ARMY OF THE DEAD (2021) ** ½

Zack Snyder returns to the zombie genre after a seventeen-year absence with the fitfully amusing (and just as fitfully uneven) Army of the Dead. 

A zombie virus runs rampant through Las Vegas.  The government walls in the city to contain the outbreak, but naturally, you just can’t have all that Vegas money sitting in the casinos like that.  So, Dave Bautista and his team of thieves sneak back into town to steal some loot and hopefully, avoid becoming zombie grub.   

The zombies are divided into two categories:  “Shamblers” and “Alphas”.  The Shamblers are just your garden variety gut munchers, however, it’s the Alphas you have to watch out for.  They are super-fast and super-strong and can communicate with the zombie leader, Zeus (Richard Cetrone).  Eventually, our heroes manage to piss Zeus off, and he declares open season on the living. 

The best moments in Army of the Dead find Snyder leaning into his tendencies of glorious excess.  The opening sequence features a great needle drop on a choice Richard Cheese song (shades of his Dawn of the Dead remake) as zombie showgirls and undead Elvis impersonators wreak havoc on The Strip.  Snyder also gleefully cribs from everything from An American Werewolf in London to Escape from New York to Apocalypse Now to Aliens.  Heck, even the heist set inside a walled-up zombie city was already done in Train to Busan Presents Peninsula.  (Also, Cetrone is basically playing a slight variation on his role as “Big Daddy Mars” in John Carpenter’s wrongly neglected Ghosts of Mars.)  These little nods to other (better) movies are fun, although they don’t add up to a whole lot in the end. 

I mean Snyder even rips his own self off, which is kind of funny.  Two of the main zombies are seen wearing capes and crowns that make them look like zombified versions of Superman and Wonder Woman.  There’s even a scene where one dons a helmet that makes him look like Gerard Butler in 300!  He also rips off the zombie baby idea from Dawn of the Dead.  

I’m sure Snyder had fun making a patchwork pastiche after so many self-important superhero movies.  Admittedly, parts of this really work.  However, at over two and a half hours, it’s just way too long for its own good.  This could’ve easily been pared down to under two hours, but as is the case with most Netflix Originals, the filmmakers are allowed a little bit too much leeway to do whatever the hell they want.  I think a director should have artistic freedom and all but judging from this and The Snyder Cut of Justice League, it’s apparent that Snyder just doesn’t know when to quit. 

Then again, any movie that features a zombie tiger is kind of critic-proof, if you ask me.  

Bautista is OK in the lead, but it’s Laura Arnezeder who gets the best line when she says, “Take another step and I’ll blow her head off.  Or… more of it off.” 

THE PINK BIKINI GANG 3: THE BLACK COBRAS COUNTERATTACK (2014) ** ½

This is the third and as of this writing, final entry in the Pink Bikini Gang series.  This time out, the dreaded Black Cobras are sprung from prison to help steal a powerful weapon that can threaten the world.  It’s then up to everyone’s favorite bikini-clad gang of lascivious Latinas to bring them down.   

The Pink Bikini Gang 3:  The Black Cobras Counterattack features even more overly cheeky shots of the ladies in action.  (If you catch my drift.)  As a bonus, we also get long scenes of them changing into their bikinis.  In fact, these sequences go on so long that some of the ladies just sort of hang around in the background with nothing to do while they wait for their teammates to undress.

In short, this is far and away the best film of the trilogy.   

As in the second film in the series, The Pink Bikini Gang vs. the Black Cobras, this one features plenty of training scenes of the Pink Bikini Gang lifting weights under the guidance of a Mexican wrestler.  This time out, instead of Hurricane Ramirez, it’s some guy in a clown outfit that makes him look like the love child between El Santo and Ronald McDonald.  I kind of wish there was more Lucha Libre action, but oh well.

The good news is that the film feels more cinematic than the other movies, which looked like they were made in someone’s backyard.  Sure, there are still plenty of scenes that look like that in this one (like the long scenes where the ladies hang around the production company’s editing bay which also doubles for their headquarters), but this is a marked improvement in just about every way.  In fact, it’s downright almost good.

