SHIN ULTRAMAN (2023) ***

When kaiju begin to terrorize the globe, the SSSP is mobilized to assess and neutralize the threat.  The latest monster might be too much for them to handle, but luckily, help arrives in the form of Ultraman, a giant robot man who kicks kaiju ass.  Little does the SSSP know, one of their own team members is actually Ultraman’s secret identity.  

While I’m not well-versed in Ultraman, I have seen a few episodes of the original TV series, which this is a reboot of.  I don’t know how die-hard fans will react to it, but for me, Shin Ultraman checked all the giant monster mashing boxes.  It was a good mix of old school kaiju battling and 21st century CGI.  I think the best thing about it was the fact that many of the monsters, while obviously CGI, were rendered to look like a guy in a clunky rubber suit.  Shit like that puts a goddamned smile on my stupid face.  

Also, most monster mashes make you wait till the very end to see the kaiju squaring off.  This one gives Ultraman a new foe to fight every half hour or so, so there’s always some big threat looming to help keep you invested.  (The monster battles are spaced so evenly that it almost feels like you’re binge watching four episodes of the series.)  The monsters include an invisible creature that shoots electricity from its horn, a lizard that has a drill for a head, an evil version of Ultraman, and a giant space weapon.  Each one is a little different than the last, which helps give every fight a little different flavor.  

The most impressive thing is that the human drama is fairly decent.  Let’s face it.  No one watches these things for the acting or plot.  However, I did appreciate the way director Shinji (Shin Godzilla) Higuchi used rapid-fire editing to keep the dialogue scenes flowing and used odd camera angles to make them more interesting from a visual standpoint.  Sometimes, little touches like that make all the difference and help separate the good monster mashes from the mediocre ones.  

JANUA-RAY: THE MAD LOVE LIFE OF A HOT VAMPIRE (1971) **

Once again, we see Ray Dennis Steckler has a knack for coming up with memorable titles, even when he’s working in the adult film world.  Steckler’s wife, Carolyn Brandt stars as Dracula’s wife, who acts as our narrator.  Dracula (Jim Parker) is awakened by his hunchbacked servant (Jason Wayne) so he can watch him get it on with three of Dracula’s love slaves.  Drac then sends his babes out to search for blood.  And by “search for blood” I mean, “have sex with a bunch of dudes and suck their blood out of their dick”.  Eventually, it’s up to Van Helsing (Will Long) to stop Dracula’s reign of terror.  

Parker, who kind of resembles John Astin, really hams it up as Dracula, and it often looks like the other actors are about a second away from cracking up at his antics.    Wayne barely showed a sign of a pulse in Blood Shack, but he gamely chews the scenery this time out as the hysterical hunchback.  It's Brandt who is the most memorable though.  She looks sexy as the vampire bride, staring directly into the camera and saying shit like, “Dracula is groovy!”  Too bad we only get to see her from the neck up. 

Steckler’s handling of the sex scenes is clumsy at best.  None of them are particularly hot, but that’s part of the charm.  Even though the actors have trouble staying hard, the actresses seem to really be into their roles.  Unfortunately, the sex scenes go on forever and quickly wear out their welcome.  Even at fifty minutes, it feels way too long.  At least the scenes where the vampire brides bite their lovers’ peckers with dime store vampire fangs are good for a laugh. 

As far as Steckler’s Stock Player Round-Up goes, Brandt, of course was in a ton of his films.  Wayne was also in Blood Shack, Parker went on to have a small role in The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher, and Long appeared in a few of his X-rated flicks.  There isn’t any of the director’s shameless self-promotion here (which makes sense since he was using his Sven Christian alias) nor are there any of his signatures on display, unless you count the use of psychedelic light, which is kind of like Sinthia:  The Devil’s Doll.  

AKA:  Hot Vampire.  AKA:  Love Life of a Red Hot Vampire. 

