FRANCO FEBRUARY: BLACK BOOTS LEATHER WHIP (1983) ** ½

Robert Foster stars as a washed-up private detective who is about to go on the lam to get away from some pesky loan sharks when he’s hired to by a sexy femme fatale (Lina Romay) to retrieve her purse from a junkyard in exchange for a big payday.  He gets more than he bargained for when he goes to get the bag and is jumped by two goons.  Naturally, he kills them in self-defense, but the cops come looking for him anyway.  He changes his appearance, and eventually gets embroiled in a scheme to rub out his new lover’s enemies.

Jess Franco’s Black Boots Leather Whip starts out like a sexy version of a private eye movie before slowly morphing into a hitman drama.  The film’s best scenes are its early ones where Romay (ideally cast as the femme fatale in a bad blonde wig) is luring Foster into her web of deceit.  The ensuing sequences of Foster setting up Romay’s husband’s underworld associates to be murdered are less effective, although there are some decent moments along the way.  (Like the scene where a dominatrix gets the upper hand on Foster.)

Black Boots Leather Whip is surprisingly progressive for an exploitation movie in 1983.  Romay’s husband in the film is trans, and one of his illicit businesspeople is a blind woman.  That doesn’t necessarily make it “good”, but it makes it memorable.  

Lina is sexy as always and is the main draw.  Her best scene comes when she performs in a live sex show and runs Christmas tinsel all over her partner before blowing him.  I think my favorite moment though is when our hero changes his identity so the cops won’t find him, and he goes from looking like Magnum P.I. to a secret agent in a ‘60s spy movie.  I have to wonder since the hero’s appearance and the plot changes so drastically after the first act if this was actually two unfinished movies loosely stitched together.  

Like all the movies featured for Franco February, Black Boots Leather Whip has plenty of scenes where the camera wanders aimlessly around and zooms in on seemingly inconsequential things.  It’s also yet another film where Romay is saddled with a terrible blonde wig.  Of Franco’s usual stock players, Romay and Foster are the two most notable names yet again.

TUBI CONTINUED… BEYOND THE RESONATOR (2022) ***

After college student Crawford Tillinghast (Dane Oliver) and his friends experimented with the “Resonator” at Miskatonic University, they have been having weird dreams and strange hallucinations of a sexy squid woman beckoning to them.  She corrupts one of Crawford’s friends into committing suicide, which spurns him into trying to shut down the Resonator once and for all.  Meanwhile, a new student named Herbert West (Josh Cole) arrives on campus and starts conducting experiments to bring the dead back to life.  

Beyond the Resonator is a solid continuation of the surprisingly enjoyable The Resonator:  Miskatonic U.  It’s basically Charles Band’s MCU-inspired reboot of From Beyond and Re-Animator placed under the umbrella of one cinematic universe.  (In this case, the “MCU” doesn’t stand for “Marvel Cinematic Universe”, but “Miskatonic Cinematic Universe”.)   It’s not a patch on the originals (I mean, you can’t top the classics), but it is nevertheless a fun, breezy good time.  It’s certainly a lot better than the usual Full Moon offerings, that’s for sure.  

Writer/director William (Baby Oopsie) Butler does a good job honoring what came before while at the same time creating something new and giving this series its own distinct identity.  While it never quite attains the madcap fun of From Beyond or Re-Animator, it does feature what I believe to be the screen’s first zombie koala attack.  That alone is enough for me to hold it in high esteem.  

Cole has some pretty big shoes to fill in the Herbert West role, but I’ll be damned if they don’t fit him like a glove.  He does a dead-on Jeffrey Combs impression and is a lot of fun to watch while conducting his unspeakable experiments.  Although no one else in the cast comes close to matching his intensity (the From Beyond segments are noticeably weaker than the Re-Animator stuff), I’d recommend the film based solely on his perfectly pitched performance.  Whenever he’s re-animating, the movie really comes alive.

SINISTER CINEMA CLASSIC SCI-FI TRAILERS VOLUME 1 (199?) ***

After tearing through the Sinister Cinema Classic Horror Trailers compilations a while back, I thought it was finally time for me to start checking out their Classic Sci-Fi Trailers collections.  While Classic Sci-Fi Trailers Volume 1 features a lot of trailers you’ve probably seen elsewhere (particularly in the Something Weird compilations), there’s still a lot to admire here.  It will be just the thing for movie fans looking for a quick fix of sci-fi classics (The Time Machine and Creature from the Black Lagoon), cheesy B-movies (Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine and Horror of Party Beach), and straight-up schlock (Phantom from Space and Night of the Blood Beast).