That’s mostly because the filmmakers found a lot more reasons to feature the Pink Bikini Gang jiggling, dancing, lounging, and cavorting around in their pink bikinis.  It also helps that it looks like their bikinis might’ve shrunk in between Parts 1 and 3 as there’s even more of the ladies’ various assets that manage to wiggle their way out of their already skimpy garments.  Not to be outdone, the Black Cobras have their fair share of scenes where they hold slumber parties, hang out, and dance around in their skimpy black bikinis too.  

All this concludes with a solid catfight between the two scantily clad factions.  I don’t want to spoil anything, but the ending is kind of surprising as it ends on a cliffhanger.  So far as I can tell, there isn’t a part 4 (yet).  Hopefully someday all the plot threads (and G-strings) will be wrapped up in a satisfying manner.  Till then, we’ll just have to be content with the fact that The Pink Bikini Gang 3:  The Black Cobras Counterattack is the pinkest, most bikiniest Pink Bikini Gang movie of them all.

SHADOW IN THE CLOUD (2021) *** ½

A pilot named Maude (Chloe Grace Moretz) boards an Allied plane during WWII carrying a top-secret package.  Right away, she is bombarded by the rampant sexism from the flight crew.  As the plane heads to its destination, she gets the suspicion they are not alone.  Eventually, Maude comes to realize there is a gremlin aboard the plane with the intention of sabotaging the flight.  Naturally, none of the men believe her until it’s too late, and it’s up to her to save the day and protect her precious cargo. 

Shadow in the Cloud owes a heavy debt to the Bugs Bunny cartoon “Falling Hare”, Gremlins, and the Twilight Zone episode, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”.  There’s also a big chunk that kind of plays like a dramatized radio play as Moretz is locked inside of a machine gun turret for much of the picture and listens via headset to everything that’s happening aboard the plane.  Even though the film is largely a hodgepodge, it is nevertheless an effective one.  Sometimes, it’s a little silly.  Sometimes, it’s a little dumb.  However, Moretz’s performance grounds the ludicrous premise, and her character's tenacity will have you rooting for her throughout. 

I really liked the propaganda cartoon that precedes the main feature that warns soldiers about gremlins.  I have to wonder if this had been a Warner Brothers movie if they would’ve just used “Falling Hare” instead.  No matter, as it’s pretty cool either way.  One minor quibble is that the electronic score seems really out of place in a film set in the ‘40s.  Fortunately, it’s used rather sparingly.   

Shadow in the Cloud runs a lean eighty-three minutes.  Director Roseanne Liang gets a lot of mileage out of the claustrophobic setting and milks the premise for all its worth.  While some of the set pieces are ridiculous, they feel like a breath of fresh air coming on the heels of such a taut, sparse, and minimalistic first half.  Even when things threaten to spin out of control, Liang still manages to keep ‘em flying.

THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD (2021) **

It’s been a while since we had an Angelina Jolie action vehicle.  Those Who Wish Me Dead isn’t exactly a good one, but it’s a reminder of what we could’ve been getting in lieu of all those Maleficent and Kung Fu Panda movies over the years.  

Angie stars as a “smoke jumper”, which is just a silly way of saying she’s a skydiving firefighter.  Since Something Bad Happened in her past, she is now reduced to being stationed all by her lonesome in a fire tower in the middle of the forest.  She finds a kid (Finn Little) whose father was murdered by some hitmen (Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult) and it’s up to her to protect him at all costs.  The killers set a forest fire to cover their tracks, but we all know Angie has what it takes to put out the fire and take down the bad guys.   

