TUBI CONTINUED… THE ROTTEN APPLE (1963) *

Ben (Will Gregory) is on his way to San Francisco with his wife (Gaye Gordon) and baby in tow.  When his car breaks down on the highway, he leaves his wife and kid on the side of the road and heads to a junkyard looking for parts.  As soon as he arrives, the creepy owner Harry (Paul Leder) begins harassing him.  Soon after, Harry’s sleazy wife Sally (Rue McClanahan) starts sexually harassing him.  Harry eventually pushes Ben too far and thus begins a game of cat and mouse, culminating in a violent confrontation.

The only memorable part of this dull thriller is when Leder addresses the audience and says he only took the role because the studio insisted it had a basis in fact.  This is complete bullshit however since Leder himself co-wrote the script!  I have a feeling this was only added because he wanted to assure everyone that he isn’t really a disgusting, despicable creep like he plays in the movie.  (Either that, or they needed to pad the running time out to hit the eighty-minute mark.)  

Overwrought and overdramatic, the whole movie boils down to nothing more than a bunch of icky characters yelling at one another while sweating profusely.  The scenes with future Golden Girl McClanahan feel like a cheap version of a Tennessee Williams play as she breathlessly yammers on about how it only takes five minutes to do the nasty.  (The original title was Five Minutes to Love.)  Heck, even the “good” guys are rather unpleasant, which doesn’t exactly make for an enjoyable viewing experience.  

Scene after scene of people screaming their heads off at one another quickly grows tiresome.  The part where the junkie runs off at the mouth about God knows what seemingly goes on forever.  The only reason anyone would probably want to watch it is to see Rue in her prime playing a hooker.  I did enjoy seeing King (the “TORTURE!” guy from Teenagers from Outer Space) Moody (who also went on to play Ronald McDonald!) as Leder’s right-hand man though, and the groovy jazz soundtrack is decent.

Director John Hayes went on to do much better Grave of the Vampire.  He was dating McClanahan at the time and directed her in the only slightly less irritating Hollywood After Dark.  Leder went on to direct such classics as I Dismember Mama and A*P*E.  Despite their best efforts, this Apple is Rotten to the core.  

AKA:  It Only Takes Five Minutes.  AKA:  Five Minutes to Love.

TUBI CONTINUED… THE PLATINUM PUSSYCAT (1968) **

Dena (Sandy Roberts) is a sexy blonde who is framed for murder and becomes embroiled in international espionage.  A detective named Mike (Jeff Baker) reluctantly takes her case and pounds the pavement for answers.  When Dena is kidnapped by some gangsters, it’s up to Mike to rescue her.  

I know that’s kind of a barebones plot description, but you have to understand that about 75% of The Platinum Pussycat is just flat-out incoherent.  It’s one part detective story, one part spy caper, and one part skin flick.  There’s a lot going on in the story, but nothing ever really happens.  It’s all one big jumble, and it’s often difficult for the mind to catalogue just what is occurring on screen in any given scene.  

Like most ‘60s sexploitation cheapies, it has crisp black and white cinematography and out-of-synch sound.  While some of the dubbing is good for a laugh, the constant narration and voiceovers make things a lot more confusing than they needed to be.  (I could be wrong, but it sounded like one of the voices on the soundtrack was Coleman Francis.)  The whiplash-inducing editing is also frustrating and often prevents the viewer from understanding what should’ve otherwise been a straightforward scene.  

I was tempted to give this a lower rating, but there were a few noteworthy moments that kept this hovering around the Two Stars mark.  One is the random color sex scene that appears for no good reason about halfway through the movie involving a greasy guy getting it on with two hookers.  I also liked the scene where Baker gets the drop on the bad guys while wearing a wetsuit and shoots them with a speargun.  (I think this was part of the James Bond influence.)  However, these scenes are fleeting, as most of the running time is devoted to long stretches where nothing happens and short stretches where way too much happens.  

Even though much of it doesn’t make a lick of sense, there is a lot of skin here, so that’s always a good thing.  

The co-director was Edward L. Montoro.  He only directed one more movie (the Uschi Digard comedy, Getting into Heaven) before going on to create Film Ventures International.  He later took millions from the company and disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again.  He’s such a legendary figure in the world of cult filmmaking, I’m surprised nobody’s made a movie about him yet.

AKA:  The Losers.  AKA:  The Pink Pussycat.  

TUBI CONTINUED… A FRENCH MAID IN SAN FRANCISCO (1981) ** ½

A French Maid in San Francisco is a very strange movie.  Or should I say it’s a very strange presentation of a movie.  It’s an edited hardcore sex flick, which is kind of surprising to find on Tubi.  But it gets weirder.  All the voices have been completely redubbed.  That might not sound weird, but it’s obvious that the soundtrack, music, and dialogue were replaced recently, and not at the time of production.  No one put much effort into it either, as the dubbing is worse than your average Kung Fu actioner.  Also, some dialogue scenes are repeated, and there are flashbacks to stuff we’ve just seen that add to the overall fever dream aesthetic.   