TUBI CONTINUED… CHEERLEADER NINJAS (2003) * ½

When I sat down to watch this, I had a sneaking suspicion I had seen it before.  As it turns out, the movie I was thinking of was Ninja Cheerleaders, not Cheerleader Ninjas.  That film was about Ninjas who are also Cheerleaders, whereas this one is about Cheerleaders who are also Ninjas.  I think.  I guess it all comes down to semantics.

Anyway, a Christian coalition of outraged mothers set out on a crusade against gay internet porn.  They think a bunch of high school cheerleaders are the cause of all the smut, so they send some delinquent Catholic high school girls to take them down.  The cheerleaders soon learn they aren’t strong enough to win the battle, so they turn to a Kung Fu master to train them to be Ninjas.

You would think a movie about high school cheerleaders squaring off against naughty Catholic high school girls would be a can’t-miss scenario, but somehow, the filmmakers manage to screw it up.  The best part is Skinamax legend Kira (Sexual Intrigue) Reed who plays a blow-up doll named “Fantasy Girl” who comes to life during one of the nerd’s sexual fantasies.   (Apparently, she was also the body double for the rest of the cast.)  If it wasn’t for her participation, Cheerleader Ninjas would’ve been virtually unwatchable.  

Cheerleader Ninjas aims for the kind of mix of sight gags, send-ups, and humor Zucker/Abrahms/Zucker was known for.  Unfortunately, it comes closer to approximating the painfully unfunny lows of the unbearable Friedberg/Seltzer comedy spoofs.  I just can’t help but think that this would’ve been a lot funnier had they just played the concept of Cheerleader Ninjas seriously (or at least tongue in cheek) instead of turning it into an all-out spoof with lots of dumb, obvious gags, and a bunch of painfully unfunny fart jokes and gay stereotypes.  (I think the only laugh came from the nerd’s bedroom, which is modeled after the bridge of the Enterprise.)  The fact that it’s an overlong ninety-six minutes and moves at a snail’s pace doesn’t help either.    

JANUA-RAY: THE LAS VEGAS SERIAL KILLER (1986) * ½

Seven years after making The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher, Ray Dennis Steckler returned with this straight to video sequel.  Pierre Agostino once again plays the Strangler, who has now relocated to Las Vegas to prey upon more helpless women.  Unfortunately, the film is sorely missing the presence of Carolyn Brandt as the Skid Row Slasher.  She’s nowhere to be found this time around, so instead, we get two chuckleheads who stumble around Vegas and ogle women walking by, which is a pretty crummy trade-off if you ask me.  Occasionally, to break up the monotony, they’ll mug a woman.  Although they have just as much screen time as Agostino, these guys don’t make much of an impression.  There’s a reason why the movie isn’t called The Las Vegas Serial Killer Meets the Two Dudes That Stand Around Making Lewd Comments to Passersby.

The good news:  Agostino strangles lots of women.  The most memorable one occurs at a pool party at the home of “Las Vegas movie star, Cash Flagg”!  There’s also a nude burlesque number shown in its entirety.  Steckler also gives us a WTF close-up of a Papa Smurf doll during one murder sequence that’s good for a laugh.  That’s about it as far as the “good news” goes.

The bad news:  There is a shit-ton of padding here.  There is a bunch of travelogue footage of Las Vegas, along with repurposed scenes from the original film.  Remember the scenes of the random rodeo in Blood Shack?  Well, I hope you liked it, because there’s even more pointless rodeo footage in this one.  There’s also an equally perplexing sequence at an air show that is likewise only there to beef up the running time.  

Like the first movie, Steckler shot The Las Vegas Serial Killer silent.  Once again, there’s more narration/thoughts of the characters than actual dialogue.  The big difference this time out is that a radio announcer gets the bulk of the dialogue (much of which is repeated) to keep the audience up to date on the Strangler’s crimes.  The weird thing is it doesn’t sound like a human being, but rather a talk-to-type computer voice. 

Oh, and the ending sucks.  