The worst thing about the movie is simultaneously the most endearing.  It just tries too hard to make Jolie this tough, capable action heroine with emotional baggage who participates in big action scenes, but at all times, she just looks like a goddamn movie star.  Her Burnout on the Edge scenes are funny too.  We learn the answer to “Just How Badass is She?” early on when she stands up in the back of a speeding pick-up truck and pulls her parachute, sending her flying down the highway in search of an adrenaline rush.  Never mind the fact that her hair and make-up suggest she should be playing in a romantic comedy or something.   

Other than that, it’s pretty standard stuff.  The only real difference is that we have a firefighter heroine instead of what ordinarily would’ve been a traditional cop heroine.  It was directed by Taylor (Hell or High Water) Sheridan, and features a great supporting cast that includes Jon Bernthal, Jake Weber, and uh… Tyler Perry as the man who sanctioned the hit.  Jolie isn’t bad, it’s just that her repartee with the kid is kind of grating.

Those Who Wish Me Dead ultimately suffers from having way too many side characters that get in the way of the main story.  Maybe the filmmakers realized Jolie and the kid had no chemistry, so they kept cutting away to the deputy and his pregnant wife and the subplot about the two hitmen.  There are also one or two goofy touches, but it’s not nearly enough to make it worthwhile.  I mean what can you say about a movie that has Angelina Jolie trying to avoid being struck by lightning not once, but TWICE!?!

Also, for a firefighter, she spends most of the movie running away from the fire!  Firefighter?  More like a fireAVOIDER, amirite?

THE PINK BIKINI GANG (2013) **

You might remember me reviewing The Pink Bikini Gang vs. the Black Cobras a while back.  I didn’t have a really good idea what was happening in that one because A) I don’t speak Spanish and B) I had never seen the first Pink Bikini Gang movie, appropriately titled The Pink Bikini Gang.  Well, I finally checked it out, and I’m only slightly less confused as before.  

 

Some bad guys are trying to sell a top-secret missile-launching device that looks like an Amazon Kindle in a pink protective slipcase.  Their meeting is interrupted by a team of gun-toting dudes in black sunglasses who kill everyone and steal the machine.  When all attempts to retrieve the device fails, the government sends in a team of bikini clad babes to use their feminine wiles to stop the bad guys and save the world.  

 

The Pink Bikini Gang looks even cheaper than its sequel.  In fact, sometimes, you can see crew members and/or confused bystanders wandering into the shots.  It gets off to a strong start as the opening credits sequence features many jiggling butts.  However, it bogs down almost immediately as it’s frontloaded with a lot of long, dull dialogue scenes.

 

The cast is a bit of a mixed bag as anyone who doesn’t wear a bikini doesn’t make much of an impression.  I could have done without the girls’ stereotypically gay boss, who kind of acts like a Mexican version of Bosley from Charlie’s Angels.  The bad guys mostly look like ex-professional wrestlers (you can tell by their scarred foreheads), although they aren’t really all that memorable.  I did like the one villain whose Coke bottle glasses made him look like a cross between Danny Trejo and Burgess Meredith from the “Time Enough at Last” episode of The Twilight Zone.  

 

Like the sequel, the main draw here is the scenes of scantily clad bikini babes.  While that flick had plenty of scenes of the titular ladies walking slowly down hallways while brandishing firearms, this one is curiously low on bikini-girls-walking-down-hallways thrills.  However, the scene where they unsuccessfully try to holster their guns and resort to shoving them down the backside of their bikini bottoms is almost worth the price of admission.

 

The sequel was wise to have two sets of women in bikinis going toe to toe to help keep your interest.  This one has no such luxuries.  That’s right, the villains this time around are just a bunch of boring dudes, Because of that, The Pink Bikini Gang definitely doesn’t have the same level of sex appeal as the sequel.  That said, there are some fun moments here, like when our heroines swim in an Olympic-sized pool, beat up ugly dudes who hit on them in bars, put on impromptu bikini fashion shows, and naturally, perform seductive dance routines.  I think my favorite moment came when they use poison lipstick to drug the bad guys with tainted kisses.

