TUBI CONTINUED… CRASH AND BURN (1990) * ½

I must not have gotten enough of people saying, “Crash and burn!” while watching Robot Jox, so I decided to check out this sort of sequel/sort of spin-off.  Thankfully, that phrase isn’t repeated nearly as often this time around as it refers to a computer virus.  

Tyson (Paul Ganus) is a motorcycle-riding rebel who drives through the wasteland and hunkers down at an old TV station to wait out a “thermal storm”.  The other inhabitants are an old newscaster (Ralph Waite), his camerawoman granddaughter (Megan Ward), a teacher (Eva LaRue), a Rush Limbaugh dude (Jack McGee), two hookers (Elizabeth Maclellan and Katharine Armstrong), and Bill Moseley.  During the night, the old dude is murdered, and the group eventually figure out one of them is a “synthoid” robot killer.  (“One of us ain’t one of us!”)

Crash and Burn is a bait-and-switch bore.  It was sold as a giant robot movie, but it’s more of a post-nuke murder mystery.  Or more accurately, a people walking around dark hallways, boiler rooms, and basements movie.  And a dull one at that.  There are also scenes that rip-off The Thing (there’s a blood test to see who’s human) and the Terminator (unstoppable robot killer).  

Once Moseley goes crazy (I would put a spoiler warning here, but c’mon, you knew the robot was going to be Bill Moseley) and starts killing everybody, the movie comes to life.  Too bad you have to wait until the last half-hour for the big reveal.  Even if Bill is only doing a thin imitation of his beloved Chop Top character (he even has an exposed metal plate in his head at one point), he’s still kind of fun to watch.  (“That’s all folks!”)  Till then, it’s a tough slog.

Oh, and if you came to the party expecting some giant robot action, you’re in the wrong place.  It takes about seventy-five minutes for Ward to get it online.  Once it finally wakes up, it doesn’t do a whole lot before it crashes and burns.    

AKA:  Synthoid 2030.  AKA:  Robot Jox 2:  Crash and Burn.  

JANUA-RAY: RED HEAT (1976) **

Our “director” Cindy Lou Sutters (the voice of Carolyn Brandt) tells us all about her latest porn starlet discovery, Mary (Lovie Goldmine), whom she christens “Red Heat” on account of her fiery crimson locks.  When Mary finds out her boyfriend (Pierre Agostino) is cheating on her, she goes crazy and stabs him to death in the shower.  Mary then goes out and kills more people, effectively leaving her director in the lurch.  Desperate, Cindy must go and find other starlets in order to complete production.  Meanwhile, a mugger on a motorcycle goes around holding people up and stealing their wallets.  It’s only a matter of time before the two of them meet.

Red Heat almost feels like director Ray Dennis Steckler’s trial run for The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher as both films have divergent plot lines and lots of sex and stabbings.    (Although I guess it would be more accurate to say The Las Vegas Serial Killer because of the setting and the mugger character.)  Like many of his other pornos, it’s not very sexy (to be fair, it's far from his worst) and features a lot of blowjob scenes.  Some of the dubbed dialogue during the sex is good for a laugh (“That’s enough kissing!  Let’s see some tit!”), but the dubbed moaning and sucking sounds are wildly overdone.

There might’ve been enough material here to make a decent movie, but the fact is there’s just way too much padding gumming up the works.  The endless shots of people wandering around Las Vegas, random waterskiing scenes, and porn inserts that have nothing to do with the plot get to be a bit much after a while.  Steckler also manages to further stretch out the running time by filming the cum shots in slow motion, one of which is set to the familiar tune of “The Hell Raisers”, the theme song from Doris Wishman’s Another Day, Another Man.  (In fact, a lot of the movie resembles one of Wishman’s XXX films.)

Steckler’s directorial signatures are abundantly clear.  We get lots of footage of the Las Vegas Strip, constant narration due to the fact the film was shot silently, plenty of stabbing scenes, and a multitude of long blowjobs.  Of the usual company of Steckler Stock Players, there’s the usual cronies like Carolyn Brandt and Pierre Agostino.  Most everyone else in the cast (according to IMDb) were also in Steckler’s Perverted Passion.

AKA:  Nancy.

TUBI CONTINUED… ROBOT JOX (1990) ** ½

Robot Jox is basically Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots:  The Movie.  In the post-nuke future, the remaining nations of the world settle their conflicts by putting two dudes in giant robots and letting them duke it out.  “Robojox” Gary (Alien Nation:  The Series) Graham (the movie would’ve been called Robojox, but MGM threatened to sue because it sounded too much like Robocop) walks away from the giant robot fighting circuit when his mech accidentally kills a bunch of spectators.  The government wants to replace him with a test tube baby pilot (Anne-Marie Johnson) who is viewed as the future of the sport.  Naturally, she can’t handle the pressure, so Gary has to hop into to cockpit and fight the Russian baddie (Paul Koslo) to the finish.

