TUBI CONTINUED… REVENGE OF THE EMPIRE OF THE APES (2023) **

The opening crawl contains no less than three spelling errors, which doesn’t give you a whole lot of confidence in this, the fourth film in director Mark Polonia’s Empire of the Apes series.  After the crawl, we get a recycled scene from the last one, Invasion of the Empire of the Apes, where a female prisoner is nearly raped by a horny ape.  Then, the plot begins. 

Two ape terrorists are arrested for trying to blow up a space station and are sentenced to an icy prison planet.  (Scenes of two guys in monkey masks walking in front of green screened images of a frozen tundra is what passes for “an icy prison planet” in this movie.)  As they seek shelter and warmth, they are pursued by alien “flyers”.  (They look like something out of How to Train Your Dragon.) Eventually, they stumble upon a crashed ship containing a warrior woman, and together they form an alliance to fix the spacecraft and get revenge on the evil aliens who condemned them all to death.

Revenge of the Empire of the Apes is an improvement over the last two outings in the series, although that’s not saying very much.  Once again, the effects are piss poor (the CGI space battles look like cut scenes from a 3DO game), although the ape masks are slightly better this time out.  (There were only two apes, so I guess they could afford to spring for masks that weren’t on the clearance rack for this entry.)  I’m not sure I can say this is the best one of the franchise or anything.  What I can say is that the ape on human sex scenes (including some ape on human S & M) certainly make it the most memorable.  Granted, the human and simian boinking isn’t exactly erotic, but it’s just weird enough to give it a reason to exist. 

TUBI CONTINUED… DEVIL STORY (1986) ***

The first ten minutes or so of Devil Story is enough to qualify it as some kind of demented work of genius.  A misshapen guy who looks like a melted marshmallow in a Nazi uniform, runs around the countryside indiscriminately stabbing people.  The funniest bit occurs when a stranded motorist asks the clearly unhinged individual for directions and gets stabbed for his troubles.  

Meanwhile, another stranded motorist almost gets struck by lightning and imagines a cat attacking her.  Then, she and her boyfriend go to a castle to spend the night with a couple of old coots who tell longwinded flashbacks about the town’s history involving pirate ships running aground.  

It was right about this time I began to get nervous.  It was here I thought the movie was going to start to run out of gas.  Luckily, Devil Story still some nutty WTF lunacy left in the tank.

You see, a horse gets loose and runs into a field where a toy pirate ship pushes through a little sand dune.  The audience was probably supposed to think it was the presumably regular-sized pirate ship the old couple was talking about as it began breaking through a mountain.  The fact is it looks like a four-year-old filmmaker’s backyard homemade version of Fitzcarraldo.

That is to say, it’s awesome!

Then there’s the scene where the wayward horse encounters our bald antagonist and gets into a fist fight (hoof fight?) with him.  When the horse kicks the baddie in the stomach, it causes him to puke blood for two straight minutes.  As Martin Scorsese would say:  “Cinema!”

Devil Story is one of those movies where the kitchen sink approach yields uneven, but sometimes hilarious results.  Like, I couldn’t tell if the bad guy was supposed to be wearing a Halloween mask or he was supposed to look like that, and the make-up was just piss-poor.  (It turned out to be a case of the latter.)  Or like just when you think things can’t get any weirder, a mummy shows up.  Because of that, Devil Story is sort of review-proof.  Sure, it’s bad, but depending on your mileage, this could be a minor camp classic. 

I mean, I originally was going to give it ** ½.  However, the day after I watched it, some people at work asked me if I had seen anything good lately.  So, I told them about Devil Story.  Folks, the LOOKS my co-workers gave me when I was just describing the plot makes it worth ***.

TUBI CONTINUED… ZOMBIE PIRATES (2014) * ½

Produced by Fred Olen Ray, Zombie Pirates tells the story of Linda (Sarah French), a sexy cat burglar who is coerced by a shady antique dealer (J.C. Pennylegion) into looking for some priceless pirate treasure.  The only way to conjure up the mythical booty is to offer up five sacrifices in five nights at the stroke of midnight to a boatload of undead pirates.  Naturally, when Linda fails to make the fifth and final sacrifice in a timely manner, the zombie buccaneers come after her.

I wanted to like this one, but there were just too many dreary stretches and extended periods where nothing happened.  If you dig long scenes of a guy who looks like Colonel Sanders droning on and on about the history of pirates, then this will be your Citizen Kane.  If you enjoy entire dialogue scenes that are filmed with the “Vignette” filter left on the camera, then this will be your Casablanca.