 

All this makes for a fitfully amusing time.  Too bad that when it should be over, it continues on for another (bikini girl-less) ten minutes.  I’ll still give it Two Stars just because I couldn’t understand most of the plot.  (Those dialogue scenes certainly drag it down.)  Although it’s not up to the standards of the second one, when the girls are front and center, The Pink Bikini Gang is kinda fun.

THE PLAYBIRDS (1978) ** ½

A murderer is going around London strangling models who have appeared in a men’s magazine called Playbirds.  Two stymied Scotland Yard detectives pound the pavement but are unable to come up with any leads.  Desperate for a break in the case, they ask a sexy, but capable traffic cop (Mary Millington) to go undercover as the magazine’s next centerfold to hopefully lure and trap the killer.   

The Playbirds is one of those movies that have too many moving parts to quite work as a cohesive whole.  In addition to the police procedural plotline, we have the giallo-esque murder sequences (featuring a killer in black gloves), and faux-Playboy modeling shoots (including a Satanic orgy featuring a guy in a werewolf mask).  These set pieces work individually, but the final product feels a bit incongruous and uneven.  The stuff involving the Hugh Hefner wannabe’s woes at the racetrack are especially tiresome (the horse race footage provides the film with ample padding), and the downbeat ending doesn’t really fit the tone of the rest of the film.   

Fortunately, The Playbirds features one of my favorite exploitation movie tropes:  The sexy cop who goes undercover to nab a killer.  I particularly liked the scene where Millington had to “audition” in front of her co-workers to prove she had what it took to be a Playbirds centerfold.  (They also audition other lady cops, you know, just because.)  Millington has a winning screen presence, and her affable good cheer makes these swinging sexploitation sequences memorable.  It’s just a shame that many of the detective scenes are so plodding.  I did like the killer’s gimmick though.  (He numbers his victims with lipstick on their forehead.)   

Bottom Line:  When the film gets bogged down with the various subplots, it’s kind of a drag, but when it’s focused on the T & A (the lesbian scene is particularly saucy), The Playbirds soars. 

AKA:  The Playbird Murders.  AKA:  Secrets of a Playgirl.

SINTHIA: THE DEVIL’S DOLL (1970) *

When Sinthia (Shula Roan) was just twelve years old, she caught her parents making love.  Since she had an unnatural sexual attraction to her father, she stabbed both of them to death and burned the house down.  Years later, a psychiatrist tries to help her before she gets married and potentially snaps again.  

 

Sinthia:  The Devil’s Doll was co-written and directed by one of my favorite cult directors, Ray Dennis Steckler.  After his career in campy B movies like The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies dried up, he was forced to make nudies like this.  At least his backyard bargain basement productions like Rat Pfink a Boo Boo had a certain charm about them.  This one is just torturous.  It’s not even fun in a cheesy way.  The repetitive scenes of Sinthia hysterically yelling, “Daddy.... Daddy… Daddy!” over and over again will be an endurance test for even the most jaded exploitation fan.

 

The poorly framed sex scenes make it hard to tell who’s doing what to whom.  Steckler also overdoes it on the psychedelic imagery, with all the blue, orange, and red lights only adding to the visual chaos on screen.  The long dream sequences get on your nerves too.  In most movies, they are usually there to help us understand the character’s psychosis, but here, it just feels like a cheap and easy way for Steckler (who was using his “Sven Christian” pseudonym, the tip-off that he was trying to pass this off as an “arty” Swedish movie) to pad out the running time.  (The repeated sequences are another tell-tale sign Steckler’s trying to milk the running time for all its worth.)  What’s worse, the constant roller rink music is enough to drive you certifiably insane.  There are also beach scenes that look like leftover footage from Incredibly Strange Creatures.  

 

We do get one good sequence where Sinthia goes to Hell and is forced to “love herself” and masturbates until she brings herself to a chest-heaving climax.  This scene is solid, but it’s way too brief, lasting only about a minute.  The other seventy-six minutes are often hellish.

 

AKA:  Where the Devil Tolls.  AKA:  Teenage She Devil.