EXPENSIVE TASTES (1978) *** ½

Maria Lease (using the pseudonym Jennifer Ray) directed this notorious roughie that still has the power to shock more than forty years after its original release.  It’s startlingly effective, not only because of its grungy grindhouse aesthetic, but because it’s a damned good movie too.

Joey Silvera and his girlfriend (Chrissy Peterson) are enjoying a nice evening in when a gang of masked home invaders tie him up and rape her.  As it turns out, this is just the sick way Joey and his buddies get their kicks.  A detective then hires a sexy call girl (Phaery Burd) to trap Joey and his rapist buddies.  

Although the opening gang scene is grueling, nasty, and long (almost twenty minutes), it does have a cinematic quality to it that makes it effective.  Lease does an equally impressive job during the scene where Silvera and his lover (Elaine Wells) get it on while a dirty movie is projected onto their bodies.  As this scene suggests, Expensive Tastes is in turns arty and exploitative, and sometimes works on both levels simultaneously.  It also earns points for focusing on the main character’s trauma.  Because of that, the film is not a mere catalyst for titillation, but also a psychological examination of emotional turmoil.  

Even the so-called “normal” sex scenes have a sleazy edge to them.  I’m thinking specifically of the scene where a hooker licks a guy’s hairy asshole.  Lease also made the Little Girls Blue movies (under her more well-known name, Joanna Williams), and they couldn’t be any more different.  Much of the film is definitely depraved and bawdy, but since it is taken from the female gaze, it has a touch of pathos and sympathy for the characters that are rarely found in the roughie genre.  

It's not quite perfect though.  The ending is awfully pat, and the plot is wrapped up way too quickly.  Still, if you’re looking for a Golden Age porn flick that has something more to offer than just cheap smutty thrills, then Expensive Tastes will fit the bill nicely.

AKA:  Expensive Taste.

SHANTY TRAMP (1967) ***

K. Gordon Murray, the American distributor best known for importing Mexican horror flicks stateside (not to mention the WTF children’s classic, Santa Claus) produced this sleazy southern fried sexploitation shocker.  If you love your smut with overexaggerated southern accents, beat-up film stock, ADHD camerawork, AND pointed anti-racist social commentary, then Shanty Tramp is for you!  Still not convinced?  Then the kick-ass theme song (which will live rent-free for days after you see it) will definitely change your mind.  

Eleanor Vaill stars as Emily, the titular tramp with a reputation.  She even openly flirts with the holy rolling preacher (Bill Rogers) after his sermon.  When her biker client gets too rough with her, a young black man (Lewis Galen) steps in and saves her.  Naturally, Emily thanks him the only way she knows how… with her body.  Predictably, her drunkard father (Otto Schlessinger) finds them in the throes of passion, and to save what little reputation she has, Emily claims she was raped.  Soon, the whole town is in an uproar.  

Shanty Tramp is sleazy, skeevy, and stupid, but the fact that it managed to tell its message so brazenly within the confines of a sexploitation movie makes it kind of special.  I mean, no one will mistake it for In the Heat of the Night or anything.  You just have to admire the way it wears its social consciousness on its sleeve.  While much of the technical merits are dubious at best, the editing is often dynamic and effective.  

Vaill is a hoot and a holler while delivering her sassy monologues.  She chews the scenery admirably and has several nude scenes too.  The real reason to see Shany Tramp though is for the theme song.  It is, as the kids say nowadays, a banger.  Too bad they play an annoying rendition of “When the Saints Come Marching In” three times as much.  

Future Porky’s director Bob Clark was the assistant director, and Vaill and Rogers also starred in Herschell Gordon Lewis’ A Taste of Blood the same year.

YOKAI MONSTERS: 100 MONSTERS (1968) ***

The residents of a small Japanese town use a shrine to tell ghost stories.  To keep the evil spirits at bay, they perform a cleansing ritual after the evening’s tales have come to their conclusion.  Trouble brews when a crooked magistrate comes to town with the intention of turning the sacred shrine into a brothel.  He also sets his sights on tearing down a nearby tenement, which further distresses the community.  Naturally, when the corrupt officials prevent the cleansing ritual from being performed, it awakens a horde of monsters.   

Yokai Monsters:  100 Monsters is an odd, goofy, but most importantly, fun amalgam of samurai drama, Japanese folklore, and monster movie.  While it’s a mostly enjoyable romp, the pacing has a weird rhythm to it.  Some of the ghost stories are shown in full, which kind of feels more like an excuse to pad out the running time than anything else.  These moments, taken on their own accord, are really entertaining, even if they are more of a goofy detour than anything else.  