Once the zombie pirates finally show up, things slowly start to come alive (no pun intended), but not much.  The poster artwork and skeletal pirate make-up is very much inspired by the old Blind Dead movies, particularly The Ghost Galleon, as the scenes aboard the zombies’ boat harken back to that old flick.  The zombie make-up is also pretty cool.  (One even has a zombie parrot!)  The kills are serviceable too, and include a knife through the mouth, some gut ripping, and skull chewing.  

The final zombie attack is OK I guess, but it’s ultimately too little too late.  It certainly doesn’t make up for all the dull scenes that came before, especially the parts where our heroine disposed of the bodies, which had a tendency to drag.  (And I don’t mean because they involved her literally dragging the corpses onto a boat for minutes on end.  I mean they are repetitive and really bogged the pace down.)

TUBI CONTINUED… ATTACK OF THE GIANT TEACHER (2020) **

Kenzo (Makoto Kojima) is a lowly teacher who learns his night school is about to be shut down.  As a final farewell, he and his ragtag group of students decide to put on a musical for the last day of school.  Little do they know that’s when an alien invasion of Earth is about to occur.  Luckily, two of his students are tiny aliens in disguise and they give their beloved teacher a super pill that makes him grow to enormous proportions so he can duke it out with the giant alien menace.

Attack of the Giant Teacher has a potentially good idea.  It’s just a shame that you have to wait until the final ten minutes for the teacher to become a giant.  (Aside from the opening flash forward, that is.)  Till then, you’re stuck with a lot of boring Stand and Deliver-style stuff.  While the teaching scenes aren’t bad exactly, there’s very little for you to hang your hat on until the climax rolls around.  (Aside from the random scene where a lawyer fights a waitress wearing wrestling tights.)

The effects are kind of cheesy, although I guess that’s to be expected.  (The main alien looks like a cross between a burned-out lava lamp and Tom Servo from Mystery Science Theater 3000.)  However, the Ultraman-style fight scene at the end is rather ill-fitting with the whole teacher narrative.  I guess it would’ve been okay if the final fight wasn’t so damned brief.  If you’re more invested in whether or not the teacher and his students will rally together to put on the big musical rather than if the teacher will become huge and fight off the impending alien invasion, then you might dig it.  Personally, there weren’t nearly enough scenes of the giant teacher battling UFOs, which, to me, seemed like the entire goddamned point.  Because of that, I can’t give Attack of the Giant Teacher a passing grade.

TUBI CONTINUED… FROZEN SCREAM (1975) *

“Immortality?  Why would anyone want to live forever in a world like this?”

This question is pondered out of the blue by an unseen narrator early on in Frozen Scream.  The query is posed in between a scene of a floating head that’s superimposed over a starfield and a scene where a bug-eyed strangler murders a couple in a swimming pool.  Shortly thereafter, there are phone conversations where the camera never is on the person talking, which means it’s easier to dub in the dialogue after the fact.  (This is also known as “Pulling a Doris Wishman.”) 

I wasn’t even five minutes into the flick, and I already knew I was in deep trouble.

Five minutes later, the narrator comes back, identifies himself as a cop, and tells us how he’s been investigating the murders.  Unfortunately, he chose to do this during a long dialogue scene between the heroine and her doctor, so there’s narration stacked upon dialogue and overlapping to the point that it feels like a ramshackle Altman movie.  This technique is used throughout the film, which begs the question:  Why go through all the trouble to poorly dub your dialogue if you’re just going to dub narration over the whole conversation anyway?

Speaking of the dialogue, it’s spoken by actors who A) Flub their lines B) Speak in blank, expressionless monotone and C) Have accents so thick it sounds like Lili Von Shtupp impersonating Dr. Ruth.

In short, this movie is like a seven-layer cake of suck with each layer suckier than the next.

Bright spots include an OK nightmare scene, a few nifty (albeit brief) gore effects (including an axe to the face and a shard of glass to the eye), and a nude dream sequence.  The most hilarious scene involves a rock band singing covers of “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and “Rock Around the Clock”, but slurring the words in such a manner that I assume was their slick way of avoiding paying any royalties.

Co-Written by Michael (Blood Diner) Sonye.

TUBI CONTINUED… WONDER WOMEN (1973) ***

Nancy Kwan is an evil dragon lady with a prosperous side business.  She sends out her hit team of all-girl assassins to bring back top athletes and then uses their body parts and organs to transplant onto old rich farts so they can live forever.  Ross Hagen is the cranky ex-cop who gets hired by Lloyd’s of London to bring down her organization.