As far as director signatures go, there’s a couple things of note.  Since Ray had moved his base of operations to Vegas by this point in his career, we get scenic shots of the Vegas Strip instead of Hollywood Boulevard.  He also manages to toss in some completely random parade footage, which makes it kindred spirits with Rat Pfink a Boo Boo, as well as the aforementioned rodeo bullshit.  Other than Agostino, there aren’t any actors who worked with him previously, although Ron Jason would go on to star in more Steckler productions down the road.  Steckler does, however, find some time to put in a little shameless self-promotion as a poster for The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies is seen hanging in a pizza parlor.  A character even exclaims, “Cash Flagg!  All right!”

AMBULANCE (2022) **

Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) returns home from the war to discover his wife is in desperate need of experimental cancer treatments.  Of course, the insurance won’t cover it, so he turns to his brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal) for help.  Naturally, his brother ropes him into pulling a bank heist for a big payday.  If you already couldn’t guess, things go south quick, and the brothers are forced to make their getaway in an ambulance with a feisty EMT (Eiza Gonzalez) and a wounded cop in tow.  Almost immediately, every cop in the city is after them, and it’s up to the brothers to do some fancy driving in order to keep out of the big house.  

I normally associate director Michael Bay with shaky-cam action sequences, rapid-fire editing, and big, swooping camera shots.  His movies were bad enough with all this stuff, but now, they have somehow gotten worse.  The reason?  Someone got the bright idea to give Mikey Boy a drone for Christmas.  Now, he’s mounting a camera to it and flying it around God’s creation during the action sequences.  That means more whooshing and swooshing, sometimes to nauseating effect.  (Especially during the pointless shots where the camera goes up and down buildings, Spider-Man-style.)  OK, there is one admittedly cool shot where the camera flies under a car while it’s in mid-air, but the rest of the flying camera shenanigans are just plain annoying. 

The bank heist scenes are decent too.  It’s just that the action becomes overly chaotic once the brothers hop into the titular automobile.  Some of time it’s hard to tell who’s shooting at who during the gunfights and who’s chasing who during the chase scenes.  I mean, I assume the robbers are shooting at the cops and the cops are chasing after the robbers, but it sure would’ve been nice to see it in a coherent manner.   

Gyllenhaal has a couple of good moments.  Whenever I was about to mentally throw in the towel, he would chew the scenery or rock out to Christopher Cross.  That at least kept me going, as I wanted to see what he’d do next.  The rest of the cast, unfortunately, aren’t very memorable.  

Car chase movies are hard to screw up.  I mean, I even kind of like Smokey and the Bandit 3.  You’d think this kind of scenario would be right up Bay’s alley.  I guess he was too busy fucking around with his drone and namechecking his previous movies (having someone quote Sean Connery in The Rock is what passes for “Meta” in a Bay flick) to deliver the goods. 

TUBI CONTINUED… CANDY (1968) *

Candy was like the North of its day.  It’s a bloated, boring, big budget, all-star, box office dud.  It’s a comedy with zero laughs.  It’s one of those movies where it’s amazing that they were able to get so many talented people involved and STILL managed to make it dreadfully unfunny.  

Candy (Ewa Aulin) is a schoolgirl who gets into various sexual misadventures.  Her list of lovers includes a poet (Richard Burton), a gardener (Ringo Starr), a general (Walter Matthau), a surgeon (James Coburn), and an Indian guru (Marlon Brando).  Throughout all of this, Candy goes from compromising situation to compromising situation with the same blank expression on her face… much like the audience.  

This movie has aged like milk in just about every way.  It was bad at the time of release, I’m sure, but it’s gotten much worse since then.  It’s horribly dated, and I’m not just talking about the ‘60s fashions, hairstyles, and music.  Not only does the whole plot revolve around a bunch of creepy dudes trying to perv on an underage girl, but you also have Ringo and Brando embarrassing themselves in brownface.  Everyone, including co-writers Terry Southern and Buck Henry (who cameos as a mental patient) seem to be working under the assumption that the louder the actors are and the more chaotic the scene is, the funnier it will be.  The only one who comes close to getting a laugh is Burton, but that’s only because wherever he goes, his ascot keeps blowing in the breeze.  