The monsters are kind of silly too, which only makes them more endearing, although there are noticeably a lot less of them than advertised.  (I’d say the final number is closer to two dozen than a hundred.)  There’s a fuzzy monster that resembles a one-eyed Muppet, a woman whose snake-like head pops up and down like a Jack-in-the-box, an army of faceless men, and a giant witch.  My favorite was the cute umbrella monster who comes to life via chintzy animation and hops around on one foot.  The scenes where it befriends a boy with special needs are particularly a lot of fun.  (You have to wonder if Spielberg saw this before he made E.T.)

Frankly, the samurai stuff is the weakest aspect.  The hero is kind of a lightweight, and the sword fights are few and far between.  I also wish the ratio of monster mashing had been higher.  That said, when the flick is firing on all cylinders, it’s a real treat.

AKA:  The Hundred Ghost Stories.  AKA:  The Hundred Monsters.  

SAMARITAN (2022) ** ½

Years ago, the superhero Samaritan fought his nemesis… uh… Nemesis in a battle to the death.  Now, a young boy named Sam (Javon “Wanna” Walton) becomes convinced that his next-door neighbor (Sylvester Stallone) is the mythic crimefighter.  Meanwhile, a crime lord (Pilou Asbaek) gets his hands on Nemesis’ hammer, the only thing that can kill Samaritan, and begins amassing fanatic followers to take over the city. 

It's bad enough we have all these comic book movies based on actual comic books.  It’s even worse when Hollywood starts making up their own superheroes (which means they don’t have to pay any royalties).  Even though I pretty much knew what to expect from this (especially since it went straight to Prime), I still tried to remain hopeful because of the participation of Sylvester Stallone.  

Fortunately, Samaritan was just a little bit better than I anticipated.  That’s mostly due to Stallone’s performance, which is easily the best thing about the movie.  His character may be cliched as all get out (Old Man With a Secret Who Just Wants to Be LEFT ALONE), but he finds ways to bring a hint of humanity to the film.  

Things get off to a janky start.  The superhero origin, done in a cartoonish style, is really cheesy, and the mythology behind the characters is pretty thin.  (They are brothers who don’t like each other.)  Luckily, the film gets better as it goes along, even though it takes a while to find its footing.  The scenes where Sly teaches the kid to fight have a Rocky Lite vibe to them, and the big twist is moderately effective.  

The biggest problem with Samaritan is that it’s just too low key for its own good.  That’s probably due to budgetary constraints more than any attempt to ground the characters in “the real world”.  Once the film (and the main character) finally embraces what it really is, it actually becomes a lot of fun.  The action in the finale is surprisingly strong, and some of the violence pushes the realms of its PG-13 rating.  (It also makes terrific use of its One-F-Bomb-Per-PG-13-Rating.)  If it had less moping and more rope-a-doping, it might’ve been a contender.  

AKA:  Nemesis.

NIGHTMARE FESTIVAL (1989) ***

Friend of the Video Vacuum, Stuart McPherran has posted a lot of great trailer compilations online in recent years, and I’ve enjoyed every single one of them that he has uploaded.  He let me know about one I missed, and I eagerly checked it out.  Among the highlights are the trailers for Forbidden Planet (which was shown as part of a ‘70s re-release of “MGM Children’s Matinees”), Monty Python and the Holy Grail (which parodies The Seventh Seal and The Seven Samurai), Sleeper (in which Woody Allen is interviewed in between snippets of the film), The House That Dripped Blood (which has a great tagline:  “Vampires!  Voodoo!  Vixens!  And VICTIMS!”), The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (narrated by the sexy star, Kathryn Grant), and The Gates of Hell (which looks like it was culled from a VHS release).  

Nightmare Festival presents a good mix of trailers that span across the decades and subgenres.  Included are previews from the ‘30s (Rocket Ship), ‘40s (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), ‘50s (The Incredible Shrinking Man), ‘60s (The Fearless Vampire Killers), and ‘70s (Ben).  Because of that, it’s a good primer for fans of horror and sci-fi alike.  There are also plenty of ads for films by notable directors, such as Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Eaten Alive), Herschell Gordon Lewis (Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs), William Castle (Macabre and The Tingler), and Robert Wise (The Haunting and The Day the Earth Stood Still), and movies that appeared on Mystery Science Theater 3000 are well-represented too (The Leech Woman, It Conquered the World, and The Crawling Hand).  While there are some trailers that will be overly familiar for dyed-in-the-wool trailer compilation aficionados like me (the trailer for the double feature for The Blood Spattered Bride and I Dismember Mama is trotted out yet again), there’s a nice assortment of fun, oddball, and iconic trailers here to please just about everyone.  