Wonder Women is a weird flick.  Kwan plays sort of a female-flipped version of Fu Manchu.  The transplant scenes feel like a Ted V. Mikels movie. The stuff with busty ladies in tight outfits seem like something out of a Russ Meyer daydream.  Hagen’s scenes are like a generic made-in-the-Philippines actioner.  All this sounds like an ideal mash-up of genres, but unfortunately, most of the exploitation elements are kept to a minimum.  Even though things kick off with a trippy multicolor scene of topless women swimming around in a pool, that’s about all the skin we get.  (I mean, it’s rated PG for God’s sake!)

The beginning is choppy as hell too.  There were times when I was struggling to tell what was going on.  However, if you’re a patient viewer, you eventually figure it out, mostly from osmosis.  Even then, it kind of takes a while for it to make sense.  Fortunately, the fractured narrative becomes a bit cohesive as the film goes on.  I will say the scenes with Hagen run on a bit long though, and there will be times when you’ll start to wonder where the Wonder Women are.

Is the plot choppy?  Sure!  Is the storytelling structure erratic as hell?  You bet.  BUT… even with those detriments, I must be honest when I say that director Robert Vincent O’Neil’s kitchen sink approach is quite admirable.  While there are certainly some rocky stretches here, the sillier aspects of the flick eventually won me over.  I mean by the time Kwan was giving Hagen a tour of her personal prison of misshapen freaks, I had to admit I was having a good time.  The set-up for a sequel, which sadly never happened, also goes on too long, but since it features some of my personal favorite ‘70s actresses, Marilyn Joi, Robyn Hilton, and Leslie McRae, it’s hard to complain too much.

The cast is solid throughout.  Hagen is grouchy but fun, and Kwan makes for a solid villainess.  It doesn’t hurt that her all-girl army (including Roberta Collins and Maria de Aragon… who went on to play Greedo in Star Wars!) are easy on the eyes.  Sure, Wonder Women is messy and uneven, but it’s hard not to like any movie that features both Sid Haig AND Vic Diaz. 

The music is probably the best part though. The soundtrack is full of funky toe-tapping ditties that will keep you moving and grooving, even when the plot isn’t moving and grooving.  Also, the opening theme was later incorporated by Vinegar Syndrome, which by itself is pretty cool too. 

O’Neil later went on to direct the iconic Angel.

AKA:  The Deadly and the Beautiful.

TUBI CONTINUED… FANTASTICOZZI (2016) *** ½

FantastiCozzi is a fun, breezy documentary on Italian genre filmmaker Luigi Cozzi.  At first, the camera finds him behind the counter of his video store where he relates his story in his own words.  Luigi starts out as a little kid obsessed with science fiction and grows up and becomes the Italian correspondent for Famous Monsters of Filmland.  He then begins writing movie reviews and strikes up a friendship with none other than Dario Argento, who asks him to co-write Four Flies on Grey Velvet.  Eventually, Cozzi shifts to directing gialli (The Killer Must Kill Again), sex comedies (The Naked Housekeeper), and even his own Italian version of Godzilla.  Other films featured are his cheesy Star Wars knock-off, Starcrash, his Alien clone, Contamination, and my personal Cozzi favorite, Hercules.

Director Felipe M. (Deodato Holocaust) Guerra uses a couple different source interviews with Cozzi to generate the film.  In all of them, Luigi seems like a gregarious guy and is obviously a natural storyteller.  Guerra also gives us a nice assortment of clips of the films, and even some behind-the-scenes footage.  Although I wish the film delved more into Cozzi’s Godzilla (it would probably make for its own illuminating documentary), the stuff we do get is fascinating.  The scenes of the colorization process of Godzilla are especially mind-blowing as artists are shown hand painting the black and white film a frame at a time.  

Most of the time is devoted to Starcrash, which is fine.  The behind the scenes look at the special effects are a lot of fun and the side-by-side comparison of Star Wars and Starcrash (accompanied by Meco’s Star Wars disco theme!) is particularly great.  I also enjoyed scenes from the vintage documentary on Contamination where Cozzi reveals the alien eggs are nothing more than balloons painted green and touched up with slime.  The best tidbit however was learning that when they made Hercules, no one told Lou Ferrigno they were making a sequel simultaneously.  He thought they were just doing reshoots of another movie!  The producers purposefully kept him in the dark because if he knew he was making Herc 2, he would’ve asked for more money!  Incredible!