The first thing you notice is that many of the trailers are shown more or less in chronological order.  That way, you get to see how the various trends came and went throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s.  Films about alien invasions, like those found in Invaders from Mars and Robot Monster give way to the giant atomic monsters of Attack of the Crab Monsters and The Monster That Challenged the World.  Mad scientist movies such as The Brain That Wouldn’t Die and The Unearthly are replaced in favor of creatures run amok flicks like The Monster of Piedras Blancas and Revenge of the Creature.  It’s also fun seeing such lowbrow schlock like The Hideous Sun Demon, The Brain Eaters, and Attack of the Giant Leeches, rubbing elbows with big budget studio fare like Barbarella, Planet of the Apes, and 2001:  A Space Odyssey.   

At nearly two hours, it does feel a little on the long side.  Fortunately, the inclusion of vintage concession stand ads and drive-in snipes helps prevent things from feeling stale.  I kind of wish there were more of them (they pretty much dry up in the second half), but the ones we do get are pretty great.  I can’t wait to check out further volumes in the series (of which there are many).

The complete trailer round-up is as follows:  Flight to Mars, Invaders from Mars, Phantom from Space, It Came from Outer Space, Robot Monster, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Killers from Space, Attack of the Crab Monsters, The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Man Who Turned to Stone, The Monster That Challenged the World, The Vampire, Return of the Fly, The Colossus of New York, Monster on the Campus, Terror from the Year 5000, Night of the Blood Beast, The Monster of Piedras Blancas, The Time Machine, The Brain That Wouldn't Die, Beyond the Time Barrier, The Leech Woman, Crack in the World, Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, a double feature of Die Monster Die! and Planet of the Vampires, Planet of the Vampires, Fantastic Voyage, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Them!, Revenge of the Creature, This Island Earth, It Came from Beneath the Sea, The 27th Day, a double feature of The Crawling Eye and Cosmic Monsters, The Land Unknown, Enemy from Space, The Giant Claw, The Cyclops, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, The Unearthly, 20 Million Miles to Earth, The Brain Eaters, Attack of the Giant Leeches, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Hideous Sun Demon, Satellite In the Sky, Gorgo, Valley of the Dragons, Mysterious Island, The Horror of Party Beach, Barbarella, Thunderbirds Are Go, Five Million Years to Earth, Planet of the Apes, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

WINNIE-THE-POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY (2023) *

Soon after A.A. Milne’s beloved Winnie-the-Pooh lapsed into the public domain, this horror movie based on the character was announced.  I have to admit, it was a pretty great idea.  Unfortunately, that’s about all writer/director Rhys (Firenado) Frake-Waterfield had:  An idea.  He just never bothered to build a movie around the idea that was worthy of the initial inspiration.  

The opening animated segment held a lot of promise.  Christopher Robin finds, feeds, and nurtures a group of anthropomorphic animals hiding out in the Hundred Acre Wood.  When Christopher grows up and takes off for college, he leaves the animals to fend for themselves.  They turn feral and cannibalistic, and wind up eating poor old Eeyore.  The shot of Eeyore’s tail attached to his tombstone billowing in the breeze gave me a hearty chuckle.  Once it switches over to live-action, it’s all downhill from there.  

Christopher (Nikolai Leon) returns to the Wood years later with his new bride (Paula Coiz) in tow.  Of course, he doesn’t realize the animals have become cannibal killers, and is shocked when they kill his wife and take him prisoner.  Meanwhile, a group of friends gather in the woods nearby for a girls’ weekend and they are eventually menaced by the deranged Pooh and Piglet.  

Frake-Waterfield may have started out with an ingenious idea, but he seems to have little understanding how films in general work.  Scenes just sort of happen at random and peter out with little consequence.  Scenes that in most movies would’ve been short and sweet, seem to go on forever here.  Scenes that in other pictures would’ve been allowed to breathe in order to flesh out the characters or mount suspense end abruptly or are awkwardly edited.  

Likewise, the horror sequences lack build-up, momentum, or even a satisfying payoff.  Take for instance the scene where one of the women takes selfies in the hot tub.  You would think Pooh and Piglet would either use the pool to their advantage and drown her, or maybe even use the phone as a weapon of death to make a commentary on today’s overreliance on technology.  What do they do?  Tie her up and run her over with a car!  I mean, I didn’t know Pooh had his driver’s license (or even a learner’s permit), but okay.  

While there is some gore here, it’s poorly lit, and the effects are inconsistent.  I suspect they blew must their budget making the Pooh and Piglet (who has a set of humorous looking tusks protruding out of his maw) costumes and there wasn’t much left for anything else.  That might explain why there’s no Owl, Rabbit, Kanga, or even Tigger.  (Unless they are saving them for the sequel.)  

Oh, don’t bother with this steaming pile of Pooh.

