TUBI CONTINUED… THEY CALL HER… CLEOPATRA WONG (1978) *** ½

Cleopatra Wong (Marrie Lee) is a badass Interpol agent out to bust a counterfeiting ring.  She finds out the bad guys are smuggling the phony dough in strawberry jam and use a Christian monastery as a front.  Cleo then assembles a crack team to infiltrate the monastery and bring the villains to justice.  

They Call Her… Cleopatra Wong is an awesome hybrid of spy flick and Kung Fu actioner.  It plays like an Asian version of an American Blaxploitation action flick with Marrie Lee playing the Cleopatra Jones type of role.  It’s full of funky wah-wah guitar music on the soundtrack, snazzy ‘70s fashions, and frequent Kung Fu battles.  The fight choreography isn’t exactly great, but the editing is dynamic enough to make the brawls and battles pop with pizzazz.  Oh, and they occur at nearly every reel change, which is also a big plus.  The best thing though is that the while the action occurs in a modern-day setting, the fights are all staged like a traditional period Kung Fu flick.  Seeing that style and energy transposed into the groovy world of bellbottoms and blue jeans, and blended with the globetrotting intrigue of a Bond adventure (or at least the low budget knockoff version of a Bond adventure) makes it a real treat.

The film really takes flight once the action switches over to the monastery.  It’s here where Cleo and her team dress as nuns to infiltrate the holy place of worship.  What I loved about this sequence was the fact that the guys on Cleo’s team don’t even try to hide their beards and thick, bushy handlebar mustaches while disguised in their nuns’ habits!  In fact, They Call Her… Cleopatra Wong proves the rule that any movie can be made better with the addition of nuns brandishing machine guns.

There’s enough violent, slow motion, bloody exploding squib carnage in the third act to make Sam Peckinpah proud.  Then, the action culminates with Cleo hopping on her jet-powered dirty bike with rear-mounted machine guns and using arrows with exploding tips to take out the bad guys seven years before Rambo made it fashionable.  If that isn’t enough to make you want to watch it, the scene where the villain, dressed like a monk, yells as his nun henchwomen and says, “That better be the gospel truth, or I’ll send you straight to Hell!” will.

AKA:  Cleopatra Wong.  AKA:  Female Big Boss.  

TUBI CONTINUED… STALE POPCORN AND STICKY FLOORS (2023) ** ½

Stale Popcorn and Sticky Floors is director Dustin Ferguson’s tribute (I hesitate to call it a “documentary”) to the grindhouse horrors and drive-in fare of the ‘70s and ‘80s.  Lynn Lowry talks about working on I Drink Your Blood and The Crazies.  Camilla Carr discusses Don’t Look in the Basement.  John Dugan appears and reflects on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.  John Russo gabs about Midnight.  Kevin Van Hentenryck relives the making of Basket Case and takes us around to a few of the original filming locations.  Brinke Stevens tells us how she came to appear in The Slumber Party Massacre, which launched her career as a Scream Queen.  And so on and so on…  

Some of the interviews are entertaining (especially Lowry’s) and I commend Ferguson for seeking out lesser-known stars to talk about some deep grindhouse cuts that aren’t usually covered in something like this.  I just wish the whole thing looked a little more professional.  Some segments resemble Zoom calls while others look like they were culled from a cheap behind the scenes special features off a DVD.  Other times, the subjects are framed awkwardly on camera and sometimes even have half their head cropped out of the picture.  I don’t know if they filmed the pieces themselves and sent them into Ferguson or what.  It just gives the whole thing an inconsistent look.

Still, there are some good moments here, and lots of solid clips from movies like I Spit on Your Grave, Last House on the Left, Hellhole, Re-Animator, and Street Trash (although many times they are taken from the theatrical trailers).  The segments on low budget horrors like Microwave Massacre, Force of Darkness, and Spookies are fun too, and it was cool seeing the prop maker from Halloween 3 showing off the Silver Shamrock masks.  So, overall, Stale Popcorn and Sticky Floors isn’t bad; it’s just a little uneven in terms of both content and quality.

TUBI CONTINUED… RETURN OF THE WITCH (1952) ***

This just in from the “You Just Never Know What the Hell Will Show Up on Tubi” Department.  Here’s a ’50 Finnish horror flick called Return of the Witch.  Now, I’m no scholar on Finnish horror movies.  In fact, I think this is the first one I've seen.  What is interesting about it is that it predates a lot of similarly themed American horror films by several decades.  For example, Witchouse 2, which I reviewed a little while ago for this column, could play as virtual remake of this flick if you squint hard enough as the set-up is nearly identical.   

A husband-and-wife team of scientists are brought in to excavate a swamp that backs up to an old wealthy guy’s mansion.  They do some digging and uncover the body of a witch that had centuries before been staked inside her grave.  They foolishly remove the stake, much to the locals’ protests, and before long, a naked, raven-haired beauty named Birgit (Mirja Mane) is found wandering near the grave.  The team brings her inside and gives her shelter, and she in turn causes the men to become a bunch of horndogs.  She also causes a several calamities among the locals (although to be fair, most of them are just strange coincidences) who come to believe that she is the reincarnation of the witch.

