLACK COBRAS (2013) **

The Pink Bikini Gang vs. the Black Cobras is sort of like a south of the border version of Charlie’s Angels.  The only difference is that they don’t speak English and wear pink bikinis all the time.  Their evil rivals, the Black Cobras all wear black bikinis and have cobra tramp stamp tattoos.  When the Black Cobras steal a valuable microchip, it’s up to the Pink Bikini Gang to recover the chip and take down the bad bikini girls.   

 

This has slightly better production values than a typical shot on video movie.  The acting is pretty bad, and because I understand very little Spanish, the plot was virtually indecipherable.  The fact that it was apparently the second entry of a trilogy of which I haven’t seen the first and third films didn’t help either.  However, it has a lot of girls in bikinis, so it’s certainly easy on the eyes.   

 

For a Lucha Libre fan like me, it helped that it featured Hurricane Ramirez in a supporting role.  It’s obviously not the original Hurricane, and it’s possibly not even his son or one of his other descendants.  (It’s hard to tell for sure because he’s wearing a mask the whole time.)  However, his participation alone made some of this foolishness go down smooth.  He’s involved in a couple of training sequences where he whips the heroines into shape in a gym, and he also spars with another luchador named Poco Rojo.  Unfortunately, there’s not enough wrestling action here to qualify it as a Lucha Libre movie.   

 

Overall, The Pink Bikini Gang vs. the Black Cobras feels like a cheap Mexican variation on an Andy Sidaris movie.  It’s not awful or anything.  It’s just that there’s not enough action or skin to make it recommended.  Like the Sidaris films, there are tantalizing scenes where the ladies in the cast get dressed.  To me, it’s a true sign of sexiness when a woman can get you hot while putting their clothes ON.  Too bad the heroines wait a long time to change into their supposedly trademark pink bikinis.  At least the Black Cobras wear their black bikinis throughout.   

 

While The Pink Bikini Gang vs. the Black Cobras is fitfully amusing, it ultimately leaves a lot to be desired.  The low budget is probably the main culprit.  (There are lots of scenes set in hotel rooms and lobbies.)  Whenever things get slow, we are treated to endless scenes of girls in bikinis walking down hallways while brandishing handguns.  I’m sure this a fetish for someone out there, and I have no doubt that when they see it, they’re going to love it.  In the end, these scenes didn’t do much for me, especially after about the tenth time.

 

I might’ve been able to get on board with all of this if the climactic Bad Bikinis vs. Good Bikinis showdown wasn’t such a long time coming.  I will admit that the extended yoga ball training sequence that concludes the movie is pretty great though.  More pictures should end this way, if I can be completely honest.