CYCLONE (1978) * ½

Rene Cardona Jr.’s Cyclone is assembled from a whirlwind of durable disaster movie cliches.  There’s extreme weather, multiple doomed boat voyages, and a plane crash.  Since it was released in the late ‘70s, there’s also a subplot about a killer shark in there to ride the coattails of Jaws.  

Like Cardona’s Treasure of the Amazon and The Bermuda Triangle, it’s overlong (nearly two hours) and has way too many characters and subplots.  Because of the choppy plotting, and the cutting back and forth between the different groups of survivors, the early scenes can be rough going a lot of the time.  Some of the inane special effects are good for a laugh (like when branches are beaten against the camera lens to simulate heavy winds rollicking through the trees), but they aren’t nearly cheesy enough to make it a camp classic.  

About halfway through, the film switches gears and becomes a tale of survival.  It’s here where the survivors eventually gather aboard a tourist vessel and hunker down.  Faced with a dwindling water supply, no food, and no prospect of being rescued, they start to consider their options.  You just know the little dog (named “Christmas”) is gonna be the first to go.  This sequence is in especially poor taste and is far more unconscionable than the scenes where the survivors eventually resort to cannibalism.  

I guess it goes without saying that the cheesy early disaster movie scenes are a lot more fun than the schlocky survival sequences.  Even in its second act, it fails to drum up much suspense.  As lumbering and slow as much of the film is, Cardona totally rushes through the finale as cast member after cast member is devoured by sharks until the last remaining survivors are escorted to safety before the flick finally tosses in the towel and ends.  The abrupt and unsatisfying conclusion does little to win back any goodwill Cardona lost during the objectionable dog scene, but on the bright side, at least the movie is over at long last.

AKA:  Tornado.  AKA:  Terror Storm.  AKA:  Without Warning.  

TREASURE OF THE AMAZON (1985) **

Directed by Rene Cardona Jr., Treasure of the Amazon is a dawdling jungle picture that is occasionally punctuated by some decent gore and/or animal attack footage.  There are three main plot threads.  The first involves Stuart Whitman as a grizzled boat captain leading a party down the Amazon searching for gold.  The second finds a hotshot pilot Bradford Dillman and his friends uncovering a cache of diamonds in the jungle.  The third revolves around Nazi Donald Pleasence hiding out in the jungle and trying to restart the Third Reich with the diamonds.  These plot threads eventually all come together, but Cardona sure takes his sweet time getting around to it.

The pacing plods along without much momentum or urgency.  The upside is that when something finally does happen, it seems a lot cooler than it probably would’ve seemed had it occurred in a good movie.  The highlight is a gnarly crab attack where a man is tied up and dozens of creepy crawling crabs pinch his ears and lips and claw out his eyes.  There’s also a sequence where someone is strung up by a giant fish hook, although the goofy tongue effect kind of diminishes the reveal.  

At least the cast is fairly strong, which may help keep you watching whenever the top-heavy plot starts spinning its wheels.  Whitman gets a great introduction sequence where he is startled out of a drunken slumber by a crew member trying to pick his pocket, and he cuts the guy’s finger off.  When the dude attacks him, Whitman tosses the guy overboard and he is devoured by piranhas.  Lesson learned:  Don’t fuck with drunken Stuart Whitman.

Pleasence looks gaunt and tired, but still manages to chew the scenery with his usual zeal.  John Ireland has a few good moments as the priest who dishes out a lot of exposition, and Cardona regular Hugo Stiglitz also turns up as yet another grizzled boat captain.  It’s Sofia Infante though who makes the most memorable impression as Pleasence’s frequently topless native “wife”.  

Whitman, Dillman, Ireland, and Stiglitz were all in Cardona’s Guyana:  Cult of the Damned six years earlier.  

AKA:  Treasure of Doom.  AKA: Greed.

CRAZY NIGHTS (1978) *** ½

When Joe D’Amato makes a Mondo movie you know you’re in for something special.  If you go in expecting something along the lines of Mondo Cane or The Killing of America, you might be disappointed.  Crazy Nights is more like an anthology film using the Mondo framework.  It’s supposedly a spotlight on the various lurid nightclub acts found around the world, but it soon becomes apparent that it’s just a jumping-off point for D’Amato to string together some inspired exploitation lunacy.  

Our host is Amanda Lear, a trans performer who at one point was romantically linked to everyone from Salvador Dali to Bryan Ferry to David Bowie.  Before the film begins, she sings a catchy disco number “Follow Me” while wearing a slinky red dress and a Dracula cape.  Then, the segments begin.