Again, I’m not a scholar when it comes to Finnish horror movies, but I do know for a fact that us prudish Americans did NOT have scenes of nekkid women running around in our horror movies during the ‘50s.  While it’s far from a T & A parade, Return of the Witch is much more blatantly sexual than anything Hollywood would dare try to get away with at the time.  Heck, there’s even some choice four-letter words here too (in the subtitles at least).  I’ll admit, I kinda wished it went a little further with the nudity than it did, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t surprising, and most of all, fun.  I mean, you’ve got to wonder if Lifeforce and Species didn’t take a page out of this flick’s “Naked Woman Turns Men into Brainless Victims” playbook.

Mane is feisty and frisky in the title role.  While the rest of the film is a tad uneven and perhaps a bit creaky at times, her performance is easily the best thing about the movie.  It’s always a blast to watch her whenever she’s on screen.  Mane’s vivacious screen presence is so enchanting that it’s no wonder all the men in the movie fall all over her.  I also thought it was neat that her character is less a malevolent temptress and more of a carefree cutie-pie who just so happens to accidentally curse you.  

In short, Return of the Witch is sure to cast a spell on you.

AKA:  The Witch.  AKA:  The Witch Returns to Life.

BODY FLASH (1984) ****

This is the kind of ‘80s erotica I enjoy.  We live in an age where you can find virtually any XXX movie on your phone.  However, I’d rather dig up and revisit relics like this from a bygone age of simpler, cheekier smut.  One thing is for sure:  They don’t make them like this anymore.

Body Flash was made for the Playboy Channel, and it is a mash-up of the music video, dance, and workout video formats.  (When it was released on home video, it was sometimes paired with the lame sketch comedy special, The Sex and Violence Family Hour, which starred a young Jim Carrey.)  It was meant to capitalize on MTV and the workout video crazes while simultaneously giving the viewer lots of T & A.  It’s only a half-hour long, but it sure packs a lot into that small time frame.

First up is Kim Morris, who does a sexy dance in heels to Taco’s cover of “Puttin’ on the Ritz”.  Kim is interviewed afterwards about her taste in men (“To me, a sexy man is Mick Jagger!”) and her first sexual encounter.  She then drinks fizzing champagne suggestively until it foams all over her and she is forced to do the rest of the interview in the nude.  This is by far the longest segment (about twice the length of the other sequences on the tape), but it kicks things off in fine fashion and sets a pretty high bar for the rest of the performers.  

Yazoo’s “Situation” accompanies the next segment, where Toni Allessandrini appears in a geisha outfit.  Before anyone can make claims of cultural appropriation, she sheds the kimono in favor of a skimpy black leotard and starts to strut her stuff.  When she’s interviewed, Toni talks about her love of dance and sex.  (“Making love is a dance.  The dance of life!”)  

Return of the Living Dead’s Jewel Shepard is next, dancing to Tim Scott’s “Swear”.  She’s kinda dressed like a tomboy (except for her legwarmers) until she strips down to her Flashdance-inspired get-up of a ripped black T-shirt and sexy yellow thong.  Just when you think this segment can’t get any better, she seductively eats a banana.  

Afterwards, Cheryl Baker does an aerobics number while dressed like Olivia Newton-John in the “Physical” video.  This one is set to the tune of another Yazoo song, “Sweet Thing”.  She talks about her love of dancing before stripping down and telling the story of how she banged a rich German dude.  

Tamarah Park is the final dancer.  She does a wild and frenzied number set to Madonna’s “Burning Up”.  She then discusses fantasizing about dancing naked in a room full of strangers and talks about what she likes in her men.  Although this segment feels a little rushed compared to the other dances, Tamarah is hot, sexy, and feisty, and she ends the tape on a high note.  

TUBI CONTINUED… VIDEO VIOLENCE PART 2 (1988) ***

I reviewed the first Video Violence a while back for my collection of horror movie reviews, Bloody Book of Horror.  (Available on Amazon as we speak.)  That flick was all about a video store employee who found snuff movies returned in the overnight drop box.  Part 2 is a natural progression of that idea.  In addition, we get lots of T & A and blood and guts.  Heck, there’s even a few legitimate laughs this time around.  Overall, it’s a marked improvement over the original in just about every way.  As low budget, shot-on-video horror films go, this is one of the best.

Two sickos jam a local cable access channel and broadcast their own demented talk show over a pirate signal.  They encourage viewers to make their own snuff tapes and send them into the show with a chance of watching their videos on live TV.  They also lure unsuspecting actresses on the show to “audition” for a movie, unaware that they’re actually auditioning for a snuff flick.  