Julia Perrin stars as Julia, an eighteen-year-old French girl who comes to San Francisco and finds work with a maid service.  Her first client is an old dude who has over a hundred cats.  It seems weird from the start, but she heads for the hills when the old perv wants her to wear sexy lingerie.  Her next job is with a family that has a horny teenage daughter, who naturally seduces Julia.  Things get complicated when her mother’s lover (Herschel Savage) joins in on the fun.  Next up is a family with a grandpa who tells Civil War stories and waves the Dixie flag whenever he gets a blowjob.  Julia’s final client is a scientist (played by John Leslie) who falls in love with her, and eventually, they get married.

The movie already had an odd vibe to it as it is.  (There’s a picture of Father Guido Sarducci hanging in the employment office.)  The re-release fiddling just adds to the overall weirdness.  The funky fashions (Perrin wears what looks to be an astronaut suit when we first meet her) also lend themselves nicely to the strange mood.  I mean, I can’t say it’s “good”, but it’s certainly memorable and offbeat.  

Perrin has a sexy Christina Lindberg-type quality about her and carries the film rather well.  She also figures into the hottest scene in the movie when she makes out with her image in the mirror.  I can only imagine how this sequence played in its original version as it is pretty steamy in this edited form.  The scene where she masturbates and fantasizes that Leslie is yelling at her from a black void is less effective, however.  Leslie is as amusing as ever, but it’s Savage who gets the wildest line of the whole flick when he tells Perrin, “Don’t you know you can get cancer from making it with a lesbian?”

AKA:  She’ll Do Alright.  AKA:  Love Dreams.

TUBI CONTINUED… PARASITE LADY (2023) ***

I look forward to new Chris Alexander movies the way most cinephiles await the latest works of Werner Herzog, Claire Denis, or Wong Kar-Wai.  His films are often moody, dreamlike, and overly arty ASMR horror flicks.  Sure, some of them are pretty bad (like Space Vampire), but when they hit the sweet spot, they are often quite mesmerizing (like Necropolis:  Legion).  This one might be his best yet.  

Arrielle Edwards stars as a sexy vampire woman named Miranda.  Her daily routine is pretty simple:  She rises from her coffin, takes a shower, dons her best vampire attire, and then cruises amusement parks for fresh victims.  She’ll pick up a hot babe, lure her back to her hotel, rip her throat out, and then whisper, “I love you.”  The pattern repeats, one day flowing into the next, until she eventually falls for Catherine (Ali Chappell) and turns her into a vampire.  When Catherine asks what the vampire lifestyle is all about, Miranda answers, “We wait.  We walk.  We drink.  We go on.”  Predictably, their bliss doesn’t last very long.

Parasite Lady feels like a more assured remake of Space Vampire as it has the same barebones structure:  A vampire woman wanders trancelike through various landscapes.  However, it’s a lot more cohesive than Space Vampire.  It even has a point, which is something that couldn’t be said for Space Vampire.  

Imagine if Jean Rollin had directed Under the Skin.  That might give you an idea as to what Alexander is trying to achieve.  We’ve seen this sort of vampire-as-a-metaphor-for-existential-crisis thing before, but hey, when it works, it works.  Alexander makes his points succinctly and uses his abbreviated forty-two-minute running time expeditiously enough while still finding time for his highly personal artsy-fartsy digressions.

It helps that Edwards is great in the lead.  With her wide-eyed waxy demeanor, she reminded me of Vampira on more than one occasion, and she is nothing less than captivating when she’s on screen (which, fortunately for the audience, is quite often).  Frequent Alexander muse Chappell is also quite good in her brief, but memorable role.

TUBI CONTINUED… LILLITH (2019) *** ½

The Tubi algorithm keeps recommending movies to me about sexy succubae named Lilith (or in this case, “Lillith”), and I keep right on watching them.  This one is the best of the bunch so far.  

Jenna (Nell Kessler) and her friends take a college class on demonology.  When she catches her no-good boyfriend cheating on her, she decides to ask her witchy pal Emma (Robin Carolyn Parent) to help get back at the two-timing bastard.  Together, they summon a succubus named Lillith (Savannah Whitten) to seduce and torment him.  Naturally, things get out of hand in a hurry and Lillith kills him after doing the nasty.  When she sets her sights on fucking and killing more frat boys, it’s up to Jenna and her Wiccan besties to stop her.

Lillith is a surprising, funny, and fun time.  It’s always a little bit better than you expect, as it defies conventions at every turn.  The way co-writer/director Lee Esposito colors outside the lines of the usual horror cliches is also a real treat.  