The first two segments play out like Tales from the Crypt episodes, except with lots of sex and nudity.  They start off with an unlikely premise and just when the participants have reached their… ahem… climax, D’Amato pulls the rug out from under you with a warped O. Henry type ending that will leave you speechless.  The first sequence revolves around a sexy girl in a sheep costume who is raffled off.  The ending is fairly shocking, but the finale to the next segment, the Satanic “Choo-Choo Sacrifice”, is a real doozy.

Even the sections that adhere closer to the traditional Mondo movie format have a lot of energy and style.  One episode involves a pair of lovers dressed only in newspaper clippings who fuck on stage.  The “Panther Woman” segment, in which an exotic dancer does a wildly exuberant striptease, is particularly memorable as well.  Other sequences include a pair of ballroom dancers who resemble a nudist version of Bobby and Cissy from The Lawrence Welk Show, a couple who specialize in African folk dancing, and a ballerina-themed striptease that ends in a lesbian lovemaking session

There are also a lot of scenes devoted to magicians who perform risqué magic acts.  One prestidigitator does a gender-bending stage show, another (this time a woman wearing only a white cloak) performs feats of levitation (which ends in predictable fashion), and an old dude pulls doves, scarves, and flags out of his sexy assistant’s pussy!  I’d like to see David Copperfield try THAT.

The longest sequence is an expose on a German brothel that specializes in S & M where prostitutes dress like extras from Conan the Barbarian and sock it to rich perverts.  One slices a guy with a knife and rubs lemon juice in the wound.  I don’t mean to kink shame or anything, but GODDAMN.  There’s also another interview-style segment that involves a husband-and-wife duo of porno actors.  Both include brief hardcore footage.

The travelogue shots of the cities profiled are meant to lend an air of authenticity, but all of this is obviously phony and staged.  You won’t care though.  Lear makes for an engaging hostess too.  Her introductions are usually tongue in cheek, and her musical numbers have style and flair.  All told, you’ll have a crazy good time with Crazy Nights.

AKA:  Follow Me.  AKA:  Mondo Erotico.

PARADISE (1982) *

Paradise is a blatant rip-off of The Blue Lagoon.  Only this time, instead of two youngsters discovering love on a desert isle, it’s two youngsters discovering love in a desert.  As with The Blue Lagoon, the only reason the film exists is as a showcase for its young leading lady to go au natural.  Both films are pretty terrible, but I have to give this one a slight edge, if only because I’m a big Phoebe Cates fan.  

A nefarious sheik named The Jackal (Tuvia Tavi) spies the young Sarah (Cates) in a traveling caravan and decides he must have her for his harem.  He and his soldiers raid the hapless travelers, killing everyone but Sarah and a young Christian pilgrim named David (Willie Aames), who escape to the desert on camelback.  After wandering through the sand for a few days, they come to the idyllic shoreline where they build a home together.  Eventually, the pair hit puberty and let nature take its course.  

Written and directed by Stuart (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3) Gillard, Paradise is a mess.  The first act is decent, but the wheels fall off quickly once Aames and Cates start playing Ken and Barbie in the Coconut Dream House.  To make matters worse, the comic relief chimpanzee will get on your nerves real fast.  The scene where it starts masturbating is rather dire, although with Cates walking around nude so much, I can’t say I blame him.  

It’s kind of funny seeing Aames playing such a holier-than-thou Christian since he would eventually go on to become Bibleman.  Cates, who also got nude in Fast Times at Ridgemont High from the same year, is the only real reason to watch it.  Her shower in an underground waterfall is appropriately steamy, although I’m sure you could just watch that clip on Mr. Skin or something and spare yourself from sitting through the rest of this inane garbage.

OUR FRIEND POWER 5 (1989) **

If you were alive in the late ‘80s, you’ll remember that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were all the rage.  If you were a youngster in that era, you probably even saw the Turtles movies in theaters.  However, you probably haven’t seen this South Korean rip-off that actually beat the first Turtles movie to theaters by about a year.  Sure, it’s bad, but it’s better than about half of the movies in the “official” Ninja Turtles series.  

A space princess and her team of Turtles are being pursued across the galaxy by the evil Shark Gang.  Their ship crash lands on Earth where they are befriended by a young Taekwondo expert, a bumbling idiot, and a kid with telekinetic powers.  Eventually, they all team up to put an end to the Shark Gang’s tyranny.  

The Turtles costumes aren’t bad, all things considered.  They look almost identical to the Playmates action figures and resemble a high-end Party City costume rental.  In fact, they’re the most memorable thing about this spotty would-be cult item.  

To be fair, there’s a lot of memorable stuff here.  Like the fact that the so-called “Shark Gang” are actually rat-men (who look like Master Splinter, if you can believe it).  Or the fact that the space sequences, mech battles, and flashbacks are shown in the form of stolen footage from a Go-Bots cartoon.  There is also one legitimately funny scene where a kid dresses up like a vampire to scare his friends, and the Turtles, thinking he is the default human form, transform themselves into vampires to “blend in” with the earthlings.  