If Herschell Gordon Lewis was making movies in the ‘80s, I have a feeling the results would’ve looked something like Video Violence Part 2.  (I mean that as a sincere compliment.)  The flick opens with a great sequence where an actress working on a vampire movie complains to the director that the heart she just staked doesn’t look realistic.  He then stakes her to show her what a real heart looks like.  

Along the way, the film is peppered with amusing commercial breaks that deftly parody the low budget local commercials of the era.  My favorite was for a pet named “Wilbur” (he looks like the love child of the Grinch and a Ghoulie) who eats a kid under the tree on Christmas morning while his mother looks on approvingly.  There’s also a Ron Popeil-inspired guy who demonstrates handy kitchen implements that will help you off unwanted dinner guests.  

The snuff videos themselves are really enjoyable too.  An ex-cop and his ditzy wife make a homemade electric chair to fry a mugger.  A group of college girls grow weary of watching horror movies where the women are helpless victims, so they decide to lure an unsuspecting pizza boy to his death.  There’s also a fun sequence where an out-of-towner realizes just how hard it is to rent from a locally owned mom and pop video store.  (Titles like I Spit on Your Grave, The Gore Gore Girls, and the original Video Violence are proudly on display on the shelves.)  

One of the college girls gets the best line of the movie when she says the snuff TV show is, “The best thing to hit cable since Fraggle Rock!” 

AKA:  Video Violence Part 2:  The Exploitation!

TUBI CONTINUED… ALL JACKED UP AND FULL OF WORMS (2022) NO STARS

In 1977, Herb Robins directed The Worm Eaters.  It was one of the worst movies ever made.  It was so bad that I thought no one would dare to make another film in which worms were ingested ever again.  I was wrong.  

Forty-five years later, here comes All Jacked Up and Full of Worms.  Incredibly enough, it is so monumentally bad that it makes Robins’ film look like Citizen Kane.  This is without a doubt one of the most loathsome movies I have seen in quite some time.

The plot (such as it is) follows a bunch of losers who get high from eating worms.  That’s about it as far as the plot goes.  In fact, I’m not even sure what was going on besides the worm eating as the film is so ineptly and incoherently put together.  

If the movie was nothing more than a series of scenes of people getting high from eating worms, it would’ve been stupid, sure.  Then, a scene so tasteless came along that I was almost tempted to turn the whole thing off.  Said scene involves a guy receiving a sex doll in the mail.  That doesn’t sound all that bad, does it?  That is, until it’s revealed that the sex doll is in fact, a baby doll.  Ugh.  What’s worse is that later in the film, we see him having… uh… “relations” with it.  Sigh.  I guess worm eating alone wasn’t enough shock value.  The filmmakers had to drag this disgusting subplot into the mix to further add to the air of griminess.  

I think the “filmmakers” (note I put “filmmakers” in quotation marks) were going for a David Lynch Meets Troma vibe.  That sounds good in theory, but the rampant unpleasantness and awful acting sinks it before it can even get out of the gate.  I don’t want to overhype this by saying that it's the worst film I’ve seen on Tubi after five months of watching movies almost exclusively on the streaming service.  If I say that, then I know some of you who read this will be tempted to actually go out and watch it.  But yeah.  It’s even worse than Bikini Hackers.  

This worm will undoubtedly turn your stomach.

TUBI CONTINUED… THE VAMPIRE PROJECT (1995) ** ½

Four years before The Blair Witch Project was a massive box office hit, another Found Footage horror flick with the word “Project” in the title was released.  The good news is that the film only uses the Found Footage format sparingly as it alternates between what the cameras are capturing and what is happening to the characters in the “real” world as opposed to the “reel” world.  While it’s not great or anything, The Vampire Project is certainly a lot more fun than the glut of Found Footage flicks that followed in the wake of Blair Witch.  

A documentary film crew goes undercover with hidden cameras to do a story on illegal underground after hour nightclubs.  They get more than they bargained for when they capture footage of a vampire in action.  The director, Michelle (Kathleen Kelly), then decides to make like Anne Rice and sets out to interview herself a vampire.

The film has a dated ‘90s aesthetic that’s appealing to anyone who lived through the era.  The fashions, hairstyles, camera techniques, and filters make the whole thing look like a music video from the period.  I mean the vampire himself even resembles an alternative rocker.  All this makes for a slim, but notable source of amusement.  Too bad the vampire’s so wishy-washy that he never feels like a credible threat.

While the shaky-cam stuff wasn’t as prevalent as I initially feared, it’s not exactly effective either.  I’m tempted to say it would’ve worked much better without the whole Found Footage angle.  However, I will admit the sequence that plays like a tabloid TV news show a la America’s Most Wanted and/or A Current Affair is pretty spot-on.  

It's only forty-eight minutes long, which is also a bit of a relief.  Say what you will about The Vampire Project, but it knows when to quit, and that’s something that definitely can’t be said for most films working in the Found Footage milieu.  In fact, the short running time coupled with the tame level of violence makes me suspect that this might’ve been a TV pilot that didn’t get picked up.  

At any rate, this Project gets passing marks from me.