The complete list of trailers is as follows:  Forbidden Planet, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), The Incredible Shrinking Man, Them!, Raw Meat, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, The Fearless Vampire Killers, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Ben, Sleeper, Race with the Devil, Invaders from Mars, Things to Come, I Married a Witch, Tales from the Crypt, Island at the Top of the World, Scream, Baby, Scream, Rocket Ship, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, The Invisible Ray, The Astro-Zombies, The House That Dripped Blood, The War of the Worlds, The Blob, Queen of Outer Space, One Million Years B.C., The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, The Gates of Hell, a double feature of The Creature from the Black Lagoon and It Came from Outer Space, Macabre, The Tingler, a double feature of The Blood Spattered Bride and I Dismember Mama, Horrors of the Black Museum, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs, The Legend of Hell House, Sugar Hill, The Woman Eater, The Flesh Eaters, The Haunting, Count Yorga, Vampire, Eaten Alive, The Omen, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, Dracula:  Prince of Darkness, Carrie, The Leech Woman, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Valley of the Dragons, It Conquered the World, The Crawling Hand, Revenge of the Creature, Children of the Damned, and Freaks (re-release).

ORPHAN: FIRST KILL (2022) ** ½

Sometimes with prequels, it’s best to wait a few years until you come up with a great reason to justify its existence.  Sometimes, it’s better to strike while the iron is hot.  The makers of Orphan:  First Kill waited thirteen years to tell us the origins of the deranged psycho kid, Esther.  What’s odd is that in 2009, Isabelle Fuhrman, who plays Esther, was nine years old.  Now she’s pushing twenty-three.  If you saw Orphan, you will remember that Esther was revealed to be a thirtysomething dwarf masquerading as a child.  Now instead of having a kid playing an adult playing a kid we have an adult playing an adult playing a kid.  Got that?  I’m not sure why they waited so long, especially since Fuhrman is much too old to play the part, but that at the very least makes it memorable.  

They don’t do a convincing job trying to cover up the fact that Fuhrman is too long in the tooth to play a kid either, which may give the film some shelf life as a camp classic.  The child doubles are obvious, as are the parts where the other actors are clearly standing on apple boxes to make it look like they’re a lot taller than her.  It all seems sloppy and cheesy, which of course, I kind of dug.  

Esther murders her way out of an Estonian psycho ward.  She eventually poses as a missing child and dupes the parents into thinking she is their long-lost daughter.  Before long, she begins manipulating and killing.  

Although it’s a little slow to get going, it gets better/cheesier/weirder as it goes along.  The first film had an insane twist ending, so naturally, you’re wondering if they will even try to top it.  While the twist in this one is appropriately nasty, it falls short of the one from the original.  Julia Stiles, who I hadn’t seen in a while, sinks her teeth into the role of the estranged mother gamely and gets the best line of the movie when she says, “If you think I’m going to let some psycho dwarf destroy what I’ve built… you’re mistaken!”

DAY SHIFT (2022) ***

Jamie Foxx stars as a vampire hunter in the sunny San Fernando Valley.  Unlike most screen vamp slayers, he has modest aims.  He’s not trying to rid the world of bloodsuckers.  He just wants to get enough dough to pay for his kid’s braces.

Day Shift kicks off with a great fight sequence with an old vampire contortionist lady who bends, cracks, and gnarls her body in a variety of ways while attacking Foxx.  From there on, it gets a little spotty in places.  Like most Netflix movies, it’s way too long (almost two hours), but the biggest debit is the weak villain.  As Audrey San Fernando, Karla Souza looks and acts less like a Queen of the Damned and more like a Real Housewife of Beverly Hills.  That or maybe a reject from one of those house-flipping reality shows since her character moonlights… err… daylights as a real estate mogul.  

Fortunately, the rest of the supporting cast is a lot of fun.  There’s Snoop Dogg as a cowboy vampire hunter, Peter Stormare as a sleazy pawnbroker who buys vampire teeth on the black market, and Dave Franco as Foxx’s nerdy by-the-book partner.  The best characters are a pair of badass Russian vampire hunters played by Steve Howey and DTV action legend Scott Adkins.  Their big action sequence where they team up with Foxx to dispose of a nest of vamps is breathless, fun, and inventive.  (I especially dug the stake that can also be used as a nunchuck.)  It’s enough to make you wish that Adkins and Howey get their own spin-off somewhere down the road.

Foxx’s performance helps to tie the loosey-goosey tone together.  He’s very funny and is at his best when he’s ad-libbing insults at the expense of Franco.  He also fares quite well in his everyman family man scenes too, which grounds the film from flying off the rails.  

Overall, Day Shift is more than a tad bit uneven.  It often feels like parts of a couple of different scripts sewed together.  All this barely gels, and if it skates by with a *** rating, it’s thanks to the charm of the cast.  It’s just that it never quite realizes its full potential.  There are times when it flirts with awesomeness (like the stuff with Adkins and Howey), and yet it always feels like it’s holding back.  Ultimately, it delivers just enough to make it all worthwhile, but it kind of leaves you wanting more.