What’s the point of all this, you ask?  Maybe that we put too much trust in our artists, military, doctors, and religious figures.  That when you come right down to it, all of them will jump at the opportunity to get into a young girl’s pants.  I guess that’s the one thing that hasn’t changed in the fifty-five years that this was made.  That doesn’t necessarily make it funny or entertaining though.

JANUA-RAY: THE HOLLYWOOD STRANGLER MEETS THE SKID ROW SLASHER (1979) ***

You’ve got to give it to Ray Dennis Steckler’s The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher:  It has a great title.  It’s second only to Steckler’s The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.  While it’s not quite up to the zany levels of that classic, it is one of Ray’s better films.  

Johnathan (Pierre Agostino) is a serial killer who hires models to pose nude for him before he strangles them to death.  Meanwhile, a lonely woman who owns a bookstore (Carolyn Brandt) goes around slicing and dicing the bums that hang around Skid Row.  And… They meet.  That’s the plot!  I mean, what more do you need to know about a movie called The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher? 

Steckler gives you exactly what you would want/expect from a movie with that title.  No more.  No less.  If you were hoping for more, sorry you’re out of luck.  

Steckler does a pretty good job, all things considered.  There’s enough strangling and slashing to keep the plot moving forward (my favorite scene was when the Strangler killed a girl who was wearing nothing but a KISS beach towel and then Steckler gives us a close-up to the band's Destroyer album), and the Taxi Driver-esque scenes of Agostino stomping around Hollywood Boulevard are rather moody 

This almost feels like Steckler’s version of a Doris Wishman movie.  He shot it silently and most of the dialogue occurs in narration as characters’ thoughts.  The fact that sex and violence are often combined is very much like one of Wishman’s roughies from the ‘60s.  The use of the term “photographer’s models” instead of “hookers” was also pretty dated by the time the film came out, further making it feel like a lost relic from the ‘60s that happened to be released in the late ‘70s.  That’s not a criticism, just an observation.  

This might be Steckler’s purest movie.  There’s no fat on it, except for the scenes of Agostino in his coop petting his pet pigeons.  Or the random sex club roller disco scene at Plato’s Retreat West.  (Steckler would later make a porno of that title using the same location a few years later.)  

Steckler also wrote some great lines like, “I was right.  She IS just like all the others.  Worse maybe”, “You want a shot of my buttocks?  Doo-Doo-Doo!”, and “Die, garbage!”  

The last name of Pierre Agostino’s character is “Click”, which makes this sort of a loose sequel to Steckler’s The Thrill Killers.  Also, the title, The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher calls to mind the alternate title of The Incredibly Strange Creatures, Teenage Psycho Meets Bloody Mary.  Other Steckler signatures include:  A Yellow-on-Black opening title sequence (like Blood Shack), scenic travelogue shots of the sex theaters and porno shops of Hollywood Boulevard (which make this a nice time capsule of the era), scenes that take place on the beach, and weird narration.  We also get a little bit of Steckler’s trademark self-promotion as posters for his adult films, Teenage Massage Parlor and Teenage Hustler can be glimpsed in the background in one scene.  However, this time around Brandt and Agostino are really the only members of Steckler’s Stock Players to put in appearances. 

When I first saw this on video back in the ‘90s, I thought it was okay.  Probably a ** ½ flick.  Now, seeing it in the proper context of Steckler’s work, I have a better appreciation for it.  I’d say it’s a *** movie now.  Heck, it looks like a goddamned masterpiece next to Sinthia:  The Devil’s Doll and Blood Shack. 

Steckler followed this up seven years later with a sequel, Las Vegas Serial Killer. 

AKA:  The Hollywood Strangler.  AKA:  The Model Killer.