FRANCO FEBRUARY: SEX IS CRAZY (1981) **

Jess Franco’s Sex is Crazy is an almost unclassifiable film.  I guess you could call it a sex comedy, but that still wouldn’t do it justice.  It has a freewheeling, madcap, almost Monty Python style of irreverence.  (Just don’t mistake “irreverence” for “funny”.)  Scenes start out like a drama, and then the director (Franco, of course) does a second take where the actors play it like a comedy.  There are scenes of an alien gangbang where a human woman is impregnated over and over again in a matter of minutes.  This is eventually revealed to be nothing more than a live sex show.  Then, there are parts that play out like a spy movie where Lina Romay is tortured with utensils up her hoo-hah by Argentinian secret agents looking for microfilm.  She gets over that very quickly and runs off and has sex with her boyfriend while he’s driving.  There are also constant cutaways to the “producer’s girlfriend” who is only there to provide the film with gratuitous nudity.  

We also get a group marriage and a Satanic ceremony.  Oh, and it MIGHT be all a dream.  Or a movie.  Or a videotape.  And the aliens might’ve been real all along.  I don’t know.

One thing is for sure, the movie lives up to its title.  Sex is Crazy is crazy.  There’s a lot of nudity, a wild anarchic spirit, and jaw-dropping absurdity here.  That might seem like high praise, but I assure you that words like “good”, “entertaining”, and “coherent” were at no time found anywhere in this review. 

As far as Franco’s signatures go, his use of long, wandering camera pans and zooms matches the wandering, aimless plot to a tee.  His penchant for showing Romay in the nude also crops up once more.  In addition to Romay, co-stars Robert Foster and Tony Skios were also in Franco’s Night of Open Sex.    

TUBI CONTINUED… BABY OOPSIE PART 3: BURN BABY BURN (2022) **

Doll collector Sybil (Libbie Higgins) tries to make things right by stopping the demonic toy Baby Oopsie from opening the gates to “Toy Hell”.  She and her pal Ray-Ray (Justin Armistead) are too late, however, and the toys bring forth a giant clown monster from the depths of Hades.  It’s then up to Father McGavin (LeJon Woods) to perform an exorcism and send the creature back to Hell.

Part 3 is a slight improvement over Part 2, but it still falls well short of the heights of the original Baby Oopsie.  The biggest stumbling block is that Oopsie, who was a lot of fun to watch in the original, is never given a whole lot to do.  Her partners in crime, the cowboy and clown toys, are similarly wasted.  (Although the cowboy gets some good one-liners like, “Adios, motherfucker!”)  The giant toy Big Bad (who kind of reminded me of the giant Ghoulie from Ghoulies 2) is pretty cool, but he doesn’t get much screen time.  

That said, Burn Baby Burn still has its moments.  The exorcism scenes feature all the green puke you’ve come to expect from the genre, and the kill scenes are solid (if limited).  The best moments belong to Madison Pullins as the corporate toy spy, Skipper who is revealed to be a (SPOILER) living Barbie Doll.  The scene where her wiring malfunctions and she goes nuts is a lot of fun.  I can only hope she gets her own spin-off somewhere down the line.  

Like most of these Full Moon movies, Burn Baby Burn feels much longer than its scant running time implies.  In fact, it has more endings than fucking Return of the King.  However, at forty-seven minutes, you could watch this back-to-back with Part 2 (which is only fifty-five minutes long) and their combined running time would still be shorter than your average Hollywood sequel.  I’m not exactly recommending you do that, but you COULD do it if you felt so inclined.

TUBI CONTINUED… BABY OOPSIE PART 2: MURDER DOLLS (2022) **

Lonely doll collector Sybil (Libbie Higgins) is now under the spell of her Satanist priest neighbor Ray-Ray (Justin Armistead) who makes her find victims for the demonic baby doll, Baby Oopsie.  A toymaker in China wants Sybil to create a new line of Baby Oopsie toys for the worldwide market and gives her designs to make two new dolls, a cowboy and a clown.  Eventually, Sybil breaks the spell, comes to her senses, and tries to stop the killer dolls.  She turns to a priest (LeJon Woods) for help, and when he turns her down, she sets out to face the dolls down alone.     

The opening in which Higgins and Armistead dress up in S & M gear and lure unsuspecting swingers to their demise is great.  It’s almost like Eating Raoul by way of Chucky.  Sadly, this sequence is just kind of a one-off.  It’s similar to the sort of completely unrelated opening pre-title sequences you’d see in a James Bond film.  The problem is it outshines everything that follows.

It’s a shame that the rest of the film falls into the typical cookie-cutter killer doll formula Full Moon is known for.  As someone who thought the first film was a lot of fun, I was a little dismayed to see this one going back to the overdrawn well.  It doesn’t help that the two new dolls are forgettable and feel more like something out of a Puppet Master sequel than the Demonic Toys series.

Higgins gives yet another fun performance, which helps somewhat, but there isn’t a whole lot of killer doll carnage this time out, and the kills we do get are kind of odd.  (Death by Crisco?)  The biggest problem is that there is no real climax as the movie is essentially a table-setter for the third part of the trilogy.  Even if it had a strong finish, it would’ve still paled in comparison next to the fun and entertaining first film.