As much goofy shit is in this movie, the highlights are just too infrequent to certify it as a WTF masterpiece.  It would, however, make for a good Copywrite Infringement Triple Feature with The Dragon Lives Again and 3 Giant Men.  It’s not quite the camp classic I hoped it would be, but the crappy movie connoisseur in me is certainly glad I saw it.  I mean, how can you not want to see it with screengrabs like this:

SPIRAL: FROM THE BOOK OF SAW (2021) ***

Chris Rock (who was also an executive producer) stars as a detective who once ratted out some dirty cops.  Because of that, no one in his department trusts him.  When his partner is murdered by a copycat Jigsaw killer, he gets advice from his old man (and former captain), played by Samuel L. Jackson.  Naturally, dear old dad goes missing too, and it’s up to Rock to stop the Jigsaw wannabe before his father becomes the next victim.

Directed by Darren Lynn (Saw 2, 3, and 4) Bousman, Spiral:  From the Book of Saw has a solid amount of gore, a snappy pace, and some genuine laughs to boot.  It’s easily the best Saw movie since the original.  The sequels always went sideways when they tried to cram a bunch of Jigsaw flashbacks into the current timeline (which is gonna happen when you kill off your killer in Part 3).  This one plays out in a straightforward manner (not counting the flashbacks to Rock’s earlier case), and it’s all the better for it.  The narrative flows so much better when you don’t try to shoehorn Jigsaw in there every ten minutes.

Chris Rock is really funny in this.  He brings his own comic persona into the film without it feeling ill-fitting or intrusive to the narrative.  He cracks a lot of jokes, makes a bunch of pop culture references about Forrest Gump, New Jack City, and The Wire (there are also a couple clever nods to Jackson’s work in Pulp Fiction), and gets laughs more often than not.  Rock also does a fine job while essaying the more dramatic emotions required of the role, but his sense of humor helps to elevate Spiral far above the tired and interchangeable sequels.  Rock’s rapport with Samuel L. Jackson certainly helps too, and I hope they are paired in more films because they have a lot of chemistry together.  

The Jigsaw traps won’t rank among the series’ best, but they are all gruesome and effective.  There’s a tongue-ripping apparatus, a set of extreme Chinese finger cuffs, a fileting, waterboarding with molten lead, a glass shredder, and a puppet string IV contraption.  In short, there’s plenty of gore to keep fans happy until the next sequel spirals its way around.

Official Saw Ranking:

1. Saw

2. Spiral:  From the Book of Saw

3. Saw 3

4. Saw 2

5. Saw 6

6. Saw 5

7. Saw 3D

8. Jigsaw

9. Saw 4

AKA:  Spiral.  AKA:  Spiral:  From the Legacy of Saw.  AKA:  Saw 9:  Spiral.  AKA:  Saw:  Spiral.  AKA:  Spiral:  Saw.

THE SCARY OF SIXTY-FIRST (2021) ** ½

The Scary of Sixty-First is a throwback to the low budget Mumblegore movies of the early part of the 21st century.  It takes place in mostly one location, has a small cast, and is an awfully slow burn.  As far as these things go, it’s not bad.  

Noelle (Madeline Quinn) and Addie (Betsey Brown) rent a swanky New York apartment that has a weird layout.  Almost immediately, they start having bad dreams and amped up horniness.  The pair soon drift apart, mostly due to the bad juju in the apartment.  Addie spends more time with her dopey boyfriend (Mark Rapaport) and Noelle invites a nosy reporter (Dasha Nekrasova, who also directed) into the apartment (and her bed).  The reporter is convinced the apartment was once owned by none other than Jeffrey Epstein and that it has bad intentions for Noelle and Addie.  

The fact that Nekrasova makes Jeffrey Epstein a plot point may make some cry “Too soon!”.  However, if they had used some fictionalized version of the sleazy billionaire, it wouldn’t have the same effect.  Because of that, The Scary of Sixty-First has a little bit more of a bite to it than you might expect.  Using real photos of Epstein, Ghislane Maxwell, his island compound, etc. is sort of in bad taste at times, but at least it makes the film stand out in a sea of trauma-based indie horror flicks.  

While there are visual nods to both Polanski and Kubrick, overall, Nekrasova’s style is rather mundane.  That’s a good thing though, because when something random or strange happens (like when Brown uses tabloid clippings of Prince Andrew to masturbate), it registers with a larger impact.  As with most slow burns, you can abide being jerked around as long as the director delivers the goods in the final reel.  I can’t quite say that Nekrasova was able to stick the landing, but she got close enough to the runway to make me curious to see what she’ll do next.