Robot Jox was directed by the great Stuart Gordon, but if you go in expecting another Re-Animator you are going to be severely disappointed.  (Re-Animator star Jeffrey Combs also appears as one of the fans in the stands.)  At $10 million, this was Empire’s biggest budgeted film.  However, Gordon probably needed double that to fully achieve his vision.  The stop-motion special effects and robot battles are pretty good.  It’s just that there aren’t all that many of them.  Most of the running time is dedicated to dull espionage drama and predictable sports movie cliches.  

Although I liked Gordon’s other forays into science fiction (Fortress and Space Truckers) better, this one isn’t too shabby.  Even when things bog down, there’s still plenty to enjoy.  I liked that in Gordon’s future, everyone wore face masks when they leave their house.  The scene where the Jox use a dual gender locker room also predates Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers by several years.  And the fact that the test tube babies were called “Tubies” made me smile since I’ve been watching Tubi non-stop since the new year.  

Oh, and if you take a shot of your favorite alcoholic beverage every time a character says, “Crash and burn!”, you’ll be ready to check into a psych ward before the end credits roll.  That motto was also the title of the spin-off.  Robot Wars was the real “sequel”.  Sort of.

JANUA-RAY: THE SEXORCIST’S DEVIL (1974) ** ½

After watching so many cheap Ray Dennis Steckler porno flicks, the first thing you notice about this one is that it at least looks like a real movie.  The camerawork is much better and the acting (especially by Steckler’s wife, Carolyn Brandt) is certainly an upgrade from the likes of Count Al-Kum and Dr. Cock-Luv.  That doesn’t exactly make it “good”, but it is one of the best Steckler pornos that I have seen.  

Brandt plays a reporter named Janice who is doing a story on a professor of the occult (Kelly Guthrie).  When he reads a cursed parchment, it awakens a Satanist named Volta (Doug Darush, who kind of looks like Adam Driver).  He seduces Janice’s roommate, a hooker named Diane (Lilly Lamarr) and soon, he takes possession of her soul.  Volta then commands her to “bring more souls to Satan”, which is just a fancy way of saying, “Stab a bunch of people”.  Eventually, the professor (who has spent most of the movie sitting in his office staring at the wall and yelling, “EVIL!  EVIL!”) arrives on the scene to perform a sexorcism (driving away a spirit who has sexually possessed someone).  

Although most of the dialogue comes in the form of narration, what spoken dialogue we do get is pretty great.  Such lines as, “SEXORCISM?  What the fuck is that?” and “Bite it!  Chew it!  Suck it!  You can’t hurt me!” had me chuckling.  The sex scenes are slightly better than most of Steckler’s previous porn work, although there’s a heavy concentration on blow job scenes.  The lack of variety also doesn’t help as Lamarr is the lone female sex performer, but I must admit, the Satanist angle works better in a porno than say, vampires or Nazis.  That doesn’t hide the fact that none of this comes close to being titillating for a second.  

Steckler does a better job when it comes to the horror scenes.  The murder sequences are quite bloody, and he even delivers a not-bad homage to the shower scene in Psycho.  The exorcism… excuse me… SEXORCISM finale is also rather memorable.  

There aren’t many of Steckler’s director signatures this time around.  The constant narration calls to mind a lot of his later-era films such as The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher (I have to wonder if Steckler borrowed the idea from his pal Coleman Francis’ Beast of Yucca Flats) and the stabbing scenes are kind of similar to the ones found in The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.  Steckler’s stock players are rather plentiful though, and include Brandt (of course), Guthrie (who later appeared in Steckler’s Sex Rink), and Darush (who previously had a role in Ray’s Devil’s Little Acre).    

AKA:  Undressed to Kill.  AKA:  Sexorcist Devil.  AKA:  The Sexorcist.

TUBI CONTINUED… OOGA BOOGA (2013) **

In circumstances too contrived to reveal, the soul of a young African American med student (Wade F. Wilson) is transferred into the body of a racist looking African tribal doll.  The doll then teams up with his former girlfriend (Ciarra Carter) to get revenge on the crooks, cops, and politicians responsible for his demise.  

Director Charles Band must’ve seen Black Devil Doll from Hell and tried to remake it in the typical Full Moon/Puppet Master style.  The end results aren’t nearly as memorably offensive as that cult item.  Although it never quite crosses into full-blown offensiveness, the whole thing is tonally out of whack.  The oddest scene comes when Carter takes a shower after being gang raped.  What does the doll do?  Jerk off while watching her suds up.  

I’m not sure how they roped Stacy Keach into this mess.  He plays the crooked judge who secretly runs meth on the street.  He chews the scenery gamely, but it looks like he filmed all his scenes in one day as he spends all his screen time behind a desk in his office.  I did enjoy seeing Karen Black here though, although her presence is more of a wink to her role in Trilogy of Terror than anything else.  It’s buxom porn star Siri who makes the most memorable impression as a topless party girl.  