At the heart of the film is a tour-de-force performance by Whitten as Lillith.  Instead of playing the succubus as a demonic sex machine, she opts to act like a catty goth chick, which is really inspired.  Not many actresses can remain charming, funny, and sexy during long dialogue scenes where they appear with dried dick blood on their face, but Whitten is definitely one of the best at the craft.  (“Blood and cum.  NOT a good combination!”)

Unlike most horror-comedies, Lillith scores high marks in the comedy department.  Heck, it manages to hit its marks during the dramatic scenes as we even grow to like the characters too.  When they are killed off, it gives the movie unexpected depth and weight.  It’s certainly head and shoulders above most low budget horror flicks that populate the backwaters of Tubi, that’s for damned sure.  

While Whitten is a hoot and a holler as Lillith, it’s Kessler who gets the best line of the movie when she says, “Okay, just to be clear:  You want to summon a sex demon to have sex with my ex-boyfriend, and then… what?  Give him demon crabs?” 

TUBI CONTINUED… THE THIRSTING (2007) ***

Tina Krause stars as a sexy nun with a dark past who works at an all-girl Catholic School.  When a team of Catholic schoolgirls head out into the woods for volleyball practice, Tina tags along and acts as their chaperone.  Since they are preparing their thesis on ancient demons, they decide to fool around with black magic and try to summon the evil Lilith.  (“Think about the grade we could get if we interview a demon!”)  After lights-out, the girls strip down and hold a black magic ritual in their cabin, but it doesn’t work.  Or so they think.  That evening, they are all haunted by sexy nightmares in which their darkest desires drive them to their doom.  Said fantasies involve cheating boyfriends, Catholic schoolgirls being paddled in the nun’s office, back-alley plastic surgery, getting accosted in a strip club, and becoming a dominatrix and accidentally banging your father.

This was the second film in a row I watched on Tubi that involved an evil woman named Lilith that starred Tina Krause.  Not that I’m complaining.  Krause is really good here too.  She looks equally sexy while fully clothed in her nun’s habit or while completely nude.  I especially liked the scenes where she fantasized about the girls while they were in the shower and when she was tempted by the succubus while praying naked.  Sure, the ending is a little abrupt and a tad anticlimactic, but it doesn’t derail the movie or anything.  I mean, whatever its flaws, I can’t complain about any flick that features an amazing topless Catholic schoolgirls black mass ritual sequence.

Just when you think it can’t get any weirder, MICKEY ROONEY shows up as a kindly old groundskeeper who dispenses wisdom to the girls in their time of need.  You might think it’s odd that he shows up in something like this, but it’s really not that strange considering his memorable turn in Silent Night, Deadly Night 5:  The Toy Maker.  Even though he isn’t given a whole lot to do, his very appearance just adds to the film’s anything-goes appeal.  

AKA:  Lilith.

TUBI CONTINUED… WITCHOUSE 3: DEMON FIRE (2001) ** ½

Annie (Tanya Dempsey) flees her abusive boyfriend and goes to stay with her girlfriends Stevie (Debbie Rochon) and Rose (Tina Krause) who are making a documentary on witches.  One night, they get drunk and decide to practice a little witchcraft for shits and giggles.  By doing so, they accidentally summon a witch named Lilith (Brinke Stevens) who appears from out of their shower and sets out to torment the three friends.  

The fact that this stars Rochon, Krause, and Stevens, three of the greatest B-Movie Scream Queens of all time, automatically makes Witchouse 3:  Demon Fire the best film in the trilogy.  It’s not great by any means, and it could’ve used a little bit more T & A (only Krause has nude scenes), but it’s head and shoulders better than its predecessors.  

Like Witchouse:  Blood Coven, this doesn’t really connect back to the original.  I guess they were going for a Witchcraft kind of thing by giving the series only a loose sense of continuity.  (The only real theme is that they all feature witches named Lilith.)  Although it was directed by Blood Coven’s J.R. Bookwalter, Demon Fire closely resembles a David DeCoteau movie as it’s about a bunch of hot babes in a house fighting the supernatural.  It only really starts to fall apart towards the end when Bookwalter tries to pull the rug out from under us with a totally unnecessary “surprise” twist in the third act.  It doesn’t exactly work and sort of negates some of the stuff we’ve previously seen.  

At least the ladies make it worth watching.  Krause is particularly entertaining when she’s off on her own, being goofy, muttering to herself, and singing into her toothbrush.  Stevens is a bit underutilized as the ghost witch, but she at least looks like she’s having fun chewing the scenery and hamming it up.  Rochon is awesome as always as the sassy documentarian who gets the best line of the movie when she tells Dempsey, “It looks like you fell down a flight of abusive boyfriends!”

AKA:  Demon Fire.