I’ve seen so many sixty-minute Full Moon movies lately that one that runs eighty-six minutes feels like a five-part mini-series in comparison.  After watching this one, I appreciate those short and sweet features a lot more.  Since Ooga Booga is rife with too many subplots and extraneous characters (the drunk kids’ show host being the most egregious), it often feels a lot longer than it actually is.  It also features less doll attacks than you might want/expect from a Full Moon flick.  It’s watchable, sure, but it never quite lives up to its potential. 

TUBI CONTINUED… SCREAM OF THE BLIND DEAD (2021) **

Scream of the Blind Dead is Full Moon’s reboot of Amando de Ossorio’s Blind Dead series.  As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with the OTHER Blind Dead reboot, 2020’s Curse of the Blind Dead.  As a die-hard Blind Dead fan, all I can say is the more the merrier (or scarier).  

We begin with a cool scene where a woman is chased through a field by an undead Templar knight and killed.  Then, the focus switches to a woman who seems to be in a daze when she steps off the train.  She wanders around for a little while before she stumbles into a church where she plays the organ, masturbates, and falls asleep.  When she awakes, she too is menaced by the Templar knight.  

I’ve seen some short Full Moon movies over the course of this column.  This is the shortest one yet.  It’s only thirty-nine minutes long.  I know what you’re asking:  If it’s so short, does it really count as a movie?  Well, if you’re like me and you’re trying to watch 365 movies on Tubi in 365 days, then the answer is a resounding, “Hell yeah.”

Scream of the Blind Dead FEELS like a short.  It’s often experimental, dreamlike, and surreal.  Some sequences look like something out of a silent movie.  Some of the extreme lighting resembles a giallo.  The resurrection of the zombie knight would right look at home in a heavy metal music video.  Most viewers will probably be confounded by it.  Speaking as a fan of the original series, I’m not sure I liked it, but I know at the very least I didn’t not like it.  

There’s a lot of stuff here that will please fans of de Ossorio’s original series.  There are slow-motion attack scenes (in fact, if it wasn’t for all the slow motion, the movie would probably be twenty-five minutes instead of thirty-nine), a gory heart-ripping, and suspense sequences where the heroine must remain perfectly quiet so the Blind Dead (who hunt by sound) won’t find her.  Unfortunately, there are no slow-motion horse riding scenes, which is a bit of a bummer.  Also, the budget was so low they could only afford ONE Templar knight instead of a whole platoon of them.  If only writer/director Chris (Necropolis:  Legion) Alexander gave us a third act (or at least another twenty minutes or so of footage), this might have felt like an honest to goodness continuation of the Blind Dead legacy.  As it is, it just feels like a slightly more expensive fan film.

JANUA-RAY: DR. COCK-LUV (1973) * ½

Three American women are kidnapped by Germans and taken to a Nazi experiment camp ran by the crazy Dr. Cock-Luv (Jerry Delony).  He hooks up the first woman to a “vibration machine”, and when that fails, he orders an SS soldier to bang her.  The next woman is threatened with a cattle prod before another officer has his way with her.  The final captive is oiled up by Nazis with a Spanish Fly ointment before yet another solider plows her.  Eventually, the camp is liberated by American G.I.’s who only have one thing on their mind.

The alternate title for Ray Dennis Steckler’s Dr. Cock-Luv was Nazi Sex Experiments.  If that puts you off, you should know that the movie is neither graphic enough to live up to that title, nor does it have the humor of Steckler’s Nazi Brothel to compensate for its overall lack of titillation.  As it is, it’s just a dull, unpleasant slog.  Heck, it’s not even up to the low standards of Steckler’s The Strange Sex Life of Hitler’s Nazis.  

The sex scenes are short, repetitive, and not very sexy.  The constant German marching band music on the soundtrack doesn’t exactly help either.  The only scene that shows any sign of passion is the lesbian pairing where two of the American prisoners use a double-edged dildo on each other.  Too bad the rest of the movie was sorely lacking this kind of heat.  

Delony overacts to the hilt, but he isn’t given any funny lines or memorable shtick to deliver.  (He was probably ad-libbing the whole time anyway.)  Other actors flub their lines and look at the camera.  At least Steckler sprang for some sets this time.  (They’re cheap, but they’re a lot better than the ones found in his other Nazi pornos.)

As far as Steckler signatures go, this is yet another Nazi porno movie.  (I guess when you find your niche, you’ve got to really stick with it.)  It also features some kaleidoscope effects during the sex scenes, just like Count Al-Kum.  Delony is the only member of Steckler’s Stock Players, having previously co-starred in Count Al-Kum.  The absence of Carolyn Brandt’s Nazi Buster is definitely felt this time around.

AKA:  Nazi Sex Experiments.  AKA:  Sex Slaves of the SS.  AKA:  Slave Girls of the SS.